Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

Pickerington has a ''Communiquick'' information program that you can register for on the city web site. They then will email you news about city events. Now with the new council and mayor, information is beginning to flow at a greater rate.

Today I received an email notice about a zoning hearing. Keep in mind that several years ago I took the time to repeatedly write to city hall to request that zoning hearings and other public hearings be more widely publicized to the local population.

Ohio Law requires them to advertise these hearings in a generally circulated newspaper in the county, in this case, those that meet the circulation criteria stipulated in the state law are the Columbus Dispatch and Lancaster Eagle (LEG) Gazette. They chose the LEG because they felt the info would be buried in the Dispatch. I asked them to connsider placing additional notices in the local papers, which are more widely read by community residents. They refused, stating that they had to follow the state law. I did respond to that refusal, stating that I understood the state law requirments, but was aware that less than 200 homes in Violet Township received the LEG. I pointed out that nothing in the state law prohibited them from advertising these hearings in additional media sources and that in my view, it was in the best interests of the community to place additional ads to foster public participation. The response I received to that inquiry was SILENCE. It has remained that way until today when I received an email announcing the city zoning hearing.

Thank you new city council and mayor for setting a new direction for the staff, one which has started with baby steps and hopefully will result in a giant leap soon.

These notices will be posted in the calendar section of this site as they are received, with any ''big ones'' on ''our pages.''

By Webmaster one

Dumping Bushman

Just dumping Bushman leads to promise of communications improvements..

From the PATA website of May 2001?…. You were reminded of the ?“LACK OF COMMUNICATION?” this City Manager wanted. Out goes the manager ?– problems now being resolved.


Pickerington Web Site seeks Public Input, errors Stop Comments


City Web Site not allowing comment submission
***** Update on correction of City web site - COMMUNICATING WITH OFFICIALS *****

The Contact City Officials links are now working due to citizen efforts in contacting the internet site designer for Pickerington to fix the problem. City officals were urged to fix the problem for several months and did not attempt to do so. It only took one five minute email from a concerned citizen to the site host to fix the problem. City officals apparently cannot spare time to send a brief email to the site host to whom they pay your tax dollars for the design and operation of their site.
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Despite efforts several weeks ago by PATA members to notify the City that their web site ''Contact City Officials'' page was not working, The problem persists as of 16 May 2001.

Any use of the links on this site to contact the city are inoperable when you click the submit button on the City site,after taking the time to type your comments. The error message you will receive reads as follows:

Mail send failure. Error was :503 must have sender and recipient first
Response object error 'ASP 0156 : 80004005'

Header Error

/sections/mayor/contact/prsform.asp, line 230

The HTTP headers are already written to the client browser. Any HTTP header modifications must be made before writing page content.


We hope the city corrects the problem soon, as many inquiries have been made to this site as to what is the problem with the link and the City Site. It is important that the city be proactive seeking citizen comments about their actions in as many ways as possible to remain true to their mission of service and representation of the ''people's will.''

***** The correction came about by citizens who contacted the City's outside web administrator directly. ****

http://www.neighborhoodlink.com/org/clubextra.html?nclubid=68303919&nid=272377591


By a step forward