Following a closed session at the conclusion of Tuesday’s regular monthly meeting, the Mathews County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to hold a public hearing on whether the county should spend $307,692 to repair structural issues at the Hole in the Wall Waterfront Grill on Gwynn’s Island.
The hearing will be held at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, March 28, at Mathews High School.
The decision came in response to Mathews Building Official Kevin Zoll’s issuance last May of a notice of unsafe structure to the county, which owns the building, and after Mathews County Administrator Ramona Wilson notified the owners of the business in January that they would need to pay for the repairs, which were outlined in an engineer’s report, if they wanted to avoid having the building boarded up or demolished.
The owners, Mac Casale and Dean Tsamouras, had until Friday, Feb. 24, to respond to the letter. Wilson said on Wednesday morning that the county had received a response to the letter from the business’s attorney, but that she could not discuss it further.
Supervisors’ chair Dave Jones said after the closed session that a public hearing is required on the possible expenditure because it would require a budget increase representing more than 1 percent of the county’s total budget.
Earlier in the meeting, the board summoned Zoll to the podium to discuss a recent article in the Gazette-Journal about the issues at Hole in the Wall. Supervisor Mike Walls said the article “had a lot of lies” in it, and asked Zoll, “Did I ever pressure you to go out to Hole in the Wall and find issues?”
Zoll said that the board as a whole had voted to have him inspect the building.
Walls then asked whether the contractor who completed the original lift of the building had followed Bay Design’s drawing, and Zoll said that the drawings “did not match the work.” He said there had been multiple problems with the building, including footings that weren’t deep enough, a missing girder, and others.
Jones asked Zoll if he felt that the engineer’s report on the condition of the structure was accurate, and Zoll said he did not disagree with it.
Walls then said that he and Jones had been in three meetings with Casale, and he asked Jones if Casale had ever said he would cover the cost of the sewage pump-outs for Hole in the Wall, and Jones replied, “Not to my knowledge.” He also said that Casale had, according to the newspaper article, talked about having administrative exceptions for some of the work done on the building.
“You’ve asked him twice for these, has he given them to you?” said Walls to Wilson and Jones, to which they both responded “No.”
Walls then asked whether anyone on the board had attempted to bribe the group that conducted the engineering study—an issue that was not raised in the newspaper article—and Jones responded, “No.”
“Mr. Casale can hire an independent structural engineer,” said Walls. “He said he hasn’t been able to, but he can do it whenever he wants to.”
Finally, Walls asked board members if the reporter who wrote the article had called and asked them for their opinions on any of the issues raised by Casale, and they responded, “No.”
“Strikes me as strange,” said Walls.
Later in the meeting, during supervisors’ reports, Walls said the county has spent $44,000 on septic pump-outs at Hole in the Wall since he’s been on the board, and that the business still owes $8,800.
“I would like to get him out of the taxpayers’ pocket,” said Walls, “but more important is the safety of the building.”
Subpoena of former building official
The board also voted unanimously to subpoena former Mathews Building Official Jamie Wilks to the April 25 meeting to answer questions regarding the Hole in the Wall project. County Attorney Andrea Erard said that the Virginia Code authorizes the governing body of a locality to conduct investigations regarding government affairs, including ordering the attendance of witnesses and the production of notes and documents. She said the county is investigating the condition of the building.
Wilson said she had called Wilks twice and had emailed him twice about the matter, and that he had responded to the telephone calls, but not to the emails.
The county attorney clarified that Wilks had agreed to a Zoom meeting about the issue, but then a request had come that he appear before the whole board, which was what Wilson was referring to.
“Looking at the gravity of the situation, we need answers,” said Jones. “I want to know how we got to this point.”
Jones went on the say he had questioned Wilks’s qualifications years ago, wondering how he had gone from being a retired firefighter to having all the credentials required for a building official. He asked Wilson if Wilks had met the requirements the county had made when it hired him, and she said that one license Wilks was required to get within one year had taken him 18 months, and that he had never gotten additional licenses that he had been required to obtain within three years.
“We need to find out why this building was inspected and let go the way it was,” said Jones. “We have records where it was inspected; there’s no denying that.”
Reassessment
Wilson told the board that work on the county’s real estate assessment was completed last week and notices will be sent to residents about their new assessments. She said that the overall assessment was 37 percent higher than the 2016-2017 assessment.
“People are gonna have a shock when they see their notices,” she said, and pointed out that a separate meeting would need to be scheduled to hold a public hearing addressing the assessments.
Jones said the board will “need to see what we can do to help our citizens.
“I don’t see our community being able to meet that,” he continued. “We’ll have to make an adjustment. We have a lot of retired people, and incomes are not going up that much.”
Jones also said that a reassessment every six years “is a stretch,” and that one will be needed sooner in order to keep taxes as low as possible.
The public hearing on reassessments and the resulting real estate tax increase will be held at 6 p.m. on Thursday, March 30, in the Mathews High School auditorium.
Gwynn’s Island bridge project
VDOT’s Saluda Residency Administrator Lee McKnight told supervisors that the Gwynn’s Island bridge project will not be completed until Dec. 31 because the company completing the work has experienced “significant delays in delivery of critical components.” He said VDOT will work to ensure that the delay will not have a detrimental effect on residents of the island.
