Candidates for Washington County Board of Supervisors Focus on Jobs, Industry

ABINGDON, Va. – Jobs are the issue of the times – and the leading concern among candidates seeking seats on the Washington County Board of Supervisors on Nov. 3.

Campaigning in three different races – representing the Taylor, Wilson and Jefferson districts – all of the candidates said their top priority is attracting and keeping jobs in the county.

They split, however, on whether current board policies promote that goal.

On one side are the candidates who contend current board members are driving industry away.

On the other side are those who believe the board is doing an excellent job of recruiting industry.

At the heart of the arguments are a series of controversial board decisions: the rejection of a truck stop proposed at Exit 24; an ethanol plant proposal that is now headed elsewhere; and a battle over highway billboards.

Industry incentives

Washington County’s economic development program is the best in Southwest Virginia, said Christy Parker, the assistant county administrator who leads it.

“I just let the record speak for itself,” she said. “What I hear from other counties is that Washington County has an excellent track record.”

Over the past 13 years, Parker said, the county has seen more than $359 million in private investment by 37 companies, and 3,439 jobs created or retained.

“I challenge anyone to find another county that has had the same degree of success in new or existing industry projects in the same period of time,” Parker said.

“We’ve been extremely blessed,” she said, “but I think that … our board is very pro-business, our board works very closely, seamlessly, with our industrial development authority, and we have a very good working relationship with all the state agencies where we can go to access incentives to help our existing and new industry.”

Parker said the program is simple: Develop industrial sites and workforce training programs that are favorable to prospective industries. Woo their site selection teams with bluegrass and fried pies. Provide financial incentives – with state and local money – that are better than those offered by other localities.

“You’re not going to win them all,” Parker said, “but we’re very competitive.”

Incumbent view

The two incumbents seeking re-election to the board, Dulcie Mumpower and Jack McCrady, said they and their fellow supervisors have done an effective job of recruiting industry.

“We’ve gotten more jobs in four years than the 10 years of the board previous to us,” said McCrady, who has represented the Damascus area on the board for four years. He said during his term, the board has spent more money on industrial incentives than in all of the preceding decade.

As evidence of that success, Mumpower points to a property tax rate decrease – from 70 cents per $100 of valuation to 56 cents – during her 16 years on the board.

“We are doing an excellent job,” said Mumpower, who represents the area between Abingdon and Bristol. “We’re in bad economic times. Other counties are really suffering drastically, but Washington County is still hanging on. There are still jobs in Washington County.”

Challengers view

But Joe Straten, Vernon Smith and Glen Peters, three of the candidates seeking to oust incumbent supervisors, said current board members and other county officials have fallen short.

All three said the county’s approach toward industry is slow, outdated and unwelcoming to modern companies’ needs.

“We discourage people,” Smith said. “People come in here and they say the red tape here in Washington County, it just takes so long to get anything done.”

Straten said the board seems to have preconceived ideas about the business and industry they will approve.

“If a new business wants to come in and it doesn’t fit their preconceived ideas, they pretty much reject it out of hand,” Straten said.

Smith and Straten point to a series of recent decisions that they call hostile to business, most recently the rejection of a truck stop proposed for Exit 24 and a $200 million trash-to-ethanol plant proposed for an industrial park in the county.

Their displeasure also goes back to a year ago, when the board placed a ban on billboard construction after a Glade Spring businessman erected about two dozen signs along the county’s main highways.

As did the truck stop, the billboards attracted public attention on both sides of the issue: Those who believe in a very specific, locally based model for development; and those who believe business taxes and property rights trump others’ concerns about the scenery.

The billboards’ owner – whose signs current featuring campaign ads for Smith, Straten and Peters – said some current board members are out of tune with business.

“I’ve been told [by members of the business community] ever since I arrived here that this has not traditionally been a business-friendly county administration ... other than a select type of business,” said Bill Roop, who owns the billboards.

Roop said the business-approval process is fraught with favoritism, missing logic and a rejection of opportunity that stems from prejudice and preconceived notions. He said the county board and economic development officials too easily walk away from an opportunity over such simple matters as water connections or missing roads.

“When you’re business-friendly you’re recruiting and you’re doing what it takes to get it [business] in,” Roop said. “You can’t just look at it saying ‘We can’t do this’ and you can’t have an administrator saying, ‘This is not the type of jobs we want in the county.’ ”

The campaign’s poster-child appeared this past summer, when supervisors rejected the truck stop in a 5-4 vote after Love’s Travel Stops & Country Stores had spent four years and hundreds of thousands of dollars meeting local requirements for the project.

