2020 – Year in review

  • Dayton Parkway Interchange
    • The parkway construction is well underway and still scheduled to be completed by next fall. While I wasn't happy with some aspects of it, it will be an attraction for businesses and be another avenue for tax reduction.
  • New NW and NE Wells
    • Not cheap, about $1.5M each, but now both water systems have a backup (and a volume boost if needed by the fire department).
  • French Lake Industrial Center
    • A LOT of planning has gone into this project.  It's set up and designed to bring in a significant amount of business. Our city staff did a LOT of work to help make this happen.
  • Builder's Association v. City of Dayton
    • It's never good to be on the losing end of a lawsuit. This was especially frustrating because in my opinion, the city and council didn't play fair and got appropriately reprimanded for it.
  • Phase 1 Elsie Stevens Park Improvements
    • This park is meant to be an event park and the enhancements it received will go a long way toward that goal. These enhancements were entirely paid for through development park fees (not tax dollars).
  • Phase 1 River Hills Park
    • A good amount of work was started on this park and will continue into next summer. This park had a lot of input from the community and a good amount of that input ended up in the final result. This should become a model for how we work on projects in the future.
  • Trails
    • Trail crossing at Jonquil Lane (it's been in the comp plan forever).
    • Trail crossing on Pineview.
    • Trail crossing at Rush Creek Parkway.
    • Underpass at Elsie Stephens Park to the River Hills Park (brought to you by M/I Homes).
  • Pineview - Oakview - 121 Rebuild
    • Both of these roads were overdue to be rebuilt. The improvements look great!
    • The problem is... we spent $4M on a $2.5M dollar problem.
    • And yes, we will look at what we can do with the lighting.
  • Comprehensive Plan
    • The Comprehensive Plan can be one of the most dangerous documents to your property (and well being). It allows the CITY to decide what the best use is for your property. IF the city decides the best use of your property is a McDonalds, and you just want to spend the rest of your life out on the porch, sipping some coffee, and enjoying life... be prepare to be wacked with an assessment that'll curl your toes. Or maybe it puts a road right through your kitchen.
    • Bottom line? Be ON the committee that updates the comp plan and push to protect yourself.
  • Magnus Veterans Foundation, Graco, Zeigler Cat, and the River Hills Underpass
    • Excellent additions to our city. The best part? The city got out of the way and let them happen...
  • Firestation 1 and 2 Upgrades
    • These stations are roughly 40 years old and needed a number of improvements / repairs and possibly more in the future.
  • North Zanzibar
    • It got paved. The worst dirt road in the county (our own mud run every spring) and a few years back the city put a public works and police station on it. So, it had to get paved. That cost was NOT included (and it should have been) when the building cost was estimated.
  • Cares Act
    • I'm not a fan of the federal government handing out money, but one way or another it was going out so we distributed it to various businesses and helped reduce some of the internet access costs to residents.
  • Small Business Assistance Grant
  • Started Ground Work on Changing the 1 in 40 Ordinance
    • This ordinance essentially only allows developers to purchase land because very few of us can afford to purchase 40 acres to put a house on. Changing this to 1 in 10 or if possible 1 in 5 would allow people to purchase practical parcels of land to build on. The previous council got SO close to completing this, but there are still a few details to fill in. Hopefully we'll get this in place soon. If we hope to diversify our density, we need this.
  • Residential Development
    • Another banner year (no, I don't consider that a good thing). We have a mechanism to limit growth year to year but I suspect it'll need some work.
  • Budget Levy
    • I voted for the 2021 tax levy only because it was the first year in a long time where the tax levy increase was close to the build rate. I voted against the 2020 tax levy because it was significantly higher than the build rate! (23% vs. 14%).
    • Here's a graph indicating ALL taxes per person. Can you tell which year is the election year?

Dayton Taxes (all) per person
Dayton Taxes (all) per person