A-Tisket, A-Tasket, Who Took the Baskets?

OK Then, How About a Game of Softball?
.

By GEORGE SOUTHERN
Cape Charles Wave

August 26, 2013

Eight months ago to the day — December 26, 2012 — Town of Cape Charles staff returned to work after a four-day Christmas break. Town Manager Heather Arcos was still on leave, so Assistant Town Manager Bob Panek was in charge. The previous week on December 20, just one day before the holiday break, Mayor Dora Sullivan had given a Christmas present to developer J. David McCormack and his company, Charon Ventures. McCormack received the Old School in Central Park, the adjoining Park basketball court, the Park playground parking lot, and $41,000 to be used for water and sewer connection fees.

The property was valued on the tax rolls at over $900,000. When McCormack offered to “buy” it for $1 (later raised to $10), Town Council was so impressed by the offer that they declined to request or entertain any other bids.

McCormack was known to Arcos, who, according to McCormack, “by sheer coincidence had a relationship” with his wife, Mary. (click here to watch McCormack video ).

But McCormack and his Echelon partner, Edwin Gaskin, explained to Town managers Arcos and Panek that despite the expectation of federal and state tax credits totaling 45 percent of their development costs, they still could not afford to convert the Park property into a 17-unit apartment building. The sticking point was the water and sewer connection charge of $12,350 per unit.

As residents paying a minimum $108 monthly water bill are painfully aware, the Town recently raised sewer charges over 80 percent because connection fees have not been sufficient to cover debt service on the Town’s new sewage plant. Nevertheless, Town Council reduced connection fees from $20,000 to $12,350. Then, to accommodate developer McCormack, Council further reduced fees to $6,175 for one-bedroom units.

But that was still not enough for McCormack and Gaskin. So Panek persuaded Town Council to give them a special rate of another 50 percent off Town connection fees. McCormack’s one-bedroom units would pay only $3,087.50 per unit tap fee.

CONTINUED FROM FIRST PAGE

But McCormack and Gaskin still wanted more, so Panek hit on the idea of filing for earthquake damage believed to be sustained by the school in August 2011. The Town eventually received $41,000 insurance proceeds from the Virginia Municipal League, and assigned it to McCormack to pay most of the rest of the already-reduced tap fees.

Panek maintained to the Wave that the Town was required to give the insurance money to the purchaser of the building, but a Wave inquiry to the Virginia Municipal League revealed that as incorrect.

Mayor Sullivan signed over the property on December 20, 2012. The basketball court, including uprights, backboards, and hoops, conveyed with the school property. Only a work shed and other miscellaneous articles that McCormack did not want were not conveyed, and the Town was required to remove them.

On December 26, 2012, with Panek in charge at Town Hall, orders went out to the maintenance staff to remove the basketball hoops to prevent children from playing on the now privately owned court.

That same day, a Wave reporter found Panek in his office and asked him why the Town was removing private property. Panek’s reply was that he was concerned about liability. If the hoops remained, people might assume the Town owned the basketball court, and if anyone got hurt they might sue the Town.

Later the story changed: McCormack had no desire for the hoops, so they were removed for safekeeping until they could be reused by the Town at a new basketball court.

In a sworn statement to the National Park Service, Manager Arcos stated: “A c2006 basketball court will be removed and relocated to public property by the Town of Cape Charles.” Her signature, dated October 1, 2012, appears under the statement: “I understand that falsification of factual representations in this application is subject to criminal sanctions of up to $10,000 in fines or imprisonment for up to five years pursuant to 18 USC 1001.”

Almost a year later, the Town of Cape Charles has taken no action on a replacement basketball court. Privately, one Town Council member stated last year that Council was not even sure it wanted a basketball court because it “attracts undesirables.”

Other than the Town’s removal of the hoops, nothing has been done at the Old School since McCormack purchased it. Four months ago the civic groups Concerned Citizens of Cape Charles and Old School Cape Charles sent McCormack a letter that said, “During the four months since our Town Council gave our school property to Charon Ventures, the young people in our town have been without a place to play basketball. This is a hardship for both children and their parents, since the basketball court was one of the favorite places for our youths to expend their excess energy.

“We request that you allow the town to reinstall the basketball hoops so that both locals and tourists will have a place to play during the interim period before a new court is constructed,” they wrote.

McCormack never answered the letter, but when Concerned Citizens president Lenora Mitchell telephoned him, he said no — he would not agree to allow the Town to use the basketball court.

The softball field is a much earlier story. Now owned by Bay Creek, at the time of annexation it was assumed that the developer would maintain the field as a public good. In fact the annexation agreement states that if a proposed road encroached on the field, the developer would relocate the field.

The only encroachment is a cotton field, as pictured above.