Supervisors approve $124,614,825 FY-22 County Budget as time and word records shattered

If Warren County Board of Supervisors Chairman Cheryl Cullers thought she and her board were on a world record setting pace to adjournment of a municipal meeting on April 20, she and her board outdid themselves Tuesday night, April 27, with adjournment of a special meeting in an unprecedented five minutes – to this reporter’s knowledge an all-time local meeting record of municipal government.

The Board of Supervisors ‘central committee’ – Chairman Cullers, flanked by Delores Oates and Walt Mabe – with Tony Carter and Archie Fox off camera on the flanks, flew thru Tuesday’s Special Budget approval meeting. Royal Examiner Photo by Roger Bianchini

Okay, it wasn’t the 12-item agenda with regular meeting board reports, public hearings, public comments and outside agency reports achieved in 73 minutes last week. As noted, it was a special meeting called to adopt the proposed Fiscal Year-2022 County Budget in the amount of $124,614,825, as well as make an annual housekeeping motion setting the Personal Property (motor vehicles) Tax Relief rate, this year at 35%, to comply with State regulations on annual adjustments related to the Virginia General Assembly’s “no Car Tax” legislation and reimbursements to localities adopted “many years ago” according to an agenda summary.

But five minutes IS five minutes to adjournment on a motion by Delores Oates, seconded by Archie Fox.

And had there not been some confusion over 6’s and 9’s being verbalized or miss-typed into the budget summary prior to the vote, it might have been a four-minutes-to-glory record-setting meeting, as this story would have been 56 words shorter (to 179) in establishing a still personal best for brevity municipal meeting story, at 235 words.

Watch the meeting here.

(Writer’s note – not applied to story length: I figured Royal Examiner’s faithful readers needed a break after yesterday’s 2,231 word account of Monday’s sometimes volatile and sometimes murky Front Royal Town Council meeting.)