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Primarily serving Pataskala and surrounding areas
January 23, 2011
Licking Heights to request 11.9 mills 8.9-mill existing levy would come with additional 3 mills By MICHAEL J. MAURER ThisWeek Community Newspapers The Licking Heights Board of Education voted unanimously Jan. 18 to put an 11.9-mill, 10 year operating levy on the May ballot. Board members were at pains to say the levy represented a renewal of an existing 8.9-mill levy passed in 2007 plus an additional 3 mills. The levy must be filed with the Licking County Board of Elections by Feb.
we’re asking for 3 on top of just renewing,” board member Mark Loth said. “It’s A closer look really important that we say that.” The district operating budget is $27The existing levy’s annual cost per million, and the existing 8.9-mill levy $100,000 of assessed property value that is expiring raises $4.3-million anis $252. The cost of the proposed nually. The 11.9-mill emergency levy is levy would be $365, an increase of projected to raise $6.2-million annually. about $113 per $100,000. Because of state-mandated rollbacks, the existing 8.9-mill levy’s effective mill2 to appear on the May 3 ballot. age rate is 8.23, according to the Lick“It hinges on (communicating that) ing County Auditor’s Office. 8.9 mills of that is already covered, and The existing levy’s annual cost per
$100,000 of assessed property value is $252. The cost of the proposed levy would be $365, an increase of about $113 per $100,000. Even with the additional funds, the district expects to have a 2013 deficit of $1.2-million and a 2014 deficit of $6.1million. Board president Matt Satterwhite said Superintendent Thomas Tucker and treasurer Jennifer Vanover would have to begin planning cuts immediately to eliminate the projected deficits.
“We are constantly banging on Jenny and Dr. Tucker, who have already cut everything they can possibly cut,” Satterwhite said. “What I’m going to be voting on is, when we pass this, we have to make that (projected 2013 and 2014 deficit) be zero.” Board member Sharon Cochrum said she was concerned that the mandatory ballot language would confuse voters. “Voters read this paragraph (in the See LEVY, page A2
City staff salaries
CLEARING THE WAY
Pataskala council debates whether raises warranted By MICHAEL J. MAURER ThisWeek Community Newspapers
By Lorrie Cecil/ThisWeek
Danny Harris shovels his and his neighbors’ drives along Township Road in Pataskala on Jan. 21. A winter storm overnight dumped several inches of snow on the area. Temperatures are expected to rise above 30 midweek and there is a chance of some more snow on Monday and Tuesday.
Columbus to Licking County to Pittsburgh
Nine visitors bureaus collaborate to promote destinations along routes By MICHAEL J. MAURER ThisWeek Community Newspapers Nine county convention and visitors bureaus between Columbus and Pittsburgh have collaborated to launch a travel website this month. The idea is to promote a corridor of back roads between the two cities and businesses and tourist attractions on state Routes 161 and 16. Susan Fryer, director of the Greater Licking County Convention and Visitors Bureau, said the various bureaus each pitched in about $2,000 to establish the website, TriStateRoad-
Trip.com, which is intended to be selfsustaining with sponsorships. “It was a collaboration starting off with Licking County and Dennison Railroad in Tuscarawas County, and we knew that along this corridor of state Routes 161 and 16, it becomes Route 37 for a while. There is a terrific tourism product along that route that has never been promoted as a region,” Fryer said. “We wanted a website where people could go and find wonderful destinations, for weekends or even a weeklong trip to connect Columbus and Pittsburgh. As we worked, we found more and more hid-
den treasures along the route.” Linda Linham, a business consultant who returned to Ohio after working in the United Kingdom and Chicago, built the website through her company, Successful Ventures. “I wanted to do something that would make a difference for towns east of here that I’ve known and visited all my life,” Linham said. The economic downturn has hit visitors bureaus particularly hard, she said, because most of them rely on a “bed tax” for funding, and the drop in tourism and travel has hurt their budgets.
“In Licking County, the only marketing dollars they get come from the bed tax,” Linham said. “When people don’t travel, the bed tax begins to decline. The money to market Licking County has diminished.” Linham said the visitors bureaus responded to the crunch by pooling their resources. “We have more than 110 communities so far, and we thought it would be 30 communities,” Linham said. “It’s places to eat, stay and play that people can hear about from local exSee BUREAUS, page A2
Pataskala City Council on Jan. 18 continued to debate whether four city employees are being underpaid and, if so, when and how their pay should be brought into alignment with comparable cities. The affected positions are the city's public-services director, whose base pay is $54,690; the council clerk, $27,400; the mayor’s court clerk, $33,260; and the police clerk, $25,130. Each is being recommended for raises of 4 percent to 11 percent this year, pending their employment anniversary dates. Council member Bernie Brush said those employees substantially were underpaid and that council should commit now to addressing the full amount of the disparity, rather than making the decision later during subsequent budget years. “I just think it’s important that since for other employees we stepped up to a minimum, but these employees we’re spreading over a three-year period,” Brush said. “I think the revised pay matrix should be adopted to say this is our intent for 2012 and 2013 since we are spreading it out over three years instead of doing it right away.” Other council members said they agree with the intent but were not willing to make a decision without knowing other effects on the city budget, including state subsidy of local government, the state of the economy and whether the job functions were in fact the same as in comparable cities. “We don’t know what’s going to happen with the state budget or anything else that might prohibit (the raises) from going forward,” council member Merissa McKinstry said. Council member Dan Hayes said he would like to see a more detailed job-comparison study to ensure that raises were being awarded based on job See RAISES, page A2
Pataskala might take over ‘blighted’ mobile home downtown By MICHAEL J. MAURER ThisWeek Community Newspapers Pataskala City Council scheduled a special meeting for Monday, Jan. 24, to consider taking over the title to a foreclosed doublewide trailer at 51 Depot St. Mayor Steve Butcher had urged council to take action on the property, which, he said, was a nuisance. “This is a blighted property, and it didn't meet the eligibility of the federal program we used, which
allowed us to seek the removal of numerous blighted homes across the city,” Butcher said, adding that a fire-damaged, red-brick home on state Route 310, just south of the city, had been removed under the federal program. Despite the lack of federal funding, Butcher said, getting rid of the mobile home would be a minimum cost to the city. “There are no available funds in the (federal) Neighborhood Stabilization Program,” city administrator Tim Boland said. Dianne Harris, the city’s planning and zoning di-
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rector, said the forfeiture is to the mobile home only, not the real property on which it sits. “It’s sitting there in a sort of limbo,” Harris said. “The person who owns the land is not anxious to expend the funds to demolish the structure. They declined to bid on it when it was offered, and no one else bid on it. That is why it’s being offered to public entities for a forfeiture sale. Because it has been such a problem for code enforcement, I wanted the city to be aware it was there. But at the same
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