The town of

Tyrone will soon send a letter to the Fayette County Commission asking

the commission to negotiate with all the cities together on a new jail

deal.

The letter

is a response to a recent communication from Fayette County Commission

Chairman Greg Dunn saying the commission would prefer to negotiate with

the cities on an individual basis.

Tyrone Town

Manager Barry Amos said the issue actually began in 1993 when the cities

signed an agreement with the county to house all the municipal prisoners

of Tyrone, Fayetteville and Peachtree City.

The cities

would add a surcharge of 10 percent on all fines paid to compensate the

county for housing the inmates.

In January,

the cities received a letter from Dunn stating the agreement would be

terminated Dec. 31 and he would be in further contact with the towns in

180 days to start negotiations on a new contract.

Amos said it

wasn't until Aug. 3 that Tyrone received another notice about the contract.

The county forwarded a copy of its proposed agreement and asked the town

to examine it.

Toward the

end of August, Tyrone sent a response back saying town officials had some

problems with the new agreement. Specifically, the town did not like the

clause that states if there is a surplus in the funds paid to the county

that it would be rolled into the next year's costs, but if the funds did

not match the costs, the municipalities would have to fork over additional

funds.

"Why can't

the surplus funds be returned to the county?" Amos asked.

The town also

had problems with some of the definitions in the contract, and said if

the county didn't actually house a prisoner overnight that it shouldn't

have to pay the daily rate for the prisoner.

Tyrone received

another letter from Dunn Oct. 1, stating that the county preferred negotiating

with the cities on an individual basis.

But Amos said

the issue affects all of the cities equally and the deal should be the

same for everybody.

"Our council

did not believe this was the best type of negotiations, so we're going

to ask the county to deal with all the cities equally," he said.