Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

Ain't Google Great?



http://www.city-data.com/city/Ohio.html

In the site at the link above you can begin to find other cities in Ohio of comparable demographics and area, etc. I won't have time today to follow up on this, but in case someone else has time....

Once you get a list of the comparable cities, links are provided to the city sites. From there you can determine if they have a fire department and also access their budget information to see how much they spend on the department annually.

Information is power folks. We can do our own analysis to see if we can get a city fire department at the same or less cost than we pay the township.

Aside from the fire department, what other services does the township provide that we would then have to do on our own? Post them here and we can research to see if we can get a better deal.

Thanks!




By Patriot

Paper Township NOW!

Start the process NOW!

As much as it hurts, I would support (dirty words) new taxes to support a Pickerington Fire Department.

Don't get me wrong. I have no issues with the VTFD. They are great. BUT it is time to move on.

Joint Fire District

If we are so in love with the VTFD why not create a joint fire district with it's own board of trustees?

It's high time to ditch the Rustic Drive gang.

By Only On Paper

Wait a sec, don't misunderstand


Hold on, I think you misunderstood. We already pay 11.55 mils for the fire levy.

WE GET THAT BACK IF WE LEAVE VIOLET TOWNSHIP!!!

We don?’t have to pay more taxes to have a city fire department.

The city constitutes around 40% of the township. If we divest ourselves, we already ?“own?” 40% of the fire department. We get 40% of the assets.

40% of the equipment
40% of the facilities
40% of the staff

We don?’t have to pay more taxes to have a city fire department.

While I can?’t say I?’m ?“in love?” with the VTFD, the people I know that work there are great. Also their service is great. To answer both of these postings by Anonymous and Only on Paper, we don?’t have to pay more taxes to have a city fire department and 40% of the staff of the VTFD will certainly have the first dibs on the jobs created with the PFD, I would assume.

People, what I am trying to say is that we lose nothing. We simply take our 40% and go on our own and finally break the ties to the autocrats on Rustic Drive.

Now don?’t get me wrong, somewhere down the road we will need to get equipment and more importantly a fire station. Think of this. The city already owns a large parcel surrounding the Police Department. Oh wait, the city also owns a parcel on Center Street where the bus repair garage is. Hold on, the city owns land on Hill Road south of Central that was going to be used for the sewer plant expansion. Now that I read that technology has improved a lot, all that land wouldn?’t be needed for the expansion. Wow, a fire department on Hill Road.

We already own land that is central to the city and also another located near the main commercial district. We don?’t need a (please forgive me?…) Taj Mahal like the fire department on Refugee. A couple of simple structures that meet city code would suffice.

Baby steps folks! Start out small and plan for the future. Down the road we could merge the police and fire departments into a Department of Public Safety and run a combined levy to support their needs. Who says that if we need to make a few initial equipment purchases that they have to be new pieces of equipment? I did Google used fire equipment and it is there, believe me. I am not talking 1940?’s trucks with a hand crank siren either.

OK, back to the main subject, it is the weekend and I, like many of you, have games to get to so I will be on the run the rest of the day. If anyone is looking into the demographics challenge I asked for assistance on, I issue another challenge. Part of the statistics to make an informed decision about creating a fire department is the number, type and locations of all the calls they respond to. This is public information and has to be provided upon request by the ?“Rustic Renegades?” that are ramrodding the township gang. If someone out there gets time, can you make a request for the statistics? Send them to the PATA webmaster and I am sure they will get posted. From there we should be able to extract the calls in the city and be able to categorize them and understand them.



Give me liberty or give me the phone number to U-Haul !!
Patriot, 2006



By Patriot