Fayette County commissioners

today will discuss how to respond to local cities' ultimatum on impact

fees for a new county jail.

Commissioners will meet at

3:30 p.m. at the County Administrative Complex.

"You can kiss impact fees

good-bye" unless the county guarantees space at the jail for inmates

arrested in the cities, said Fayetteville Mayor Kenneth Steele during

a rancorous meeting of the FUTURE Committee last week.

FUTURE (Fayette United Team

to Use Resources Effectively) is a three-year-old committee of elected

and appointed officials from the county and all the local cities, and

is charged with finding ways the governments can cooperate, eliminate

duplicate services and save taxpayers money.

But on two contentious issues

tax equity (see related story) and impact fees for the jail cooperation

is an elusive concept.

A heated three-hour discussion

Wednesday failed to move the county and cities closer on either issue.

Impact fees are charged to

developers to help pay the costs of new government services and facilities

made necessary by growth. If such fees are used to help pay for the jail,

it will save current taxpayers about $1 million a year in debt payments,

or about a mill in property taxes ($78 on a $200,000 home).

County and cities appeared

to be on the same page three weeks ago, poised to send impact fee paperwork

off for state approval. But in approving the latest version of an intergovernmental

agreement to allow for the fees recently, the cities inserted a paragraph

guaranteeing that there will be space for city prisoners at the jail for

as long as impact fees are being collected, probably 20 years.

The county is happy to guarantee

space, commission Chairman Harold Bost said, but not for free. The county's

interpretation of the language in the agreement is that there would never

be an opportunity to charge per diem fees for city prisoners those convicted

merely of violating city ordinances housed in the jail.

City representatives voiced

strong objections to the idea of charging such fees, but at the same time

argued that the new language is silent on the subject of fees and should

be approved, leaving the fee question to be argued later.

"Nobody has ever said

we wouldn't accept prisoners from anybody," said Commissioner Greg

Dunn. Steele shot back, "You tried to shut the doors of the jail

two months ago... admit it!"

With overcrowding at the current

jail reaching critical levels, commissioners did discuss plans to stop

adding new residents to the jail, saying they would have to work out plans

to pay other jails to house local prisoners until the jail population

was reduced.

Prisoners currently are being

transported to Union City, where Fayette is paying $45 a day for each

inmate. Commissioners were prepared to tell cities they would have to

share in that cost, or make their own arrangements, but then a 1994 agreement

was discovered. The county had agreed to house city prisoners for free.

The agreement is automatically

renewed each January, and the county must give notice six months ahead

of time if it intends to end the agreement.

County leaders said city judges

sometimes send people to jail when all they've done is violate a minor

city ordinance. County residents shouldn't have to pay to house those

prisoners, said Bost.

But city leaders said that

scenario is simply not happening. Some of the prisoners come from city

courts, they said, but they're guilty of serious crimes and municipal

court was merely the starting place.

"That is a county prisoner

regardless of where the arrest was made," said Steele, who argued

that, because most of the new building permits are issued within the cities,

the cities will be collecting most of the impact fees for the jail. The

majority of property taxes also come from within the cities, he said,

so most of the ongoing maintenance of the jail comes from city taxpayers.

"We all pay the bill,"

said Steele. "This is our jail, Harold. This is our jail and we cannot

allow our citizens to be double-dipped."

"You always say that it's

going to be our way or no way," responded Bost. "We are not

going to accept your way."

In their meeting today, commissioners

will discuss the 1994 agreement concerning the jail.