THE ESSEX COUNTY CONTRACTS

 Much has been written about County Administrator's Contract with the Essex County Board of Supervisors as Letters to the Editor in the Rappahannock Times and in commentary on the Essex Tea Party website.  This EssexSunshine.Org (ESO) website has commented about the extension of the Superintendent of Essex Public Schools contract extension approval with over a year to go before the completion of the original contract (1).  Very few Essex County citizens have actually seen any of those contracts.

Contracts are required to be accessable to the public by Virginia Law.  One of the areas evaluated by Sunshine Review (2) in rating both County Government and School Board website is the accessibility of contracts.  Therefore, ESO requested copies of the contracts which are published at the following links:

County Administrator's Contract:  

          http://www.essexsunshine.org/pdflib/county-administrator-contract.pdf

Original Superintendent's Contract: 

            http://www.essexsunshine.org/pdflib/super-2010.pdf

Extension of Superintendent's Contract:
            http://www.essexsunshine.org/pdflib/super-2012.pdf

Please note that the documents are civil contracts NOT ordinances.  Claims have been made that the non-fulfillment of the portion of the County Administrators contract is ILLEGAL. ESO believes that the claim of "illegality" has been made either in error or as a deliberate misrepresentation of fact. 

An appropriate question would be whether the Board of Supervisors agreed to either amend or waive any aspect of the contract.  The County Administrator, was and is thru 30 September 2012, an at will employee subject to termination of employment at any time for any reason.  Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that the Board of Supervisors, by continuing to employ the County Administrator in effect waived or chose to not enforce a portion of the employment contract.

Also of public interest is the $6,000 salary increase granted to the Superintendent in conjunction with the contract extension.  It's ESO opinion that the 5% increase exceeds the salary increase approved for the teachers and staff. 

Footnote 1: http://essexsunshine.blogspot.com/2012/06/superintendents-contract-extension.html

Footnote 2: http://sunshinereview.org/index.php/Essex_County,_Virginia

John R. Clickener