BY KATHLEEN HILLENMEYER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
MASON -- City council has pulled the plug on talks with Deerfield Township to save their fire department until township leaders repeal a threat to leave the joint fire district.
Hopes for an agreement faded Thursday, after a Wednesday night vote by Mason council to reject terms of a tentative deal until Deerfield trustees rescind their Dec. 29 resolution to withdraw from the fire company.
"We were looking for a way to continue negotiations," trustees President Larry Backus said Thursday. "But I think they effectively killed it last night."
City council's 4-2 vote, with one abstention, marked a change in the tide for some members who are engaged in private meetings with trustees to outline terms under which the governments might coexist peacefully. The adversarial relationship, fueled by recent city annexations of township land, prompted the trustees' move to split the Mason-Deerfield Joint Fire District Sept. 30 if the partners could not mend fences.
"The joint fire district is the right thing to do," said Councilman John McCurley, one of a few members active in recent talks with trustees. "(But) we're being backed into a corner. We're tired of reacting to negotiations."
At stake is the future of 140 firefighters and emergency medical technicians who provide fire protection and life squad services to 35,000 residents in the township and city.
With 19,000 citizens to serve, Deerfield trustees said, they could not afford to continue losing commercial annexations to the city if their tax base was to finance emergency services.
Rather than tie up annexations in court (as with Paramount's Kings Island), trustees offered not to fight annexations where they could not provide water and sewer services. In return, trustees asked Mason to share revenues with them on future annexations (channeling property taxes to the township while the city kept income taxes) and to agree not to solicit annexations from Deerfield property owners.
Though a council minority was receptive to such concessions, others criticized Deerfield for trying to weaken Mason's authority. "By signing this agreement, we're going to give away what we already have under the Ohio Revised Code," Vice Mayor Dick Staten said. "It would give away the potential for the city to grow in the future, and I can't support it."
Mason also voted Wednesday to limit further negotiations to meetings of the full council and board of trustees.
Trustees' patience with talks also had worn thin by Thursday. "This (deal) was not a legal contract," Mr. Backus said. "It was only a basis to re-establish good relationships. They were trying to get a document that left the door wide open for continued aggressive annexation."
Firefighters left in limbo for three months declined to comment Thursday. Worried about their jobs if the district splits, some said they didn't want to take sides. But all echoed a slogan from T-shirts protesting the tug-of-war: "Fires kill. So do politics."
