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In Troup County’s fourth district, two candidates will face off for the Republican nomination for the seat. Both candidates made their cases during an election forum at the LaGrange-Troup County Chamber of Commerce on April 23.

Incumbent Morris Jones is being challenged by Phil Nations.

The forum was organized by the LaGrange-Troup County Chamber of Commerce and live-streamed by The LaGrange Daily News. Videos of the forum in its entirety, including other races, are available on both the Chamber and LDN Facebook pages.

Jones is a timber and cattleman for his family business, Jones Bros. Farming. The longtime commissioner is currently finishing up his sixth term. 

Nations is retired after running a local towing business for many years, which he turned over to his sons and grandson. He still works at West Georgia College as a CDL instructor.

Each candidate was given 90 seconds for each question, with two minutes for an opening and closing statement.

Some of the questions covered in the forum include:

SANITATION

Last year, the county made the decision to move to a single franchise provider for garbage collection in unincorporated Troup County. Do you think that was the right move for the county to make? And should we continue with the way we’re managing garbage collection? Or should we consider changes?

“We should definitely consider changing. I was totally against it,” Nations said. “I feel like that, that the whole [issue] that came about didn’t give the people of Troup County, the citizens, a chance to vote on what they wanted. They got something forced on them that they were not even aware of that was coming … it’s not been good for the county, I don’t feel like. I feel like there’s been problems. I feel like the people are unhappy, even though they might have needed a change but the people should have got a voice in the change.”

“When the Commission Board looked at this curbside pickup and the expense for trash it kept escalating up higher. You’ve got to realize district for a majority of the voters in District 4 already had curbside pickup, whether it was from the City of LaGrange or from C&C,” Jones said.

“We did give the citizens plenty of time to come. We had several public hearings, where they came in, and they stated themself, what they wanted and what they didn’t want. If you ever come to county commission meetings, the people who are against something or don’t want it, they don’t come in. The people who already are satisfied, they’re not going to come to the meeting, they going to wait for the five men that they elect to sit in those seats to make those decisions for them. That’s why we are elected as county commissioners a seat in those seats. That’s why we elected to make the hard calls, not the easy calls,” Jones said.

GROWTH

Given the growth in our area, projected over the next five to 10 years, and the number of apartments being built near the city limits near unincorporated Troup County. What do you think should be done to improve the county’s infrastructure to support upcoming growth? 

“The biggest problem that’s going to be coming in Troup County Canada is going to be our transportation. If you look at our roads, our roads go back into the 20s. And as the population grows, we’re going to have to address that as far as the apartments that are being built,” Jones said.

“We know growth is coming but we want to do smart growth. By smart growth, we want to be on top of it, we don’t want to be behind the scenes, we want to be up there with it,” he said.

“As far as the growth part with the apartments coming in, I don’t think anybody realized what was happening. It kind of jumped ahead of them. I don’t think anybody was ready for what’s fixing to happen. 

“Transportation is going to be an issue with all that many people coming in. And I think people need to really think about, what do we really have here for all those people and we need to look at what we’re going to bring in for those people? Do we have the schools for those people?” Nations said.