My congratulations to Lisa Whiting on being appointed to the Hilliard Board of Education, taking the seat of Cheryl Ryan, who recently resigned.
I've had the pleasure of serving with Lisa on what became the ACT Committee. We also served together on the Redistricting Committee, as members of one of the small groups assigned with coming up with one of the option sets.
She's a smart, dedicated and motivated supporter of our school district, and a good choice by the Board. I hope to have the opportunity to serve with her.
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Friday, October 12, 2007
Corrections to NW News Article
My thanks to the Hilliard Northwest News for running an article about my campaign in this week's issue. However, there are a few things that need to be corrected, both in fact and in tone:
- My role at CompuServe Network Services was Chief Technology Officer, not 'chief technical director'
- My hometown is Charleston WV, rather than Charles Town.
- Terry was the Chief Financial Officer of her company when she retired
Those are just minor details. The more significant corrections I'd like to make are:
- The sentence: "We are about to enter a time when enormous amounts will be needed by our schools because of decades of friendly decisions in our community" should read: "...due to decades of developer friendly decisions in our community."
- This article paints a picture that the only thing I care about is funding. It is indeed a critical issue, and one that will shape decisions in every facet of district operations. If we don't keep our schools adequately funded, we'll feel the pain in every area.
Of course I know there is a broad spectrum of matters which need attention. But we have competent professionals in the classrooms and in the administration who are trained and experienced in those areas. To do what they know needs to be done, the community must provide them with the fiscal and physical resources. In my opinion, this is a primary duty of the Board of Education.
The Board carries out this responsibility by: a) ensuring that the people of our community understand how funding works at a fundamental level; b) taking an active role in community development policymaking; and, c) keeping the pressure on our state officials to provide the tools we need (e.g. impact fees) to control our own destiny.
Please let me know if you have any questions about my agenda.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Endorsement Interview – Hilliard Education Association
I, like the other three candidates for the Hilliard School Board, was invited by the Hilliard Education Association – the teachers' union – to participate in the process used by the HEA to decide whether to endorse any candidates in the upcoming election on November 6th. To learn more about the candidates, we were sent a list of questions in advance, and asked to come in for an interview on September 19th prepared with answers to the questions.
Because I was out of town for the entire month of September, I submitted my answers to the HEA in writing, and made myself available for an interview after returning, if they desired. They did, and on Oct 1, we met. I'm assuming the other candidates met with the HEA committee earlier.
I was notified this week that I did not receive the endorsement of the HEA; that they chose to endorse Doug Maggied and Dave Lundregan. I respect their choice and thank them for the opportunity they gave me to present my thinking to them.
I thought that you would be interested in the questions they asked, and how I responded. First, the written questions:
=====================================
September 18, 2007
Hilliard Education Association
5491 Scioto Darby Rd, Suite 001
Hilliard
OH 43026
Dear Endorsement Committee Members:
Thank you for the opportunity to respond to your questions. I hope that my written responses will suffice until I return to Columbus approximately September 26, 2007. You can also find out a great deal about my views on many topics by reviewing my website, http://www.savehilliardschools.org/, which I began in February 2006.
State your reason for becoming a candidate
The reason is simple: There is much work to be done to address the fiscal challenges our district faces, and I have the training, experience and motivation to be able to contribute. It would be much easier for me to ignore the challenges of the school district now that my children are adults, but the school district is the most important organization in our community, and it is my civic duty to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. My efforts over years to convince the current board members that they must educate the community about school funding, and communicate more effectively in general, have failed. Rather than give up, I have decided to run for a seat on the board and drive for change from the inside.
I have no experience in matters of school system management, but have extensive background in the leadership of large organizations with substantial budgets (larger than that of our school district). However, I believe that the primary role of the school board is not to second guess the professional educators in our system, but rather to see that they have the resources to get the job done. The key resources for our school system should be obvious: a) well-trained, motivated and effective faculty and staff; and b) economic viability. My expertise is the latter.
What qualities and experience will I personally bring, and what three major issues will I advocate?
Qualities/Experience: I have served in leadership roles in both professional and volunteer organizations for most of my life. As a professional, I began my career in 1973 as one of the early employees of CompuServe, as a night-shift computer operator. By the late 1990s, I had become the Vice-President of Network Technology and Chief Technology Officer of our telecommunications division, leading an organization of over 700 people worldwide, and managing an operating budget in excess of $300 million per year and a capital expenditures budget over $100 million per year. After CompuServe was acquired by Worldcom in 1998, I was named the Vice-President and General Manager of the UUNET Web Hosting Service. I retired in 2000 at age 46.
I am currently an investor and executive in Rivet Digital, a high-tech startup firm headquartered in the Hilliard City School District.
As a volunteer, I serve as a leader in our local church, Mountview Baptist, and have been instrumental in the strategic planning for both our congregation and our state organization, American Baptist Churches of Ohio. I am a member of the Board of Directors of the National Black Programming Consortium (http://www.nbpc.tv/) headquartered in Harlem, New York, and currently serve as Secretary. I am the Treasurer of The Ohio State Chapter of Triangle Fraternity, the alumni organization of this national collegiate fraternity of engineers, architects and scientists.I am a past member of the Board of Trustees of the Hilliard Education Foundation, including Chairperson for the Evening of Excellence in 2000, and continue to be a sponsor of HEF events such as the Spelling Bee and Casino Night. I participated in the financial committees now known as ACT and the Treasurer's Committee, and served on the most recent Redistricting Team. I am also a past member of the Board of Directors of Pinnacle Data Systems, a publicly-held corporation headquartered in Groveport OH.
I was a member of the committee which performed the most recent update of the Brown Township Comprehensive Plan, creating conservation style (lower density) land use policies for the western half of our school district.
I hold a BA in Management from Capital University.
