After a meeting with officials from the Ohio Department of Youth Services, Ironton Mayor Rich Blankenship says he is even more convinced that closing the Ohio River Valley Youth Correctional Facility is a poor business decision.

“No logical reason was given other than ‘it was a business decision,’” Blankenship said. “That was the reason.”

The mayor, along with Portsmouth Mayor David Malone and a representative from Rep. Terry Johnson’s office, met Tuesday with Director Harvey Reed and Assistant Director Martha Spohn of the Ohio Department of Youth Services, which oversees the ORVJCF. The representative from Johnson’s office was scheduled to meet with Kasich about the closure Wednesday evening.

The department announced the closure of the facility in March when Gov. John Kasich announced his budget, which calls for a $41 million reduction in funding to the department. Closing the facility would save approximately $20 million.

The facility is set to close Sept. 10.

Blankenship said he wanted to know the cost of the upgrades that would need to take place so that the other facilities could take on the population of ORVJCF, but officials did not provide it.

The officials also asked for Blankenship and the others to help them find a buyer for the facility, which the mayor declined to do.

“I want this to stay open,” he said. “That’s my objective.”

The mayor said he talked about the facility being the newest and most upgraded in the state and provided the director with statistics from the Ohio Office of Budget and Management that compares the costs of three of the state’s juvenile correctional facilities.

The statistics show that in the fiscal year 2008, ORVJCF had average daily cost of $207 per youth, compared with $363 at Circleville JCF and $310 at Scioto JCF.

The statistics also show that during that year the ORVJCF, which had an average daily population of 314.9, had an operating budget of approximately $23.9 million for the year, compared with approximately $29.4 million at Scioto JFC, which had an average daily population of 259, and $16.5 million at Circleville JCF, which had an average daily population of 124.4.

During the fiscal year 2009, the ORVJCF had an operating budget of $25.2 million, compared with $16.7 at Circleville JCF and $29.4 at Scioto JCF.

They also showed that during the same year, the ORVJCF had an average daily population of 270.7 and a daily cost of $255 per youth.

The Scioto JCF had an average daily population of 188.6 and a daily cost of $427 per youth. The Circleville JCF had a daily population of 121.9 and a daily cost of $375 per youth.

Last year, statistics showed that the ORVJCF had an annual operating cost of approximately $26.6 million compared with $18.6 million at Circleville JCF and $28.5 million at Scioto JCF.

They showed further that the ORVJCF had an average daily population of 226.7 and an average daily cost of $322 per youth.

The Circleville JCF had an average daily population of 126.1 and an average cost of $405 per youth. The Scioto JCF had an average daily population of 134.2 and a daily cost of $581 per youth.

The mayor said the officials declined to reconsider their decision to close the facility even after he gave them the statistics.

One reason for closing the facility that the officials discussed was that families from the Cleveland area have a long distance to travel to see their children, the mayor said.

“What do we do with our kids that we send?” the mayor responded. “We have to travel so that reasoning does not make any sense, whatsoever. That even leads me more to believe that it’s the location of this facility and it has nothing to do with the statistics that we provided.”

The mayor said in the hour-long meeting he was not given a logical reason why the facility has to close.

He added that job loss anywhere is difficult, but it is more difficult in southern Ohio, because there are fewer jobs.