Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

Stop the Houses 1st


Mr Rigleman,

You are to be commended for your dedication and support of PLSD. We certainly need more folks like you who want to do what's best for this community. However Pickerington city council seems to be doing only what is best for themselves and residential developers.

Example: The Community Authority agreement with developers that virtually assures unabated home construction will continue. ?“The moratorium and Authority cannot coexist?”, per Ms. Bushman (who?’s town is this? Oh yeah, it?’s Ms. Bushman?’s town)

The city?’s ''to hell with everybody'' (read: ?“to hell with the voters?”) attitude has ruined this once wonderful community. Their use of emergency legislation the past 7 years has wrecked the school system. Meanwhile unincorporated Violet Township residents have their hands tied and can do nothing to stop this madness. Well, almost nothing?…

We do however have one card in our hand to play and that is the NO vote for any and all school levies until growth is under control. Indeed our Republican controlled statehouse has not helped the situation, a fact that staunch area Republicans seem to easily forget. But make no mistake about it, Pickerington city council and Pickerington city manager, Joyce Bushman, has done more harm to PLSD than any other entity, ever!

Pickerington has no commercial businesses other than businesses taken from Violet Township via annexation, or retail commercial properties that they have used TIF's to
attract. They have created this quagmire and I refuse to subsidize their shoddy attempt at the largest strip mall & retail community in central Ohio. We've got empty storefronts all over this city and we're building more strip malls with city subsidized infrastructure improvements. Improvements paid for through TIFs (i.e., SCHOOL MONEY!).

WHERE?”S THE OFFICE PARK ???!!!!???

City council has given up on that I guess, or... THEY LIED !!!!

When we vote ?“FOR?” the school levy, we endorse the city's use of TIFs, money that should be used for school district improvements only. Except, the city diverts this money and uses it to put up traffic management devices that only seem to manage to get commuters stuck in more traffic or perhaps the city will use these funds to build another ?“Road To Nowhere?”. IT IS INSANE !!!

Dear city officials and PLSD Board members: Either cut a deal and
immediately make PLSD whole (with interest), ?…AND enact an immediate
moratorium, or I will vote ''NO'' on everything. I am not alone; there are hundreds of people just like me. We are not ignorant of the goings-on of the Pickerington city government.

Finally, if city residents want to do PLSD a favor (?… hey P.T.O., this means you, so listen up!), they need to recall their elected officials.

Until something is done to immediately control homebuilding, I can guarantee a good deal of opposition to any school levy.

Yes, the kids will suffer, but we adults are already suffering. Why isolate one generation from the pain this entire community endures.





By V O T I N G NO !

Send your message....

Please send your message to the right audience.

Our kids are not the ones that need to pay the price of the idiot's currently in office in the City.

There are two kinds of petitions circulating now - one for a two year moratorium & a 10 year growth plan - the second is a series of recall petitions to get rid of the problem at it's source.

Growth needs to stop - let's make sure the ones that caused it feel the pain we all do. Their political futures can end now. If they are truly our public servants - we don't need any enemies !!



By PickeringtonMom

My apologies

The incident that you describe should never have occurred. Bringing school levy campaigns into grade school classrooms is simply wrong.

I want to assure you, however, that the School Board never has considered turning off the air conditioning or turning down the heat if the current levy fails. As an economy measure, we have centralized control of classroom temperatures, and try (I believe) to maintain classroom temperatures at 68 degrees in the winter. I suspect we target 72 degrees for warm weather days.

Unfortunately, when temperatures change suddendly, as they have recently, it sometimes takes time to get the temperature adjusted. I have experienced this problem in every office building that I have ever occupied. Also, I think we are still working some of the bugs out of our centralized system.

None of us, however, would ever try to sweat levy money out of people's kids by turning off the air conditioning or the heat. We don't hold children hostage. That would be wrong, and your child's teacher was wrong in even suggesting that we would ever do anything of the sort.

I understand

I understand that if PLSD income tax collections are down, as they are, that can only be because PLSD incomes are down too. I know that investment income has fallen off the table, and that many people are suffering through lay-offs and RIFs. There but for fortune go all of us.

That is why we have tried to minimize the size of this spring's levy, and are limiting it's life to no more than five years. There are some on the school board who wanted to ask you for more.

This levy will not close entirely our anticipated budgetary gap. We have tried to meet the voters at least halfway with permanent cost cuts. Building budgets have been cut in half and then frozen. We reduced next year's budget for new hiring from $3.4 million to $1.8 million, and thus reduction will not be restored, even if the levy passes. We are determined to wring substantial savings from our transportation budget, which I believe is badly bloated. And we continue to search for savings in other areas.

Passage of this levy will enable us to maintain existing programs only by cutting costs to the bone. I realize that school taxes are a significant sacrifice for many people. Thus it would be unethical for us not to try to stretch each tax dollar as far as it will go.

However, you and other voters should hold our feet to the fire. Ask us hard questions. Make sure that we are careful with your money. And if you are not satisfied with our efforts, vote us out of office and replace us with people who will be more careful with your money and your children. In a democracy, voters only get the quality of service from government that they demand.