Pending Front Royal Town Council vote on Crooked Run: Do words matter?

Timing is everything – it is the same with Tuesday night’s (Nov. 12) anticipated Front Royal Town Council vote on the proposed Crooked Run West development proposal.

This battle has been front page news for several months with no clear resolution by the Council. Indeed, every meeting seems to end up in “let’s push it to next meeting”. That pushing appears to have ended with the November 4th council work session majority consensus being achieved that we “are not interested” in providing water to a primarily residential development outside the town limits.

However, despite no legal or procedural necessity that a vote be taken, a consensus to proceed to a vote for the public record was agreed upon.

The comment to many of his council colleagues made by Mayor-elect Gene Tewalt that “you have not considered the Town water policy” on out of town North Corridor central utility extension; “or the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Warren County on utilities and annexation issues that must be addressed”; let alone the water-sewer utility study that Council has sanctioned that will produce a report in January 2020; or the fact the County hasn’t yet approved the rezoning to facilitate the residential development was well taken.

As one citizen recently said to council on these issues, “Why wait for real information when you can vote based on ignorance of any real facts?”

Front Royal’s then Interim Mayor, now Interim Town Manager Matt Tederick appeared to provide the initial impetus for approval of the Crooked Run West request with his “past Town anti-growth” comments and a concurrent effort to dramatically reduce water and sewer Tap Fees to developers. And the interim mayor appeared to have an initial three to four-person portion of council (Meza, Holloway, Gillespie and …) in agreement.

If we are to believe what a four to five-member portion of council said during last week’s working session, Tuesday night’s vote will be “NO”. At last week’s work session, initially Mr. Tederick, based on comments from members of the Council, pushed for the Town Manager to send Crooked Run West developers Tom Mercuro and Ed Murphy a notice that the Council was not interested in pursuing this effort – a direct reversal from his previous pushes for the effort.

Instead, the decision was suddenly reversed to “Let’s put this on the agenda for our next Town Council meeting for a vote.”

It will be interesting to see what takes place in front of the people of Front Royal who have consistently said NO to this build during meetings. Will the Town Council indeed vote per the words they spoke last week? This goes well with the comments made by Mr. Meza.

At a recent Town Council meeting Councilman Meza decried foul at the amount of criticism that the Council was receiving from the people of Front Royal. He is quoted as saying the “lack of trust and the disrespect is not earned.”

Well Mr. Meza, if this vote keeps in line with the Council’s words from last week’s work session then you and the council will have helped build the respect you demand.

Remember trust is earned. Note Mr. Meza, it was your comment at last week’s work session when you stated “do words really matter” in front of the citizens of Front Royal, which were very surprising in lieu of your recent comments on “we are not crooks.”

Well, that is easily answered with a resounding “YES, words do matter!

Note that Mr. Tederick will not have a vote as he is now the Interim Town Manager.

It is indeed interesting that Mr. Tederick will not have a vote on this issue as his knowledge of commercial and residential development appears to be above others on the council. Although his knowledge was somewhat lacking in truly understanding what needed to be done by the Council to move this proposal forward. If you visit the following website, www.1839capital.com/executive-bios, Mr. Tederick’s bio is rather amazing and shows him as President of a firm called 1839 Capital.

I will skip the front part of his bio as it is the same as in the Front Royal official website. Later in the description of Mr. Tederick, it states:

“After military service he owned a multi-office investment advisory firm which he sold after 20 years in operation. Utilizing his governmental, real estate, and investment knowledge, Mr. Tederick developed a thriving business solving complex problems for national residential and commercial construction entitles in several states. In many cases, Mr. Tederick led the entitlement team consisting of attorneys, engineers, and architects in order to accomplish client objectives. Mr. Tederick spearheaded over 35 projects ranging from single parcel to 1,500 acres, mixed use (residential, commercial, industrial, institutional) developments.”

It should also be noted the 1839 Capital (out of Alexandria, VA) did not file for their United States SEC filing until August 9th of 2019 right in the middle of Mr. Tederick’s service as Interim Mayor – somewhat strange timing. You should also note if you look at the complete request in the website (Section 4), the firm’s areas of expertise is in real estate development.

Like I said at the start, it’s all about timing!

Simon Mays
Front Royal, Virginia