As of press time Tuesday, senior

Judge Stephen Boswell had not ruled on Fayette County's motion to dismiss

a request for mandatory mediation in the county's long-standing tax equity

dispute with three local cities.

Lawyers made their arguments

Thursday afternoon and now await Boswell's decision.

Boswell took the case under

advisement after assistant County Attorney Dennis Davenport and Rick Lindsey,

city attorney for Peachtree City, presented their cases.

Davenport asked the judge to

dismiss the cities' request for mandatory mediation of the dispute, while

Lindsey asked him to appoint a mediator to settle the cities' claim that

their residents pay about $2 million a year more in taxes to the county

than they should. Peachtree City, Tyrone and Fayetteville are the three

cities involved.

In his argument, Davenport

said the cities haven't shown the necessity of bringing in a mediator.

The state law that requires counties and cities to work out joint service

delivery strategies also provides for mandatory mediation, Davenport admitted,

but he argued that once a strategy has been agreed upon, mediation is

necessary only if one party to the agreement is violating it and the state

is threatening sanctions as a result.

The county's position is that

all the parties involved signed a joint service delivery strategy that

has been approved by the state, and it's not necessary to renegotiate

that agreement through mandatory mediation.

"There is no violation

of the strategy here," said Davenport. "Just because someone

is dissatisfied ... doesn't necessarily mean it's a violation of the service

delivery strategy."

The agreement, signed in 1999,

acknowledges that the cities and county continued to disagree on equitable

funding for police and jail services, public works and recreation, and

called for continued discussion of those issues through Dec. 31, 2000.

City officials look on that

date as a deadline after which the agreement would technically "expire,"

creating the need to renegotiate and enter into mandatory mediation, argued

Lindsey.

"It has become necessary

to review and possibly revise the service delivery strategy," he

said, adding that the state law requires cities and counties to make sure

that city residents are not paying for services primarily provided to

residents of the unincorporated county.

That situation exists, he argued,

and therefore, "If we don't go back and revisit this, then the cities

and the county are violating the law."

Davenport said the agreement

did not "expire" after the Dec. 31, 2000 deadline passed, because

the agreement calls for continuation of current funding of those services

if an agreement isn't reached.

Judge Boswell played devil's

advocate with Lindsey on that point. The service delivery strategy agreement

amounts to a contract, he suggested. "What if you agree to a bad

contract?" he prodded Lindsey. "How do you get out of a bad

contract?"

Lindsey said the county already

has changed the agreement by notifying the cities that the former method

under which the county housed city prisoners in the county jail is no

longer in effect. "If the county has the right to terminate that

contract, then it absolutely has changed the service delivery contract,"

he said.

Boswell said his decision on

the dismissal motion "ought to be fairly quick."

If he denies the motion, Davenport

said the county probably will appeal to a higher court, and if he grants

the motion, the cities probably will do likewise, said Lindsey.

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