The idea of charging impact

fees to help pay for a new Fayette County jail appears to be dead, negating

six months of wrangling by county and local city leaders.

County Commission Chairman

Harold Bost has spent the last week trying to negotiate new language for

an intergovernmental agreement that would allow the impact fees, but without

success.

Impact fees are charged to

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

made necessary by growth. Levying the fees for the jail would pay about

$1 million a year of the county's $4 million bond payments for the jail

and a new courthouse.

"This was just me trying

to put something together," said Bost Monday, adding that he proposed

a new sentence in the agreement that would leave the door open to the

county charging per diem fees to the cities for prisoners under the control

of municipal courts.

City leaders, who feel their

residents already are paying more to the county in taxes than they are

receiving in services, are adamantly opposed to paying the per diem fees.

Bost's first stop was Fayetteville,

meeting with Mayor Kenneth Steele and City Manager Joe Morton. "They

would not agree to that sentence being in there," he said.

"We are not going to subject

our citizens to be double-dipped," confirmed Steele Tuesday.

Without Fayetteville's agreement,

there was no reason to talk to leaders in Peachtree City, Tyrone, Brooks

or Woolsey. The County Commission's vote to instigate impact fees for

the jail, taken last May, was contingent upon all the cities participating.

County commissioners could

still approve the fees using the language that the cities have insisted

upon, but Bost said he doesn't think that's likely. It's on the agenda

for the group's meeting tomorrow night, but, "I would be opposed

to it," Bost said.

Since the impact fees originally

passed the commission 3-2, Bost's opposition would probably be enough

to doom the measure.

"I don't think it is right

for the revenue from the courts going into one coffer and the cost coming

out of another pot of money," said Bost.

During a recent joint meeting

of city and county leaders, he said the county would like to have the

option of charging fees for inmates either sentenced by municipal courts

or awaiting trial in municipal court.

He and Commissioner Greg Dunn

said it has been the practice in some municipal courts to sentence people

to jail if they couldn't pay their fines for minor offenses.

"It doesn't make sense

to spend $45 a day to keep someone in jail for a couple of weeks to collect

a $300 fine," said Dunn. "We don't want to pay that $45 a day

for a guy who had too many dogs at his house," he added.

Bost said the cost could run

as high as $300,000 a year.

Fayetteville's Steele said

that's just not so. "He thinks we only send them to jail if they

can't pay their fines," he said. "But some of those people need

to be in jail. We had one that came the third time in a row to his probation

meeting under the influence of drugs. He was going to be out driving and

interacting with the public, and he needed to be in jail."

But the number of prisoners

kept in jail by municipal courts is small compared to the taxes city residents

are paying for the jail, Steele argued. Out of 241 prisoners on a day

chosen at random, 11 were from Fayetteville, seven from Peachtree City

and one from Tyrone, he said.

"And we're [city residents

combined] paying more than 50 percent of the cost of the jail," he

said.