Blight Inside City Hall

"Why can't they write citations?" asks SCRUB's Mary Tracy.

by Bruce Schimmel

Mary Tracy, renowned billboard battler, is confused

She finally has a mayor she really likes. A mayor who's also a big fan of SCRUB (Society Created to Reduce Urban Blight), Tracy's tiny nonprofit.

So how come, she wonders, is she still fighting City Hall? It's as if the dinosaur in City Hall got a new head, but its spiked tail continues to thrash.

Tracy's confusion is understandable, for her attachment to the mayor is deep. She worked on Nutter's primary campaign, which is unusual for the prominent head of an advocacy group.

After Nutter won, he put Tracy on his transition team. But his support of SCRUB goes way back. In 2001, Councilman Frank DiCicco tailored a bill to keep SCRUB from suing violators of the city's billboard law, saying that SCRUB shouldn't butt into local matters.

But then-Councilman Nutter came to SCRUB's defense, arguing for its right to challenge billboards that are illegal, no matter where they pop up in the city. "[A] billboard is a blight wherever it is," said Nutter in 2001. "Philadelphia is one city. We're affected by whatever takes place, anywhere."

Tracy still lives by the principle that we are all our neighbors' keepers. "It's a question of environmental justice, of fairness," said Tracy in her little office on Walnut Street.

As far as Tracy is concerned, all she ever wanted from the city is to enforce the law.

Back in 1991, City Council banned all kinds of stupid ad tricks. Which would include some recent imbecilities that Tracy has raged against: a Unisys sign on Two Liberty Place, a bee tethered to the Inky building and an ad wrapped around the SEPTA building on Market.

Council banned this blight, under the principle that it benefits few while hurting everyone else. And billboards, especially, are odious. They lower property values and invite crime — just as perniciously as broken windows and abandoned properties.

Visual pollution may be harder to measure than garbage in our water or air. But urban blight is still plenty nasty: It's how a neighborbood says it's poor and defenseless.

But since 1991, when Council passed the anti-blight law, enforcement has been poor.

Said Nutter: "We've had limited to no enforcement. And I mean, that's a part of what this whole matter is about." That was Nutter in 2001. But as mayor, says Tracy, Nutter has yet to get into gear. "I drive by and see violation after violation," says Tracy. "Why can't they write citations?"

It could be that the city's bureaucrats have been appeasing billboard companies for so long that they can't break the habit.

For instance, only last year — 16 years after the anti-blight law went into effect — some 900 illegal mini-billboards finally come down. But this victory came, says Tracy, as part of a back-room settlement with Mayor Street's administration that she's confident will only blight the city further. That's because, in exchange for removing those 900 billboards, many others of questionable legality will get to stay.

But even if — hopefully when — the mayor starts to back SCRUB, we'll still need Tracy. We need new laws for new times. To fight against advertising on street furniture, against errant beer posters, against giant glowing signs on I-95. To fight, as Tracy puts it, "the commercial colonization of public space."

With her flashing blue eyes and brisk manner, Tracy says a friend likens her a terrier, who latches on and won't let loose. That's not quite right, she says.

"If you need an animal to compare me to," says Tracy, "I prefer the image of a hawk. Or a lioness. Watchful, with a big roar, and that's not afraid to challenge injustice."

Can you hear her now, Michael?

(bruce@schimmel.com)

For more information, see urbanblight.org.