EDA Asset Committee Chairman blasts Town for ‘bad faith’ actions

As part of his Asset Committee Report at Friday’s Front Royal-Warren County EDA Board of Director’s meeting, Greg Harold began a two-phased counterattack on the Town of Front Royal’s recent actions toward the EDA, particularly as they relate to the Town’s refusal to make good on its legal commitment to repay the EDA for $8.4 million spent thus far on the new Front Royal Police Department headquarters across Kendrick Lane.

“This is an example of Front Royal’s loan commitment process” as he held up a picture of Jennifer McDonald. “This is what they used to approve your loans.”, said EDA Asset Chairman Greg Harold.

“The EDA may soon be sponsoring an introductory level class on Municipal Financing and Understanding Loan Commitments,” Harold wrote in his agenda packet Asset Committee Report, referencing “bad debt and shady accounting” from a “community partner known as the Town of Front Royal” which he described as continuing “to act in bad faith”.

And that was just the start – at the meeting’s outset Harold made a motion to add a statement he wanted to make on the above topic to the meeting agenda. That motion passed unanimously. Harold’s statement read into the meeting record following the second of two closed sessions was titled “The Town of Front Royal’s Charade of Partnership”.

In it Harold describes a pre-Thanksgiving meeting he and Board Chairman Ed Daley had with Town officials that was “cordial, respectful and collaborative”. “However, actions speak louder than words he adds before concluding, “Merry Christmas”.

See Harold’s scathing indictment of Town officials’ recent behavior toward the EDA as a newly re-tooled EDA staff and board of directors works to right its situation in the wake of what stands at a $21.3-million dollar financial scandal alleged to have been forged during some portion of the 10-year executive leadership of Jennifer McDonald in this exclusive Royal Examiner video: