<< Front page News March 5, 2004

Gardner responds to College

Daniel Gardner 1/20/2004
Statement at city council meeting

On the advice of our solicitor, I want to begin by stating that my vote on the Union Street rezoning petition is in no way connected to or conditioned upon whether or not Oberlin College wishes to enter into negotiations now or in the future about a Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) program. In the course of discussing the establishment of a committee to address the city’s serious budget situation, I said during the council meeting of January 5 that I would like to see Mr. DiSpirito charge that committee with the pursuit of a PILOT program with Oberlin College since more than 40% of this community’s property is ‘exempt from taxation. That, as they say, was one thing. Later in that council meeting, when discussing the college’s Union Street rezoning request, I stated my concern that we were being asked to remove taxable property from the rolls. That, as they say, was another thing. Both things are clearly stated in distinct and unrelated sections of the minutes of January 5 meeting that we approved a few moments ago.

On January 15, in a phone conversation with Mr. Evans, the college’s chief financial officer, I reiterated these two as distinct issues. Nevertheless, later in the day of January 15, all Council members received aletter from President Nancy Dye. The letter states: “We declined to answer the question posed by Daniel Gardner about entering into a negotiation with the city about payment in lieu of taxes. We are of course familiar with these vehicles, but we do not think that PILOTs are relevant to the zoning issue currently before council.” I had asked no such question, and had made no such connection between a PILOT program and the rezoning issue before us. There is no quid pro quo attached to my vote. The college appears to have drawn an inference between two separate things.

I now want to acknowledge publicly a perception that this council and its chairman may feel coerced in the vote it is about take, and then dismiss the perceived threat because the imagined repercussion is so implausible. It is possible for an observer to draw an inference between the college’s words and actions suggesting that they have given the city a quid pro quo: specifically, that if we vote affirmatively on the rezoning issue, they will be generous in helping the city address its serious budget issues. If we do not, they will sue and name the chair of the City Council separately in their suit.

Here is how an observer might draw such an inference: One could read something into the fact that, beginning in mid-December, attorneys from Oberlin College began visiting City hall to request records regarding the city’s denial of the Johnson House rezoning at just the time when the Union Street matter was coming before Council. One could interpret the fact that the college’s attorney’s met a few days before Christmas with City Solicitor Eric Severs and others to talk about rezoning case law not as a collegial exchange of legal views but as a warning shot across the city’s bow-a show of force. After all, one might also think, if the college merely wanted to make its position clear on Johnson House, why did it not wait until after City Council had considered and settled the Union Street petition to avoid any appearance of attempting to influence the council’s consideration on its merits. Anyone drawing such inferences might go on to think that when an individual member of city council, and not the council as a whole, is alleged to have asked a potentially illegal or coercive question of the college, then that person is being set up to be named separately in a legal action. One would, if aware of the risks of exposing the city to litigation, take pains to affirm that the college has done nothing illegal or coercive in any actionable way, but that it has nevertheless sent a chilling message: do what we want, or else.

As City Council chair, I have found it both necessary and, I hope, wise to refrain from actually drawing such inferences. To draw an inference such as this would risk that my inclination to vote “yes” to the college’s rezoning request would be seen even by me as influenced by perceived threats rather than by the merits. This council, I am delighted to discover so early in the game, is not so easily intimidated, especially when the imagined repercussions of a long legal fight are so implausible. I find it untenable to believe that the college would sue. I am sure that if the council really felt threatened, we would choose to emulate our president and say with a swagger, “bring it on.”

I plan to vote in favor of granting this rezoning petition. I will do so, however, with a heavy heart because I continue to believe that the general welfare of the Oberlin community is harmed when taxable property is taken off the rolls without consideration of the impact to the school district, the ambulance district, the health district, the library and the city’s general fund. It is my view that we are being asked to down zone this property from an economically productive use as R-l to an economically unproductive use as a Planned Development.

