Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

We have the opportunity to build a great community.

Consider all of our resources: There is still land available to build the commercial tax base we need, and we still have the opportunity to plan and build the road network needed to support such development. Through zoning, setback requirements, building codes and the like, we can still preserve a rural flavor in our residential subdivisions. We have mechanisms available to control our growth rate to one that our infrastructure can support. We still have stands of forest that can become parks. We are blessed with streams that can support beautiful hiking and biking trails tying together our parks and neighborhoods. We have a truly unique resource in Pickerington Ponds. We have good schools. And, most importantly, I believe we now have the leadership in place to unite this community in preserving and developing these resources.

But we must not allow ourselves to be distracted and divided by conflicts between township and city government, township and city residents, or residents of various school enrollment districts.

The new high school and junior high school were costly mistakes. Just a trip to the men's room at the new stadium (which must have more than 30 urinals) should be enough to convince anyone of that. But we must learn from those mistakes (which the BOE apparently did in changing architects) and also find ways to eliminate the divisions in this community that they have caused.
Above all, we must unite, or we will quickly lose all these wonderful opportunities with which we all have been blessed.

That means merging the city and the township at the earliest opportunity. We can no longer allow each of our governments to use the other as an excuse for doing nothing. We can no longer permit builders and developers to play one against the other for special favors, as they have done so effectively in recent years. We can no longer let these divisions distract us from our common goal of using all of our wonderful resources to build a great community.

We need one community, under one government, with one land use and development plan -- a plan that we all participate in developing.

Commercial usage

The biggest obstacle to bringing in commercial entities has always been ''Not In My Back Yard''. Even pushing or encouraging large commercial growth out along the 33 corridor has brought many NIMBY's out over the years. It is this type of narrow thinking that has hampered the many business-search efforts that have been tried.

We all cry out for tax relief, but if we do not bring in large businesses to increase the tax base we are doomed to the same course we have been on for decades.

Thus the fix the city is in

The current council also realizes this situation. However the preannexation agreements Joycie made with the land owners in the south end of the township is such a problem. Does council find a way out of the annexations, perhaps by artful negotiations and settlements or take their chances and breach all contracts or do they proceed with the annexations and cost the city over $3,000,000 in give aways?

If they try to negotiate away the annexations they lose possession of the commercial and industrial acreage. Bad political move? So which side of the double edged sword to you grab on to? The side that could potentially bankrupt the city or the side that will gain votes this November? We need commercial and the council knows it. Question is - AT WHAT COST?

By the time the city annexes, pays off the ridiculous preannexation ransoms and acquires the rich industrial and commercial land, how much money will they have left? I ask because obviously the city has to make the acreage lucrative to potential developers. By lucrative I mean they have to abate property taxes, income taxes, do TIFS of heaven knows what else. Developers just won't walk in and say ''We'll take care of everything and want nothing in return.'' Have they ever yet? So the city could end up losing more millions in future income by having to make further deals to make a deal.

Merge and share the wealth, share the costs and unite as a community.



By Ol' Cuss

T/P Defeatist attitude

So many have always NIMBY?’d in a past.
So some folks are still dumb enough to dislike commercial neighbors.
So some folks are too near sighted to not want this town to have job opportunities for their kids when they grow up. (other than the ever ballooning public tax payer supported PLSD).
So when we run out of residential developable land and the developers even build on the PYAA / PASA complex or the PLSD locates the FORTH High School on that wonderfully centrally located site.

Do you think we will be smart enough then to get the local residents to value commercial neighbors?
I think many more of us than you can imagine want to make the reality of commercial development happen now!

Isn?’t it time for this change?
Or should we just keep stating how stupid we have been toward a broadened tax base.


By Understand tax mess