Unofficial results from the Virginia Department of Elections show that incumbent Emily Winkey and newcomer Stevean E. Irving II have won seats on the Gordonsville Town Council.

Winkey received 47.48% of the votes, Irving has 30.4%. The two beat out Mary C. “Cyd” Black, who received 20.13% of votes. They will join the four-person Town Council in the beginning of 2025.

The results are unofficial because provisional ballots appear not to be counted yet, according to Virginia’s Department of Elections page. An employee from the Orange County Office of Voter Registration and Elections said they didn’t know anything about the number of provisional votes casted in Gordonsville when Charlottesville Tomorrow reached them by phone on Wednesday.

Provisional ballots are ballots casted by people who registered to vote yesterday or whose registration was for some reason questioned. This way, they still could cast a vote but the matter of whether the vote would count is resolved later. It can take a week or more for provisional ballots to be certified and counted.

Winkey and Irving agree on most of their top issues, but the need for funding is a recurring theme in accomplishing their priority projects.

Irving wants to repair or build new sidewalks

Infrastructure, especially repairing sidewalks, was the first issue both Winkey and Irving mentioned when reached by Charlottesville Tomorrow by phone on Wednesday.

“The sidewalks aren’t going to be a quick fix,” said Irving. While the current situation isn’t dire, some sidewalks are cracked, and certain areas lack adequate lighting, he noted. Fixing them is a matter of safety.

“During the day it’s fine, but at night time — we were out walking on Halloween, and you can definitely feel the difference. I could see where someone could trip,” he said.

Such repairs are costly, and with Gordonsville’s small population of just 1,402, additional funding will likely be necessary, said Irving. His plan is to seek federal grants to support these improvements.

The town currently raises money through a small real estate and personal property tax, along with a handful of other taxes and licensing fees.

“It’s going to be a step-by-step process, because we’ll need funding from elsewhere to help. We are a small community, so it will take years of effort. It’s not going to be an overnight fix.”

Winkey has her eyes set on a new park

Winkey also named sidewalks as a top priority but emphasized that this isn’t the only project needing funds — she also plans to continue work on renovating the town’s public pool and raising money to build a new park.

“The citizens have expressed a desire for recreational spaces for the youth, so that’s what we’re focusing on,” she said.

The multi-million dollar project has been five years in the making, originally beginning with the need to renovate Gordonsville’s public pool, which has served the community for 70 years, according to the town’s webpage devoted to the project. Over time, this need grew into a proposal to expand the pool and add a park for community use.

Currently, the pool is under construction, with an opening planned for summer. The park is projected to cost $5 million. The town still requires $1.5 million in funding, she said.

“Our goal is to open the pool this summer and then continue work on the park for all citizens, whether it’s using the shelter, swings, or other equipment we plan to install — if we can secure enough funding for everything,” said Winkey.

At the moment, the town’s budget is limited, and the pool project has been such a priority that Winkey and others “put everything on hold to save as much money as possible for the pool and park.”

The council hasn’t yet discussed the budget for the next term, she said, but additional priorities come to mind: increasing salaries to help address employee turnover and securing more funds for the Police Department and public works.

Irving is concerned about water quality

Water was another priority named by both Winkey and Irving, but the area of their focus on it differed.

Winkley is interested in the possibility of lowering the water and sewer costs that she said have increased in the past years. 

“The water bill continues to go up because we get our water from Rapidan Service Authority. And of course, when their prices go up, we have to pass the prices on to the citizens,” said Winkley. Gordonsville currently purchases water from Rapidan Service Authority, or RSA, a water and sewer provider serving parts of Orange and Madison counties.

“So the water bill at one time was a certain price, but with it steadily increasing, sometimes annually, we have to pass that on to the citizens. And the citizens continue to complain regarding that.”

For instance, an average water bill now is somewhere between $75 and $100 a month, said Winkley. About three years ago it was around $49.

Winkley, however, doesn’t currently have ideas on how this issue could be solved. 

For Irving, the question of water is the question of expansion.

“The Rapidan (River) only has a certain amount of water to be able to utilize, and the more you grow, the less water the Rapidan has. Gordonsville and Locust Grove both pull from the Rapidan. They’re both a part of RSA. So if you keep building and building and building, eventually that water is going to run out,” said Irving.

He knows that Locust Grove has been having issues with having too many chemicals in the water. In Charlottesville Tomorrow’s reporting on the recent water crisis in Orange County due to RSA’s catastrophic pump failures, a Virginia Health Department official mentioned that having too much disinfection byproduct in the water, the way Locust Grove does, is a result of overextending the water supply.

It’s not the growth of Gordonsville per se that Irving thinks about, but the neighboring counties that asked the town for water.

“Louisa County has come to Gordonsville asking for water inside of their county because they wanted to build subdivisions on the Louisa County side of Gordonsville, and they’ve asked for water to come through,” he said. “So it’s not just Gordonsville, it’s other counties as well that are asking for water from Gordonsville.”

Gordonsville is well placed between RSA and Louisa, he explained. He doesn’t know whether this neighboring expansion and possible sharing would somehow affect the availability of water for Gordonsville, he is curious to look into it.