Town-County Liaison Committee ponders increased trust, cooperation as EDA situation explained to council reps

Neither Mayor Chris Holloway nor Vice-Mayor Lori Cockrell were available to attend and chair the Thursday, January 21st Liaison Committee meeting at Town Hall, Town Manager Steven Hicks noted at the meeting’s outset. The mayor and county board chair are constant committee members, with a second representative rotated on an alphabetical basis – which was later discussed for possible change.

So, Letasha Thompson and Chris Lloyd represented the Town, with Hicks taking the lead voice on the Town side, with Warren County Board Chair Cheryl Cullers leading the County contingent of herself, former chairman Walt Mabe and Interim County Administrator Ed Daley.

With it being his and Lloyd’s first Liaison Committee experience, Hicks suggested everyone introduce themselves around the table soon after the 6 p.m. start. Introductions in hand the committee traversed an agenda addressing areas of mutual County-Town interest, as well as the Liaison Committee’s rules and mission. Included in that agenda were County projects occurring within the town limits – at Ressie Jeffries Elementary School and the County’s Health and Human Services Complex at the old 15th Street middle school site; and upgrades to the County’s Building Inspection software designed to make it more user friendly.

The virtual view of Thursday’s Town-County Liaison Committee meeting. From the nearside head of table to the left, Cheryl Cullers back, Walt Mabe, Ed Daley, Steve Hicks at far end head of table, Letasha Thompson and Chris Lloyd. Royal Examiner Virtual Meeting Photo by Roger Bianchini

Five of the agenda’s seven topics were Town forwarded. They included proposed amendments to the Liaison Committee’s mission statement and process (no forwarding attribution); how County short-term rental ordinances related to the collection of lodging taxes and whether those ordinances could be amended to ease approval of “Air B&B” style short-term rentals within the town limits (McFadden); potential consolidation of permitting and tax payments that require visits to both Town Hall and the Warren County Government Center (Lloyd); and establishment of PILOT (Payment In Lieu Of Taxes) fees for non-profit status Valley Health’s new hospital in town (Thompson).

A fifth topic may have been the most significant long-term for both municipalities – developing a joint vision to the mutual benefit of county citizens on both sides of the town-county boundary line. “Beginning the conversation between the entities is a start to not only to help heal the community but ensure that the citizens are a priority now and into the future,” the agenda topic summary initiative attributed to Vice-Mayor Cockrell stated.

Thompson raised the potential of creation of a “visioning” steering committee with occasional full joint body meetings to try and keep the two municipal bodies on the same page and heading in the same direction. “I think that would be very beneficial and starting the healing process that we very much need,” Thompson said.

“I agree, … but I kind of feel like I would like to keep it casual, where it’s more like we’re breaking bread together and not sitting around a table like we are necessarily now, but more of just a coming together, break bread and then share ideas of what our combined effort is and the fact that we do need, in order to heal the community, we have to heal together,” County Board Chair Cullers added.

Mabe suggested initial monthly meetings on this joint visioning effort, “Then at some time in the future when things are working better than they were, or have, or are, we go to two months and then further down the road, every three months,” he envisioned.

Perhaps that first joint visioning session should be scheduled quickly as the Afton Inn sale for redevelopment is still being held up by Town challenges of the EDA’s right to make that sale and recover a portion of its expenses in maintaining and marketing the property over the past five-plus years.

In fact, the status of the half-century-plus old joint County-Town Economic Development Authority (EDA) was broached early in the meeting when budgets and available municipal dollars were being discussed.

EDA 101: you can’t just close your eyes and make it go away

“The County has this drain I’m going to call it, called the EDA lawsuits,” Daley, who did a stint as Chairman of the re-tooled, post-financial scandal EDA Board of Directors prior to taking over the county administrator’s seat following Doug Stanley’s ouster, began. “And I think until we are not putting money in there, I think we’re going to focus on that before we start any capital projects because that drains any money that would potentially be for … capitol (projects).” As has been widely reported, one of the EDA’s two lawsuits is the Town’s against it, claiming over $20-million-dollars in misdirected Town assets, a great percentage of the total claim in the EDA’s lawsuit against its former executive director Jennifer McDonald and a large number of co-defendants involving the alleged misdirection or fraudulent use of EDA, County and Town assets.

At this point Thompson joined the conversation, asking, “While we’re here and you’ve kind of brought the EDA situation into it, at what point do we stop throwing money at the EDA? They’ve requested about a million dollars and things like that, and take the money that is being dumped there, it seems to me – I’m outside looking in, you know – and put that towards something like our schools and where the kids need it or get drug court started. At what point do we draw a line in the sand and say, we just want this to stop and we want to start anew and afresh and spend our money elsewhere?”

The town council under the guidance of its past interim town manager, withdrew from its initial effort to help re-focus the EDA, into hostile litigation and plans to start a second, unilateral EDA, while technically still legally part of the joint Town-County EDA.

“The EDA must remain in existence until all of the industrial development bonds are paid. So, if we were going to decide to discontinue the EDA, then Valley Health is the number one right now (EDA facilitated loan for new hospital), but the other industrial companies out here would have to pay of their bonds before the court would permit it,” Daley explained. Thompson thanked him for the explanation, noting it helped her understand the EDA situation’s “nuances”, something that apparently has been lacking on the Town side with its decision to separate and litigate, rather than negotiate as former Mayor Eugene Tewalt had unsuccessfully urged council to do.

“It leaves the County kind of sitting in a corner there,” Daley continued of the Town’s withdrawal from the rehabilitation effort that has seen some promising recent recruitments and pending recruitments of new business to the community. Daley added that if the County, which is financially supporting the EDA at this point, didn’t pursue recovery of lost assets through real estate seizures and other court procedures “Then the County’s got to pay off the whole, entire bill.”

See these discussion and all the agenda topics covered in the Town website’s video of the Front Royal-Warren County Liaison Committee meeting.