Posted: 5:00 p.m. Friday, Feb. 12, 2016

Middletown wants to be an All-America City in 2020

By Mike Rutledge

Staff Writer

MIDDLETOWN — 

By the year 2020, Middletown City Manager Doug Adkins wants the city to again be crowned an “All-America City,” an award Middletown won in 1957.

Now that Middletown has some extra revenue after the recession, it plans to beautify its parks and downtown — with the goal of filling downtown storefronts and area shopping centers, and attracting more families with higher incomes. So by 2020, the city may be positioned to win back All-America status, he hopes.

There are many things that need to happen to keep improving the city’s financial situation so it can launch major street-paving projects, upgrade parks and to remove neglected, past-its-use housing stock, Adkins told City Council last month during a Saturday retreat in a Hueston Woods State Park lodge conference room.

“If we’re … cookin’ on all cylinders, how about an All-America City again?” he rhetorically asked council members, after presenting plans to upgrade various aspects of the city. “Why not?”

Part of the evaluation for the award is “that you improved your city livability, things like that,” Adkins added. “I think we have a heck of a story to tell if we can put this together, and make it work.”

He’s motivated by confidence in improvements the city can make between now and then, and partly by comments residents sometimes make.

During a decade as a city employee (since mid-2014 as city manager), he’s grown tired of hearing, “‘Well, we used to be an All-America City,’” he said. “That’s what you hear. All right, if that’s important to you, we’ll do it again. Let’s do it again.”

In fact, by 2018, he wants the city to be positioned so it can invite Forbes magazine back to town to reconsider its 2008 declaration that Middletown was one of “America’s Fastest-Dying Towns.”

“Look what we’ve done in a decade,” he wants to say. “‘This doesn’t look like the fastest-dying town to me,’ and hopefully, get some good press out of it,” he told council. “Why not?”

Mayor Larry Mulligan Jr. likes the All-America idea, but said he considers the Forbes article “old news.”

“I think it’s a rational goal,” Mulligan said of the All-America crowning. “I don’t know if it’s a must-have goal. I hear from a lot of people, especially some of the folks that have lived here a long time, that they remember the excitement of being All-American city, and I think it’s worth trying to bring that image back, as well as strive toward.

“And if we’re striving toward that, good things should come of it,” Mulligan said.

First steps

“We went through so many years during the recession when the only question was how much budget are we going to cut, and how many people are we going to lay off?” Adkins said in an interview last month with the Journal-News. “And it’s hard to do anything positive and forward-thinking when you’re dismantling the organization.”

The city’s 2015 revenues finally eclipsed those it had in 2007, before the Great Recession.

“The difference is we have 53 people, something like that, less than we did in 2007. So the fact we have all that payroll we’re not paying, and all the benefits, gave us a little bit of money to start investing into economic development and things that might start giving us some positive, long-term impacts,” Adkins said.

“And we’ve done a little bit with quality of life,” he said. For a cost of about $13,000, “We had our fireworks back for the first time in 17 years last year.”

Those will be back again this year as an all-day event, he told council members at the retreat. The city also plans to partner with community groups to help improve the quality of parks, Adkins said.

“They would like to come to our parks and do a fair amount of work, renovating and spending some money,” he added. “Not just cleaning up, but new picnic tables, new shelters, new substantial investment into our parks – trees, things like that.”

Adkins has told his Public Works director and Keep Middletown Beautiful, who are working together, he wants to see a plan to beautify the city’s Interstate 75 interchange at Ohio 122, a front door to the city.

“I’ve said I want our interchange to look at least as good as Monroe,” Adkins told council. “I said, ‘That’s your standard.’ I said, ‘Design it, do some things, get some irrigation, seed it, I don’t care. When you bring me back a plan, I want it to look as good as Monroe.”

Council members during the retreat strongly endorsed that plan, and also liked Adkins’ plans to upgrade of the looks of Public Works vehicles to make them more attractive. Adkins has plans large and little — from an aggressive street-paving program and closing the city’s jail within five years so more police and firefighters can be hired with the savings; to getting rid of the brick pavers in front of the city building that become a trip hazard for women in heels.

