|
|
January 16, 2001
Mayor Hughes
100 Lockville Road
Pickerington, Ohio 43147
Dear Mayor Hughes,
I have just received, read and reread your letter to the citizens dated January 9, 2001. In case you have already looked, you'll have noticed that I left this letter unsigned. I can only hope that this has not caused you to summarily discard this without reading it first. Based on your public treatment of Bob Harding and others I fear the public and/or private retaliation of the city regime against my family.
If I may, as best as I can, I would like to address your letter paragraph by paragraph, thereby more clearly explaining my concerns with your regime and the letter you sent.
No one took advantage of me in asking for my signature on this petition. The ordinance was shown to me and I was allowed to read it. It was then clearly explained and all my questions about it were clearly answered. I felt no pressure, imposition, coercion or anything else you have insinuated by the concerned citizen at my door to exercise our Constitutional rights.
I see no ulterior motives behind the origination of the petition, however, the city regime is completely transparent in its ulterior motives behind most, if not all actions taken by the city. Your motives have become so apparent that it is an insult to the intelligence of the citizens for you to pretend any longer to be doing what is in the best interest of us or the city. You only do what is best for you.
You state that zoning issues and densities and ordinances are complicated issues. Why is that? Perhaps they are only complicated to you. Perhaps with truthful and unbiased interpretation by someone other than interested developers, they won't seem so complicated to you. Then, once you understand them, you might comprehend what we are trying to tell you; you don't have a clue as to the jeopardy you are placing the city, the taxpayers, the environment, the infrastructure and especially the schools in every time you tweak the zoning, densities and ordinances to suit yourselves and the developers that own the city government. If you truly believe that they are too complicated for us to understand, then maybe you can send us out another letter that uses simple words in simple sentences for us simple folk to understand. Then you can save yourself paying a spin-doctor to contrive the circular talk in paragraphs 5 and 6.
CONTINUED
By Soap Box Hero
|
|
|
|
|
|
Hughes Part 2
Don't presume that I was so rude as to not invite the petitioner in the door, or assume I was only given a few sentences by which to make my decision to sign or not and don't even try to make me believe that someone pulled a fast one on me. The two-day deadline is a direct result of your personal interference with Mr. Harding's attempt to obtain certified copies of the ordinance in a forthright and proper manner, so you couldn't come back later and say he didn't have legitimate copies or that they were tampered with or that they were just plain wrong (reference: rezoning against citizen's wishes behind Kroger). Is it possible the copier just happened to be broken when he was there? I suppose. Did your employees know that City Hall would be closed the next day when they told Mr. Harding to come back? Certainly. You sir, pulled the fast one, or at least tried again. That's your problem with this whole issue. Your attempts to make this petition go away before it started were thwarted soundly and you will try anything to come out on top. You have an extraordinary record at making citizen's attempts to publicize the wrongdoings of your regime disappear without a trace.
Next, you talk about houses per acre. Your banal rhetoric is getting old. You need to come up with a new patented oratory that can be learned and repeated by you, the regime and the media. They can automatically type in the patented response every time an article appears on annexations in Pickerington. You remind me of the School Board and their copyrighted drivel in that respect. Right now, the houses have to be at least six feet from the property line. That makes them twelve feet apart and this is what you propose for all new subdivisions coming in your insatiable land grabs. Of course, the average number of houses per acre will fit the chart you provided or any other chart you dream up, simply because not all of the land annexed can have houses jammed into every square foot, as would probably please you. You have to put a road here and there don't you? There has to be some flood plain, bog or mosquito-infested swamp designated as ''public greenspace'', right? That will keep your charts looking right.
Does it matter if the petitioners are not city residents? They will be soon enough as long as the current city government is seated. Since the Violet Township residents laughed in your face at your merger proposal, you'll show them. You'll just annex the whole township as quickly as you can. Thanks to your new method of government, emergency legislation, you'll just continue unhindered at hostile takeovers of the Township until you own it all.
