UPDATE: Back from the brink – supervisors save most interesting discussion for last

Just when suicide seems like a viable option to extricate yourself from a time/space loop of consideration of municipal government minutiae that you see no way out of, the unexpected pulls you back – to life, to the makings of a good story.

That was the case Tuesday evening, just over three-and-a-half hours into a meeting characterized by the “Nothing is Easy” perspective that seems to have overtaken the Warren County Board of Supervisors recently. Delayed for action Tuesday were, not only a vote on allocation of the $2.1 million County share of federal CARES Act Coronavirus relief funding due to the absence of Deputy Emergency Management Coordinator Rick Farrall (correction: Farrall was absent due to the item being pulled from agenda by chairman due to the need for additional information on allocation process being developed), but also the rather routine approval of the minutes of previous meetings. Well, there were a lot of them – three regular meetings dating back to mid-May, three special meetings, and a May work session – “a lot of reading” as Chairman Walt Mabe pointed out.

But 3-1/2 hours later, long gone were general topics of public interest on recognitions of service to the Warren County Sheriff’s Office and updates on Samuels Library operations during the COVID-19 pandemic emergency response.

Also gone were potential lead stories:

• on the fate of a long-planned promotional LOVE sign designed to piggy-back Virginia communities on the half-century-plus success of the “Virginia is for Lovers” tourism promotional slogan acknowledged as one of the Top 10 marketing campaigns of any kind (keep it alive but explore alternate designs, locations and funding options);
• of a possible border war with Clarke County over a centuries-old surveying anomaly leading to a needed boundary adjustment (approve the changed boundaries as did Clarke County earlier in the day to correct the situation);
• or proper lighting, shrubbery, parking and positive movement on development of a Department of Game and Inland Fisheries overseen Morgan’s Ford Shenandoah River-side boat landing property (keep the project moving forward so as not to lose DuPont environmental settlement funding, but at reduced costs with less lighting and less shrubbery – “shrubbery”, is there a Monty Python script developing here?).

By 8:43 p.m., one-hour-and-43 minutes in, the meeting had settled into a mind-numbing series of Conditional Use Permit requests for private-use campground property additions; for short-term tourist rentals; and ordinance amendments controlling how many dead, unusable, untagged vehicles or recreational vehicles may be kept on residential properties; and how flags and signs can or cannot be regulated in the wake of a 2015 U.S. Supreme Court ruling on publicly displayed content.

After an hour of this drier side of municipal business, first, the LOVE sign issue came before the board seeing a 6 for, 2 against, 2 in the middle public split. Following a revisiting of early agenda board and staff, reports pushed back by other business and the 7:30 p.m. start of the eight public hearings, an agenda item added at the meeting’s outset by Happy Creek Supervisor Tony Carter, one of two still-sitting incumbents (with Archie Fox) whose seats have not yet come up for election, post-EDA financial scandal.

Reservation of whose rights?

That item was board consideration and a vote of “formal approval” of a renegotiated “Reservation of Rights Agreement” with the Front Royal Town Council. As Royal Examiner has reported, that agreement negotiated informally between Supervisors Cullers and Oates and Council members Lori Cockrell and Chris Holloway was an attempt to have the Front Royal Town Council agree to assume payment responsibility for its Economic Development Authority-financed new Town Police Station headquarters in the new fiscal year.

That the negotiated and renegotiated agreement not quite achieving that goal – the Town has agreed to a one-time, recoverable, half-interest payment of $10,528.95 – had been accomplished by Cullers and Oates without his, and perhaps other supervisors’ knowledge, led Happy Creek Supervisor Tony Carter to inquire as to the nature and advisability of his involved colleagues’ negotiating process, without the formal endorsement of the entire board.

That 35-minute, sometimes confrontational, discussion involving, not only board members, but County Attorney Jason Ham, EDA Board Chairman and soon-to-be Interim County Administrator Ed Daley, will be explored in a related story “Two supervisors questioned about ‘back channel’ dealings with Town on EDA issues” and attached video segment.

See the Morgan’s Ford Boat Landing, the public comment section, boundary adjustment,  and the LOVE sign discussion and tabling vote in these Royal Examiner videos:

Warren County Board of Supervisors Meeting – Morgan Fords Public Hearing – July 21, 2020

Warren County Board of Supervisors Meeting – Public Comments – July 21, 2020  – (The Public Comment video has been updated to include both sections of public comments presented at the BOS meeting.)

Warren County Board of Supervisors Meeting – July 21, 2020 – LOVEworks Sign Project

Warren County Board of Supervisors Meeting – July 21, 2020 – Boundary Line Adjustment between Warren and Clarke Counties