My wife Terry and I have lived in the HCSD since 1979, and our two daughters attended school in the HCSD from K-12, both graduating from Darby High School. Our eldest is a teacher in northwestern Ohio, while our youngest is in her first year of medical school.
Major Issues:
- Educating the Community about School Funding
- Improve Communications between the District and the Community
- Demand a Voice in Community Planning and Management
- Develop a Long-Range Strategy for Growth
- Campaign for Impact Fees
How would I address these issues? (the answers were taken directly from my website, so I will not reproduce them here)HCSD is not meeting AYP requirements within some of our sub groups, how would I address this issue? What support and materials would I offer teachers?
I am not an educator, but rather a businessman. I would have to depend on the judgment and advice of the educators in our district to determine how to best address this issue. I view the role of the Board as being one of setting objectives, policies and standards; of monitoring performance of the leadership against those objectives, policies and standards; and to muster the resources – primarily fiscal – to get the job done.
With increasing diversity of our school population, how would I as a school board member represent and explain to the community "why" we remain in "Continuous Improvement?"
I would say that this is a flaw in the way these ratings are structured, one which needs to be fixed by the Ohio General Assembly. While it is appropriate to indicate that AYP is not being met for some subgroups, the overall performance of the district is not being communicated fairly.
After all, the purpose of these rankings is to tell current and potential residents of the school district how well our kids are being educated. In a very real way, it assures the taxpayers in the community that they are getting the performance they feel they are paying for.
Nonetheless, no one should ignore the fact that there are populations of immigrant kids in our school systems which continue to need extraordinary attention. We can argue that the standards are too aggressive, or that the federal government should contribute more to the extra costs the immigrant kids bring to our district. But still we need to report how those kids are doing compared to their American-born classmates.
In the meantime, the district leadership must clearly communicate to the community how the evaluation system works so that no one becomes unduly alarmed. As much as I criticize the district leadership about their lack of effective communications, they have attacked this issue aggressively and reasonable
effectively.
The Ohio Legislature is making fiscal and educational policy with little direct input from school districts. What do I see as my role in working with the legislators in representing HCSD, students, and community?
If the legislators are not listening adequately to school districts, who are they listening to when they make fiscal and educational policy?
I suspect that they are listening to the lobbyists from the education community, such as the Ohio Education Association, just as they listen to the lobbyists from every other special interest group in the state, but just don't have enough money to satisfy the desires of all.
The Ohio Legislature and the Governor are in a tough situation. As entitlement programs such as Medicaid eat up more and more of the state budget, the portion available for everything else, including education, continues to shrink. The answer is not a new amendment that attempts to force the Governor and the Legislature into making education the first among all the priorities. Nor is it necessarily to raise tax rates at the state level. The health of our state in general is determined by our ability to bring new businesses and new jobs to Ohio. Higher tax rates force corporations to leave the state, lowering both corporate tax collections as well as individual income tax revenue.
It is far more efficient for Hilliard to fund our schools with local taxes than depend on the state to fund us. At the state level, affluent suburbs like ours are the cash cows that provide the funding to support all kinds of activities, especially school districts, in urban and rural areas. That's why the Governor froze the State Aid to the HCSD – he believes our district is affluent enough to solve our own funding problems.
I firmly believe that the more control of school funding we turn over to the state, the less Hilliard will get, and the more we will have to tax the people and businesses of our community to make up the shortfall.
If no operating levy is passed between now and the fall of 2009, what would my position be in regards to the opening of Bradley High School?
First of all, it is a tragedy that this question is even being asked. The school board and administration failed to adequately educate the community prior to the decision to build the third high school, and many will be surprised to learn that the levy they approved did not provide for operating the high school as well. How can that fundamental misunderstanding be allowed to exist?
Now we are headed for a funding crisis – one which could have been avoided. The only way out is to embark on an intense community communications program, and hope they will forgive the district leadership for putting us in this situation.
The direct answer to this question is that Bradley can be opened only if we can afford it. The school district cannot spend cash it doesn't have, and if no levy is passed, a drastic amount of spending cuts will need to be made. The current HCSD budget documents show a cash deficit of $20 million in 2010 if no new levy is passed. What that really means is that the district would have to cut $20 million in expenses if no levy is passed by 2009.
Some of these cuts might be to eliminate some or all optional programming and services. We might have to drop some or all extracurricular activities.
Eventually we must face the fact that nearly 90% of the cost of running our district is the salaries and benefits of the faculty, staff and administration. We would certainly eliminate all "nice-to-have" administrative roles. Some staff positions would have to go as well, probably leading to short-term neglect of the facilities and reduced services to students and faculty.
And there would need to be some cutbacks in faculty – where most of the money is spent. I would hope that there could be a meaningful and productive discussion with the HEA about how to work through this situation. All possibilities have to be on the table, including layoffs, salary/benefit rollbacks, and reassignments. There a doubtless many more options that could be explored if all sides work together in an atmosphere of trust and respect.
But I'll say it again – we can avoid all this if we begin immediately to educate our community about the situation. If we help them understand the problem, they'll help find the solution.Again, thank you for the opportunity to answer your questions. If you wish to interview me in person, let me know and I will meet at your convenience.
=====================================
Some Additional Question asked during the interview (paraphrased from memory):
The relationship between the Board, the Administration and the Teachers is friendly and cooperative. How do I see that working if I am elected?
I believe it is possible to be friendly without being friends. The Board represents the community in its relationship with the teachers and staff, and in that role, sits on the opposite site of the bargaining table from the union members.
note: the following comments extend beyond what I recall answering in the actual interview. However, I believe it is important for you to understand the whole of my thinking on this matter...
The relationship with the Administration is more complex. The administrators are part of the same benefit system as the teachers, so when union contracts are being negotiated, do the administrators play the part of 'management' with the Board, or are they 'labor' along with the union members? Aren't the administrators conflicted in either role?
