By Steve Kemme
The Cincinnati Enquirer

HAMILTON - Joyce Harper, who suffers from diabetes and asthma, depends on Butler County public transit for her frequent medical trips and for other errands.

But she'll soon have to find another way to get around.

The failure of the quarter-percent sales tax increase for the Butler County Regional Transit Authority at Tuesday's election means the transit system - called The Blast - will go out of business by the end of the year.

"I use the RTA three or four times a week," said Miss Harper, a 48-year-old Hamilton resident. "I don't know what I'm going to do. This has put a lot of people in a bad situation."

The five-year sales tax increase would have generated $8 million a year and would have enabled the Transit Authority to restore some of the cuts in services that funding problems have forced in the past two years. This was the agency's third tax-increase defeat in two years.

In a somber meeting Wednesday, the Transit Authority Board decided to end its bus services on Dec. 20.

"There's no other option," said Ken Reed, general manager of the Transit Authority.

The agency's contract with the Southwestern Ohio Regional Transit Authority (SORTA) that provides express Metro bus service from park-and-ride lots at West Chester Township and Fairfield to downtown Cincinnati will end Dec. 31. West Chester and Fairfield will have to arrange with SORTA for that service to continue.

About 50 employees will be laid off at the end of the year, with two weeks' severance pay, an $800 bonus and three months of health benefits.

Mr. Reed and Sterling Uhler, Transit Authority president, praised the employees for their professionalism and dedication under extremely stressful circumstances. Every employee showed up for work Wednesday, the day after voters rejected the higher sales tax, 52,285 to 32,721.

Blast driver Dave Kelhoffer said he and his colleagues are more concerned about their riders than about themselves.

"Many of them are on set incomes," he said. "They can't afford cabs. They're losing their independence."

Another casualty of Tuesday's election is the Butler County Mental Health Board, whose five-year, 1-mill levy was defeated, 45,612 to 39,514. The levy would have allowed the agency to restore $1.2 million cuts in services made in October because of declining federal and state funds and no levy increase in 17 years.

Instead, the Mental Health Board will be cutting more services, said John Staup, the board's executive director.

E-mail skemme@enquirer.com