Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

Fix's term of spending city $

Clearly Fix and the Colonel have illusions of grandeur when it comes to important city issues. I wonder what the city did back in 1983 when they first decided to move from a statue village to a charter village. I am sure Fix and Smith were not here at the time. Back then they had to start from scratch and not have a working copy to copy from. Now these two have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on these adventures to create this agreement or that agreement only in all cases to have the document revised numerous times and in most cases rejected in the end. Let?’s see there was the development agreement between the city and the township when ended with a referendum. Remember that is when Fix was trying to give away the city income taxes to the township. Fix and his comrades then had to scrape the whole idea because after all that time the trustees rejected the proposal. Then came the JEDD which went on for years. We then find out that some governments (Lancaster Council & Bloom Township) in the area are much smarter than the Pickerington Council and they rejected the JEDD. Then don?’t forget the red-light cameras and the stink they caused. How about the income tax outsourcing? Rita went down in a ball of flames. I seem to remember Fix trying to spend more the city taxpayer money by having the city employees work the polls and be paid. That was an act of bailing out the county government. Recently Fix got involved with negotiating the board of health only to have the advisory committee not meet to accept his handy work. Behind the council?’s back he signed a contract to rent the local ball parks for his little league team club. Probably got a sweetheart deal to help out his struggling league. I also heard that he took the liberty to hang his campaign sign on the outfield fence which is clearly illegal. Violating election laws have never been high on Fix?’s list of things to do. He seems to have the opinion of himself that he is better than most and he is above the law

NEWCOMERS TO THE CITY

I recall that Fix moved into the city in 2004 and Smith moved here in late 2003. Now these two people with little or no knowledge of the city's history are going to be our saviors because they know more that anyone else who has been here for decades. I read a quote from Fix that the charter is screwed up. According to who Fix?

Read all the minutes

I applied to be on the charter commission. The reason I did is that one of my first involvements in city government was back when the whole Lee Gray thing happened. I became interested in how our government make-up was formed and why.

Anyway, I realize that dates me and makes me old in comparison to the young and totally inexpreienced Mr. Fix. I also realize it marks me as having lived around here for a while.

I read the minutes of the meetings where this charter review was discussed. It's all very dry but there are a few high points to consider. After taking office this mayor, who I haven't had a lot of contact with yet, but now intend to, attended the review meetings and asked over and over again if Smith and Fix knew the history of this charter. He also asked if they had talked to anyone involved in the initiative that brought about this form of government and they both said no, they hadn't.

He also asked themm if they had talked to anyone who had served on either of the previous review commissions and they also said no. So the mayor asked them if they knew nothing about the history of why our government is what it is, and had not bothered to talk to anyone involved in the previous reviews, why were they making all these changes now and why were they throwing out the initiative? Apparently their answers were inaudible and the transcriber couldn't enter them in the minutes or they just didn't have an answer.

The mayor asked them in subsequent meetings the same questions and got the same answer - nothing. Am I the only one who reads these minutes? I encourage anyone who applies to sit on this review commission to take the time to sit down and go through the minutes section of the city web site to learn about how we got to where we are in this process so they are prepared for their interview with the rules committee. Smith is on it and will be sitting in the interviews. Fix has his chubby little hands in everything so I assume he will also be in them. It