Montgomery County supervisors are scheduled for a very unusual vote Monday — on whether to censure their colleague Sara Bohn for missing too many meetings.
Supervisors also are set to renew an operating agreement for a joint tourism program that the county runs with Christiansburg and Blacksburg, to set a public hearing for next month to gather comments on possible changes to the county’s real estate reassessment schedule, and to honor three women for years of community service.
The supervisors meet at 7:15 p.m. Monday at the Montgomery County Government Center in Christiansburg.
Reached by phone Saturday, supervisors Chairwoman Mary Biggs said that the censure resolution against Bohn is the first such resolution against a supervisor in at least the 29 years that Biggs has been on the board.
Biggs declined to comment on the situation with Bohn, saying, “The resolution speaks for itself.”
Bohn could not be immediately contacted for comment.
According to the resolution, which is included with supervisors’ agenda packet, Bohn has shown a “consistent failure … to attend in person” the supervisors’ meetings. She also has not attended meetings of the Montgomery County Public Service Authority — the supervisors double as the public service authority’s board — and of the New River Valley Community Services Board, to which she was appointed as the supervisors’ representative, the resolution said.
Bohn, who was first elected in 2017 and won a second term in 2021, represents District A, which covers the northern section of the county and part of Blacksburg.
The resolution said that Bohn went through a mediation process with Biggs and a mediator from the Virginia Association of Counties. Bohn agreed to attend all meetings of the supervisors, public service authority and community services board for the rest of 2024, the resolution said.
However, Bohn missed the December meetings of the public service authority and community services board, the resolution said.
The resolution said that the code of ethics and standard of conduct that the supervisors adopt each year sets consistent meeting attendance as a “fundamental responsibility” for board members.
Besides publicly rebuking Bohn, the censure resolution would remove her from the public service authority board and community services board, and also from the board of the Fairview District Home, where she also serves as a county representative.
She would remain a member of the county board of supervisors.
Joint tourism program to up for renewal
The tourism agreement that supervisors are to vote on would renew an arrangement for a joint program that the county has run for years with Blacksburg and Christiansburg, The program’s operating agreement was allowed to lapse last year.
As the program continued to operate without an active agreement, it came under increasing criticism from Christiansburg Town Council members who said that the town was not appropriately represented on the tourism program’s website or in various materials that the program created. Christiansburg’s council voted multiple times to leave the program, but then decided to give it another chance.
The new operating agreement, like the old one, funds the tourism program with a portion of the lodging tax that each locality collects. Also, the localities promise to contribute 0.002% of their sales tax revenue to the program.
The agreement addresses a financial concern raised by some Christiansburg council members with an arrangement that the localities will appropriate money for the tourism program based on estimates of tax revenue, then “true up” the program’s funding at the end of each fiscal year. Truing up would involve reviewing actual tax revenue and either paying additional money to the program if revenue was higher than estimated or receiving a credit against the next year’s funding if revenue was below expectations.
Reassessing the frequency of reassessment: public hearing in late January? and more
On reassessment, supervisors plan to vote on scheduling a public hearing for Jan. 27 on whether the real estate reassessment should continue to be done every four years or be changed to an annual or every-other-year schedule.
And supervisors plan to honor New River Community College President Pat Huber, who is retiring Dec. 31; New River Valley Agency on Aging Executive Director Tina King, who also is retiring soon; and Martha Stalling for her work on establishing the Access to Community College Education program, which gives tuition assistance to county high school graduates who go to New River Community College.
To see the complete supervisors’ agenda and accompanying materials, go to https://go.boarddocs.com/va/montva/Board.nsf/Public.
