June 12, 2012 - Senate Republican Primary Results

In shore, George Allen has won. Here's the state wide breakdown:

• 65.3% - George Allen
• 23.2% - Jaime Radtke
• 6.7% - Bob Marshall 
• 4.7% - Mr. Jackson 

Voter turn out state wide was 5.3%, or 251 thousand of 4.7 million active voters.

On the whole, Fauquier County came close to the state-wide numbers with:

• 62.3% - George Allen
• 26.2% - Jaime Radtke
• 9.2% - Bob Marshall 
• 1.9% - Mr. Jackson 

Voter turn out for Fauquier County came in at 6.3%, with 2,657 out of 41,658 active voters participating.

Most precincts fit in the ballpark of 60% to 70% support for George Allen, while the Bealeton precinct pulled out a win for Radtke of 54% vs 35% for Allen with 133 voters turning out for Bealeton in total.

June 12, 2012 Republican Senate Primaries

Its that time again--time to get down to your local polling station and cast a vote.  This time, it is for the 2012 Republican Senate Primaries.  The nominee will contest former Virginia Governor Tim Kaine. Who is in the line-up for the Republican Primaries?

• Jaime Radtke
• George Allen
• Bob Marshall
• E.W. Jackson

Here are some first thoughts about the candidates, in case I don't get around to another blog post before the primary on this coming Tuesday.

Jaime Radtke is a conservative activist who has worked to help several conservatives in their bids for elected positions. Jaime's own site contrasts her conservative views with the big-government philosophy of George Allen. After I read Jaime's bio, I have a good first impression of her.

George Allen was elected to the Senate back in 2000, but was ousted from his seat by Senator Webb in 2006 by less than 10,000 votes. Many people remember him by the controversy where he called a Webb staffer by a racial slur during the unsuccessful 2006 campaign for re-election.

Bob Marshall currently serves as a delegate in the Virginia General Assembly, having first won his seat in 1991. Bob has played an important role in Virginia state-level politics of the last few years, recently playing the role of an important sponsor on the bill which give Virginia legal precedence in suing  the Federal government over the health care mandate. (By the way, thanks to the Bob Marshall supporter with the large sign in the front yard with the "June 12th" date. It was a nice reminded of the upcoming primary!)

E.W. Jackson is a former lawyer, turned minister of two churches, one in Boston, MA, the other in Chesapeake, VA. One of the first things I noticed on his website was a video in front of Virginia highway rest stop talking about how Tim Kaine (the current Democratic nominee for the Senate) closed rest stops. Granted, he was speaking about Mr. Kaine's dishonesty in closing the stops and raising taxes while there was room left in the budget--I will always remember Mr. Jackson as the minister talking about closed rest stops.  I guess first impressions are important.

School Board work session, 20 April 2012

Last night I attended my first School Board meeting ever. How do I find the words?


Pitiful.


These people are elected to direct education and educational funds in Fauquier County for those who decide to take advantage of the public education system for their children.  Did I hear honest people with direct and honest intent? For the most part, no.  Did I hear petty bickering and semi-indirect wise-cracks (mainly by one person) at others?  Yep.

On to what happened. for this meeting which lasted around an hour.

First off, a committee (of what appeared to me to be Middle School Principals) discussed their desire to eliminate inter-scholastic middle school sports and replace them with intramural sports intended to encourage lack of competition (the argument being competition is not good at the 6th-8th grader age) and encourage more participation (the stats on the try-outs and team positions are lame, often 33% make the team).  Is there plenty to talk about here?  Sure is.

What else was talked about? Funding for High School athletics, specifically Freshman sports which have had declining participation.

What was practically not talked about?  The elimination of funding for 21 teaching positions.  Granted, Mr. Gorg (representative for the Center District) voiced his concerns that not one board member brought up the discussion of the impact of the loss on teaching positions, except the administrator who addressed his direct question of essentially 'what will happen?'.  Note to the reader--this is in direct contrast to the exhaustive conversation on the funding, participation, and importance of after-school middle school sports, not to forget the funding of Freshman sports teams which was discussed at length as well.


