Builders warn against Darby housing levy

The Columbus Dispatch
By Mike Ferenchik
Saturday, October 6, 2007

A community-development authority that would tax new homeowners could quash demand for housing near Big Darby Creek, the head of a builders' group says.
A working group of the Big Darby Accord is finalizing ways to pay for public improvements and protect the Darby, a state and national scenic waterway. The accord developed last year calls for creating a community-development authority that could tax property owners up to 10 mills for larger housing developments in the Franklin County section of the Big Darby watershed.
Ten mills would cost $306.50 a year per $100,000 of house value. The money would be used to buy land to preserve open space and to put in such things as roads and sewers.
Although the accord says "up to 10 mills," Jim Hilz, executive director of the Building Industry Association of Central Ohio, has heard that the working group is expecting to levy the full amount.
"How did this move from 'possible sources of funding' to 'this is what it is?' " Hilz wrote the 10 accord governments recently.
He said that amount could stymie home builders and the proposed town center that would concentrate up to 5,000 houses off W. Broad Street in what is now Prairie and Brown townships.
"The whole idea of a town center is to allow development to take place at higher densities while protecting land close to the Darby," Hilz said this week.
Those working with the accord say they haven't decided how large the millage will be or how big a development needs to be to be part of a development authority.
Recently, the owners of 203 acres along W. Broad between Alton and Galloway roads, who plan to build homes there, said they will be creating a community-development authority that will assess 10 mills, said Susan Ashbrook, who is Columbus' environmental steward and a member of the Darby working group. Final approval would have to come from the Columbus City Council.
But Jim Schimmer, Franklin County's economic-development and planning director, said 10 mills have not been set in stone for the entire Darby watershed.
"We have to make sure we have a mechanism that works for everybody," said Schimmer, also a member of the working group.
In his letter, Hilz referred to the community-development authority in New Albany, which now assesses 5 mills to property owners to pay off bonds that built a new high school, roads and a new fire station. It collected 9.75 mills when it was set up in 1992.
Hilz said homeowners in New Albany can afford to pay the extra millage, but he wonders if the market in the Darby watershed can bear that.
"You have to be careful adding those costs on now (when the housing market is soft), pricing everything out of the market," he said.
Coleman's spokesman, Mike Brown, said Hilz is overreacting.
"We're not going to sell out the goals of the Darby Accord because of short-term market conditions," Brown said.