County Chairperson thanks Marshal’s Office for good job, despite few negative comments

During the Stephens County Board of Commissioner’s meeting on Tuesday, County Chairperson Michelle Ivester used her time during the Commissioners Report section of the meeting to address the public regarding the Stephens County Marshal’s Office.

Ivester thanked the Marshal’s Office for their work. She said several years ago, the Commission set a goal for the county to be cleaned up, and that’s exactly what the Marshal’s Office is doing.

“I would like to make a comment on the marshals while we’re here this morning, and just tell them I appreciate the work they’re doing. We set forth as a commission board, several years ago, to clean our county up. That was a goal of ours. And I think y’all have done a phenomenal job at that and I know you don’t get the credit you deserve a lot of times. And I would also like to say, I was on a panel a couple weeks ago, for Franklin, Hart, and Stephens Board of Realtors and we discussed you guys. I can tell you that the other two counties both had comments to say of what a good job you are doing for this county. It’s being noticed,” she said.

Ivester explained that following the publication of an article by WNEG about the Stephens County Marshal’s Office and the Stephens County Humane Shelter rescuing 30 dogs from a Stephens County property last week there’s been some negative comments made on Facebook.

Ivester says some comments alleged that the Marshal’s Office and the County were overreaching; however, she says that can’t be further from the truth.

“I know there’s a few comments out there, in the Facebook world, in reference to an article that was on WNEG’s website this week about a dog cleanup, there were about 30 dogs. And I noticed that there were some citizens, or maybe one or two citizens—because I think a majority of the county appreciates the job you do—that had the comment that ‘this was overreach by the commissioners and this was overreach by the marshal’s office,’ that can’t be further from the truth, that’s ridiculous. If you read the article, it clearly says that we were contacted to help with that case. This is not something where the marshals just went out and started collecting dogs and the Humane Shelter—and thank you to the Humane Shelter for the job you did on that as well. We were contacted for that reason for our marshals to go out and help,” she said.

She says the Marshal’s Office doesn’t go out to properties without cause.

“A lot of times, our marshals do go out and help. I’ve never witnessed our marshals go out and be ugly to any of our citizens without cause. They want to help before they even get to the courtroom. If you get to the courtroom, it’s because you are flat out defying our ordinances and you are not wanting to clean up your property. They go above and beyond to try to help you get to that point. I’ve had many conversations with Tony Addison, our marshal, and with one of the other properties that we had a couple months ago, and he was really going above and beyond to help that gentleman. I think some of the citizens who were getting involved were actually hindering the process. I just want to thank y’all for the job you’re doing, it’s being noticed by our citizens, and we get more good compliments than bad on it,” she said.

Following Ivester’s comments no action was taken.