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COMMENTS TO HILLIARD CITY SCHOOLS BOARD OF EDUCATION
- As a poll worker, I have
already filed my absentee ballot, and am happy to report to you that I voted
in favor of the levy.
- I believe the levy is
going to pass. But we should not be proud about squeaking another one by. I
believe that until we get an overwhelming majority of voters supporting
school levies, our community is not healthy, and we should not declare
victory.
- I believe close passage
means that too few people understand how funding works, and are just voting
from emotion. Very few people understand the interconnection between the
actions of the municipalities, primarily Hilliard, and impact they have on
the cost of running the school system.
- In fact, many people may
not understand that Hilliard City Schools and the City of Hilliard are two
independent, but inter-dependent, government organizations. Names are
important, and strategically it may make sense to change the name back to
“Scioto Darby Schools” to help clarify that point and reflect the fact that
over half our students come from homes outside the City of Hilliard.
Regardless of what he or anyone else thinks, Mayor Schonhardt does not in
fact run the school system.
- The Mayor was quoted in
two newspaper articles last week as saying that the 50% open space
requirement in this new development means ½ acre is left open for each acre
which on which houses are built. The correct math is that 50% open space
means that for each one acre that is developed, another acre is left open.
This seems like an attempt by the mayor to use the words of the Big Darby
Accord plan to fool all of us, but redefine them to match his own
intentions.
Admittedly, his plan is better than 6,000 to 8,000 homes that might normally
be platted on 2,000 acres in Central Ohio, but the Mayor was not going to
get that many homes anyway because of limits in the sewer/water system. You
see, there’s capacity for only 2,000 homes left in this part of the area,
and Mayor is trying to grab it all for his developer friends before the rest
of the folks around here figure out what’s going on.
- I urge you to be
independent thinkers and dig into an analysis of the Mayor’s actions in this
case. While this move sounds like a good step, the reality is that the Mayor
is withdrawing from the Big Darby Accord process. This 2,000 acres is the
only land which is annexable into the City of Hilliard and also part of the
Big Darby Accord planning area. If it is annexed into the City of Hilliard,
then the City of Hillard has no further interest in the Accord.
- In case you don’t
understand the amount of power developers wield in politics, note that the
newest Ohio annexation law allows a developer and a municipality to work out
a deal in secrecy and enact it without review by the citizens or by any
other government agency.
- The impact of Hilliard’s
withdrawal from the Accord is the whole thing might collapse. A key concept
of the Big Darby Accord is keeping development density at an average of one
home per 5 acres across the whole planning area, which encompasses parts of
nine municipalities and townships. However, some areas, such as this 2,000
acreas, are designated as conservation spaces, in which little or no density
is desired, and other areas, where appropriate road and sewer/water capacity
is available, would be developed at higher densities.
The landowners in conservation zones get compensated for not developing
their land by selling their development rights to folks who want to develop
at higher densities in permitted areas. Such areas are in different
municipalities, so the Big Darby Accord agreement is needed to provide for a
way for this compensation to pass from development rights sellers in one
jurisdiction to buyers in another. Most of the land the Mayor intends to
annex and take away from the Big Darby Accord is in one of the limited
development conservation zones, where most landowners would be rights
sellers. The Mayor’s plan allows 1,300 houses in this zone – the Big Darby
Accord would allow fewer than 400 and encourage even fewer than that.
- So what does this mean to
Hilliard City Schools? Well, if the Big Darby Accord collapses, it means
that the race is on for developers to grab sewer/water capacity in the
southern part of the school district and build houses as fast as possible
on the tens of thousands of acres of open land south of Roberts Rd and west of
Alton-Darby Rd. That part of the school district is served by a different
sewer trunk line than the one which serves the area north of Roberts Rd, and
this south trunk line (the Big Run Connector) has capacity for a huge number
of new homes.
(click to enlarge)
- As I have been saying for
months, the Mayor has played an excellent game. He has maneuvered the School
Board into a position of desperation where the only choice you have left is
one which allows him to blow up the Big Darby Accord and take care of his
developer friends. The consequence of his action is that the school district
area will continue to develop with an imbalance of residential and
commercial property, and the cost per homeowner to build and operate our schools
will double. If you want to prevent that, your last best chance to act on
behalf of your constituents – and not the Mayor – is to get behind
HB299,
allowing Impact Fees, which is co-sponsored by our own State Representative
Larry Wolpert.
This is what your tacit approval of the Mayor’s self-serving agenda is doing
to our community. We’ll all remember that every time we pay our property tax
bills, and when we walk past that brass plaque in the new high school which
will
bear your names. Our tax bills are your legacy, not the buildings.
Tell us what you think
in the blog
Read the response
from the City of Hilliard |
