City Ends Probation Department Contract with the County

The City of Toccoa will be using their own probation service for municipal court.

At their meeting Monday, City Commissioners voted to remove the City from a partnership with Stephens County to provide probation services.

Toccoa has been sharing the probation services with the County since the early 1990’s , but City Manager Billy Morse says the City has simply decided to go in another direction.

“We currently have a joint probation department with the County and it serves the courts; the city court included,” Morse explained. “The City Commission decided they wanted to go in a different direction. So we have advised the County that effective June 30th, we will not participate in the program any longer.”

Morse said the City has contracted with an independent probation service, which will begin working for the City’s municipal court on July 1.

“We hired a new private firm to handle our probation services. They go by CPM, but it’s Capital Probation Management, Inc. It’s no cost to the City so I think that’s an attractive thing,” he said.

Morse did not say why the City has chosen this route for handling probation services.

However, the City’s decision has put the County in the position of having to decide what direction they will go for probation services.

County Manager Phyllis Ayers says the first thing they are doing is looking for a new Chief Probation Officer.

“We have advertised for a Chief Probation Officer because our current Chief Probation Officer plans to retire by the end of this year,” Ayers said.

Ayers says they’re also looking at privatizing their probation services.

“In the process of waiting for all of those (applications) to come in, the judges and I and the current Chief Probation Officer met and we are also going to bring in a private company. We’ve looked at them before, but we’re going to ask them to come in and give a presentation if I can get them here by the next board meeting. So we;re going to look at all of our avenues too,” Ayers explained.

Ayers said it may cost the County more to run the Probation office without the help of the City.

So far, the County has not made any definite decision on whether to continue with the Probation Department as is or hire a third party contractor.