Blog: Today's UPT Stupidity Score: Supervisors 3, Tree 0

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Why do elected officials apply different standards for decision-making? Why are there different rules for developers?

The little village of Oaks is bounded and barraged on all sides by traffic from commercial development on its borders. Hemmed in by Brower and Highland avenues, sliced up by Egypt Road and assaulted by Station Avenue traffic, the tiny community is coming under increasing pressure from plans to expand commercial activity with resulting traffic, noise and pedestrian safety issues. 

The majority landowner, Audubon Land Development (ALD), holds most of the property surrounding what remains of the residential village area. Upper Providence Township Supervisors have effectively let ALD run roughshod over the Township in that area for several decades. Finally, in the last two years, residents banded together to push back against what they perceive to be the combination of cronyism, lack of vision and bad planning.

In addition to a number of documented issues that the neighbors have proposed to sustain the value and spirit of the tiny Oaks community, the new "ground zero" in the battle between common sense and unresponsive government may now be a tree. 

It overlooks and overshadows the intersection of Highland Avenue and Perkiomen Avenue. It’s big and has been there a long time. The Township wants to cut it down. The neighbors think there’s a better way. The Supervisors plan to respond with a chainsaw.

The tree is being blamed for a condition called "sight distance," a technical term that describes how an object blocks a driver’s view as they sit at an intersection. But the tree is not really the problem. What really plagues the Township is a condition I call lack of consistent application of the law.

The Phoenixville Patch reported on this situation 10 days ago. (.)

Supervisor John Pearson wanted a stop sign. Neighbors proposed a bike lane. The Township’s contract traffic consultant, a nice guy who means well, proposed the bike path as a traffic calming measure and suggested it could be tried before cutting down the tree. The Township’s contract lawyer said there was risk because a "sight-distance" issue creates liability.

In the end, Supervisor Bob Fieo nastily refused to engage in any discussion about an alternative other than a stop sign or cutting down the tree. Bob's attitude was a glaring reminder why he was given the boot in the primary.

In a letter to neighbor Erin Murphy on Nov. 17, Assistant Township Manager Lee Milligan has put neighbors on notice that they will hire someone to cut down the tree. 

Keep in mind that no one has stacked their car up at this intersection in recorded history. At least, the Township provides no evidence that the venerable oak has been blamed for any accidents since World War II or the invention of paper, whichever came first. As far as we know, there have been no complaints by any drivers that their lives or limbs (an obvious reference to the tree) have been endangered. 

What the Supervisors are doing is panicking again where common sense should and could prevail. There is a better solution: it's called traffic calming for the neighborhood. But they won’t hear it and their buddies at ALD don’t want it. Here’s where we get to the double standard. 

Everyone and anyone who’s been in Upper Providence for the past few years remembers the day that ALD’s convention center opened to a gun show and train show on the same day. The resulting traffic caused all sorts of grief and UPT got its backside spanked for creating a traffic monster that pushed parked cars back onto 422. ALD’s contribution of commercial traffic and its impact on the community was so outrageous, they had to act. As Mel Brooks wrote in Blazing Saddles, “Gentlemen, we have to protect our phony baloney jobs here!” How appropriate.

Like so many Chicken Littles, the Supervisors panicked as the sky fell around them that fateful weekend. While ALD was raking in the dough at the shows, the Supervisors adeptly sidestepped taking responsibility for their votes that approved the convention center development without reality-based traffic data. They focused all their enmity on the stop signs on Station Avenue (which is ALD’s private road) as the cause of all their grief. In a few short days, they yanked out the stop signs, making Station Avenue the high speed, uncontrolled, unpatrolled arterial that it is today. 

There were no hearings, no notices, no consultant reports, no options discussed, no neighborhood meetings and no ordinances proposed. Different rules for the developer who is substantially more connected politically than the tree.

Keep in mind that since our elected officials tossed out the stop signs, there have been a number of multiple vehicle accidents at the intersection of Station and Montgomery. People have been hurt and cars have been wrecked. So there’s hard data that points to this intersection as a source of danger. As the Patch reported:

…Solicitor Steve English said if the township knows about a hazardous condition and doesn’t make an effort to correct it, the township may be on the hook if there’s an accident. “The township can be held accountable,” English told the board.

And despite a litany of facts, the Township sits blind to the dangers they engendered at Montgomery and Station. It is obvious that the Township only applies the stated standard of accountability to unindicted trees, not intersections with a history of criminal activity owned by political contributors. 

Before we start swinging axes, let’s hold the Township accountable for dangerous conditions on Station Avenue that they approved. That intersection should be their priority. All the folks who’ve had their cars smacked by another driver’s bad behavior, at the obvious invitation of the Township, should band together and sue the Township for their ignorance and the willful continuation of a hazardous condition. 

Maybe it’s time to sue the Township to protect the tree. The tree doesn't vote and it doesn't do deals with elected officials. Maybe its independence demands our attention.