Bailey: No holds barred

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Bailey: No holds barred

Conservative faction shut out too long, supervisor asserts By Keith Stickley Shenandoah County supervisor Cindy Bailey is a God-fearing woman some people love to hate. The custodial parent of three school-aged grandchildren, Bailey is routinely demonized on social media as the impediment to all that’s good about local government. Curiously, her sin appears to be one most often viewed as honesty. While campaigning for public office, Bailey made a promise, one she has kept. After nearly four years in office and despite a barrage of criticism from detractors, Bailey makes no apology for having made good on her campaign pledge to oppose any effort to raise real estate taxes, the largest single source of local funding for government programs, including public schools. And, if she decides to run for a second term when this one ends in December, she is likely to again make that same promise. As a result, Cindy Bailey already is in the crosshairs of those who say they are willing to pay higher taxes to finance increased wages and benefits for local school employees. If necessary, they’ll beat her at the ballot box. Considering that Shenandoah County Public Schools employ nearly 1,000, raising pay for all of them would require lots of wallets to lift. No matter how willing school supporters might be to send in their cash, Bailey won’t take them up on that offer. Bailey, a retiree whose last full-time job besides parent was that of captain in charge of the Shenandoah County Jail, governs from the dais at the county government center just as she might from a cellblock window. Subtlety is not her style. Her rough and tumble approach has done nothing to win the favor of her less conservative colleagues, and it has enhanced her public reputation as a renegade. While many disagree with her methods, she gets things done. Besides being an unrelenting force against higher taxes, Bailey has championed a diversity of community projects. She directed the ownership transfer of a former school building in Woodstock to the town, shut down plans for expansion of a rendering plant west of Edinburg and encouraged New Market emergency volunteers to train for certification to prevent expansion of paid services to that community. Despite her efforts, Bailey sometimes failed. She was unable to convince colleagues that accepting a farm near Timberville for a public park would be a bad idea. They accepted it over her objections. And, she was equally ineffective at convincing the board to abandon a second parcel of park property at the Warren County line. As the central figure of a love-hate relationship, Bailey is paid $850 per month. Bold and assertive though she’s been, Bailey last week orchestrated a decision that prompted the eruption of an emotional volcano. Her detractors quickly took to Facebook. Online postings revealed a side of the community more unseemly even than its politics. Since January, county supervisors have been unable to select a chairperson. Each time they tried, the vote ended in a 3-3 tie. They did, however, vote 6-0 to elect Richard Walker as vice chair. When the last January ballot for chair end-

ed in the usual tie vote, Walker reminded his colleagues that absence by one from a future meeting might well result in another election. That opportunity came a week ago. And it was not unanticipated. Knowing that he would be unable to attend the Feb. 16 meeting, supervisor Conrad Helsley of Strasburg emailed county attorney Jason Ham to ask if his colleagues might depose him in absentia. Not to worry, Ham told Helsley via email on Jan. 30. He referred to the supervisors’ Feb. 16 joint meeting with the county school board as a “work session,” saying other supervisors could not elect a chairman at such a meeting. The board’s calendar for 2017 listed the session as “Board of Supervisors/School Board Joint Meeting.” Two other references on the county website listed it as a joint meeting. Rules governing supervisors’ meetings, a one-page document when Bailey and Marsha Shruntz took office four years ago but since expanded to 18 pages, stipulate that an agenda for any meeting can be amended by majority vote of members present. At the conclusion of the joint meeting with the school board, Bailey moved to amend the agenda to add the election of a chair. She, Walker and Shruntz voted for the amendment, supervisors Dick Neese and Steve Baker against. Bailey then nominated Walker for the chairmanship, and the same vote resulted. In the public’s eye, the dreaded conservative wing of the county board had resorted to trickery to install one of their own at the top of county government. How dare they? Though four supervisors already had said they would oppose a school budget that included wage and benefits increases (this one calls for $2.1 million for those expenses), Bailey’s detractors took to the Web. It was perhaps Bailey’s boldest move yet. By Monday afternoon, Ham, holding to his claim that the joint meeting was a “work session,” opined that Helsley was still chairman. Bailey, Shruntz and Walker having nothing of it. Ham, whose legal advice Walker once described as “half decent,” has for more than a year been one vote away from losing a job. During an interview Monday, Bailey told The Free Press that Ham, who lives in Rockingham County, has assumed an outsize role in Shenandoah County governance, one to which he is not entitled. She says the board chairman, county administrator Mary Beth Price and Ham often jointly discuss policy and decide which initiatives move forward and which languish in local government agencies. “They’re not sharing information with us, that’s for sure,” she said. Bailey says Helsley phoned Walker days before the board’s organizational meeting in January to say that he, Neese and Baker had decided that the board’s organizational structure would remain unchanged. In other words, Helsley would keep the chairmanship. She said Helsley agreed a year ago to relinquish the chair when the board reorganized in January. “He reneged on that promise,” Bailey said. She reels off a litany of efforts to transform county government that have been stonewalled during her days in office. Bailey said she has attempted without success to repeal an ordinance governing development along the historic Old Valley Pike.

