MARSHALL - On Nov. 3, three seats on the the Madison County Board of Commissioners will be up for grabs.
Ahead of the election, five of the six commissioner candidates spoke in a forum Sept. 22 on issues including accountability to voters and made closing statements on why residents should vote for them.
The five candidates — Bill Briggs, Shannon Dowler, Jeremy Hensley, Connie Molland and Alan Wyatt — fielded questions from Sarah Scully, a local reporter with WNC Grassroots Media who served as moderator organized by the Madison County Chamber of Commerce and hosted by AB Tech's Madison campus in Marshall.
Briggs; Hensley, the commission's current vice chair; and Wyatt, a current commissioner, are Republicans.
Briggs, 37, owns a property maintenance
company specializing in pressure washing and lives in Mars Hill.
Hensley, 47, has been a Verizon service technician for 20 years.
Wyatt, 50, is a sales representative for L&W Supply in Arden. He is a firefighter with Ebbs Chapel Volunteer Fire Department, and president of the county firefighters association.
Both Hensley and Wyatt live in Mars Hill and have served as commissioners since 2022.
Dowler and Molland are Democrats.
Dowler, a family physician and health policy consultant, is in her second term on the Madison County Board of Health.
Molland owns Flow Gallery in Marshall and has been active with the Downtown Marshall Association and Rotary Club of Madison County for years. She was named the Rotary Club's first district governor in 2024.
Mark Snelson, another Democrat, did not participate in the forum. Snelson served on the board from 2018 to 2022 and served as the board's chair in his final year. He is director of the county emergency medical services, where he has worked since 1990.
At the forum, the five candidates present addressed six topics: the economy, taxes, the question of resources for towns versus rural communities, accountability to the residents, the county's youth and their own top issues.
Accountability to voters
One of the six questions presented to the candidates was "How should residents hold commissioners accountable after they are elected?"
According to Briggs, long-term visions and planning is important for the county, including infrastructure maintenance, and building rehabilitation and updates.
"I think it's important to take care of what we have. By doing that, we don't have to just completely build something brand new. I think that's what the current commissioners are doing with the Public Service Complex," Briggs said of the new Public Service Complex. .The complex is a 80,000-square-foot facility that includes a judicial center at 500 Medical Park Drive in the field behind the health department in Marshall.
It will consolidate governmental, social and judicial services into a single facility, including Department of Social Services, clerk of court, inspection, child support, county administration, information technology, as well as county offices such as register of deeds, zoning and planning, board of elections and a commissioner meeting space.
"We've had this old courthouse for over 100 years," Briggs said. "A lot of people don't understand, because they haven't been in it, they don't understand that it's not a place that we can do the business that we need. The county is growing, so there's going to be more people, and we don't want to burden this on our kids, and that's what's been done all these years. Everything's just been pushed down, and we've had burden. We're burdened over it now."
Dowler said voters should expect and demand transparency.
"We have too many closed sessions, in my personal opinion," Dowler said. "Too many big decisions are being made behind closed doors. We don't get minutes often enough from meetings, and they're not in real time. We also have to be accessible, and we need to be accessible to our constituents.: Dowler said holding people accountable on social media is the worst way to do so, as people are "just ugly" on social media.
"So, I would ask people to hold us accountable to our faces, in public comments, and in public settings where we're working together to listen and hear each other," Dowler said.
Hensley said the first three words of the U.S. Constitution, "We the people," offer the best path forward for constituents.
"If you don't like what they're doing, vote them out," Hensley said. "As far as leadership goes, we've got to have a vision. We need to leave this place better than how we got it. When we first came on (in 2024), the minimum wage was $11 an hour. Now, it's $15. That's good leadership. Just like Will mentioned on the Public Service Complex, that can's been kicked down the road for 50 years. We can either pay for it now and put the burden on us, or we can get it to the next generation when it's three times as much. Leadership's all about a vision and a plan."
Molland acknowledged the issue of accountability to the voters is "one of the tougher questions" from the forum, and said leadership, by its very nature, needs to be accountable.
"I think that everyone should always act with integrity, especially in a role that is an elected position," Molland said. "It's a long four years if we have to wait for somebody to get elected if they're not acting properly. We want to keep our people listening to what is important to the community. We want to have the dialogue. Public comment at the county commissioner meeting is one way."
Molland said she agreed with Dowler's idea to have town hall-like meetings at more remote sites such as community centers.
Wyatt said when he was voted in in 2022, being open and available, as well as being a good steward of taxpayers' money, was a main focus.
"But also, I think the people have trusted us to be good stewards," Wyatt said. "We've addressed long-term infrastructure needs: building rehabs, parking lots, landing zones to help the emergency services in Laurel, Spring Creek and here at AB-Tech. That's being accountable: doing what you said in the campaign. And we have done that."
Johnny Casey is the Madison County communities reporter for The Citizen Times and The News-Record & Sentinel. He can be reached at 828-210-6074 or jcasey@citizentimes.com.
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Issue of accountability to voters tackled in Madison commission forum
