County should define job first

Regarding The News Virginian’s Friday editorial, “Firing shots at the shadows,” I won’t enter into the good editor’s fray as to the reasons for my contrariness. But I would like to share why I opposed the Augusta County supervisors’ recent authorization for another employee, this one an economic development director, in the county building.

I disagreed with my fellow supervisors solely because I did not feel a sufficient case for adding staff was made. And the fact that it is a job reporting directly to, and at the “pleasure of,” the Board of Supervisors made it doubly troubling.

To wit, following the vote Wednesday to approve the new position, the board met in executive session to consider this job. The laundry list of duties, without any prioritization or emphasis, was just now being scrutinized. The conclusion, after having no agreement on what the job should be, was that we should let the candidates during their interviews direct the focus of the job. I left the meeting recalling an old saying, “When you don’t know where you are going, any road will do.”

Augusta County enjoys an enviable balance of industrial, commercial, professional, agricultural and governmental employment. Existing staff has either been helpful in bringing this work here or smart enough to stay out of the way, but in either case the county has prospered fairly well with existing staff.

During my time on the board, we have been given multiple opportunities for industry ranging from the well-known “megasite” venture down to smaller ones not publicly vetted. Our economic development team had gotten prospects on the hook but it was the Board of Supervisors, not staff, who didn’t reel them in.

My question to the board has been: what are we going to do differently? If nothing, then little will change, no matter someone’s personal powers of persuasion. If we are going to change policy, say with greater incentives, let’s detail them seeking public support first. This, to me, was the single greatest failure in trying to secure Toyota.

The question is not the cost of this job, but its value. Can a $69,000-a-year person deliver a $1 billion manufacturing opportunity by cutting red-tape? Please. Mississippi got Toyota because of their governor, Haley Barbour, not because of the economic development director of Blue Springs, Miss.

The News Virginian seems not to know how government grows. It is not all at once, but brick by brick, program by program, job by job. And someday later, the Board of Supervisors will likely be called to task for its size by this same paper and more importantly by the people. And it should be. We don’t lack for good people in Verona. We lack leadership that defines what needs to be done and aligns its resources to those ends. 

I think the times demand that we keep this money in the bank. But as the board has an itch to spend, let’s at least spend where we have been asked to spend it: on EMTs, deputies, paving dirt roads or perhaps even re-hiring the people we fired for lack of funds.

I essentially represent “country” people. They expect me to share their values with the board. In the “country,” we have a saying: “Take what you have, and make what you want.” The board would do well to consider this simple philosophy of conservation and innovation. I do.

Tracy Pyles, of Churchville, is the Pastures District representative on the Augusta County Board of Supervisors.