2012 State of the City Mayor Don Schonhardt I welcome all of you to my State of the City address. I have chosen a theme titled “Hilliard at a Crossroads” because we have arrived at a point at which an important decision has to be made. I have come to understand, that one’s future is not a matter of chance; but rather a matter of choice. Hilliard’s future is not something simply to be waited for, but rather something to be achieved. We have worked diligently to achieve a sound future for our community, but external forces have been brought to bear that challenge the most optimistic among us. We are all aware that we live in a time of great economic uncertainty. While there are numerous positive indicators suggesting we are embracing a real economic recovery, it has been a long journey through one of the most troubling economic periods in American history. Future generations may well regard us as those who endured the Great Recession. And given the state of our economy, there are those who wonder if we will ever really be able to return to the days of expansion and economic growth we enjoyed in past years when the economic flame burned brighter. We can no longer focus on just our small corner of the world because we are bound to a world economy. As we struggle to become competitive in a global marketplace, the true impact of global competition is being felt at the local level. For that reason, what happens in Athens, Greece really does have impact on what happens in Hilliard, Ohio. We are still masters of our own fate, despite our economic struggles. We are still one of the strongest economies in the world. America has proven its resilience time and time again. We met the challenge of a world war in the 1940s. We met the challenges of a cold war in the 1950s and the 1960s. We proved ourselves world-class technology innovators in the 1970s and 1980s. We capitalized on that technological prowess in the 1990s to make our businesses and industries more efficient and profitable. And we met the scourge of terrorism in the first decade of the new millennium. In the final analysis, Hilliard is not an island unto itself. We are part and parcel of the fabric of America and when America rises up to meet the challenge of a new global economy, Hilliard rises up to meet the challenge of a new global economy. If we have learned anything in the past decade it is that we cannot separate ourselves from the world around us. It is for all these reasons we are at a crossroads in our community, standing at an intersection where we have done all we can do to weather the storm of recession. We have tightened our belt to its last notch. It has always been the aim and mission of this administration to make Hilliard all that it can be. We want to do whatever it takes to make us a progressive, economically viable and premier location for our citizens to raise families and for business and commerce to grow and flourish. Our 1
mission is unchanged. Those objectives still define this administration. But we have reached that intersection where we must now determine where we go from here. Let me put it in context. The City’s adopted budget in 2011 was one-tenth of one percent higher than the approved budget for 2010. This year, our adopted budget grew by four-tenths of one percent over 2011. Hardly a testament to runaway government spending! During that period, we reduced the number of city employees by leaving nonessential positions vacant. We have invested in those services we regard to be the most critical to the community. We have reorganized whole departments to wring the greatest possible efficiency from our organization. The Police Department continues to address organizational change with the hiring of a Deputy Chief and proposed integral changes to the operations of the department. Those changes will result in a more efficient operation, but more importantly will afford our police department the opportunity to attack crime proactively instead of reactively. And before that, we conducted a reorganization of our parks and recreation department, focusing on how best to maintain all of our programs and services at the least cost to taxpayers. Those changes became necessary because of funding decisions made from outside the City of Hilliard. The governor and legislature, for example, decided to reduce the amount of local government funds to Ohio cities. And while that would appear to create additional revenue for the state, the impact on the local level has been $1.1 million in lost revenues to the Hilliard City budget. The governor and the legislature also decided, and perhaps wisely, to eliminate the estate tax effective with the 2013 budget year. But for the City of Hilliard, that decision cost, on average, an additional $250,000 annually. And for those of you who wonder why banks even bother to pay us our 1/10th of 1% interest, think about what those lower interest rates mean to the City of Hilliard. In past years, investment of our fund balances yielded as much as $800,000 in revenue annually. This year, we estimate those earnings will be less than $100,000. Our strategy to meet these declining revenues is sound. On one hand we have struggled to control the cost of government by taking some of the steps I just mentioned. The other part of our game plan has been to attract more businesses to the community to try, as best we can, to offset the losses I have just enumerated with growth in income tax receipts. It is this approach that has afforded us the ability to maintain our quality city services despite the gravity of the economic environment that has enveloped the nation. We have always been committed to the principle that building a strong commercial base will yield a more solid tax base. New commercial enterprise also means more jobs and more jobs mean more income tax revenue. The income tax is the most vital source of revenue we receive to plow snow covered streets, safeguard our community, give our kids a place to swim in the summer, provide our citizens with parks and sports venues and give our seniors a place to meet and enjoy 2  Â
their retirement. In short, we use the income tax as a resource to provide the kind of quality of life that makes Hilliard so desirable as a place to live and raise a family. But it’s decision time. And we have reached that critical juncture because we, as a community, must now ponder what we want from city government, and we in city government, need to assess, in this era of declining revenues, what really constitutes critical services. In Hilliard, we are accustomed to greeting an overnight snowfall with plowed streets only hours after a snow event. In Hilliard, we are accustomed to a street sweeper cleaning our neighborhood streets on a regular basis. In Hilliard, leaf pickup is a staple in our community where other communities have long abandoned that service to their residents. In Hilliard, we have two community swimming pools to serve our citizens. Some have argued we should have only one pool and close the other to save money. Our pristine aquatic center, some say, is more than most communities offer their residents. Still others say they would like to see more police officers on the street. And what are we, as a community, willing to forego to hire those additional officers? Does street sweeping go away to reallocate revenue for those officers? Is closing a pool something we are willing to do in order to identify resources for additional police? I want to make it clear that I am not proposing tonight to park the street sweeper or to close the East pool, but those might well be the kind of trade-offs we consider as we navigate our community toward the future. Some have told us that we should do more to regionalize local government. In that respect, Hilliard has been a case study in partnering with other jurisdictions to deliver vital services to residents. Our police patrol the streets of Norwich Township and we have jointly constructed a safety services building that houses both our city police and township fire personnel. That collaboration alone saved Hilliard taxpayers in excess of $3 million dollars, the additional cost of building a separate stand alone police station that was already a decade behind in construction. We buy our gasoline and salt from the county and we have been engaged in collaborative planning and development with local governments throughout the region. To that end, we have been actively involved in efforts to end the practice of offering income tax incentives simply to move existing businesses around Central Ohio. It adds nothing to the regional economy for a company to jump across the city line just because of the lure of tax incentives. Columbus and its suburbs need to stop taking businesses from one another and instead, embrace policies that pledge we will not help businesses profit at the public’s expense. This practice is a game where there are only losers and never winners and Hilliard has been instrumental in developing and signing a letter of intent to halt this practice.
