Beckey Gallamore considered attending Tuesday night’s King George County Board of Supervisors meeting to make a public comment but had a last-minute change of heart.
So, instead, the then-King George Economic Development Authority Chair watched a livestream of the meeting at home on YouTube.
Gallamore was alarmed approximately 50 minutes into the meeting when Board Chair T.C. Collins began discussing his dissatisfaction with the EDA.
She was even more taken aback minutes later when Collins made a motion to dismiss the entire EDA, and the board voted 5-0 to do just that.
“If I tell you I’m devastated, he’s going to feel like he’s won,” Gallamore said of Collins. “So, I’m very disappointed. I feel like I’m being punished for asking questions that all of us should’ve been asking.”
The questions Gallamore is referring to are inquiries to the Fredericksburg Regional Alliance (FRA) and Birchwood Power Partners as to whether King George received a different deal than surrounding jurisdictions in a performance agreement that was signed by Gallamore and former Board Chair Richard Granger in December with Amazon Data Services.
In addition to the conversations, Collins also said the supervisors are dismayed that Gallamore wrote a check for $27,000 to the FRA, which helped recruit ADS to the region.
Collins said during the meeting Tuesday that, according to the EDA’s bylaws, its secretary-treasurer is the custodian of all funds and securities and may sign all checks, drafts, notes and orders to make payments. Collins asked County Administrator Matthew Smolnik, who was voted in as secretary-treasurer at the June 13 meeting, if he wrote the check to the FRA, and Smolnik responded that he did not.
Gallamore told the Free Press that Smolnik did not have the authority to sign checks when the funds were authorized. Gallamore said she was the only one allowed to sign checks after the departure of EDA Director Nick Minor in March.
Gallamore noted that the supervisors have no control of the EDA’s funds, which do not come from taxpayers. She said the bulk of the EDA’s finances stem from tracts of land sold by the entity in the industrial park that it owns in the county.
Supervisors asked Interim County Attorney Richard Stuart if they could legally recoup the money paid to the FRA, but FRA President Curry Roberts said he would freely return it to the EDA, noting that it does not belong to the county.
“The Authority is an independent political entity, and the funds that they have were not appropriated by the county,” Roberts said … It’s not appropriated by the board, and it’s not controlled by the board.”
The supervisors voted in May to withhold its dues to the FRA in a contingency fund because they did not believe the alliance was effective. But Gallamore said the EDA wanted to honor the commitment by making its own donation because the FRA offered support over the years, including recruiting Greenchip — a company that allows people to dispose of used technology equipment — to the industrial park.
Greenchip relocated from Brooklyn, New York to Fredericksburg and when it was seeking to expand in the region, the FRA recruited the company to King George. Gallamore said the donation to the FRA, which is identical to the amount the county is withholding, was “in appreciation of the support they had given us over that past year.”
“They brought us a large business that purchased property within the industrial park, and it seemed appropriate for us to do that because the board of supervisors had said the FRA didn’t do anything for them, which is why they weren’t supporting them,” Gallamore said. “Yet, they supported us quite often, so it only seemed right that we donate.”
Gallamore said she spoke with all but one EDA member after Tuesday’s meeting, and they shared her shock and sadness. Members were paid $50 per meeting, but Gallamore said the effort to promote the county to businesses is a labor of love. She said the most troubling aspect is that the entire body was dismissed; she said she wishes that the supervisors only removed her.
She believes she was the board’s primary target because of the conversations with the FRA and Birchwood about the ADS project, which was upended in January when a board with three new members decided the performance agreement signed by the previous board was unsatisfactory.
Gallamore said she and former EDA member June Drake wanted to clear up any misconceptions on social media about the project.
According to minutes from the July 11 EDA meeting, Gallamore and Drake researched the project, starting with Birchwood Power Partners. They viewed performance agreements from Caroline, Louisa, Spotsylvania and Stafford counties to examine if there were any differences with King George’s, and said the only divergence was that ADS committed to provide approximately 600,000 gallons of untreated water daily to the county.
“The first meetings between us and at Birchwood were with supervisors [David] Sullins and [Ken] Stroud,” Roberts said. “These were not negotiations. This was strictly informational – what could be developed, how it would work, why the performance agreements look the way they do, how that rolls up into the state and the senate.”
Roberts said Gallamore and Drake made no effort to hide their conversations with the FRA from the supervisors, and that some combination of Sullins, Stroud and Binder attended multiple meetings.
Stroud, however, said the conversations with the FRA demonstrate that “it’s very clear in here that EDA members were working against us,” and Binder asked Smolnik during Tuesday’s meeting if EDAs typically work in lockstep with supervisors — and Smolnik responded that they do.
Gallamore, who was appointed by At-Large Supervisor Sullins, said she was blindsided by her removal, citing a joint meeting with the supervisors and the EDA held on July 2.
She said the supervisors asked the EDA to “stand down” in any discussions with the FRA regarding ADS, but she did not believe the meeting was contentious enough that it would result in the decision she witnessed Tuesday night.
Collins did instruct Gallamore that if she reengaged with the FRA, it could affect the county’s stance in negotiations. Roberts asserted, however, that ADS remains firm in its stance that there are no ongoing negotiations because the original performance agreement still stands.
“They keep trying to use the word ‘negotiate’ but we never attempted to negotiate,” Gallamore said. “We have nothing to negotiate with. We were just trying to get clarification on things we continued to hear, so we knew how to respond to that when people asked.”
Guy Booth, an EDA member appointed by Collins, was the only member reappointed when supervisors continued to discuss the matter Tuesday. The board also approved the appointments of Larry Emory by Stroud and Brian Gregen by Binder. There is no time constraint on filling the other four seats, Stuart said.
