From: Tom Heller
Columbus
Businesses of all sizes in Columbus will shortly face a cumulative 37% increase in their water and sewer bills if a measure being placed before the city council is adopted.
Many of Columbus’s largest businesses, such as employers at Woodside Industrial Park, already pay substantial property taxes that are annually directed into the Columbus Redevelopment Commission’s TIF mechanism instead of finding their way into city coffers.
Since those tax dollars are not received by the city, our water and sewer utility are faced with hiking our bills to pay for large capital projects planned to accommodate city growth.
State law encourages redevelopment commissions to engage in a wide variety of activities to make land “shovel ready”. Much of the list of projects in the utility’s master plan meet this qualification.
The city should use some of the money built up in the TIF account to help fund our city utility’s big-dollar sewer and water projects. That will offset much of the proposed rate increases that otherwise will take effect.
Don’t let city hall tell you they can’t do that, because they can.
Inflationary times require local government to think out of the box and create benefit for both ratepayers and taxpayers, to keep our utility rates low and get our taxes under control. That time has arrived.
