Four candidates for the James City County Board of Supervisors faced off at a forum hosted by the League of Women Voters of the Williamsburg Area on Thursday night.
Jim Icenhour (D) and Tom Phillips (R) squared off against one another as they vie for the Jamestown District seat while incumbent Michael Hipple (I) contended with GOP challenger Joseph Swanenburg for the Powhatan District in front of an audience of about 45 people at the James City County government complex.
The forum, moderated by the College of William and Mary President’s chief of staff, Michael Fox, gave the audience an opportunity to hear the candidates’ visions for the county’s next four years. Fox prompted candidates to give their honest opinions on a variety of subjects such as real estate taxes, growth, securing a water source and school funding.
The forum is an annual tradition for the League of Women Voters, an institution in Williamsburg for more than 50 years.
“We are pleased to continue the long tradition of the league of women voters to provide information about candidates running for elected public office, and promoting civil discourse,” said Mary Schilling, president of the League of Women Voters of the Williamsburg Area.
While the candidates come from a variety of backgrounds, all four claim they have the experience and mettle to serve on the Board of Supervisors.
Tom Phillips is a manager and engineer at the Lane Construction Corporation, before moving back to James City County he worked as a construction contractor in the Middle East.
Jim Icenhour is a retired Air Force and commercial airline pilot with eight years of experience on the Board of Supervisors from 2005-2013.
Joseph Swanenburg is a Class A licensed contractor and a county resident since the age of 14. Michael Hipple is also a Class A licensed contractor and the incumbent supervisor in the race for the Powhatan district. He has served since 2013.
Listen to the full audio of the forum here.
Before the forum began, James City County resident Frank Pollster sat in the far back section of the county board room. Pen in hand, Pollster wrote on notecards to submit questions on schools, proffers, and the candidate’s plans for growth in James City County.
“What I’m really interested in is to see if they’re paying attention,” Pollster said. “I want to hear what they think is important and why.”
Fox started the forum with a question related to a tax hike approved by the Board of Supervisors in 2015. He asked whether the candidates would seek to increase, maintain, or decrease real estate taxes in the county.
All four candidates indicated they would not raise the real estate tax rate unless something fundamentally changes in the county’s finances. Candidates also said they would not reduce the tax rate.
“The rhetoric of all the nonsense that’s going on in the race it’s crazy,” Hipple said. “There’s no increase coming up,” Hipple said of the tax rate.
Swanenburg said he’d reduce the tax rate “If it was at all possible…I’d love roll back all of it.”
While the candidates agreed on many subjects, one place they markedly differed was the future of James City County.
Icenhour said he’s running a campaign to curb the county’s growth, as storefronts remain empty in parts of New Town and the Historic Triangle. Icenhour said citizens come to him with concerns about the empty retail spaces across James City County from New Town to Settlers Market and the Lightfoot Marketplace. Icenhour suggested the county need to grow into the infrastructure already in place.
“The biggest issue we face is growth,” Icenhour said.
Candidates offered differing views on the county’s water source security. For several years, the county has attempted to gain access to another water source as the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality limited the county’s ability to withdraw water from the Potomac Aquifer.
Phillips said he favored the construction of a desalination plant on the Chickahominy River — if it was economical to the county. He called a $25 million deal in 2008 made between James City County and Newport News Water Works a “boondoggle, a huge mistake.”
Looking back at his eight years on the Board of Supervisors, from 2005 to 2013, Icenhour pointed out that previous efforts to secure a stable water source such as the King William Reservoir had failed. Icenhour said rather than canceling out the deal with Newport News Water Works, he’d seek to renegotiate it.
“I think we ought to negotiate with them,” Icenhour said. “Because the groundwater is the cheapest.”
After an exchange about the civility of the race, Phillips and Icenhour both agreed to run a “clean” election focusing on solutions instead of personal attacks.
“I haven’t heard of a criticism from my opponent in this campaign, I don’t know of one,” Phillips said. “I’m in favor of a clean race.”
However, in his closing statement just moments later, Phillips cast Icenhour as a candidate who could create more problems than solutions for the county.
“Mr. Icenhour represents the past, he represents increased taxes, irresponsible deficit spending, and unclear solutions to problems that he helped create,” Phillips said.
Questions about the county school system poured in from the audience, but the question heart of the matter was school funding.
All four candidates agreed with the notion that James City County is paying its fair share of the costs for the Williamsburg-James City County School Division.
However, three candidates cast blame toward the General Assembly for maintaining relatively flat funding for the division as it continues to grow.
The division has grown by about 7.6 percent between the 2010 and 2016 school years. In the same period, revenue from the state government increased 15.1 percent, according to 2010 and 2016 budgets from the Williamsburg-James City County School Division.
“The money we get from the state just sort of tends to shrink a little bit,” Icenhour said. “We’re the ones that have to make it up.”
When it came time for closing remarks, both Republican candidates said their focus remained on keeping spending down while adequately funding police and schools.
“Want and needs, wants and needs, are you safer than you were four years ago?” Swanenburg asked the audience before saying the police department is understaffed and that crime has increased. An in-depth review of crime statistics done by the WYDaily found that crime rates are not significantly increasing in the Historic Triangle.
“These are problems we’ve known about for seven or eight years and they haven’t been addressed,” Swanenburg said.
While each candidate had differing views of what the county looks like today, they also had vastly different visions for the future. Hipple touted the county’s balanced budget and schools, but suggested the election would be a decision between two different versions of growth for James City County: controlled growth as decided and anticipated by the county or uncontrolled growth that would strain county resources. Hipple suggested the latter could threaten the county’s bond rating.
“We’re looking at what do we do with growth that’s coming up that we know’s coming up,” Hipple said before suggesting the county had a plan “to show us the direction we’re going, so we don’t wander down a road we don’t need to.”
