Getting Painted Into Corners

Thanks to the State Capital Budget, the City Administration is going to push City Council again sometime soon. It's time to stop the madness.

Last month in the waning days of the Spring Session of the Ohio General Assembly, the state legislature did what it felt it needed to do; it passed one of the largest state capital budgets on record that is bringing over $4 billion to every corner of the state for one-time projects that are designed to “transform” the state.

The City of Troy became a willing beneficiary of this taxpayer funded largess by getting $2 million for the Troy/Great Miami River Recreational Trail Connectivity Project. This project was really thrust into the public conversation last September and was the topic of discussion at a Recreation and Parks Committee Meeting as the City Administration was asking Council permission to apply for funds from the Miami Valley Regional Planning Commission. The proposal was to install a new recreational trail on the south bank of the Great Miami River, at a cost of at least $3 Million. You can read about that meeting below:

It felt a lot like déjà vu, when earlier this Spring, when Council’s Economic and Community Development Committee was asked for authorization to apply for another grant for another recreational trail. This time, it was a $1.7 Million project for a 10-foot recreational trail down South Crawford Street from East Water Street to Herrlinger Park.

Looking at the meetings in which these projects were discussed, it is a fair assessment that neither of these projects have the full-throated support of the community. It’s not even clear that these projects have the full support of Council themselves. The meetings from both September and May make it clear that more thought and more consideration would have been extremely helpful in the deliberations the council committees had when these discussions were taking place.

As residents, and even elected officials, questioned the wisdom of these projects, they were told by the City Administration that the meetings were not the proper time nor place to discuss such items. These meetings were just granting permission to the City Administration to get these dollars. There were no contracts to bid out, let alone any concrete plans to discuss. All those items would be discussed would be discussed in the future.

Well, the future might be here quicker than we know it. With the above referenced state capital budget, $2 Million has just fallen into the lap of the City Administration to create the redundant bike path on the south shore of the Great Miami River. The master plan is to link Treasure Island with the Hobart Cabinet Building on East Water Street and eventually down South Crawford Street to Herrlinger Park.

The City Administration never needed permission from Council to go after the $2 Million in the State Capital Budget. In the State Capital Budget process, all forms of local government reach out to their state senators and state representatives and make proposals for this funding. The process isn’t as stringent as other state grant proposals, since these dollars are coming straight from the State Legislature and not a bureaucratic agency of the state government, which often require Council approval through a resolution.

When is the right time to ask questions?

All of this discussion, leads to an important question, when is the right time to talk about these projects? When is the time to discuss whether these projects are warranted in our community?

Well, if the time to discuss these projects wasn’t when the City Administration was requesting funding for these projects, is the appropriate time to discuss these items when the project is ready to be designed and to be contracted?

We all know if that is the case, the City Administration is painting the City Council into a corner, which is exactly where the administration wants council to be.

What City Council is going to vote down a project when not only all funds have been committed, but a large portion of those funds have come from “outside sources”? (I use the terms in quotes, because even these outside grants and capital budget allotments are still funded by taxes that we pay.) The logic is simple, the City Administration is going to be saying, “Well, these outside players think this is good for our community, so we need to do it. You wouldn’t dare not use this money, would you?”

And this is how a City Administration, largely led by unelected bureaucrats, gets what it wants. The administration is largely not bothered by having conversations on what this city needs and what this city doesn’t need, it just dreams up projects, gets funding and dares city council not to go along with the program.

The problem with that approach is that the City Administration can be seen as out-of-touch. This publication has gone to great efforts to show how these recreational improvements aren’t necessary where they are being planned. Can Troy use more recreational trails? Absolutely. And when the westernmost connected recreational trail in your community is on Trade Square West when our community has thousands of residents that can’t access a connected recreational trail safely; well, putting in more recreational trails in neighborhoods that are already well-connected isn’t strong planning.

But a larger issue remains, how can a community have a robust discussion about the important infrastructure decisions that are going to be made for the community? How can the officials that we ask to represent us play a role in deciding the future of our community?

The Need for a Capital Improvement Plan

What our community needs, is something most communities have, a stand-alone capital improvement plan. This plan, should be a council approved document, separate from the annual budget. The plan should be a comprehensive listing of the community’s infrastructure priorities in the near term (1-2 year), midterm (3-5 years) and long-term (5-10 years) with basic cost estimates and potential sources for those funds. And yes, the publication has written about Capital Improvement Plans in previous editions.

Failure to create such a plan, is a failure to lead a community that is trying to consistently demonstrate its value to not only visitors, but to the 26,000 residents that live in this community.

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