Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

As we approach the 200th anniversary of Violet Township I am struck by the question as to why the State of Ohio still has townships as part of the governmental organization?

Clearly it overlaps city residents and it double taxes many.

Why should we have two local governments? Clearly if you live in the City of Pickerington you symbolically vote for township trustees who do not serve as your local government and they basically draw your tax dollars for doing NOTHING in return. In past years the Violet Township Trustees have regularly sued the City of Pickerington and its residents. These actions have cost both the City taxpayers and the Township taxpayers millions of dollars over the last 10 years.

Many times these law suits dealt with annexations and the settlements have been even more costly to the city taxpayers.

The argument from the township is that the lands in the township are ?“THEIRS?” and when the city annexes it reduces the income for the township. The township argument is false and up until now no one has bothered to do the math and when you do the math the township lose nothing. In fact, they gain in property taxes based on the increased property values and the inside milage.

In fact the zoning war that the Violet Township trustees have waged against our city and our school district has hurt us all including the residents in the township and the school district. For years now the township has moved forward with High Density zoning along the City borders to stop annexation and in turn they have created uncontrolled student growth in our schools. In addition some of the areas that could have been developed as commercial were forced into residential development by some bitter and revengeful trustees wanting to stop Pickerington at all costs and to ?“save?” their township.

These policies continue to this day. It can clearly be seen in the JEDD document being proposed by the Violet Trustees. The only purpose of this document is to get Pickerington to agree NOT to annex. Despite the fact that in the future the township will not have the ability to provide any infrastructure to facilitate any of the ?“DREAMED?” about commercial development. It will open the door to residential development and more kids into our school system. I am opposed to this JEDD argument.

When I took office in 2004, I had an open mind in regard to our Violet Township and the issues they face. At the time, there were a couple of annexations on the books that didn?’t make good business sense to the city at the time. We were able to accept one of the annexations and the other is still in limbo.

After endless hours and days of negotiations with Violet Township, the city has come up empty each time and the resulting documents reflect a greed on the part of the trustees that is unsurpassed by anything I have ever seen in private life. Those documents show no concern for our school district and they only want to preserve the status quo of an archaic township system in Ohio.

I would recommend that once the newness of the recently elected that run under the cooperation platform that our city leaders consider a new and much stronger annexation policy so that our city and our community will remain strong and not die under the lack of growth of commercial development. Until we have a community where all of its taxpayers share equally in the provision of infrastructure then we will surly fail.

No development plan

I wanted to follow up on the JEDD document and its poorly thought out consequences for everyone involved.

The first factors involved with economic development is who, how and when do you provide the infrastructure in the area to make any development possible. As we have seen this all work in the Canal Point industrial park. The sewer was provided by Canal, the water provided by Pickerington and the roads provided by Canal, Pickerington and ODOT. Canal and Pickerington provided these infrastructures based on the hope and the intention of a future annexation agreement to make these township lands available to the receive income tax revenues to pay debt service and may be other expenses associated with these developments. What the Municipalities here must keep in mind is the fact that if they provide the infrastructure there will be debt service for at least 20 to 25 years. The fact is in the Canal Point Industrial park Violet Township provided none of the infrastructure yet they were still able to collect income tax service payments for providing a road service maintenance for the future. It should be noted that they gave up the property taxes for 15 years on the properties that were abated for 100% for that period.

We do have another model to compare our JEDD to and that is the Northern Pickaway County JEDD agreement recently agreed to between Columbus, Harrison Twp, Asheville and the Village of South Bloomfield.

Clearly in the NPC JEDD the party that is going to provide the infrastructure is Columbus. In the five party JEDD here the party that will provide the infrastructure is Fairfield County and they were never at the table. So if the parties go with this JEDD they have no idea to the very first questions that must be asked and answered and that is the who, when and how the infrastructure will be provided for any future commercial development. Providing infrastructure and the planning for that infrastructure take years and in some cases decades. This JEDD document gives the county 30 days. Clearly the creators of this five party JEDD document do not understand the complexities of building roads and running sewer and water lines or even how they may be financed in the future.

Since the City of Columbus has made the commitment to provide the infrastructure for Northern Pickaway County they have made that commitment on the facts that they will not be able to annex the lands anytime soon and they have required that 70% of the income revenues coming from this future JEDD will go back to Columbus presumably to pay their debt service. I believe that the Federal Government and the State of Ohio Government also kicked in money for the future development. None of that exists here in the five party JEDD.

Another very important part of any future commercial development is a development plan. Much like some of the creators of this five party JEDD they tout a business plan and investors in any development want to know what the plan is. This gives them some amount of security if how the properties will be developed and what risks that may face with their investments. The northern Pickaway JEDD provides for a development plan our JEDD does not.






By Ted Hackworth

Not enough revenues to pay debt

In the Northern Pickaway County JEDD the parties were limited to three parties (Columbus, Harrison Twp and Ashville). To protect the future JEDD parcels they did get an agreement from South Bloomfield to agree to a moratorium on annexations in the future. The five party JEDD here ignores the villages of Carroll and Lithopolis and where and how they may plan to expand in the future. This could place all five parties in our local JEDD at risk of losing their investments into a JEDD area if after those investments are completed and either of these two Villages see the opportunity and move forward with their own expansion plans.


Tied closely to the Development plan of the Northern Pickaway County JEDD is the request that these land owners joint their JEDD in exchange for a part of the development plan. It seems that the current plan with the local Five party JEDD is a hit or miss plan hoping that a land owners will joint. I am also concerned with the language in a couple of places in our JEDD that seems to force these land owners into the JEDD thus violating their property rights. One the one page it clearly states that they will not get the desired zoning if they don?’t joint the JEDD which is clearly illegal.

In comparison our proposed five way JEDD is simply a pipe dream that will never produce what some of its creators have promised and it may very well restrict any commercial development down along US 33 in our school district for years to come. Once we have placed ourselves in this contract we will limit our ability to be flexible enough to respond to future opportunities and different needs of whom ever may be wanting to locate here.

I think the City of Pickerington must be more pragmatic and explore ways to develop a development plan with Violet Township and the Village of Canal Winchester. We will never get anywhere with non plans and concepts only and with no ideas of how the area will be serviced with water, sewer and future roads. Once you have a joint plan then you can earmark those in the system that will provide the infrastructure and who and when it will be paid for and how that debt service will be paid back.

When you start with the premise that there will be millions of ?“DOLLARS?” over time of ?“FREE?” money coming from this JEDD and no one has bothered to identify and get a commitment of who will pay for the essentials of any commercial development then that plan will never materialize. Then you further complicate the problems by dividing up the proceeds up before that very first parcel of land is brought into the JEDD you create a reluctance of the parties what would provide the infrastructure and to back off because their portion of the expenses will not cover future debt service then that will leave that land in our school district vacant and useless for us all. Remember this is a 90 years agreement. To get out you need all five members to agree.

Do we really want to enter into a blind contract with no direction or any vision of the future and then turn that future over to a private JEDD board that the City and the Township will have little or no control over and they can spend the new income revenues as they please?

By Ted Hackworth

Nope

Sounds like a Fix deal again.