End of the jail trail?

In case you missed it, the County Commissioner meeting of last Monday was also interesting because a final "compromise" on the construction of the downtown jail housing unit got voted down.

Commissioner Grace Mynatt proposed to reduce the size of the building by leaving the top 2 floors off the planned 6 story building. Only Coy Privette agreed with her and so the proposition got voted down by 3 votes to 2.

Immediately after that Commissioner Juba introduced a resolution demanding that this would be the last time a jail "compromise" would be discussed.
Apparently Grace Mynatt felt personally hurt by this resolution saying that it was "totally unnecessary and uncalled for" and stating that "you know this would be the last time anyway". This resolution also got voted down because only Joni Juba and Bob Carruth voted in favor of it.

We now have to wait for the decision of the N.C. Court of Appeals in the lawsuit filed by 11 downtown residents against the city of Concord for granting the county a conditional use permit to build the jail, which should come within 3 months.

In case the court rules in favor of the City of Concord (and so also in favor of the County), the start of construction would be within a year unless the decision gets appealed to the NC Supreme Court. It could take up to a year for construction to really start because of applications that need to be done, reviewed and approved, and because after that the bidding process needs to run it's course.

In the probably unlikely scenario that the court rules in favor of the plaintiffs, we're back to square one.