It is the duty of the Board to hold the administrators accountable for their performance, and that of the school district. There may well be times when the Board and the Administration don't agree, and sometimes that disagreement might be quite vigorous. When that happens, the Board has final authority, and must be willing to exercise it – uncompromised by feelings of friendship.
I have served as a member of the Board of Directors of public companies (i.e. ones that have sold shares of stock to the public), and understand the tendency of Board members to become buddies with the management. I believe the excesses of Enron, Worldcom, et al, happened to a large extent because the Board members got too close to the management, forsaking their responsibility to the shareholders.
School board members must behave the same way. They represent the tens of thousands of people in the school community, acting as stewards of our most important community institution – the school system. Their loyalty has to be to the community first, and the employees of the district second.
Who is on my campaign committee? What endorsements have I already garnered?
No one. No endorsements.
=====================================
So what was my feeling about the interview and this endorsement process?
I spent some time beforehand questioning whether I actually wanted to be endorsed by the teachers' union. What would an endorsement by them signal to the community? That I had somehow subordinated my agenda to theirs in return for the promise of the votes of their members and the potential votes of others in the community who pay attention to what the teachers' union thinks? That would not be a good thing – my first thought. If my intention is to bring radical change to the School Board, why would I want an endorsement of any of the current players?
In the end, I decided that an endorsement by the teachers' union would be a positive thing, and chose to participate in this process. I sincerely thank them for the time they spent with me, as it is valuable to learn the perspectives of all the stakeholders.
The union is a political entity which exists to create bargaining power on behalf of the individual teachers. The teachers want their union officials to represent them in negotiating their collective bargaining agreement. They also want the officials to skillfully analyze situations, like the selection of School Board members, to tell the membership the results of that analysis, and to recommend action (e.g. "vote for X and Y for School Board in the upcoming election").
But I've seen what happens when the union leadership gets off track and begins to exercise its power to the detriment of the employer. My hometown was a major manufacturing center until the 1970s, when labor costs drove employers to move operations to Texas and overseas. The kind of thing happened all over the Rust Belt.
As employers, the School Board is in a difficult position. The Board cannot threaten to move operations elsewhere (a fact taken advantage of by Mayor Schonhardt as well). Nor will the community easily tolerate a labor action which causes the operations of the school system to be significantly impacted. A full-blown strike by the teachers would create havoc. Therefore the tendency is to be pretty generous when negotiating a new contract.
I don't think the union leaders liked my answer about what would happen if the next levy doesn't pass, but I believe I told them the truth. If the next levy doesn't pass, the magnitude of cutbacks required in our school system will certainly result in teacher layoffs, and perhaps even the closing of buildings (or the indefinite delay in opening Bradley High School). Regardless of who gets elected to the Board, this is what must happen if the levy fails. This is the reason it is critical to radically step up the community education effort now.
The Board is already many months, in fact years, late in this effort.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Finish the Sentence
The Dispatch headline reads "Builders warn against Darby housing levy" ...
The rest of that sentence should read "... because their business has always been subsidized by the rest of the unsuspecting community, and this Big Darby Accord levy jeopardizes that subsidy."
As described in this newsletter by the Buckeye Association of School Administrators, the construction of new homes is not helpful in solving the funding problem in growing Ohio school districts, such as Hilliard City Schools. In fact, it is the primary cause of funding problems in districts like ours.
Don't get me wrong - I applaud businesses which can manufacture a product or deliver a service which has value in the free market. Such businesses employ workers and pay taxes, both of which are essential to a healthy local economy. In fact, I am part of a team of investors and management who are trying to get a small business , headquartered here in our school district, off the ground right now.
My objection is to the decades of developer-friendly politics in central Ohio, and in particular the way in which our taxing mechanisms cause new homeowners to be subsidized by the rest of the community. This effect is like a modified Ponzi scheme in that the apparent cost of ownership a new homebuyer perceives is lowered because of this subsidization. Soon enough, however - in fact the next time a school levy passes - the once-new homeowner becomes part of the group subsidizing yet newer homeowners. You want to be the last person to build a house in a community because everyone else subsidizes you.
An study published by The Ohio State University says it this way: "residential development often brings costs to the community that are not fully borne by the new residents, but instead are distributed throughout the community"
A very powerful way to have new homeowners pay for the costs they bring to the community is impact fees. Indeed, the City of Hilliard charges impact fees already. Mayor Don Schonhardt said in January 2007: "We were the first central Ohio community to impose an impact fee and that fee went up last year to $1,500 per single family dwelling unit."
Unfortunately, both the Mayor and the school district leadership were silent when State Rep. Larry Wolpert introduced HB299 (126th General Assy) which would have given school districts the authority to levy impact fees as well.
Some opponents to impact fees say they serve to bar lower income folks from a community by placing the cost of a new home out of reach. The way many impact fee systems are designed, this is true. And that's not a good thing in my opinion.
However, I have proposed an impact fee approach which neutralizes this objection. The first stage would be to deal with the cost of facilities. If a new high school costs $50 million and houses 2,000 students, then the cost per student is about $25,000. I would propose that when a new house is built, this $25,000 is tacked onto the mortgage and paid out to the school district. The school district would add it to their building fund, and in theory when the time comes to build a new high school, the money would already be in the bank - no new capital levy required!
But how is this fair to the homeowner carrying the $25,000 in their mortgage? The answer is that the homeowner would be credited their cost of the impact fee through property tax credits.
The cost of $25,000 added to a 30 year, 6% fixed interest rate mortgage is $150 per month, or $1,800 per year. I propose that this amount would be credited against the homeowner's school tax bill.
