Augusta County: Why was Gerald Garber talking about a 1947 Board of Supervisors meeting?

If you were still paying attention at the end of Wednesday’s contentious Augusta County Board of Supervisors meeting, you might have wondered what Gerald Garber was getting at with his story about minutes from a 1947 board meeting.

What was going on there was Garber, who represents the Middle River District on the BOS, was getting in a subtle dig at fellow supervisors over the comical mishandling of the resolution of censure of Wayne District Supervisor Scott Seaton.

The original resolution that was approved on July 13 referenced dates on which Seaton is alleged to have divulged closed-session information to the public that turned out to be wrong, and then the effort to fix the dates at the July 27 meeting had to be tabled because the replacement resolution still had incorrect dates.

Back-channel discussions about the dates issue got to a point where one member of the board questioned the importance of fixing the dates.

It emerged before the meeting that Garber wasn’t happy with this view.

And then he had this to say last night:

“If you wonder how far down the road accuracy in the minutes is important, I walked in this building one day, and this young man, younger than I am, was sitting in front of a minute book from 1947. And what he discovered was over an event, Mr. Fitzgerald was well-aware, that somebody’s going to pay a million dollars for it, but the minutes from 1947 were very clear that Augusta County was not a part of that. So now it’s down between two other parties, somebody will pay, and if they don’t fix the problem, they’ll pay even more dearly than that,” Garber said.

“So the minutes from 1947, long before that young man was born, very critical to him and his company, he didn’t get what he was hoping for, because he was kind of hoping Augusta County was on the hook. But Augusta County clearly was not. It was very clear where they were and all of that.

“So you might think, if the minutes aren’t correct, maybe it’s not a big deal. Might be a big deal. Sometime down the road, might be a real big deal,” Garber said.

So, there you go, that’s the backstory.

Pound of flesh, extracted.