To those people in Pickerington that think the three Petitions that were filed with the city on January 8th of this year are heading to the ballot, they are probably mistaken. The ONLY decision that is before our esteemed Pickerington City Council is either to put the initiatives on the ballot or not, but they continue to debate the merits of the language whether we will be sued or not and what effect it will have on the cost of our local housing market, they also tried to infer that some of the circulators were misinformed.
The language on these three petitions is not negotiable by either Mrs. Ricketts or me. The 350 plus voters that signed these three petitions placed their signatures on them based on the language they read, just before they signed. Nowhere on these petition did the signers give Mrs. Ricketts and me permission to negotiate the language.
Mr. Fox promised on April 16th that he was going to place all three petitions on the ballot as they were written. He further stated that he was listening to the voters. The City Council had access to the wording of these three petitions since October 24th, 2001.
I THINK WE HAVE GIVEN THEM AMPLE TIME TO FULL FILL THEIR PROMISES.
Mr. Mapes hired an outside lawyer, at the City?’s expense, to find a reason to with hold up sending the initiatives to the Board of Elections. Then pressure mounted and he reversed himself and sent them to the board for verification, probably thinking we would fall short in the number of verified signatures.
Saying the petitions were invalid on April 16th, Linda Fersch, refused to send the petitions on to the Fairfield Board of Elections to be placed on the November ballot. At this point the City Council was off the hook so to speak. Then Mr. Fox jumps up to save the day. He sponsored the three ordinances to place them on the ballot.
The facts are that they are trying to buy time and miss this November?’s ballot so they can continue to put in residential developments. At the same time, they are trying to personally bash local residents that have some very real concerns about how this city council functions.
The message that these three petitions are trying to tell the Pickerington City Council is to stop their current practices of passing everything by emergency that is not really an emergency (like zoning). Passing a zoning measure by emergency denies the residents their rights in running referendums if they disagreed with the zoning decision. Even the density initiative by Mrs. Ricketts only asks that the city council have open and fair hearings and that the city council members enter into these public hearings unbiased. Unlike; Mr. Parker testifying in favor of annexing and rezoning the Diley farm to mostly 8500 sq ft lots. The third initiative prohibits giving away the taxpayers money without any public hearing or notice. Remember the 8185 Farms this council authorized the City Manager to enter into this contract without ever seeing the pre-annexation agreement. Mr. Postage said, ?“That it was legal and Mrs. Bushman knew what they wanted?” (So why vote?). When they were questioned about this going through the service committee Mrs. Bushman said, ?“They were passed through by waivers?” (no public hearing). No one in the public received any information until it was too late to change or stop the agreements. Simply put, NO MORE BACK ROOM DEALS!
The language on these three petitions is not negotiable by either Mrs. Ricketts or me. The 350 plus voters that signed these three petitions placed their signatures on them based on the language they read, just before they signed. Nowhere on these petition did the signers give Mrs. Ricketts and me permission to negotiate the language.
Mr. Fox promised on April 16th that he was going to place all three petitions on the ballot as they were written. He further stated that he was listening to the voters. The City Council had access to the wording of these three petitions since October 24th, 2001.
I THINK WE HAVE GIVEN THEM AMPLE TIME TO FULL FILL THEIR PROMISES.
Mr. Mapes hired an outside lawyer, at the City?’s expense, to find a reason to with hold up sending the initiatives to the Board of Elections. Then pressure mounted and he reversed himself and sent them to the board for verification, probably thinking we would fall short in the number of verified signatures.
Saying the petitions were invalid on April 16th, Linda Fersch, refused to send the petitions on to the Fairfield Board of Elections to be placed on the November ballot. At this point the City Council was off the hook so to speak. Then Mr. Fox jumps up to save the day. He sponsored the three ordinances to place them on the ballot.
The facts are that they are trying to buy time and miss this November?’s ballot so they can continue to put in residential developments. At the same time, they are trying to personally bash local residents that have some very real concerns about how this city council functions.
The message that these three petitions are trying to tell the Pickerington City Council is to stop their current practices of passing everything by emergency that is not really an emergency (like zoning). Passing a zoning measure by emergency denies the residents their rights in running referendums if they disagreed with the zoning decision. Even the density initiative by Mrs. Ricketts only asks that the city council have open and fair hearings and that the city council members enter into these public hearings unbiased. Unlike; Mr. Parker testifying in favor of annexing and rezoning the Diley farm to mostly 8500 sq ft lots. The third initiative prohibits giving away the taxpayers money without any public hearing or notice. Remember the 8185 Farms this council authorized the City Manager to enter into this contract without ever seeing the pre-annexation agreement. Mr. Postage said, ?“That it was legal and Mrs. Bushman knew what they wanted?” (So why vote?). When they were questioned about this going through the service committee Mrs. Bushman said, ?“They were passed through by waivers?” (no public hearing). No one in the public received any information until it was too late to change or stop the agreements. Simply put, NO MORE BACK ROOM DEALS!