Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

Results Take Time

I second the comments of Lisa Ross and others. Our new Mayor, and our new City Council majority, have done everything they promised to do, and then some. It takes time, however, to undo decades of mistakes, to put the proper policies in place, and to then achieve the intended results.

I think that our new city government is well on its way to controlling residential growth, building a strong commercial tax base, and making sure that the infrastructure is in place to support growth as it occurs. The measures that Ted has described are just the beginning.

However, we must still contend with carryover effects from the prior regime. As I have noted elsewhere, the old city government let builders stockpile building permits for use during the recent moratorium. The new subdivisions the old city council approved during its last years in office, when fully built out, will add well over 1,000 additional homes to our community.

Our new city government has started to apply the brakes, but we are dealing here with a runaway freight train. It will take some time to bring it to a stop.

I was saddened to hear of the difficulties that Ted has encountered dealing with PLSD administrators. I had similar problems getting information, or just getting straight answers to questions, when I was on the school board. I was sometimes denied information that was made freely available to my critics. I had hoped that, with our new superintendent, all of this would change. Apparently it has not.

These folks need to be constantly reminded that, under Ohio's ''sunshine'' law, anyone is entitled to access to any ''public record'' of any school district. This includes pretty much anything that is written down or recorded in any form, with certain very limited exceptions.

I doubt very much that the school district has any valid basis for denying Ted the information he has sought. Certain PLSD administrators, however, have a known propensity for stonewalling. This, more than anything, has eroded public trust in our school system.

They seem to forget, as do we, that they work for us. These are our schools, not theirs. These administrators need a strong reminder of that. I had hoped that the folks who could give them that reminder would be on the ballot this fall. I guess I'll just have to wait for two more years.

They are making their run

Bruce

Thank you for the support and I am truly understanding what you went thru over the years just to serve on the board. That came home tonight and I remember what the outlaws did to you.

During the community comments our former councilman Brian (Sour Grapes) Fox spoke. His concern was an email he had obtained thru some public records request. Sabatino made the request.

In that email I had responded to the our Media Babe about what I was expecting to happen this year at service since I am the Chairman. This is routine every quarter.

I had told the Media Babe that I had expected to see us raise our sewer and water taps fees this year. We were trying to seat a commission to review and study and recommend and probably raise the city's user fees for water and sewer and that I had expected that to occur after the election.

Brian claims it is unethical for me to be raising user rates behind close doors. This process will not be done behind closed door. Our committee meet last night and we elected Terry Walburn the Chairman.

As I have said in the past we want to run the Water and Sewer Utilities as business. My critic had EIGHT YEARS on council to suggest and implement this policy. He accomplished the consent agenda and campaigned for McAuliffe and Demastry. He still has their campaign signs hanging in his garage.

IT IS CLEARLY CAMPAIGN SEASON.

Please some one tell this idiot and I know he reads this site that I am not running for election this year.

To restructure the debt on the two utilities departments we are wanting to convert our existing debt to revenue bonds. This means we will need to develop a five year plan and we will need to hire an engineer and a financial advisor to create and develop a five year fee schedule plan that we can submit to the lenders.

The commission will review the recommendations from the engineer and the financial advisor and they will pass it on to the Service Committee. These are public meetings and they will be held the third Monday of the month. All meetings are posted on the City's web site and on the front door of City Hall.

If we do increase the user rates and I believe there is a possibility to do that we must ensure we have enough revenue to make our debt service.

The recommended rate fee schedule will be voted on in public by a FIVE member commission. Their first meeting was August 30th. Those minutes and agendas will and are posted on the City's web site. Were meeting posted on the city's web site from 1996 thru 2003?

The reason we are looking at the utility fee schedule is that once we wean ourselves off of the unlimited tap fees we have paid our debt service with over the last decade we will need to make sure the city stays solvent and that we can demonstrate to our lenders that we can pay our debt service even if the new building tap fees drop drastically (hint hint hint). It will take the pressure off on any future council to sell tap fees to pay debt.

I am hopeful this will be completed by the first quarter of next year before the primary election what ever that means to Brian Fox.

Anyway he called the majority ''SHAVER BUBBLEHEADS.'' So much for the lions club nice guy.

His buddy Gary Peterman taking Sabatinos place. He brought up the Mayor's accident again. Although he claimed he was not talking about the police and I don't know how he could avoid it. He said the Mayor ran from this accident. He doubted the Mayor's claim about the hitting the curb.

This was a broken head light on the one car and a two inch scratch on the Mayor's car. Peterman give it up.

Desperate

Ted, they're desperate to hold onto what few seats they have left on council so that in maybe 2 more years they'll be able to get back into power.

Don't let these guys rattle you - don't give them anything they can use against you.

They're desperate and their true character is showing through brightly.

Keep your cool and your head up.



By OB

The fire still burns

I wanted to comment about my posting of last night. I am sorry for my outburst on this web site.

However being called the Mayor?’s apologist and unethical Councilman Hackworth by former Councilman Brian Fox of all people drove me over the edge with emotion and anger. The former councilman reminded me last night why I got involved in serving the community and on our council.

If the goal is to get me to give up and walk away then that failed. My anger and emotion of last night are now renewed determination and energy to make this city and this community a better place to live. I will gladly compare my record of 21 months to Mr. Fox?’s EIGHT YEARS anytime.

To state that I was unethical because I felt the user rates on our utilities would not be raised until after the election protected whom? I believe when that was sent we all thought Parker, Wright, Sabatino and O?’Brien would seek re-election to their seats. Who was I protecting or was I stating realities with how fast we could get the proper analyses to make an intelligent decision?

When Mayor Shaver took office in 2004 the utilities had been operating in the RED, something that should have been addressed years ago and that happened to be on Councilman Fox?’s watch. One analogy would be that if you work and get overtime in your job and you begin to depend on that overtime for day to day living expenses then one day your overtime stops how do you make your mortgage payments? Clearly with rising interest rates and the housing market going into the tank we must make the hard decisions to secure our finances.


As for supporting the Mayor and his visions, he knows I support him just based on his short 21 month record. They think they will create a void if they drive the Mayor from office. However the Mayor and I are not running for office. Even if they succeed in forcing the Mayor out, this change in doing business at City Hall will survive. I believe I can safely say that the current majority on council strongly supports Mayor Shaver not because he has some dirt on us or some control over us but because he is RIGHT.