Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

Reply to Pam

Pam,

I somewhat agree with you. I also agree with Seen it Before and credit them with saying most eloquently what I could not fully articulate without insulting people. I know many of the same ?“leaders?” you allude to and I have to tell you that few to none of them have the experience necessary to take us to the level you propose. Unless you have been living in a cave for the last decade, you must admit that our progress has been terrifyingly slow compared to some of our outer belt neighbors. Not that they haven?’t had their trials and tribulations but they have made much more progress in dealing with urbanization than this area.

I fault some of this to the city manager and the township director. Both nice people with their hearts in the right place but neither of them has demonstrated progressive leadership. The council over the last couple of years has propped up the manager while she tries to learn her job and learn the local politics. She hasn?’t been too successful at either. The township director still is one of those good old boys with whom he associates himself through the election process.

I also fault many of the problems we face on the state. Do you think this community is the only one facing residential growth, school systems falling further and further behind, lack of money to do anything positive? I hope not because that would demonstrate thinking in a vacuum. The issues we face here are faced state-wide each and every day. Our issues are simply a microcosm that most communities in the state are facing.

The sad part is that people like Blackwell, Petro and Strickland aren?’t the right people to lead us out of the dark. We will be faced with the same choices in both the primary and general election that we faced with the last tow presidential elections ?– the lesser of the evils.

Here are a couple of questions that will help me continue this dialog with you, if you wish.

How many people would sit on a merger commission?
Would there be qualifications to get appointed?
Would there be educational/experience prerequisites or would residency be the only requirement?
How much support can you expect from currently elected officials when the inevitable result is reached that we have not only outgrown the current forms of government but most importantly have outgrown the very people in office?

Lastly, how would you propose interjecting people into studying a merger when they might be on the outs with current politicians? I mean, let?’s face it, some of the best minds in the business are not political allies of current regimes. Do you think it would ever be possible to have any sort of merger commission NOT become as political as the current governing officials have become?

I applaud your optimism Pam. When it comes to living in this area, I wish I could muster the same sentiments but I am an old coot who has been here long enough to see that the names and faces sometimes change but the same old games and politics still run rampant. If it was possible to succeed in the current government types, it may be possible to succeed in a new form of government.

By Coot

Let's Keep Talking

Let's keep talking, Coot. Something may come of it. If done in the right way, a merger commission could build community, which is what we need.

I had in mind a rather large commission jointly appointed by the board of trustees, the city council and the school board. This commission might, in turn, appoint committees to deal with various specific issues, drawing still more people into the process. Those committees would hold hearings, conduct surveys, speak at various gatherings, and so forth, which would involve still more people. In one way or another, I would hope that everyone who wanted to would become involved, and that the process itself would make people want to get involved.

Ideally, the commission would have a budget sufficient to engage professional consultants as needed. However, there is a lot of brain power in this community, if it ever could be fully tapped. We might have less need for consultants than one might imagine.

If, however, our current governments aren't interested in appointing such a commission, we could get the process started from the grass roots. Just a few folks getting together on Saturday mornings over coffee might be enough to get things going.

But we do need to get started, before the opportunity to plan for our future has passed. What are your thoughts, Coot?

By Yosemite Pam

Keeping talking

Pam,

Sorry I didn?’t get back to you. Mrs. Coot believes I should begin spring projects. Having given the matter more thought and weighing all you and others have written, I have to say that I believe the ship on any merger possibility has sailed. I think we have passed the point where we can build a community here. We are simply too divided on too many issues to be able to set them aside and work together. If you believe even half of what gets posted on this site, we are solidly divided on EVERY issue.

Take schools. We can?’t get people to run for the board and we can?’t pass a levy regardless of the fact that they have essentially offered us all the different options we have asked for. If we won?’t approve what we asked for, from where can we draw unity?

Take the township. We couldn?’t get more than token opposition to the current regime. I heard with my own ears the two incumbents state that they would pool assets to drive off any competition. Their view of township government is a strict oligarchy (Government by a few, especially by a small faction of persons or families). All their talk of JEDDs and CEDAs is their typical and proven track record of demanding something for nothing. Could you imagine people like them in charge of the Greater Pickerington Community? The township is Home Rule. They have the power to make things happen but choose to operate in the same old ways.

Take the city. You have the same old politics and absolute division that has seemingly always been there. New names and new faces every couple of years but the same old stuff keeps happening. How could a governing body that cannot govern itself participate in governing a larger body effectively?

Your suggestion about a large body appointed by the current elected officials would be a disaster. In effect from what I read in these postings, you would be placing the famous NW Republican Club in charge of studying a merger. I think they have done enough damage to this community. I can?’t imagine where the commission?’s budget would come from. From what I read in the papers, none of the governing bodies have a cent to spare. Any way this Wal-Mart joke plays out, who can afford to address even the most basic safety concerns? The township can?’t afford to make infrastructure improvements, the county obviously can?’t and said so in their recommendations and if even if the city again returned to the old days of rapid and aggressive annexation, how long would it be before they reaped enough out of it to afford anything? All they could afford to do is incur more debt. Maybe our ?“oh so many promises?” councilman Smith can get his wish of a 2 ?½% income tax and that will solve everything.

I agree there is a lot of brain power in this community and we could solve a lot of issues by working together. Just give me a few examples of when that has happened and perhaps you can change my pessimistic mind some. Give me an example of one single instance where some ?“big brains?” came together and politics and egos were left at the door. Come on Pam, just one. Remember Community First? Remember the original PATA after the politicians got involved?

I appreciate your offer to get a few together for coffee on a Saturday. I enjoy times like that. I even enjoyed them when they eventually became citizen initiative committees, referendum committees, PATA, republican clubs and all the other offshoots that ended up being hijacked by people like our ?“oh so many promises?” councilman Fix or our omnipotent mayor.

Sorry, wholesale evolution of our community has to begin with wholesale evolution of the leadership.

By Coot

Coot, You Make A Lot Of Sense

Coot,

Clearly, you have been in the community for quite a while, and have seen these things before. Special interest groups come and go, but the divisions, factions, cliques and restlessness remain.

I completely agree that the time for a merger has come and gone. Sadly, I hold out little hope for our community's future. I'll add another thing - people with younger children are now starting to move out because of the schools. People who have kids in high school will be moving out as soon as their kids graduate. Our school system is going the way of the community. We've already gone down a notch, from ''excellent'' to ''effective''. We'll be lucky if we can stop the slide there.

I remember someone a few years back posting as ''Make Whitehall Us''. The initials were a play on someone's name, but I believe was prescient as to what to expect. There was a time when Whitehall was an upscale community. If you're new to the area, that would be a big shock to you. Now it's an area nobody wants to go after dark.

I can't say how to make things better, because this community was so divided that if Jesus himself came back and told us what to do we wouldn't do it. We'd never agree that it was even Jesus, that Jesus was who he said he was, that Jesus understood this community, or even whether Jesus was in the pocket of the builders!

You said it best - the names change, but that's about all that does.



By Seen It Before