The deadlock between Hamilton County and Cincinnati over a 60-bed juvenile jail has turned bleaker. It is year five and counting. The latest setback: Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Robert Kraft dismissed a lawsuit that would have brought the dispute over a Bond Hill site to trial.

The county has asked the judge to reconsider his ruling that favored the city's home-rule right to zone out juvenile detention centers. If Judge Kraft refuses, the county's appeals could drag on for years more. The standoff persists as a raw, poisonous symbol of regional hostility between city and county.

Judge Kraft could still deliver taxpayers from this juvenile feud. Let the site dispute go to trial. Let's not wait until 2001, and election of a stronger mayor, for a resolution. The quickest deliverance would be for Hamilton County and Cincinnati officials to do a land swap to put the jail in Bond Hill. But the city is dead-set against it.

City officials have argued a juvenile jail should not go next to a high-tech industrial park; that prison jobs are not what the Bond Hill neighborhood needs; and Cincinnati is already overloaded with such institutions.

Most of the juveniles who would be detasined in Bond Hill will come from the city. They have a better chance at reforming if they are close to families. But city officials want the juvenile jail outside the city.

The county argues that the Bond Hill site was used since 1978 as a youth center (the former Millcreek Psychiatric Hospital for Children); a locked rehabilitation facility in Bond Hill would be more accessible to parents; and the Millcreek facility can be renovated for millions less than buying land and building a new jail.

Millcreek, designed cottage-style on a broad campus, best suits the requirements of Juvenile Court and Ohio Department of Youth Services. It already has most of the features needed - gym, dorms, classrooms, library and dining hall. County officials insist it could be a win-win deal: The Millcreek neighborhood could benefit from prison jobs, with room for high-tech jobs too.

After the teen massacre at Columbine High School, most experts called for reconnecting alienated teens to parents and community. That's been Hamilton County Juvenile Court strategy with the juvenile jail all along, and an advantage of the close-in Bond Hill site.

"We are trying to tie parents and the community into the whole process," said Juvenile Court Administrator Jim Ray.

That site can also save taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars, and not just from ending the wasteful costs of city and county suing each other at public expense on both sides. The cost of renovating Millcreek has risen from $4.5 million to at least $5 million. Yet the state would pay construction and operating costs.

Every year of delay, the county loses about $600,000 - the difference in state reimbursements between sending our juvenile offenders to boys homes elsewhere in Ohio and rehabilitating them here. The abandoned buildings also may be deteriorating.er proposed juvenile jail site, which the city wants for a senior center. That property or others could offer opportunities for the city to do some "horse-trading." But the city isn't interested in give-and-take.

Commissioner John Dowlin still believes the county can win in the courts. But more years of delay are not worth the time and money. Cincinnati and Hamilton County should settle this now.