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But, going forward, what must we give up, to get what we really want as a community? That truly is the challenge we must address in the year ahead and, most likely, in future years well beyond 2012. I am the eternal optimist, but I very much doubt we can or will go back to business as usual in local government. I think the die has been cast and I think the future of local government will require more consolidation, more cooperation and more centralization of services in the future. It makes little sense, for example, with today’s technology for several communities to house their own separate Mayors Courts. Perhaps going forward local Mayors Courts could be combined to more efficiently serve several geographically contiguous municipalities. We have already passed a resolution (11-R-60) and entered into an agreement with eight other central Ohio political subdivisions for the provision of shared fleet maintenance and repair services. We continue to work with the shared services task force to evaluate the potential benefits of shared sign shop services, purchasing plans and IT services. But what is at stake? What is realistically on the table as we endeavor to meet the economic challenges of the future? As Mayor, I owe this community my most candid answer and the answer is that everything is on the table. That is the crossroads. That is the intersection that beckons us to decide what path we take from here. It is not sufficient for us to sit and idle at this intersection and hope for a day when we can simply pick up where we left off at some date back in the past decade. Those days are gone. A new day has dawned. It is a day when the reality of a truly strapped municipal budget collides head-on with the expectations of those who live here. Everything is on the table because we have a responsibility to level with our citizens and tell them that one day our sidewalk maintenance program may succumb to declining revenues. Street sweeping, leaf pickup, our brush and chipper service, recycling – it is all on the table because together we must decide what is truly essential and what constitutes a critical need to keep Hilliard on the path to a sound future. Whenever America has been challenged, Americans have met that challenge through hard work and, yes, sometimes sacrifice. Know that we will continue to work hard in this administration to do all that we can to keep Hilliard moving forward. I pledge to you that we will continue to pursue ways to eek evermore productivity from our workforce, utilize technology to promote more efficiency, work collaboratively with other units of government to achieve economies of scale and promote continued economic development within our community. Let me emphasize that economic development is what has postponed our arrival at this critical juncture. While other communities retreated and retrenched cutting vital city services, we held steady by providing our citizens with ongoing and expanded services. Some have said the improvements in Old Hilliard alone would have been sufficient to write the legacy for our 4
administration. But add to that the expanding economic development on Trueman Boulevard and the addition of major amenities such as the Hilliard Family Aquatic Center and First Responders Park. All of that has seen us through some of the darkest hours in the national economy, while making Hilliard more attractive to current and future residents and businesses. And we are constantly thinking about new strategies and new processes that will advance our economic development in Hilliard. The Lifelong Community concept, for example, is about diversity. It is about affordable housing for the young, as well as affordable housing for seniors. It means building “walkable” communities with ready access to necessary retail and commercial enterprises. It means transportation options and rethinking the way we build roads and bridges, and where we build roads and bridges. It means services that fit the needs of all populations and all ages, and realigning services as necessary. The Lifelong Community concept means fine-tuning our land-use and community planning processes to accommodate a diverse population, young and old and all those in between. For young people, it means available housing they can afford and a local job base that will enable them to move from apartments to starter homes where they can begin raising the next generation of Lifelong Community partners. For senior citizens, it means eliminating the need to drive, where possible, and incorporating some of the unique needs of older adults into new planning, construction and transportation projects. It means the opportunity to stay close to children and grandchildren, even as the inevitable effects of aging change one’s lifestyle requirements. I believe it is innovations such as this that will shape who we are in the future. So what is the takeaway from this 2012 report to you on the state of our city? It is this: We have difficult decisions and choices we must make to determine what the phrase “critical and essential services” means to us as a community. I welcome your input. I invite you to communicate with me and with all of our directors and legislators. Don’t be afraid to engage us as we endeavor to engage you in this vital task of determining the future of our city. In that, we are all major stakeholders because, after all, each of us individually comprise our community. We are not measured by the miles of roads we plow in the winter, the number of sidewalks we repair or even by the number of swimmers who populate our swimming pools on a hot August afternoon. Ultimately, we are measured by what we have done to make Hilliard more livable for our citizens and more appealing to prospective business and commerce. For eight years I have served you as Mayor of this community. And as I embark on my ninth year, I want to acknowledge that I have not done it alone. I’ve done it with a strong team of directors who share my passion for this city and with a workforce that has done a superb job of accomplishing more with less. 5
That is a tribute to their dedication and resolve. I leave you this evening as I have left you in past years – filled with my gratitude for your confidence and committed to doing what it takes to make Hilliard a community of excellence. I guess I’ve always known that the key ingredient to an excellent community is excellent citizens. Everything else is just window dressing. But as we leave here tonight, my challenge to all of you is to offer up your best thoughts and ideas on what we all can do, collectively, to keep Hilliard as innovative and inviting as we know it to be. It is no accident we are deemed Best Hometown by Ohio Magazine. As a friend likes to remind me, that recognition and designation has the added benefit of being the truth.
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