As was mentioned by some concerned citizen after the meeting--those sitting on the board have known budget changes were coming for around 5 years.  What have they done to prepare for it? Nothing.  What are they doing now? Gnashing their teeth.


Pitiful.

Mountainside Montessori and the FCBOS

I had the privilege to attend my first Fauquier County Board of Supervisors (FCBOS) Meeting last night, 12 April 2012.  For those interested, the meeting is typically held at the Warren Green building in Warrenton (10 Hotel Street) at 6:30 PM on the second Thursday of the month.  Many things were discussed--the meeting let out at about 10 PM.  The two major items which drew the public hearing were the forthcoming Mintbrook development in Bealeton and the Mountainside Montessori school in Marshall.

I may discuss Mintbrook in the future, but in summary, their requests for special exception were permitted, by a 3-2 vote, despite most people speaking against the matters of the flood plane issues and the lacking proffers from the developers.  I wish to focus on the Mountainside Montessori school, which kept me  up for several hours last night and hasn't been successfully chased out of my mind.

What is Mountainside Montessori?  Well, from what I gathered from the public hearing last night, it is a private preschool which is growing into a primary/elementary school.  The problem? It is a commercial business located in land zoned for Residential/Agricultural (RA) development/use.  How the school got started there back in 2003 I'm a bit fuzzy on, but the fact of the matter is that some special exceptions were granted to the school to bring in students for preschool, then for the primary school.  I do not wish to go into the many complicated details of which I do not fully understand.

The neighbors of the property came out in force, requesting that an extension to their special exception be denied--after all the school IS a private commercial business in the middle of a rural, residential neighborhood.

The parents and others associated with the small school came out in force as well, pleading for the exception to be granted so their children, students, and business could continue the work of education.  All the while, the school leadership were promising that they only needed one more year to solidify and close out financing which would propel the school's desire to move to a commercially zoned area where they could experience unhindered growth. Side note on the funding:  The USDA had promised the school 100% financing on their selected site, but then backed down to 80%. This means the school needs to scrounge to find the rest of the funds--and brings us to the claimed need for the extension of the recently expired special exception for continuing the work of private education in the location.

Now my position on this.  I stood last night in front of the FCBOS and stated I had no knowledge of the previous happenings--only what I had heard there--and that my only interest was that of a resident of Fauquier County. I stated that to pull away the special exception (allow to expire) would be to break the trust of the businesses and residents of Fauquier County.  Who can we trust, if we cannot trust our elected government officials?  To pull away the previously promised support in such funding circumstances would be no better than reneging on the USDA's 100% financing promise.  At the time I meant it in support of the school's desire to simply gather more time so they can move to a more proper location--and I still do.

Last night, my mind came back to the fact that the FCBOS has already reneged on promises. Which promises? The promises to the residents of Fauquier County that the property they were purchasing was zoned for Residential and Agricultural development. I sided with the school in my comments last night, but they need to leave.  The county cannot attract or allow businesses under a certain premise and then when that premise changes--just kick them out.  But along the same line, the county cannot go on breaking the promises made to generations past, present, and future by allowing special exceptions to the rules all willy-nilly.  The FCBOS (albeit a previous board) had indeed created their own problems here.

Quite the situation, if you ask me.  Both parties are in the right, in my opinion--although the school doesn't belong there.  The FCBOS members each spoke at length of the school and their reluctance to approve the special exception. But they approved it--extending the exception for the primary school until June 30, 2013 allowing the school to finish out this and the next school year before being required to attempt another permit----or move.

My hope?  That the school takes this extra life-line and gathers the funding they need and works on getting out the door at the current site at the same time.  I'm not sure I have any confidence that the school well be able to gather their funding in the coming year AND complete construction on a new facility in time to be opened for the 2013-2014 school year.  The FCBOS (and this resident as well) have made it clear that the next special permit which comes up is being shot down 0-5.

