Staunton Mayor Andrea Oakes is apparently concerned that the wishes of the voters of Augusta County expressed six years ago over the Augusta County Courthouse are not being honored.
Thing is, a lot has happened – and not happened – in the past six years, with respect to the courthouse.
What has happened: the county has spent more than a million dollars on plans to upgrade at the existing courthouse location in Downtown Staunton, without support for any of those plans from the city.
What hasn’t happened is plainly obvious: without support from the city, the courthouse is still where it was six years ago, in desperate need of repair, unsafe, and the county is now under court order to do something about it.
This one isn’t hard at all. If the city isn’t going to work with the county, which it hasn’t proven willing to do, despite the claims from Oakes that Staunton has acted “in good faith,” the only alternative for the county is to build a new courthouse somewhere else.
Oakes, in an interview with the News Leader this week, raised a dubious concern over the city losing its status as the county seat, which matters to any of us how, exactly?
“For me, it’s all about the history,” Oakes told the paper.
That’s a real good reason to continue this nonsensical back and forth over what Staunton isn’t willing to do, which is anything, over an outdated and unsafe courthouse.
This referendum, and the overwhelming approval of a move from Staunton to the county, can’t happen soon enough.
Story by Chris Graham
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