Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

Or better yet....

Mark, let's take your figures into account and some wild guesses about Pickerington schools.

Beechwood:
($5228 residential tax * 1688 students) / 12,000 residents = $735 per resident.

This is assuming that only Beechwood City residents go to school there. Residential figure did not change.

Pickerington:
($2790 per student residential tax * 8000 students) / 20,000 residents = $1116 per resident.

I doubled the number of residents sharing the tax burden for Pickerington and still came up with a figure that shows we pay more residential per student than Beechwood.

So, I ask again. What am I missing????

- Brian

Class Size & Support for Kids

Brian,

You asked what are you missing ...

It is as easy as this ...

In Beachwood, the student/teacher ratio is 11.1
In Pickerington, the student/teacher ratio is 20.1

In Beachwood, they spend $13,071 per pupil in local revenue
In Pickerington, we spend $3,171 per pupil in local revenue.

In Beachwood, they are far above the state average in expenditures per pupil.
In Pickerington, we are far below the state average in expenditures per pupil.

In Beachwood, they offer approx. 500 students 14 different advanced placement courses.
In Pickerington, we offer approx. 2000 only 7 advanced placement courses.

And, we have a higher medium household income in Pickerington than they do in Beachwood. And, it was the Columbus Dispatch that called the people of Beachwood generous. They DID NOT call the people of Pickerington generous.

Is it really that hard to understand these facts?

Is Brian also drinking Mark?


Brian,


Do you need some sunglasses? Mark claims I am hung over. Mark has a pair that is Rose Colored when looking at Beachwood Schools. This is a city school system so the figures for city population, that you are using, are close to the school district population. Mark Uher has never been able to connect the actions of the Pickerington City government, or Violet Township and what effects they will have on our school issues. For a long time, Mark was able to blame Columbus, but now that they have slowed down their building so he must blame the greedy people of PICKERINGTON, even if he must spin the factual information around three or four times.

The entire community has driven itself into an unfortunate debt situation. Much of this was of Mr. Uher?’s not knowing the issues. Not only is the school system drowning in debt and extra expenses but we must be told by people like Mark Uher that the only way to solve this problem is to pay more in taxes. According to the Pickerington Area Chamber of Commerce Pickerington pays a higher tax rate than any of its adjacent neighbors in Real Estate Taxes. But he says we are still greedy.

Last year Mark persuaded this community to spend $77 million to build a new school. Many of his followers claimed that this would resolve our over crowding. Did it? To trick us he also claimed they had a fair way of financing this new project. Instead of cutting the costs of this new school for HIS children, they delayed the principal payments for years only to find one year later we are in an over crowding condition once more. Why are there 22 kids per class room? Are the people of Pickerington greedy?

As I was looking at the Beachwood City School web page last night they send 96% of the high school graduates on to college. Even if you factor in Mark?’s claim of 74% of our graduates go to college then are we failing our children? Are the leaders failing this community?’s children? God I hate this but I do agree with Mark is that we are providing a less than acceptable education for our young people. The 27 out of 27 that this school system touts is merely state minimums. Will replacing the greedy people here in Pickerington, with more generous people (like those that live in Beachwood) solve the problems?

Brian this is a community problem. The sooner Mark realizes that the sooner we can get the results he would desire. The simply solutions that Mark has proposed for years now won?’t solve our current problems.




By Joe Sixpack

We are supportive.

No matter how you dice it the fact is WE IN PICKERINGTON PAY MORE PER RESIDENT PER STUDENT than ALMIGHTY BEECHWOOD therefore your median income argument is useless.

We are not a muture established city like Beechwood, we are bursting at the seams and have nearly 5 times the number of students and far, far fewer businesses.

For Pickerington to become Beechwood. $13071 * 88% = $11502 per student for personal taxes. (11502 * 8000)/20000 residents = $4600 per resident. I'm sure the 20000 resident figure is too high but I don't have the stats. So if we quadruple our taxes we should be set. Now if we are paying this much more in taxes how are we really going to prove to our kids we love them if we can't afford to get their BMW out of the shop?

According to city council we scored perfectly on the State tests and that is the end-all to having an effective school, not small classes and advanced courses.

Back in the late 80's early 90's there was a small school district in NE OH called Lordstown. They had it all, spacious buildings, huge gym, small classes, computers all over the place, and I know they had at least 1 indoor pool and maybe 1 outdoor. How could this little school system afford all this? Because GM had a plant there and they had a COMMERCIAL TAX BASE to work with. That's what we are missing and until we get commercial $ coming in the residents are not going to be able to afford 11 kids per class, and $13K per student.

If we quadruple our taxes how are all the 'empty nesters' moving into Condo-ville, aka Pickerington, going to be able to afford to live here?

Just because we aren't living up to Beechwood expenditure standards doesn't mean we aren't supportive of our kids.