Jackson County officials are in the process of deciding who will provide what services to which areas.

Representatives from the county and Jackson municipalities recently met to begin renegotiating the guidelines of their joint service delivery strategy.

The service strategy addresses such services as courts, law enforcement and wastewater treatment. The purpose of the document is to ensure that residents receive quality service without governments duplicating efforts.

“Before the meeting, the (city) managers from Braselton, Arcade, Jefferson, Commerce and myself got together and went through the existing document to determine what things had the potential for very little, moderate and major change,” said Darrell Hampton, Jackson County manager.

During the first discussion, Hampton says the group discussed all of the items on the “very little” potential change list, which included the housing authority, E-911 services and property tax assessment. The group also discussed some of the items from the moderate list that required a little more discussion, including animal control, solid waste disposal and land use planning.

“(Staff is) in the process of making the changes and putting them onto a new form. We’ll present those back to the group during the next meeting and if everyone is in agreement, we’ll adopt those,” Hampton said. “Ultimately, there were no major changes in how services are being provided.”

In upcoming meetings, the group will tackle more complex issues like elections, jail services and fire district service map areas.

The group hopes to have a renegotiated service delivery strategy by July. Once renegotiations are completed by the smaller group, the proposed final document will be presented to the individual city councils and the county commission for adoption.