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Letter to the Editor, Hilliard ThisWeek: For many years, land development policies and practices in central Ohio have been dictated by the residential developers, who seem to get whatever they desire regardless of the impact it brings to local school districts and the cost burden placed on existing homeowners and businesses. Residential development in of itself is not bad. The problem is that when residential development outpaces commercial development, the cost of housing and educating all the new kids that arrive with new homes must be absorbed by the existing homeowners in the district, causing their tax bills to skyrocket. In the Nov 16 edition of this paper, Hilliard Economic Development Director David Meeks was quoted as saying that the city’s new approach to bringing in business is paying off. Mr. Meeks has a tough job. In central Ohio, the norm is not so much the recruiting of new business from outside the region as it a reshuffling of business among municipalities, using abatements and other incentives to lower costs for the incoming businesses. As long as Columbus and the other suburbs continue to engage in this game, Mr. Meeks and his peers in other municipalities have no choice but to play. Columbus solicits businesses from Hilliard, Hilliard solicits business from Dublin, at so on. It’s not a zero-sum game – in the end all the municipalities lose revenue. The game will continue until we elect mayors and city councils who have the guts to get together and put an end to this destructive practice. In the meantime, I’m glad that Hilliard has someone like Mr. Meeks who is working hard to ensure the economic viability of our community and our school system. We absolutely need to put more emphasis on commercial development in Hilliard to offset the impact of all the new residential housing which has been constructed in the last few years. But let’s be wary: Mr. Meeks is also quoted as saying that the City of Hilliard has an emphasis on commercial development that generates revenue for the City (he didn’t say ‘and for the schools’), and he offers as proof the fact that only 71 building permits for single family homes were issued this year. I suspect that this low number of residential building permits has much more to do with the collapse in the demand for new houses than it does any explicit policy change on the part of the Mayor or the City Council. Kudos to the Mayor and Mr. Meeks for attracting new businesses to Hilliard to replace those that have been lost to shutdowns (e.g. Dana), contractions (e.g CompuServe) and intraregional movements (e.g. Gates-McDonald). But if the Mayor really wants to protect our schools, let him set a policy that says new residential permits will be issued only at a pace which matches incremental commercial property tax revenue with residential growth. Paul Lambert |
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