Gloucester VA Links and News: Costs

Showing posts with label Costs. Show all posts

Friday, January 31, 2020

In State Constitutional Convention Part 5 Your Help Is Needed

(By: Chuck Thompson)

We need your help to get this idea going. Please contact your local Board of Supervisors and have them put this on their meeting agenda. For those in towns and or cities, please contact your local town or city council and have them put this on their meeting agenda. No different than what was done for the 2A sanctuary meetings. But, we need them to commit to sending someone to the convention. It needs to be decided if localities want only 1 representative or maybe 2. If one, it should probably be the chair person of the Board or council. If two, we recommend the chair person and the local sheriff for the area. A central meeting place still has to be picked and arrangements need to start for that meeting. The question is who pays for this? It's going to have to come out of each localities pockets to do this. How much? No idea at this time. It will depend on the location of the meeting place and the arrangements that need to be made to cover the amount of people who will be attending and an estimate of how long the meetings will go on.

This is not an easy concept to setup and run. But we have to begin somewhere folks. Remember, we are leading the nation in this fight. What is done here will be done everywhere else. So we want to be very successful in this mission. Meeting in Richmond is probably not the smartest plan, but can still be done if that is what the masses want. This will have to be paid from our tax dollars. Private funding may have legal issues unforeseen. What is an estimate of the costs? It depends on how many localities actually participate. We would need a quorum of at least 51% of the localities. Then we would need two thirds of the votes to eliminate any code deemed a violation of the Constitution.

Once we start getting localities on board we can start calculating costs.

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Gloucester, VA Public Library Debate Over Leasing's High Costs

Public libraries are a key element in promoting literacy and intellect, building a community and providing free and open access to a vast amount of information the public would otherwise face challenge and expense in obtaining. Gloucestercurrently has two public libraries where the community may access only a small portion of information actually available. The quantity of information contained in public libraries is highly dependent on local community financial investment. Upon glancing at the amount of money Gloucester annually invests in our public libraries, it is evident their importance to the community is realized by our elected leaders. Unfortunately upon a closer look at how the money is actually spent it becomes clearly evident the taxpayers are getting very little return on their investment. In fact, we are throwing away several million dollars to lease library spaces instead of owning them.

This year the Board of Supervisors (BOS) budgeted $996,982 to operate our two public libraries. $577,630 is for salaries and benefits and $253,226 for rent, leaving only $166,126 for library operations. The larger of our two libraries is located in the MainStreet Center and owned by the Gloucester Main Street Preservation Trust (GMSPT). Rental of this 24,000 square foot library space initially began in 2004 for a period of 10 years, with four five year renewal options for up to a total of 30 years. The BOS renewed the lease for five more years in 2013 which became effective in 2014. This year we will pay the GMSPT approximately $190,000 in lease associated payments to rent the library and among other things, to pay 23% of the property tax charged on the entire Main Street Center. Our second library, located in the York River Crossing Shopping Center, is rented to Gloucester under a similar lease agreement. This year the People will pay approximately $63,000 in lease associated payments for this 3,916 square ft. library space.

Should Gloucester continue leasing the Main Street library for the full 30 years, the taxpayers will have paid the GMSPT close to $6 million in rent. A new 24,000 square foot library constructed at $2.50 per square ft. would cost the taxpayers approximately $6 million and would convert the annual rent obligation from $190,000, to an annual library capital improvement fund contribution of approximately $50,000; rendering an eventual annual savings of at least $140,000. Similar, but smaller scale results could also be realized by constructing a second library instead of continuing to rent. Over the years Gloucester’s administration and elected leaders have made some deals and decisions that have proven to be contrary to the long term financial interests of the overall community. Just think, if the earlier decision makers had truly acted in the community’s best interest, they would have built a new library and the benefits and savings of such would be enjoyed financially stress free today. Unfortunately, we now appear to be locked into a carefully designed financial cycle that will be very hard to break without a significant cash windfall, as we currently cannot afford to rent and build a new library at the same time. The current BOS has an obligation to address this issue and initiate a process that will result in construction of the larger of two new libraries within the next six years, with construction of a satellite branch beginning not far behind. Hopefully the current BOS becomes the Board that did what was best for the entire Gloucester community; otherwise we will just keep paying more for library rent than for information quantity and quality.

Respectfully,

Kenneth E. Hogge, Sr.

Gloucester Point

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Gloucester, Virginia Animal Control Still Abusing The Taxpayers

For the past 6 weeks we have been reporting abuses to the taxpayers and the people of Gloucester, Virginia as Laura Dickie of Animal Control has been using a taxpayer owned county vehicle for personal use by going out to breakfast each morning while in uniform and therefore considered to be on duty getting paid for such.

We have no problems with people eating. Everyone needs to eat. What we have a problem with is the violation to county employment rules of conduct where employees are not to use county vehicles for personal use as well as state codes, federal laws and IRS codes that also state the same. According to county employment rules, employees get a 15 minute break as well as a lunch break. These do not include using taxpayer owned vehicles for personal use to go to the local restaurants, fast food places, quick stop markets, shopping centers and the like while on break or for lunch. The employee rules are very clear on this.

What we also have an issue with is that Animal Control deputies are supposed to exhibit higher levels of conduct since they are charged with enforcing certain, yet restricted, legal ordinances or codes. (Color of Law). It becomes a serious issue of concern when you have someone who is supposed to exhibit these higher levels of conduct but instead keeps repeatedly violating these very simple basic rules. How can we trust these people? Or can we? Below are some of the many pictures we have taken showing these violations to the taxpayers of Gloucester County, Virginia. And this is minor on what goes on here.