A week after naming two finalists for the site for the new Warren County Jail, the Board of Supervisors approved the first step in moving forward with one of them.

At their meeting Monday, the supervisors unanimously approved a motion to hire Greg Thomas to assess the value of a 50-acre tract located off Old Highway 27 between Miss. 27 and Berryman Road.

“They will appraise the property on Berryman Road, one of their two finalists,” board attorney Blake Teller said. “They are simply authorizing the appraisal of the Berryman Road property.”

Teller said the board does not have to ask for bids for professional services such as hiring an appraiser.

The supervisors heard from Stantec’s Brian Robbins and John McKee about the two proposed properties for the new jail, which they previously said they hoped to have completed by 2019, during a work session on Sept. 25. 

The second site was a 47-acre property known as the Pine Woods property, which is located off U.S. 80 and near the site of the former Pine Woods Hotel.

During the Sept. 25 work session, McKee said he recommended the Berryman Road site as it would be easier to build on and require considerably less work to run a sewer system to the site.

The Pine Wood site would require approximately 5,000 feet of sewer in order to tie into the city sewage city costing $200,000 and require upgrades to the pumping station. There are also several structures that would have to be demolished at the site and mobile homes that would have to be moved.

The Berryman Road property would require only 1,300 feet of sewage piping and be able to tie in near the YMCA costing $155,000.

The motion approved by the board was not to purchase any property, but to have the value of the site appraised and see what the owner would be willing to sell for.

“The next step in the jail property search is to identify property that they would like to buy for the purpose of building a jail,” Teller said. “They have to get it appraised and they have to then deal with the owner on what price the owner is willing to take.”

The Board of Supervisors has budgeted $1.2 million to purchase property for the jail.