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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 ( http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/news/local/council-selects-adkins-as-next-city-manager/nf5q9/" rel="nofollow - 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 http://www.forbes.com/2008/12/08/towns-ten-economy-forbeslife-cx_mw_1209dying_slide_2.html" rel="nofollow - “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);
·
http://www.journal-news.com/news/news/local/middletown-considers-street-light-assessment-to-pa/nqMZC/" rel="nofollow - (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 http://www.journal-news.com/news/news/local/middletown-takes-step-to-attract-more-retailers/npyc2/" rel="nofollow - 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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