ThisWeek UA 1/6/2010
I had a wonderful conversation with a friend of mine a couple of weeks ago who introduced an idea to me that I’ve been struggling with ever since. I’ll do my best to discuss what it is that I’ve been thinking about and then leave it to you to form your own opinions. I expect that those of you with the strongest of opinions will share them in the comments.
I live in Upper Arlington which most of my readers already know. The community is fairly affluent for Central Ohio; playing home to State and Federal politicians, CEOs of local and multi-national corporations and the like (as well as more pedestrian folks like myself). The community has a “right-leaning” political landscape – the type that generally comes with affluent, majority white mid-western communities.
Compared to many communities in Central Ohio, Upper Arlington has a very competitive tax rate. According to the Franklin County Auditor [Click Here] we have a slightly lower tax rate than most comparable suburbs of Columbus but a higher tax rate than Columbus itself.
In terms of our location, as a land-locked inner-ring suburb which is fully developed, it means that anything we choose to do as a community requires redevelopment. Redevelopment is always more expensive – both through construction costs as well as through community contention over whether or not the redevelopment is appropriate. Similarly, as an older suburb our community was designed as a “bedroom” community – relying on the most popular features of the era – large homes built on large lots with winding lanes and a “country feel”, aka no sidewalks or even curbs/storm-water planning and few commercial properties.
What that has meant for Upper Arlington is that our community developed without much room for a commercial tax base and without even the framework for the type of community that makes both financial and physical sense to most families today. So conceptually, if we want to remain a “premier” community we have a lot of investment to make. That being as it is, Upper Arlington continues to make strides to overcome these obstacles.
With a mindset of fiscal conservatism pervasive among many in the community, attempts to invest in more modern infrastructure has almost always required the city to find grant funding or a private benefactor to fund improvements. This appears to be due to a feeling among the majority of Upper Arlington voters that they do not think it is appropriate to invest any more of their money (via property tax) into the community.
Perhaps they believe that the city wastes money or perhaps they don’t see the investments as improvements. Either way most attempts to make our community more in-line with modern amenities that our competition (other “premier” suburbs in Central Ohio) have often fallen short of the required votes.
Now, I’ve railed about how I think people should vote plenty of times so I’m not trying to do that here. I want to try and get beyond that for a moment and ask the question that was posed to me by my friend.
Should residents of Upper Arlington feel ashamed of taking grants to improve their community when there is so much personal wealth in the community that individuals are unwilling to share? Wouldn’t it be more honorable for those grants go to communities that have a greater financial need than Upper Arlington?
From what I’ve been thinking about since being posed this question I came up with the following:
- Strictly from a mechanical sense there is the issue that the grants are competitive items and our team (our UA city administrators) are incredibly smart folks who can write a grant request that I’d bet is much better than most (and that’s why UA is so successful at getting grants). Seeing as many of these grants are federally or state funded that means that UA residents are contributing to them the same as any other community so why shouldn’t we also reap the benefits of them? From a standpoint of wanting to keep our taxes low shouldn’t we applaud our administrators for finding as many ways as possible to modernise our community without costing the taxpayers more money?
- All of that seems like a reasonable argument to favor continuing to go after grants and other types of partnerships to improve our community without adding tax burden to residents. But what if you put this into the perspective of grants effectively being charity?
- Would you feel comfortable personally taking charity from your local church, your friends, an organization like the Mid Ohio Food Bank or even from a state or federal program knowing that you have the where-with-all to do it without that charity? Knowing that whatever amount of charity you remove from the system is then unavailable to people who truly need it?
Now, before you solidify your opinion think about a few other issues.
- Grants often go unused because for one reason or another few if any groups respond to them. So isn’t it better then that a grant be awarded and used than not?
- On the other side of things, if a voting majority of people decide that they do not want to invest in modernising their community is that in and of itself reason for the city administration to then allow the city to remain stagnant (which is usually the first step towards decline – something UA is arguably already sliding into)?
- The voice of the voting residents may have spoken and said – we don’t want that. Now, was it that the residents don’t want to PAY for something or is it that they actually DON’T WANT THE THING itself?
To pull from a recent set of examples I would argue that it is strictly that the majority voters have stated that they don’t want to PAY for things but they are (mostly) happy to accept them otherwise. I say that because the majority of residents living on Upper Arlington streets that are now receiving sidewalks based on federal grants have chosen to support those sidewalks. The controversy over the sidewalks being put in has primarily been about whether or not a resident wants it in their yard – not about whether we should be embarressed to let some outside entity pay for those sidewalks.
Besides the questions my friend posed to me I would specifically ask:
- Should we feel some sort of shame for wanting things to be given to us?
- Should we feel pride over “winning” grants or convincing private organizations to invest in what we won’t?
- What exactly is community pride anyhow?