The matter was assigned to the county community development office more than a year ago. Efforts to change the filing deadline for farmers renewing land use taxation status have similarly been delayed. Walker began efforts to expand tax relief to the elderly even before taking office in January 2016. That issue has yet to reach a vote. Bailey said the county zoning ordinance should be amended to encourage business development and expansion. “The chairman drives that,” Bailey said. “The chairman drives everything.” During her tenure, Bailey has had a less than collegial relationship with county administrator Price. “I believe the county administrator is stonewalling efforts to bring change,” Bailey says. At times, she says, she believes “the county attorney is running the county. This county is a mess.” Her decision to bring the chairmanship to a vote a week ago, Bailey said, “was righting a wrong. We are taking care of business. We had been unable to elect a chairman.” Had county government been legally challenged over a document signed by Helsley, an unelected chair, Bailey said, she and other supervisors might have been liable. “It had to be done to protect our county…from any legal difficulty.” She said she acted out of “determination and common sense,” saying “sometimes that’s all it takes.” Given the opportunity, Bailey says Helsley, Neese and Baker “would have done the same thing.” Citing Helsley’s statement a day after he was deposed that the chairmanship is largely ceremonial, Bailey said, “If the chairmanship isn’t important to him, why wouldn’t he switch?” She criticized Helsley, Neese and Baker as lackluster on efforts to build the local economy. “What have they done to grow the economy, hold the line on taxes and bring jobs? Nothing. “They don’t want to work to find ways to solve problems,” she said of the three. “It’s so much easier just to raise taxes.” After four years of battling to keep a promise, Bailey says she’s ready to tackle yet another county budget, one she knows will require cuts to avoid raising taxes.” “I’m not evil,” she says. “I’m just trying to do the job I was elected to do.”

Walker: ‘I won’t go quietly’ By Keith Stickley Shortly before 9 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 7, Richard Walker’s vote on matters before the Shenandoah County Board of Supervisors suddenly became a lot less important. Until then, Walker was one of three county supervisors who for two years had effectively blocked efforts to increase local government spending. On Election Day 2017 that changed. Voters that day chose new supervisors for Districts 4 and 5, removing from office Cindy Bailey and Marsha Shruntz whose votes in lockstep with Walker had time and again stymied spending initiatives. Come January, when Bailey and Shruntz no longer occupy chairs on the dais at the Shenandoah County Government Center, Walker will be the only remaining member of what had become an ultra conservative coalition. Karl Roulston, an engineer who owns a collection of businesses, will succeed Bailey. Dennis Morris, who spent 36 years as a county supervisor before losing to Shruntz four years ago, will return for yet another term. The county school board and those who support them already are salivating about prospects for increased funding. Days after election results were tallied, the school board released a wish list of $15.5 million in capital improvements. Supervisor-in-waiting Morris appeares ready and willing to consider taxpayer funding to insure the families of the county’s nearly 1,000 public school employees, a benefit likely to cost more than $4 million annually. Rich Walker, meanwhile, is like a sailing vessel adrift at sea on a windless day. Only halfway through a four-year term, Walker said this week he’s not yet certain he will seek reelection. Walker became a third and critical vote to the board’s conservative faction in 2015 when he unseated former board chairman David Ferguson. Voters turned on Ferguson after he, Morris and their colleagues had issued more than $40 million in bonds to finance a series of politically unpopular capital projects, including a regional jail. Since then, voters in District 5 clearly suffered short-term memory loss. Whether or not they forgave his role in assigning a lifetime of debt to their grandchildren, voters returned Morris to office one more time. The result was not just redemption for a man who has feasted at the public trough for most of his adult life but a blow to those who were convinced just four years ago that it was time to tighten the purse strings. Morris might reasonably believe that results of the election represented a spending mandate. Considering that fewer than half the voters in his district bothered to cast ballots, he could be wrong.

