Once again, the town of Pound has averted efforts to eliminate itself — for now.
With three new members and a new mayor, the five-member town council voted last week to put off for one year a move to disincorporate the town.
Two council members elected in November on a platform of disincorporation, Clifton Cauthorne and Gary “Po Boy” Hall, will have to work with their colleagues to carry on the work of town government at least until January 2026.
Cauthorne’s motion near the end of the meeting, seconded by Hall, was to direct the town attorney to begin discussions with Wise County attorney Karen Mullins about the terms and conditions under which the town’s charter could be dissolved.
During last fall’s election campaign, Cauthorne asserted that residents are weary of paying town taxes while getting few services. He noted that the county Public Service Authority had taken over the town’s water and sewer service and raised rates significantly.
Cauthorne — who has served on the council before — said during the meeting that he wants simply to see what the county will offer the town, in terms of taking on responsibilities such as law enforcement and assuming the town’s assets and debts, and then the council could decide if it wants to proceed toward disincorporation.
Town attorney Kevin Dotson said that if an agreement is reached, the next step would be asking the county circuit court to order a referendum on ending the town’s charter.
Cauthorne said the November election showed that residents want to vote on whether Pound should continue to exist.
The town, on the north end of Wise County and a few miles from the Kentucky border, has fewer than 900 residents.
Vice Mayor Leabern Kennedy offered a substitute motion to table the matter for a year.
Two of the three new council members — Hall and Lyndon Powers — have never served before, she said, and they need to “get their feet wet” and learn more about what town government is doing before this matter is considered.
Kennedy, Powers and Doris Mullins voted to put the discussion off until next year.
New Mayor John Cauthorne, Clifton Cauthorne’s son, was elected separately and does not vote unless a tie must be broken.
The threat of disincorporation has been raised before. During the 2022 General Assembly session, Del. Terry Kilgore, R-Scott County, introduced legislation to dissolve the charter. His goal, he said, was to jolt the town government into fixing a mounting list of troubles that included dysfunction on the council, the 2021 embezzlement conviction of a town employee and serious problems with the water system, which was still under town control.
With Kennedy taking a leading role, council members fought fiercely against Kilgore’s legislation and rallied residents to petition the General Assembly to shut it down.
Among them, in fact, was Clifton Cauthorne, whose efforts included asking another Southwest Virginia delegate to pursue amending Kilgore’s bill to put charter repeal up for a referendum.
A year later, after seeing significant progress from town hall, Kilgore filed legislation to revoke the earlier bill. “Without what we did last year, we wouldn’t be here today,” he said at the time. “We had to shoot across the bow.”
Asked Friday for her sense of residents’ current leanings on disincorporation, Kennedy wrote by email that she’s heard a variety of responses.
“I’ve heard some of both but have had a resounding response from people who do not want to see the charter removed,” she said. “I do feel there are a lot of half truths, lies and innuendo circulating throughout the community and to me it’s like playing a game of telephone, the message at the end is never what it was at the beginning.”
Staffing changes
The town council’s Jan. 21 meeting was contentious from the start, with Clifton Cauthorne implying that the town clerk had deliberately left the disincorporation item off a first draft of the agenda. Kennedy asserted that it was simply an error.
Later, the council voted to name former mayor Brittany Carter as the part-time town manager.
Before the election, Cauthorne and others had criticized the fact that Carter had been serving in both elected and management roles for the cash-strapped and short-staffed town.
Carter said she is being paid a salary for 20 to 24 hours per week, but Kennedy, who also spends significant time working for the town outside of council work, called 24 “a very conservative number” and said Carter is often at work much longer.
Later, the council voted to hire a college intern as interim treasurer.
Would hiring the intern mean that Kennedy would cease doing double duty as a council member and a town employee? Cauthorne asked. Yes, Kennedy said, although she would still be available to help when needed. “I didn’t retire [from a full-time job elsewhere] to come back to work,” she said.
After a long discussion, the council split votes but agreed to advertise the police chief’s position.
The two-person police department’s current chief lives more than an hour away, Cauthorne said.
The town is under a court order to retain a police chief because a licensed officer is needed to maintain the police evidence room; the county commonwealth’s attorney several years ago dropped criminal charges against 31 people investigated by an earlier iteration of the Pound Police Department because evidence had been mishandled.
Later in the meeting, Cauthorne again raised questions about elected officials being paid to perform administrative tasks. He asked if the council could pass an ordinance to prevent it.
Dotson said that according to the Virginia Municipal League, the best practice is to separate the duties of elected officials and employees — but doing so can be difficult in small towns.
While Carter is no longer an elected official, the town needs a hard rule prohibiting the mixing of duties, Cauthorne said. But Kennedy said many small towns have people serving in multiple roles out of necessity. The matter was tabled so more research could be done.
A wave of grants
Another agenda item was handled by Kennedy: a rundown on the progress of several grant-funded projects and grant applications.
Despite its small staff, the town government has managed to secure hundreds of thousands of grant dollars in recent years.
Initiatives that Kennedy detailed included the progress of plans to fix damage from a 2015 landslide at a highly visible three-way downtown intersection. A park with a monument to the region’s labor history, an amphitheater and a decorative retaining wall will be built. Design sketches will be presented to the public in February, Kennedy said.
The town received a $217,000 Monuments Across Appalachian Virginia grant through Virginia Tech to build the monument. The town also is moving through the steps to get a federal Abandoned Mine Land Economic Revitalization program grant to help with the costs. Further, the town is working through details of receiving a $491,000 Virginia Department of Emergency Management grant for slope stabilization and retaining wall construction, and it received a $175,000 Department of Environmental Quality grant for the costs of demolishing the former Peoples Bank of Pound building next to the slide area.
Demolition of the bank is nearly complete. Plans call for unveiling the monument this fall.
The town is also working with the Appalachian Voices regional advocacy organization, the Department of Environmental Quality and West Virginia University to address the problem of dilapidated structures. Kennedy said the project partners want to make a presentation to the council on their progress.
In May 2024, the team classified 20 buildings that were in poor condition and would be considered for demolition.
In September, the council passed ordinances aimed at fighting blight. They define derelict buildings as residential or non-residential buildings or structures that might endanger the safety, health or welfare of the community or have been vacant, boarded up or not lawfully connected to electricity or water for six months.
The town will require the owner of a derelict structure to submit a plan for repair or removal within 90 days of receiving a written notice. For every month the owner goes past that 90-day period without submitting a plan, a $500 civil penalty can be imposed, and additional penalties may come if the property is a risk to public safety.
The town could publish information about derelict structures in a local newspaper for two weeks, after which the owner will have 30 days to repair or remove a structure or face a civil penalty up to $1,000. Or the town can choose to have the structure repaired or removed and collect the cost from the owner.
Other initiatives include:
- The town is pursuing a two-year, $50,000 Appalachian Regional Commission grant that would allow it to boost pay for the interim treasurer.
- The town is working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency on a project with funding from a Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities grant for technical assistance. Kennedy explained that the ultimate goal is to remove trees and trash from the river and clean up and improve recreation sites near the town.
- Kennedy said the county planning commission has scheduled a public hearing on plans to build a primitive campsite off the Red Fox trail with campsites, shelters and a composting toilet. A $40,000 Virginia Outdoors Foundation grant was awarded for the project.