KENTON COUNTY FISCAL COURT
JUDGE DREES AND ERIC DETERS EXCERPT OF COMMENTS MADE DURING THE MEETING OF JANUARY 9, 2007
Judge Drees asked that comments be held to three minutes.
Deters' Statement: It is hard to do but I will speak quickly and hold my comments to three minutes. I would first like to thank you, Judge, for your public comment that you are willing to take into consideration other jail sites. I know that you are a pessimist whether that can be done but I want to thank you for your willingness to do that. I also would like to thank you all for setting up the tent outside for the people that came. It is full but more than that I would like to thank all of the people that came today who are against this proposed location, particularly. I have just recently met a group of women out in the hallway from the moms' club of Independence who brought all these kids. They support moms who want to stay at home and I think it is remarkable that they brought all their kids that they watch. (Change of tape) I would like to submit sites and some of those things that we can clear up from the website at the January 23rd meeting. I do want you to know, Judge, along with the rest of the fiscal court that I was advocating the possibility of suspending the litigation; however, and this is not my fault, I want you to know that I became the attorney because I happen to be Lloyd Bruckner's lawyer anyway, and that is how I got involved in this. Those of you that know my political experience will know that I have been very quiet since I was defeated for county attorney politically. I can't stand politics; I hate politics. I am only involved in this because Lloyd Bruckner is my friend and I am his lawyer and I live in this community, so therefore, I am in the middle of this issue. But the lack of trust that developed from this, for example, Judge, I want you to know that while I was advocating litigation my client said, ´Well, they don't know whether you guys are sincere or not' so I hope that you can some time and point express your sincerity at this meeting that if we can come up with an alternate location you will give that good consideration. Another thing, real quickly in my final minute here, just as an example, I have gotten phone calls from like the Covington Turners who own 30 acres near Doe Run Lake. I know that somebody submitted a site plan to me this morning. The original Richardson Road jail site location, those owners are still interested, I know that that had some issues, but I want you to know that there are, you know, people are calling me every day with site locations and I want you to know that we are going to get detailed information about each of those locations to you. And, finally, since I am confident my time is starting to run out, I want to stress to you that, you know, we were the mob at the last meeting because we needed to be the mob. We don't want to be a mob. Nobody in this community would rather be here than doing what they are normally doing but everybody felt like they had no choice. The reality of it is, is these are very intelligent, constructive, interested citizens who want to help you and Kenton County solve the problem. I also want to stress that the city of Independence, and I think this is very significant, the Kenton County school district, who also you know feel offended in the process, I want to ask you all to suspend at least for 30 to 60 days any additional work on this site location to give us the opportunity, I have given the goal as January 30th, Judge. In other words, I am asking people let's come up with sites even that quickly. You said 6 to 8 months, well, I feel like if we could find a good site, you know by the 30th worthy of consideration, so I am even trying to go quicker than you are. But, I want to caution you all I have done some legal research and I have no control over what the school board does but the school district may have the power to condemn county property. I don't know what their intentions are; I know they went into executive session last night and who knows what they may or may not do, but before you spend additional money and what not on this site, I think there should be a real concern on whether or not it is doable. I want you to know that although the litigation will continue I promise you, and I promise you, that I am going to keep my rhetoric and my oratory civil. I will keep it professional. I want to gather through the litigation process documentation that I may or may not need but I really do think that all of you all, particularly you new commissioners, can be heroes. You know, I love football, it is my favorite sport, I still play competitive football, I was involved in politics and I am a lawyer. All three of those things require you to slug it out with somebody and then you walk away and go have a beer with them. As tough as it was at the last meeting, as tough as some of the rhetoric has been, all of these people would be your best friends, campaign for you, not campaign against you, support you 110 percent if you help us help you find a remedy to this situation. It is not too late to just say, my wife hates this saying by Shakespeare, "All is well that ends well," but it does. I have great respect for you, Mr. Drees, as a person, as a business person, you don't need this job. I am sure at the last fiscal court meeting when you walked out of here you were thinking what the heck am I doing in this position. But, I just want you all to know that if you're sincere of giving us the opportunity, we're ready to do out part, so thank you very much. I might have went over a little bit of three minutes.
Judge Drees: That is alright. Just a couple of comments-we won't be doing anything with the site during that period you are worrying about. But, you know, we can continue on with architecture. One of the things we want to do is level the site.
Deters: I understand that.
Judge: So we haven't done anything architectural except very, very preliminary stuff. We will be hiring probably in the next 30 days or so somebody that could start on that because this will depend on any site that meets the criteria.
Deters: I understand. The architect designs for wherever you put it.
Judge: But we won't be doing anything on the site.
Deters: I understand.
Judge: I do want to thank you for this meeting, the calmness and what have you. It is certainly better. The new county commissioners didn't know what they were getting into and they wanted to know if they could get unelected and I said no it is too late. Anyway, we do appreciate that and, hopefully, the format that we are going to have at one of the schools the 23rd of January will help a little bit, and obviously, look at the website. Hopefully, it will be on there by 4:00 this afternoon but there may be some additional stuff to go on there. You just kind of gave me an idea of what we should put on there. Thank you for your time.