-TFCR

Southern Fauquier Town Hall - 11 April 2012

I had the opportunity to finally attend the monthly town hall being put on by the Fauquier County Board of Supervisors (Mr. Stribling and Mr. Sherbyn specifically) this past Wednesday, April 11.  Several people were in attendance and several people spoke for a few minutes.  This included 1) Fauquier County Fire and Rescue, 2) Delegate Michael Webert, 3) Captain Meadows of the sheriff's dispatch center, and 4) Mr. Fisher, the commonwealth attorney for our area.  One at a time now!


1) Fauquier County Fire and Rescue
The only name I was able to catch was Thomas Billington.  He presented a 4 page summary of the report presented to the Fauquier County Board of Supervisors (FCBOS) about current volunteer staffing of EMS and Fire equipment, average response time for all the fire stations in the county (comes in at 10.3 minutes from call to first-on-the-scene), summary of the funding for personnel from the FCBOS, and a estimated projection of what the average response time would be given the new personnel.
A key note is that the FCBOS has approved an increase in funding to hire the 22 requested positions.  The discussion briefly touched on how the fire chiefs hope to improve response time especially during the 4AM to 6AM window when most volunteers need to head off to work and prefer not to respond to calls (more and more employers are less tolerant of employees missing time at work for volunteer fire work).
I have requested the full 26-page report from Mr. Billington and hope to have another post here soon to break down their request.  I also hope to hold their feet to the fire and show actuals vs. the projected response times after the proposed staffing levels have been achieved.


2) Delegate Michael Webert
Delegate Webert stopped by and gave his ear for the whole meeting (there was a chance that if the meeting ran long that he would have to drop out to support a conference call--that didn't occur), speaking only in summary of his on-going work for a few minutes.
He focused on a few items going into the budget including funding for schools and funding for a (from what I understood) new Virginia state-level grant program to support growing businesses.  Mr. Webert was especially excited for the prospects this presents for the local agriculture initiatives.

3) Captain Meadows
Captain Meadows spoke for a few minutes about his call and dispatch center.  He runs the 911 hotlines as well as the 540-347-3300 non-emergency line for the county.  From what I gathered from his talk:

• he has currently 19 employees, 
• he has elevated funding to bring this up to 24 full time employees, 
• there are 6 call terminals which can be staffed at any given point in time
• last year there were 157,000 calls.  That is an average of 18 calls per hour all year long. 
• This number (if I recall properly) has increased by 300%+ over the past 12 years while staffing has only increased 18%.
• This increase was attributed mainly to cell phone service and (per his example) of receiving 25-30 calls for an accident on I-66 rather than the pre-2000 era of 1 or 2 calls.
• The past 2 years he has had employee turn-over of 25% and 28% (approximately 5 people per year)
• I had to grill Captain Meadows to get him to answer some questions about this turn-over rate, which he seemed reluctant or possibly annoyed to be answering. I am unsure of the reasons for this.
• It costs about $52,000 to train a new employee
• It takes about 9 months to get a new employee up to full-capability
• Since it felt like pulling teeth, I decided not to pursue what the average employment length was for his department
• He claimed (I hope I'm not reading too far into his words) that this turn-over rate was caused because of the stress associated with the work and with the long hours, poor scheduling circumstances (someone always has to be there, even if the scheduled person gets sick), and the need to request vacation 30 days in advance.

To me, it seems like there may be a bit of room for improvement here.  If you project out the cost for only training the new employees, simply because people quit, the county has spent an extra $520k over the past 2 years.  Hopefully in this time of flat-lined budgets this department will be able to control these training costs. Even if they decided to give out bonuses to the employees who stayed for a given year, or require a 2 or 5-year employment contract for new-hires, there would be a great amount of savings!

