Members of the Patrick County Board of Supervisors shared their priorities for the coming year, outlining a vision focused on better budgeting, access to healthcare, and administrative operations.
Doug Perry, of the Smith River District, said he wants the county to continue to build on and improve its already existing organizations and operational side.
“I think that’s the key to everything. We’ve come a long way, Mrs. Simms (County Administrator Beth Simms) has done a great job building us operationally and developing organizationally, so we just need to continue to build and strengthen our operations,” he said.
If there aren’t adequate operations, Perry believes nothing will fall in place.
“From the administration piece to the department heads, the way things are ran, the way things are operated. Without that operational piece, things don’t flow,” Perry said.
As part of that operational piece, Perry said the county intends on looking at building a building for Station 8, its paid Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Department.
“I’ve asked our Facilities Manager (Mike McGuinness) to see if he can get us some numbers as to what that’s going to cost, just (to) have something put together,” he said.
If the board doesn’t have an estimated dollar figure for the project, Perry said it’s not going to be put in the budget. “If it doesn’t get put in the budget it’s not going to happen. If we can get just an educated guess what it’s going to cost us then we have something put into the budget and get that ball rolling,” he said.
Based on his last conversation with McGuinness, “I think he’s got a couple solid plans put together that he’ll address that we can put into the budget or work into the budget. And again, that’s part of that whole operations piece that’s just on the EMS side,” Perry said.
An upcoming board retreat will be when the board “put heads together and develop that operations piece” and determine its overall priorities for the year, he said.
The date for the board retreat had yet to be set as of the publication of this article.
Perry expects EMS and the way the board’s budgeting process will be among the top priorities at the retreat. At last year’s retreat, improving the Transfer Station and EMS were among the board’s priorities.
“The Transfer Station improved leaps and bounds,” Perry said. “It’s now actually running like a Transfer Station should run. That was a huge accomplishment. The Facilities Manager (has) been able to save us a whole lot of money, keep us from making mistakes on various facilities in the county. Then with EMS, and of course people turned that into a debacle, and we’ll just have to go back to the drawing board and figure that out again,” he said.
Andrew Overby, of the Dan River District, said he has seven main goals he wants to accomplish in 2025, including increasing transparency to ensure better communications between county administration, the board, the public, and the media.
“Number two is better budgeting to minimize last minute and mid-year budget requests and modifications,” with the third: “increased accountability through clearly defining processes, duties, and procedures across administration. That’s to include county administration, financial, maintenance and DSS (Department of Social Services),” he said.
Overby said his fourth goal is to continue the work to increase healthcare opportunities like the reopening of the local hospital, the mobile health unit, and local primary and urgent care facilities.
Providing better support to the Economic Development Authority (EDA) by clearly defining the board’s vision for economic development and aggressively pursuing any and all available grant opportunities to minimize taxpayer burden are also a goal.
“My last one – develop a plan for the future of Station 8 and paid fire and EMS services in coordination with all of our volunteer agencies. We need to create a one team, one goal approach,” Overby said.
To accomplish these goals, much work will be required, he said.
“I’m hoping that the board itself can have better communications between each other. If we need to have more meetings in order to get things taken care of, I think that’s what we’re going to do. I know that I am going to push these items throughout the year and do what we can to ensure that we are giving the taxpayers the value for the dollar that they’re paying,” he said.
With the better communication goal, Overby said he wants the county to have a better communication plan, which he doesn’t believe it currently has. He also wants to make sure the media is informed of all meetings and anything that’s going on in a timely manner, and that information is being posted properly on the county’s social media pages.
That will help “mainly make sure that the county administration is communicating with the board, and they understand exactly what the board’s vision is and what we want to get accomplished,” Overby said, adding a lot of his goals will be covered during the board’s upcoming retreat.
Clayton Kendrick, of the Mayo River District, said he doesn’t think the board has come up with its goals for the year yet, but will discuss them at the annual board retreat, even though “they don’t never seem to materialize. You get all these big plans and tell us all this, that, and the other, and then you never hear anything about it till the next year, and nothing changes,” he said.
From his part, Kendrick said his priority for the year is to have a balanced budget, without a tax increase.
“That’s going to be hard to do with the way things are going right now. There’s some other stuff in mind that I’d like to see, but you got to get a team together, I guess we’ll know more about it when we get everything figured out” at the board’s reorganizational meeting, he said.
Improving the county’s infrastructure is another of Kendrick’s goals, particularly in terms of better phone and internet services.
“I went to VACO (Virginia Association of Counties) and I sat in on a meeting,” he said. In Floyd County, “with their fiber or broadband and the way it’s set up, they’ve got 100 percent coverage,” he said, compared to Patrick County’s coverage of about 47 percent.
Kendrick added the percentage would not be that high if not for Infinity and Spectrum’s coverage in the Ararat area.
Internet coverage and phone service are “really important. We need to get broadband and better cellphone coverage or whatever because if you can get your internet, you can get your Wi-Fi” and make calls with a cellphone, he said. “But the way we are now, things are terrible.”
With broadband projects between Appalachian Power (AEP), Charter Communications, and Riverstreet Networks in Franklin, Henry, Pittsylvania, and Patrick counties underway, Kendrick said he’s only seen AEP updating some of its lines in the Stella area.
A recent wintry mix that caused widespread power outages “really showed how bad the infrastructure that we’ve got with them” is, Kendrick said. Still, the AEP part of” the broadband projects — “what they’ve got the grant on, it’s supposed to run on the power poles, too. We aren’t getting anywhere.”
Kendrick said the county relies on those service upgrades for many facets of everyday life, including economic development. Patrick County won’t be able to add jobs until it has good broadband infrastructure in place, he said.
“A lot of people could actually work from home and make good money, but you got to have good broadband or internet to be able to do it,” he said.
Kendrick also believes the county will need help from Richmond and local representatives like Del. Wren Williams, R-Stuart, to accomplish these goals.
Steve Marshall, of the Blue Ridge District, and Jonathan Wood, of the Peters Creek District, did not respond to multiple attempts for comments.
