The Lampasas County Commissioners Court recently discussed possible landscaping for a breezeway and parking lot near the addition to the Lampasas County Office Building.

Proposals include features such as natural stone paving designed to look like a dry creek bed, strings of lights across the breezeway, seven canopies attached to iron support posts near the wall of the former Mullican Dry Goods building and potted trees -- possibly Italian cypress or other plants that consume little water, art consultant Nancy Gray said -- watered by drip irrigation.

"We're trying to make that as maintenance-free as possible," County Auditor Jack Clark said of the landscaping proposed for the breezeway.

Precinct 1 Commissioner Robert Vincent, however, said plants will create a maintenance cost for the county even if they do not require much water. Trees and the canopies also might obscure part of a proposed historical mural, Vincent said. The commissioner suggested limestone instead of greenery and a wrought-iron covering for the breezeway instead of canvas.

Vincent and Precinct 4 Commissioner Jack B. Cox also voiced opposition to suggestions of a small park area with benches and possibly a fountain near a parking lot behind the new annex building.

Komatsu Architecture architect Gordon Marchant said the county will lose four parking spaces if commissioners opt to include a park behind the annex.

"We're losing parking spots in the front with the handicapped [entrance]," Vincent said. "We don't need to lose parking spaces in the back."

Marchant and Clark, though, said the county will lose spaces for vehicles behind the building anyway unless the Commissioners Court decides to cut down a tree east of the county building.

Cox said constructing a "green area" would increase the project's cost and would require maintenance.

The breezeway -- without a park behind the building -- is estimated to cost $44,000, Marchant said.

Vincent also said a garden area behind the new annex might attract vandalism. Ms. Gray, however, said Lampasas has not experienced many acts of vandalism. Only one sculpture in Campbell Park has been vandalized, she said, and the artwork was cleaned quickly.

Any mural painted in the breezeway can be sealed, Ms. Gray said, both for protection from ultraviolet rays and to allow for easy cleaning in case of vandalism.

The Commissioners Court voted 5-0 to table discussion of the breezeway and parking area.

Design documents for the addition to the county building should be finished by January, Marchant said. The county can advertise for bids in February.

In another item, the court voted unanimously to extend for 90 days, beginning immediately, the ban on outdoor burning in unincorporated areas. The 90-day period will end March 8.

"Hopefully by then we will have had precipitation of some kind," County Judge Wayne Boultinghouse said.

The court also voted 5-0 to adopt a fireworks order banning the sale, storage, detonation or other use of rockets with sticks and missiles with fins in any unincorporated area of the county.

In other business, commissioners voted 5-0 to approve an inter-local agreement with the city of Copperas Cove to allow county septic inspector F.A. Taylor to inspect septic systems in the parts of Copperas Cove that lie within Lampasas County.

The Commissioners Court also approved a set of budget amendments for the 2007-08 fiscal year. The amendments transfer excess revenues from certain departments to county departments with deficits.

"The goal of this is not to have any budget variance in any department," Clark said.

Also at the recent meeting, the Commissioners Court voted 5-0 to pay Jeff Jackson $50 per month for courthouse maintenance, including work on the courthouse clock.

Jackson said he typically resets the clock each month to make sure it keeps accurate time.