By Denise Smith Amos
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Cincinnati Public Schools could use the power of eminent domain to force property owners to sell land for new schools.

The Board of Education Monday night voted unanimously to begin legal proceedings, if necessary, to acquire land in Over-the-Rhine and Price Hill.

The Over-the-Rhine property is mostly a parking lot bordered by 12th, Elm and Race streets, and Central Parkway. The Price Hill properties are small tracts of vacant land along Glenway Avenue.

The board hopes it won't have to resort to eminent domain, said board member Harriet Russell.

Eminent domain gives government the right to take private property at a price set by a court. CPS, which is building 35 new schools and renovating 31 others, has so far acquired land by reaching agreements with property owners.

But the owners of the Over-the-Rhine property in the Washington Park area want more than CPS is willing to pay, said Janet Walsh, a CPS spokeswoman.

CPS says the land is worth $5.2 million.

CPS officials say the Glenway tracts are worth $18,000 total and are owned by Stewart Road Development Co. Inc. and homeowners Mary E. Finch, Lucille Elizabeth Brown, Elizabeth A. Bambach, Anna C. Ellis and John J. Schubert.

Finch is 84 and partially disabled. She lives next door to the lot that the school system wants. She uses it for parking, and it leads to the home she owns and has lived in since 1946.

Her son, John Finch, said state workers who handle his mother's Medicaid case and finances warned him that if she sells her property and makes more than $1,300 in cash, she'll no longer be eligible for Medicaid.

CPS officials said Finch's lot is worth $5,000.

Another landowner, Lucille Brown, 88, lives next to the tract that CPS values at $5,000. She believes CPS wants her home.

"I'm still alive," she said. "I'm going to live in my house until I fail. I have no place to go, no relatives. I'm 88. ... You think I'm going to sell my house?"

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E-mail damos@enquirer.com