Civilian Coalition's Petition Receiving Support Amid Opposition's Allegations of Misinformation

Save Our Skyline—a civilian coalition that accused the Cambridge City Council of allowing the city to be “‘corporatized’ by a proliferation of large illuminated signs”—has continued to garner support in their petition drive despite accusations of misinformation and personal revenge.

The petition opposes an amendment the council passed last Monday that includes provisions to increase the building sign height limit in Cambridge and to repeal the “variance process.”

The process is a legal procedure of granting exemption to business owners when they want to put up a sign larger than the legal limit.

Coalition spokeswoman Karen Schwartzman called the amendment “detrimental” to the Cambridge skyline.

“These are not signs that help people identify places they need to find,” she said. “These are corporate advertising.”

Schwartzman added that the petition collected thousands of signatures as of yesterday afternoon, though she declined to disclose the specific number.

Meanwhile, critics have denounced the coalition as a misleading campaign motivated by a personal vendetta.

Critics point out that the amendment could potentially allow Microsoft—a competitor of Phillip T. Ragon’s multimillion dollar software company Intersystems Corp.—to place a large sign atop One Memorial Drive, where the two companies share office space.

In a letter posted on the website of Save Our Skyline, Ragon said that as a Cambridge citizen for more than 30 years, he supports the petition because he the amendment would “fundamentally alter the visual character of Cambridge.”

Though Schwartzman did not deny funding from Ragon, she said that Ragon only supported the campaign as a concerned Cambridge citizen.

But James J. Rafferty, an attorney familiar with zoning law in Cambridge, called Schwartzman’s claim “ridiculous,” citing the long history of rivalry between Ragon’s company and Microsoft.

According to the Boston Globe, Ragon’s company sued Microsoft and the owner of One Memorial Drive when Microsoft tried to move into the building in 2008, arguing that “we want to stay in our building [because] it’s very much our home.”

Ragon also claimed in his letter that without the variance process, it becomes easier for business owners to obtain special permission for large signs.

In the variance process, the council grants exemptions to regulations on sign size if the council decides that not doing so would constitute a “hardship” for the business owner—a test that Schwartzman and Ragon said is a stringent limitation on multinational corporations.

However, according to Councilor Leland Cheung, the present amendment puts strict rules on paper, as opposed to the more subjective judgments made in the variance process.

“I respectfully disagree with Councilor Cheung,” Schwartzman said, because “variance is far less subjective than a special permit process.”

—Staff writer Sirui Li can be reached at sli@college.harvard.edu.