Questioned by supervisors about the delay, McKnight said that a rack gear needed for the project has to be manufactured specifically for the project, and that the manufacturer is experiencing delays in both obtaining materials for the job and fabrication of the component.
“I don’t even know what to say about an eight-month delay,” said Walls.
McKnight said the work that occurred over the weekend of Feb. 26 had gone “extremely well,” with no issues, and he praised the work done by Mathews Emergency Services Coordinator Willie Love to help ensure that was the case.
Channel dredging at Hole in the Wall
The board unanimously approved a request for proposals that was developed by the Middle Peninsula Planning District Commission for dredging the channel at Hole in the Wall, the body of water that separates Gwynn’s Island’s eastern edge from the county’s mainland.
Walls made the motion, saying, “I’ve been waiting since June of 2016 to make this motion.” He said it had taken a lot of people to bring the project to fruition, and he gave special thanks to former Mathews Planning and Zoning Director Thomas Jenkins and to Ray Procopio of the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary.
Jones also gave a “hats off” to Mathews County’s MPPDC representative Harry Meeks, saying he had told the commission he would be “the squeaky wheel until we finally get some action.”
Continental Society request
A request by supervisor Melissa Mason that the board send a letter of welcome to the Continental Society, which is having its regional conference on March 10 and 11 in Newport News, hosted by the Mathews Chapter, became an issue for the board when Walls said he couldn’t support a letter of welcome without further research on the organization, which he said he knew nothing about. He told Mason that she should’ve submitted her request during at the February meeting and said he would need 30 days to conduct his research.
Mason, clearly taken aback, explained that 30 days would be too late because the conference would have already taken place. She said she had submitted the request to have the matter included in the meeting two weeks prior, and she described the Continental Society as a service organization consisting of women in the community who focus on such matters as health, education, employment and recreation. She said the organization’s overall mission is to “create an environment to empower children to have opportunities to reach their potential” and “address the welfare of underserved youths,” and she emphasized that the organization serves “the entire population of children.” She mentioned the Snack Pack program at the schools as one of the group’s major initiatives and pointed out that the society provides scholarships, as well.
Supervisor Paul Hudgins said he wasn’t familiar with the organization and questioned whether it serves local children and provides local scholarships, to which Mason responded, “Yes.” He said that, since he had more information, he would move to approve the letter. Mason seconded the motion.
But supervisor Jackie Ingram said that approving the letter would go against the board’s decision about providing information for matters placed on the agenda.
Jones said when he first received the letter, he thought it would be handled administratively and thought it was just going to be a consensus item. He said he at first thought the Continental Society was a different organization that supports Planned Parenthood, but after research had determined that was not the case, and that the Continentals are “a very non-political organization.”
“I haven’t found anything wrong with the organization at all,” he said, and called for the vote.
The board voted 3-2 to support the motion, with Jones, Hudgins, and Mason for and Walls and Ingram against.
Later, during the second public comment period, Judy Rowe of Gwynn told the board that the Continental Society has done “extraordinary work over the years,” including providing a food closet at the high school for students so they can discreetly obtain food without being embarrassed about asking for it. She said the group works “behind the scenes,” just as an organization does that she’s a member of, and she urged the board to welcome the group.
Animal Control expenditures
Walls raised the issue of $4,000 spent by Mathews Animal Control for a lightbar for the vehicle. He pointed out that the company the lightbar was purchased from is a Richmond HVAC company and said that “something doesn’t seem right to me.”
Jones said that the company in question has a Foster address but a Richmond business license, and he said that accounts payable had not received a W-9 form for the purchase. He said the threshold for accounts payable approval should be lowered to $1,000.
Wilson explained that the animal control officer had approved the purchase from her budget, that the purchase had not included installation, and that the officer’s husband had installed it.
In other matters, the board voted unanimously to:
—Change the location of the board’s March 28 meeting to Mathews High School;
—Have a public hearing during the March 28 meeting on a proposed amendment to the budget to pay a total of $650,000 for construction of a new maintenance shop and the purchase of land for a new Fire Station 1;
—Approve a resolution to purchase 7.839 acres for the Station 1 from The Landing at Stutts Creek at a cost of $300,000. The land is located at the corner of Buckley Hall Road and Moger’s Corner and extends along Pine Hall Lane;
—Authorized Senior Executive Associate Judi Green to submit paperwork for inclusion in another round of opioid settlement funding;
—Set a public hearing for the March 28 meeting on the Dangerous and Vicious Dog Ordinance after authorizing County Attorney Erard to incorporate the maximum penalty allowed by state law into the ordinance. Hudgins said he had received complaints from residents concerned about dogs at large chasing and biting at people on their own property and about a vicious attack of a person riding a bike;
—Appointed the following people as voting members on the new Parks and Recreation Board: Tom Robinson, Terry Dixon, Nicholas Koch, Christine Johnson, Dan Reno, Diane Campbell, and Janice Towne, with Buzz Lambert and Sharon Frye as non-voting members;
—Appointed the following people to the Virginia 250 committee: Sandy Warhol, Bobby Dobson, Dee Russell, and Sharon Frye, and
—Reappointed Edith Turner to the Community Services Board.