After a bumpy first year on our Shepherdstown Town Council I have at last uncovered the ways of government. The town has not been governed, as one might think, by six councilmen and a mayor in front of the public in an improvised meeting hall.
Instead, three people on the Shepherdstown council run the council. They rarely say anything, suppress almost all debate, turn down just about everything. I call them the “Silent Three.” They are councilmen Jim Auxer, Jim Ford, and Howard Mills. Their inaction has left Shepherdstown defenseless and vulnerable, dangerously open to reckless development just outside our town borders.
The result has been years of doing nothing, keeping a lid on everything, suppressing opposition or debate, not making waves, and taking the easy way requiring the least effort and the least courage.
For six years the Silent Three kept the Shepherdstown Comprehensive Plan buried way back on a shelf in town hall so we could not use it to stop 400 sprawl houses and a shopping strip that will be built in open land near town, especially 140 new houses right near Morgan Grove Park: Mark/Tollhouse Woods, Town Run Commons, and Kensington.
The Silent Three failed to use our Comprehensive Plan to tell the Catholic church not to clear-cut eight acres of forest at Duke and New streets for a parking lot. Nor could we tell the church it could not build an urban eyesore for a church, a huge structure that is shockingly incompatible with our traditional steeple town, and looks like a multiplex theater.
Just this year, 65 townhouses, called Seneca Crossing, were approved by the county, to be stuffed into eight acres north and south of Route 45 next to Sheetz because Silent Auxer, Ford, and Mills never acted to put our Comprehensive Plan into use to protect us.
The Silent Three let a sewer and water plan languish for five years while they took long naps and vacations. The costs to us taxpayers have risen from $5 million five years ago to $12 million now. Seven million taxpayer dollars, wasted by Auxer, Ford, and Mills, asleep again, no one holding them accountable.
I am ready to hold them accountable and will not be silenced. I am one lone councilman they think they can bully, but they cannot. If they succeed in muzzling me in meetings using parliamentary tricks, I will take to the streets and newspapers. The more they try to bully me into silence, the more loudly I will work to expose them.
Now the Silent Three want to build a new town hall building, come hell or high water, on the current town hall lot. It is a super-size combo town hall and police headquarters. Twice the building the Building Commission was charged with building.
When asked how all this can possibly fit into a postage stamp of a lot, the answer is: eliminate a meeting room and the mayor’s office. A multi-million dollar new town hall without a meeting room or mayor’s office? This can’t be anything but madness.
Without a backward glance, the Silent Three are ready to demolish the current building, and will doubtless have to blast a massive mound of rock that covers most of the lot. They will spend a fortune before they can even begin building. The worst part is, by forcing too big a building on too small a lot, they will be lavishly spending double the $1.2 million that is already set aside and budgeted for a new town hall. We have the money to move right into the Smith house with $500,000 to spare, yet the Silent Three want to build an ugly monster three times more expensive. It is not their money they are spending. It is yours and mine.
I gave each councilman a packet with 30 years of case histories from the National Trust for Historic Preservation that showed it costs half as much to occupy and preserve a historic structure as it does to build an ugly new one. They ignored the data. They ignored a list of 20 leading citizens who felt the Smith house would be an ideal, lucky windfall for the town.
The Silent Three used a parliamentary trick to silence debate. They suppressed any discussion. They took control of what had to be the most disgraceful town meeting I have ever been forced to take part in. They sat there, silent. Their motives were never questioned. Their reasons for sabotaging the Smith house were never challenged or revealed. They sat there silent, with the public looking on in dismay, my constituents in disbelief.
And the Silent Three have a new ally I must take on and expose. They voted Councilman Stuart Wallace onto Council, and I unwittingly voted for him based on his resume. But in the short time Wallace has been on Council, he has delayed and obstructed my bill to protect our large canopy trees; he has delayed and obstructed our attempt at a better annexation policy; and he has destroyed the Smith house with the outright falsehood that it was “bad business policy” to buy a historic structure, so we could spend three times more on a new combo Folly. Wallace has stymied our Historic Landmarks Commission’s attempt to write guidelines for building and renovation applications, and he is now beginning an attempt to re-work our streetscape plans by requiring constant supervision and review until he has dismantled the plan piecemeal over time and redesigned it himself—risking potential delays and overages as he painfully re-fashions StreetScape into WallaceScape.
He is leading the Silent Three by the nose, and has succeeded in taking over our Town Council meetings with endless lectures on bureaucratic details.
In the next election in June, Wallace must be cleaned out of government, and Silent, do-nothing Auxer, Ford, and Mills, who govern by suppression and paralysis, must be cleaned out with him.
Their record of bad government and bad decisions must be brought to light, they must be held accountable. They are not fit to hold the reins of government, and must never be allowed to stifle Shepherdstown in a strangled coma, not ever again.
Everyone I talk to says this government by strangulation has been going on for years, from one stupid decision to the next. It can’t continue. They think if they sleep and do nothing things will go away. They are insanely wrong.
