Questions for Board of Supervisor Candidates, Accomack County

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Respondent:  Stephen Mallette, District: 6 Date: 8/14/07 1. In your opinion, what are the top three problems for the county? A. County Leaders with focus on their single Election Districts rather than working towards countywide solutions to problems. B. Transportation C. Water 2. Why are these problems? A. The best solutions to County problems are those that benefit the majority of our citizens and not those designed to deliver “pork” to district constituents. B. Historically, the State has been responsible for road construction and maintenance cost while the County is responsible for making land use decisions. The demand for State and Federal dollars to support road construction is beyond the ability of both the State and Federal Government budgets. Many of the secondary roads on the Shore especially in low lying areas, were built to address conditions 50+ years ago, and lack suitable foundation to support current and future demands. As the uses of these roads increase, serious deterioration in the road base will occur without the ability to provide critical improvements. Poor quality roads will hurt the County’s potential economic development as well as the ability to deliver public services particularly during emergency conditions. C. Wise management of our water resources will sustain our economy, environment and community. Narrowly focused water management strategies designed to quickly drain surface waters from the land while increasing the transport of pollutants to valuable coastal waters. Efforts are needed to encourage to infiltration of this water to encourage ground water recharge into our drinking water aquifer. Draining surface water by the use of ditching in low-lying areas can increase coastal flooding during storm events. Rising sea levels, the lack of comprehensive water resources and land use planning can greatly increase future public liabilities. 3. What would you do about them if elected to the Board of Supervisors? A. I will continue to encourage members of the Board of Supervisor’s to consider “big picture” views on what are best interest of the entire county as well as highlighting the cost of narrowly focused decision making. B. I will support the adoption of US 13 Transportation plan to enhance highway safety and provide additional tools to the County to protect this vital transportation artery. If we do not aggressively manage growth along this corridor, US 13 will become more dangerous, traffic flow will slow and our economic future will not reach its potential. I will also encourage County planners to assign a portion of the cost of road improvements to those seeking to change and benefit from more intensive land uses. Otherwise, these costs, in the form of higher taxes, will be assigned to all of the citizens of the county. C. I will promote water resource solutions that encourage integrated approaches to promote infiltration of excess surface waters for ground water recharge as wells as filtration of water to reduce levels of soil and other pollutants from entering our waterways. Allowing soil and pollutants to enter our creeks and bays will impact navigable channels, adversely impact our aquatic resources and can disrupt several important economic sectors of our community – tourism, aquaculture and recreation. 4. What do you think about water in the county – Storm water, Ground water, seawater, bay water? Water resources are poorly understood by the citizens and County leadership. We have not adequately addressed soil erosion and storm water management and continue to expend money to dredge our waterways to remove what should have been kept on the land. 5. What do you think of the recent (June, 2007) report on the Accomack County Public Safety System? The volunteers who have supported the public by providing fire and emergency services have and continue to perform an invaluable public service to our community. Accomack County cannot do without them! However, with the demands on the volunteers’ time in their personal lives, training and service requirements have and will continue to strain their abilities to meet the expectations of the public when the lives of their families are on the line. Over the past 10 years the County has repeatedly studied and recognizes the problem of the County Fire and Emergency Services system and yet has failed to act because the problem was “controversial”. Any corrective action will take several years to fully implement, and action is now needed to prepare for the future. We as a Community must first identify those items where consensus is present, and take action sooner than later. We must then identify the most important “controversial” items and seek solutions that best serve the public’s interest. We cannot allow another study to “sit on a shelf” without action because the choices before us are difficult. Governance is required! If you have questions or comments or would like to respond please click here.