The May 1 meeting

Here's What happened at the May 1 meeting

The May 1 Board of Supervisors meeting was a Work Session. It just happened to be that we listed that meeting in the ad. We did it to try to reach people that hadn't heard, and to try to get them on the website.

The Flood Plain Ordinance was not on the agenda.

About 30 - 40 people showed up at the meeting in response to the ad, but only 5 of them had an email address. We got as many as would fit in the room to come inside anyway, just to show that people were paying attention and would come to these Supervisors meetings.
Here is my impression of the agenda items. (Remember, this is not "minutes of the meeting." It's just my notes, in my subjective opinion.) If you want the actual official minutes, you can wait until they post them on the county website, in a month or two.
1. The first item was a request from Powell Markowitz to lower the personal property tax for aircraft. He said the current rate of $2.16 is higher than surrounding airports and people will put their planes in Culpepper or Warrenton rather than come here. He said the airport provides jobs and needs to be competitive. Personal property tax for cars is $3.90. There was no action taken by the Board at this time.
2. The Town of Stanley wants to change their boundary lines slightly, to extend water and sewer service.
3. The Stanley Little League needs a new ball park and they want to coordinate investment and actions with the county.
4. The Stanley Fire Department needs an approval letter so their EMTs can give medicines when needed.
5. Charlie Campbell, Commissioner of Revenue, wants a new position approved for his department. He needs a certified appraiser on staff to a) correct the mistakes the Blue Ridge Mass Appraisal company made this time and b) monitor any appraisers hired next time. This sounded like a very good idea. Charlie said the people deserve and the law requires that the appraisals be done correctly.
6. J D Cave, who owns the local radio station, appealed to the Board because his business license was turned down. Something about VDOT sending a letter saying the electric pole was too close to the highway. The electric pole is in a line of electric poles, and for some reason the Page County Zoning ordinance says he can't get a business license without VDOT approval. Actually I may have that wrong, I seemed to get confused over what was happening. In the end, I'm pretty sure the Supervisors said to just give this man a license and stop being goofy about it.
7. Charlie Campbell pointed out that many times people ask for a business license to do an Internet business out of their homes, and they can't approve the license because there isn't a commercial entrance to the building, which is ridiculous because there are no customers or suppliers coming to an Internet business. So he said the county misses out on the revenue, because he doesn't think the business stops operating just because Page County didn't issue it a license. The Supervisors said this is an issue that should be forwarded to the Planning Commission for a Zoning Ordinance change to allow Internet businesses. We'll put a few stars next to this one to see what happens to it.
8. The big news of the night came when Mark Belton asked the Supervisors if they wanted to rescind their vote to buy the Wallace Building for a County Office Building. It turns out the owner of the building does not think there is a valid other buyer for it. The argument FOR buying it was that the county could sell it to another business, and if they didn't buy it, the owner might want to take a 10 year contract to make it a warehouse. But the arguments against buying it were that it should be left to be available for other business and the county should look elsewhere, because it would be more expensive anyway. The vote was to rescind, so the Wallace Building is no longer being considered as the new County Office space. A committee was set up headed by John Rust to come up with a new plan for the county office building.
That was it. The meeting was over.

After the meeting some of us introduced ourselves to the Supervisors and told them about Page County Watch and its purpose. We talked about the problem with the Flood Plain Ordinance and they assured us that it would not be passed. They had been under the impression that the state sent us a letter stating that our ordinance was not in compliance. They are getting a confirmation from Richmond that is not the case, and will end it as soon as they know our current ordinance is fine. We also pointed out that the Comprehensive Plan had been changed to say it was a goal of the county to pass ordinances to get houses and businesses off the flood plain. They said they knew about that and would correct it.

So we had verbal confirmation that all will be well in time. However, we will need to follow up until that is true in writing.
An important part of our discussion was "how can things like this happen?" In a county that is small and depends on volunteers to do its research and work, it can happen that there aren't any volunteers. In fact, it usually to always happens. So there may be some people with a special interest or an agenda, and they turn out to be the only people volunteering. If enough of them volunteer long enough, they can dominate a committee, and the result turns out to be biased toward the special interest, instead of a reflection of the interests of the county as a whole.

The conclusion: we need more participation in the local government so that there will be a wider base of volunteers to get stuff researched and done for the county.
That's what Page County Watch is for. One idea we had is that we could build a "skills database" of people who live in the county. There is an amazing set of skills here from retired people. The Boomers are starting to show up, and this is not your grandmother's retirement. People are showing up from age 55 and up, with their health and their skills well intact. Many people in the county now have experience and time to provide the volunteers county government needs. With a wide base of interests, things like the Comprehensive Plan and the new Zoning Ordinance changes could be made to better reflect the interests of the whole, rather than the interests of one set of special interests. Plan to come to the Planning Commission and the Supervisors meetings. They're better than Reality TV!

Blog about what you think! Hit the Comments button at the bottom. You can sign your name or post anonymously. Others will see your Blog. Get your friends and neighbors to go to the site and sign up for the NewsList. If you want your own blog, email me and I'll post what you write.

Alice Richmond