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As promised in the announcement as the new Webmasters for the PATA website, we stated that one of the things we were going to implement was a topic of the week. Here go you...
We have all seen our city officials implement new legislation such as impact fees and residential design guidelines as a means to slow the growth within the city of Pickerington. But what are the officials in the township doing about the growth outside the city limits? We all watched as two sitting township representatives retained their seats in the November election. While both Mr. Dunlap and Mr. Myers touched upon the sensitive growth issue, they were both very non-committal either way to the topic. Does this mean that they are still thinking over the issue of growth in Violet Township or are they planning upon opening the door to the developers?
What do you think?
By Roadrunner and Coyote
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Connecting the dots
I think we should review a little history prior to talking about plans and policies to control growth. I know the school district community has been very concerned for a number of years in the tax base of the district. In 1997, I believe the PLSD had around 18% of their tax base in non residential. Today that number is I believe around 14% non residential.
One of the main reasons the PLSD has been unable to have a more balanced or at least approach a 30% non residential tax base has been because of the unprecedented rate our residential land was being developed. So by definition, we should try to slow the residential development to allow the commercial development to catch up. So if we want to comment on the city or the township?’s performance then we must look at both sides of the equation.
The city?’s history has not been a stellar one in trying to balance the residential versus non-residential over the last 15 or so years. Although the numbers of new homes being built in the city are still high in percentages of total available housing, there does seem to be a light at the end of the long tunnel of approved building lots within the city.
I know in 2002 just prior to the citizen?’s initiative to limit new platting to two lots per acre, the then city council did approve over 2000 new building lots. All of those that were on the Pickerington City Council at the time have now been voted out of office or they choose to not run.
I believe I have seen a continuing effort on the part of the current council and now by the new members to continue the policies and programs to put the brakes on the uncontrolled growth. Just to mention a few are the impact fee ordinance, the residential design guidelines, I see they are raising the water and sewer tap fees. These steps will shift some of the costs for the growth over to the new home builders and more than likely they will increase the initial home costs and some buyers will be unable to qualify for a new home in Pickerington.
Will the above steps slow growth by itself or is there more to the factors that allow growth to occur? I believe early on the current city council did put a halt to the huge sewer plant expansion that would have added 2.3 MGD capacity and probably 30 to 40 years of normally growth in new homes and school age children. One interesting side bar here is that Fairfield County utilities has excess sewer capacity as well and they have pressure on them to see development happen in the school district but no one seems to care or they conveniently over look their beloved sewer provider and their policies. I believe the Fairfield County Utilities currently has over 1.5 MGD Capacity and I believe the tax payers to the County are paying for that capacity.
I am hopeful that future City of Pickerington sewer expansion is keep to a level that can be sustained over a decade or two and to a level that does not put undue pressure on the Pickerington water users to develop unwanted customers.
By Bret Maverick
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Time will tell
I believe if you all take a look at the ?“our pages?” to the left you can print off the impact fees studies and get some idea of the costs of development. Clearly ALL (residential and commercial) development costs the existing tax payers money to provide the infrastructure and services needed. However commercial development does provide a quicker pay back to the taxpayers and thus a better return on their investment. With the exception of High end Condo developments most residential development cost the existing taxpayers more in services than the taxpayers receive in new revenues.
To recover some of those impact costs to the community the City passed an impact fee ordinance and they started collecting those impact fees, I believe, last December. The township seems not to be very interested in imposing any kind of impact fees and they appear ready to allow the existing tax payers to pick up the cost of development and if they could they would do that with a TIF. Which diverts money away from others services like the schools and put it into infrastructure improvements.
I understand that the city is planning on re-writing their zoning code book. I also understand that the Township has updated their zoning code book in the last year or two. Residential growth can be controlled by what we call ?“administrative delays?”.
So how is the township going to reach that balance between commercial and residential development? I know they have had the Kroger store come in across from the North High School but are they really improving the community?’s tax base? Obviously they did enjoy an increased value in their 1.5 mill bridge and road levy and the schools did receive higher property valuation but most of the school funding is outside millage and the school did not receive any additional tax dollars only more property valuation until the next levy or bond issue.
Then we have the County who receives some of the sales taxes from these retail boxes. It seems they only put back into the project a traffic signal at Refugee and Pickerington Roads.
The sad part is that the Township for what ever reason has zoned most of its available and undeveloped land as residential. The township residents can delay and put off residential developers but they can?’t stop them. As the cost of building new homes increase in the City I am sure the pressure will mount on the township to allow residential development and it will be right after the housing market starts to recover. The township seems to refuse to use their home rule powers and they resist imposing impact fees. By their inaction they are inviting future residential growth.
By Bret Maverick
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Very Interesting
I think it is very interesting that there were two responses on this topic thread that were posted today (2/1)that have now disappeared. I wonder why? I did print the responses so I do know they were actually there and I have not lost my mind.
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