Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

During tonight's Pickerington City Council meeting, Joyce Bushman announced that the city had issued 89 building permits by the end of April, and in the last 5 weeks the total number has skyrocketed to a total of 325 building permits so far this year. This is just below the total number of permits issued by the city in 2002. If this number is multiplied by 2.5 children per home, Pickerington and the BIA have added 813 students to our struggling school district. This is a modest number of children per home according to Tom Hart of the BIA, who is quoted in Sunday's paper as saying, ''You can see three and four kids in these houses. They are set up that way.'' And the year is only half over! Will this ever end?

David Shaver announced at the meeting that he will introduce legislation at the next city council meeting to enact an emergency moratorium on growth. David, you have my full support! The BIA has acted in bad faith toward the Pickerington community, and you are the leader Pickerington City Council needs. Good luck!

What's happening is..

That the builders are loading up on building permits in case any sort of moratorium goes into effect.

Bad faith is a kind description of what they are doing.

Bad Faith


At the last council meeting I made the mistake of voting against my better judgment. As I noted at that meeting, I was concerned that the discussions with the BIA over the terms of the community authority would not result in any meaningful outcome. I had, however, spoken with the BIA and hoped they were seeking the extension in good faith. My belief was that if both sides were conducting discussions in good faith then a solution could be found that would be beneficial to the community. Part of that good faith was assurances that there would not be a rush to stockpile building permits. Given this, I took the chance of accommodating the request of the BIA for more time. This has turned out to be a mistake.

The action of the builders in rushing through building permits simply indicates that they have no intent of operating in good faith. They were simply seeking more time to rush through as many building permits as possible.

For those of you who do not understand the significance of the building permit issue, this means that the builders now have permits for three hundred and twenty-five houses. If the moratorium were to go into effect tomorrow, the number of houses that could still be built would be nearly our record total of last year. They will no doubt keep trying to push through more permits in the next two weeks before the next council meeting. At the rate that the city is handing out building permits, they will likely have more than enough permits in hand to build more houses than last year, community authority or no community authority.

The only recourse we have at this point in time is to limit the damage by enacting legislation on June 17, 2003 putting the moratorium into effect immediately on that date. I would urge all of you who are interested in this issue to show at the next council meeting and express your concern that immediate action is taken.


By David Shaver

Who runs the City ??


My impression from the Council Meeting is that the entire room was surprised at the number of permits issued including the Mayor & the City Council.

While I suppose the surprise can be tolerated from Council - these same gentlemen all voted (Mr. Shaver excluded) to approve these plats of some 2000 homes in September. Did they then think these homes would not be built ??

The last thing that can be controlled here is the rate. The Pickerington City Manager serves at the pleasure of the mayor - he is her boss. If she is acting in a manner inappropriate it is his responsibility to fix that.

Given that Joyce has single handedly put him, the entire City Council, the Pickerington School District & this community in harms way by her incompetent handling of management of growth matters - she should be removed from office NOW.

Please remember that actions speak much louder than words - you see before you the platform that Lou Postage, Brian Fox and Craig Maxey have to run on.

Uncontrolled Growth - these are your guys get your yard signs now.