4) Mr. Fisher
Attorney Fisher spoke for a few minutes about his budget situation and how he has been able to creatively find ways for more funding. He is looking to bring down to the local-level the collection of over-due fines which previously has occurred at the state-level.  

He mentioned that part of this move was because that the state would:

• automatically write-off and not even attempt to collect 2/3rds of the fines/fees
• take a fee off of any fines actually collected

Mr. Fisher stated that he will be able to fully support the newly requested personnel to perform these collection duties with the extra funding received because of the locally more efficient methods.
I commend Mr. Fisher and his office for the creative findings.




Well, that is all.  I hope to have some future posts going into some more detail about these items where possible.  The next FCBOS Town Hall is the second Wednesday in May (the 9th) in Catlett (location forthcoming once I clarify with some people).


-TFCR

Opal Construction

Have any of you noticed the construction going on near the 29 and 17 interchange near Opal?  My wife and I talked about it several times, and how it has to be some sort of commercial development.  Well, turns out that it is actually road work.  VDOT is currently implementing a flyover for the left-hand turn lanes from 29 to 17 south which will take place down the road a bit from the current 29 and 17 intersection.  This will prevent the huge jams which occur because the 2 left turn lanes onto 17 south are full.

It appears that there are no significant impacts to current flow of traffic for 17 and 29. Current estimated completion date is December 2013.

See the PDF from VDOT for the plan.

Marshall Surpervisor Candidates

Below are my initial thoughts on the candidates for the Marshall seat on the Fauquier County Board of Supervisors.


Michele Noel

My first impression of Michele was her website. My advice? Get a proof-reader--and someone who knows how to maintain websites wouldn't hurt either.

The Website
All of this should be taken with a grain of salt--Mr. Schwartz doesn't even have a website for his campaign.
I found the site difficult to navigate.  Modern websites typically have the page header link back to home, but her's doesn't.  The major issue I had with the website layout was that when on one of the pages here if you click on "business" you get linked to "public safety", and if you click on "home" you get "business". This is a really simple mistake which screams "unprofessional" to someone who is quick with a mouse (or track-pad in this case).

Proof reading
It doesn't help Michele's case that on education, Michele's website has a note about the school budget:

"It comprises over 60% of the counties[sic] budget. We need to effectively manage every penny of the school budget." (retrieved September 26, 2011).

There's a little bit of irony in the two errors here. 
The first is already marked with the [sic].  This can be easy to overlook, but it should read "county's budget" instead.
The second takes a bit of knowledge about the county, because it is actually the school board that manages "every penny" of the school's budget.  The Board of Supervisors is only tasked with managing the transfer of local funds (mostly property taxes) into the School Board's budget.

Current Conclusion
It appears that Michele is a fresh personality on the political scene, which may appeal to a lot of voters since Mr. Schwartz seems to have a political past (at least in attempting for office). She leaves me the impression of a great person who has done a lot and wants to extend her contribution to the county as a whole. The talking-points described on her website seemed pretty canned, but I can't wait to hear her at the upcoming forum to see if her website is simply a "work in progress" fluke.




Peter B. Schwartz, Incumbent

I can't find much information about Peter, besides what is listed on the county website.

VA Election History
He ran as a Democrat back in 2001 for the Virginia House of Delegates, District 18. Peter grabbed 37% of the vote in the three-way race against the Republican candidate, Clay Athey who pulled 54% of the vote.
Peter won his current seat on the Board of Supervisor in an uncontested election back in 2007.

Current Conclusion
Color me cautious. From the little information I have, I believe I have good reason to start off being cautious.  During his 2001 bid for the House of Delegates, Mr. Schwartz outspent Mr. Athey by more than 330% (for a total of $220k) and lost by a 17 point margin.  Granted this is a Republican-leaning area, but I think it can be called a failure for outspending your opponent by that margin and losing by that much.  Like Mrs. Noel, I also can't wait to hear Mr. Schwartz at the upcoming forum.