Editorial: Council right to fund work on its own

The comments from Fred Barrington and John Nixon need addressed, and we’ll get to them shortly. First, however, Lima City Council, as a whole, deserves credit for the direction it went on paying for downtown streetscape improvements.

The city already levies the equivalent of a tax on drivers, so councilors were right to use that money instead of demanding more from property owners — in whatever form — in the current economy.

City officials wanted help from Allen County with the $545,000 needed to bring in a $1.2 million state grant to replace sidewalks, crosswalks, landscape and trash cans. The county commissioners balked. Anyone who has followed the news of late can understand why: Allen County is struggling for money.

County employees still have to take an unpaid week off work this year. Four of eight groups that last year had their budgets eliminated still won’t see county funding this year . The other four groups will receive massively reduced funding. Allen County still is about $150,000 short of carrying enough money into next year to cover its bills and payroll.

The commissioners would have a hard time justifying the $225,000 city officials asked for to pretty up the downtown streets. The city plans to pay its share through the extra charge Lima residents pay for their driver’s licenses.

But the economic development and promotional group Downtown Lima Inc. lobbied to have the streetscape work done, so the city could have assessed property owners without too much fight, but officials chose not to after much consideration.

The county is a big landowner downtown, so by an assessment would have hit county taxpayers pretty hard. The $225,000 city officials asked the county for would become $390,000 in property assessments. Of course, all business owners in the affected district would pay in that scenario. They pay nothing if the city gets the grant — and no one wants to turn away $1.2 million.

So members of City Council decided Lima would pay its part without the county’s help. We imagine the nine councilors all could figure out where downtown business owners might direct their anger, no matter how much blame the city laid on the county. Now is not a time anyone — in business or in government — wants to see another bill coming in.

And that brings us to the comments from Barrington and Nixon. Both the Downtown Lima executive director and the City Council president, respectively, took issue with the county commissioners’ poor planning. Downtown Lima brought up the issue in 2007, and the city locked in the grant funding in 2008.

Barrington and Nixon therefore believe the county has had plenty of time to plan for this expense. Even if the commissioners had planned to help bring the grant, though, the economic mess we’re in would necessitate directing that money elsewhere. The commissioners already made the mistake of putting up a title building when the county could have used the money elsewhere.

Lima charges residents extra for licenses. Barrington and Nixon can be content with that money and save the lectures.