Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

Developers give funds for roads

Thursday, September 25, 2003

GAYLON VICKERS
Enterprise Staff Writer

Five developers working in the Waggoner Road area have donated more than $1.4-million for road improvements there.

Franklin County Engineer Dean Ringle told Franklin County commissioners Tuesday that construction will begin this year to widen Waggoner to three lanes from the area just south of Havens Corners Road, where it is currently three lanes, to just north of the ConRail tracks.

Kennedy Road will be reconstructed, with a new coat of asphalt added to the top. Kennedy's pavement will be widened in some places, and turn lanes will be added where subdivisions are located, he said.

Wengert also will be widened in spots. Both Wengert and Kennedy will remain two lanes.

The county will pay for a small part of the $1,441,138.39 contract awarded by commissioners on Tuesday to Complete General Construction Co., Ringle said. The vast majority will come from donations by M/I Homes, Rockford Homes, Homewood, National Church Residences and W&K Development.

Tom Cormody of M/I Homes presented a check to commissioners at the meeting for the total donation.

Ringle said the donations were made in lieu of roadway work the developers were going to have to do in connection with subdivisions along the roads. ''This way, instead of having five little contracts, it will be just one big contract.''

Franklin County Commissioner Arlene Shoemaker praised the developers, saying, ''Without this cooperation, we would not have been able to get the project done and save money.''

Commissioner Mary Jo Kilroy echoed her sentiments, saying this will make for a much better neighborhood and lower the final costs.

Work will begin this year, Ringle said, but will continue into 2004 before it is finished. He said he has to meet with Complete General officials before he can say for sure what will start first.

But, he said, ''Drainage issues have to come first. If there are any culverts to be replaced, that will happen first.'' Then, he said, he expects the contractor to move on to working on the roadway.

Ringle noted that the county had already widened Waggoner to three lanes just south of Havens Corners Road.





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Looks like the Lee Gray gang

Looks like the Lee Gray Gang is checking in. The developers shoulsd pay for these improvements, they created the mess which necessitates the road widening. If this poster had driven in this area and experienced the poor conditions, overloaded roads etc in the Waggoner Road area, he would have seen that this is long overdue. This should have been done before the first subdivision was built there, in other words make the infrastructure adequate before you drop another 10,000 cars per day on the road. Of course that would make sense to those who live there but once again the fix comes after the problem festers for years and the people who live there pay the price with a reduces quality of life for long periods of time.
Perhaps this poster is sitting in traffic at 256/204/70 and can't get to Reynoldsburg to go see for himself.

Points to consider

Dear Anonymous,

The article highlight the following points:

?„h Developers and Builders are actively working to ruin our schools
?„h Developers and Builders have ?¡?§pledged?¡?¨ $600,000 to our schools
?„h Developers and Builders have actually donated NOTHING to our schools
?„h Some Developers actually give money to fix problems they create, albeit much later than they should
?„h Pickerington holds Developers and Builders to NO STANDARDS WHATSOEVER
?„h Somehow Franklin County was able to extract money for much-needed improvements
?„h IN SOME PLACES DEVELOPERS DO GIVE SOMETHING TO THE COMMUNITIES

Same developers here

The only thing they appear to give here is campaign contributions. Our leadership likes the taxpayers to get fleeced year after year and then run PR campaigns at election time where they sing a different tune,..... like working behind the scenes to slow down growth.... and records of cooperation with everyone everyday..... and democracy in action even though petition after petiton signed by hundreds of voters gets tossed out.