By CATHY DYSON
Two issues continue to haunt the King George Board of Supervisors: the infrastructure of Chatham Village subdivision and the status of fire and rescue volunteers.
This week, two Chatham Village homeowners, Donna Eubank and Tracy Travers, wondered why the driveways of their homes weren't seamed together properly the way one driveway in the Dahlgren-area subdivision was done.
Different types of asphalt were patched together to create a finish that didn't match.
"The homeowners of Chatham Village should not have to accept such shoddy work," Eubank told supervisors at a meeting Tuesday.
Homeowners in Sections 1 and 2 of Chatham Village have been battling for two years to get their infrastructure completed.
A September story in The Free Lance-Star chronicled the saga homeowners faced after the developer left without finishing the work.
Residents appealed to the supervisors. They believed the county was responsible because Jack Green, King George's director of community development, gave construction bond money back to developer Thomas Worman before the work was done.
Typically, bonds are put up by developers as a guarantee that they'll finish the work.
The bank backing those bonds paid for a paving company to fix curbs, gutters and drainage issues, and a lot has happened since mid-September, said Ruby Brabo, the resident leading the homeowner campaign.
The gaping ditch in the backyard of Cepeda and Nina Long has been filled in and fixed, Brabo said. Most of the easement and curbing issues have been addressed, and work has begun on the storm pond.
The homeowners, who retained a lawyer well-versed in homeowner association disputes, no longer plan to sue the county, Brabo said.
"Everything is not necessarily as it should be," she said, but "it is far better than when we began two years ago."
What perplexed her most was how the situation was handled. Homeowners had to plead their case repeatedly to the board, even after the supervisors voted in April 2008 to "do all things necessary" to complete the subdivision infrastructure.
She hopes her efforts will help others.
"Someone needs to look out for the residents of King George and quit allowing the developers to leave these communities prior to their completion," she wrote in a recent e-mail to The Free Lance-Star. "Residents pay good money for their homes, and I don't think anyone on the Board of Supervisors would like to reside in a community that is only half-complete and then left that way."
Volunteer status
Supervisors also have been hearing questions for months about the status of fire and rescue volunteers.
On Tuesday, the concern came from a new voice.
John LoBuglio, who is running for the James Monroe District supervisor seat, said he was concerned about a recent incident in which eight emergency-services personnel responded to an accident scene involving nine vehicles.
"That isn't enough [people] to take care of the vehicles," LoBuglio said. "I would hate for it to be a situation where something detrimental would happen just because we don't have enough personnel to respond."
LoBuglio asked for a thorough review, then added how much the county owes its volunteers.
Supervisors acknowledged he was right about one thing: the value of volunteers. They told the candidate they'd been studying the situation for up to 10 years.
"There's been a tremendous amount of attention given that," said Dale Sisson Jr. "What you mentioned was a very small snapshot."
On Oct. 6, Chairman Joe Grzeika said the issue of how volunteers have been affected since 2008, when Chief David Moody took control over both paid workers and volunteers, has been discussed and was closed.
Cathy Dyson: 540/374-5425
Email: cdyson@freelancestar.com