By DAVE HAMRICK
Staff Writer

There will be no parking deck at Fayette County's new jail and courthouse complex... at least not in the near future.

“We need to keep the price of the project as reasonable as we can for the taxpayers of the county,” Commissioner Greg Dunn said during discussion of plans for the jail at last week's County Commission meeting.

Commissioners voted 3-2 to approve a site plan for the jail that calls for about 700 on-ground parking spaces to serve the jail and courthouse. Future plans for a county administration building will double the need for parking spaces, but Dunn argued that if a parking deck is necessary it can be built at that time.

Commissioners Herb Frady and Glen Gosa argued for the parking deck, saying storm water runoff from the parking lot will present an environmental problem.

“Every parking space creates an environmental problem,” said Gosa.

“I just think that's an awfully big parking lot,” said Frady.

Under the approved plan, parking lots and buildings will take up about ** percent of the 67 acres the county has set aside for the jail, judicial complex and a future administration building for the county.

To Dunn's argument that a parking deck will cost between $5 million and $7 million as opposed to about $500,000 for on-ground parking, Frady suggested using revenue bonds to build the parking deck and charging visitors to park there. “The taxpayers wouldn't have to pay for it,” he said.

But Commissioner Linda Wells had a different reason for opposing parking decks. They're not safe, she said.

“We're creating a venue there that we're going to have to have more and more law enforcement officers to patrol,” she said.

In the end, commissioners approved a plan for adding onto the current county jail, and renovating the old courthouse facilities to use as a sheriff's office. Administration offices for the jail will move into the old sheriff's office.

A new three-story judicial complex is planned just south of the new sheriff's office/old judicial complex.

The approved plan also designates about three acres for a new senior center at the southeast corner of the property.

Cost is expected to be around $60 million, and finding the funds is the next step in the process.

The commissioners' jail committee will be discussing funding options over the next few weeks, but members have said they don't want to decide on a funding method until after the Board of Education's sales tax referendum Sept. 21.