October 3 Letters to the Editor

Dear Edi­tor,

Con­cerned Cit­i­zens for Your Safety (CCFYS) sin­cerely thanks the Card­ing­ton Town­ship Appeals Board for hold­ing the bill­boards hear­ing last
week in their large room and for allow­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic to speak. We also thank them for accept­ing our “Posi­tion Paper” as part of the hear­ing record, and hope they find it to be valu­able as they delib­er­ate on the bill­board variance.

We lis­tened to Lind Media’s attor­ney, and hav­ing done exten­sive research on the bill­board issue, found many of his state­ments to be mis­lead­ing. All but two are addressed in the Posi­tion Paper (both the hear­ing audio­tape and Posi­tion Paper are on www.billboardsafety.org). Here are the other two.

1. ODOT’s Posi­tion on the Safety of these Bill­boards on the Curve.

Mr. Darto, Lind’s attor­ney rep­re­sented that ODOT’s approval of a per­mit meant that in ODOT’s objec­tive opin­ion, the bill­boards did not present a safety issue.

This is not correct.

ODOT per­mit approval is a two-step process. To date, ODOT has only issued a “Con­di­tional Per­mit.” When ODOT issues a Con­di­tional Per­mit, they only ver­ify that the pro­posed bill­boards are planned to be built out­side of their right-of-way, that there is a 500’ dis­tance between signs, and that the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the signs them­selves (size, num­ber, and light­ing) meet their reg­u­la­tions. They leave other issues (such as safety based on road con­fig­u­ra­tion) up to the local juris­dic­tions, and issue their Final Per­mit con­tin­gent on local per­mit approval. This is doc­u­mented in ODOT’s “ADC Man­ual” (avail­able on their web­site), and was con­firmed when we met with them in late July. A Final Per­mit has not yet been issued by the State, so ODOT has not by any means given their approval of the safety of the bill­boards on the US 42 curve.

2. The Exis­tence of a “Hardship”

Mr. Darto claimed that a hard­ship exists because Lind Media, in erect­ing the signs, relied on the Town­ship hav­ing issued its permit.

Yes, it is true that the signs were erected after receiv­ing the Township’s per­mit, but this does not con­sti­tute a hardship.

Mr. Siegen­thaler (pres­i­dent of Lind Media) pur­chased the prop­erty with­out any con­tin­gen­cies (includ­ing con­tin­gen­cies is a com­mon prac­tice when writ­ing com­mer­cial prop­erty con­tracts), and pro­ceeded to erect the bill­boards even after CCFYS gave him, both in writ­ing and over the phone, a “heads up” that there may be prob­lems with the Township’s per­mit, and that he might not want to spend more time/money until it was resolved. The next day, the signs went up, and on Sun­day (four days later), two crews were out weld­ing the platforms.

Mr. Siegen­thaler, with 21 years of expe­ri­ence in bill­board per­mit­ting and erec­tion, made the busi­ness deci­sions to omit any con­tin­gen­cies (for exam­ple, the issuance of the Final Per­mit by the State) when pur­chas­ing the prop­erty, and to pro­ceed with sign erec­tion even after hav­ing been noti­fied that there may be a prob­lem. The time and money he spent doing this were his choice. His hard­ship was self-imposed, and fatal to a use variance.

But please don’t take our word for it. We highly rec­om­mend that inter­ested per­sons con­tact ODOT’s Out­door Adver­tis­ing Con­trol Man­ager at (614) 466‑7699 regard­ing ODOT pro­ce­dures, and do a Google search on “self-imposed hard­ship” or ask an attor­ney whether a “self-imposed hard­ship” is fatal to a use variance.

Vicki Ker­man, Cardington

Con­cerned Cit­i­zens for Your Safety

Dear Edi­tor,

Elec­tion day is just a few weeks away. Once again we have the right, pro­tected by our Con­sti­tu­tion, to vote for the peo­ple that will rep­re­sent us at the local, state and national level. Too many times cit­i­zens do not take the time to vote. 75 per­cent of the vot­ers liv­ing in Mor­row County did not vote in the pri­mary elec­tion this year for what ever rea­son but still com­plain about the results. Maybe they should be think­ing of the num­ber one rea­son why they should be vot­ing, to honor the ones that gave up their lives pro­tect­ing our rights and free­dom to vote the way we chose, not like in some coun­tries where you are told how to vote. So do you vote to give your­self the right to com­plain, or are you one of the 75 per­cent and just com­plains? To look at it from another point of view 25% of vot­ers decide who makes the laws that in one way or another con­trols our lives.

