WHITE LAKE, NY — “Controversy is coming,” said Councilperson Dawn Rider as she explained that a digital sign would be the subject of a public hearing to be held by Bethel’s zoning board of appeals (ZBA) on March 22. Rider was speaking at the Bethel town board meeting on February 24. She said the sign would be located in Mongaup Valley on Route 17B, in the space now occupied by a sign for the River Edge Restaurant.

The proposed sign was also the subject of a ZBA meeting on January 25. Monticello businessmen Jeff Siegel and Mark McEwan, who are both well known in the county, created a company called Bright Advertising and plan to install the digital sign.

Comparing digital signs to conventional billboards, Siegel told the board, “They are cleaner, they are brighter, and they look better. The information that can be on those boards is pretty immediate. It is all done through the Internet and uploaded, whether it is information that is an emergency-type situation or just regular billboard ads.”

He said the size of the sign would be eight feet tall by 12 feet wide, and would involve showing six ads on each side of the signs. The ads would be rotated and show for eight to 10 seconds at a time.

There was quite a bit of discussion among board members about whether this would constitute a billboard or a sign. Signs in the district in question are permitted, but not billboards. The general definition of a sign, according to the town code, is that it advertises a business or other entity on the same property as the sign. Although the code does not currently define billboards, it was agreed in the discussion that a billboard is something that may be rented to businesses or entities elsewhere, and not necessarily related to the sign.

Because there is no definition of billboard in the town code, even though some billboards existed before the current code was adopted, the ZBA board determined that the project would need a use variance before it could move forward. If the ZBA does grant a use variance, then the planning board will need to approve the project because of the proposed size of the sign.

No communications courses for court clerks

In a separate matter, the board turned a rare thumbs down to a request for the two court clerks in the town justice court to attend a course related to learning how to better communicate, at a cost of $149 each.

Councilperson Vicky Simpson said, “I’m a little confused as to what that has to do with court clerks.”

Councilperson Lillian Hendrickson agreed, saying, “It’s not being done by New York State. And they can’t keep up with their work now; how are they going to take a whole day away to do it, when they are complaining that they can’t even get a day off?”

Supervisor Dan Sturm said, “Anytime we have education requests, in my experience, it always goes to the town board, because we have to approve the amount, we have to approve whether there will be mileage or meals. So we’ve always done it and very rarely do we decline education.” Sturm said, however, that at $150 each the courses are expensive, and while they might be helpful, they are not court clerk classes but rather courses for the general public.

The council voted unanimously to deny the approval.