Where’s Homer Simpson when you need him? Yes….something that was so d’oh today I have to blog about it.
There I was, enjoying the quiet of a nice Chester County morning, sipping my French Press and the phone rang. It was 9:54 a.m. and it was a cold call, sales call, solicitation call.
Now anyone who knows me, knows how much I hate solicitation calls.
So there was this guy on the phone. Calling from Philly Direct on behalf of the Philadelphia Inquirer (215-682-2001) – a Google on them shows them to be a tele-pests and tele stalkers. ( Apparently I am also not the only person to find them very annoying.)
I say “hello,” and there is this male voice on the other end of the phone. Blah blah blah calling on behalf of the Philadelphia Inquirer. I can barely understand him his enunciation is so bad. Ah yes, the virtually unintelligible needs a translator telemarketing call…my ultimate favorite.
I tell the guy I am going to stop him right there and I should be on the “Do Not Call” list because well I am on “Do Not Call Lists” and religiously reaffirm my “Do Not Call” status…and well they are not a charity. (Not that I have any love lost for charity telemarketers, because I don’t.)
So this guy actually then says to me “Uhhh that means you don’t want to hear about our special offers for the paper?”
REALLY? Talk about d’oh. Dumb and dumber has nothing on this guy. Nothing.
I mean come on Philadelphia Inquirer! REALLY? So embarrassed for the Inky. But hey, they are having groundhog day over editors in their next great new “local ownership”, so I guess this is to be expected?
The moral of this story is, NO I won’t be subscribing to the Inquirer for home delivery – tried that for a few years and they never got it right. Besides, if you are going to call and hang up a million times and then call and interrupt a person’s Saturday morning and then not get it when you are told someone wants to be on the Do Not Call list for real, then well, not only is a body less than likely to want to subscribe…but you might just blogged about in the process…ya’ know? Free publicity of the reverse PR kind?
Philadelphia Inquirer, stop cold calling me. Stop cold calling everyone. Do us all a favor.
Lordy how do these old Coatesville people keep getting jobs? I started to pay attention to Coatesville years ago when under Paul Janssen they tried to sieze the farm of my friends Dick and Nancy Saha via eminent domain for private gain. (Don’t remember? See Save Our Farm’s website.)
Now I thought it was bad enough when Radnor in the midst of the Bashore drama thought about bringing in Paul Janssen in 2010 as a then temporary township manager.
OMG it all makes sense now. When will people stop hiring people Coatesville gets rid of??? I mean let’s get real, for years can it be said that Jean Krack talks a good game but doesn’t quite have the follow-thru in the end? He is good at spending money, however. Haven’t taxes gone up under Krack? Wasn’t it reported in The Phoenix at the end of 2011 that taxes were going up 19%? And the year before that didn’t the Phoenix report a 24% increase?
(Oh and as a Phoenixville aside don’t forget about those condos that did not sell. They get auctioned off on April 15th as per the Mercury.)
Now part of the discussion surrounding this new Phoenixville Borough Hall isn’t just the cost but the stormwater/flooding concerns. Remember the thing in the Inquirer in September about water stuff?
How very West Vincent of him, or maybe this was another place West Vincent looked for inspiration on the public comment debate? It doesn’t really matter – what matters is in my opinion government officials who seek to limit public comment are immediately suspect for that alone. Of course in this case, I am amused by his touting his tour of duty in Coatesville since in the end they fired him as per all media reports, right?
But I digress. My whole point is Phoenixville hired one of the managers that Coatesville fired.
Now I know Jean Krack like most municipal talking heads would like to take credit for all of the renaissance which has occurred in Phoenixville, but I think a lot of credit needs to go to the small business owners and residents themselves.
But back to Krack and his quest for a Platinum-clad Phoenixville Pagoda – check out the latest coverage in Phoenixville Patch:
Seems to me that Krack seems a little desperate to get this building shoved through? That in and of itself is enough to make residents want to hit pause in my humble opinion. I also think that Phoenixville needs to remember that the residents are the taxpayers and they in essence pay the Borough Manager’s salary.
Well maybe it’s just me, but the design of this building isn’t much better than the giant Acme Market being built on Lancaster Avenue in Bryn Mawr. But what do I know? I am just a mere mortal and a female….now see if I was in Phoenixville I would talk to the folks in Radnor who inherited the mess of THAT too super-sized municipal building. I am pretty sure they seem to think NOW that they built too large a temple of excess there too a few years ago.
No one wants a butt ugly municipal building. But there should be a common sense approach as to what can really be afforded and a happy medium between a quonset hut and something along the lines of the Taj Mahal.
Now is not the time to build the Taj Mahal. It’s a shame they can’t do an adaptive reuse of an existing building – or even part of that old steel site now being developed. (in that case, wouldn’t it have made an interesting argument to see what the developer who is doing the steel site development would have been willing to do?) But again, I am but a mere mortal and a female on the outside looking in.
