Tuesday, December 07, 1999
Company pressure kills Elsmere jail proposal
BY JANE PRENDERGAST
The Cincinnati Enquirer
COVINGTON — Mounting economic pressure helped kill plans to build the new Kenton County Jail in Elsmere.
Judge-executive Dick Murgatroyd announced Monday that the fiscal court will drop the Elsmere site, which was selected in September. The decision should be final at its meeting tonight, when commissioners vote to end their option on the property off New Buffington Road.
“This is a most difficult decision for the court,” Mr. Murgatroyd said, “but it is made necessary by recent developments, which clearly indicate that the development of this site will have a negative economic impact on the city of Elsmere and the citizens of Kenton County.”
After months of public protest, the final blows that killed the proposed site came when:
• Mazak Corp. an Elsmere machine tool company, threatened to move its $22 million expansion elsewhere.
• Cosmair Inc., a subsidiary of the L'Oreal cosmetics giant, threatened to moved its 106-job expansion project elsewhere.
: The search for a new site starts next month. Mr. Murgatroyd did promise, however, that three former options will not be reconsidered — sites on Webster and Richardson roads and on the 3L Highway.
Elsmere Councilwoman Betty Wehner applauded the fiscal court's decision, calling it a wonderful Christmas present for her city. Lawyer Phil Taliaferro, who represented several Elsmere residents who wanted to join a lawsuit against the county over the site, called the decision a “win-win situation.”
Cost also was a factor, the judge-executive said. New calculations show several cities would spend more for their police departments to cart prisoners from the proposed jail to the Covington courthouse. The total transportation increase for all cities would amount to nearly $187,000 a year. Covington would bear more than $74,000 of that.
The change ends months of anti-jail campaigning by residents near the site, who alleged political favoritism led officials to pick Elsmere over the more heavily Republican, wealthier Edgewood.
At the end of his statement, Mr. Murgatroyd asked for patience.
“As we go forth from this time and place, the decisions this court will have to make will be increasingly more difficult, and we are certain to make judgment calls with which others may disagree,” the judge-executive said. “We are human.”
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