The election of Morris, though, will strengthen the school lobby’s hand. Rarely during his years as a supervisor has Morris opposed a school budget. He will join chairman Conrad Helsley (District 6) and Steve Baker (District 2) as the board’s most reliable school supporters. All three, incidentally, are graduates of Shenandoah County Public Schools. Supervisor John (Dick) Neese (District 1) will not be quite so free with taxpayer funding. Though he won backing of the school lobby in this month’s election, Neese said he would oppose taxpayer funding to insure school employees’ families. Neese said Shenandoah County simply can’t afford that benefit, one school officials are pedaling as an incentive to keep good teachers on the job here. Roulston will be the board’s unknown quantity. Though he almost surely will be more liberal than his predecessor Bailey, Roulston has said throwing money at the problems facing the county’s schools won’t fix them. Should Roulston vote with Neese and Walker to check the spending habits of Shenandoah County Public Schools, the luster of paradise may soon tarnish. Though Walker will remain the board’s most conservative voice, he says he envisions ways to improve business development by simply removing impediments. Faulting so-called community leaders, Walker says “these guys say they want growth but they really don’t.” He says he, Bailey and Shruntz had fought for years to remove restrictions to business development along US 11 and in rural areas but were repeatedly stymied. Walker claims Rockingham, Frederick and Warren counties have no such restrictions. “There are ways to protect the rural areas without going to Draconian measures,” he says. Shenandoah County, he says, requires that all building lots in agriculture zones front on a road. Cluster housing would lead to better development, he claims. That construction jobs in Shenandoah County are down 24 percent since 2010 is evidence that development is an issue here, he says. Walker came to Shenandoah County in 1972 at a time when, he says, government was “unobtrusive, not overbearing,” and taxes were “very reasonable.” Since then, local government has changed. It has “attacked the volunteers” who for generations had manned fire and rescue squad stations. Those volunteers today believe that “If I oppose the administration I’m not going to get any help at all.” “The government’s attitude is that the volunteers are there to support the government,” he says. In other areas he has visited, “government is there to support the volunteers.”

A certified public accountant, Walker has often challenged financial records since his election two years ago and says he will continue to be “the loyal voice of the opposition.” “I will continue to ask questions and will not accept what I’m told at face value.” He continues to question financial records of the county’s Industrial Development Authority whose accounts reportedly total $1.8 million, perhaps more. “I’m not going quietly into the night,” Walker said during an interview early this week. He said, however, that he would consider increasing taxes if he sees that an essential project can’t be financed without doing so. Replacing communications equipment in the county’s E911 call center, he says, might require a tax hike. Though he is high in praise of local public schools, Walker says the plan to abandon the campus concept would be a mistake. About a 25-year, $188 million plan for school construction, Walker says, “I can’t say enough against it.” He thinks the county’s teachers are adequately paid when compared with other locations in the seven-county region and doubts that increasing wages and benefits would prevent them from leaving. When comparing household incomes, a measure of a county’s ability to pay, Shenandoah County would rank either No. 1 or No. 2 based on teacher pay, he says. Shenandoah County’s school principals and assistant principals are among the highest paid in Virginia, he maintains. While private sector jobs have steadily declined over the past 20 or 30 years, Shenandoah County has created “a government class.” Voters in that class, he said, decided the outcome of this month’s local election. Walker will become less active in service to county government in the last years of his term. He will continue to “do a decent amount of digging and ask a lot of questions,” but “if I’m not going to make a difference I might take a little time off.” He says he has given too much time to county government during the past two years. Rich Walker, now 70, says he wants Shenandoah County to be open for growth. “The close-the-gate mentality” of years past should be abandoned, he says, insisting that the county’s development plans were “fashioned” on those of Rappahannock and Clarke, both anti growth. Right or wrong, what Rich Walker thinks may be of little concern to those who will govern Shenandoah County come Jan. 2. The tax and spend folks, after all, have had the last word.

Will an election really solve county’s problems?

