Things that make you go …
Fear and Loathing in Waynesboro column by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net
John Lawrence told me last week that he was interviewed about his interest in running for city council by a group that included Dave Wolfe, Tom Reider and Roger Willetts. Noticeably missing from the list of people leading the effort to run somebody were the names of Reo Hatfield and Frank Lucente.
I’m wondering … am I the only person who thinks this to be curious?
I mean, I guess I’m not that naive. I’d heard for years that the people who really run Waynesboro weren’t the people we assumed them to be. I don’t know Wolfe or Willetts personally, but their names were always among those whispered as being in the power-player group. I was a little surprised to see Reider’s name in that group, at first glance, but then it started to make sense when I considered the news from the walkup to the election of how Reider was part of a group representing Reo Distribution on a field trip to China, and then the news report two days following the election that had Reider traveling around town with Bruce Allen to help him pick up yard signs.
I don’t know, I just expected to see Hatfield and Lucente and would-be mayor Tim Williams as being part of the power group.
I would actually feel better about things if they were, to tell you the truth. I might not (OK, definitely do not) agree with their politics, but at least they live in Waynesboro. Only Reider, as far as I’ve been able to verify, is a resident of Waynesboro from the group of power players that Lawrence identified.
I know that Wolfe and Willetts have business interests in Waynesboro, but that having been said, I don’t know that I feel all that good that people who don’t even live here telling us how we should run our lives.
I hope I’m not alone in thinking this way.
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According to the city tax base Mr. Willets owns and lives in Waynesboro property. Just my two cents.
I have found two Roger B. Willetts listed locally. One is Roger B. Willetts Sr., with an Afton address. I did the city tax records search that you suggested, and found a Roger B. Willetts Jr. listed as a property owner on Greenway Circle.
That’s why I was careful to say above that Reider was the only member of that small group that I was able to verify as a resident of Waynesboro.
If they have business interests in the city I think that gives them a reason to have in interest in the politics of the city. There was a remark made by another Waynesboro business person that did not live in the city some time back about taxation without representation. These folks own property or run business within the city limits, generating tax revenue for the city yet have no voice in electing the people that make the decisions that could impact their business. Local politics seems to be getting played just like the big leagues. Special interests throwing money and support behind candidates that can help them the most. Nothing new there. If I had a business that had to pay taxes to the city I would find a candidate that had the same values as I did and would do what is best for city business owners and do what I could to support them.
Having an interest in the politics of the city? Sure. They have every right to be interested. And they have a right to back candidates whom they feel represent their interests.
We Waynesboro residents also have a right to know who these people are, of course, and what their motives are. From Mr. Lawrence’s telling of his story, their motives in this election were clear. They wanted to fire the city manager. It is interesting that neither they nor their surrogates running as candidates on their behalf made this known publicly in advance of the election, even as they were well aware of their own plans to meet with the city manager to make this clear to him in the days following the election.
The voters in Waynesboro have a right to know that an Afton resident and an Augusta County resident want to decide the future of their downtown district, how their schools are funded, how the improvements to their stormwater system are made, whether or not their fire department is staffed adequately. They don’t get to go home at the end of the day to another locality that provides a different level of service in all of those areas and more. This is where they live.
If this cabal had been transparent about their motives, and the voters had endorsed their candidates, hey, that’s politics. They didn’t, though, and now even the people who voted for them are having serious second thoughts about the damage that they have unwittingly perpetrated on our city.