Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

Also

Several people from what I heard when this first started were against the project but those elected to office pushed it through anyway.

Now we as taxpayers are having to pay for what we did not really want nor asked for.

Tax increase needed

Dear Anonymous

I want to challenge you on where you got the information on the Diley Road not being needed until 2017?

The City Traffic Engineer predicted in 2004 that Diley with only two lanes would start to fail in 2011.

The decision to widen Diley Road took a number of council decisions over the span of 5 Mayors and two city managers. Clearly all of the Pickerington City Councils since the early 90s did the PLANNING and the expenditures for widening Diley Road. It was not a project that was dreamed up over night and executed in three readings without any thought to the process or the need.

Reasons for Diley Road Project:

1. The current Diley road was failing and needed a better base to allow it to hold up during weather extremes. The county put weight restrictions on it during the spring time after the winter thaw.

2. The two lanes could not carry enough daily trips to support the growing number of new residents into our city after 2011.

3. ODOT & MORPC offered to pay for 80% of the project and that will never come again and or before 2017.

4. It gives Pickerington and her residents a second freeway access which will not come for years at the I-70 interchange.

5. During heavy rains the road experienced heavy flooding in two places and this project will correct those two areas prone to flooding.

6. The costs were nearly the same for a three lane road compared to the five lanes.


I will acknowledge that this is a huge project for a city considering our resources. However it is not the only reasons we find ourselves with the budget short falls.

1. The police department uses up half of the annual income tax revenues and its budget normally has been increasing at a much faster rate than the general revenues of the city.

2. The city has seen a slowing of growth. This has caused a drastic reduction in the money coming in from impacts fees which were earmarked to pay for the debt service on the police building and the Diley road widening project. Clearly living on high growth rate has caused this city huge problems with how we fund the school district and that growth has hurt us all with high property taxes. Actually with the housing slump this will allow our schools and our city to catch up and have a rest period.

3. The simply fact is with a larger city it takes more to operate the higher density and deal with the larger populations. Clearly crime increases, roads need repaired and rebuilt and the general services demanded by the residents continue to increase. The city voters will be given the opportunity to choose what they want.

4. Commercial development also requires expenditures of public funds to develop these projects. Here I do agree with you in that this JEDD will never get off the dime because the it will require huge expenditures for infrastructure that none of the parties will be willing to fund. Here again do we really want to stop the city dead it its tracks or move forward?

5. Debt has been dogging this city for years now. You can?’t simply sell the city?’s assets off to pay off that debt. It is obvious that with the current 1% income tax the city can barely keep its head above water. Why do you expect Pickerington to manage with 1% when other cities smaller than Pickerington have a 2% income tax?

By Ted Hackworth