Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

I commend our Township Trustees for working out a deal with the Sheriff to use the old Township building. I condem Hughes for publicly taking credit for it in his letter to the editor. If you reread the letter, Hughes did not say he worked the deal but to the uninformed it sure sounds that way. The building happens to be in old town Pickerington, it was not built there to house the sheriff, it is an existing building.

By Violet

Contract time

Violet:

Maybe it is time for the City of Pickerington to contract their police services with the county Sheriff. They are already present in the City and they now will be working right out of downtown Pickerington instead of on the Franklin County line.


By Dudley DoRight

Rethink police station


I think the suggestion to contract for service with the County is an excellent idea. Sheriff Phalen is doing a fantastic job. The Pickerington police are simply an expensive redundancy. Anyone who reads the newspapers quickly learns that the Pickerington police make very few arrests each week and most of those are for minor traffic violations. The monies saved could be used to pay the salary of a real city manager who has experience with economic development and for recreational services for our citizens.
By the way, we are already paying to redesign the police station since no one envisioned that anyone would be foolhardy enough to build the station on swampland that could support the original design. The city recieved this fine tract of real estate, which is closer to Columbus than most of Pickerington, as a ''donation'' from a developer, who just happened to get a free road and sewer line to his new development, all of which were worth considerably more than the donated swampland.Instead of redeisgning the police station, perhaps we should use the money to build a community center with an indoor pool that could be used by both high schools. We could also can the idea for the free road and sewers to the developer.
Alternatively, we can simply give the land back to the developer and not build anything since we are all going to need to start saving up for the new taxes that we are going to need in November when we are going to be asked for yet another school levy for building additional elementary schools.
Better yet, maybe (just maybe mind you) we should start getting angry about the polcies of the governments int his area that are not aonly allowing but promoting uncontrolled residential growth. The ''welfare program'' the city of Pickerington has for developers is nothing short of scandalous. They give developers free water taps, waivers of taxes and free roads and in exchange we get overcrowded schools and people who work in Columbus or other communities thereby negating any possible benefit from income tax. Developers of drug stores, fast food joints and strip malls get ''TIF''s , which are simply tax giveaways that do little to encourage substantial economic developmentn and take money away from the schools.




By Spartucus

Be careful what you wish for

Spartacus,

Maybe you should do a little research before you make such profound statements as ?“Anyone who reads the newspapers quickly learns that the Pickerington police make very few arrests each week and most of those are for minor traffic violations. ?“ The reason I say this is the Police may make only a few arrests but they certainly do a lot of investigations. But these are investigations you never hear anything about. What would happen if the potential homebuyers for Pickerington found about the drug overdoses that happen in the schools? What about when a high school student is found with enough LSD in his possession to get the whole school high? What about the racial problems that exist in the schools? If you are a non-caucasian ?– non-athlete, watch out, Picktown is still full of good old boys. Well, enough dirty laundry about that.

Check out potential different chains of command for police protection available to cities. Perhaps the police could be better served in a Constable role. Perhaps they could work the ?“presence in the schools?” issue or traffic control at the ball fields, serving writs of habeas corpus and such and leave the law to Sheriff Phalen and his deputies. Perhaps by staffing the police department in a way that lend itself to a more appropriate role, they could just stay where they are and turn the new station under construction into a bigger and better substation for the real law in this town.

Then take the salary and facility savings and spend it first to buy out the current City Manager and send her packing and hire one with the experience to deal with the issues we are facing. Or maybe recruit a Mayoral candidate that would have the big brass ones to make the current one actually do her job and represent the taxpayers.