Splinters form among amigos

Among the maladies affecting politicians are deprivations of senses along with sense. Some are deaf to the cries of constituents. Some can’t feel others’ pain. Some can neither detect the foul aroma of a particular policy nor its bitter taste. Vision? Some detest the very word. So comes Tim Williams, mayor of Waynesboro, absent an evident sense of himself.

While wearing a symbolic crown, he steadily has slipped to the third rung among those clutched by the City Council’s so-called “three amigos,” the majority bloc made up of him, Vice Mayor Frank Lucente and Councilman Bruce Allen. Those three swept almost a year ago into control of the council riding almost two-thirds of the vote, Williams the only one running uncontested.

The conservative faction’s victory was the product of at least two things: abiding uncertainty over the use of taxpayer money for the Wayne Theatre and a corollary, the amigos’ depiction of their opponents as tax-and-spenders. We can hear the rising hum of vexation among theater backers and conservatives’ political foes. Our aim here is not to opine on the merits of the majority’s campaign assertions but to say what happened.

It matters because voters responded based on expectations, namely that the conservative trio, having been given charge, would keep the lid on taxes. So far, two of the three amigos are following the expected course. Lucente and Allen have wielded budget knives with abandon and, precisely to the issue at hand, have pledged to cut the property tax rate from 70 cents per $100 to 67 cents per $100 to offset the reassessment increase. Williams is not so sure, putting him in the camp of councilwomen Lorie Smith and Nancy Dowdy.

From the latter two, this hardly comes as a surprise. Their view, whether we or anyone else agrees, is consistent. To their style of thinking, additional tax money from the reassessment might be needed to ease the sting of dwindling revenues from other sources and the budget cuts that follow as a result. What their foes call spending Smith and Dowdy call investments in the city.

In Williams’ case, though, his line-straddling raises questions. With whom is he aligned? Among the lasting images of last year’s election is a photograph of the conservative gang that appeared on the front page of The News Virginian. Williams stands between Lucente and Allen doing a fist pump that would make Tiger Woods proud. His position and place then seemed clear.

A year later, they’re anything but. In addition to his wavering on whether to offset the reassessment with a lower tax rate, he has proposed raising the council’s salaries, a notion that’s anathema to Lucente and Allen. Smith and Dowdy fled this idea, too, sensing its insensibility – they’ve even decided to forgo their council pay.

If the Waynesboro School Board bites on a proposal by Lucente to defer until next year some of the money it was to receive from the city, that could mitigate the debate over the tax rate by covering a sizable chunk of the $550,000 the city would need to cover reduced real estate revenues.

That would leave unresolved the larger, growing question about Williams: who is he philosophically? He clings to an allegiance with Lucente and Allen but drifts from it at many turns. We view lowering the tax rate as an especially necessary step at a time when the local economy is sagging, but we don’t suggest that Williams’ wandering is a bad or wrong thing. He should act on conscience, not on the basis of his political alliances.

But voters should know where their elected officials stand ideologically. That knowledge is vivid in the cases of four of the council’s five members. Williams remains mysterious, a thing that disconcerts as much as intrigues.