Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

I know I am out of touch with things when an elementary school is $15 million to build. I have a few simple questions:

Why, if we reuse a design for a subsequent school, we seem to pay full design fees to architects and engineers? A new home, designed from scratch is $10,000, a set of plans from a book is $750.00. Planting a copy of Tussing Elementary in another corn field shouldn't be that difficult.

Are we forced to pay prevailing wage rates? Why not have a truly competitive bid that doesn't rig the pay scales in advance? Major savings here I suspect.

How many other aspects of the construction process are rigged against us? (Like how did that dirt pile get left at PN?) Given the fact we are going to be building schools for the next decade or two do shouldn't we have a construction savvy person employed full time to represent us against the construction industry?

We've got to build, that's a fact. How can we do it for far less cash than the current process spends?

By Acme Building Co

managment on both sides

Maybe we start by not hiring the same construction manager that allowed the dirt pile to be left at North and second write contracts that cover these details so that there is legal recourse to move the dirt at their expense and fix the leaks etc.

PICKERINTON STINKS!

Dear People Trying to Find a Place to Live in Central Ohio: Don?’t Move Here!!!

This place stinks! We?’ve got a governor who stinks and has always stunk, our air quality is terrible (the worst in the country by recent published reports in the Columbus Dispatch), our water and sewer rates are ferocious along with their respective poor quality, the commute to Columbus is awful and our lethargic legislature maintains the stone-age mentality of using property taxes to fund public schools ?– and this is after the Ohio Supreme Court ruled many years ago that this sort of funding was unconstitutional (That's illegal, for you simple folk). Yes, this is about the only state in the U.S.A. where you can thumb your nose at the state Supreme Court and get away with it. But, hey, this is cow-town U.S.A.! And We?’re Broke! We?’re so poor here in Ohio that Michigan?’s rats pack a lunch to cross our state on their way to Kentucky!

And Pickerington? We?’ve got hundreds of our darling little elementary kids, the same kids we won?’t allow to play in our streets for fear of rampant drug dealers, drunks and loud filthy music, in trailer parks across the district, learning the ABCs and 1,2,3s. Plus, we?’re not even close to reaching our maximum potential with respect to our kid capacity. According to published reports, we can add another 5.5K kids to our district within the next few years. Do you think with each and every household considering all of the above facts that we can pass a school levy? No! Do you really think we (homeowners) are thinking about bricks and mortar? Heck, No! We?’re trying to put food on our table, outsiders! We can barely keep up with the mortgage payments! Don?’t move here! Move to some stable environment like Bexley or Granville or some other place. If you?’re not house poor now, you will be. We?’re all just waiting for the chance to get our younglings out of this overpriced school district with a piece of paper that says they graduated... and we?’re also hoping that our meager real-estate investment didn?’t plummet (too much).

The last one out of town, please turn the lights and water off...

***** Due to Liability concerns, I maintain that the above diatribe is strictly satire and has no factual evidence to support its claims?…

WHATEVER!