For someone who builds a home appraised at $150,000, the current annual school tax would be approximately $1,934 per year. Subtract the $1,800 credit, and this homeowner would owe an additional $134 per year in school tax.
However, if a homeowner builds a $500,000 house, the same $25,000 impact fee would be assessed, and the same $1,800 credit applied to their school tax bill. Since the full school tax on a $500,000 home would be about $6,448, this homeowner would be charged an additional $4,648 per year.
Can the district use the impact fee money for anything they want? How can we be sure they won't spend it as fast as they get it? I would propose that impact fee money can only be used for school construction and capital improvements, and then only with the approval of the voters of the school district. But note that the question before the voters will not be whether or not to raise taxes, but rather to spend money we have already collected.
How does a homeowner recoup their impact fee if they sell their house? Easy - the buyer must pay the impact fee to the seller, and the buyer will assume the same property tax credit the seller enjoyed. Again, a wash.
What would lenders think of adding an impact fee to the mortgage? Because net cash flow of the borrower would remain the same as it would be under the current system (i.e. the higher principal and interest payment would be offet by a lower property tax payment), the impact fee would cause no change to the borrower's ability to make payments. However, in these days when mortgage foreclosures are an increasingly common reality, the lender must have confidence it their ability to recoup their money if they foreclose. Presuming that the next buyer would assume the impact fee, like any other buyer, the risk to the lender should be acceptable.
What if mortgage interest rates go up? I proposed that the property tax credit the homeowner would receive would be calculated based on prevailing rates on 30 year fixed mortgages, set once per year. The presumption is that as long as the $25,000 fee remains constant, the school district will have the opportunity to purchase income producing instruments (e.g. Treasury bonds) at a fairly constant spread to the mortgage rate. In other words, the income lost due to larger tax credits to the homeowner would be offset by higher earnings on the capital fund.
Wouldn't this make it harder to sell a house which had been imposed an impact fee if the one next door had not? This would be a rare scenario in that impact fees would almost always be assessed in areas where a cluster of new homes are being built. But when it does occur, the tax credit offsets the difference in cost.
What about those of us who already live here? No change. We continue to pay our property taxes as today. But we should not see any significant new bond levies for school construction - the impact fee collections would pay for that. However, we have to start building the impact fee fund soon. It's too late if we wait until the next school is needed.
How is this fair to someone who moves into the district, but doesn't have any kids. Isn't the Mayor emphasizing retirement housing these days? This is an fascinating question, only because so many people ask it. Isn't it interesting that people think they shouldn't have to contribute to school funding if they don't have kids. I wish I didn't have to pay for government services I never use. In the past 28 years, I've paid a ton of Hilliard City income taxes and have never lived within the city limits.
What if the school district needs more money in the future? Then we would have to pass additional levies, same as today. We might increase the impact fee, but presumably this would require approval of some state agency which ensures that the fee is reflective of our actual costs.
So how is this different that our current system?
The impact fee is automatic: if you build a house in our school district, you get charged the fee. The school district gets the money as soon as the homeowner moves in rather than only after the passage of another levy which we all must pay. There is no option for a new homeowner to move into our community then vote against levies to support the very schools they moved here to enjoy. The impact fee is a commitment to pay, in advance, the cost a new homeowner creates.
There are doubtless many details that would need to be worked out, such as the extent in which owners of multi-family housing pay into the impact fee system. But impact fees have been used all over the country in growing bedroom communities, so they must be effective.
If they work to better fund municipalities like the City of Hilliard, then they would work to better fund our school systems as well. I would hope Mayor Schonhardt agrees.
The rest of that sentence should read "... because their business has always been subsidized by the rest of the unsuspecting community, and this Big Darby Accord levy jeopardizes that subsidy."
As described in this newsletter by the Buckeye Association of School Administrators, the construction of new homes is not helpful in solving the funding problem in growing Ohio school districts, such as Hilliard City Schools. In fact, it is the primary cause of funding problems in districts like ours.
Don't get me wrong - I applaud businesses which can manufacture a product or deliver a service which has value in the free market. Such businesses employ workers and pay taxes, both of which are essential to a healthy local economy. In fact, I am part of a team of investors and management who are trying to get a small business , headquartered here in our school district, off the ground right now.
My objection is to the decades of developer-friendly politics in central Ohio, and in particular the way in which our taxing mechanisms cause new homeowners to be subsidized by the rest of the community. This effect is like a modified Ponzi scheme in that the apparent cost of ownership a new homebuyer perceives is lowered because of this subsidization. Soon enough, however - in fact the next time a school levy passes - the once-new homeowner becomes part of the group subsidizing yet newer homeowners. You want to be the last person to build a house in a community because everyone else subsidizes you.
An study published by The Ohio State University says it this way: "residential development often brings costs to the community that are not fully borne by the new residents, but instead are distributed throughout the community"
A very powerful way to have new homeowners pay for the costs they bring to the community is impact fees. Indeed, the City of Hilliard charges impact fees already. Mayor Don Schonhardt said in January 2007: "We were the first central Ohio community to impose an impact fee and that fee went up last year to $1,500 per single family dwelling unit."
Unfortunately, both the Mayor and the school district leadership were silent when State Rep. Larry Wolpert introduced HB299 (126th General Assy) which would have given school districts the authority to levy impact fees as well.
Some opponents to impact fees say they serve to bar lower income folks from a community by placing the cost of a new home out of reach. The way many impact fee systems are designed, this is true. And that's not a good thing in my opinion.
However, I have proposed an impact fee approach which neutralizes this objection. The first stage would be to deal with the cost of facilities. If a new high school costs $50 million and houses 2,000 students, then the cost per student is about $25,000. I would propose that when a new house is built, this $25,000 is tacked onto the mortgage and paid out to the school district. The school district would add it to their building fund, and in theory when the time comes to build a new high school, the money would already be in the bank - no new capital levy required!
