Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

It is starting with no drum roll

Yosemite Pam,

You asked the questions and I simply don't have the answers. However I have a question for you. Why should the City of Pickerington TAXPAYERS pay for another level of government that does NOTHING for their tax dollars and in consideration of the Ohio Supreme Decision this week have helped to engineer a total block and then yell CHECK MATE for the city or the township to EVER get to the promise land of US 33 within the PLSD. Why should city taxpayers continue to pay there hard earned tax dollars to the representatives that simply don't represent them? Why should any of us be pleased with the recent court decision that now allows Canal Winchester to determine the zoning within the PLSD? I warned you all last week you choose to ignore me. I hope you are now awake and paying attention.

All I can say as a City residents was it good for you?

For those of you south of Busey Road welcome to Canal Winchester lets see just how damn understanding the Village council is to the PLSD in future zonings.

In fact you should know that Violet Townhsip Trustees have threatened even more legal action against the city to allow and keep the path open for Canal to annex all the way to Liberty Township. So much for cooperation. Nothing but a bunch of damn lairs.

By Bill

Paper twp and city schools

It occurred to me that if the township and Jeff Fix wants to stop the city's residential growth and all of the future residential growth then occurs in the township then why should the City residents pay for future school growth to accommodate that growth in the township. I know there will be the district history buffs that say the growth has been in the city and the township has controlled the growth. I think if you go back far enough like fifteen years we will find that most growth before 1990 occurred in the Township. It continued through the mid-90s and slowed more recently. What appears to be happening now is that the trustees are going to dictate the rate of growth or the lack of it and future growth with this agreement will only occur in the township.

I say that makes the strong argument that we in the city show form a paper township and we school form our own city school system. That ends the north south debate and it ends the fighting between the twp and city. I think that is a perfect solution.

Think About It

Instead of hurling insults at me (how satisfying can it be to hurl insults at an anonymous person), please think about the questions I've raised.

I do honestly believe that a joint economic development agreement of some sort (and not necessarily the current sort) with the township is better than nothing.

But the best solution to the problems the city faces is merger with the township.

Townships don't have annexation powers. But cities do. If the city merged with the township, it could annex property for commercial development in neighboring townships (e.g., to the east and northeast, along US 33 and Interstate 70). Our township cannot do that.

If the city merged with the township, there would be no further incursions into our community by Columbus, Canal, Reynoldsburg or anyone.

If the city merged with the township, builders and developers could no longer extract favors and concessions by playing one against the other.

If the city merged with the township, no neighboring municipality could ever again approve the construction of high density housing in our school district, thus swamping our schools and forcing us to approve one building levy after another.

If, on the other hand, the city does not merge with the township, it may soon become landlocked, as other municipalities rush in where the city fears to tred.

Think about it.

By Yosemite Pam

Answer

Mack, I have not run the numbers. We will need to do this, and a lot of other stuff, before moving forward. But we need to move as quickly as possible. Time waits for no one.

There are, however, some clear facts to ponder. The city needs to add non-retail commercial property to its tax base, to slow residential growth, and to take at least some of our growing tax burden off the shoulders of homeowners. But the city does not really have any place within its current boundaries to put such property -- at least not without spot zoning, which would put office buildings and factories in people's back yards.

The most suitable land in the area for such development is along SR 33, and also to the northeast of Violet Township along Interstate 70.

Our previous town fathers, realizing that this land was not contiguous to the city, and thus could not be annexed by it, tried to annex their way to it, by approving one residential subdivision after another along Diley Road. In the process, they actively encouraged residential development, offering fee waivers, zoning variances and other concessions in order to induce them to build here.

We're all suffering from the results, and our former city fathers never even made it to the US 33 corridor. Moreover, houses now stand on land that might have been commercially developed.

I think a joint economic development agreement of some sort with the township, which would give the city some of the tax revenues thrown off by commercial development on the township's land, is better than this ''go it alone'' approach. Moreover, the current variant of the economic agreement, sensibly, provides for the annexation of all commercial development that is contiguous to, and thus annexable by, the city -- so that, among other things, we can collect income tax from the people who work there.

But a joint economic development agreement leaves the township (and our school district) open to annexations by neighboring municipalities. Moreover, it gives us no ability, at least for the present, to annex land to the east of the township, which is not now contiguous with the city.

The only measure that would give us that ability is a merger of the city and the township. Such a merger also would deny builders and developers any ability to play the city and township off against each other, as they have in the past. It would allow comprehensive planning for the development of this community as a whole. It would spread the tax burden for needed public services and facilities over a far larger tax base, even in the sort term. It would deny neighboring municipalities the ability to approve the construction of high density residential developments within our school district.

Although I haven't run the numbers on this stuff, the city council and its consultants have run some of them. They have determined that non-retail commercial development is one of the few kinds of development that will generate more tax revenue than expense.

This is what we need. This is what enables some other communities around here to fund better schools than ours with lower tax rates. This is what the city needs to hire more police and provide the other services we need without taxing us to death.

Please think about it. If we wish to take this course, we'll need to work out all the details, and all the bugs, and carefully tote up all the pros and cons. But we'll need to move fast, or it will be too late.

By Yosemite Pam