ALPHARETTA — In just a few weeks, the city of Alpharetta will open its new municipal jail, which will operate in the facility that was previously the north Fulton jail annex.

When the county opted to cease annex jail operations on September 1, city officials faced the choice of sending people to the overcrowded Rice Street facility near downtown Atlanta or operating the annex as a 72-bed city jail with its own 15-person staff and budget.

“The services to come along with a jail that the county was covering before,” Public safety director John Robinson says. “We’re now having to cover that”.

Robinson says they are in talks with Milton, John’s Creek, and Roswell about a jointly operated facility, and he says felony offenders will still be housed at Rice Street.