Past, present or future tension

In a July 13 letter to board members, Virginia Governor Tim Kaine and House Speaker William Howell urged supervisors to locate a proposed Walmart in an alternate location-at a site farther away from nearby Wilderness Battlefield. At their July 28 meeting, supervisors had to make a couple of changes to their response letter to state legislators after the public hearing process was derailed by an advertising glitch.
Originally, with the planning commission's public hearing and 5 to 4 vote to recommend approval of Walmart's SUP behind them, supervisors would have had their own public hearing July 27-and in all likelihood, supervisors would have had their vote on the SUP prior to the July 28 regular board meeting. On that schedule, the response letter would have gained a thumbs-up or thumbs-down at Tuesday's meeting and could've been on its way to Richmond forthwith.
But since rescheduling of both public hearings was necessary in order to comply with legal requirements, the letter needed some grammatical changes.
"I put [the response letter] together on the basis that we would have already decided that issue," Frame said.
But of course, that hasn't actually happened. So supervisors had to decide whether to make changes to the letter or scrap it altogether.
District 4 Supervisor Teri Pace said the governor and speaker's letter contained a generous offer to provide access to state resources. Perhaps the board should consider the offer and ask Walmart corporate to choose an alternate site.
But not all supervisors had Pace's faith in the bi-partisan offer to help.
"I don't have any trust for the governor's political appointees on an issue like this," District 2 Supervisor Zack Burkett said. It was supervisors' responsibility to approach the Walmart topic based on constituents' feedback, he added. "I'm really fed up with paper pushers trying to get into this."
Frame said that from what he could determine, the extent of state "resources" available as a result of state government's offer was marketing data, maps and a pie chart or two.
So then, Frame asked, should the letter go to the state capital now, or should it wait until the board has rendered their SUP decision?
District 1 Supervisor Mark Johnson said a "polite thank-you gentlemen for your interest in Orange County…" was appropriate, regardless of how the SUP turned out.
But Pace worried that turning down the governor's offer, and choosing retail over tourism revenue, would be biting the hand that feeds Orange County.
"The governor could say, 'Well, you depleted revenue sources so I'm not sure we can come up with the money for the regional jail?' Is that something that could happen?" Pace asked Orange County Attorney Sharon Pandak.
"I can't purport to say what the governor would say in response to anything," Pandak responded. "I can't speak for the governor and there are a whole host of things that are better said by political figures and not by me as a lawyer."
Frame proposed (and nobody argued) changing a sentence here or there in his response letter-a couple of "have been's" to "will be's"-so language in the response doesn't imply a decision has been made.