This was originally posted on our website in 2010, but it is worth reminding ourselves that we are being overcharged for our healthcare. The Affordable Care Act begins to address this and that is one reason why the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects lower deficits over the next few years.

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From National Geographic:

City Council incumbent candidates Frank Ciotola's and Wade Steen's campaign flyers are proclaiming how they got Kingsdale done.

"With Linda Mauger and Don Leach both leaving Council, we need moderates to replace them --- members who will put the people's business first. We think Mike Schadek and Debbie Johnson are those two candidates." --- UAPA Executive Cmte

But who really negotiated on behalf of Upper Arlington constituents for the best deal with developers? Who had the backbone to stand up and get the best deal for Upper Arlington?

As it turns out, Ciotola and Steen are two of the least deserving of all the praise they are heaping on themselves.

The market idealogues vs. the pragmatists

We heard it 100 times during the Kingsdale debate from Council's right-wing block --- "let the market dictate what goes in at Kingsdale". In this Columbus Dispatch story entitled 'Big-box approach OK'd for Kingsdale', Ciotola thought that UA was negotiating too aggressively on Regency's big box Target store proposal:

"I think municipalities are getting overzealous in dictating what the mix of development is instead of letting the market dictate," he said.

If UA had solely relied on market forces, as Ciotola suggests, Jacksonville, Fla.-based Regency would have "dictated" our future and we'd likely have a big box Target store or something like it at Kingsdale today.

A view of the Continental's proposed Kingsdale site from Tremont Road. Many of us breathed a sign of relief when Regency failed in their bid to build a big box Target store at Kingsdale. If Ciotola had been in charge of the negotiation, the market would have "dictated" the outcome and UA would likely have a Target store at Kingsdale!

And thanks to Council's moderate, pragmatic majority we will have something much better than Steen or Ciotola were willing to settle for.

The audacity of negotiation

Instead of the passive role of government that Ciotola recommended, the city staff and other Council members embraced their responsibility to the community to get the best deal for UA.

By effectively tempering market forces with the needs of the community as described in the Master Plan they brokered a Kingsdale compromise has been well received throughout our community.

The role of government

At the heart of the Kingsdale debate was how active and engaged City government should be in making economic development decisions.

"Upper Arlington has neighborhood schools and does not bus children to school. The result of neighborhood schools and parents unwilling to let their children walk to school has led to traffic issues on streets adjacent to schools in both morning and afternoon hours...

In reality, very few children should need to be driven to school since the majority live within a 10-minute walk or a short bike ride (if facilities existed) of their neighborhood school."

--- UA Transportation Plan

Upper Arlington currently has sidewalks along approximately only 20 percent of its roadway. This poses a significant safety risk for everybody that travels by foot, by bicycle, by car or public transportation. We need complete streets in UA with curbs, gutters and sidewalks.

In UA we inherited a city with no plan for sidewalks, and until recently there never has been a consistent plan to address this issue.

Now UA has a modest and reasonable Sidewalk Policy on the books to build sidewalks along UA's busiest streets:

When rebuilding an arterial or collector street, the City will look at the feasibility of adding a sidewalk on at least one side of the street.

But conservatives Ciotola and Steen have have fought this common sense and generally well-received approach. In 2007 Frank Ciotola, Tim Rankin and Wade Steen tried to remove the money to build sidewalks along Kenny Road. Their amendment failed:

• Voting to kill the sidewalk funding: Ciotola, Rankin, Steen
• Voting to preserve the sidewalk funding: Krauss, Leach, Mauger, Seidel

And again this year, Ciotola and Steen opposed the Sidewalk Policy, but decided not to offer an amendment to remove sidewalks from the Kenny Road rehab project.

"...However, I don't think I would getting support on that, knowing the past voting history of Council, so I will not offer up an amendment [to remove sidewalks from the Ordinance]."

--- Frank Ciotola, July 13, 2009, UA City Council Meeting Minutes

One of several photos submitted to City Council showing children playing on streets with no sidewalks with on-coming traffic. From the April 23, 2007 UA City Council minutes.

Besides offering a safer, walkable community, sidewalks make economic sense, too. The residents on Glenn Avenue have even created their own website promoting sidewalks in their neighborhood near Barrington school. Here's one of many interesting tidbits gleaned from their site:

People are willing to pay more to live in walkable communities. The Urban Land Institute compared four new urban communities (those built within existing urban settings) with their surrounding competitors and found that people spent an average of $20,189 more to live in pedestrian-friendly new urban communities. (Valuing the New Urbanism, 1999). More recent studies show similar results.