I truly believe that the reason the petitioners waited until the last minute, as you say, is many of them fear the same retribution that I do. After all, you have the Police and Fire Departments at your disposal and what would happen if you unleashed the rest of your arsenal on us? You've proven time and time again that while you may not be legally able to stop a petition from happening, you certainly can do other things that would make it go away (reference: rezoning against citizen's wishes behind Kroger). You are ruthless in your pursuit of self-satisfaction and self-serving.
CONTINUED
By Soap Box Hero
|
|
|
Hughes Part 3
Nothing has been blown out of proportion except your collective egos in the city government. You will stop at nothing to please yourselves, build your empire and assure yourselves that there will be no land not blanketed in houses in the city or township, regardless of the quality, no election day without a new school levy on the ballot or levies for more Police, more Fire Stations and on and on, ad-nauseum. Also, coining a clich?© from one of our former Presidents, ''No New Roads''.
As residents of Pickerington, we have nothing to be proud of. 'Pickerington Pride' will become 'Pickerington Cried'. We are a laughing stock among neighboring cities and in the press. Others use Pickerington as a perfect example of what not to do. You have condemned our schools to always be overcrowded. You know as well as I that within a year or two after the two new cash cows are opened, they will be at capacity and Mr. Maurer, Mr. Yocum and the board will come demanding more money with their customary threats of split sessions and cutbacks in sports. You support the schools in their incessant rhetoric about how great they are. You are going to do nothing but dilute that quality by the uncontrolled growth you perpetuate. You do absolutely nothing to assure that basic infrastructure growth occurs at even a proportional rate to what you are forcing the residential to occur until public outcry forces a response. Then you invariably put a horrifically expensive band aid on the problem (or just drain Pickerington Ponds if the mood strikes). How many cars per day have to use the only access to I-70? How can you, in good conscience, continue to add houses by the hundreds, in your quest for the largest bedroom community in the Midwest, without adding more access points to the only road out of town? After all, you don't want them working in Pickerington, evidenced by the nearly complete lack of non-residential growth. You just want them to live here. Well, sir, they have to get to and from here. At least do us the justice of looking at Huber Homes over in Dayton. They have more than one entrance to the freeway.
?§ You claim to have expansive parks (you'll have to more clearly define expansive for us simple folk) but you have no budget to improve them and you can barely maintain them.
?§ Safe subdivisions? Some are. What about Columbia Place or Lake's Edge. Would you live there? Would you feel safe leaving your car parked overnight at Winderly Plaza?
?§ Convenient restaurants? Yes, expensive and to excess. Enough is enough.
By Soap Box Hero
|
|
|
hughes Part 4
?§ A Main Street to envy? It is a joke. It is nothing more than an inconvenient and totally unnecessary bottleneck of traffic. Does the revenue to the city generated by the merchants in the downtown area truly outweigh common sense and safety? Do yourselves and your cherished residents a favor; put a bypass in. Get the traffic routed away from this traffic-engineering quagmire. Sooner or later, there is going to be a serious accident involving either a school bus or a student on their way to or from school or a Fire Truck or a train. You're making the possibilities endless. Save yourselves and us from having to listen to years of hindsight by outraged citizens saying we should have done something about that sooner. I'm sure we can get a few of us that have to negotiate it twice or more a day to chip in and buy a big sign and arrows that say, ''If you want to shop, go this way. If you want to just get home safely, go that way''.
Better yet, do us all a favor and, as a whole, resign from your offices. Don't waste any more of our tax dollars for the postage required to let us know your feelings are hurt. You're paid to have your feelings hurt. Bring back the Burkholders, the Wilsons, and the Ricketts. At least when they were all yelling at each other, we knew what was going on. Now you have a Mafia-style code of silence in the government. No one dares speak. Well, just in case you also have a Mafia-styled system of retribution at those who dare question you, I'll leave this -
Respectfully Unsigned
PS Just so you don't think I'm waiting to pull a fast one on you or anyone else, I have every intention of taking whatever ''cherished right as individuals'' that I can to see that your ability to pass emergency legislation is repealed or greatly restricted. Petitions, public pressure or what you fear the most, elections that Daryl Barry can't buy you. Oh, that's right, I apologize, you and 4 of the Councilmen weren't elected, were you?
By Soap Box Hero
|