When you do vote are you vot­ing for the right rea­sons or just vot­ing so you can say you voted? When vot­ing in the Novem­ber elec­tion all of us need to ask our­selves do I vote for some­one because of the polit­i­cal party they are affil­i­ated with, or because they are the right per­son to do the job I expect them to do for my fam­ily and me? To often we for­get when we vote we are hir­ing a per­son to do a job for us because we are the employer they are the employee. We need to edu­cate our­selves on the issues and can­di­dates before vot­ing. You can start that edu­ca­tion by attend­ing and ask­ing ques­tion on Octo­ber 15, 2012 at the meet the candidate’s night at the Card­ing­ton Lin­coln High School. Ask any busi­ness owner when they hire some­one for a posi­tion how do they go about fill­ing that job open­ing in their company.

Do they hire some­one because of their reli­gious faith, skin color, or just tells them what they want to hear?

I think you will be told when they hire some­one they want a per­son that is qual­i­fied for the job, some­one who’s back­ground expe­ri­ences is telling them that they can be depended on to get­ting the job done and done right the first time because to do the same job over a sec­ond or third time cost valu­able time and money to fix what should have been done the right way the first time. The per­son who is hired that can find a more effi­cient way of doing the job but still main­tain­ing the high qual­ity of the prod­uct is the employee that will keep his job. The fail­ure to do so and that per­son will be replaced with some­one who will. To often, after being elected, the employee for­gets who hired them and lis­tens only to spe­cial inter­ests groups (paid lob­by­ist) and party lead­ers not the peo­ple who hired them, so when that hap­pens it becomes our job, the real employer, to fire that employee by the way we vote in the next election.

The time has come to let our cur­rent elected offi­cials that have failed and destroyed the qual­ity of this coun­try and the prod­uct it stands for, our free­doms and rights as cit­i­zens, know that we the employ­ers are going to replace those employ­ees with the ones that will pro­tect our con­sti­tu­tion, civil rights, and help rebuild this nation to its num­ber one stand­ing in the world which we have lost over the last few years. We the peo­ple of the United States also need to let our elected offi­cials and the world know that we are tired of being kicked around and being treated as a third world coun­try, as some of our now elected offi­cials would like us to become, and that we are not going to take it any longer by stand­ing up for our rights and the rights of all the peo­ple liv­ing in this the great­est nation in the world.

Our lives and the lives of our grand­chil­dren depend on it.

Duane Rasey, Con­gress TownshipDear

Edi­tor:

I attended the Card­ing­ton Town­ship Appeals Board hear­ing on the US 42 bill­boards last Wednes­day. I spoke about the safety issue the bill­boards present to the many stu­dents who travel around that curve to get to school.

At the hear­ing, Mr. Siegen­thaler, pres­i­dent of Lind Media, raised the idea of putting up “guard rails or water bar­rels or what­ever is required” to address everyone’s con­cerns about the safety haz­ard pre­sented by the signs.

He said, “I’m will­ing to do what­ever it takes to alle­vi­ate that con­cern, whether we agree with it or not. And I stand by that pledge.” You can hear the audio of the hear­ing on www.billboardsafety.org.

Why is he sug­gest­ing putting up more stuff on that curve just to pro­tect motorists from his signs? This loca­tion is but one of 215 which his com­pany has in North­ern Ohio . Why is he will­ing to place the lives of stu­dents in jeop­ardy when there are so many other loca­tions where he could put them? Why is this one loca­tion so important?

A national author­ity on bill­board safety wrote a Let­ter to the Edi­tor two weeks ago explain­ing how there are many juris­dic­tions, both domes­ti­cally and inter­na­tion­ally, which specif­i­cally pro­hibit bill­board signs on curves because of the safety haz­ard they present.

