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Khalila:
Thanks for making contact this morning. I very much hope that
SNP can help in the process of educating our community about the complicated
network of interlocking issues and powerful forces at work in our community.
My message last night was simply this: the school board has
been manipulated into selecting this particular site by powerful real estate
development interests who want to build thousands of houses in the acreage
west of Alton-Darby Rd and north of Roberts Rd. The key player is probably
Homewood Homes, who owns the entire strip of land between the Walker Rd site
selected by the school board, and Alton-Darby Rd, the frontier of the City
of Hilliard and the current terminus of municipal water/sewer service. The
construction of this high school in this location will, in my opinion,
severely damage the financial viability of the school district, just as
uncontrolled residential development is destroying Southwestern,
Pickerington and Westerville schools.
It is true that this high school would be very near my home,
but that in of itself is not a problem to me. We built our house where it is
to be near a school (Brown Elementary), and I do not necessarily feel that a
high school nearby is a bad thing. It's all the other stuff that comes with
it:
The first
attachment is a draft presentation which I put
together just this week and sent to the school board. It is a piece of what
I hope is a comprehensive effort to teach our community about how school
funding actually works. I believe our school board and administrators have
failed in their responsibility to educate the community on these matters,
and to demand their rightful place at the table where such policies are
made. I have been very verbal in this opinion to the school board and the
school administration. If the people knew what was going on, they would help
the school system solve this problem. Instead the dialog is always about "do
you love your kids?" Well, there are plenty of us in this community who
love our kids and still think the district is mismanaged (but let me be
clear that I feel they are skilled and effective educators of an
increasingly large and diverse population of kids -- it's their strategic
and financial management which is lacking).
Here is a link to a story written by the Big Darby Advocate
about Homewood's action to begin preparing their land for development:
Here is an article about the new annexation laws. Notice the
description of the "84.05 Expedited Type 1 Annexation." When 100% of the
property owners in a parcel desire annexation and appropriate agreements are
drawn up, the county government is required to approve the annexation
request immediately without further hearings or discussion. This annexation
form was created to appease the developers, as the typical case is that they
are the one and only property owner.
It is interesting that the land owned by Homewood Homes has
been mysteriously redesignated from "Agricultural" to "Residential"
use. (See the Franklin County Auditor's website and search for parcel
120-000200). I'm not sure when that happened.
Here is a background article on the so-called "Win-Win
Agreement" which specifies how annexation and school district boundaries
interact in Franklin County.
http://www.new-albany.k12.oh.us/district/maps/win-win_detail.htm.
The Win-Win plays into this because developers in general view school
districts as part of their "product" -- ie people choose to live in Hilliard
because they want their kids to go to Hilliard Schools. Therefore the
developer prefers land within a suburb's current boundaries, or within areas
which the suburb can annex (which is controlled by the sewer/water contract
with the City of Columbus). Hilliard's agreement boundaries are Roberts Rd
to the south and approximately Walker Rd to the west. School sites south of
Roberts Rd were not seriously considered because the school officials were
told that no water/sewer service would be provided to them south of Roberts
Rd.
Brown Township has spent a number of years developing a
Comprehensive Plan using a development approach called "Conservation
Development," which strives to preserve large areas of open land. This plan
was updated in 2005 and accepted by the Franklin County Department of
Development. The City of Hilliard has very different development ideas for
this area west of Alton-Darby Rd, and if Homewood et al annexes to Hilliard,
housing densities will be 4 times what the Brown Township Comprehensive Plan
proscribes. This will effect the environment (the Big Darby Watershed) as
well as school financing. And it throws away years of planning effort
between township residents and county officials.
The Big Darby Accord is a planning organization made up of
representatives from many jurisdictions and agencies in Central Ohio. They
have completed their planning process, but the enactment seems to be
stalled. My opinion is that the residential development lobby does not agree
with the conclusions of the Big Darby Accord (which by the way specifies
that the land owned by Homewood would be preserved as floodplain and natural
habitat), and are seeking the dissolution of the Accord so the developers
can resume their business as usual:
I have also attached a letter which I sent to State Senator
Steve Stivers and State Representative Larry Wolpert advocating the use of
Impact Fees as a way to protect existing residents of a school district from
bearing an unfair portion of the costs of unbalanced residential
development. Impact fees are used in jurisdictions throughout the country to
solve the problem of uncontrolled development. Few believe our legislators
will be able to withstand the objections to impact fees by the powerful
residential development lobby.
I believe that very shortly you will see Homewood apply to
Hilliard for annexation, and Hilliard will accept. I suspect that the
Hilliard City Schools has been approached by Homewood (or the City of
Hilliard) with an offer to have Homewood pay the cost of running the one
mile of water/sewer service to the high school site in exchange for the
school system's support in this annexation. I believe the school system was
placed in this nasty situation through the manipulation of the residential
developers. Note that Mayor Schonhardt was one of the most verbal opponents
to the Cosgray Rd site, suggesting instead that a Davis Rd site (just west
of Alton-Darby Rd and owned by developer Dan O'Brien) was a better choice
(see story titled "New Committee to seek solution for Hilliard's crowded
schools:
http://bigdarby.org/news_articles/122003.htm). He said it was about
traffic. I think it was about cracking open Brown Twp for development.
One reason the City of Hilliard wants to influence the site
of the high school is that the school system is the largest employer in the
City of Hilliard, and the income taxes generated by 100+ high-paying jobs
are substantial. When any other kind of business is being recruited to move
to Hilliard, it must be offered incentives, typically in the form of
property tax abatements (you heard one of these deal get support from the
school board last night), and the City must bear the capital costs of
installing infrastructure -- all in hope of getting payback through the
creation of jobs paying income taxes. But the cost of building a school and
its infrastructure is substantially borne by the school district (hence my
question about who was paying for the water/sewer lines), no incentives are
necessary, and lots of tax revenue is generated. Hilliard City Schools
recently placed one elementary school outside the City of Hilliard (Horizon
Elementary, which is on Renner Rd in Norwich Township), but I understand
that there was a negative political backlash which I believe bears into the
high school siting decision.
I and others now intend to embark on this education effort
independently of the school officials. I am neither uneducated nor
apathetic. I have been a member of the Hilliard Education Foundation, the
State Funding Committee, the Treasurer's Committee, and the Brown Township
Comprehensive Plan committee. Others with longer and deeper involvement in
our community are also fed up with the way our school system continues to be
used as a pawn to enrichen the residential developers, who are preying off
the ignorance of our community.
The authors of the US Constitution created freedom of the
press so that government misbehavior and incompetence could be brought to
the public eye without fear of prosecution. I'm not sure to what degree this
is a case of misbehavior vs incompetence, but it's clear to me that it is
your duty to bring the matter out into the light.
I am available at any time to answer questions or clarify
statements.
Most sincerely,
Paul Lambert
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