In normal circumstances, property might be “down zoned” to create a park or, at the request of neighboring property owners, to protect them from allowed uses that might negatively affect their quality of life. In this case, we are being asked to down zone to allow a use that ironically allows negative impacts on the neighborhood. The amount of money involved, roughly $3,700, is relatively insignificant, but the principle to me is highly significant. It is a shame that when a business requests that more than 50 percent of its taxes be abated for a short period of time, it must win the approval of the school district, the city and the county. But when property is simply taken off the tax rolls forever, there is no need for such consultations and approvals.

However important this principle, I have determined that other, positive aspects of the planned development being proposed outweigh the application of this principle. Community leaders have indeed called upon the College to consider decreasing the number of students living in the community so that we might have a healthier mix of housing opportunities, and especially more opportunities for people of modest means to become home owners. We could certainly wish that Oberlin College had outlined a plan for how it would help ease a painful transition in the local housing market, but they have chosen instead a vague pledge of cooperation in the future. We could certainly wish that further concessions be made by the College to the concerns of neighbors, but we are not entitled as a council to revise their site plans.

In the very near future, I will ask the City Manager and the City Solicitor to see if we might create a policy for this city which upholds our rights to prevent further erosion
of our tax base.

Since I have indicated that I will vote yes on this rezoning request, I will now answer the question posed to me by a College official: “What do you want?”

What do I, and the citizens of Oberlin, want? We want you to get off the phone with your lawyers and get on the phone with the superintendent of schools to ask what impact she sees when the College acquires real estate and takes it off the rolls. Go on, perhaps, to ask about the consequences to the schools of your recent and pending moves in student housing. Revive the community-based housing collaborative you initiated some months ago but have let go dormant. Participate actively in this community’s Comprehensive Plan. Voluntarily, without having been coerced, offer to the city, the schools, the ambulance district, the library and the county a new policy that when you acquire real estate you will not take it off the tax rolls. Anynot all, but anyof these moves would have satisfied my concern, and probably most citizen’s concerns, that the College was removing taxable property from our rolls but was doing other specific and tangible things in acknowledgment of that fact. Not what it had done generally in the past, but what it would do specifically now.

Since we may be on the one hand close to resolving the rezoning matter but on the other hand appear to be at an impasse in our relations more generally, let me answer the question that has not been asked of this council but I wish had been: How do we want to resolve differences and work together? We want the ability to have good, direct, imaginative conversations about issues of mutual concern, not to exchange statements cleared by our attorneys. Substituting good lawyers for good community relations will not be good for either College or City. We need to settle differences as the governance and management entities that we are, not as prospective plaintiffs and defendants.

More generally what do I, and the citizens of Oberlin, want? We want your participation in this community as an equal partner, not your generosity as an elective and episodic benefactor. Several people and Mr. Moran’s letter in today’s News Tribune point out that the College has been relatively generous in its donations to this community. We want you to understand that we understand that the concept of generosity means that the decision to be of assistance or not is always at your sole discretion. If noblesse oblige is the construct, it is always the case that the nobles can decide to punish or reward the serfs. It is always the case that the nobles will never be seen to have given enough, because only they get to determine what is fair and just. Feudalism does not work particularly well for well-meaning nobles, either. We want to move out of the feudal era of College and community relations where the powerful side determines how much it thinks it can share, and into a modern era where fairness and responsibility are methodically and mutually defined. If we stay in the feudal era, it is inevitable that we will feud.

We want you to see that it is our water we drink, our roads that we travel, our open spaces we wish to protect and that the budget issues this community faces in its schools and in its municipal government are not problems of the schools or the city but are all of our problems. Similarly, we acknowledge that some problems that the College experiences are not problems only of the College but are our problems, and we hope we can help with these.

I sense here on this council only resignation and not enthusiasm for the approval of this rezoning request. I stated to Mr. Evans privately that I hoped to be part of a fullhearted endorsement from council so that feelings of ill will toward the College could dissipate and that we could begin a spirit of cooperation. Instead I see the collateral damage of a win-at-all-costs and a war-like strategy. Let us hope we can prevent more such behavior and damage. Let us pick up the pieces and go forward in a relationship defined by its healthy collaboration, its imaginativeness, its reliance on deeds and not words. That’s what I want.


 
 
   

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