Farmville And PE
Conclude A Fair
Deal On Parking

   The Town of Farmville and Prince Edward County shifted their differences over parking into neutral and found enough common ground for County vehicles in Farmville’s municipal lot.
   As they should.
   The common ground is paid for and reserved.
   As it should be.
   The family that parks together embarks together for the common good of all local residents, and Prince Edward-Farmville are family, complete with the occasional bickering which is welcomingly over now, where parking is concerned, and periodic triumphs that take the breath away, such as the new library.
   The County will pay the Town $200,000 for 99 years worth of parking. That seems like a lot of money for a lot of parking but the cost is only about $8.41 a day for 109 reserved parking spaces.
   Two hundred thousand dollars for 99 years is about $2,020 a year, which is approximately $168.35 a week, or about $8.41 day, based on an average of 20 work days per month.
   And that’s not even eight cents a day per reserved parking place.
   Which is a deal.
   And one the County deserves if for no other reason than keeping the courthouse downtown, as Town officials pleaded for Prince Edward to do, rather than move it—by building a new courthouse—out to the industrial park.
   Had the courthouse moved out of downtown, the effect on the Main Street economy would have been hugely negative, with a correspondingly devastating impact on downtown’s energy and vitality.
   For the courthouse to remain downtown, the parking that comes with all of those people who aren’t driving out to work and conduct business at a new courthouse in the industrial park, instead, must be downtown, too.
   Now, it is true that some years ago the Town of Farmville asked the County to partner in constructing additional municipal parking. As it is also true the Town has spent a sum of money acquiring additional property to create a larger municipal parking lot.
   Which is why the $200,000 for 99 years worth of County parking is a fair amount for the Town of Farmville to receive, helping to defray expenses incurred in creating and maintaining the parking lot.
   But the expanded parking would not have been needed if Prince Edward had shut down the courthouse on Main Street and built a new one out of town.
   A fair deal, therefore, has been concluded between the County and the Town, and those who persevered to bring about a particularly amicable happy ending should maintain their focus on that spirit of cordiality and cooperation. They need to remember how that state of mind felt and the attitude which built this bridge over what was widening into a chasm.
   Partnership between the Town of Farmville and Prince Edward County is something the community, and therefore the region, desperately needs. It must become a fact of life, and this parking deal is another important step in that direction. There will be rocky moments in the relationship but they need to be rolled over quickly, a speed bump, not an impediment, as this parking dispute turned into solution so effectively demonstrates.
   Credit goes to members of both governing bodies but key roles were played by Farmville Town Manager Gerald Spates and Prince Edward County Administrator Wade Bartlett. They plowed the ground and sowed the seeds of this agreement. Keep the harvest coming.
   Joint meetings, to build dialogue and understanding, have long been an answer waiting to happen.

—JKW—

What’s Good For The
DNC Goose Is Good
For The RNC Gander

   One may take legitimate issue with Gov. McDonnell choosing the House of Delegates chamber for his national rebuttal, or response, to President Obama’s State of the Union address, and with GOP legislators invited, though Democrats free to attend, too. The choice turned a non-partisan room in a non-partisan building built and maintained by the taxpayers of Virginia into a partisan backdrop, scenery and props for a purely partisan broadcast.
   But the Democratic National Committee sounded ironically flat while condemning Virginia’s new Republican governor for partisanship. Virginia’s old Democratic governor chaired that very same partisan DNC while governor of Virginia, a position paid for by the taxpayers of Virginia, while residing in a mansion also built and maintained by the taxpayers of Virginia.
   And, while the words of Gov. McDonnell might have been surrounded by Republicans during the broadcast, the words issued by Gov. Kaine from by the DNC were surrounded by Democrats.
   Let’s keep it surreal, ladies and gentlemen.
   Political parties are always BYOB, or Bring Your Own Bias.

—JKW—