Council briefed on FY-20 revenue numbers, including some good news; and…

The Front Royal Town Council got some unexpectedly good news concerning its just completed Fiscal Year 2020 revenue stream at its Monday evening, July 21st work session. That news delivered by Finance Director B. J. Wilson in response to a question from Mayor Gene Tewalt was that the Town’s meals tax revenue for the entire fiscal year came in at 99% of anticipated levels despite Coronavirus Disease-2019 emergency management response restrictions on business operations in the final four months of the fiscal year.

“I’m very happy with that; very pleased with that. I think a lot of that can be attributed to some of what we’ve done on Main Street,” Wilson said of the Historic Downtown “Open for Business” weekend walking mall initiative that the Town initiated to coincide with Governor’s Ralph Northam’s Phase Two easing of social distanced-based business restrictions. “Also businesses may have adapted with deliveries, with staying open (by deliveries and carryouts). We did fall there in March and April but then it rebounded through the month of June,” Wilson noted of the final two months of the fiscal year.

Staff theorized that the weekend downtown business district walking mall scenario helped the Town’s meals tax revenue jump back to a near-normal level over the last two months of Fiscal Year-2020. Royal Examiner Photos/Roger Bianchini – Royal Examiner Video/Mark Williams

And as part of his FY-2020 revenue report, Wilson noted a distinct drop in delinquent utility accounts between May and June. Those numbers were 2,022 delinquent accounts totaling $841,442 in May, down to 1,151 still-delinquent accounts totaling $658,439 in June. And if that $183,003 one-month delinquent account recovery wasn’t enough, Wilson told the mayor and council that thus far through July another $58,000-plus had been pared off those overdue Town utility accounts.

“Delinquencies may still take a few months to catch up,” Wilson added, noting that the Town was working with individual account holders to make payment arrangements that worked for individual financial situations facing those utility clients. He said that while the delinquent account total may not see the same kind of drop as over the past seven weeks, he anticipates that total will get back to the more normally delinquent $400,000 range in the not too distant future.

The news was a little more mixed on the Town’s individual utility or public works revenues and Enterprise and General Fund account balances. The split was 50/50 or three funds in the black and three in the red after applying contingency resources to those individual funds.

As Mayor Tewalt, Vice-Mayor Sealock and Councilman Holloway listen, Finance Director B. J. Wilson, seated left, explains the pros and cons of the FY-20 revenue report. On the downside appeared to be a massive use of contingency/surplus funds to accommodate revenue shortfalls on a variety of Town service fronts.

On the plus side was the Town General Fund (+$136,821 with the help of $324,054 in General Fund surplus/Contingency revenue), Water Fund (+$96,334 boosted by $620,866 Contingency) and Solid Waste Fund (+$17,797 aided by $26,619 contingency) revenues; while down was the Street Fund (-$36,954 with no available or applied contingency funding), Electric Fund (-$16,734, again no contingency applied) and Sewer Fund (-$542,235 with an injection of $256,404 in contingency funding).

Responding to a question about the water and sewer numbers, Wilson explained variables including expenses related to the start of mandated sewer upgrades, as well as reductions in water-sewer taps and connection fees last year. He said hikes in the water and sewer rates to help meet system costs would also help balance those funds in the current fiscal year, FY-2021.

CARES $ applications

During the open discussion of non-agenda items later in the work session, the logistics of disseminating information about how local businesses and citizens can apply for Town-administered CARES (Coronavirus Aid Relief and Economic Security) Act federal funding and the process of distributing that $1.2 million Town share to qualifying applicants were discussed. That information is coming by way of multiple fronts, including social media and Town website posts and press releases, staff assured council.

IT and Communications Director Todd Jones, standing left, assured council that instructions on applying for Town-administered COVID-19 relief funding are coming on multiple fronts as soon as the apparatus to handle those applications are in place.

Oh, about those 2020 graduations

Also, of interest was presentation of a draft letter to the Warren County School Board urging more traditional graduation ceremonies at the high school football fields than town officials believe are currently planned. A four-person consensus (Gillespie absent), led enthusiastically by Jacob Meza – “It’s a good one, Lori, trust me” Meza told Councilwoman Lori Cockrell, who connected remotely to the work session expressed some reservation on an endorsement having not seen the draft letter.

“The School Board is my employer, Jake,” the councilwoman and career local educator reminded Meza. See more on why Cockrell’s caution might be warranted from her employment perspective in a related story: “Pushing ‘OUR’ luck? Town poised to seek traditional graduations capped at 1,000 attendees”.

And see Kim Riley’s story “WCPS releases graduation plan; continues devising fall school-start plan” on last week’s school board meeting – and keep an eye out for Riley’s story on this Wednesday’s Warren County School Board meeting at which more on graduation is expected to be announced.

Expanded fiber optics network and …

Also discussed Monday was a 34-page draft contract with LUMOS NETWORKS, Inc. “for a new, non-exclusive, limited franchise and pole attachment agreement for voice and data communications services via fiber optic cable”. The staff agenda summary explained that the company doing business as SEGRA is a successor to a company known as NTELOS Network, Inc. which had a now-expired contract with the Town to provide telecommunications services to Warren Memorial Hospital.

The contract would be for five years and renewable for four additional five-year terms upon mutual agreement. It would generate revenue for the Town, and by remote connection Town Attorney Doug Napier cited a $25 per pole fee, potentially for a large number in the thousands, of poles.

The staff summary noted that currently SEGRA “provides telecommunications services via its installed fiber optic cable system to select businesses and proposes to expand its services to a larger range of customers should the Town grant the proposed franchise.”

Other agenda items included a passing reference to bids received for the “Stonewall Bridge Epoxy Application; a brief discussion of re-advertising a vacancy on the Urban Forestry Advisory Committee after no applications were initially received; a review of the Town’s Public Information Office set up in the last year out of IT Director Todd Jones office. Jones did a PowerPoint presentation on impacts on the Town’s website and Facebook pages and strategies being developed through staff and one hired individual consultant that were showing positive results, Jones told council and the mayor.

And after a 49-minute meeting, the mayor and council adjourned to closed meeting to discuss a variety of topics, including a prospective business; legal matter including “actual or probable” litigation with ITFederal; and unspecified personnel matters.

See all these work session discussions, other than the closed session, in this exclusive Royal Examiner video: