Chatham-Kent council has voted against the possibility of purchasing a piece of the municipality's heritage that has been slowly crumbling with age.
At Monday night's meeting, council voted 16-2 to reject Councillor Mark Authier's motion for administration to bring back a detailed report by October 1 with regard to the purchasing of the Old Kent County Jail. The report would have included the following:
1. Cost of the old jail.
2. See if we could fit the rest of Chatham-Kent staff that are scattered in buildings across Chatham.
3. Cost to fix the jail building for Chatham-Kent staff.
4. To see what we would expect if we sold the buildings the staff are in.
5. Keeping a place for the Old Kent County Law Books.
6. Option of private sector purchasing
Authier says he's not surprised his motion failed.
"I figured there'd be a lot of work to get it up to par for people to actually work in it daily. I was hoping we could save the courthouse and the jail and keep it in our hands," says Authier.
General Manager of Infrastructure and Engineering Services Thomas Kelly told council that the municipality would have to spend a lot of money on restorations to bring it up to code.
Authier says the jail and courthouse were part of Kent County before the amalgamation and hold a lot of history.
"We don't have a lot of historical sites anymore here in Chatham-Kent, we seemed to have torn down a lot and hoping that that doesn't happen to this," says Authier.
Authier says hopefully the historical site can still be kept in the municipality.
"I just apologize to the people that we couldn't get it through, but we probably saved a lot of taxes as far as money coming from the pockets of the people of Chatham-Kent," says Authier.
Authier says the provincial government currently owns the building, which will be put on the open market next week. He says there's still hope a private buyer could take the building over.
"We had one person who had spoke to us and said that they were interested in it," says Authier. "Mind you, this was a couple years ago, so I'm hoping that he's still interested in it and if he does purchase it that he'll keep it as close to replica as possible as far as the courthouse and the jail itself."
A local historical researcher recently inspired a petition to keep the Kent County Law Library and prevent the province from dismantling it.