Mary Tracy is a founding member and current director of SCRUB, Society Created to Reduce Urban Blight. She spearheaded citywide grassroots efforts to form SCRUB in 1990 to order to stop the proliferation of billboards in Philadelphia. Although successful in securing passage of the laws, the coalition witnessed the consistent failure of the city to enforce the ordinance and tenaciously worked for change in the system. In 2000, under Tracy's leadership, SCRUB became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organzation with a mission to improve Philadelphia's visual character and ensure that all citizens regardless of income, education or neighborhood, benefit from laws safeguarding the city's visual environment and quality of life. By successfully challenging unjustified zoning variances given to billboard companies, SCRUB’s pro bono attorneys and neighborhood partners created a new body of land use law in Pennsylvania, setting legal precedents through 16 published decisions ruling on dimensional and use variances, standing, advertising wall wraps, and hardship. Since its inception Tracy has worked through SCRUB and its neighborhood partners and legal volunteers to prevent over 50 new billboards and wallwraps from being erected and secure final removal of over 900 illegal billboards located across from homes, schools and playgrounds.
Tracy is a highly motivated person, with vision and tenacity, and a proven ability to work with citizens, political leaders, and administrative agencies to produce positive change. She is a member of the Philadelphia Bar Association’s Delivery of Legal Services Committee, serves as president of the Fairmount Park Commission’s Advisory Council, is on the Board of Directors of Scenic America, a national scenic environmental organization based in Washington D.C. and past-president of her neighborhood civic association. Tracy graduated from Rosemont College and lives with her husband John in Philadelphia where they raised three children.
