There is a direct connection between our community leisure trails and our New Albany International Business Park.
Since walking paths were identified as the No. 1 recreational need in the 1998 New Albany Strategic Plan, our community trail system has grown to 32 miles – with an additional 70 miles of sidewalks – that link our Village Center, neighborhoods and the business park itself.
Major recent trail additions include:
-Completion of the Dublin-Granville Road trail from the Church of the Resurrection to Morgan Road;
-Installation of a solar-powered walk sign on Dublin-Granville near the Jeanne B. McCoy Community Center for the Arts, providing another safe connection from the school campus to the Market Square trail over Rocky Fork Creek.
-Completion of the Central College Road bridge and trails along Central College that now offer nearly three miles of trail connecting Tidewater east of U.S. Rt. 62 to the New Albany Links subdivision, New Albany Condit Road and Giant Eagle Plaza outside city limits;
-Completion of the Thompson Road bridge connecting Thompson Park to New Albany; and
-Expansion of the Reynoldsburg-New Albany trail from Hawksmoor to Brandon.
Improvements in 2015 include completion of the Dublin-Granville trail from Mead Way to Morgan, while a 2016 improvement includes the High Street trail from Kardules to Chatham Green. These two connections play a key role in providing direct access to the school district for a major segment of school children.
The Mead Way to Morgan section will provide a direct link north of Dublin-Granville for Hampstead area residents to the school campus from Mead Way. The Kardules to Chatham Green section on High Street will connect nearly every subdivision north of state Rt. 161 to the school campus via the Central College trail.
Better yet, these two connections will occur because of our work with the school district and our successful Safe Routes to Schools grant applications.
Additionally, the city is in the process of engineering a traffic signal at the North High Street and Chatham Green Drive intersection using old mastheads from the Market and Main intersection. However, the time frame for completion is the 2015-16 school year.
Some, particularly those new to the community from out of state, may not be aware that in Ohio, the city and school district are separate government entities with separate responsibilities, funded by separate revenue streams. Still, the city supports our schools through different programs, services and revenue sharing.
For example, the city pays for 100 percent of the school resource officer and D.A.R.E. programs, devoting two full-time officers for this work. The city also provides fiber optic infrastructure connections to the school campus from the state of Ohio’s fiber network, linking the school campus to universities and research institutions around the world.
With Rocky Fork Metro Park opening next year, the city is planning to add a trail section along Walnut Street from Dean Farm to Bevelhymer. This will be the first step toward creating direct access from northern New Albany subdivisions to the new Metro Park.
Speaking of the Metro Park, City Council partnered with Franklin County Metro Parks and the city of Columbus to grow the park through additional land purchases. Council also partnered on the dog park within the Metro Park, which Metro Parks staff will manage and maintain.
So what does our business park have to do with our trail system? If money is the bottom line, in this case, the money source is income tax revenues.
By and large, trail extensions connecting our Village Center to neighborhoods and the business park are funded by income taxes paid by the roughly 13,000 employees who work within New Albany. Income taxes are by far the city’s main revenue source, constituting 80 percent of the general fund budget, which pays for leisure trails, street, water and sewer maintenance, and basic services such as police protection, leaf collection and snow removal.
The city’s reliance on income taxes to provide services is why job creation is paramount to our community’s long-term health. The vast majority of working New Albany residents, who work in Columbus or other central Ohio suburbs, pay nothing in income taxes to New Albany because income taxes paid by residents to other communities stay in those communities. But everyone who works in New Albany pays income taxes to the city of New Albany, no matter where they live.
For those residents who work and live here, thank you very much!
This reliance on job creation, and the income taxes those jobs produce, is all the more important considering the city receives only 2 percent of residential property taxes. It may be hard to believe, but the city receives less property tax revenues from New Albany residents than the Columbus Metropolitan Library and Eastland Joint Vocational School.
“We understand that trails not only create recreational opportunities, they also are viable alternative transportation choices for our students and those who work in our business park,” says City Manager Joe Stefanov. “Our ability to continue to expand our trails is directly linked to the income tax revenues we produce within our borders.”
Scott McAfee is a contributing writer and public information officer for the city of New Albany. Feedback welcome at ssole@cityscenemediagroup.com.
