Town, lawyers meet to determine next step in consolidation agreement

By Allison Brophy Champion

Published: May 18, 2008

Consolidation was the No. 1 issue on voters’ minds during the May 6 Town Council Election and it was what town officials met to talk about that very same day behind closed doors.

With less than eight months remaining to develop “a consolidation agreement,” folding the town of Culpeper into the county, town leaders and out-of-town lawyers have been putting their heads together to determine what the proposal will look like.

The goal is to put the plan before voters in the November General Election. Getting there, however, is shaping up to be a long, complicated process.

Some background
Mayor Pranas Rimeikis stopped by the Star-Exponent last week to provide an update on the consolidation front, an initiative spurred by local businessman Joe Daniel last year and supported, in theory, by 1,000 town voters.

“The proposal is for the town to be absorbed into the county and with it of course goes the town government, plus the infrastructure, all the entities that provide the services, all that goes away,” he said.

“The charter goes away.”

In January, Daniel, owner of Culpeper Wood Preservers, delivered notice of the town’s obligation under state law to develop a consolidation agreement in a year’s time — by Jan. 17, 2009.

Soon after, the town hired top local government attorney Carter Glass IV of Richmond at a rate of up to $342 per hour to help lead them through the consolidation process. They’ve since met several times since at the staff level, most recently on Election Day.

What now?

“It’s time now we got to put pen to paper,” said Rimeikis, noting that in order to place the consolidation plan on the November ballot it must be submitted to a circuit court judge 60 days before or in September.

That leaves four months.

“What has to be done?” Rimeikis said. “The — for lack of a better term — ‘agreement,’ because that’s how the state law is written, where the town and county have to agree on what the new county is going to look like and then that is presented to voters in the referendum.”

Five items must be in the consolidation agreement, according to a March 17 analysis by Glass, including the names, property and debt of each the town and county along with the new county’s name and the effective date of consolidation.

And then there is a whole laundry list of optional terms.

That’s where it gets difficult, especially considering that the county Board of Supervisors has to agree with the plan the town develops before it goes to voters for a final say.
“We still have all these issues of, well, maybe the government and the functions of the agencies providing the services goes away, but we still want the services,” Rimeikis said.

“So the real question is, do you want to give up control of all that to the county and how much do you want to give up?”
More questions

The agreement, then, will speak to what services the former town wants to maintain.

Does Town Council want the town to become a shire, Rimeikis said, or does it want to set up a service district?

What services will the service district provide, he went on, and who pays for the services considering the loss, under consolidation, of town tax revenues?

“How do you deal with utilities? Do you simply just transfer them over to the county, give them the keys? What happens to all the employees? Does the public works department now fall under the control of the Board of Supervisors or do you say, you know what, let VDOT handle all our roads?”

What becomes of the town police department is “a very big thing,” Rimeikis said, offering more questions: “Do we have the sheriff’s office provide the law enforcement piece or does the county want to create a county police department?

“How are you going to pay for that and who’s going to pay for that?”

Does the former town become a special tax district to pay for the former town’s old debt? Or does the new county absorb the town’s debt and assets?

“So although you can say (forming the consolidation agreement) is in our lap, we still need a lot of involvement with the county to decide on those elements, and we got to do that by September,” Rimeikis said.

Attorney-client privilege
Glass and Town Attorney Bob Bendall of Manassas attended the most recent consolidation meeting May 6 in Town Hall along with interim town manager Tom Huggard, former police chief Dan Boring, who was recently named temporary interim manager and consolidation project manager, Rimeikis and Vice Mayor Billy Yowell.

The meeting was organizational in nature, Rimeikis said.

It’s up to Town Council to decide which options it wants to include in the agreement working in conjunction with county leaders, he said, mentioning other things to consider like what to do with the town’s business license tax and what form of government the consolidated localities should assume.

Boring, as project manager, will gather the needed data for the agreement and Glass and his law firm will draft it.

Rimeikis said the next staff meeting would be Tuesday for further legal consultation.

As for the public’s part in the process, the mayor did not know.

“I suppose we could build in some public hearings, but I think it’s going to be tough enough when you’ve got 16 people that have to agree,” he said of the nine council members and seven supervisors.

Agreeing on what?
Virginia Code calls it an “agreement,” Rimeikis said, though he didn’t favor the term.

“That’s why residents say, ‘You can’t let this happen.’ Well, we don’t have any choice in that, it’s their choice, but we have an obligation to put an agreement together,” he said.

“So it gives an appearance as though we’re working toward consolidation even though I’ll tell you, I’m against it.

“I think it’s stupid.”

The Board of Supervisors has taken a hands-off approach to the consolidation proposal thus far because the petitions delivered in January by Mr. Daniel call for the elimination of the town, not the county.

However, the supervisors passed a resolution recently indicating its willingness to work with the town to meet the state’s requirements for an agreement by January.

“The Board will strive to achieve a consolidation agreement with the Council that is as fair and equitable as possible for all citizens of the town and county,” it says, in part.

Daniel, in a letter from January, provided background as to why he took up the One Government movement.

Not surprisingly, it had to do with water and sewer and the two governments’ inability to come together on the provision of the essential utility.

He viewed the consolidation agreement as a document that would assure continued services to town residents, fair treatment for town employees, coordinated zoning functions and a “blended” law enforcement approach.

“The quality of the Consolidation Plan will determine its success with the voters of Culpeper,” Daniel said.

Allison Brophy Champion can be reached at 825-0771 ext. 101 or abrophy@
starexponent.com.

A voice from the past: what would it cost to consolidate?
Former Town Manager Brannon Godfrey, before he left his post in December, weighed in on what he felt were “two basic arguments against consolidation” in an e-mail to town council and town department heads.

One argument was the loss of town government representation under a county-run board. The other argument was “The Monetary COST — Loss of Revenue.” Godfrey then listed local taxes and fees the county cannot collect, and the estimated annual loss in the areas of:

- Business and professional licenses: $1.2 million
- Meals tax: $2 million
- Other local taxes (bank stock, admissions, cigarette, consumption): $500,000
- VDOT street maintenance payments: $1.3 million
- State public safety grants (HB 599): $330,000
- Other categorical aid: $50,000

Total revenue loss: $5.38 million