Effort to defeat Bailey, Shruntz at heart of strategies for Tuesday By Keith Stickley Shenandoah County voters will be forgiven if they appear confused as they head to the polls Tuesday to elect three members of the county’s board of supervisors. After all, they’ve been told that a vote for some candidates would miraculously improve student test scores and fully accredit all county schools, a goal that has eluded the school board and three superintendents for five years or longer. Others have claimed that the election could somehow restore the county’s economy and bring back good jobs, a promise as old as politics itself. And there are those playing to the fears of an aging community who suggest that only certain candidates could possibly find a way to provide emergency services to every outpost no matter how remote. If only solutions to the problems confronting Shenandoah County were so simple. They aren’t, and they won’t be fixed no matter the outcome of Tuesday voting. The county’s economic and educational problems may well be too big to fix, at least in the near term. Ironically, the loudest voices in this campaign have been those casting blame. Most of the vitriol has been directed at supervisors Cindy Bailey and Marsha Shruntz, who four years ago promised to oppose any effort to increase local taxes. They have kept that promise, have since renewed it and may pay the ultimate price for having done so. Among those cheering for the defeat of Bailey and Shruntz are members of the county school board, its administrators and most county employees.

That those on the county payroll, including nearly 1,000 school employees and their administrators, would oppose Bailey and Shruntz is not surprising. Neither supervisor, if elected, is likely to support a budget that would increase the public payroll. The Shenandoah County Career Firefighters Association, whose members also draw a taxpayer paycheck, likewise oppose Bailey and Shruntz. It’s a pocketbook issue. Though there’s plenty of blame to spread for Shenandoah County’s all-too-public woes, voters could be forgiven for believing it’s all the fault of Bailey and Shruntz. The county’s school board has demonstrated no willingness to accept its role in the failure of local elementary and middle schools, opting instead to blame low test scores on county supervisors, primarily Bailey and Shruntz. Considering that students here were failing standardized tests before Bailey and Shruntz were elected and that budgets to operate local public schools have increased each of the past four years, the school board should take ownership of its problems and work toward solving them. Similarly, Bailey and Shruntz are being blamed for the county’s declining economy, including the loss of thousands of jobs over the past decade, times when neither was in office. But, Shenandoah County has had no plan to revive its dismal economy since the passing of a robust manufacturing base with the closing of the last Aileen, Inc. plant in the mid 1990s. Meanwhile, the Shenandoah County Industrial Development Authority, the board charged with encouraging eco-

nomic growth, has pigeonholed $1.8 million while homeowners have borne an increasing burden of the cost of local government. Except for a cold storage firm and a toilet tissue manufacturer, both at Strasburg, few jobs have been created in Shenandoah County since the 1990s, though the vineyard business has boomed. Meanwhile, the ranks of volunteers who for generations have answered emergency calls, continue to decline, prompting unceasing appeals for paid personnel in areas that have gone without such services for generations. Though Shenandoah County has employed emergency medical technicians only since the 1990s, its Department of Fire and Rescue today is the fastest growing agency of local government. Since their election four years ago, Bailey and Shruntz have opposed every budget. They say Shenandoah County’s some 1,350 public employees are well paid and enjoy better benefits than those in the private sector. Their detractors say that voting no is not a strategy and that taxes must be increased to support the rising cost of government services. The school lobby says veteran teachers are leaving for higher pay and better benefits elsewhere, a claim Bailey and Shruntz dispute. Oddly, supervisor John (Dick) Neese, who earlier this spring said he would oppose any school budget that included an increase in wages or benefits for school employees, has become the darling of the school lobby. Neese represents District 1, including the town of New Market. An independent, Neese is seeking a fifth term. Bailey represents District 4, including the Town of Woodstock. Shruntz is the District 5 member. Her district includes Toms Brook and a vast land area extending to Cedar Creek

