The February interest amount for the jail payment is in hand although the $165,000 principal payment due in August was not included in this year’s budget, according to Panola County Administrator Kelley Magee.

Supervisors last week passed a budget amendment to cover expenses for the jail addition not included during last summer’s budget session.

That interest payment is in a trust account at First Security Bank which holds the bonds on the facility.

The county will pay approximately $371,000 annually in principal and interest over a 20-year period.

The David M. Bryan Justice Center is actually owned by a not-for-profit corporation with the board of supervisors acting as directors. That board through the not-for-profit corporation leases the facility to the county for an amount sufficient to pay the bonds and interest used to build the facility. The original structure was constructed using the same non-profit venue and has approximately five more years of $30,000 monthly payments on that part. The City of Batesville constructed the Batesville Post Office and public library using a similar non-profit.

It is a method used to construct public facilities without having to have a bond issue voted on by citizens.

The bonds to construct the addition accepted by supervisors on Monday were dated August 1, 2007, according to Magee. The former board of supervisors had approved the $4.6 million jail expansion that same day.

While board members were discussing the addition and possible changes to hold mental patients in the new facility that day, bond attorney Lucien Bourgeois warned supervisors that interest rates could rise quickly if the board postponed its decision.

Reported in a news story published July 6, 2007, “The jail expansion is expected to cost $4.6 million through a lease purchase, though county officials are assuring the public that the undertaking can be accomplished without a tax increase.”

Also reported at that same July meeting was former supervisor Jerry Perkins seeking assurance that passage of resolutions that day was not obligating any public funds to be spent.

“No, not until you accept the proposal,” the bond attorney replied.

So three weeks later at the August 1, 2007, meeting of supervisors Perkins is quoted as saying, “I didn’t know we were coming to build a jail today.”

Yet the bond work was apparently set and the project was approved that day.

Yesterday, after almost 18 months, the current board inspected, approved and accepted the jail addition office renovation that some were in such a hurry to build in July of 2007.

You can be sure there will be a tax increase to pay the bond and interest. And Panolians will pay it. This is not to say that the additional jail space wasn’t or isn’t needed.

But the process was flawed. Misleading information was put out and taxpaying citizens had no input into the process as they did when the original jail was planned with a committee of citizens assisting in decision making.

This is not a good example of how to run the peoples’ business. Continuing to govern with this approach will eventually lead Panola County to the same problems now faced by a couple of small municipalities in Panola.