Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

Jeff has his four votes

Jeff Fix jfix@steakescape.com> wrote:

Michael,

I agree with you on many fronts with one notable exception. I approached EVERY councilperson with the proposal that I am putting together in an effort to get EVERYONE on board. If my attitude had truly been ''I have the votes I don't need you.'' I would not have spent the time talking with you and Ted Tuesday morning. I spent nearly two hours with you in an effort to convince you that this was the right direction to go. I closed our meeting with the idea that I had the votes necessary to move forward, I didn't open the meeting that way. I think there's a distinct difference. I called Brian shortly after that to let him know I was moving forward. I didn't have to do that. I did it out of respect to him and his position. I've tried to be above board with everyone and include everyone and though we are now in the midst of a disagreement, I would do it all over again because I truly want everyone's input even if I disagree with it. I want to be clear that I do not in any way have a finalized document at this point. What I presented to all council members individually (and LEGALLY) was a proposal that I had put together. I was and continue to work on trying to put together a coalition as I believe honestly that cooperating with the township is in our city's best interests. Many others feel this way as well. I would dearly love for everyone to be on board this program but when confronted with ''I won't ever give up the rights of our city to annex'' and ''I won't agree to anything that says we can't conform the boundaries'' and ''I will only agree to this if it is limited geographically to the areas around RT. 33'' then I can't move forward. Those arguments would castrate this agreement and make it meaningless and no one is going to agree to a meaningless contract. The bottom line is that today there are four people on council who believe that this is the right direction to go and want to work on finalizing a document that is in the best interests of our community and that the township will agree to. We will all have the opportunity to have a full debate to vote our conscience when the document is finalized and presented to council. Mike I particularly appreciate your final point. I have not taken this to the media and I do not intend to make our disagreements public. The packet I handed out Tuesday night went to council and staff only and was not provided to anyone in the media. Kaitlyn Sattler called me about this agreement last week after speaking with one of the trustees and I explained to her that we are not ready to do anything publicly with this yet. My hope remains that we can come together on this issue and forge an agreement with the township that will serve our citizens for generations to come.

How do you spell ETHICS?

I'm certain that through this string of e-mails that relationships have been damaged in some way and for that I truly feel badly. I do not take any of this personally though certainly personal comments have been made. We are all doing what we think is best. I don't doubt that for a second. I don't question anyone's motivations or agenda. We simply disagree on the best way to go forward. Hopefully we can find a way to agree in the near future.

Jeffrey Fix
City Councilman,
City of Pickerington
950 Paisley Ct.
Pickerington, OH 43147

Please note: that that round robin meetings like Mr. Fix admits to are a clear violation of the Ohio Open Meetings Laws. However the press is busy with other things.

Word count

Hopefully you all noticed the occurrence of ''I'' 40 times in Fix's email while the occurrence of the word ''we'' was 9.

Buying the Brooklyn Bridge

It appears that under the leadership of Councilman Fix, Pickerington is about to buy the Brooklyn bridge from the Township Trustees.

I have read this agreement a couple of times now and I really don?’t see anything that the Township is committing too. They agree to ?“work?” with the City to create JEDDs in the unincorporated areas of the Township within the PLSD.

Let me get this straight now. In a JEDD it takes three parties to agree. The City, The Township and the Property owner. OK we have the two parties but what about the property owner? There is nothing binding on that future owner to work with either the Township or the City.

I recall in the CEDA agreement between Canal Winchester and Violet Township that they agreed to resist annexation applications by outside parties (that included Pickerington) trying to annex into their CEDA area. Where in this document does it say that the Township will resist outside parties from annexing into the outlined JEDD area? Remember this agreement goes on for 30 years.

When Canal Winchester and Violet Township entered into their CEDA agreement in 2001 Canal Winchester already had ALL of the infrastructure in place (water, sewer, access directly to US 33 and the roads were being built by ODOT) for the Canal Pointe industrial park. Although the Township agrees to share equally in the infrastructure costs (or negotiate) with third parties how are they going to swing this? See paragraph # 2. I understand that state law doesn?’t allow them to take on debt without a bond levy approved by their voters. So in effect the Trustees are promising something they can?’t deliver on.

Not only is the Township NOT bringing anything to the table but they are wanting guarantees that they don?’t lose any money from tax abatements. So much for equal partners. It seems fine with the Township trustees to put at risk their constituency living in the City but the must protect the risk factors of their constituency living in the unincorporated areas of the Township. See paragraph # 3.

Jumping to Mr. Wisniewski?’s power point presentation, I finally figured out what he was talking about last night. I believe last year there was a study adopted by the city to justify the impact fee ordinance that they were about to impose. In ALL of the categories for new commercial development over 80% of the expected revenues came from the City?’s income taxes. These were studies done for commercial development within the boundaries of the City and where the City provided all of the services and infrastructure needs. According to this agreement any commercial development outside the city borders would then share 50% of the income taxes with the township and the township is NOT committing to any service being provided by said township. In effect, the City taxpayers would be subsidizing the township taxpayers for 30 years with service payments for services that the City Taxpayers were providing.