Wakulla County disabled comments on its official Facebook pages earlier this year, and many neighbors say they still don't know why.WATCH FULL REPORT BELOW: Neighbors are still questioning why the county disabled commenting on t heir public Facebook pagesNeighbors began noticing the change during the first county commission meeting of the year. Since then, residents have publicly questioned the decision.At a January 20 meeting, neighbor Ravyn Fears brought it up directly to county officials."My first question is for everyone in my text messages over there asking me why y'all turned Facebook comments off on the meeting? Does anybody know? Administration doesn't know," Fears said.County Administrator David Edwards responded at that meeting."We changed it the first of the year. Facebook is, we're pushing information out on Facebook. That's the purpose of" Edwards said, with the remainder of his response inaudible on the live stream recording.According to emails sent on January 6th from the then-public information officer, the decision to disable comments came from the county administrator.Neighbor Michael Thomas said residents have a right to express themselves and doesn't understand why that would be a problem."That's another form of communication, so there shouldn't be any problem with it. That's just another form of letting you know and speaking in your mind about what bothers you. You don't like it. You have the right to say whether you like it or not. That's the bottom line," Thomas said.During the February 2nd commission meeting, District 3 Commissioner Valerie Russell asked whether comments could at least be re-enabled during meetings."Is that something we could do? Turn it back on just for the meetings, just to give everybody an...none of us respond to those comments," Russell said.District 1 Commissioner Ralph Thomas pushed back on that idea."Well, I think that's, that's what makes it an ineffective communication. You know, people are making those comments, and we can't go in there and comment. You know, it's a whole lot more constructive if they'll call us, if they'll email us, you know, because then we can have an actual dialogue," Thomas said.But neighbor Chuck Hess questioned that reasoning, arguing that commissioners were never required to engage with comments in the first place."They're not required to respond to comments. They're not required to do anything to the comments. They don't have to look at the comments. So what's the purpose? There's really no purpose," Hess said.I posted a poll Tuesday morning to the Facebook group Wakulla Citizens Forum, asking neighbors how they felt about the change. At the time of Tuesday's report, around 88% of the 196 responses said they were against the disabling.I then reached out to the county for clarification on why the decision was made.The county declined to make a statement.The next county commission meeting is Monday, March 2, at 6 p.m.This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.Want to see more local news? Visit the WTXL ABC 27 Website. Stay in touch with us anywhere, anytime.Like us on FacebookFollow us on Instagram and X. ...read more read less