BY CINDY SCHROEDER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
COVINGTON -- The Kenton County property valuation administrator (PVA) Wednesday defended his real estate transactions involving a potential jail site, after they recently came under scrutiny by county officials. "My integrity, and the integrity of the PVA's office, has been shot to hell in the last couple of weeks, simply because of my involvement in a legitimate business deal dating back to 1994," said Mark Vogt, the 22-year Kenton County PVA.
Mr. Vogt, who is an elected official employed by the state, denied allegations by some county officials that he is involved in possible land speculation at a 106-acre site off Webster Road in Independence that he is in the process of buying.
June 20, Kenton County Judge-executive Rodney "Biz" Cain publicly announced that he favored the Webster Road site for a county jail, after earlier describing it as one of several possible locations for a new jail.
The Webster Road site includes 64 acres of CSX Railroad property, and a separate 42-acre parcel that Mr. Vogt is under contract to buy, contingent on his ability to close on the railroad property. Mr. Vogt declined to say Wednesday how much he is paying for the railroad property. He added it will become public record when the deal is final and the deed is recorded.
June 25, Mr. Cain called reporters to express concerns about possible land speculation involving the Webster Road site.
Mr. Cain said then that he had just learned of a contract between Mr. Vogt and an Elsmere company that wanted to buy the 106 acres and put a mobile home park there.
Kenton County's judge-executive and other county officials questioned a clause in the June 12 contract that specified that if the property sold for more than $600,000, the two parties would split the difference.
Michael Sketch, Mr. Vogt's lawyer, said the clause was inserted at the insistence of the buyer, SSK Co., to show that the buyer had a legitimate use for the site, and did not intend to immediately resell it at a profit, after Mr. Vogt had spent several years assembling the property.
"It was simply done as a good-faith gesture on SSK's part," Mr. Sketch said.
Mr. Vogt also said he made no attempt to hide his intentions to acquire the property and sell it to a developer when he included it among several suggested jail sites in a conversation with two top county officials last spring.
Mr. Vogt said he broached the subject, when Mr. Cain and Deputy Judge-executive George Neack asked him for information on possible jail sites.
On another issue, Mr. Cain and Mr. Neack had asked last week why the value of the two parcels making up the Webster Road site had been so much lower May 21, when they checked it as a possible jail site, than on June 26, when The Cincinnati Enquirer -->sought property records on the site.
Mr. Vogt said the value of two parcels that make up the Webster Road site rose by more than $500,000 after a countywide review of agricultural properties showed that the properties were no longer being used for agricultural purposes, and should be assessed at the higher residential rate.
The review was prompted after Kentucky adopted a standard classification method for agricultural properties, instead of the "hit-or-miss" methods applied by individual counties in the past, Mr. Vogt said. John V. Simkonis, an administrative assistant in the Kenton County PVA's office, said a field review of 1,000 Kenton County agricultural properties resulted in 110 agricultural parcels being reclassified as residential from January through June of this year.
Because of the scope of the review, information on some of those parcels was only recently entered into county computers, Mr. Vogt said.
Mr. Vogt said he and a friend first tried to buy 64-acre CSX Railroad property off Webster Road in 1994, with the idea of building homes for themselves. However, both lost interest after an electrical line easement went through the property about a year later.
Two years later, after seeing residential development occur on similar hilly, wooded sites in Kenton County, Mr. Vogt said he resumed efforts to acquire the railroad property, as well as a 42-acre parcel bordering it, with the idea of eventually developing the entire 106 acres.
