Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

I am willing to go to court

Lisa,

Thank you for your return message. In my history as a national sales manager of an $8,000,000,000 corporation, I have never been afraid to face the odds of someone trying to take advantage of someone else. I also believe that the 10th amendment of the Bill of Rights gives the county jurisdiction as the magistrate of the county to impose the fees necessary to force the developers to finish their development for the good of the community. It is also the county commissioners who grant the right to the developers to develope new lands. I am not a lawyer but I am willing to fight all the way to Washington D.C. on this issue. I intend to let it up to the courts to tell the people that the people must pay to finish the developers project.

Thank you,

Michael Noll

Impact Fees

The primary obstacle to the imposition of school impact fees on home builders and developers by school boards is the lack any statutory authority under Ohio law for school boards to do so.

For some years the PLSD actually lobbied for the enactment of such a statute. However, the PLSD's proposal never really got on the legislative agenda because of a provision in the Ohio constitution requiring proportionality of taxation. It was believed that impact fees imposed a disproportionate tax burden on those who paid them.

Several years ago, however, the Ohio Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of impact fees imposed on developers by city councils for parks and the like under the home rule clause of the Ohio Consitution. This clause, the Supreme Court held, gave city councils authority to impose such fees provided certain conditions were met. Of course those conditions are not always met, and sometimes are difficult to meet. Thus impact fees imposed by city councils continue to be challenged, sometimes successfully.

There is, however, no similar provision in the Ohio Constitution giving such authority to school boards, and no movement afott to enact an authorizing statute.

I think there is consensus that, with this Ohio Supreme Court decision, there is no longer any obtacle under the Ohio Constitution to the enactment of such a statute. However, those who favor such a course of action -- myself included -- must realize the obtacles they would face. They would have to take on the real estate developers, home builders and probably the realtors and their allies. These folks are well-organized, well-connected and well-funded. Taking them on would be no mean feat. It probably would take a sustained and combined effort by at least a majority of the school boards in the state, with the support of the Ohio School Boards Association, the Ohio Education Association, and so forth.

But I no longer believe that it would be impossible to enact such a statute; just extremely difficult. If Ohio school boards could mount such an effort, however, they might also be able to secure repeal of the Ohio statutes authorizing tax increment financing (''TIFs''), which allow city councils essentially to appropriate school tax revenues for the benefit of developers. These statutes are a disgrace, as are the city councils (our own included) that use them.

By Bruce Rigelman