From lengthy Closed Session focusing on legal matters, council ponders coming budget, revenues and drug abuse

After a five-item, 90-minute Closed Session Thursday evening, February 4, that included discussion of the status of the Afton Inn; all the Town’s EDA financial scandal litigations; an unnamed former employee’s lawsuit against the Town (we know who she is); “the possible taxation of certain portions of hospital real and personal properties located in the Town of Front Royal”; and the status of an unnamed employee, the Front Royal Town Council readjourned to open work session.

With no special meeting tied to that work session, no action followed the closed session. We’ll have to wait until the February 8 meeting to see if anything substantial will result from the closed session discussion.

Down two members, McFadden and Meza, Mayor Holloway and a council quorum, from left foreground Scott Lloyd, Gary Gillespie, Lori Cockrell, Mayor Holloway, and Letasha Thompson, right foreground, prepare to go into closed session at outset of Thursday’s Town Hall work session. Royal Examiner Virtual & File Photos by Roger Bianchini

Minus two absent members, Jacob Meza and Joseph McFadden, the work session kicked off with new Town Manager Steven Hicks opening a multi-pronged presentation outlining an overview of the Fiscal Year-2022 $47.07-million Town Budget. Facing pandemic-related revenue shortfalls, that budget is down approximately $1.5 million from the current FY-2021 budget of $48.6 million.

The budget discussion was followed by logistical details of the plan to move council toward once-monthly meetings and work sessions. Meeting deadlines on submission of desired agenda topics was stressed by Hicks as crucial to making the change work. There was no mention of any anticipated lengthening of meetings to take care of town business being accommodated by two meetings and two work sessions a month for years.

However, some of the most ear-catching discussion came later in the meeting during “Open Discussion” of unscheduled items after Councilman Gary Gillespie raised the specter of the opioid drug abuse problem, particularly as it is impacting the community’s youth. He noted that just five weeks into the new year there have already been three overdose deaths in the county. Councilwoman Thompson suggested adding a joint Town-County effort to fight the problem on a future Liaison Committee meeting agenda, which was met by a unanimous positive consensus.

During the opioid discussion Gillespie put forth the proposition that the Town officially oppose an anticipated State General Assembly initiative to legalize marijuana because, despite decades of past sociological and medical studies indicating otherwise, he said that there was “no question marijuana is one of those gateway things” leading to harder drug use. He pointed to reports that the illegal drug market was now seeing the lacing of marijuana with the super-synthetic opioid Fentanyl as an indicator of his belief on the matter.

However, social and medical sciences have countered over decades of research Gillespie’s proposition that marijuana use is a “gateway” to hard drug abuse. Research in those fields has indicated little, if any, direct link between the use of marijuana and hard, physically addictive and fatal, overdose-prone opioid drugs like heroin and Fentanyl. In fact, research has pointed in the opposite direction, noting that taking a so-called soft drug like marijuana off the black market of illegal drug trafficking might well counter such incidents of crossing soft and hard drug usage boundaries.

But none of his colleagues questioned Gillespie’s “no question gateway” proposition, leading the town manager to later seek direction from council on any official Town statement to the General Assembly opposing the marijuana legalization initiative.

Also during the Open Discussion, Vice-Mayor Lori Cockrell broached the possibility of opening up the downtown Gazebo-Village Commons area this spring, April or May were suggested, to have an outdoor prom for the local high school Classes of 2021. It was noted that the new pavilion currently under construction weather permitting in the Commons might be available as an additional facility to help house such events.

Above, pictured during last year’s Turkey Egg Hunt, a portion of the Gazebo-Village Commons area proposed for a high school prom or proms this spring. Below, Turkey Egg Hunt supervisors Mr. and Mrs. Turkey (aka the Hucks) are good for assistance, along with neighboring downtown business owners, in any season.

