Wednesday, April 21, 1999
Older state suburbs want Ohio to stop promoting urban sprawl
BY PAUL SOUHRADA
The Associated Press
COLUMBUS — Officials from Ohio's older suburbs are fighting what they see as state subsidization of urban sprawl: tax incentives, transportation plans and other policies that favor growth in outlying areas over revitalization of existing roads and structures.
“We're trying to change harmful state policies that, in effect, promote disinvestment in our communities,” Ken Montlack, a city council member from Cleveland Heights, said Tuesday before he and other representatives of the Ohio First Suburbs Consortium spread out across the Statehouse to lobby lawmakers.
The 75 local politicians and officials from 28 cities planned to ask for access to state grants, loans and incentive programs that they say now tip the balance toward fast-growing communities and companies that create new jobs rather than retain existing ones.
The older suburbs, meanwhile, are left with a shrinking tax base to cover the expenses of schools and other services for the residents who stay behind, Mr. Montlack said.
The “First Suburbs” movement originated in Cleveland area in 1997. A similar group started around Columbus earlier this year, and others are forming in Cincinnati, Dayton and Cincinnati.
By pooling their resources, the separate groups think they will increase their clout at the Statehouse, said Daniel Lorek, deputy for development in the Columbus suburb of Whitehall.
“It's not that we're trying to hinder development as it grows out from the central core,” Mr. Lorek said.
“But let's make sure that as development moves out, there's reinvestment back into the established areas.”
Gov. Bob Taft said he is already studying the issue.
“We're looking at the whole issue as part of the Urban Revitalization Task Force,” Mr. Taft said. “We're reviewing our policies in the transportation area ... housing, brownfields — all the different ways the state impacts on development.”
In addition, Mr. Taft has renewed an executive order issued last year by former Gov. George Voinovich that required state agencies and commissions to identify policies that might affect farmland use and to come up with a plan to minimize their impact.
The Ohio Office of Farmland Preservation was put in charge of collecting the reports from the state agencies and compiling them into recommendations that were supposed to be forwarded to then-Lt. Gov. Nancy Hollister.
But Karl Gebhardt, who recently quit as the director of the farmland office to become a consultant, said the report was never written.
“I believe they're still working on it,” Mr. Gebhardt said. Mr. Voinovich, meanwhile, is now in the U.S. Senate, and Ms. Hollister is a member of the Ohio House.
Critics of efforts to curb development — including some home builders and officials from fast-growing suburbs — say Ohioans should be able to live where they want. After all, that's what the people who founded what are now the inner-ring suburbs did.
There are some parallels, Mr. Montlack agreed. But the amount of state investment has increased “exponentially” with the creation of the state highway system.
Besides, he added: “Aren't we allowed to learn something over the years?”
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