Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

2.5% coming in Columbus

Let?’s review what our friends to the west are doing. I hope all of you caught the budget message by Mayor Michael ($103 million trolley) Coleman that Columbus was cutting out 130 city jobs in the 2009 budget and there would be no police or fire cuts. He then went on to say that they will cut police and fire in the 2010 budget. I can say that when it comes to the democrats they know how to set up the voters for a tax increase. I think the voters of Columbus are about to see a 2.5% income tax proposal on the ballot some time next year. The conditions and talking points are in place and everyone that votes in Columbus will know that they are about to lose police and fire people in 2010. Will that be enough to motivate them to pass a 2.5% income tax? Don?’t know. It is more motivation than what was given to Pickerington voters.

If the plan for the 2010 budget is to cut police then they better get that word out on the streets now so that it has time to sink in. They clearly had a changing message this last campaign. If the message is in 2010 is that the city will lay off 6 officers then make that number public. Some say that is a threat. Yea; so what?’s your point. If don?’t make that obvious then how do you explain when you run out of money and start laying off officers when you said you wouldn?’t?


I think these people on council better start reading the tea leaves because if 70 or 80% of the commuters here in Pickerington see there income taxes raised in Columbus then how will that affect the place where they actually get to vote on the issue. What about the Fire department levy soon to be at your local voting precinct?

By commuter

Taxation without Representation

I think this is the point I heard the mayor making more than once. Columbus will be in the same boat that we and Westerville were in this time around. We were voting on a tax that PRIMARILY affected people working here. So a lot of the income would come from people outside the city and like we will be with Columbus next year, not able to vote for or against.

Debt numbers

As of Dec. 31, 2008 the city?’s general fund debt will be $11,156,205.09. These figures come from the 2008 budget.

As of December 31, 2008 the Diley Road SIB-loan will have a ending balance of: $2,896,205

However waiting in the wings are two loans associated with Diley Road. These are TIF loans and I think they will soon expire.

Loan #1 ending balance is: 2,150,000.00

Loan #2 ending balance is: $1,132,787.21

Apparently loan #2 is not required to pay any money out of the general fund until it expires in probably 2012.

Now if the city were to combine these three loans the ending balance would be: $6,178,992.21

Now if they could combine all of these debts and restructure the payments over 20 years then the year debt payment would be around $495,000 per year.

I believe the two TIF loans could be redone and paid off over a 30 year period. However that may be unlikely because the commercial development in the country and our city is down and it would require the cooperation of a commercial developer.

The two TIF loans could be converted to notes and the city could only pay the interest for a few years. That would make the debt service payment for those two loans at around $164,139 per year. Combine that with the other Diley road loan and that is $564,000 per year.

I believe highways can get the longest amortization of any public works loans (20 or 25 years).

Finally the city kept saying they were $30 million in debt. Actually total debt is a little more than that. However the income tax can only be applied to general debt payments not sewer and water debt. That general fund debt as of Dec. 31, 2008 will $11,156,205. If the TIF projects don?’t pay those loans off then there could be another $4,143,787 of TIF debt added to that number. Some of that debt will have been paid down before combining these debt issues.

Cool

I don't understand a word of what you said but it is nice to see that councilman poster mentioned before alive and well!