Gloucester, VA BoS Meeting Notes for March 18th, 2014. Gloucester, Virginia Links and News website.

1. 18 Mar. 014
Supr’s Mtg.
• As you review the Planning Departments recommendations on
Interstate 17 tonight, you need to consider the following. Guinea Road
is nine lanes wide in the north and southbound lanes. As you stretch
these lanes north from the bridge to Ark currently, you will have to
make some critical decisions. As you look at 17 today, envision it 5 or 10
years down the road chocker blocked with business and no room for the
vehicles to travel unless you coordinate with VDOT and determine the
required width and setbacks to expand your business efforts. As the
corridor expands, the existing businesses will be forced out and will have
to move elsewhere on the main stream.
In 2002 I submitted a plan to provide for a series of divided highways in
Gloucester that are necessary to provide for cross travel and ease of traffic
movement around the congested areas of the county. It also identified the
potential for development and an increased revenue base. It still lays dead
in a drawer somewhere in Planning.
You need to consider the possibility of our backdoor development
process from West Point, coming into Adner and then south to Main. The
potential is there since it is close to the airport and Interstate 64, a lot of
space for potential development.
•I looked at our Utility budget over time and it has budgeted 1.6 million
for development fees and collected 1.4 million in revenues. The
interesting side of this equation is I could not find a specific entry at the
Treasurer’s Records that maintained an entry and expenditure
specifically for utility development. Will you ensure the taxpaying public
tonight a change in how we handle, invest, and obligate these funds to
ensure they only go for their prior intended use?

2. As you are aware if you currently use these funds to adjust your
budgeted records by June 30 of each fiscal year to determine a budget in
balance. Then the department and the taxpayers will never know the true
nature of the fiscal condition of the department, nor will our
infrastructure ever have enough funds to accomplish their scheduled
programs.
Finally yet importantly on this department in 2013 they had 673
disconnects or 14 percent of their inventory to hookups. What is the
fiscal impact to this process and do you recover within the same fiscal
year?
• Business opportunities in the county appear to always hit the hurdles
and the applicants have a tendency to disappear, thus leaving the
citizens and the county without new businesses and revenue
enhancements. When the Director of Economic Development presents
his program tonight, will it have within his presentation why
companies change their minds and walk away? His comments to
address education, regulations, accessibility to transportation needs
and most critical our ability to provide broadband or electronic
capabilities that would enhance a corporate to expand and create
more jobs.