Marengo residents voice concern over use of Highland West building

By Randa Wag­ner
Will it be a school, gym, day care, senior cen­ter or sold to the high­est bid­der? The for­mer High­land West Ele­men­tary School in Marengo is as unoc­cu­pied and unde­vel­oped as it was when it was sold late last fall to Ross Porter dba Wal­nut Park LLC.
It was stand­ing room only at Thurs­day night’s Marengo Vil­lage Coun­cil meet­ing as local res­i­dents attended to voice con­cerns over Tri-State Youth Academy’s inter­est in the prop­erty. The acad­emy is cur­rently using the Buck­horn prop­erty off SR 314 south of Chester­ville, but their con­tract is up and Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Rocky Hall is scout­ing for a new loca­tion. He gave a pre­sen­ta­tion to High­land school board mem­bers early last Octo­ber before the High­land West build­ing was sold.
Before Hall could address the coun­cil, Joe Porter spoke with coun­cil mem­bers on behalf of his son Ross, who could not attend that evening.
Ross was request­ing a split of the prop­erty (large and the small build­ing) so he can start con­struc­tion on the small build­ing. (There are cur­rently two parcels in the prop­erty).
“My biggest con­cern in rela­tion to split­ting the prop­erty — before you decide what you’re going to do with it — is this prop­erty is zoned one way at the present time,” said Vil­lage Solic­i­tor Robert Weston. “The biggest prob­lem in a rezon­ing sit­u­a­tion is cre­at­ing ‘spot’ zon­ing, If you split this prop­erty now, it’s going to be very dif­fi­cult to zone the two prop­er­ties dif­fer­ently.”
Weston explained that’s two dif­fer­ent kinds of zon­ing side by side in the mid­dle of an area that’s res­i­den­tial.
“Per­haps you need to decide what’s hap­pen­ing with the entire prop­erty before you start split­ting it,” Weston said.
“With­out fur­ther research with the zon­ing Ross pre­sented to you folks, it’s unsure what can be done there,” Porter main­tained. “He’s look­ing at options with fit­ness facil­i­ties, which doesn’t fit in with P-1, how­ever the small build­ing we’re look­ing at for early child­hood devel­op­ment fits under the P-1. We’re doing the split to do financ­ing on the small build­ing then move on to the big build­ing.”
“You can’t expect coun­cil to say yes, we’ll change the zon­ing, when they don’t know what’s going in there,” Weston said. “It’s get­ting the cart ahead of the horse.”
“We’re just talk­ing about a split for the small build­ing and not chang­ing any zon­ing at this point,” Porter replied. “So when you change that zon­ing, you’ll change it just on ‘that’ build­ing and leave the other alone.”
“It makes it that much harder to rezone – that’s ‘spot zon­ing,’” Weston replied. “Maybe you ought to decide what’s going to be done with the whole prop­erty before you ask us to split it.”
“Well there’s some ideas in the let­ters we pre­sented to you,” Porter coun­tered.
“Not ‘some’ ideas,” Weston said. “If you buy a piece of prop­erty, it’s the idea you’re going to use for the prop­erty.”
“Ideas change from time to time when you buy a build­ing,” said Porter. “You can’t just say, ‘I’m going to use it all for this.’ Other ideas come in. We thought the split would help with financ­ing and we could move on with the con­struc­tion (entry­way and cos­metic work).”
Weston advised Porter to hire an attor­ney who under­stands the zon­ing and approaches it in a sys­tem­atic way. “It’s not our job to make your idea fit to our zon­ing.”
Another point of con­tention was the unpaid sewer bill on the prop­erty. Mayor Robert Gale said Porter hasn’t paid any­thing toward the sewer bill.
“We’re ask­ing for two things,” Joe Porter said. “A recal­cu­la­tion (on the sewer bill) and an abate­ment until we get the prop­erty up and run­ning.”
“We don’t do it for any­body else,” Mayor Gale said. “I’ve got a vacant lot I’ve been pay­ing on ever since they put it (the sewer line) in.”
Sewer rates in Marengo are cal­cu­lated by units.