But how is this fair to the homeowner carrying the $25,000 in their mortgage? The answer is that the homeowner would be credited their cost of the impact fee through property tax credits.
The cost of $25,000 added to a 30 year, 6% fixed interest rate mortgage is $150 per month, or $1,800 per year. I propose that this amount would be credited against the homeowner's school tax bill.
For someone who builds a home appraised at $150,000, the current annual school tax would be approximately $1,934 per year. Subtract the $1,800 credit, and this homeowner would owe an additional $134 per year in school tax.
However, if a homeowner builds a $500,000 house, the same $25,000 impact fee would be assessed, and the same $1,800 credit applied to their school tax bill. Since the full school tax on a $500,000 home would be about $6,448, this homeowner would be charged an additional $4,648 per year.
Can the district use the impact fee money for anything they want? How can we be sure they won't spend it as fast as they get it? I would propose that impact fee money can only be used for school construction and capital improvements, and then only with the approval of the voters of the school district. But note that the question before the voters will not be whether or not to raise taxes, but rather to spend money we have already collected.
How does a homeowner recoup their impact fee if they sell their house? Easy - the buyer must pay the impact fee to the seller, and the buyer will assume the same property tax credit the seller enjoyed. Again, a wash.
What would lenders think of adding an impact fee to the mortgage? Because net cash flow of the borrower would remain the same as it would be under the current system (i.e. the higher principal and interest payment would be offet by a lower property tax payment), the impact fee would cause no change to the borrower's ability to make payments. However, in these days when mortgage foreclosures are an increasingly common reality, the lender must have confidence it their ability to recoup their money if they foreclose. Presuming that the next buyer would assume the impact fee, like any other buyer, the risk to the lender should be acceptable.
What if mortgage interest rates go up? I proposed that the property tax credit the homeowner would receive would be calculated based on prevailing rates on 30 year fixed mortgages, set once per year. The presumption is that as long as the $25,000 fee remains constant, the school district will have the opportunity to purchase income producing instruments (e.g. Treasury bonds) at a fairly constant spread to the mortgage rate. In other words, the income lost due to larger tax credits to the homeowner would be offset by higher earnings on the capital fund.
Wouldn't this make it harder to sell a house which had been imposed an impact fee if the one next door had not? This would be a rare scenario in that impact fees would almost always be assessed in areas where a cluster of new homes are being built. But when it does occur, the tax credit offsets the difference in cost.
What about those of us who already live here? No change. We continue to pay our property taxes as today. But we should not see any significant new bond levies for school construction - the impact fee collections would pay for that. However, we have to start building the impact fee fund soon. It's too late if we wait until the next school is needed.
How is this fair to someone who moves into the district, but doesn't have any kids. Isn't the Mayor emphasizing retirement housing these days? This is an fascinating question, only because so many people ask it. Isn't it interesting that people think they shouldn't have to contribute to school funding if they don't have kids. I wish I didn't have to pay for government services I never use. In the past 28 years, I've paid a ton of Hilliard City income taxes and have never lived within the city limits.
What if the school district needs more money in the future? Then we would have to pass additional levies, same as today. We might increase the impact fee, but presumably this would require approval of some state agency which ensures that the fee is reflective of our actual costs.
So how is this different that our current system?
The impact fee is automatic: if you build a house in our school district, you get charged the fee. The school district gets the money as soon as the homeowner moves in rather than only after the passage of another levy which we all must pay. There is no option for a new homeowner to move into our community then vote against levies to support the very schools they moved here to enjoy. The impact fee is a commitment to pay, in advance, the cost a new homeowner creates.
There are doubtless many details that would need to be worked out, such as the extent in which owners of multi-family housing pay into the impact fee system. But impact fees have been used all over the country in growing bedroom communities, so they must be effective.
If they work to better fund municipalities like the City of Hilliard, then they would work to better fund our school systems as well. I would hope Mayor Schonhardt agrees.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Ryan Resignation
It was announced this week that Hilliard School Board member Cheryl Ryan has resigned from the Board to take a position with the the Ohio School Boards Association, which prohibits its employees from also being school board members.
This gives our school board the opportunity to appoint an individual to serve the remainder her term - two more years. Applications are now being accepted.
My Reaction
A friend called me suggesting that I apply. It's an interesting thought, and I've been weighing the reasons to do so, and the reasons why not.
I've decided not to apply, and will continue the campaign to be elected to the School Board in November.
The reason is this: If elected, my intention is to drive for radical change in the way things get done in our community, and to do so I think it is important to have been elected by the people, not appointed by the very Board whose behavior I intend to change. I hope the community will lend me its backing in that mission.
Another friend said I should apply just to find out what the current School Board members think of me. If they turn me down, he says, it tells the community that the incumbents don't want me on the Board, which might further motivate the community to vote for me in November.
That kind of cloak-and-dagger, back room maneuvering is exactly what I think is wrong with the way our community is being led. I prefer to present my positions to the people of the community, let folks compare what I propose to that of the other candidates, and allow them to select, in a General Election, the two of us they think can best do the job that needs to be done.
The Appointment Process
The public may never know who the list of people are who apply for Ms. Ryan's seat, or how the Board goes about making its decision. It is not clear to me how the Sunshine Laws apply in this situation, or how much the Board has to disclose about its process and deliberations (but I will find out).
Here's what I found out about the appointment process, according to the Ohio School Boards Association website:
This gives our school board the opportunity to appoint an individual to serve the remainder her term - two more years. Applications are now being accepted.
My Reaction
A friend called me suggesting that I apply. It's an interesting thought, and I've been weighing the reasons to do so, and the reasons why not.
I've decided not to apply, and will continue the campaign to be elected to the School Board in November.
