The New Albany Business

Businesses are key to community financial health

health and vibrancy of our community.

Today, our 3,000-acre master-planned business park is home to 12,000 employees. A number of New Albany residents work in the business park; so do many more nonresidents. No matter where they live, all who work in the park pay local income taxes to New Albany, and businesses with headquarters here also pay local income taxes to New Albany on their earnings. These local income taxes account for more than 70 percent of the revenues necessary to provide city services such as police protection, leaf collection, snow plowing, road maintenance, leisure trails and water and sewer infrastructure.

In today’s economic climate, personal financial health is a predominant topic. It affects how we live on a daily basis, how we plan for our children’s education, how some of us help manage our parents’ geriatric issues and how we strategize for our own retirement.

Because of the profession I chose, I also think a lot about financial health from a community perspective. As your city manager, I continually look for ways to safeguard New Albany’s financial future and enhance your quality of life. While these two functions are inexorably linked, their cause-and-effect relationship starts with funding, not spending.

This is why New Albany’s leaders have placed such an emphasis on creating and growing the New Albany Business Park. In the late 1990s, when the park was just a vision in a cornfield, our community’s leaders understood the importance of creating a new revenue stream that would ultimately shift the burden for local services away from residents.

This may seem puzzling since most residents pay property and income taxes. But New Albany receives a very small amount of property taxes paid by residents (approximately 2 percent); and income taxes are paid to the community where one works, not where one lives. So any resident working outside of New Albany in cities such as Columbus, Westerville, Dublin or any other community with a 2 percent local income tax rate or higher pays 100 percent of his or her income taxes to the community in which he or she works.

That is why a successful business park was – and remains – vital to the financial

Partnerships have been key to transforming New Albany into the regional economic engine that it has become. The New Albany Company, Columbus 2020, the state of Ohio, multiple school districts and utility companies such as AEP have been integral in one way or another to helping us attract companies of all sizes.

Because of consistent business growth and the community revenues these businesses generate, city leaders have been able to move forward with projects that enhance your quality of life. Our leisure trail system is now nearly 30 miles in length. More than 13 percent of our land use is dedicated to parks or open space, and the city is a partner in the creation of the metro park located just outside city boundaries in Plain Township.

We’ve continually invested in our Village Center to make it a welcoming and