Wednesday, April 14, 1999
State grant boosts hopes for new jail
BY STEVE KEMME
The Cincinnati Enquirer
HAMILTON — Butler County's hopes for a new jail received a major boost Tuesday when the state announced it will award the county a $10.3 million grant for construction.
“This cinches it,” County Commissioner Chuck Furmon said. “We'll definitely move forward now. We're ecstatic about that.”
Butler County's grant was the largest among the seven counties that received money from the $26.8 million state fund for jail construction and renovation, said Harry Hageman, chief of the Bureau of Adult Detention in the Ohio Department of Correction and Rehabilitation.
The grant will cover about one-third the cost of the jail, which will carry a price tag of approximately $32 million. The county has budgeted money to cover the remaining cost.
The state grant will allow the county to build the jail without raising taxes, Commissioner Mike Fox said.
County voters overwhelmingly rejected a proposed sales tax hike in November 1997 that would have been used to build a jail.
“This grant really puts the development of the jail in the fast lane,” Mr. Fox said. “The jail just moved from an "if' to a "when.'”
The county wants to build a jail to replace the one in downtown Hamilton that was built 38 years ago to hold 80 prisoners, but often has more than 180. The sheriff's department routinely releases prisoners early from jail in order to accept new inmates convicted of more serious crimes.
With the finances for a new jail in place, the biggest decision facing the commissioners is where to build the jail. The county's currently preferred site is county-owned property at the top of a hill near the Butler County Care Facility on Princeton Road in Hamilton.
But residents who live a half-mile from the site have vehemently objected to locating a jail there. They say the jail would cause safety problems and would lower their property values.
Commissioners are waiting for an environmental assessment of two other potential jail sites — a downtown Hamilton site bounded by Sycamore, Ludlow and Third streets and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and the former Deusher foundry site on Hanover Street, near Seventh Street in Hamilton.
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