Laws governing monument-style mailbox supports in Fayette County will get still more scrutiny tomorrow night at the Fayette County Planning Commission meeting.

Planners sent the law to the County Commission in June with a recommendation designed to make it easier to enforce, but commissioners tabled it in July and then last week voted to send it back to the Planning Commission to consider ways to reduce the number of homes affected by the ordinance.

Commissioners Harold Bost and Scott Burrell both suggested new wording that would allow brick or stone monument mailboxes on local subdivision streets but not allow them on through streets with speed limits of 35 miles per hour or more.

Commission Chairman Robert Sprayberry argued for doing away with the mailbox restrictions altogether.

The current law, enacted in 1993, prohibits monument boxes on any public road, but it's hard to enforce, staff members say. Builders of high-priced homes often put up brick, stone or stucco boxes before homeowners move in, and infractions aren't even noticed unless someone complains, they say.

Staff members say the state won't pay for improvements to any road that has such mailboxes on it because the structures present a danger. If a car slips off the road and hits a brick mailbox, the possibility of severe injury or death is much higher than if the mailbox is a standard break-away type, staff members say.

Staff recommended, and the Planning Commission concurred, that the county require that a home's mailbox be part of the final inspection so that a certificate of occupancy could not be issued until the box was erected and inspected.

But when the subject came up in July, county commissioners said they didn't like the idea of holding up homeowners' moving day, preferring to allow the boxes in subdivisions so enforcers need only watch for them on highways.

County attorney Bill McNally objected. "From a legal standpoint, I would prefer to see the regulations the same on all county roads," he said.

"I think we ought to rescind the 1993 ordinance," said Sprayberry. "They can run off the road and hit a pine tree and that's okay, unless we're going to legislate it where you can't have pine trees along the road."

But county manager Billy Beckett pointed out that mailboxes are in the county right of way, and the county may be held liable if there's an accident. "They do present a threat, in my opinion, to the traveling public," he said.