Wither Goochland

 

Dr. Tom  Epperson facilitates strategic planning retreat

On August 12, the Goochland Board of Supervisors met at the Luck Stone Studio in Manakin for a retreat to begin an update of the county’s strategic plan, which was last overhauled in 2013. Sessions where the entire board—more than three supervisors together at the same time constitutes a meeting—sit down to share their thoughts and concerns about issues facing the county are rare, due to statutory restrictions.

County Administrator Dr. Jeremy Raley said the goal of the meeting was to “zoom out” from pressing matters and take a long term look at what is important to the community, to local government as an organization, and where the county wants to be going forward. The process to revise the strategic plan will include conversations with the community and focus groups to craft a long-term road map to get everyone on the same page about the future direction of the county. Adoption is expected in the next six months or so.

The session was facilitated by Dr. Tom Epperson, Vice President of Culture at the Luck Stone Companies and a founder of the Innerwill Leadership Institute https://innerwill.org/, a philanthropic arm of Luck Companies.

Epperson explained that a strategic plan should help set goals; identify major projects and tactics going forward; and most important, to get everyone on the same page, aligned “with where we’re going” and how we’re going to get there. Ideally, this will have everyone, government and citizens, who should have a loud voice in this, moving together.

He segued into a SWOT—strength, weakness, opportunity, threat—analysis.

The following offers a few highlights. Go to the “watch county meetings” tab at goochlandva.us to view the entire session.

Goochland’s strengths are many. They include engaged citizens; current financial position; excellent schools, fire-rescue, law enforcement; a do more with less philosophy; proximity to major metro area; James River and interstate access; and lowest tax rates.

Weaknesses included underutilization of bond rating to finance capital projects; small size and scale that makes competing with large jurisdictions like Henrico difficult; thin staffing; resistance to change; need to communicate better to help citizens understand the rationale behind decisions; legal constraints on board collaboration; east west tensions; and staff lacking some tools needed to support its workload.

Opportunities include generation of flow charts for response to issues like power transmission lines; rebuild public trust; clearly define role of county government and communicate that to the citizens; find the sweet spot between costs and services; educate newcomers about rural living like sharing the road with farm equipment and hunting season, AKA the fall festival of firearms; leverage our history for tourism; limit annual population growth to  certain percentage, equally across all districts; and explore additional public-private partnerships.

Threats include the cumbersome, slow, and expensive nature of working with VDOT on road projects; poaching of staff by neighboring counties; negative local impacts of state legislation; growing too fast; attracting and keeping the best teachers; need for strong revenue sources to build infrastructure; and crafting multi-year fiscal flexibility to deal with the uncertain revenue streams caused by factors outside county control.

A recurring theme in the session was frustration about statutory barriers that hobble effective and transparent communication among themselves and with citizens.

The supervisors voiced their appreciation for the opportunity to sit down face to face and talk, which is pretty much prohibited by state law. Between monthly board meetings, they have “two by two” meetings, where two supervisors meet with Raley and members of staff to discuss pending issues. Raley then shares those conversations with other board members. This hub and spokes method is cumbersome, things will “drop through the cracks” along the way. Supervisors said they would welcome more opportunities for “cross pollination” to explore in detail issues facing the county.

Erosion of public trust was identified as a major threat. This was attributed to doing a poor job of helping citizens understand rationale behind decisions. Information vacuums tend to be filled with rumors, speculation, and conspiracy theories. If people do not like or understand a decision, they assume that the supervisors are being paid under the table for “done deals”. There are very mixed attitudes about attracting more outside investment to the county. Many citizens, busy with their lives, find that local government is hard to understand and access, which complicates communication and undermines public trust.

Newcomers from other states may not realize that Goochland is governed by part-time elected officials, only has about 28,000 people, and cannot operate on the same level as say, a Henrico, whose budget is about $1.4 billion versus Goochland’s about $107 million.  

Disclosure is a perennial frustration. Virginia is a caveat emptor (let the buyer beware) state, which prohibits jurisdictions from requiring realtors and developers from telling buyers about things that could discourage a sale. Goochland, for instance, was recently prohibited by state law from accepting a proffer from a developer to inform buyers in a new subdivision that the land on the opposite side of the road is zoned M-1. That was not always so. Deeds for homes in Manakin Farms, which is on the opposite side of Rt. 6 from Luck Stone, included warnings that they would be living near a large quarry.

Jonathan Lyle, District 5 contended that anyone who buys property in Districts 4 and 5 should be aware that is in proximity to an area that has been designated for high growth for decades, but there is currently no way to share that knowledge. The TCSD was created to attract commercial development, but previous boards decided to put residential development there, creating conflict, with which the current board must deal.

When there is a proposal that citizens do not like, they show up to voice their opposition. While there was acknowledgment that supervisors could do a better job of explaining their votes, they cited a philosophy expressed by former District 5 Supervisor Ken Peterson that after listening to the comments of a room full of opponents to a proposal at a public hearing, he also needed to consider the other 26,000 citizens not present.

There was acknowledgment that the board needs to do a better job of communicating with citizens, but no clear-cut way to do it was identified.

Supervisors said that rather than focusing solely on their district, each of which has distinctive characteristics, they try to base their decisions on county wide impact. However, restrictions on board internal collaboration give the perception that this is not the case.

There was some discussion, and there needs to be more going forward, on the role of local government and finding the sweet spot between too much and not enough. Seems simple in theory, in practice, not so much.

The relative inexperience of supervisors and staff was identified as a challenge, but also an opportunity. Since taking the helm of team Goochland—there will be sports analogies—14 months ago, Raley has reorganized county government and brought in many new, and well-qualified people, who got right to work but are still getting acclimated to Goochland. Raley began his tenure by meeting with a wide range of residents to learn about their view of local government. He continues to do this and welcomes citizen feedback.

The strategic plan update holds great promise to help citizens understand the role of local government, where Goochland needs to go as a county, and how to get there. This will be a challenging task; there are about 29,000 people in the county and probably almost as many opinions. Stay tuned and be engaged.

By now, every household in the county should have received a letter announcing an August 27 meeting to be held at Goochland High School beginning at 6 p.m. to discuss proposed amendments to the TOD to prohibit data centers outside of the TOD boundaries and align the ordinance with state law on high energy use facilities. Go to https://goochlandva.us/OrdUpdate for details.