The reason is this: If elected, my intention is to drive for radical change in the way things get done in our community, and to do so I think it is important to have been elected by the people, not appointed by the very Board whose behavior I intend to change. I hope the community will lend me its backing in that mission.
Another friend said I should apply just to find out what the current School Board members think of me. If they turn me down, he says, it tells the community that the incumbents don't want me on the Board, which might further motivate the community to vote for me in November.
That kind of cloak-and-dagger, back room maneuvering is exactly what I think is wrong with the way our community is being led. I prefer to present my positions to the people of the community, let folks compare what I propose to that of the other candidates, and allow them to select, in a General Election, the two of us they think can best do the job that needs to be done.
The Appointment Process
The public may never know who the list of people are who apply for Ms. Ryan's seat, or how the Board goes about making its decision. It is not clear to me how the Sunshine Laws apply in this situation, or how much the Board has to disclose about its process and deliberations (but I will find out).
Here's what I found out about the appointment process, according to the Ohio School Boards Association website:
- The Board must fill the vacancy at its first regular meeting or special meeting no less than 10 days after the vacancy is effective. Ms Ryan's resignation is effective Sept 30, 2007, which means the Board must make its decision at its regularly scheduled meeting on October 15, or at a special meeting it calls between October 10 and October 15.
- The interviews with candidates and the deliberation about the candidates can take place in Executive Session. However the actual vote must take place in public.
- To appoint a candidate, the candidate must receive at least 3 votes of the remaining 4 Board members.
- The appointee will in this case, as I understand it, serve the remaining two years of Ms. Ryan's term.
The only thing we can be sure of is that it will be a new face, and one that is friendly to the current Board. It will also be someone who gets a seat without going to the effort of collecting 150 signatures on their nominating petitions, or running for office in the General Election, meaning the person will take office without having to reveal anything about their agenda to the public.
This selection will be very interesting.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
The Big Darby Accord and Hilliard
The September 19, 2007 issue of the Hilliard Northwest News published an article titled "Hilliard, Columbus grapple over water, sewer for sites" in which it is reported that the City of Hilliard continues to be a holdout on signing the Accord. Several reasons are given for Mayor Schonhardt's opposition to signing the Accord as is, and with some of them I agree.
A key factor of the Accord is a radical new position being taken by the City of Columbus in regard to water/sewer service. For decades, going back to when James Rhodes was the Mayor of Columbus, the big city has used its exclusive control over the regional water/sewer system to influence development policy county wide. Each suburb has a contract with Columbus which specifies the boundaries where the suburb can annex and be provided water/sewer service by Columbus, provided Columbus agrees it has the capacity to provide the water/sewer service or can construct new capacity at a reasonable cost.
In the case of Hilliard, the most significant parcel of unannexed land remaining in its water/sewer agreement is the several thousand acres bounded by Alton-Darby Rd, Roberts Rd, and a sawtoothed line running generally north from the site of Bradley High School. A good deal of this land is already owned by developers, such as Homewood Homes and Planned Development. Much of the rest is owned by individuals and families hope to soon sell to developers.
The land use plan for this acreage as defined in the Big Darby Accord is for Tier 1 conservation zones and conservation style development. What this means is that the creeks that drain the area would be preserved or restored to a natural state, and that homes would have to be constructed on 2-5 acre lots. This reflects the role this acreage plays in protecting the environment, and in particular the Big Darby River. Clearly this is an undesirable state of affairs for the developers accustomed to placing 4-5 homes per acre.
Alternatively, according to Accord policies, a developer can build to a density of one house per acre, as long as 50% open space is preserved. This means that on 100 acres, a total of 100 homes can be built, but those houses need to sit on only 50 of the acres, and the other 50 acres must be left as common open space. This is still an uncomfortable scenario for developers.
Mayor Schonhardt subsequently announced his own development scheme for this area - from the Conference Room of our school district's central office building no less - stating that he also supports the 50% open space requirement. However, the mayor's definition of 50% open space is that for each acre developed, a half-acre is reserved as open space. This means that on 100 acres, the Mayor's scheme would allow 66 houses rather than 50. The Mayor's definition also, I believe, allows unusable creek paths and flood plains to be counted as open space in his formula. Overall, the housing density for this area under the Mayor's plan would be at least 33% higher than that allowed by the Big Darby Accord. The language sounds the same, but means something different. The Mayor's language is more developer-friendly that the Big Darby Accord, which is I believe to be his primary motivation, but it is still an improvement over the 4-5 homes/acre density the developers typically use.
However, we must remember that this plan the Mayor has revealed is not cast in stone, and that if the developers request annexation to Hilliard (which incredibly forces the school district to request annexation of its land to Hilliard as well), the City of Hilliard can enact zoning policy which makes this land developable at whatever density it wants. After all, one of the demands the Mayor makes relative to the Big Darby Accord is that he wants to retain control of land use policy in Accord areas within the boundaries of the City of Hilliard - in other words this hunk of land west of Alton-Darby Rd. I don't understand how a municipality can be part of the Accord and retain control of land use within the Accord boundaries.
One consequence of Columbus' new water/sewer policy is that it neutralizes a key provision of the Win-Win Agreement, which governs how annexations and school boundaries relate. The Win-Win says that if undeveloped land is annexed into Columbus, the resulting houses would be assigned to Columbus Public Schools. This is a big negative if you are a home builder, which is the reason folks like Homewood and Dominion prefer to build houses in suburban school districts where they can demand higher prices.
Mayor Schonhardt rightly points out that if Columbus provides water/sewer without annexation, any resulting land stays in the suburban school district. This is a big win for the developers, but a big problem for the suburban schools like ours, who would like to see population growth slow down. I'm not sure why Columbus would suddenly make this radical policy change, but would have to observe that it's good the developers, and that seems to be the answer to a lot of questions.
