Digital Billboard Brightness Battle Not Over Yet

They thought this battle was over.

Despite the fact that Palmer Township officials filed an injunction to get the developer of the controversial digital billboard on Route 22 to get into code compliance, residents syill appeared before the Board of Supervisors Monday night to complain some more.

This time, the focus was on brightness and blight.

Board of Supervisors Chairman Dave Colver said that residents showed up at Monday's meeting to say that they believe the billboard—which passed a township engineer's illumination test to meet code—is still too bright.

"I think the developer (Abraham Atiyeh) turned it back up," Colver said. "It's not as bright as it used to be. And it's hard to believe he would do that."

Colver said resident Charles Diefenderfer was once again leading the charge against the billboard, which received a certificate of occupancy from the township last month after numerous code violations were resolved.

"He's making it brighter," Supervisor Ann-Marie Panella said. "So can't we do a spot check quarterly instead of year to year?"

Palmer Township Solicitor Charles Bruno last month went before a Northampton County Court judge Tuesday asking to hold off on an injunction hearing that the township had requested because Atiyeh had made "considerable progress" in the past week resolving numerous code violations.

Hay Terrace residents—who say the billboard is ruining their quality of life—have complained to the supervisors, showing up in force at several meetings over the past two months to protest the billboard's brightness and blight.

At Monday's meeting, Colver said the residents sought the supervisors' help for getting the billboard tested for illumination more frequently, getting trees planted to block the light and clearing up some garbage around the site.

"We're going to go back to the electrical engineer to see about having it retested," Colver said. "We have a baseline now so we need to see if we can randomly test without notification. We're reaching out to the developer too."