“When the sys­tem was designed, none of these small vil­lages in the county had cen­tral water,” said coun­cil mem­ber Earl Ben­nett. “The EPA has a chart of equiv­a­lent dwelling units. One dwelling with one fam­ily was set at one unit. Other types of uses were set in other ways, such as the num­ber of stu­dents in an ele­men­tary school, junior high or high school. The sys­tem was sized: the size of the equip­ment, lines and new plant was based upon the need to ser­vice so many EDUs. Restau­rants might be eight units; an office might be five.”
If the pur­pose of the build­ing changes, do the EDUs change?
No. “We financed for thirty years based on ‘x’ num­ber of units to make that pay­ment,” Weston said. “So it didn’t change. It wasn’t by choice, it was dic­tated by the EPA. We went by their chart. If we cut you from 22 units to 4 units, we don’t have enough money to pay our bill. That’s the way it was set up, and when you bought the build­ing, you assumed that respon­si­bil­ity. If you don’t pay your bill. We’re short of money to pay our bill to the bank for the sewer sys­tem. If we cut your bill in half, we’re short 11 units x $33.50.”
“Until we repay the loan to the Ohio Water Devel­op­ment author­ity, we need that much money,” Ben­nett said. “If Mr. Porter wants a reduc­tion (in his EDUs) my sug­ges­tion is he go to the Ohio Water Devel­op­ment author­ity and see if they will reduce our loan by that amount.”
Because a res­o­lu­tion could not be reached, the issue of the sewer rate and abate­ment of the billing was tabled for a future meet­ing.
“I don’t think we should do busi­ness with you til this (bill) is paid up,” Mayor Gale told Porter.
“Well, we were try­ing to get this worked out a cou­ple of months ago,” Porter responded.
“But you’re not pay­ing your sewer bill now,” Gale said. “Ross told us he wasn’t going to pay it – ever.”
“Well, you’ve got to work things out even­tu­ally.” Porter said.
Tri-State Youth Acad­emy Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Rocky Hall addressed coun­cil and the com­mu­nity about pos­si­bly relo­cat­ing to the High­land West build­ing. Tri-State Youth Acad­emy is a licensed res­i­den­tial treat­ment pro­gram for boys ages 10–17. Rev­enue to sup­port the for-profit comes from per diems paid by the coun­ties the youths come from.
Hall explained the 32 boys that are res­i­dents at Tri-State are a step above fos­ter care; youths from bro­ken homes in a five-stage pro­gram that lasts from 6–18 months. Typ­i­cal issues the youths expe­ri­enced before com­ing into the pro­gram are anger man­age­ment, sex­ual, phys­i­cal and emo­tional abuse, drug and alco­hol abuse, lack of self esteem and good par­ent­ing, and petty crime.
Res­i­dents’ main con­cerns were over safety and secu­rity of their own chil­dren if they acad­emy moves into town. Hall insisted the youths are not a threat or haz­ards, the facil­ity is well staffed and the youths always mon­i­tored. He said he wouldn’t have his own wife, rel­a­tives and grand­chil­dren work­ing and liv­ing on the cam­pus if the youths were dan­ger­ous.
“We are very staff secure,” Hall said. “Our staff to stu­dent ratio is 1:4 dur­ing wak­ing hours.” He described the activ­i­ties and com­mu­nity ser­vices the youth pro­vided in the two pro­grams he pre­vi­ously directed in Ken­tucky, claim­ing they ‘won the com­mu­ni­ties over.”
The issue of mov­ing the group from a spa­cious 300-acre coun­try set­ting to a con­fined area in town was a con­cern for res­i­dents. Hall said the acad­emy plans activ­i­ties and trips for the youths, and their lives are very struc­tured attend­ing classes, coun­sel­ing ses­sion, doing chores and main­te­nance work. Hall assured res­i­dents they would never see a youth out­side with­out super­vi­sion.
After an exten­sive ques­tion and answer ses­sion, Hall invited any­one who is inter­ested to visit the facil­ity and tour their cur­rent loca­tion on the Buck­horn prop­erty. Tri_State is also con­sid­er­ing another town in their search for a new loca­tion.
After Hall’s pre­sen­ta­tion, most res­i­dents left the meet­ing hall and coun­cil pro­ceeded with reg­u­lar business.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Mar 14 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.