Newsoms supervisor candidates square off

Published 12:00 am Friday, September 21, 2007

FORKS OF THE RIVER—A sparse crowd got a look at the candidates in Southampton’s most hotly contested Board of Supervisors race during a meet-the-candidates forum Tuesday night.

Members of the public also had a chance to ask questions of the three candidates for the Newsoms District seat in order to plumb the depths of their knowledge about local issues and to judge for themselves the suitability of the men for the public office they seek.

Organized by the Newsoms Ruritan Club and held at the Forks of the River Community Center, the event was the first of two planned in the Newsoms District prior to the Nov. 6 elections.

Fewer than 10 members of the public, including family members and friends of the candidates, were on hand for Tuesday’s session, but organizers said the meeting conflicted with several other events that had been planned for the same evening. They are hoping for a better turnout at the next meeting, set for Tuesday at the Newsoms Community Building.

John Skeeters, chairman of the Newsoms Ruritan Club’s Patriotism Committee, moderated Tuesday’s session. He said the idea of the forum had been resurrected during the 2003 Board of Supervisors election cycle, which also featured a competitive Newsoms race.

Walter D. Brown III, a Republican, won that election and seeks to defend his seat this year against two challengers, Glenn Updike, a Democrat, and Bert Blythe, running as an Independent.

All three men were on hand Tuesday night looking for support and ready to articulate their visions for Southampton County.

Taxes were an important issue for all three, as well as for their questioners.

Brown touted votes to institute land use taxation and monitored refuse collection centers, as well as an update of the property tax break for senior citizens, as evidence of his commitment to keeping Southampton’s tax rate low.

Both Updike and Blythe, however, complained of profligate spending and vowed to work toward reducing the county’s property tax rate.

&uot;Number One, we’ve got to control spending, no if’s and’s or but’s,&uot; Updike said during his introductory remarks. &uot;The Board of Supervisors so far has not stood up and said … ‘We want (spending) cuts, period.’ We don’t have anybody on the board with guts enough to say, ‘Enough is enough.’&uot;

Blythe also took supervisors to task for not pressing the county’s administration for budget cuts that would have resulted in lower tax rates.

&uot;They should have done it many times, and they didn’t,&uot; he said.

Brown, however, drew on his experience serving on the Board of Supervisors to describe the pitfalls of budgeting for a county government. Without a large industrial base, for example, finding money for things like the new Riverdale Elementary School sometimes requires tax increases, he said.

&uot;Anytime you have an offset, you have to make up the money,&uot; he said.

Improving the industrial tax base was one of Brown’s main themes for the evening.

&uot;Economic development is critical to this county,&uot; he said, pointing to the recent purchase of the Turner Tract as a good example of the county investing in its own future.

He said he hopes that Southampton can take advantage of work being done in and around the Virginia International Terminals in Portsmouth by making itself attractive as a potential location for more distribution terminals.

Updike, on the other hand, complained that the money the county spends on economic development projects sometimes does not generate the promised benefits.

Blythe was even more direct in his opposition to such efforts. &uot;I don’t like (economic development spending), and my constituents don’t like it,&uot; he said. &uot;It’s using taxpayers’ money for something we shouldn’t use it for. My constituents are strongly against economic development.&uot;

Regarding another tax matter, land use taxation, Updike complained that supervisors had not gone far enough in providing tax breaks to landowners when they approved the program. He called for re-addressing the program with the goal of slashing taxable land values for agricultural properties.

Brown agreed that the program had not been as generous to owners of large tracts of land as he had hoped it would be. He said he is also unsatisfied with the requirement that landowners must re-apply for the tax break each year and pledged to work to get that requirement reduced.

Blythe had no opinion regarding land use taxation, noting that he would defer to his constituents’ wishes in any votes on the program.

In brief introductory remarks at the beginning of the program, and in a flyer used to promote the program, each of the candidates told a little about himself.

Blythe, 65, is a native of Southampton County and has been in business there for 40 years. He said he is running for office because he &uot;think(s) it could be done better&uot; and because he &uot;would like to see things done as they should be.&uot;

Brown holds a bachelor’s degree in social science and a master’s in logistics management. He is a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army and chief of the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian tribe.

Updike, a Statesville-area farmer, holds a bachelor’s degree from Virginia Tech and a master’s from Virginia State. He worked for six years as a 4-H youth coordinator and 28 years as Southeast Virginia district agricultural farm agent.