Tiny Elmwood Place facing a grim future
Wendy Radeke believes that the village of Elmwood Place can turn itself around – it’s got to, says the councilwoman-elect, if it wishes to survive.
“We can’t look at things and say it’s impossible,” Radeke said on a recent afternoon in the little Elmwood Place library, packed with neighborhood children and teens.
“We have to start believing we can change.”
And that change, in her opinion, doesn’t happen with “gimmicks,” like the speed camera program her council predecessors approved last year.
It occurs when people regain pride in their community, she said.
“We need tomake it a safe place, a clean place, a place people feel a part of,” said Radeke, a 49-year-old mother and former child care provider who has lived in Elmwood Place for 18 years. “We used to have that.”
The last decade has been tough on the tiny village in the center of Hamilton County, bordered by St. Bernard and Cincinnati.
And its speed cameras – which issued a staggering 6,600 citations
in the first month before a judge ordered the village to take them down – have only complicated things.
Now, some of the village’s most involved residents are asking whether it’s time to dissolve Elmwood Place, pointing to a series of political scandals and wondering if there are better options.
“Honestly, whew, boy – probably went straight downhill,” local pastor Lonnie Smithers said of the conditions in Elmwood Place since he moved there in 2001.
“More drug dealers, more prostitution. Buildings are completely in disarray. They look vacant. It used to be a little bit more of a close-knit ... place. Big difference.”
A new mayor and three new council members, recruited by a longtime councilman, say things can be different.
But bigger budget problems are looming: The nearly $2 million in fines issued by the speed cameras has been challenged in a class-action lawsuit.
If the village loses the case, it could be on the hook to pay back all or some of money it collected. Plus court costs.
That could run the village into a deficit or bring council back to where it was before the cameras – barely breaking even.
Elmwood weathers scandal,
unstable leadership – now this
A first-ring suburb of Cincinnati, Elmwood Place was incorporated by working class German Catholic immigrants in 1890 and later attracted a wave of Kentuckians from Casey County, south of Lexington.
About a square mile in size and home to roughly 2,100 people, more than twice as many people lived in Elmwood Place in the 1920s and ’30s, when factory jobs were plentiful throughout the Mill Creek Valley.
A place frequently raided for gambling rings between the 1940s and 1970s, Elmwood residents have weathered their fair share of scandal, seeing police chiefs and politicians locked up for various reasons through the years.
Other government leaders have been a relatively unstable bunch; a revolving door of mayors and council members who resigned their seats amid the controversy du jour and struggling to make ends meet as revenue shrinks with declining property values and population.
Before installing the cameras, the village budget was tight.
So much so that village officials saw the cameras as an alternative to a crossing guard at the elementary school, a cost village officials had decided Elmwood Place could no longer afford.
The citations would have brought a windfall of revenue to the village.
Accompanied with $105 fines, the village issued $1.8 million in fines before a judge ordered them to stop.
Residents: Is it
time to call it quits?
For a number of years, some in Elmwood Place have hinted that life there might be better if someone else ran things, but dissolution of a government is a long process, and some ask, frankly, who would have them?
Governments break up very infrequently, though it’s occurred more often since the Great Recession.
A study by the University of California, Berkley found that more than half of the dissolutions ever recorded occurred within the last 20 years.
Amelia considered it in 2009, and Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters suggested Lincoln Heights dissolve last year when he announced indictments against the village clerk and deputy clerk for allegedly stealing money from the Mayor’s Court.
Voters rejected a ballot issue to dissolve Amelia after the government gave up on its idea to create an earnings tax in the face of a $3 million deficit.
But its situation and Elmwood Place’s are different.
When Ohio was first settled, it was carved into townships, and later villages and cities were incorporated to provide public services and create local laws.
Had Amelia dissolved, sections of it would have fallen, by default, into the townships beneath the village boundary lines, split up between Union, Batavia and Pierce townships. All have active township governments.
But Mill Creek Township lies beneath Elmwood Place. Its government ceased to operate in the 19th century when the entire township was incorporated into the cities of Cincinnati and St. Bernard (now a village because its population has fallen below 5,000 residents) and Elmwood Place.
Mill Creek Township has no civil jurisdiction.
The thought has always been that Elmwood Place would be annexed into the city of Cincinnati or St. Bernard, but both parties must agree to it, Cincinnati Solicitor John Curp said.
“(Cincinnati) hasn’t had an interest in annexation for a long period of time,” Curp said, “perhaps not during our lifetime.”
Another option, said Curp, is for Elmwood Place to dissolve and set up a township government with a three-person board of trustees.
“Different rules and responsibilities apply,” Curp said.
Elmwood Place would no longer be allowed to enact is owns laws or collect an income tax.
Councilwoman argues
something is worth saving
Looking around the library at smiling children decorating ornaments for Christmas or surfing the Web on computers, Radeke says it would be a shame to see Elmwood Place end.
When she’s sworn in alongside new council colleagues Michael Collins and William C. Wilson, they’ll fight to revive the community, she promised.
All three were recruited by longtime Councilman Jerald Robertson.
Radeke, the second highest vote-getter in November’s election, hopes to start by creating new community events and services, possibly using a vacant church for activities for kids and seniors.
“I got my GED here, here at Town Hall,” Radeke said. “I went back and tutored for a while, but I haven’t heard of anything going on here recently. Those things are important to a community. The library is important.”
She’s uncertain about the financial implications of the pending court decision and whether there is any money to support her ideas because she’s yet to delve into the village budget.
Molly J. Sims, whose parents moved her to Elmwood Place from Kentucky when she was 11 in the the late 1950s, is hopeful that this group of politicians will stick with it.
She likes the new mayor, Bob Schmid, a retired Wyoming policeman who took over at the beginning of December when Stephanie Morgan stepped down.
“Most of our mayors, everybody, they care,” Sims continued. “But what we need is for St. Bernard ... to take us in. We’ll be an asset because of all of our railroad access.”
Barring that, she wants the mayor and council to address what she sees as excessive spending by the police and fire departments.
“We just fought a 10-mill fire levy,” said Sims, who attends every Village Council meeting. “We’re barely a square mile – we don’t need our own fire department.”
And she supports the speed cameras.
“We had no idea ... we would generate that much money,” Sims said. “It was done because people speed through our community and when it came up it was God sent – not money sent, God sent. We were thinking of our children. How dare people speed through our town like that?”
Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Robert Ruehlman is expected to file a written ruling on the pending lawsuit by Jan. 23.
Still, most residents, including Smithers, are against the cameras and wonder why the police can’t do more about crime.
“I can’t understand it,” Smithers said, saying prostitution and drug dealing is blatant in the community. “I’m looking for another place to move.” ¦
By the numbers
Population
2000: 2,681
2012: 2,173
Change: -18.9 percent
Vacant houses
2000: 112 (9.5 percent of all houses)
2012: 232 (22.9 percent of all houses)
Total residential property value
2004: $12,505,420
2013: $8,598,460
Change: -31.2 percent
Other demographic information
Median household income: $21,792
Percentage with high school diploma or higher: 59 percent
Median age: 35.2
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2010 Census and 2008-2012 American Community Survey, Hamilton County Auditor’s Office