Officials for

Fayette County and its three major cities have made their arguments and

now must cool their heels and wait for senior Judge Stephen Boswell's

decision in their long-standing tax equity dispute.

Boswell took

the case under advisement Thursday afternoon 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 state law requiring counties and cities to work out

joint service delivery strategies allows for mandatory mediation, once

a strategy has been agreed upon, 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," he said.

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 has not "expired" because 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.