It has quietly become our lovely little corner of Holland, thanks to green-thumbed volunteers with the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy. Untold hours of labor and love have gone into the flower gardens gracing the intersection of West New Castle Street and Hansen Avenue. All told, the gardeners have tilled and planted about 400 linear feet of flower beds in the elbows of this busy junction.

It makes a fitting, flower-strewn welcome mat for guests and visitors to Butler, and a pleasant sight for neighbors and loved ones returning home from a day at work or a month out of state.

But the garden view apparently doesn’t mean much to some people when there might be a dollar to be made. The conservancy should dig up their flower bulbs and transplant them in a more appreciative town.

Butler City Council is considering a proposal to throw up three big billboards on the wooded hillside across the street from the flower gardens. Jerry Oliver, of Oliver Outdoor Advertising, wants to install the signs — one of them a big electronic TV screen — to catch the attention of motorists turning from Hansen onto New Castle. City council is expected to take up the matter tonight.

For the record, the Butler Eagle does not oppose billboards. The Eagle owns several dozen billboards across Butler County.

But billboards should not be installed everywhere. There are safety considerations. There are community esthetic considerations as well.

Oliver owns the property from 1014 to 1018 W. New Castle St. where the signs would go. One would be a light-emitting diode screen measuring 30 feet wide and 10 feet high. Two conventional static billboards each would measure 12 feet high and 24 feet wide. That’s 876 square feet of billboard advertising.

By comparison, the one traffic signal for westbound drivers turning left at the intersection features a green, red and yellow signal, each measuring 8 inches in diameter — a combined 151 square inches, which is just slightly more than one square foot. Drivers turning right onto New Castle Street have a yield sign that measures about 4 square feet.

City officials need to consider: Would billboards at this busy intersection constitute a potential safety hazard?

Oliver told the members of council the billboards will raise a small share of revenue for the city and will be used for “the greater good of the community.”

Four years ago in Armstrong County, the company put up a 12-foot by 40-foot electronic billboard near the home of a West Kittaning couple. “It’s like trying to sleep at a drive-in movie,” Patty Colberg told CBS News. “The flashing, the changing, the colors, the brightness.”

Colberg and her husband called advertisers to complain.

Oliver Outdoor Advertising offered to dim the light at night, and to help pay for new window shades. But it denied the Colbergs’ demand to turn off the sign at night. The couple refused to compromise. In December 2014, the company sued, alleging the Colbergs berated its customers, resulting in lost business of more than $50,000.

The lawsuit claims the Colbergs contacted 18 businesses, six of which pulled their ads, according to previous news reports. The Colbergs countersued, saying they did not ask any business to pull their advertising.

Council could vote tonight on a motion to change the zoning of the property from Residential 2 to Commercial 2. Zoning appears to be the city’s chief significant barrier to the billboards.

Zoning never should be changed without serious thought about the consequences. Let’s not make an exception now.