Bigger issues

Adkins during the retreat told council the city has potentially $395 million in needs to upgrade water, sewer and storm-water systems, and that may require significant boosts to water and sewer rates. Middletown has another $162 million in paving needs, he said.

He’d like to have money to spend at least $3.6 million per year on road paving; plus $100,000 yearly on parks improvements; $100,000 a year on neighborhood infrastructure; $25,000 for tree care; and $20,000 yearly for way-finding signs and beautification.

That’s a total of $3.8 million for paving and those capital needs.

So, “theoretically we need $3.8 million more than we have now, to be able do this every year,” Adkins said. Given that the city’s general fund is about $28 million a year, the city needs to have big successes recruiting new jobs, and families with good incomes to Middletown, he noted.

Adkins’ plan — which he emphasized also would benefit from on a strong economy — is based on:

·                       Attracting the equivalent of 1,400 full-time $10-per-hour retail and service jobs, which would create $509,000 per year in new city income taxes;

·                       Luring 350 new jobs worth $50,000 apiece ($306,000 more income taxes);

·                       Finding 600 more new jobs worth $40,000 ($420,000 more income taxes);

·                       Attracting 425 new families earning $40,000 a year ($297,500 more income taxes);

·                       Charging customers street-light assessments (everyone would pay, regardless of whether they have street lights) to raise another $800,000;

·                       Also as part of the plan, property taxes would have to naturally rise by $75o,000 — based on property values, rather than any rate increases by city government.

·                       Also, the city will make its final $800,000 bond payment for its downtown mall in 2019, making that amount available starting in 2020.

All together, that would create nearly $3.9 million per year in the required new revenues.

Adkins said the city already is making progress on many of those goals. For instance, The Covenant Village of Middletown alone could add 200 positions, he said. And Fischer Homes alone has been building 15-20 new homes per year for families with healthy incomes, on pace for 75-100 over five years, he noted.

Middletown recently hired the Fort Worth-based Buxton firm to help attract retail jobs.

“I’m suggesting that we try to get the downtown at least 70 percent full, instead of the 70 percent empty it is now; the mall 70 percent full instead of 70 percent empty,” Adkins said.

Also in the works are a housing plan to study Middletown’s ability to diversify its housing stock and attract more affluent families; a new downtown plan; and the possibility of razing decades-old, poorly built 750- to 800-square-foot houses that have outlived their usefulness, to replace them with larger homes.

“There’s so much small, cheap stuff, that we are constantly recruiting families to the lowest common denominator,” Adkins told council. “And what happens is, No. 1, we’re always bringing in lower-income people. The second part of that is, if they happen to be successful and they happen to do well, and they move themselves up, we don’t have enough housing stock above them for them to be able to move up, so they have to leave the city. And so they leave the city, and we bring in another poor, lower-income family to fill that house up.”

Other All-America Cities

Every year, the Denver-based National Civic League selects about 10 cities or other government entities that receive the “All-America” designation, according to Mike McGrath, chief information officer for the league.

“The criteria are sort of, to put it simply, community innovation, civic engagement, inclusion, innovative social problem-solving,” McGrath said. “The way it works is communities fill out an application, they describe three different community projects or initiatives, and it could be anything from some kind of housing program to a process to engage youth in getting more connected to public policy making, things like that.”

Out of the dozens of applicants who submit a $200 fee, about 20 finalists are chosen to go before a jury made up of a variety of civic and government experts.

“Basically, it’s sort of a sign that they’re doing good work and they’re being recognized for it,” McGrath said. “A lot of communities are able to leverage the designation to do new things, or get new projects going, and give the community itself a chance to celebrate successes, and then to focus on where to go in the future.”

Sometimes the award prompts cities to further step up their games.

“I’ve often seen it in a community where people will say, ‘We’re an All-American City now, we have to do things in a certain way. We can’t just sort-of do it in a haphazard way,’” McGrath said. “They kind of hold themselves up to a higher standard of how community decision-making works.”

Sometimes, the award gets attention from companies looking to relocate in new communities, or foundations looking for places to spend their funds, he said.

