Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

Occasionally on this web site I read comments and suggestions that do not hit me right away and sometimes they take weeks or sometimes months to enter my dried up brain.

A month or so ago Yosemite Pam suggested that the Township and the City merge. That suggestion was meet with anger and ridicule. I have also been reading some of the comments about and from Councilman Jeff Fix. Mr. Fix promises euphoria in the coming years only if we all agree with him and the trustees in this poorly thought out development agreement.

So as a citizen and one weary of the constant state of fighting here I have been trying to sort out the details of what is real and what is fiction. I was looking at the survey that Mr. Hackworth had conducted in the last couple of months and I notice that less than one third of the households in the City of Pickerington have school age children. I would expect similar results out in the township. The point is we always hear that it is all about the children. IS IT? What about the other 67% of the population?

For a long time there has been an argument that the township did a much better job in plowing the roads in the weather. Yet the City residents, seem very satisfied in the service they are getting from the city road crews according to Mr. Hackworth?’s survey.

The City residents were very willing to annex property for commercial development and not so eager to annex residential property from the township. Mostly because residential homes bring in school age children in every third home or at least that is the perception of the city residents.

They were very willing to have the city form its own fire department but not willing to increase their taxes from 1% to 2% .

I am not sure of Mr. Hackworth?’s motives in his survey or what he was trying to find out about the public but his survey does bring to light some issues that I hadn?’t thought about before. Then someone here suggested that the Yosemite Pam contact Mr. Hackworth to see if they could do a survey about the subject of merger.

Mr. Fix on the other hand has approached this whole issue with total arrogance and seems to be heading for a real show down with the City Council. If this development agreement is passed by a 4 to 3 vote and a referendum is run on that plan what will that referendum process do to this community and second does anyone care? Mr. Fix indicates that it would pass or he thinks the citizens would support his position yet I have seen nothing so far to support Mr. Fix?’s predictions. Even Mr. Fix must understand that these folks will be carrying more than just a referendum petition. This development agreement will polarize the community and there will never be a chance in the future to recover for this misguided proposal.


By Dan

Merger

Maybe a survey on the citizens attitudes about life in Pickerington and Violet Township and their perception of a merger between the city and township might very well be a solution to this impasse.


Clearly Mr. Fix must understand that an agreement with the township is low on the Pickerington city resident?’s minds according to Mr. Hackworth?’s survey. It seems that if that is a low priority with the citizens then they may very well turn down an agreement they might feel with raise their taxes in some way. Mean time we have wasted another full year because of a out of control ego.

If you visit the Ohio Revised codes web sites you will find that there is some forms of city governments that may be helpful in this process. If the City and the Township were to merge then the merger committee would need to present a form of the new city government to vote on. So lets look at Lancaster?’s City council they have 9 council members and they also elect a council president. They have a mayor that runs the city with no city manager. A merger community could select a nine member city council and every two years they elect a Mayor and Vice Mayor from the ranks of the city council. I think the terms should be four years. I would also think that it would be wise to have a City manager to run the city basically because of the complexity of City government nowadays. They would be required to have a Law director and a City Engineer by state law.

The council would consist of two members elected at large. The other seven would be elected from wards. The ward system would ensure that all areas of the new city would have at least one representative to reduce fears of one of the two former government entities of having more control than the other until some level of trust was established. I believe there are 13 precincts in the city and 18 precincts in the township. That would mean we would need to combine between four and five precincts into each ward. The former city residents would have at least three representatives and the township would have at least four representatives. The two at large council members would serve everyone.

What would be the advantage of this system?

First the new city would have one law director.
The new city would have one engineer.

The new city would have one clerk and one finance director.

There would be one police force.

There would be one fire department this removes the future threat that the city would form its own township and create its own fire department.

All of the annexation issues that the current township residents and trustees have fought would be over.

There would be more options in taxation and in some cases the total tax package paid to the new city may very well be much lower.

The question then would in regards to taxation if you knew you had to pay taxes for services would you rather those taxes be in the form of income taxes or property taxes?

The new city government would be able to plan for the entire area rather than wait for the county engineer to sign off on all roads and zoning in the new city. This would enable the new city to plan and actually control the future in housing starts and set limits on the number of new homes built each year. Just think you could actually put up stop signs.



By Dan

Merger

When Hudson Ohio merged with their township they also were faced with a second High school and they were lacking in a real commercial tax base. I believe they have since abandon the tightly controlled residential growth program that they had instituted 10 years ago.

This merger and forming a new city in Fairfield County would instantly make Pickerington the largest city in the county.

Would a city of around 35,000 in population warrant a local newspaper?


Could a city of 35,000 support and finance a recreation center and other services?

Both the Township and the City have recently completed Land use plans. I believe the City is expanding their plans currently. The point here is would it be in our best interest to find a way first to have an interchange located at either Pickerington Road and US 33 and or Allen Road and US 33? If that interchange were to be there would that create the economic development we all desire? I think a comprehensive plan would go a long way in telling us that.

One question should be would the residents of the township be willing to pay a 2% income tax in exchange for having their property taxes lowered an equal amount? What if the new city adopted a tightly controlled residential growth policy like Hudson Ohio?

Would the residents of the city be willing to increase their income taxes in exchange for a reduced property tax?

For those that have argued that it would NOT be cost effective for the city to form its own Fire Department (Mr. Weltlich) then wouldn?’t it be more cost effective to have one police force?

One problem that Pataskala had was they didn?’t provide for revenue to support their police department and other departments. The have struggled for years now trying to recover. I am still not sure if they have passed any kind of funding for city services.

The second mistake they did in Pataskala was they didn?’t work with Licking county to slowly wean themselves off of the county support system. I think the county currently provides around $1 Million in aid to the township. If the new city could negotiate with the county and say have a five year plan to slowly draw down those funds until the new city was planted firmly on its own two feet then I think this new city would have a chance.

So before we all start down any path here we need to actually do a survey and I will call Mr. Hackworth and find out what he did and how he ran his survey tomorrow. I think the questions he asked and the responses he received should not be discounted. It the coming days I will post some sample questions to use in a survey to test the waters for a merger.




By Dan

question

Just how would you lower property tax in the township by paying an income tax...I do not think this is possible.