Several times during the Cumberland Board of Supervisors meeting this week, a question struck me. What’s the rush? As you may have already read in last week’s story, supervisors voted to set a date and time for the Green Ridge public hearing. But there are a couple things about that decision which still stand out. 

First off, what exactly will they be discussing at the hearing? Yes, I know it’s for the request by Green Ridge for a new conditional use permit, so they could move forward with plans for a landfill in the county. But what does the proposed contract say? Back in June, this same public hearing was postponed because “negotiations” were still going on between the county and Green Ridge as to what would be allowed and, I’m assuming, what the company could do to basically sweeten the deal.

I say assuming because that’s literally all we can do right now. The county has not yet made anything public, in terms of what the updated version of the agreement would look like. I’m again assuming this is more than just dotting i’s and crossing t’s seeing as supervisors delayed the hearing by more than a month to get this done. It also doesn’t make sense if you argue that Green Ridge suddenly wanted this done quickly, regardless of how the vote turns out. This company has waited seven years to put this together. One would think another month would be no problem. 

A tale of two discussions

What makes this more interesting is the very argument made here, that everyone needs to see final documents, final designs, final options before any vote is taken, is the same one used that was used later in Tuesday night’s meeting. Cumberland Vice Chair John Newman said he wanted to see site plans, to see architectural drawings and what the final version of the building would look like before taking a vote on the proposed Dollar General store. I agree. That just makes sense. You don’t want to walk into a situation blind and given the questions still about how Dollar General would make that site work, everything needs to be laid out. Given that this is a significantly larger project, impacting more people, one would argue the same needs to apply to Green Ridge. Everything needs to be laid out, with the public able to go over the changes before showing up to a hearing, not the night of or right before. 

So what’s the rush? Why did a majority of county supervisors feel the need to add a special called meeting to the calendar for later this month, rather than simply add this to the agenda for August? It happens all the time in every county known to man. A decision gets delayed due to a question or something that needs to be reworked and so it gets added to the next month’s regular agenda. Why is this different? 

Someone missing for Green Ridge vote

And, it should be pointed out, this is a called meeting that will be absent one supervisor. Bryan Hamlet, who has been the voice of opposition to the proposed landfill, is not able to attend the July 28 meeting. He says he offered several alternative dates before Tuesday’s meeting, then during the meeting itself, he proposed that it be pushed back just one week to Aug. 5, so everyone could attend. No other supervisor would second the motion and so the July 28 date remains in place. Even if you know a supervisor will, most likely, vote against a project, does it not make more sense to have a full board in place for the hearing? There is no emergency. This isn’t a case, at least as far as the rest of us know, of “you must hold the hearing on X date or else”. Instead, it appears to be a choice. 

So what’s the rush? Why suddenly is there a need to get this done, one way or the other? And why haven’t residents been allowed to see what’s in that updated agreement? There’s a number of questions left unanswered as we head into the July 28 hearing.

BRIAN CARLTON is the regional editor for the Farmville Herald and its sister papers. He can be reached at brian.carlton@farmvilleherald.com.