Billboards on U.S. 42 north of Cardington to stay, says board

By Randa Wagner

The debate over the future of the bill­boards on the U.S. 42 curve north of Card­ing­ton is over; the Card­ing­ton Twp. Board of Zon­ing Appeals says the struc­ture stays put.

What has been deemed a traf­fic haz­ard by the group Con­cerned Cit­i­zens for Your Safety is con­sid­ered by the board to “enhance the prop­erty value of the par­cel itself” and “has a pos­i­tive busi­ness pur­pose for the town­ship and extended area.”

The board released its find­ings last week, and Zon­ing Inspec­tor Len Robin­son com­mended the trustees and Pros­e­cu­tor Charles How­land ‘for their wis­dom in pro­vid­ing calm and neu­tral guid­ance’ through a process that pro­voked heated debates and, Robin­son says, rude allegations.

The Lind Media Com­pany was granted a bill­board per­mit in March of 2012, then four per­mits from the Ohio Dept. of Trans­porta­tion and Ohio Dept. of Com­merce to erect and install out­door sig­nage on the tri­an­gu­lar par­cel located at a curved dual inter­sec­tion on U.S. 42 north of Card­ing­ton. The ques­tion of safety was raised by com­mu­nity mem­bers who claimed the bill­boards would add another dis­trac­tion to an inter­sec­tion already plagued by seri­ous acci­dents over the years. To this cause, the ques­tion was raised of whether the erected signs vio­lated the required clear­ance from the three intersections.

It was found that while two of the inter­sec­tions had the min­i­mal clear­ance of 150 feet, the third did not, so Lind’s per­mit was with­drawn on August 21. On August 30, Lind requested a vari­ance that would allow the sig­nage to stand as was.

A hear­ing to address the issue was held on Sept. 26 and included zon­ing appeals board mem­bers, Robin­son, How­land, Lind Media owner John Siegen­thaler, his attor­ney David Carto and many mem­bers of the community.

When the dust set­tled, the board granted a con­di­tional vari­ance, say­ing the bill­board offers no safety con­cerns rel­a­tive to its loca­tion and meets all spe­cific cri­te­ria and safety require­ments. How­ever, because the bill­board is not 150 feet from the inter­sec­tion of CR 143 and an access road, Lind Media is required to install ‘crash bar­rels’ to ‘pro­vide addi­tional pro­tec­tion to the motor­ing public.’

The deci­sion was unan­i­mous among board mem­bers Danny Wood, Tom Blanken­ship, Richard Cook, Gale Slack and Don Yake. The board said ‘the use of the par­cel for a bill­board is, per­haps, the only log­i­cal use of the property.’

There is a 30-day period to appeal the decision.

Posted by Rob Hamilton on Dec 25 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.