Town, County undertake substantive discussion on future path of the EDA

It’s almost a round table discussion – and on Aug. 27 with the EDA included it might be. Royal Examiner Photos/Roger Bianchini. Video by Mark Williams, Royal Examiner.

At 6 p.m. on Tuesday evening, August 13, the full Front Royal Town Council and Warren County Board of Supervisors and their staffs sat down face to face to discuss the future of the Town-County Economic Development Authority. The full joint meeting discussion was prompted by Interim Mayor Matt Tederick’s July 18 Town-County Liaison Committee meeting comment about the possible unilateral dismantling of the EDA.

Such a thought was prompted by an initial separation in information sharing regarding the EDA financial fraud investigation and consequent legal action the County has unilaterally footed the bill for to the tune of approximately $1.35 million. Of course the County voluntarily took on full operational funding of the EDA several years ago as part of its long and ongoing compensation to the Town for its North Corridor central water-sewer service extended into the county without annexation.

However, given the floor by Joint Meeting Chairman and County Board Chair Dan Murray, Tederick made it clear his agenda was achieving unified Town-County action to try and get to a shared bottom line on exactly how much of each municipality’s money was misdirected, to where and if it is recoverable.

The meeting began with County Board Chair Dan Murray’s now familiar pre-meeting call of prayer for community healing.

Consequently much of the ensuing discussion surrounded legal ramification of joint action in the face of the Town’s now-$15 million suit against the EDA seeking recovery of lost Town assets and the concurrent EDA civil suit seeking recovery of around $20 million in allegedly misdirected EDA assets from eight human and corporate entities. As noted above, due to its larger annual budget Contingency Fund the County has fronted all of the thus-far spent $1.35 million paid to contracted public investigative accounting firm Cherry Bekaert and the law firm Sands Anderson that is handling the EDA civil action stemming from the Cherry Bekaert report.

Five of the EDA’s 7-member board were present in the closest, front row seats pictured here.

An overview of the Villa Community Center meeting room from the back of the largest public seating section

Among a room full of interested spectators were five of the seven current EDA Board members and new EDA Executive Director Doug Parsons. By meeting’s end around 7:35 p.m., Parsons had been appointed by joint consensus to an EDA Reform Committee along with Councilman Jacob Meza, Fork District Supervisor Archie Fox, Town Manager Joe Waltz, County Administrator Doug Stanley, Town Attorney Doug Napier and County/EDA Attorney Dan Whitten.

See the discussion, votes, questions and answers as two municipal governments try to come to terms with the consequences – financial, economic, legal and political – of one of the deepest and most divisive scandals in this community’s modern history in the following Royal Examiner video: