I applaud your efforts
From one Bruce to another, I applaud your courage and your efforts. It took months before anyone had the fortitude to do what you have done.
The City Council and Board of Trustees have the tools they need to manage growth in this community. We need council persons and trustees who are willing to use those tools creatively to make and enforce intelligent plans for the future of this community.
We need to limit the rate of growth to one that our schools, our roads and the rest of our infrastucture can comfortably absorb. We need to limit the density of growth. As I have said before, if the PLSD has the same number of students per square mile as Worthington or Upper Arlington when we are fully built out, the PLSD will have a total enrollment of 24,000. That's 1,800 per grade level. We will need not three but four high schools.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we need to manage the composition of growth. We need to match every $3 million of new residential growth with $1 million of new commercial growth. And by that I do not mean apartments, grocery stores, restaurants and movie theaters. Moreover, we need commercial development that goes on the tax roll and supports the schools, not real estate that is ''TIF'd'' and kept off the tax roll for up to a decade. The PLSD cannot afford to pay for stoplights.
The Lancaster School District spends considerably more per pupil than we do with significantly lower tax rates. What's the difference? Commercial development. We need to show some stewardship for those who will live in this community after us -- for our grandchildren and great grandchildren -- by building the kind of tax base that will support good schools at reasonable tax rates that everyone can afford for years to come.
You realize that this is not going to happen with the current city council. To the contrary, the council actually has encouraged residential development with rezoning, tap-in fee waivers and the like. Ever wonder who pays for sewer and water taps when the city waives these fees? At the same time, the city council has rezoned prime commercial land as residential when it has suited the interests of local developers.
The answer is not shifting responsibility for growth control to the school board as one school board candidate has suggested. Is the state supposed to give zoning and building permit powers, or control over sewer and water systems, to school boards? This transparent attempt to take the heat off the city council, and divert attention from the obvious source of the problem, should be seen by everyone for what it is.
Stick to your guns, Bruce, and when my foot recovers from whatever is wrong with it, I'll walk the neighborhoods with you myself.
Incidentally, in answer to a question you raised on this board a while ago that I have been meaning to answer, debt service on the new high school and junior high will peak in 2014 at more than twice its initial level. Thanks for your support on that issue. We must never do such a bond offering again.
