Greetings fellow residents, below is my account of Wednesday’s town council regular meeting and some other updates.
I’ll start with the big news first:
· Kenny Allison has been appointed to fill a vacant CB Town Council seat for the 2nd time in a row. Tom Moncure and I voted NO to close door discussion on candidates and we lost. My position is clear, to run for office is a very public process so I do not consider a closed door discussion fair. Why not allow each candidate the opportunity to speak in public and answer some questions. Once the closed door session was over we came back for nominations and a vote. Caryn Self-Sullivan nominated Kenny Allison and I nominated Bailey Thompson. Caryn, Andrea and Vickie voted for Kenny and Tom and I voted for Bailey, and the Mayor abstained. Final vote was 3-2 Kenny. I did not vote for Kenny because he was appointed once already and lost his last election. There were 7 candidates and I thank everyone for taking the time to apply.
· Consent Agenda - Council decided to introduce consent agenda’s during our last work session. This is where routine business items are lumped together and voted on all at once. The two items approved were: accepting a grant for school resource officer and appropriation of additional funds for water and sewer.
· There were several presentations including:
inflow and infiltration- Dewberry did a great presentation on the inflow and infiltration issues that Colonial Beach faces. Basically rain water is entering our sewage system and the rough estimate to fix is $5.5M. The reason this is a major infrastructure issue is because our water treatment plant gets overwhelmed with all this extra water that is unnecessarily going into our drains. There are a number of reasons this needs to be addressed including: potential fines, our current system necessarily being overworked and wearing out sooner, and sewer backups.
Westmoreland County Supervisor- There were several items but the Tax assessments going out was the big one for me. There is an appeal process but the amount of tax increase is in the hands of the county which means we should not forget that county government decisions do impact us.
Police department monthly report- Efforts for community outreach were mentioned, examples were holiday toy and gift card give away and youth outreach. Mr. Moncure ask the police chief if there was a concern of a trend regarding outsiders committing crime. Mr. Miller said he’s not sure about a trend but training is underway to address issues like the recent crimes.
· Resolution 05-22 requesting $100k funds to repair the town pier. This topic was discussed during the retreat and the questions I asked were: Q- Is this like putting a band aid on it? A Sort of but a new pier will cost $1M and it will be down for a season or more. Q- How is the structure underneath? A- We should get 5 more years before we need to address pilings and other structure underneath. The vote was 6-0 to repair so it will be ready this season.
· Resolution 06-22 Bylaws. I asked about section 5-1 B because I wanted to clarify that if a Council member requests an item to be added to the agenda, they should receive a written reason as to why the request was denied. The change wasn’t controversial but Caryn also wanted additional edits to address the Mayor and Town Manager being able to deny requests so we will need to address next meeting.
· There were 2 more resolutions accepting grant funds of over $100k
· Finally, there was a closed meeting regarding a development and real estate agreement contract.
OTHER UPDATES
· I requested that Food Trucks and regulations be added a future work session agenda. (More to come).
· Police Chief interviews were postponed until next Friday 28th
Please email or call with questions or comments:
dwilliams@colonialbeachva.net
540-604-4335
Comments