Borrow Your Watch?

Notes from the Board of Supervisors Public Hearing, Sept 18, 2007

1. The school board needs another $40,000 or so because they missed something, I’m not sure what, something to do with a road and a cell phone tower. Mark Belton said they had it in contingency funds, it was approved.
2. The 911 system needs some people’s addresses changed. That was approved.
3. The contract for the consultant to do the Land Use Map was shown. Kevin Henry wanted them to approve the money ($43,000) and the contract (pure time and travel, no specified deliverables, just send the money based on timecards) but Tommy LaFrance said something on the order of (paraphrased and caricaturized) “why do we need to pay a consultant to borrow our watch and tell us what time it is?” And Gerald Cubbage said why do we need some outsider to tell us where to put the bubbles on the bubble map, and Carol Lee said, well, maybe we could just get a little bit of help, not this much, and Charlie Hoke said, why don’t we go talk to the Planning Commission about this again and John Rust was absent. So they tabled it, pending talking to the Planning Commission about it some more. Tommy and Gerald thought Kevin Henry was up to the job, and the job really entails input from the towns and the citizens, so what does that have to do with a consultant. Kevin said, but there’s only one of me, so it’s going to take a long time.
4. Then the aircraft personal property tax thing came up again. That hasn’t been approved yet. Earlier, before the meeting actually started, John Rogerson made a citizen comment that if they approved the tax rate on the new basis, could they potentially change it back to the old basis without a public hearing, and the lawyer said no, they couldn’t do that. But they tabled this again anyway.
5. There were some budget changes, but they were minor moving around things.
6. John Graves was appointed to the Water Quality Advisory Committee. There is also an opening on the Planning Commission, but the surprise candidate is not being announced until John Rust comes back from wherever he is, and there’s also an opening on the Economic Development Authority committee in District 3.
7. The Revenue office needs a new computer. Something about they upgraded the software and it used up all the old hardware. The old hardware was 4 years old anyway. Ancient. Anyhow this new computer cost $75,000 and it wasn’t budgeted.
8. And then there was a bunch of money that seemed to be laying around unused, so Mark was suggesting ways to use it. One way was to spend half a million dollars buying an option on land to become a Luray Business Park. Another way was to put $100,000 into a revolving loan fund that local businesses can use. This isn’t “extra”money, it’s just money that is unused cash. It’s an accounting thing. It’s about returns on money, and the best places to put it. It sounded okay. It’s like not a “spend” of money, it’s a “park” of money.

The actual meeting was shorter than the citizen comment and Supervisors Time (that’s when the Supervisors talk at the end). In citizen comments:
1. Jeff Vaughn (Shenandoah Speedway) said he’s measuring noise a certain way, and if that’s not the right way, he needs them to work with him to figure this out, because he thinks he’s following the rules, but then he gets notices saying the noise is too high, so what’s up with that?
2. Jeff Vaughn said the Supervisors need to talk to property owners about the Land Use Map not just consultants.
3. John Rogerson said what’s up with that tree you can’t cut down that you went and bought the land and got the plans and spent all that money and why can’t you rethink that instead of buying more land somewhere else.
4. John Rogerson said the school funding has a lot of things missing, this is just the beginning.
5. John Rogerson said there was a DEQ meeting about the landfill and there are violations there and the Board isn’t paying attention to them.
6. John Rogerson said what’s this about voting on the Voters Rights Act when it wasn’t on the agenda and there was no background given about it.
7. John Rogerson said why is Henry over at the dump preventing people from leaving good stuff there for other people to pick up?
8. John Rogerson said why do we have to buy land for a business park in the hopes that it will bring business. That’s like lengthening the runway in the hopes that it will bring planes. You can’t just build it and they will come.
9. Natalie Zuckerman said we need the consultant to finish up the Comprehensive Plan because it didn’t have a Land Use Map and that’s just like when they couldn’t finish the Comprehensive Plan because there was nobody to update the tables, and she updated the tables and for all her hard work she got called the “Unelected Citizen”. (Understand, the Board didn’t call her that. The Board thanked her for her work.) So they should hire a consultant because the Planning Commission needs one, and they already got together with the Planning Commission about it and the Planning Commission told them they needed one.

Then the Supervisors tried to answer some of these. Or, at least Tommy, Gerald, and Carol Lee tried. Charlie always just says, “yeah, thanks for coming.” Like a Potted Plant.

At the end, they went into a closed session with the lawyer because there is a potential litigation problem with the airport. That’s what I think they said.

Alice’s opinion:
It was a pretty good night. The contract with the zoning consultant is time and materials. For $43,000, the consultant is going to facilitate the meetings that need to go into a comprehensive plan, in order to be sure the layout of the Land Use Map actually reflects what the citizens want. That is, unless he spends all $43,000 before that actually happens, because his contract doesn’t have any deliverables. It’s a not to exceed. But it’s also a No Standards Specified. So when he bills $43,000, he’ll just stop showing up until we send him a new contract. But it is exactly a “borrow your watch to tell you what time it is” function. Yes, we hired a planner who is not a senior manager, and who doesn’t have years of experience, so he’s somewhat skittish, considering that he already has alligators snapping at him, and this looks like a “drain the swamp” problem. But he can do it. It may take a year, year and a half, two. So what? There is no emergency housing development pending.
I think that’s good enough. Truthfully, I think it’s going to take that long with the consultant. Plus, the consultant’s money will run out before the product is delivered. So let’s just save the $43,000 for the next “budget change” for the schools.