Valley and Lebanon Church, west of Strasburg. Bailey’s opponent is Karl Roulston, an engineer and founder of a company that creates software used in airports. Though the company is headquartered in Woodstock, it has offices elsewhere in the U.S. and employs about 160. Roulston also is a principal in a craft beer restaurant in Woodstock and day care centers there and at Strasburg. Opposing Shruntz is former long-time supervisor Dennis Morris, a Toms Brook farmer. District 5 voters dumped Morris four years ago after he supported an unpopular regional jail proposition only to vote against it when it became obvious it had enough votes for passage. Since leaving office, Morris has maintained a close personal relationship with supervisors’ chairman Conrad Helsley and, over the objections of Shruntz and Bailey, has retained membership on local and regional boards. School supporters are not along in their disdain for Bailey and Shruntz. Former supervisor Sharon Baroncelli, now executive director of the chamber of commerce, helped organize a series of candidate forums that Bailey suspected were intended to trap her before a hostile audience. Bailey had challenged Baroncelli eight years ago in a write-in campaign. When Bailey announced as a candidate five years ago, Baroncelli opted not to seek reelection. After Bailey boycotted the chamber’s candidate forum, Baroncelli and the chamber organized an economic development committee whose members concluded a week ago that acrimony among supervisors was the county’s primary obstacle to growth. Releasing that finding on the eve of an election may not have been a skunk, but it smelled much like one. The purpose of

the chamber’s not-so-subtle eleventh hour foray into political theater seemed all too obvious. Baroncelli is not the only former supervisor playing politics this election season. Former board chairman David E. Ferguson earlier this year was among four who filed a Freedom of Information Act request for legal fees connected to a dispute over chairmanship of the Board of Supervisors, a hot issue Bailey, Shruntz and Richard Walker stoked. No one was surprised when a week later the information Ferguson secured found its way into the hands of a man who publicly criticized Bailey, Shruntz and supervisor Walker at a meeting. During 36 years as a supervisor, Morris rarely, if ever, voted against a school budget, and was generous with taxpayers’ money. Among initiatives Morris hopes to restore is the public purchase of private development rights. Repealed since his departure from the board, the program allowed supervisors to use tax money to buy farmland ostensibly to prevent it from being developed, instead preserving it as open land. Bailey and Shruntz said it was little more than a govern-

ment scam to finance the retirement of a few farmers who failed to adequately plan for old age. Karen Kwiatkowski, the opponent of Neese, is a Republican who would likely be more tight-fisted with tax money than either Bailey or Shruntz. Kwiatkowski says county government is too big and that it should be “right sized.” She thinks the county’s $100 million budget could be pared to $85 million or $90 million. School administrators and their supporters consider Neese the least desirable candidate in the District 1 race. Bailey and Shruntz, meanwhile, have renewed the pledge they made four years ago to oppose any tax effort to increase local taxes. How voters will react to their pitch is difficult if not impossible to gauge. Though the tax pledge has been the hallmark of their tenure on the board, each has had a hand in other projects. Bailey almost single-handedly defeated a proposition that would have expanded a poultry rendering plant at Columbia Furnace. The company would have shipped offal to its plant from outside Shenandoah County, threatening the health of Stony Creek.

She orchestrated the ownership transfer of the former Woodstock High School to the town of Woodstock, and repeatedly went outside her district to attempt to resolve a sticky emergency services issue at New Market. Shruntz says she has spent much of her time working with the Virginia Department of Transportation on road problems in her sprawling district. During the first two years of their terms, Bailey and Shruntz were relatively ineffective on budget issues. The four men who shared the dais with them controlled votes. In 2016, however, voters denied former supervisor Ferguson’s reelection bid and instead elected Richard Walker. Walker has since joined Bailey and Shruntz to form a conservative coalition. The result has been a series of tie votes to deny most spending initiatives. Those in office before their arrival and some who remain on the board left behind a wad of debt exceeding $43 million and a trail of bronze legacy plaques adorning walls in two counties. Grandchildren eventually will inherit those obligations. Should either Bailey or Shruntz lose Tuesday tie votes

would end and governance would look much like it did before their arrival. There is little doubt that county taxes would increase. Roulston, Morris and Neese have each said they would vote to increase taxes if they are convinced such a move were necessary. They and they alone would decide when that might be necessary. Voters who believe that only more money will improve school test scores, bring well-paying jobs to town and put an ambulance in every remote hamlet doubtless will vote for Roulston, Morris and Neese. Those who look with pride on county schools, who think taxes are high enough and who say folks with heart disease should live closer to a hospital likely will support Bailey, Shruntz and Kwiatkowski. Some, no doubt, will roll the dice, hoping that one or more of those elected will champion a real plan to jump-start the local economy and convince voters that their money will be responsibly spent. Whatever the choice, the outcome will affect Shenandoah County for years, possibly generations.