Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

Paradise lost

I believe I have remember things correctly over the years about the position of those elite residents that live in our township. Remember when our argument was about the ''Rural Setting'' of your homes. You didn't want that ruined by HIGH DENSITY homes. That was all you had and still have to argue.

So the first question is you have built your Taj Mahal to educate your children and now you are about to surround that school with tens of thousands of square footage of retail stores. Is there any safety concerns on your part to worry that your teenage driver that might have some issues dealing with massive numbers of cars say on a Friday evening during and after a football game?

I have also heard you folks talk about the lights and the setting of the Taj Mahal and how wondering it looks at night with all of the lights and decorative brickwork on your building. Now you are going to be faced with thousands of cars passing that school every day at 50 MPH and there is nothing your township trustees can do to slow them down. In the application for these big boxes the county engineer mentions the safety concerns and his only solution is not to put sidewalks too close to the ''High Speed'' highway.

Oh but you all will receive huge tax revenues from this place. By the way, you all are assuming this is going to be a Wal-Mart. I do not think that has been established at this point. Back to the tax revenues. You should all look at what Bloom-Carroll schools are getting from the Meijer's store on US 33 just north of Lancaster. They get zero. Nothing and how long has that store been there?? Since they are not in an incorporated area they do not pay income tax.

Unless Violet Township teams up with either Pickerington or someone else they can't even levy income taxes against these new stores. More than likely they will ask for huge tax breaks and you all will be putting up with the traffic and the safety issues around your Taj Mahal. You will be at the mercy of the county and their engineer.

Piston head for Trustee

By Monday Morning coffee

Police protection????

Has anyone thought about the crime issues involved with allowing these big box stores to be built? In the last year there has been three bank robbers of the bank located at the corner of Stone Creek and 256. This bank is located in the township and the first to respond and the first on the site is normally the Pickerington Police department. With only two deputies in the township at any given point in time how do we see the protection from the police department or Sheriff's office in this case doing with protecting the public?

What happens if the robbers get wise and discover that Chase has now opened up a new bank directly across from the North High School? Many times these robbers walk into the bank and then either run away or drive a stolen car after the robbery to a real get a way car parked say in the High School school parking lot. Add to this and I believe there is another bank in the Kroger store. I am sure the school staff has this emergency plan already written down and knows exactly what to do in case this were to happen.

Then there is the problem with these stoes becoming vacant within a short period of time. Case in point is the Brice road area. I have read about the increase of crime in this area and that was brought on by the huge mess of traffic that was caused by letting in one big box like a Meijer's store and no other controls over the development.

Just wondering

Who is the benefactor in a JEDD or CEDA? I know each party must pony up part of the funding but what are the returns proportions versus the investment proportions?

For example:

City investment = __%
Township investment = __%

City's return = __%
Township's return = __%

I just wanted to place the ''fill in the blanks'' part out there so the Stemen theorem isn't applied to the answers. Good old Lew, if you asked him how much a dollar was worth, he'd take a day to answer with a 5 page spreadsheet.

Councilman Hackworth, you have posted to this site before with valuable information. Can you ballpark the answers to the blanks above? Before his holiness fired you from the CEDA Team, you must have had a peek at the numbers for Canal Pointe. Is it true what my coffee shop buddies say that the township put up about 10% of the investment in Canal Pointe but are getting about 40% of the returns?

I checked

Reynoldsburg has once officer per shift assigned to the approximately 1 square mile area that encompasses Taylor Square. Obviously the county cannot support that given their current budget constraints. The site manager for these big boxes would have to pay for a Deputy to be there all the time just like North does.

Hey, maybe if we vote for Elsea for commissioner we won't have to worry about any of that. He has absolutely no campaign platform other than restoring the Sheriff's funding.