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Editorials
Montgomery should stand by billboard ban : Editorials : Oswego Ledger-Sentinel : Hometown Newspaper for Oswego and Montgomery, IllinoisMontgomery should stand by billboard ban
| 12/6/2012
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"Pole signs, pylon signs and billboards should not be permitted within the Orchard Road/Blackberry Creek corridor."
We agree with that sentence, but it's not ours. We found it in the Village of Montgomery's 2004 Orchard Road/Blackberry Creek corridor plan. It's a plan the village board commissioned and then subsequently adopted to help guide development along Orchard Road on the village's west side.
After adopting the plan eight years ago, the board voted to update its sign ordinance for the entire village and prohibited the installation of any more billboard signs within municipal limits in 2006. Existing billboards were grandfathered in under the amended ordinance, but some have since been taken down.
Now, however, the board is seriously considering amending the sign ordinance once again to create a special use category that would allow the installation of billboard signs. Prompting the board's action is a request from an Indiana company to install a three-story tall LED billboard sign on private property on the east side of Orchard Road, just north of Aucutt Road. The sign would flash up to six illuminated commercial messages every 10 seconds.
Board member Bill Keck has said that permitting the sign would be a "business friendly" move by the village, while board member Andy Kazcmarek noted the LED billboards he has seen while driving in Indiana are not a distraction to drivers.
We believe permitting billboard signs along Orchard Road or any other highway or street in the village would be a serious step backward to efforts that village officials have made over the past decade to change the village's image from that of an industrial area south of Aurora to a unique community with genuine small-town appeal.
In 2002 the village conducted a community survey as part of the preparation of a new comprehensive plan. The survey asked residents and business owners to identify five of the village's least popular characteristics at that time. Topping the list of least popular characteristics were billboard signs. We strongly believe that if the board were to again seek out the opinions of village residents they would find that local sentiment against billboards has not changed.
Furthermore, creating a special use category in the sign ordinance to permit billboards could serve to open the door for the installation of not only the sign along Orchard Road, but still more LED billboards along that road and other highways in the village.
In 2006 a prior board made the right decision when it approved the prohibition on billboard signs. The current board should stand by that decision.
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