RINGGOLD, Ga. - On her way out the door, Walker County Commissioner Bebe Heiskell's efforts to take disputed property from an outspoken critic stalled.
Members of Heiskell's administration and Jill Wyse, who owns about 50 acres on Lookout Mountain, have bickered over a strip of land for about 1 1/2 years. Wyse says she bought that strip as part of a 17-acre deal in 2014. An attorney for the county, meanwhile, argued that the local government is supposed to have control of it.
Hearing both sides of the argument last week, Superior Court Judge Ralph Van Pelt Jr. sided with Heiskell. Kind of.
Wyse's attorney, Arch Farrar, argued that Heiskell wants the property to construct a walking trail. He believes county workers will tear up some of the land during construction. And he believes it will be for no reason, because Heiskell leaves office at the end of the year and her replacement might not be interested in the deal.
Van Pelt ruled the county's eminent domain power will let it take the land, but he said that can't happen for 60 days after the Nov. 17 hearing.
"I'm not saying you can't take it," Van Pelt told Robert Smalley, an attorney for the county. "That's for another courtroom at another date."
The land in question - a narrow strip 2,500 feet long - runs next to Wyse's home.
The delay means the decision is in the hands of Commissioner-elect Shannon Whitfield, who said he doesn't know yet whether he wants to take up Heiskell's mission to build the trail. Whitfield's attorney, Warren Coppedge, asked Van Pelt to keep the county workers from starting work until Whitfield takes office.
Wyse supported Whitfield in the campaign, giving him about $100 in August, campaign contribution reports show.
After the court hearing, Whitfield criticized Heiskell for keeping him and others in the dark about her plan to condemn the land. He said a county employee called to alert him the day before, but he never heard from her. Wyse said she didn't, either.
"This was a shock and a surprise to me when this surfaced late [Nov. 16]," Whitfield said. "I'm very disappointed these last-minute items were put into play."
Said Wyse: "They would have just sneaked it through like every other sneaky thing they do. Bebe and [County Attorney] Don [Oliver] are both compulsive liars. It's the best thing for this county: They are on their way out."
Heiskell did not return a call seeking comment for this story. But in a news release, Oliver said Wyse and her husband, Stan Lowe, are trying to keep taxpayers away from what should be public land. Oliver said the county has owned the property since 1981.
"Walker County has an obligation under Georgia law and the Georgia Constitution to be proper stewards of public property," Oliver said in the statement."
History of conflict
Wyse and Heiskell have been adversaries since at least March 2012, when Wyse said the water in Rock Creek behind her home turned brown. She said she walked along the creek to look for the source of the problem, only to find bulldozers next to the water, with logs and dirt dumped in.
County workers had been building a trail and were at a spot where the walkway would cross the water, which the Georgia Environmental Protection Division said was a trout stream. Wyse reported the county officials to the EPD, which said county workers violated the law and Georgia Department of Natural Resources rules by working near a stream without setting up the proper protections to keep the water clean.
To appease the EPD, Heiskell agreed to build a walking bridge across the creek for hikers on the trail, to protect the stream. The bridge cost $290,000, county records show. The EPD also fined Walker County $76,000 for failing to build the bridge on time, though Heiskell has vowed to never pay the money.
Relations between Wyse and the commissioner's office never improved. Last year, Heiskell said on local cable TV Wyse had been threatening her, which Wyse denied.
Then one night in July, Wyse said, she heard a county employee cutting brush near her property. She said the worker told her the county was going to pave a strip of land she uses as a driveway, and the next morning she woke up to find about 15 county employees outside, including Oliver.
She parked her car at what she said is the entrance to her property, which the county claimed to own. Oliver told her to move, she said, but she refused. For two hours they stood across from each other while Wyse called around town, looking for an attorney.
Eventually, she said, the county employees agreed to let the dispute play out in court, retreating with a Bobcat and a bulldozer. Wyse hired a lawyer. But she said she didn't hear much about the issue again until the day before the hearing, when Whitfield called her.
Wyse has lived at the end of Vulcan Drive in Rising Fawn since 1998, when she and her husband purchased 33 acres. They bought another 17 acres from a neighbor, Carolyn O'Neal, in July 2014.
It's on that tract that the issue rests.
In court, Smalley argued that a strip of the land is an old railroad bed that once stretched from Durham, Ga., to Chickamauga. In 1979, two railroad companies that once operated there gave their interest in the land through a quitclaim deed to The Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit. The Nature Conservancy gave the property to Walker County through another quitclaim deed in 1980.
"Years of negotiations with the two property owners have failed," Heiskell said during a commissioner's meeting 30 minutes before the court hearing. "This action is the most efficient way for me to resolve this problem."
But Wyse disputes the county's interpretation. Yes, the county received a quitclaim deed for the railroad bed. But that only works in stretches where the railroad companies actually owned the land. In some spots, the companies were simply running the line with property owners' permission.
When the railroad stopped running, Wyse said, the land reverted back to the original property owners or their heirs. Wyse bought the land from O'Neal, who inherited it in 2002 from a family member who got the 17 acres in 1955.
When she got the property in 2014, records show, Wyse received her own quitclaim deed "to the use of a private road for pedestrian and vehicular ingress and egress lying within the bounds of a right of way, formerly used as a railroad bed."
This leaves the county and Wyse at a stalemate: both have quitclaim deeds on the property. Both say they own it. The judge bought Wyse time, which she believes might be just what she needs. Time to wait for a new commissioner.
And what if Whitfield sides with Heiskell, believing the county should put a walking trail next to her house?
Wyse isn't sure what she'd do then.
Contact staff writer Tyler Jett at 423-757-6476 or tjett@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @LetsJett.