Video Gilmer County Sheriff Candidates Square Off in FYN Debate

At a Gilmer Candidates debate hosted by fetchyournews.com on Saturday, July 21st, all of the local candidates in Gilmer County running for office squared off in an evening debate covering such topics as, what the duties of their offices are to other topics such as, how they are prepared to manage budgets in their offices.
The debates, monitored by FYN’S own Brian Pritchard featured all of the Gilmer County candidates including candidates for the office of Coroner, Probate Judge, Board of Education, Tax Commissioner, Post 1 Commissioner, and Sheriff.

The Sheriff’s debate, which began at the end of the night, featured all of the sheriff candidates including Shane Bowman, Leon Davenport, Tim Theobald, Tommy Hunter, and Incumbent Stacy Nicholson, and covered such issues as local drug problems, providing better police patrol, and managing the Sheriff Office’s budget.

After allowing the candidates to give a two-minute introduction, FYN reporter Brian Pritchard, in his first question to the sheriffs’ candidates, asked a troubling question to local candidate Tim Theobald about Mexican Cartel drug related incidents, an issue on the minds of many after $15,000,000 of Marijuana was found in Gilmer County last week, the second of two Mexican Cartel related incidents in Gilmer County this year.

“Are you concerned with these recent Mexican Cartels that we have discovered that are here in our back yard and what part of sheriff if you were the sheriff could you do about that?”

Pritchard asked Theobald, after Theobald had mentioned in his introduction how he had held position as commander of the drug task force in Gilmer, Pickens, and Fannin County.

Theobald first responded to the question by saying that he believed the Mexican Cartels have been in the county a long time, and that we are now probably just discovering them. As for what he would do about the situation, Theobald said he would handle the problem by providing “very aggressive” drug enforcement such as interdiction and utilizing the county’s drug dogs more and provide even more aggressiveness by stopping the drugs at what he called “the upper level people.”

“We need to get our investigators with the drug task force ramped up to where their working mid and upper level people and then we can make a difference on this,”

said Theobald.

Other candidates such as Davenport, Bowman, and Hunter agreed with Theobald that more aggressiveness is needed to take place with the drug searches and also stated that more flyovers with drug task force helicopters could fix the problem.

Current Gilmer County Sheriff Stacy Nicholson addressed the problem by splitting the questions in two different areas. Nicholson said that according to State and Federal sources, Mexican Drug Cartels are new to areas of rural Georgia including both North Georgia and South Georgia. Nicholson then said that as far as Marijuana, the problem has increased because of so many foreclosures on empty homes because of the economical downfall and that also the reason the drug cartels are coming to Georgia is for the wooded areas.

Pritchard, again the debate’s monitor, then moved the debate in a different direction by asking local candidate Shane Bowman how he would provide “more patrol” to Gilmer County without increasing the sheriff’s budget. Pritchard asked this question because Bowman in his opening introduction had said he wanted more visible patrol for the County.

Bowman responded by saying that if feasible he would cut areas of the budget to put more deputies on the road.

“The only way to do that is to get in the sheriff’s office and break down the entire budget to see where the frivolous spending is going,”

said Bowman.

Pritchard then asked Davenport the same question because he too in his introduction said he would put more officers on the street.

Davenport answered by explaining that by reducing the County’s command staff officers, more officers could be hired and some of the command staff officers could be put on patrol.

“We spend a lot on command staff salaries. For lack of a better amount of words, there are more chiefs than there are Indians. If you can combine some of those command stand duties, then the money you are allocating in their salary, in some cases you could put two deputies on the street,”

said Davenport.

It was here Davenport also brought up, what was probably the most heated topic of the night about a recent purchase of radios made by the Sheriff’s Office. Davenport implied that the Sheriff’s office had spend $120,000 on radios when they could have bought the same thing for $45,000 or $50,000.

Candidate Tommy Hunter later commented on the purchase of the radios after being asked a question by Pritchard if he thought the Sheriff’s budget was down to its bare bones, a comment made by Incumbent Stacy Nicholson.

“I don’t think it’s down to its bare bones,”

said Hunter.

“I believe there’s money being spent that doesn’t need to be spent.”

Hunter then brought up Davenport’s statement about the radios.

“I’m not saying that deputies should not have the top of the line equipment. I’m saying that East Ellijay had the same kind of radios as Gilmer County. They’ve reprogrammed the radios and they’re fine and they meet the standards. At some point, yes, let’s get this new equipment, but right now with the financial crisis we’re in, now’s not the time to do that. We could have held off and reprogrammed those radios until the money was there.”

However, before the debate was over, Nicholson said about the subject,

“Everybody here has got all kinds of ideas about how we could have saved thousands of dollars every year in Gilmer County. Yet not one of these candidates has been to a Board of Commissioner’s budget meeting.”

Nicholson also responded to Hunter’s comment by saying that the purchasing of the radios had not been a programming issue and that the majority of the County’s radios would not accept the split frequency required by the FCC as of January 30th, 2013.

Also participating in the event were Glen J Arnold challenging Incumbent Jerry Hensley for Coroner; Probate Judge Incumbent Anita Mullins (whose challenger Lou Jean Jones Hill was not present), Tax Commissioner Candidates Charlie Paris, Rebecca A. “Becky” Marshall, Merle Howell Naylor (not present), Ermelleana Lambert (not present), and Chela Starnes Bailey; BOE candidates Ronald Clayton, Michael Wallace Parks (I), James Waters, Foster Mcarthur (I) and Angie Thomas were not present; Post One Commissioner candidates Tony Arbucci, Randy Bell, and Jerry Tuso and Shane Bowman, Leon Davenport, Tim Theobald, and Tommy Hunter running against Incumbent Stacy Nicholson for Sheriff.

Please see the video of the Sheriff’s debate from the event.