Just be sure, I hope you know that my opinion of town priority was not meant as a criticism of your work. To the contrary, I have been sailing this bay since I was 10 (and I’m old now), and you are one of the best harbor masters I have come across (and I have met a lot). Going forth as we are destined to do, as a taxpayer, I consider you and your crew one of our best assets. My one regret is that I no longer own my beloved Morgan 34 to dock in your harbor.

Beginning in 2007 the town went out to bid for an engineering firm to design the Harbor Conceptual Master Plan which was adopted in 2008. Again there were several public sessions with council and a public hearing before it was adopted. In this plan were stage build outs and their approximate cost. Phase 1 is what you see with the floating slips, bath house, and the Shanty. Phase 1-A is the Breakwaters — it was highly recommended that we install 2 of the proposed 5 before we construct the slips. Phase 2 consists of removing the rip rap by the boat ramps and building a new fuel facility and Harbor Master office in that location so it is in the center of the Harbor. Phase 3 consists of replacing the fixed piers with floating piers at the inner harbor. The fixed piers are 14 years old and have a life expectancy of 20 years (treated piles instead of creosote).

Phase 1 has been completed, and the town’s transient related taxes have gone way up (which helps keep your taxes lower) In addition the Harbor Fund pays a portion of the 4th of July Fireworks and a portion of the Town Managers and Treasures salary and benefits.

The Virginia Port Authority’s “Aid to Local Ports Program” has contributed 1/2 to the Breakwaters ($500,000) and the Harbor Fund has been paying the debt on the rest. The Boating Infrastructure Grant paid 75% of 43% of the total cost of the Slips and Bath House. The Aid to Local Ports program paid around 75% of what was left and the Harbor Fund is paying the Debt Service on the rest.

So with all of that said, I don’t see frivolous spending at the Harbor. If you would like to come over and talk sometime I would be more than glad to sit down with you and listen to your concerns or ideas.

Rather than a financial success story, I would tend to describe what Bannon-Sullivan-Natali has done as more of a financial flip-flop. The rule of thumb for so many years was that the assessed value (in healthy communities) would be 18-30% below the street value. In our case, the assessed value is much higher than what we could actually sell for, so we are actually paying a portion of our property taxes to a phantasm.

The Nataili-Bannon policies of tax and spend, will soon come home to roost and exacerbate the issue. This is most evident in the waste water plant debacle. The town gets an A+ for being proactive, but a -D for implementation. In other words, we built it in the wrong place, and due to some misguided notion that we needed to have excess capacity for a private gated community (shouldn’t the excess capacity have been the responsibility of the developer?), we built it twice as powerful and spent twice as much as we needed (see our tax burden vs. Onancock’s plant, which is higher capacity, less cost). It should also be noted that, due to faulty planning, the Town was sued by Southport over the location of the plant (can’t remember, but I believe the legal fees were close to $80k). In the end, they settled, and eventually, using the negotiating skills they have honed over the last few years, gave the guy that sued them another $180,000 in reduced tap fees (what????). This, along with the frivolous nature of spending around the harbor (floating docks and bath houses for rich boaters, breakwaters, really?), has created a mountain of debt which we have no way of paying off (we’ll have to keep restructuring, and borrowing more).

The narrative Ms. Buckley is constructing, that is so eagerly being glommed onto by Natali and Bannon, tries to create the impression that the lucky property owners and tax payers of Cape Charles are somehow glorious honey bees, buzzing around a wondrous hive filled with magnificent honey. In reality, we’re more like dung beetles; whether we’re rollers, tunnelers or pure Scarab dwellers, at this point, it’s just a matter of classification. Although, can someone remind me, why is Ms. Buckley not treasurer anymore?

You stated that the net worth of the town is $25.6 million, and the debt is $9.1 million. This means, that the total assets of the town are approximately $34.7 million.

Asset evaluation is not an exact science; however, it is generally known that assets are worth what an able and willing buyer is paying (as taught in real estate courses).

The established reality is: Our old school house was assessed at $930,000 and sold for $10 (plus other freebees).

In extrapolating this ratio, our assets are worth approximately $370.

I would not call this as “being in good financial health.”

The reality is the homes and properties are only worth what you can actually sell them for.

To put it simply, Ms. Buckley left out the following:
2012 Town Assessed Value: $640.5 million
2013 Town Assessed Value: $410 million