6/21 Council meeting comments

 Not happy, show up at the podium.  Do we continue to tax our way out of problems or increase revenues. We loose a employee after 9 years of investment, going to Kettering, don't blame her. Hell yes lets all have block meetings and fix our streets, lights, sewer and sidewalks. Can I get a refund from Nix, after my neighbors and I wire our new street lights.  Leadership is broke folks.  And yes I know many of you have contact with your ward reps. but it ain't gettin any better.  Roman is Burning. Concessions?  Who's in charge? Again I ask, whats up with Neyer and the several cars that drive up and down I 75.  Did we get a gas station yet?  SJ you know what needs to happen, and it needs to be one clear message, spoken by many.

LICENSE REQUIRED.

No person shall engage in operating any circus, tent or canvas show, carnival or other similar entertainment enterprise, without first having obtained a license therefor as provided in this chapter.

As a resident of South Main Street, I’ve been in many (but not all) meetings over the past several months leading up to the submission of our neighborhood petition, so I know a great deal about the project and hopefully can answer some of the questions that have been raised here.

First, I don’t believe we’re getting actual gas-powered lights, as has been implied. Nor are we getting any other kind of lighting that should be dimmer than the existing lights. The plan, as I understand it, is to extend a similar type of lighting as is currently installed along Central Avenue and along North Main Street south onto South Main Street to remain consistent with the theme the city has determined is most appropriate for this area. Now, I could be wrong – but that’s what I was told in the meetings I attended. My understanding is they’re referring to that type of electric lighting and just calling it “gas light replica type lighting” because the shape and design of the lights are supposed to appear similar to the general exterior of old time gas lights even though they’re bright, modern electric lights. Anyone who has walked down Central or North Main at night can attest that these lights put out just as much, if not more, illumination as the aging regular-style lights on any other street in the city. They also put out light in a wider, more circular pattern (as opposed to the current style light that typically shines straight down and leaves darker spaces between each light).

Secondly, there should not be higher maintenance and utility costs. The existing lights on the street are decades old, and many advances in electric technology have been made in that time. Those improvements should make the new lights less expensive to maintain and operate than the existing, old, inefficient lights. True, maintenance and utility usage costs are borne by all taxpayers of the city, just as they are with any street light anywhere in the city, but I would expect the taxpayer should actually see LOWER costs as a result of new lights as opposed to what’s there now.

The cost to take down the existing lights, purchase the new lights, and install the new lights is being paid for by the residents of the neighborhood, not the city at large. The only exception I’m aware of is the lighting that would be placed along the Old South city park sidewalk facing South Main, which the city has estimated will cost $7,000 (or less than 15 cents per resident of the city). It was suggested at the Council meeting that this expense also be shared by the neighborhood residents as well, and the city is investigating whether it would be legal for them to do that.

If you review the actual petition in the city workbook from the most recent meeting (on the city website for all to see), you will see who signed it and which properties were added up to reach the 63 percent of frontage on the road. You will also see that the city property, its 250 feet of frontage on Old South Park, was not counted toward that percentage. The city’s property was removed from the total completely, I assume because the city is the decider in whether or not to approve the petition, so it should not be a party to the petition as a yes or a no. Had it been included as NOT signing the petition, though, the total would have been 60.5 percent of road frontage signed in favor of the lighting, still above the minimum 60 percent for the city to accept it under the law.  And really, not all of the non-signers were “no” votes in the other 37 percent – very, very few actually said no, and the rest simply did not respond or could not be reached. Although residents had been working on this for quite a while and had discussions with city officials about the proper procedures for months, the neighborhood association had to wait for the proper wording of the petition from the appropriate city department and received the final version with literally only a few days to catch up with as many owners as possible to get it signed before it needed to be submitted due to the planned construction schedule for the road project, and the volunteers who canvassed the neighborhood were unable to reach every person in that short time frame. Personally, I was contacted about signing it three or four days before it was due and was not home at the time they stopped by, so I wasn’t able to catch up with a canvasser to actually sign it until the day before it was due.

The number of homes and businesses in the neighborhood (not counting the city property) are made up of roughly 70 percent owners who live in the neighborhood and 30 percent absentee landlords – this is number of structures, not the road frontage figure the petition required. Of resident owners, about 70 percent signed the petition in favor of the lighting. Of absentee landlords, only about 15 percent signed the petition. I think that’s significant, as these numbers showed that the people who actually live in the neighborhood want the improvement by an overwhelming majority and that even some of the absentee landlords agreed this would be an improvement for their properties they support personally funding.

If any neighborhood in the city wished to undertake the same project – seek the 60 percent “supermajority” of property owners to approve installing new lights and pay for it themselves rather than relying on the support of taxpayers citywide  – then they’re welcome to do the same. Many people on these pages have advocated strongly for personal responsibility and personal investment in projects rather than government hand-outs, and that’s exactly what we are accomplishing.

As for the street improvements, they are justified. As much as residents of the neighborhood would like for South Main to be a quiet residential street, it is not. It is used as a major thoroughfare by those who wish to avoid the traffic lights along Verity. The simple factors of traffic count and road condition placed it at a certain ranking on the list of street projects in the city, and that ranking corresponded to a scheduling of 2011 for the work to be done. Simple as that. Much of the curb and sidewalk on the street is also being replaced at the same time, but that’s also being charged to the individual property owners whose homes each replacement abuts rather than the city’s taxpayers at large. Because our sidewalks and street will be torn up already for this project, the neighborhood chose to pursue the lighting change now so that everything could be done at the same time.