Chillicothe & Ross County — Mayor Luke Feeney partly responded to the bill that County Auditor Jeff Lehner sent to the city.
Apologies for my delayed reporting – I’ve had odd medical problems with my metabolism and diabetes, and my raw reporting was a complicated three-way story that needed more wits to write up than I could find until now.
In a news conference the morning of September 11th, Lehner pointed out that the city agreed to pay $58 per inmate per day when the Ross County Law Enforcement Center was finished in 1991.
But the city went into financial hard times in 2010 and the county allowed the city to stop making payments. Though the city financially recovered a couple years afterward, it never restarted payments.
Lehner said after he took office this spring, he found the inactive payment situation and notified the city of it as the first start of a discussion on it.
After the Chillicothe council session September 11th, I asked Mayor Luke Feeney for his position.
He basically said such agreements are contracts between the governments, with the mayor representing the city. Feeney said since this contract has been brought to light, he wants to resolve it along with any others that might be outdated or unenforced and that need to be dealt with.
Both Feeney and Lehner point out that the jail agreement – and even non-agreement – happened before pretty much any current office-holders were involved, so that makes the situation even messier.
In his after-council briefing to Kevin Coleman September 11th, Mayor Luke Feeney also mentions concerns over the proposed Chipotle restaurant at Sant Andrews Boulevard and Western Avenue, and the city’s possible timeline to consolidate offices into the “Pepsi Building.”