After all, Hilliard is just one piece of the pie - there are many many square miles of land still ripe for development around central Ohio, and the developers are more interested in the upside from the new water-without-annexation policy than they are what happens in the few thousand acres annexable by Hilliard.
And now Columbus is asserting its power by refusing, until Hilliard signs onto the Big Darby Accord, to provide water/sewer service to the 125 acre site near the intersection of Alton-Darby and Scioto-Darby Rds that will be soon annexed into the City of Hilliard at the request of Skilken Development.
I am a supporter of the Big Darby Accord as a land use strategy. As part of the team that updated the Brown Township Comprehensive Plan, I learned about conservation style development, and how it can allow residential housing construction to take place while preserving an open and natural setting.
I also recognize that the ten political entities which make up the Accord group have objectives which are sometimes in the conflict, and that even the landowners are not in agreement. Some landowners want to sell out to developers and leave (indeed, many are absentee landowners now), while others, such as me, want to stay in the Hilliard community without having my current rural setting converted into high density housing and shopping centers.
So while I believe Mayor Schonhardt is fighting the Big Darby Accord primarily as an ally of the developers, I do agree with his position that the neutralizing of the Win-Win Agreement through the new water-without-annexation policy is a bad thing for our school district, and for all suburban school districts.
What happens if the City of Hilliard never signs the Big Darby Accord agreement? The obvious impact would be that Columbus could choose to never provide any additional water service for Hilliard expansion. The land west of Alton-Darby Rd would remain in Brown Township, and developers would have to live under the rules of the Big Darby Accord. Hilliard City Schools would get lots of new kids, but not as many as would be the case in typical residential development.
This would also mean that Bradley High School would remain in Brown Twp and the City of Hilliard would lose all the income taxes that would be paid by the faculty and staff if the land were annexed. Lest we forget, the school district is the largest employer in the City of Hilliard, and income taxes are the way the City gets funded. The placement of Bradley High School on the Emmelhainz property, versus land south of Roberts Rd, was significantly influenced by this fact, in my opinion.
Tough spot for Mayor Schonhardt and our school district. The City of Hilliard needs the income taxes generated by the Bradley High School staff and the folks who will work in the Skilken development, and therefore needs water/sewer service from Columbus. The school district needs the property taxes that would be paid by the Skilken development and other new businesses the Mayor and his team can recruit into the district. Meanwhile the City of Columbus has signaled that it doesn't care if Hilliard expands and develops - Columbus has its own agenda and is willing to use its control over water/sewer services to get what it wants.
What do I think is best?
For me personally, I'd like to see Hilliard sign on to the Accord and get on with seeing if we can make this progressive land use plan work for everyone.
For the school district, I think it doesn't make much difference what the City of Hilliard does. Through its control of the water/sewer system, Columbus will dictate development policy in the township land within the school district anyway. I'd much rather see this accomplished under the principles of the Big Darby Accord than have western Franklin County become another sea of houses with hordes of kids to house and educate.
A key factor of the Accord is a radical new position being taken by the City of Columbus in regard to water/sewer service. For decades, going back to when James Rhodes was the Mayor of Columbus, the big city has used its exclusive control over the regional water/sewer system to influence development policy county wide. Each suburb has a contract with Columbus which specifies the boundaries where the suburb can annex and be provided water/sewer service by Columbus, provided Columbus agrees it has the capacity to provide the water/sewer service or can construct new capacity at a reasonable cost.
In the case of Hilliard, the most significant parcel of unannexed land remaining in its water/sewer agreement is the several thousand acres bounded by Alton-Darby Rd, Roberts Rd, and a sawtoothed line running generally north from the site of Bradley High School. A good deal of this land is already owned by developers, such as Homewood Homes and Planned Development. Much of the rest is owned by individuals and families hope to soon sell to developers.
The land use plan for this acreage as defined in the Big Darby Accord is for Tier 1 conservation zones and conservation style development. What this means is that the creeks that drain the area would be preserved or restored to a natural state, and that homes would have to be constructed on 2-5 acre lots. This reflects the role this acreage plays in protecting the environment, and in particular the Big Darby River. Clearly this is an undesirable state of affairs for the developers accustomed to placing 4-5 homes per acre.
Alternatively, according to Accord policies, a developer can build to a density of one house per acre, as long as 50% open space is preserved. This means that on 100 acres, a total of 100 homes can be built, but those houses need to sit on only 50 of the acres, and the other 50 acres must be left as common open space. This is still an uncomfortable scenario for developers.
Mayor Schonhardt subsequently announced his own development scheme for this area - from the Conference Room of our school district's central office building no less - stating that he also supports the 50% open space requirement. However, the mayor's definition of 50% open space is that for each acre developed, a half-acre is reserved as open space. This means that on 100 acres, the Mayor's scheme would allow 66 houses rather than 50. The Mayor's definition also, I believe, allows unusable creek paths and flood plains to be counted as open space in his formula. Overall, the housing density for this area under the Mayor's plan would be at least 33% higher than that allowed by the Big Darby Accord. The language sounds the same, but means something different. The Mayor's language is more developer-friendly that the Big Darby Accord, which is I believe to be his primary motivation, but it is still an improvement over the 4-5 homes/acre density the developers typically use.
However, we must remember that this plan the Mayor has revealed is not cast in stone, and that if the developers request annexation to Hilliard (which incredibly forces the school district to request annexation of its land to Hilliard as well), the City of Hilliard can enact zoning policy which makes this land developable at whatever density it wants. After all, one of the demands the Mayor makes relative to the Big Darby Accord is that he wants to retain control of land use policy in Accord areas within the boundaries of the City of Hilliard - in other words this hunk of land west of Alton-Darby Rd. I don't understand how a municipality can be part of the Accord and retain control of land use within the Accord boundaries.
