(From The Northern Virginia Daily dated Thursday 21 June 2007.)

Dennis Grundman / Daily file McKay Springs near Reliance Road and U.S. 340-522 is near a small trailer court. The spring is in the county but the water rights are owned by the town.

Last week, the Town Council requested a joint development plan from the county for the McKay property. The property is located off U.S. 340-522 north of Front Royal.

The town and the county jointly own parts of the 14- to 16-acre property that also includes a spring and a historic house.

Supervisor Tony F. Carter said during a board meeting Tuesday that the county sent the town a development plan for the property in January.

Warren County Administrator Douglas P. Stanley sent the town a letter with a list of tasks that would get the property ready for commercial marketing.

They include vacating a right of way and surveying the property. The list also includes responsible parties for those tasks and completion dates.

The county and the town want to market parts of the property to potential buyers.

The Warren County-Front Royal Economic Development Authority would be responsible for marketing the property.

"If we had gotten together and followed [the tasks] then the EDA would be in the process of marketing it," said Carter, who represents the Happy Creek District. "I was just trying to comply [with the council's request] as quickly as possible, and obviously the council was unaware that this [letter] was sent over. Obviously there was some type of miscommunication."

The supervisors agreed during their meeting Tuesday to forward Stanley's January letter to the town again.

Town Manager J. Michael Graham said that he was aware of the letter, which originated in a liaison meeting between the town and the county.

But some additional costs emerged, which caused the town to hold off on moving forward. The costs were $6,000 to $8,000, Graham said.

The council couldn't cover the costs in its fiscal 2007 budget.

It has budgeted the funds in the fiscal 2008 spending plan, which goes into effect July 1, Graham said.

"We are ready to get started on it and we wanted the EDA to market [the property]," he said.

The county and the town jointly purchased the property roughly seven years ago.

The county wanted to use land to eventually realign Reliance and Rockland roads, while the town was primarily interested in the spring there as an additional water supply. The town owns the water rights to the spring but the property lies in the county.

An engineering firm performed a survey of the spring last summer.

It is unclear what approach the county and the town would take on the old house, which Carter said is among the oldest in the state.

The council wants the town, county and other organizations such as the Warren Heritage Society and the EDA to create a plan for the use of the house, according to minutes from the council's June 11 meeting.

* Contact Robert King at rking@nvdaily.com

(From The Warren Sentinel dated Thursday 21 June 2007.)

At Tuesday night's Board of Supervisors meeting Tony Carter (R-Happy Creek) said in watching a video replay of the June 11 town council meeting recently, he saw the council had "some concerns regarding the McKay property which was purchased roughly two-and-a-half years ago out on 522."

At that June 11 meeting the council spent some 30 minutes debating a resolution to contact the county "to request a development plan to turn the McKay Springs property over the EDA (Economic Development Authority) to market the property."

The request to put the item on the meeting agenda came from Councilman Stan Brooks, who wanted to know why the county was "dragging its feet on this."

The county and the town bought the property together, Carter said, with several ideas in mind.

The town owns the McKay spring and may need some additional property to put up a water treatment plant, and the county may need some property to realign the intersection of Rockland and Reliance Road, Carter said.

"When this property was jointly purchased several years ago, it was with the intent that it could be turned around and possibly rezoned to commercial property with the pieces needed for each respective body to incorporate with what we had." Carter said.

Carter said there was some discussion by the council about sending a letter asking the county to get together with the town, the Warren Heritage Society and the Economic Development Authority (EDA) to try to market the property.

According to the clerk, the county hasn't yet received the letter voted on by the council June 11.

"It's difficult to comment on a letter I haven't seen," Carter said. "But after watching the meeting I got the gist of what they're looking for."

Carter said he wanted to point out that County Administrator Doug Stanley sent a letter to Town Manager J. Michael Graham six months ago.

"To my knowledge, we never had any response to the letter," Carter said.

The letter, dated Jan. 11, outlines a proposed 10-step process and a timeline that would have had the McKay property ready to be marked by the EDA by Sept. 1 of this year.

"That's not going to happen now, obviously, because nothing has been done since January," Carter said.

Carter, with the assent of the board, asked that the Jan. 11 letter be re-sent to Graham as well as Mayor James Eastham and the council.

"In the spirit of cooperativeness and being proactive, we want to let the town council know that we are interested in doing something along those lines," Carter said.

Graham said Wednesday that he was aware of the letter and that "about 30 days after the last town-county liaison meeting," Stanley came back to him with a cost to get the project started.

"What happened was there was a $6,000 to $8,000 price tag on this and we didn't have it in the budget," Graham said. "We were surprised [the surveying] was going to cost that much."

In the meantime, Graham said, "we had bigger projects and bigger issues to deal with."

"The reason we brought it back up is that now we have the funding for it." Graham said. "The funding is built into the upcoming budget and we're ready to move forward."

Contact: kseabrooke@thewarrensentinel.com