I believe I was in 9th or 10th grade the last time there was a fire at the historic Radnor Township mansion known as Bloomfield. Bloomfield was built at the turn of the 20th century in the Radnor Township portion of Villanova on the bones of a Victorian Estate built for Albert Eugene Gallatin in the 1880’s. Bloomfield was built by Horace Trumbauer and her gardens were designed by the Olmstead brothers.
This place in my opinion was like Radnor’s La Ronda and it was a marvel it had survived this long without being torn down or bastardized. It looked like a French Chateau with fabulous gardens and a graceful, grand presence. It was being rented by a Canadian family at the time of the fire – which began mid-afternoon yesterday.
I went today to the site and when I got out of my car there were some news vans at the estate entrance on S. Ithan and the air smelled heavily of smoke. As I went to take my photos I also glanced up the street shows the gaping, ravaged land where private school Agnes Irwin had been reportedly blasting this week.
There were many gapers and gawkers on the driveway and the road when I arrived and I wandered around with a local reporter from Radnor Patch (Sam Strike) taking photos. We got up the driveway to in front of the fencing now surrounding the site where we were met by a Radnor police officer who was none too happy to see us and asked us to leave. He also threatened to take my camera. He was just doing his job.
So we left, and we got some good photos, and as we wandered back down the driveway, there were yet more gawkers, so I would not be surprised if they did not soon post a police car at the foot of the driveway.
People are driving up and down S. Ithan hoping for a glance of the scene, and I found others back around Trianon Lane, where you can see glimpses of the gardens, house, and pool from behind wrought iron fencing.
NBC10 is reporting that investigators are trying to find a cause. The state police fire investigator is now reported to be in charge of the investigation. I was told that around 175 volunteer fire fighters responded from several companies from all over the area to fight this fire. (This as a related aside is why everyone should support their local first responders and on the Main Line and in Chester County they are a predominantly volunteer force.) First responders came from Radnor, Bryn Mawr, Ardmore, Gladwyne, Penn Wynne, King Of Prussia, Manoa and Newtown Square.
They say the slate roof made it hard for firefighters to break into the roof and battle the fire. I am also told some firefighters may have suffered some issues due to the heat, etc of the fire. God bless them for what they did, because truthfully, I know many people near the mansion who had fears of the fire jumping via the trees surrounding the property. With wind and fire, you just never know how it will travel.
The mansion was most recently owned by Jerald Batoff, son of a former Democratic fundraiser heavyweight, William “Bill” Batoff. I looked at Delaware County property records yesterday and Batoff had only owned it a few years. I am told by neighbors that although it had renters, the mansion had been for sale. Apparently a movie soon to be released called “Safe” was partially filmed there in 2010 – the mansion was a film double for New York City’s Gracie Mansion.
I think this is an incredibly sad loss if this mansion ends up not being rebuilt (I am sure residents will now be nervous that the mansion will be razed and the land sold for some sort of development because that would be a natural thought process after a fire of such devastation), and it is but for the grace of God that people weren’t killed because of this fire.
Both these cases will go to an appeals process. This guy wants his billboards everywhere. He feels it is his Constitutional right. Never mind the rights of affected residents. Who knew Constitutional rights were so subjective, right?
A commenter on the Phoenixville Patch referred to Article 1 Section 27 of the Pennsylvania State Constitutions which states:
“The people have a right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment. Pennsylvania’s public natural resources are the common property of all the people, including generations yet to come. As trustee of these resources, the Commonwealth shall conserve and maintain them for the benefit of all the people.”
Residents in all counties being affected by these billboard challenges should deluge their state elected officials on this topic. Since the whole shebangy started in Haverford Township a couple of years ago over billboards state level elected representatives have been making appropriate noises regarding protecting communities, only nothing ever seems to go past those supportive murmurs. (Not that I am surprised, politicians are well..politicians.) But this is an election year, so the people could make this count if they make enough of a stink.
A blog post on the Phoenixville Patch over the past few days (they used a photo from Save Ardmore Coalition) reminds me that yes, the billboard issues that have been plaguing the Main Line, Delaware, and Montgomery County is trying to encroach on Chester County too.
And trust me, since I have been at many, many Main Line/Haverford Township billboard hearings, I can tell you it may get nasty.
The guy is Thaddeus Bartkowski. He’s young and affectionately known to billboard activists as Mr. B.I.G. (BIG is the acronym for one of his corporate entities so it’s a play on words, not truly a reference to Sex In The City.)
Anyway, this guy thinks it is his First Amendment right to litter communities with billboards.
I have noticed Chester County has it’s fair share of billboards and do you want more? I know people in Phoenixville are very upset at this prospect in the town. But then again what does a Classic Town designation and a billboard have in common? The answer is not much.
East Pikeland joins at least 18 other local communities targeted by Thaddeus J. Bartkowski, CEO of Chester County Outdoor, and his legal counsel, the law firm of Kaplin Stewart, in their game of corporate bullying.
Those communities have said, emphatically, that they don’t want digital billboards. As a result, they’ve been subjected to appeals, litigation and hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars spent in legal fees.
