Was

last week's County Commission public hearing on

plans for a new Fayette County jail and

courthouse complex a "public relations

disaster," as one speaker put it?

Opponents

of the county's plan to build a new jail and

courthouse on the site of the old one are calling

for more hearings, saying Thursday's five-hour

session was not adequate to get their questions

answered and their comments heard.

"Have

all of your questions been answered?" jail

opponent Jim Fair shouted to the audience during

last week's session, answered by a chorus of

"No!"

"This

is the one official public hearing,"

commission Chairman Harold Bost said to Fair's

suggestion that additional hearings are in order.

"Would

you like to leave the impression that you are

leaving this public relations disaster in

place?" Fair asked.

Commissioner

Greg Dunn argued that opponents' questions have

indeed been answered. "You just haven't

liked the answers you've gotten," he said.

Although

Bost sticks by his comment that no additional

hearings are needed, he said this week he does

intend to take a different approach to future

major decisions.

"If

I had it to do all over again, I would certainly

get out there earlier and seek public involvement

in the process," he said. "I was just

naive. This jail discussion had been underway for

so long that I just thought it was the way it was

supposed to be."

Bost

said commissioners are working hard to get public

input into the next big decision concerning the

jail - how to finance it. He will take

charts and graphs and make presentations on the

jail to any civic club, homeowners association or

any other group that's interested, and seek their

comments on funding options, Bost said.

Commissioner

Glen Gosa this week said he agrees with Bost that

there are lessons to be learned from the hearing

last week.

"We

need to learn from this," he said.

Members

of the commission considered numerous sites for a

new judicial complex as part of their

deliberation, Gosa said, but the public wasn't

invited in on those deliberations.

"The

impression is that we have considered no

alternatives," he said, "when in fact

we have considered several. But we didn't go to

the public and present option one, option two,

etc."

When

a public hearing was scheduled last week,

commissioners had drawn up detailed plans using

the existing site.

"We

can do a better job of that in the future,"

said Gosa.

Commissioner

Linda Wells disagreed. The county government has

been out front in providing information to all

who have asked, she said. "The people who

complained most loudly had had at least three

private meetings and other information provided

to them," she said.

"We

could have had public hearings much sooner, but

it would have been piecemeal," she added.

"It was much better to wait until we were

able to gather all of the information and make a

good presentation."

Commissioner

Greg Dunn, who was instrumental last year in

arranging purchase of additional land near the

current jail so that it could be expanded, agreed

with Bost and Gosa that earlier hearings on the

plans for the jail might have defused some of the

public rancor.

"I

didn't think about it until people started

accusing us of not having done it," he said.

"When I got on the board, building a new

jail there had been under discussion for several

years.

"But

in retrospect, yes, we probably could have done a

better job," he said. "We needed to

have had this hearing six months ago."

But,

he added, "I still think we're making the

right decision at the right time in the right

place."

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