At the meet­ing, the County Pros­e­cu­tor rec­om­mended that a study be done by an inde­pen­dent expert to eval­u­ate the impact of the bill­boards on the curve. The bill­board company’s attor­ney objected to this. Why, if they’re will­ing to do any­thing to put our minds at ease, would they have a prob­lem with this?.

It seems to me that if Mr. Siegen­thaler were really con­cerned about the com­mu­nity that he would rec­og­nize that the US 42 curve just is not a good place to put bill­board signs because of the safety issue, would vol­un­tar­ily take them down, and put them some­where else where safety was not as big a factor.

But I guess that’s too sim­ple a solution.

Kirsten Stafford, Marengo

To the Editor:

“Zoned for Your Pro­tec­tion.” That’s what the signs say in Card­ing­ton Township.

At last week’s Appeals Board meet­ing about the bill­boards, I heard the bill­board com­pany and their attor­ney talk about how the bill­boards were going to ben­e­fit the com­mu­nity by bring­ing in tax rev­enue for the town­ship and by giv­ing local busi­nesses a place to advertise.

Really?

The only rev­enue gen­er­ated by the bill­boards will be the yearly $169.00 from prop­erty tax, start­ing in 2014. This goes to the county, not to the township.

In terms of local busi­nesses adver­tis­ing on the bill­boards, most can’t afford it. So, the signs end up adver­tis­ing big com­pa­nies from out of town. This does no good for local busi­nesses. As a mat­ter of fact, it actu­ally hurts them.

The only busi­ness which ben­e­fits from the bill­boards is the bill­board com­pany, with the pri­mary ben­e­fi­ciary being Mr. Siegen­thaler, the president.

It would be just plain wrong for the Appeals Board to sac­ri­fice the well being of our com­mu­nity just to put money in Mr. Siegenthaler’s pocket. From a busi­ness stand­point, Mr. Siegen­thaler is receiv­ing all of the ben­e­fits (rev­enue) while shift­ing all of the risk to the Town­ship when (not if) it is sued by the rel­a­tive of a motorist who, either because they are dis­tracted by the bill­boards or run into the steel columns, suf­fers severe injuries or is killed.

The Appeals Board has it within their power to deny a vari­ance and have the bill­board com­pany take the bill­boards down. For good.

Just who are they protecting?

Mar­garet Grif­fin, Cardington

Dear Edi­tor,

These are sit­u­a­tions that have occurred since 2009:

1. GAS PRICES have gone from $1.80 to $3.60

2. FOOD PRICES are up 20%

3. 1 1/2 mil­lion LESS JOBS in America

4. HEALTH insur­ance up 10 — 13% yearly

5. COLLEGE edu­ca­tion costs up 25%

6. Home VALUE down 14%

7. Home OWNERSHIP 60%; low­est since 1965

8. Only 49% of pop­u­la­tion is pay­ing income tax, which means you are pay­ing for your neighbor

9. In 2009, 23.5 mil­lion were on FOOD STAMPS, now 39.5 mil­lion receive them

10. OBAMA health­care leg­is­la­tion was passed BEFORE it was com­pletely writ­ten or read by Congress

11. Tax­pay­ers are pay­ing for health ser­vices for ille­gal immigrants

12. U.S. Gov­ern­ment is suing BORDER STATES for enforc­ing state laws on immigration

13. Ille­gal vot­ing reg­is­tra­tion activ­i­ties by ACORN, of which their leader has been OBAMA, a third of reg­is­tra­tions were illegal

14. SCANDALS under OBAMA admin­is­tra­tion include fast and furi­ous gun run­ning, Green Energy boon­dog­gles, Stealth Amnesty for ille­gal aliens, Depart­ment of Jus­tice suing elec­tion boards who are doing their jobs cor­rectly when they remove deceased per­sons’ names and or peo­ple who have moved

15. U.S. Gov­ern­ment is attempt­ing to put Amer­ica under the rule of the United Nations (One World, One Gov­ern­ment theory)

16. UNSAFE secu­rity for ambassadors

Hope­fully, after read­ing this, you will have a bet­ter idea of which can­di­date to sup­port for president.

Mills Poor­man, Cardington

Posted by Taylor Kaser on Oct 2 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.