BY TOM O'NEILL
The Cincinnati Enquirer
BATAVIA -- The Clermont County border along the Ohio River is pretty obvious. It's the others that aren't quite so clear.
So says County Engineer Carl Hartman, who on Monday asked commissioners to begin a dialogue with Clermont's neighboring counties: Warren, Brown and Clinton.
The goal: a resurvey that would conclusively establish where the county boundaries are drawn. The Clermont-Hamilton line is not in dispute.
"What's supposed to be a straight line is sometimes saw-toothed, sometimes jagged," Mr. Hartman said.
He said the estimated cost of between $153,000 and $178,000 could be split among the counties, based on the length of their boundary lines, with a low of $1,788 for Clinton and $89,400 for Clermont. The project, if approved, is expected to take about six months. The dilemma goes back more than a century, when in the 1880s commissioners of Clermont, Warren and Clinton counties traveled to Clermont's northeast corner to erect a stone monument where the three counties meet. Now, no one can find the monument -- along with many other boundary markers.
A boundary dispute on the Clermont-Warren line, in which a property owner is getting tax bills from both counties for property improvements, illustrates the need for a survey, Mr. Hartman said.
For some residents of Burdsall Road in Brown County's Perry Township, the border issue also cuts close to home.
"Their road frontage is in Clermont, but the back of the property or the house might be in Brown," Brown County Engineer's Office supervisor Penny Rose said. "They call here for a driveway permit, we send them to Clermont, then give them the house number in Brown." Ms. Rose called Clermont a good neighbor for many reasons, including the promptness with which Clermont road maintenance workers plow the Clermont roads on which Brown residents live.
