Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

Taking credit for failure

I am not sure what message would have been sent by the three council members that voted against the development agreement by ''not voting.'' If they abstained from voting then that would have been an abuse of that option to NOT VOTE. The fact is that Councilman Fix shopped his agreement around until he had a committee that would pass the issue on to council. The three minority members did put up a fight and they did get their position into the news media but they could not sway any of the four members that were entrenched on this issue. Unfortunately the Township lawyers are correct (I haven't seen the quote yet) in that the details should have been worked out prior to bringing the issue to council. By keeping the issue with the lawyers the details could have been kept confidential until they were ready to vote. The City Manager would have been obligated to keep ALL of the members of council in the loop not just the four majority members about the negotiations. The fact is that Councilman Fix wanted desperately to get his name on something anything to make his mark early. Look for Fix to strike out at every one and everything in the coming year to get attention.

Clearly the city has now spent tens of thousands of dollars that may end up as wasted tax dollars because someone needed to feed a political ego. He convinced enough on council that he was a hotshot bigshot only now for us to see many of his short comings. The Mayor made him the almighty and now they need to take the blame for their incompetence. I would look for Fix to continue to blame the citizens.

Since this un-named group was able to circulate one Charter amendment in ''secret'' can they do another one or have they already started that process? I believe they just filed the charter amendment a couple of weeks ago and now it is on the May ballot. Folks in the group you have time for two more charter amendments before the general election in the fall. Please start looking at the paper township issue.

You are the Winner

Congratulations you guessed correctly

The vote was on Charter amend

There appears to be too many moving parts for some to keep up with.First the MOU between Lancaster/Canal & Violet is only an agreement to talk about things. Since Violet will not be asking these other two government entities to give away the store that final agreement will be simple. Second point here is that the respective staffs will work the document until it is ready for council. Stay tuned on this one.

Last night the City council passed an emergency ordinance to place an initiative on the May ballot. This initiative is a charter amendment. If passed by the city voters it will restrict the city council in the further from giving away things like the city's right to annex and to conform the city's boundaries or to form a paper township if they so please. This will kill the development agreement between Pickerington and Violet.

The development agreement is said to be in the hands of the City's attorney. I understand the terms of that agreement are still confidential and I am not sure when the public will get to view the changes asked for by Violet. Knowing the township I doubt if anything improved for the city and its side of the deal. Once the development agreement becomes public it more than likely will be in a committee. The committee can accept it, reject it or simply do nothing. The ordinance that created the agreement is still being referred and the voters will vote on it in November. The only way to prevent the November vote would be for the council to rescind the ordinance. I doubt you will hear much discussion on rescinding it.