Bartkowski and Kaplin’s first appeal tactic is to object to the exclusionary nature of local sign ordinances….Communities, not the billboard industry, should have the right to determine appropriate limits for billboard size, and according to a chart of standard billboard sizes, Phoenixville’s and East Pikeland’s ordinances approved sizes for free-standing signs would accommodate at least half of the industry-approved sizes of billboards.
Even in the case of an exclusionary ordinance, though, as Mr. Bartkowski and his legal counsel are aware, communities have the right to ban digital billboards outright if they can show that they are a detriment to local aesthetics or citizen safety.
A recent study by Philadelphia urban planner Jonathan Snyder demonstrates that billboards have a detrimental impact on local property value: In Philadelphia, properties purchased within 500 feet of billboards have a decrease in sale price of $30,826. For each additional billboard in a census tract, there is an average $947 drop in home value, throughout the entire census tract.
On the safety issue: The website of a prominent billboard company boasts that its signs are “virtually impossible to avoid.” Another company’s website promises that “outdoor boards are unavoidable, unstoppable.”
Marketing blogger Andrea Atkins, in a blog post promoting Mr. Bartkowski’s Outdoor Advertising wrote: “Qhat is the No. 1 best feature of outdoor advertising? That customers are basically prisoners; outdoor advertising is difficult to get away from … Is Victoria Secret bringing us new bras? I was staring into space during the commercial, but its hard to miss a gorgeous, half-naked model on a 50-foot digital billboard during rush hour!”
This issue of fighting billboards has been going on in Bryn Mawr and Haverford Township for a few years now. I mean can you imagine giant, I-95 sized billboards in Bryn Mawr? Or in Phoenixville? Why in town centers? Why not leave them on highways or better yet, not have them at all? Why do communities need billboards and why can’t they say no?
One of the proposed Bryn Mawr Locations is across the street from a church. Can you imagine a GIANT condom ad or say a Victoria’s Secret ad across from a church? Because I don’t believe you can dictate billboard content – whatever ad space that is sold on a billboard is ad space, correct?
At many of the hearings we were scoffed at when we said “what if one fell?” Apparently, that query is not so odd after all given recent events out of New York:
In spite of personally being singled out by the billboard guy’s attorney – apparently my First Amendment rights are very optional – he can claim it’s his right to put them in communities, but I am not supposed to be able to say I hate the idea of billboards in communities I care about and why – I still say if you don’t want billboards in your communities you should have a say in the matter. As a matter of fact, four states have banned billboards for years: Vermont, Hawaii, Alaska, and Maine. In England and the UK billboards are controlled via planning and the fines for not following the rules are stiff. And in Toronto, Canada since around 2010 they have been taxed and part of the tax collected goes towards public art and stuff like that.
Yet here, for this guy Mr. B.I.G., all communities are just supposed to roll over? What I still don’t get is why one person seems to be on a mission to billboard SPAM Southeastern PA?
Haverford Township Fire Truck Extends Ladder to Show Residents How High Billboards Would Be (May 2009)
So yeah, a lot of us are real familiar with Mr. B.I.G. and his Billboardquest.
YUCK.
Groups that are fighting billboards in this area are SCRUB and No Billboards – both groups are full of awesome people.
These blue tarps were stretched out at a Haverford Twp. Billboard Hearing So All Could See How Big The Billboards Would Be (May 2009)
On Christmas Day, the Phoenixville billboard issue made the Inquirer and was even picked up by the AP:
Editor’s Note: This is the first of two articles on Wednesday’s hearing. This one will deal with the legal aspects of the case, while the follow-up goes into the statements made by the public following the testimony.
After people came forward to offer emotional appeals to stop the process that may allow 40-foot wide, 43-foot tall electronic billboards along the Nutt Road corridor, the zoning hearing for Chester County Outdoor came to a close Wednesday evening.
Carol Kuniholm paced within the area of a few square blocks on the floor, her voice cracking at times as she spoke.
Though not from Phoenixville, Kuniholm has tracked the work of billboard advertising firm Chester County Outdoor and she’s part of Occupy Phoenixville. She called the opposition to three 43-foot tall electronic billboards proposed for the Nutt Road corridor a perfect example of what the Occupy movement is about, calling the bids to put billboards around southeastern Pennsylvania “corporate harassment.”
“You ought to be embarrassed,” Kuniholm told Patrick Wolfington, the lone employee of Chester County Outdoor on hand at Wednesday’s hearing.
As Phoenixville Borough faces its own billboard challenge, East Pikeland Township will face one soon and Schuylkill Township is trying to protect itself from similar action.
The challenge states that the borough’s sign ordinance does not allow for freestanding offsite billboards. Several residents and business representatives spoke at a recent hearing, and a decision from the zoning board is expected by Feb. 27.
Anyway, if you live in Chester County and where you live doesn’t have zoning to address billboards, or has zoning with holes like the holes in swiss cheese on the books, you had better sit up and pay some mind to this issue.
Trust me, these people are like ants at the proverbial picnic. Or mold. Take your pick.