“That one just kind of blows my mind,” Straten said. “It was rejected on pure emotional grounds, which is not the board’s responsibility.”

The projects

Mumpower and McCrady said they voted against the truck stop for the sake of the children who attend nearby Meadowview Elementary School. Both also opposed the billboards, and neither is using them to advertise.

The ethanol plant never came before the board for a formal vote, but Mumpower and other board members expressed heavy skepticism during a discussion of the project in February.

Mumpower said she didn’t like the idea of trash being hauled into Washington County – especially through her neighborhood and on a mixed residential-industrial road. McCrady said he’s skeptical about investing in a technology that’s new to the United States.

And, contrary to what her opponent claims, Mumpower said, “Dulcie did not kill the ethanol project.”

She said Ted Cox, who wanted to develop the plant, was sent a letter requesting more information – and he never complied.

Cox, the Bristol businessman behind the ethanol plant project, said his first choice was to put it on a site in Washington County – but now, other area localities are competing for the project.

“The only sites that were made available to us [in Washington County] could not meet the criteria for this plant,” Cox said. “Even though there were other sites in the county that would fit, they were never offered or made available to us.”

Mumpower said she was not opposed to either project – the truck stop or the ethanol plant. She just didn’t like the proposed locations because of the potential for negative health impacts on residents.

“There are good jobs and there are bad jobs,” she said. “There are some jobs that you do not want located in your county.”

Parker said county industrial development officials spent nine months in dialogue with the ethanol plant project and presented 12 sites for the company’s
consideration – but did not feel the industrial park site proposed by the company was suitable.

“So you have one ethanol plant compared against how many [industries] do we have on the list of announcements that we have,” Parker said. “If you’re presenting the information, I think the public can reach the correct conclusion.”

Asked why other prospective industries have chosen to go elsewhere over the years, she said each had a reason. Many, she said, have done so because, “There was only one road in and out of our industrial park and that was a concern for them.”

The planning

There’s also the issue of mixing residential and industrial traffic, a condition that exists at two of the county’s industrial parks. The single-road access and mixed traffic have proven problematic as industrial wrecks have blocked traffic and affected residents.

“Why in the world would you build an industrial park and not want trucks coming in and out of the industrial park?” said Straten, who questions why the county hasn’t worked harder to correct the problem.

“I’ve got a business background,” Straten said. “I know something on the surface sometimes seems insurmountable, but if you and the business can come up with innovative ways to do things, you can make it work. That’s what the board is lacking.”

Roop said he is hopeful that change will occur on the board in November – and Love’s will have an opportunity to bring the truck stop project back to the table.

McCrady said he too would like to see Love’s come to Washington County – just not at Exit 24.

Zoning and delays

Despite the four-year process that ultimately resulted in denial of the truck stop, County Administrator Mark Reeter said the board had been “very pro-development” throughout the 14 years he’s been here.

Reeter acknowledges some issues of procedure and policy could be slowing the process, but even while pointing out the need to update a nearly 40-year-old zoning code, he blames state and federal authorities for decision-making delays.

“When it was determined that it [the truck stop] would have an effect on the exit, a whole series of state and federal regulations kicked in, to undertake studies and planning and review at the state and federal level first,” Reeter said. “Only after the decision was made that it could be located there with certain improvements, could the county consider the land use issues.”

New state regulations will make it even harder for localities to consider zoning decisions before highway review work is done, Reeter said, and the county’s code is not set up to allow for any kind of conditional zoning approval.

“We have a zoning code in the county that was fundamentally a product of 1971,” Reeter said. “It really needs to be modernized, but we just don’t have the internal resources to do it.”

| (276) 791-0701

Editor’s note:
This is the first in a series of stories focusing on candidates in the upcoming Washington County Board of Supervisors election, and other issues on the Nov. 3 ballot.
Tuesday:
* Candidates in the Taylor District, which covers the Damascus area
Wednesday:
* Candidates in the Wilson District, which covers the area between Abingdon and Bristol.
* Highlights from a Tuesday candidate forum.
Thursday:
* Candidates in the Jefferson District, which covers the county’s rural northeast area.
Friday:
* Other ballot questions in Southwest Virginia.