VIDALIA — A solution about what to do with the Doty Road center could be coming together, Police Jury President Melvin Ferrington said at the jury’s meeting Monday.

The jury has been looking to get rid of the building because it could be liable for anything that happens there even though the jury has not had a say about what goes on in the building in years.

The Concordia Parish Sheriff’s Office leased the building from the jury for several years, and even after the lease expired the sheriff’s office continued to occupy part of the building as a sub-station. The jury has paid for maintenance to the building while the sheriff’s office has taken care of utilities since the lease expired.

The center is also used to house the veteran’s affairs office and a tutoring program, as well as community events.

The problem is that an inactive corporation holds the deed to the land on which the building sits.

The jury has been able to contact several members of the corporation, and Ferrington said the members are willing to donate the property to the jury, who would then hand it over to the sheriff’s office.

District Attorney Brad Burget said the matter could be simplified if the corporation just donated the land directly to the sheriff’s office because — under Louisiana law — a building cannot be owned separately from land.

“You don’t own the building,” Burget said. “If you go to the clerk of court’s office and look at my address, you will see a description of the lot, with no mention of the house.

“The bottom line is whoever owns the property owns the building.”

Just to be on the safe side, however, the jury can still enter some sort of inter-local agreement with the sheriff’s office donating any moveable property on the lot to the sheriff’s office, Burget said.

During the meeting, the jury also discussed limb removal and the parish’s waste contract.

Juror Willie Dunbar said the company contracted to remove waste in the parish — Diamond Disposal — has not been removing limbs in his district, and said that when the contract with Diamond Disposal comes up for renewal in 2011, the jury should tell its operators that if the company does not have the equipment to remove limbs as specified in the contract the jury would not renew the contract.

Ferrington said he believes Diamond Disposal is doing a good job, and stated that by the contract the company does not have to remove limbs that are not cut to four feet in length or are heavier than 40 pounds.

Likewise, the company does not have to remove wood debris from empty lots that do not have a 911 address, Ferrington said.

When Ferrington offered to let Dunbar read the contract, Dunbar replied, “I am just saying, they are not picking up limbs as they should.”

From there, Dunbar asked Works Supervisor Jackie Pugh what the parish maintenance crew’s pickup obligations are, and if he could request someone from the parish maintenance crew to pick up limbs in an area.

“Right now, I have got a lot of elderly people with limbs in their yards,” Dunbar said.

When Dunbar said someone with a prison crew had told residents they could pile limbs and a prison crew would remove the limbs, Pugh replied, “He ought not to have told them that.”

The parish was granted a special dispensation from the Department of Environmental Quality to pick up and destroy limbs following Hurricane Gustav, but that dispensation has since expired, Ferrington said.

“We don’t have anywhere to put them unless we haul them to the landfill in Tensas Parish,” Ferrington said.

In other news:

The jury voted to allow the installation of a 52-inch wall television parish courtroom.

The television will be used for video arraignments and other proceedings.

“Instead of the sheriff having the responsibility and expense of bringing someone to court (from prison), they can do it from prison,” Burget said.

The television will also be used during civil and criminal cases if an attorney wishes to show a video to a jury, Burget said.

The jury voted to send a letter to the sheriff’s office requesting they cite a citizen for littering.

The motion was made after Dunbar said he found several bags of trash on Mooselodge Road, and was able to determine whose trash it was by several pieces of mail that were in it.

Auditor Miles Hopkins told the jury that their yearly audit came through without any negative findings.