Senior Code Enforcement Officer Ken Hussong Retires After 28 Years of Civilian Employment Share

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On Jan­u­ary 1^st, 1992, the City of Mar­i­on hired Ken Hus­song to serve in the Code Enforce­ment Depart­ment fol­low­ing his nine years in law enforce­ment with the Mar­i­on Police Depart­ment (’77-’85). Dur­ing his first cou­ple years as a civil­ian employ­ee, Hus­song was the only one serv­ing in Code Enforce­ment. Then, a part-time employ­ee was brought on to help Hussong. 

“I have high stan­dards for this com­mu­ni­ty, and I want­ed to make a dif­fer­ence,” Hus­song explained.

While still work­ing close­ly with MPD, Hus­song would par­tic­i­pate in march­es to help dri­ve away drug deal­ers. Dur­ing those 5 – 6 years, he saw pos­i­tive results. Hus­song would also car­ry out pro­grams and events ini­ti­at­ed by for­mer employ­ee, Alice Love, who found grant oppor­tu­ni­ties, edu­cat­ed the com­mu­ni­ty, and helped imple­ment Nation­al Night Out. 

“One of the best and most ful­fill­ing pro­grams I’ve been a part of was the Own­er Occu­pied Reha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­gram where grant fund­ing was used (through IHC­DA) to reha­bil­i­tate homes of eli­gi­ble elder­ly and/​or dis­abled home­own­ers. The own­ers were grate­ful, but it was also good for the jail inmate work crews; it served as a morale boost­er and char­ac­ter builder for them,” Hus­song explained. 

Final­ly, he said work­ing with dif­fer­ent clubs such as Kiwa­nis and Lions was a huge help in clean­ing up the city. He expressed, ​“In order for the City of Mar­i­on to thrive, these orga­ni­za­tions should be acti­vat­ed more often for cleanups, inac­tive cit­i­zens should get involved and take ini­tia­tive to clean up around their neigh­bor­hoods, and more efforts need to be in place to edu­cate the com­mu­ni­ty on what a nui­sance prop­er­ty actu­al­ly is, and so forth.”

In retire­ment, Hus­song looks for­ward to spend­ing more time with fam­i­ly includ­ing grand­chil­dren, as well as trav­el­ing and doing things he and his wife have been want­i­ng to do, with­out time constraints.

Build­ing Com­mis­sion­er Jer­ry Foust­night who over­sees Code Enforce­ment, said, ​“He’s a good guy with a lot of knowl­edge. Ken­ny has been very active in his efforts to serve cit­i­zens not only as a CE Offi­cer but in try­ing to rid the city of aban­doned vehi­cles and trash. We will miss him and his pas­sion for his job.”

Hussong’s last offi­cial day with the City is April 22^nd, 2020.