“I can think of one downtown businessman who would probably help a lot,” Cockrell said. “Does he serve ice cream,” Mayor Holloway asked, leading to the observation that C&C Frozen Treats proprietor William Huck would likely not be the only downtown business person to offer assistance to such a pandemic-era project allowing an outdoor, properly socially distanced event for another graduating high school class that has suffered lost traditions due to Coronavirus pandemic countermeasures designed to minimize contagion.

Back to those budget numbers

Highlights of the work session’s opening FY-2022 budget overview included renewed focus on economic development marketing stressing Front Royal as a pro-business town with increased focus on public arts and a tax revenue-generating night life; ongoing infrastructure upgrades, some mandated by the state, to prepare for anticipated growth needs; increased opportunities and recognition of employees contributions to the conduct of town business; and what for some citizens, particularly renters, has been an overlong wait for enforcement of property maintenance code regulations put into place in recent years.

Town Manager Steven Hicks takes the council quorum through an overview of the proposed $47-million FY-2022 Town Budget.

Following Hicks’ opening presentation on categories and goals, Finance Director B. J. Wilson ran through revenue projections suffering from negative impacts from State-implemented Covid-19 Coronavirus pandemic restrictions on socially-distanced business operations. Wilson observed that he hoped his numbers would prove wrong on the low end due to ongoing pandemic concerns, but told council he had prepared the revenue projection portion of the budget forecast to “err on the safe side”.

During Wilson’s presentation, Town Manager Hicks noted that residential utility customers could anticipate a $3.50-hike in the water-sewer portion of their bills over the next two fiscal years, two dollars in FY-2022 and another $1.50 in FY-2023.

As revenue versus expenditures was on the table, council pondered the schedule for advertising a tax rate to cover its proposed budget. Wilson noted that the rate advertised could be lowered, but not raised without a re-advertising process that would take the tax approval process back to square one with a tax rate submission facing spring deadlines. If additional revenue becomes necessary to balance an already pared back budget it will be interesting to see how that tax rate advertisement number and debate proceeds with a generally conservative, anti-tax council majority and mayor in place. As town and county citizens have observed during past tax-rate debates, “nobody like paying them until they need the services they fund”.

Above, Finance Director B.J. Wilson was conservative in projecting coming Town revenues as business revenue losses have thus-far outweighed residential revenue gains during countermeasures to the Coronavirus pandemic that has claimed 37 Warren County lives and nearly 450,000 reported nationally among over 2.24-million dead worldwide. Below, Purchasing Agent Alisa Scott explains anticipated expenditures tied to a five-goal FY-22 budget.

Town Purchasing Agent Alisa Scott then tracked some specific expenditures anticipated as part of the coming fiscal year budgetary needs. At the top of a five-pronged goals list is development of an economic development marketing strategy as the Town moves toward creation of its new, self-funded, unilateral EDA and away from the half-century-plus old joint County-Town EDA that in recent years has been totally operationally funded by the County government.

How tourism promotion, increasingly targeting increased virtual marketing, would develop was addressed. Council recently approved a $600,000 outsourcing contract on tourism promotional work and Scott noted there was $100,000 set aside in the coming budget for development of the new EDA, with another $200,000 under planning and zoning’s budget for related work.

Following Economic Development marketing in the five-goaled budget plan are infrastructure, appearance, communications and town employees. The latter received a lot of attention during the discussion, including development of a wellness program and cross training of employees to expand the Town’s ability to cope with personnel losses when they occur and to augment internal cooperation.

Scott pointed to the still vacant Town Horticulturist position as an example of how the cross-training initiative could improved town governmental functions. One such area in the coming year’s expenditures is weed control, which will see an $800 increase from last year’s weed control expenses, Scott pointed out.

“The Town of Front Royal is responding at the speed of need,” Scott said of Communications Department initiatives with town citizens as they approach the government for assistance across the board of Town services offered to its citizens.

See additional detail in all these discussions in the Town’s linked work session video.