By DAVE HAMRICK
dhamrick@TheCitizenNews.com

Fayette County commissioners Thursday hope to get a step closer to enacting impact fees to help pay for a new county jail.
Commissioners voted two weeks ago to put the item on the agenda in hopes that details can be worked out in time for a vote on the matter.

And Dennis Davenport from the county attorney’s office, who has been working with representatives of Fayette’s cities to hammer out a plan for the fees that will be acceptable to all, is guardedly hopeful this week.

“As of Friday, I’ve been getting positive feedback from all jurisdictions, and I hadn’t received positive feedback from all jurisdictions before,” Davenport said.

“If nothing else, perhaps the Board of Commissioners can adopt something Thursday evening that will be a first step for everyone else to come along and adopt,” he added.

All of the cities have agreed in principle to charge the impact fees, which are levied on new construction to help pay the costs of additional government facilities and services made necessary by growth. But agreeing in principle was easy compared with agreeing to the particulars.

City leaders have objected to various aspects of several incarnations of the county’s impact fee plan. A committee of staff people and political leaders has met numerous times, and each time its members have gone back to their governing bodies with a new version of the impact fee plan.

It’s not written anywhere in the state’s law governing impact fees that Fayette and all its cities must agree to the same plan, but Davenport has said he feels the plan would be much easier to defend in court if it is uniform in all the governments.

Participation by all the local governments is something that county commissioners insisted on when they voted early this year to enact impact fees for the $25 million jail.

If the county and all the cities agree on the newest plan, it will go to the state Department of Community Affairs for approval, and then back to the local governments for implementation.

It’s hoped the impact fees can start rolling into county coffers by January to help reduce the size of an estimated 1.6-mill property tax increase. It will be too late to reduce the tax for fiscal 2001, but commissioners said they hope to use the impact fees to reduce the tax for 2002, which starts next July.

In other action Thursday, commissioners will hear from several residents concerning a developer’s plan to annex 873 acres into Fayetteville. The county government has no authority where annexation is concerned, but the city must ask for the commissioners’ opinions on the matter under state laws calling for cooperation between governments.

Environmentalist Dennis Chase has asked for time to discuss the annexation proposal, along with Bob and Alycia Craft and Norman Nolde.

Commissioners also will discuss a proposal from the Board of Education for two school resource officers, and will take action on three rezoning requests (see related story).