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Jefferson County Commission candidates answer campaign questions at Town Hall

By Tabitha Johnston - Chronicle Staff | Oct 7, 2022

From left, JCC candidate John Doyle, Democratic Association of Jefferson County President Amy Lindsey, Ray Benzinger, Susan Benzinger and JCC candidate Dale Manuel chat together at the Town Hall in the Morgan’s Grove Park pavilion on Tuesday night. Tabitha Johnston

SHEPHERDSTOWN — In spite of the wind and rain, Jefferson County Commission candidates Dale Manuel (D) and John Doyle (D) soldiered on, to hold a Town Hall-style meeting in the Morgan’s Grove Park pavilion on Tuesday night.

Both Manuel and Doyle took time to answer attendee questions and discuss the current county-related issues they believe are of most importance to addressing, if they are elected to office, which mainly revolved around high speed internet access, education, transparency and the JCC’s recent emergency services cutbacks.

“These two are very important [concerns] — high speed internet and emergency services. Another one is planning and zoning,” Doyle, who is running for the Shepherdstown seat, said. “The comprehensive plan that was developed in 2015 is a really good plan. I don’t like some of the things that have been done to it, in the meantime, by the current planning commission. One of those things is what’s being done with event centers.

“They’re allowing some of these event centers in places they shouldn’t allow them. People come up here from the city, and if it’s on a narrow, winding, treelined back road, these people can’t find their way out and they have a wreck and we’ve got to pay for it,” Doyle said, mentioning part of the reason for poor decision-making by county entities, is due to the JCC appointing unqualified individuals to serve on them. “The one out here on Route 45 toward Martinsburg, at the old Billmyer-McQuilken Farm, that’s a perfect place for it! But there are some others that they have allowed that are down in a backroad outside of Bakerton that I can barely find my way around, and I’ve lived in the county since 1946!”

According to Doyle, both he and Manuel have worked together to bring great results in the past, when they were serving in the House of Delegates together. Because of their history together and similar campaign platforms, he and Manuel said they believe, if they are both elected to fill the two empty seats on the five-member commission, that they will be able to bring even greater positive change to Jefferson County than would otherwise be possible.

“We served in the Legislature together for 12 years. We know each other very well!” Doyle said.

“I really want to win this election! I’m looking forward to serving on the county commission and trying to solve the problems we’ve been talking about here, this evening,” Doyle said, before referring to how he is finishing his term this year in the House of Delegates. “I’m really glad of my service in the Legislature. I worked very hard at it, and I think that anybody that watched my service would say, ‘This guy paid attention to the public.'”

For Manuel, who previously served two consecutive terms on the JCC before losing the Charles Town seat in the last election, a county commission is only as healthy as it is transparent with the public.

“We need to change a lot of the procedures for the way the county commission does business,” Manuel said. “They’re not pushing citizen participation, they’re pushing their own agenda, and in some cases, freeze out the private citizen from his or her opportunity to speak to them.

“Mostly, their issues come up one time, they’ll have a short public hearing and ‘bang!’ they vote on it. That’s not the way to do things. They should hold those issues over, just like a municipal government does, so you’ll have more than one opportunity for the public to be heard on the issue and to actually have the people who are making the decisions to hear more from the public, and maybe take some of their ideas and put them into an ordinance or an issue.”

Both candidates agreed that, if the JCC had already been focused on hearing the public in this way, some excellent ideas on how to deal with the county’s rising emergency services costs may have been presented by local residents, thus making it possible for an ambulance to remain at the Bakerton Fire Department. Paying $35,000 to an out-of-state firm, to determine how the county could cut costs on fire and emergency services, was not the only solution to this problem, Manuel said, mentioning he, personally, would have preferred to pay a higher fee for fire and emergency services rather than to accept the risk of losing emergency services in part of the county.