Cleveland is Ohio’s only five-time winner of the award, last winning in 1993. Columbus is a four-time winner, while Cincinnati, Dayton and Akron have won three apiece.

“One of the things you need to understand is a lot of times the winners are cities that have a lot of problems, but they’re really working hard to fix ‘em up,” McGrath said. “Cleveland’s done a lot of great stuff over the years, even though they continue to struggle, I think, in a lot of ways, like any older, industrial city. But there’s a lot of civic involvement there.”

McGrath during an interview wondered whether a local community was planning to vie for the award.

Yes, Middletown, in 2020, he was told.

“Oh, really? In a few years? That’s planning ahead,” McGrath said.

Middletown plans to make some improvements before it applies, he was told.

“That’s good to know,” he said. “Yeah, it’s good to be prepared.”

Ohio’s All-America City winners

Here are the Ohio cities that have been named All-America Cities since the award program began in 1949 (Cleveland is the state’s only five-time winner, while Columbus has won four times. Akron, Dayton and Cincinnati have won three times each. Middletown won in 1957):

Akron 1980-81, 1995, 2008

Cambridge 1955

Canton 1953

Cincinnati 1949, 1950, 1980-81

Cleveland 1949, 1981-82, 1983-84, 1985-86,1993

Cleveland Heights 1975-76, 1977-78

Columbus 1958, 1986-87, 1992, 2006

Dayton 1951, 1977-78, 1991

Maumee 2006

Middletown 1957

Mount Vernon 1965

Portsmouth 1979-80

Sidney 1963

Springfield 2004

Toledo 1950, 1983-84, 1998

Warren 1954

Wooster 1974-75

Youngstown 1950

Zanesville 1956

Source: National Civic League

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Anyone taking bets on this timing?

Note to Adkins and the rest of the kool-aid drinkers......

Reality check....

You can't repair the damage that has been done to this city in the last three decades in 4 years. Too much to do to fix everything in that time frame

Destroyed streets/infrastructure

Wasted concentration on a downtown that has brought absolutely no return in investment

Decent paying jobs, lost in the 70's and 80's and never replaced leaving a city with pathetic service, retail and fast food choices for the people

Destroyed city image leaving the city with a reputation as a poor, low income, ghetto-like city full of high crime, drugs and the habit of attracting the dregs of society with nothing to offer quality residents to town. Quality people don't like ghettos

High taxes, water/sewer rates and now, city light assessements and lower level service offered as a reward

Property values in the tank

Poor schools with a "must avoid" label tacked onto them by potential residents

A catering to the inner circle of city hall friends and an exclusion of 98% of the residents from a say in their city's operation

Little entertainment choices and a lack of interesting choices for the children of potential families as residents

A downsizing of police and fire services

A city government, including a city council that will not listen to the people or ask for resident input

A major employer slowly working itself into oblivion

A non-cohesive, dysfunctional community that is so apathetic and in such disarray it refuses to function as a normal city should....or as Middletown did decades ago

The refusal of city leaders to admit reality and deal with the real basic issues substituting that belief with nonsensical city projects (bike path, dog park nonsense) that don't deal with the basic foundation issues needed as first priority

A non-desired city losing population, primarily because of the poor schools and the poor way the city is being operated

"Want" all you desire Adkins. It is nice to have a dream, even though "pipe" in nature. Reality will set in around 2019. Better extend that AAC date another 20 years or so. Too much work to do here to maintain that aggressive timeline.

'I am going to build a wall, a great wall, and Mexico is going to pay for it." Make America Great Again.

Evidently Donald Trump's ambiguity has reached Middletown. Its going to be great, really great.

Hey--I hope that he pulls it off somehow
Nothing bad about a lofty positive set of goals
At least someone near the top and is trying to move the needle
Maybe hit 25% in 3 years and hope that momentum and private sector takes it from there

Still have concerns about what it is going to cost those with assets who are willing to stay, and who locally is going to benefit
Though still burned out on the "downtown" obsession when the rest of the city continues to be ignored

Where does the new school admin fit in and what are they saying?
The Chamber?
We need a lot more than talk and promises

So--I am very bored when in town
Put me to work boss!

Is it April Fools Day already?

Who is he trying to kid???