MARIETTA - City Council members present at a committee meeting Wednesday were critical of a proposal that would allow the city to lease parking spaces in a new parking deck the county is building just off the Square.

With Van Pearlberg and Jim King absent, the other five council members agreed to discuss the matter further at its Nov. 5 Committee of the Whole meeting.

The county is building an estimated $8 million parking deck next to City Hall on the site of the former Fulton Federal Savings & Loan. The deck, expected to open in February 2011, is being built in conjunction with the construction of a new Cobb Superior Court building on Haynes Street.

Cobb's Director of Support Services Virgil Moon said the city has been offered, through a 25-year lease, 102 of the 525 to 540 parking spaces in the deck. Those 102 spaces would be used for public parking. The county will offer a mix of employee and public parking with the remaining spaces. Public parking will cost $5 per day. The city would pay about $300,000 throughout the first five to six years and basically break even thereafter from ticket sales, he said.

The total cost per space the city would pay - without any offset from public parking fees - would be $1,564, which increases by 1.5 percent each year, Moon said.

But Councilman Philip Goldstein said those numbers are not based on firm assumptions. It is hard to predict how many people will pay the $5 a day ticket to park there, he said.

While Councilwoman Holly Walquist said, "I just have a hard time paying for something I'm not going to own," Councilwoman Annette Lewis said after the 25-year lease expired, the city would have the same parking problem.

And Councilman Anthony Coleman said of the proposal: "Ain't going to happen."

Councilman Grif Chalfant said the ideal spot for a parking deck to relieve traffic on the Square would be to build one where the First Baptist Church parking lot is now. Chalfant said he's heard that the church may be interested in a deal.

The only one to support the county's proposal was Mayor Bill Dunaway, who said the city should lease the spaces to help the merchants on the Square.

Goldstein and Dunaway have been negotiating with the county on behalf of the city for months, but those negotiations came to a halt in September when Cobb Board of Commissioners Chairman Sam Olens said he was recommending the county move on without the city. Olens said he'd give the City Council one last chance to participate, before building the deck without the city, with simply 102 fewer parking spaces.

Wednesday night, Olens said the city has a few more weeks to decide.

Chalfant asked Goldstein at the meeting how he could participate in the negotiations, given that his family owns a number of downtown parking spaces.

Goldstein said he has no ownership in the new deck, and does not believe he has a conflict. Drivers park closest to where they want to go. The new deck will service the courthouse crowd, not the merchants, Goldstein said. Goldstein said his family owns the parking lot off Mill Street behind the herb shop, but it is used for merchants and some of his tenants. Moreover, he said his long-term plans are to erect a building there. The other parking he owns is not daily parking, but used for his tenants, he said.

Citizens who visit the courthouse use the existing county parking deck, and such parking lots as the one owned by Cobb Superior Court Judge Rob Flournoy's family, which is bordered by Roswell, Anderson and Waddell streets, and next to that, restaurateur Jimmy Duvlaris' parking lot, Goldstein said.