By Patricia A. Scheyer
NKyTribune reporter
Kenton County clerk Gabrielle Summe came to the monthly meeting of the Kenton County mayors Saturday to bring up a problem that is troubling her.
“In a presidential election year everything is way delayed,” said Summe. “The Secretary of State doesn’t certify the ballot until September 6. There is a lot on the ballot — it will be front and back.”
She said the constitutional amendments will be hard for people to understand, so her office has been trying to do an advertising campaign in a better way, to help people understand.
In the meantime, the state board of elections has been working on their own GIS mapping system to allow a more public access for people to find out where their precinct is, and they offered to send their map overlay to Kenton County. Summe asked if Kenton County could send them their map overlay believing it to be a more accurate mapping, but in doing so a problem was discovered.
“It came to light, when we were looking at it, that we have a lot of cities with houses that are cut by city lines,” Summe explained. “In the rule of the PVA if a house sits on between two cities, it’s not judged by the percentage of where the house sits by the PVA, it is where that person sleeps at night where it’s usually coded to be taxed. If there is nothing in any statute that says that’s the way it is, then my perception is that wherever they’re taxed is where coding for purposes of voting should be drawn.”
She used Robin Lane in Villa Hills/Crescent Springs as an example, saying that about 20 houses are cut down the middle. The fact that one building is taxed by one city and another building is in another city is confusing. She asked PDS Director Sharmili Reddy, could that city’s borders just incorporate the whole property so there is no question of where the person sleeps?
Summe cited another example in another county, where a person’s property is cut in half, his property is in one city and his house is in another. He wants to run for mayor. Another resident on that street has a fourth of his house in one city and the rest in another city, and he also wants to run for mayor. So they are having a legal challenge over exactly how much of their property a person has to have in the city to be able to run for mayor.
“I’m just trying to find a better resolution,” she said. “That’s kind of what I was coming to see you about, not that you guys could decide today, but to bring that issue to light, and hopefully we could work together to find a solution that is cleaner and clearer.”
Independence Mayor Chris Reinersman tried to clarify her request, asking if when the city annexes a parcel, they should annex whole properties together in order to clean things up, and Summe said yes, that is what she is asking, because there is no reason not to.
Reinersman said that would be great except that annexation is based on a legal description that identifies exactly what is within the borders. He thought if there were outliers they would have to come separately to the city to request annexation. Two years ago the Kentucky legislature enacted a law that says no property can be annexed without permission by the owner.
Summe says it makes it so confusing for the voters when someone else draws the lines for the cities, and then the residents are sent notification of where they should vote. So what happens many times is that they come in with their tax bills and say “we want to vote for this because this is where we pay taxes.” She stated that “our lines don’t match their lines.”
Summe also explained that if a property had an owner that picked one city, for instance, Independence, that would lead to a precinct that had only one person in it and because of that their vote would be public.
She told the mayors that she was trying to find a way to fix it, because it doesn’t affect ownership.
“I know it won’t happen before November 5, everybody’s where they need to be,” she concluded. “But long term, as they are going to this GIS system, it might be confusing. Really what precincts are for are to tell you what you get to vote on, and I don’t want that to be confusing.”
She said she wanted to bring it up to let the cities know there is a problem, and they could find a resolution to the problem in the future.
Marty Lenhof, Mayor of Elsmere, where the mayor’s meeting was held this month, had news about his Industrial park. He told the mayors that new businesses were getting ready to be installed in their industrial park. The first new business that was going in was Chic-fil-A, a distributing plant which was going to take up 281,600 square feet, or 4½ football fields, and have 4,000 employees with the mean salary of the workers at $40,000 a year, while management would average $140,000. He said this business would be right next to the railroad tracks, and they would actually have a spur off of the tracks for their business.
Another new business is Niagara Bottling, a manufacturing plant, which would command 436,800 square feet, or 7½ football fields, and their employees will average about $75,000 a year.
The Chic-fil-A business will bring about $140 million in capital investment and building and equipment, and the Niagara business will bring $120 million in capital investment and building and equipment, once they are up and running.
A problem brought up last month by Erlanger Mayor Jessica Fette in regards to the old Taco Bell property was addressed. Fette announced that Bob Yeager from KYTC called and they worked out a solution where the property will retain its full access to Kenton Lands Road, and that saves the value of the property.
Fette said they are in touch with the people who made the last offer to tell them the news, if they want to reinstate their offer, but they also have a new offer, so she said she was pleased to have a good solution.