County waits for ethics ruling before acting on airport land purchase

County commissioners may soon be able to end the deadlock they find themselves in over purchasing land near the Apalachicola airport. The county has been given money from the Federal Aviation Administration to purchase 21 acres of undeveloped land at the end of the airport’s main runway to serve as a runway buffer zone. If the county buys the first phase, the FAA will provide money to buy more property in the area for a total of about 70 acres. The board has found itself in a stalemate over the land purchase for months – there are two commissioners in favor of the purchase, and two have voted against it arguing that the sale price of 9000 dollars an acre is too high. The commission chairman, Smokey Parrish, has been unable to vote on the issue because his employer was one of the landowners – though Parrish says he would support the purchase if he could vote on it. He may soon be able to cast the deciding vote, at Tuesday’s county commission meeting it was stated that Parrish’s employer has now sold his stake in the property and the chairman no longer faces a conflict of interest in the matter. But as county attorney Michael Shuler warned the board, its better to do this right than fast – so the board has asked for the state ethics commission to look at the situation and decide whether Mister Parrish is free to vote. The board said they will reconsider the land purchase once the Ethics commission has issued its ruling.