County could bypass Town in ‘CARES’ funding – but doesn’t intend to …

There was an explosive revelation in a June 4th Letter to the Editor from Greg Harold concerning the distribution of federal “CARES” Act Coronavirus Economic Relief funds. That revelation in the Letter titled “Council’s Wanton Cries of ‘More’,” is that Warren County does NOT have to include the Town of Front Royal government in the distribution of CARES (Coronavirus Aid Relief & Economic Securities) funding.

File photo of January 2020 EDA Board of Directors meeting. Greg Harold is center, far side of the table in a light shirt. Walt Mabe, a regular attendee at new EDA board meetings is directly behind Harold, who is flanked, left by EDA Board Chair Ed Daley and Executive Director Doug Parsons. Royal Examiner File Photos/Roger Bianchini

“Not to say that’s what we’re going to do,” County Deputy Emergency Manager Rick Farrall said in pointing us to the administering agency, the U.S. Treasury Department’s website for confirmation of Harold’s statement. That confirmation was most immediately apparent in a May 28 update on commonly asked questions about the federal CARES funding.

“Is a Fund payment recipient required to transfer funds to a smaller, constituent unit of government within its borders?”

To which the Treasury Department answer was: “No. For example, a county recipient is not required to transfer funds to smaller cities within the county’s borders.”

As we noted in an appendix to EDA Asset Committee Chairman Harold’s letter to the editor, “… while Front Royal is not a city, it is “a smaller constituent unit of government” within county borders.

So, if the council thought that less than a million dollars or $1.5 million were “crumbs” from the $3.5 million of CARES funding the County received on June 1, how might ZERO dollars administered through its hands play in Town Hall?

That is not to say Town businesses and citizens would lose out on that funding. Rather, the County could take on the responsibility of distribution of CARES funding to businesses and citizens on both sides of the town-county boundary who qualify by the program’s standards.

Asked after Thursday afternoon’s weekly Coronavirus Emergency Management Team briefing, Team and County Board Chairman Walt Mabe echoed Farrall’s earlier comment that unilateral County action is not currently on the table.

“It’s an option but it’s not our intent,” Mabe told Royal Examiner.

A masked Rick Farrall and Walt Mabe discuss the future of pandemic emergency management following Thursday’s Emergency Management Team briefing.

But one might imagine that if a continued, aggressively hostile and accusatory tone is the council’s collective loudest voice concerning how CARES funding will be divided, that intent could conceivably change.

In fact, Thursday evening during the first meeting of the newly formed four-member (two from the council, two from county board) Joint County-Town Tourism Committee, North River Supervisor Delores Oates referenced the recently evolving divide between the two municipal governments. In response to Joint Tourism Advisory Board Vice-Chair Kerry Barnhart’s observation on the danger of “being in the same kind of situation we’ve been in, where we have competing visions, competing, you know things that conflict with each other,” Oates began: “Well Kerry, I’m really glad you brought that up.

“Because unfortunately with the Town and the County there’s us and them perception. And WE are here to say that WE are going to end that perception,” Oates continued with emphasis on both pronouns. “We are an all us, and this tourism effort is going to be an all us. And I think in order to accomplish that we need to keep the lines of communication open,” Oates continued in describing an open, mutually beneficial network to move the partially dismantled Town Tourism function and the County’s forward on one transparent and profitable track.

“We aren’t unified and I’m going to call out the elephant in the room, Oates said to her committee comprised of she and Cheryl Cullers on the County side and Letasha Thompson and Gary Gillespie on the Town side.

More on that committee meeting in a coming Royal Examiner story and linked virtual meeting recorded broadcast.