Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

the end

If the decision was to ever to get close to a vote on a merger I think most should realize that a whole new government would be formed. That would mean a new Mayor and a new council. The current trustees would go away unless they ran for one of the council seats. To make it work the commission must include current and previously elected officials.

So lets toss that out for a moment. Lets say to settle everyone fears and mistrusts of the other governments we formed wards like a infamous city councilman suggests. Lets say three in the current township boundaries and 2 in the current city boundaries. Then we would elect four at large candidates. Once elected this new city council would elect a Mayor from the group. This would ensure that the Mayor and the Council are all on the same page. It would also put in focus who the City Manager should report to. The Mayor and the Council would have voting rights during council meetings. Otherwise this new council would follow most of the guidelines set forth for council/manager city governments.

I think to make this new government work you would need to set out some goals that everyone could agree on. Lets tackle issues like growth (both Residential and Commercial). Do we establish rates of growth and do we establish what the kind of growth (examples; office buildings, industrial, educational, high end homes, and maybe condos & etc.). What would this new city provide? Would we truly provide a state of the art recreational program and with up to date facilities (swimming pools, bike paths, parks lands and picnic areas, educational and sports programs)

I think this new city would be around 30,000 plus in population. Could we then consider a connection of the communities and neighborhoods with bike paths and a better road system. Could we consider a central location say downtown with a terminal and a bus station for a park and ride? I understand ODOT will subsidizes cities for taking traffic off of their roads. I would suggest deep into the city to prevent what happened up near I-70 in that people outside the area took advantage of the buses and we were left to pay.

Can this new city really plan for and finance together the East/West connectors mentioned. Can that new city plan for and provide the needed studies to justify a five lane road connecting US 33 to I-70 to relieve our current traffic jams?

I do believe there is enough talent in the community to see their way through all of these issues. I think our local elected officials just have to have the ability to keep an open mind and to hire experts where needed.









By Dan

Page three

I think one issue that is a negative in the way we collect our property taxes in Ohio for new homes that produce school age children. If any of you close on a newly built home tomorrow your full property valuation will not go into effect until 2008. In the meantime the system has educated your children for two years while you have paid only the property taxes on the lot. So the above residential project would lose money the first two years with the schools only receiving the owner?’s income taxes and property taxes paid on the former property lot valuation. I believe other states charge you the minute you move in and in some they require you to pay the current year in advance. So if you bought a $300,000 new built home tomorrow and closed you would need to either borrow more money to pay the taxes for the remainder of 2006 which would probably be around $6,000 for the said house but the school would receive their money before your kids enroll in the fall.

The second problem with our property taxes is despite the fact that these builders claim that the property taxes will increase by say $500,000 to the school that is not a true statement. The way our school funding is set up most of our bonds are OUTSIDE milage. That means (with the exception of the first year you live in your used home) you only pay your share of the bond issue and operating levies which for the most part are all OUTSIDE milage. The school system does not get an increase in revenues from the local tax payers until they vote and allow the school to charge them more taxes. One case is that some of these operating levies are either renewed or replaced. Once the voters allows that then the School does receive more tax monies.

So I believe when all of the facts are considered it would be to our mutual benefit to try to development commercial properties with in the school district boundaries and limit the residential development.

So how should we best move forward on these types of developments and how best do we approach the challenges in providing the support infrastructures for our citizens and the commercial developments that in turn provide the community with position cash flow in the form of tax revenues. Also related to that is how can we optimize those revenues to not only provide for the infrastructure needs of new development but to provide for those qualify of life issues (Parks, Recreation, Swimming Pools, walking trails and activities in general) that we all long for?












By Dan

sewer and TIF

It is not required for the city to serve this with sewer, the county has service and in some parts of the city the county does service city land, and according to the 208 plan, this is the county service area, so that is an expense and use of capacity that the city would not have to provide.

The county can do a TIF, but they will probably not...Township can not do a TIF,

The city has studies that say that retail development costs the city more than it takes in....so....in an era of city leadership that does cost benefit analysis...I think the city would pass on this project and say no... If this was the prior adminstration, they would have passed the TIF and annexation by emegency yesterday...not even knowing the cost to the city in the future...maybe except for that little problem of Mrs. Bushman hating the Ricketts.

except for one thing...in the cost benefit sense...

If the city could annex the High School property and reap the income tax from that, then the city may be ahead, but the police costs may exceed all of that...think about it.

You're on Track Dan

You've gotten to the heart of it: if the township and city merged, we'd be starting from scratch. We would not have to follow the structure of either current government, but could set out in any direction we chose.

That would include tax structure. We might choose to finance the new city with an income tax, or we might not. There are lots of other alternatives and, hopefully, we would consider them all.

The key is that a city government that embraced this entire community would have the power to plan for this entire community, and to enforce that plan. It would give us mastery of our own destiny. Builders and developers would no longer be able to play city off against township. If they wanted to build here, they would have to sing our tune.

There would be no more need to involve two different governments to plan arterials, utilities, parks and commercial development. There would be no more destructive and pointless annexation wars. The new city government would give us the framework we need to work together.

By Yosemite Pam