One consequence of Columbus' new water/sewer policy is that it neutralizes a key provision of the Win-Win Agreement, which governs how annexations and school boundaries relate. The Win-Win says that if undeveloped land is annexed into Columbus, the resulting houses would be assigned to Columbus Public Schools. This is a big negative if you are a home builder, which is the reason folks like Homewood and Dominion prefer to build houses in suburban school districts where they can demand higher prices.
Mayor Schonhardt rightly points out that if Columbus provides water/sewer without annexation, any resulting land stays in the suburban school district. This is a big win for the developers, but a big problem for the suburban schools like ours, who would like to see population growth slow down. I'm not sure why Columbus would suddenly make this radical policy change, but would have to observe that it's good the developers, and that seems to be the answer to a lot of questions.
After all, Hilliard is just one piece of the pie - there are many many square miles of land still ripe for development around central Ohio, and the developers are more interested in the upside from the new water-without-annexation policy than they are what happens in the few thousand acres annexable by Hilliard.
And now Columbus is asserting its power by refusing, until Hilliard signs onto the Big Darby Accord, to provide water/sewer service to the 125 acre site near the intersection of Alton-Darby and Scioto-Darby Rds that will be soon annexed into the City of Hilliard at the request of Skilken Development.
I am a supporter of the Big Darby Accord as a land use strategy. As part of the team that updated the Brown Township Comprehensive Plan, I learned about conservation style development, and how it can allow residential housing construction to take place while preserving an open and natural setting.
I also recognize that the ten political entities which make up the Accord group have objectives which are sometimes in the conflict, and that even the landowners are not in agreement. Some landowners want to sell out to developers and leave (indeed, many are absentee landowners now), while others, such as me, want to stay in the Hilliard community without having my current rural setting converted into high density housing and shopping centers.
So while I believe Mayor Schonhardt is fighting the Big Darby Accord primarily as an ally of the developers, I do agree with his position that the neutralizing of the Win-Win Agreement through the new water-without-annexation policy is a bad thing for our school district, and for all suburban school districts.
What happens if the City of Hilliard never signs the Big Darby Accord agreement? The obvious impact would be that Columbus could choose to never provide any additional water service for Hilliard expansion. The land west of Alton-Darby Rd would remain in Brown Township, and developers would have to live under the rules of the Big Darby Accord. Hilliard City Schools would get lots of new kids, but not as many as would be the case in typical residential development.
This would also mean that Bradley High School would remain in Brown Twp and the City of Hilliard would lose all the income taxes that would be paid by the faculty and staff if the land were annexed. Lest we forget, the school district is the largest employer in the City of Hilliard, and income taxes are the way the City gets funded. The placement of Bradley High School on the Emmelhainz property, versus land south of Roberts Rd, was significantly influenced by this fact, in my opinion.
Tough spot for Mayor Schonhardt and our school district. The City of Hilliard needs the income taxes generated by the Bradley High School staff and the folks who will work in the Skilken development, and therefore needs water/sewer service from Columbus. The school district needs the property taxes that would be paid by the Skilken development and other new businesses the Mayor and his team can recruit into the district. Meanwhile the City of Columbus has signaled that it doesn't care if Hilliard expands and develops - Columbus has its own agenda and is willing to use its control over water/sewer services to get what it wants.
What do I think is best?
For me personally, I'd like to see Hilliard sign on to the Accord and get on with seeing if we can make this progressive land use plan work for everyone.
For the school district, I think it doesn't make much difference what the City of Hilliard does. Through its control of the water/sewer system, Columbus will dictate development policy in the township land within the school district anyway. I'd much rather see this accomplished under the principles of the Big Darby Accord than have western Franklin County become another sea of houses with hordes of kids to house and educate.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Still Not Communicating
The Hilliard Northwest News gives space each week for a column titled "Superintendent's Desk." This is a powerful vehicle for Superintendent Dale McVey to convey information of importance to the Hilliard Schools community.
In his August 29, 2007 column, headlined "District is primed and ready for 2007-08 academic year," the Superintendent devoted several paragraphs to discussing the performance of the school district on the Ohio Department of Education local report cards. While Mr. McVey's discussion was factually correct, it left out a crucial detail – our overall grade. Our school district was given a designation of Continuous Improvement, the middle ranking, below Excellent and Effective, and above Academic Watch and Academic Emergency. We received this designation because there are some groups of kids – primarily recent immigrants who speak English as a second language – who are not showing adequate year-to-year progress.
Please understand me on this: I think the scoring system used by the Ohio DOE is flawed, and that the goals of the federal No Child Left Behind Act are not being served by this scoring system. It should be possible to create a scoring vocabulary that communicates that a district is performing very well overall, yet acknowledges that there ARE kids being left behind, and therefore is still work to be done. By the way, Larry Wolpert, our representative in the Ohio General Assembly, has introduced House Bill 27, which provides for exactly this. Why has our district leadership not gotten behind Rep. Wolpert in support of this bill? Rep. Wolpert also co-sponsored HB299, which would have allowed school districts to levy Impact Fees on new residents - a powerful growth control and funding tool - and our district leadership failed to engage the community in support then as well.
The Superintendent makes no mention of the Continuous Improvement designation in his column, what caused it, or what he thinks should be done in response. The point of this note is not to complain about our designation, or the scoring system, but rather to wonder how the Superintendent can write so many words about the ODOE scores without addressing our overall score of Continuous Improvement.
The tendency of the current district leadership is to avoid talking about bad news. The consequence is that the community is kept in the dark on important matters. The most important of these is funding, and I fear the community will be shocked when the next levy millage rate is announced (presumably after the November election) because we haven't been educated and prepared by the district leadership.
I'd like to change that. If you do too, I would very much appreciate your vote on November 6th.
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