Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

I plan to support the school bond levy this spring, and urge that others do so as well. But we must do so with qualifications.

In choosing something less than the high price spread, the school board has again shown its concern with cost. The board is at last beginning to realize that there is a limit to what this community can afford, and that we are rapidly reaching that limit.

But the board's concern with cost must not end with passage of the levy. That has been the board's major mistake in the past. At least while I was on the board, every building project expanded to absorb just about every last cent available for it.

There are reasons for this, and things the board can do to prevent it:

First, there has been a compulsion, on the part of some board members and some administrators, to spend every last cent the voters have approved. I have actually heard board members say, in just these words, ''We've got it, we might as well spend it.'' I have seen money wasted and squandered on exactly that basis. We should not tolerate such nonsense.

Second, architects and construction managers are paid a percentage of the final project cost. Thus, if bids come in low, they are busy dreaming up project enhancements and expansions to absorb the savings, and increase their earnings. That, in part, is what happened at PHS North and PJHS ''Lakeview.''

The board needs to stick to its original plans, to resist such expansionist efforts by architects and construction managers, to bring projects in under budget, and to return the savings to the taxpayers.

The board, to its credit, did kill a misguided plan, last time around, to build a multi-million dollar maintenance barn at the PHS North site, and to spend thousands of dollars moving an old modular home from one end of the property to the other. But, by then, far too many boondoggles already had slipped by.

I challenge this board to return to us taxpayers at least $1 million of the funds that we approve for this project.

Third, the board has not been sufficiently involved in developing building plans, and reviewing contractor change requests. Indeed, the board never even voted on the plans for PHS North and PJHS Lakeview (the vote would have been 3-2), and left these matters entirely to the staff and the architects (who, in my judgment, have insufficient concern for costs).

Low-balling on bids, and then making up the shortfall with change orders, is one of the oldest building contractor/subcontractor scams on the books. Only with Wes Monhollen's election to the school board, and Gail's and my support, did the board begin actively policing the change order process. Our efforts, however, were too little and too late.

Fourth, the board needs to start actively policing contractor and construction manager performance. These folks should never have been allowed to leave that huge rubbish pile at the PHS North site. They wanted to charge us $100,000+ to clean up their mess. They should have cleaned it up at no cost. Because they did not, we should not hire that construction manager again.

Finally, to do all of this effectively, the board needs to make some administrative staffing changes. The PLSD needs to have at least one person on staff who knows the building trades, whose charge is to control both costs and quality, and can sniff out, and is willing to blow the horn on, cost overruns, mismanagement and other similar shenanigans. In my estimation, the PLSD has no one on staff now who is up to that challenge.

In sum, the school board needs to get tough in overseeing building projects, and we need to get tough about demanding solid board performance on all of these counts. If we do not get it, we know what to do.

Option one??

So far this bond issue is as clear as mud. I understand that the school board has chosen the least costly version or options presented. I also understand that they want to build two elementary schools.

Then they say they want to buy land.

The land and the locations of these purchases has been a sore point with many voters for years. Why do we build schools like at the corner of our future commercial developments? We build a new high school and a new junior high school in an area that was one of the few areas we might have been able to make commercial and what happens? We get 500 homes being build across the street.

The second issue is with the elementary school locations. First why did we build the Pickerington Elementary where we did years ago? Then when they need to widen Diley the school board launches their fit into safety. If safety is the issue then build the schools back into the neighborhoods away from the traffic?

My other question is don't we have some land available down by Central High School? That campus looks bigger than most Ohio High Schools campus and I think we could carve out ten or so acres for a elementary school site.



By Broke

Busing

The first time we talk about cutting expenses for the schools we talk about cutting the busing. Yet when we build these schools along major roads the History of the Pickerington in the past has been they haven't built sidewalks. The township will never build sidewalks. How do these kids get to school when we force them to walk on the streets or over rail road tracks and they are only 6?

Even the Hill Road work from out of the middle of Pickerington a few years ago they stopped the sidewalk right at the rail line. I have been waiting to see a group of teenagers growing old standing at the end of that sidewalk waiting to cross because some one said it was dangerous to build the sidewalk across the rail line.

I hope who ever make the site selections this time reviews the district's recent past history.



By Broke

Reply to Broke

I cannot answer most of your questions, since they relate to decisions made before I moved to Pickerington in 1990, and well before my time on the school board.

I can tell you, though, that at some point in the late 1980s, the township began requiring sidewalks in new subdivisions. That is why there are sidewalks in one half of Summerfield, but not in the other.

The school board has since tried, but with only limited success, to persuade the township to retrofit a few strategic locations with sidewalks, to enable more students to walk safely to school.

I also agree with you that there is room on the PHS Central property for an elementary school. It might be necessary to relocate some athletic fields, and possibly even to relocate Opportunity Way, but I believe it could be done. I have always felt that that the PLSD made poor use of that large site. Again, however, that decision was made before I moved to Pickerington.

One reason that school locations sometimes turn out to be less than optimal, and that school sites are not used to their maximum advantage, is that this community has no comprehensive land use plan designed to take us from where we are now to full build-out. At the time Pickerington Elementary was built, no one envisioned turning Diley Road into the major thoroughfare that it will inevitably become. No one felt the need to build a commercial tax base, or anticipated that the 33 corridor would offer us our last real opportunity to do that.

This is one major reason why a merger of the township and the city is so important. We need to work together now to develop one land use plan for this entire community -- a land use plan that gives us a good idea how many schools we eventually will need, when we are likely to need each of them, and where each of them should best be built.

Without such a plan, the school board can only guess. Also, without a concerted effort in this community to control the rate of residential growth, there is the risk that each new school we build will only spur increased residential development around its perimeter.

Tussing Elementary and Diley Middle Schools are excellent examples, and it seems likely that PHS North will become one as well. If you build it, they will come.

Again, all of this highlights the need for one comprehensive land use and development plan for this entire community, which requires a merger of the city and the township.