After multiple resignations and months without meeting minutes, the Town of Louisa is finally beginning to rebuild its government — and its relationship with the public.
Residents and council members alike say the past year has exposed deep cracks in how the town communicates with the public, leading to a growing demand for transparency in how decisions are made.
Staffing shortages increased concerns about transparency. With meeting minutes not posted for six months, and video recordings not posted at all, residents struggled to find out what was happening on Town Council.
The shortages began just over a year ago. Last September, Garland Nuckols resigned after ten years as mayor, citing health problems in an interview with Louisa-based journalist Tammy Purcell. Nuckols was followed by four others in the ensuing months.
Town Manager Elizabeth Nelson submitted her resignation in November, while Town Clerk/Treasurer Jessica Ellis and Deputy Treasurer Kellye Throckmorton both resigned in May. They were followed by Interim-Mayor Danny Carter on May 21. Carter had been appointed in November to serve out Nuckols’ term until the following election.
Ellis declined to comment for the story and Throckmorton did not respond to requests for an interview.
Carter was first elected to town council in 1998 as a write-in candidate.
“The only thing to say on that is that I could not work with the majority of Town Council,” said Carter, regarding his departure. “Not every member of council. There were two long-term members who had been wonderful. But others, I couldn’t.”
The town was left with a skeleton staff. Louisa Police Chief Craig Buckley was appointed as interim town manager in December, but it took two months for the town to appoint a new clerk and treasurer.
“After the departures, we had to scramble to get our books kept up,” said Council Member Roger Henry, whose first term on Council began in January. “We were trying to do it ourselves as best we could. The [interim] town manager [Craig Buckley] was doing the clerk’s work for a while there himself. And our committees, we were keeping our own minutes and turning them in. And so we just all worked together.”
For those trying to stay informed on town decisions, the loss of a clerk was problematic.
When Clerk/Treasurer Jessica Ellis resigned in May, minutes had not been posted to the website since February. After her resignation, there were no minutes posted until September.
“For months, they had no minutes and no video. Unless you were at the meeting, you had no idea what happened,” said journalist Tammy Purcell, who covers Town Council and Board of Supervisors meetings for her newsletter Engage Louisa. “It’s been extremely frustrating to follow what’s going on in the town, because it’s difficult to access what’s going on at the meetings on a variety of levels.”
According to Virginia code, local governments have to post minutes of their meetings to their “official public government website… within seven working days of final approval of the minutes.” The approval of minutes typically occurs during the following month’s meeting.
Minutes from May and June were not written as there was no clerk. Councilors say minutes from March and April had been misplaced, which caused their delay in approval.
“Some of the minutes were accidentally put in a file by previous staff and no one could find them,” explained current Interim-Mayor Matthew Kersey.
Things began to turn around over the summer as the town built up its staff. In its meeting on July 15, the town hired Stephanie Dorman as clerk, Franchesca Mall-Padilla as treasurer and appointed Matthew Kersey as interim mayor. Interim Town Manager Craig Buckley retired as planned at the end of August, but the town hired Stuart Turille as town manager in September.
The misplaced minutes were found and approved by August. Clerk Stephanie Dorman listened to audio recordings of the missing meetings to fill in the backlog. As of November, all minutes are posted to the town’s website except for May. Dorman said she hadn’t realized May was not yet on the website.
Now, the town’s leaders are turning their attention to regaining citizens’ trust.
For months, they had no minutes and no video. Unless you were at the meeting, you had no idea what happened. It’s been extremely frustrating to follow what’s going on in the town, because it’s difficult to access what’s going on at the meetings on a variety of levels.
—Tammy Purcell, journalist who covers Town Council and Board of Supervisors meetings for her Engage Louisa newsletter
Experts say lack of transparency, intentional or not, can erode trust between a government and its community.
“It can cause a real disconnect when things are done behind closed doors or it’s hard to get records,” said Megan Rhyne, executive director for the Virginia Coalition for Open Government, which advocates for transparency practices in state and local government.
“If there’s a culture of secrecy, the public will then be suspicious of everything you do,” she said. “Like, oh, well, it’s just another thing they did behind closed doors. And even when they did it the exact right way, people are still going to be skeptical. So it’s a real erosion of that relationship, of the trust between citizens and government.”
Louisa had some run-ins with issues around trust. A particularly contentious moment centered around a special Town Council meeting that was called on Aug. 29, the Friday before Labor Day weekend.
“We had a special meeting moved [from 6 p.m.] to 8 p.m. because some town councilors were working,” said Vice-Mayor Vicky Harte, “but people framed it like they’re hiding the meeting, because it’s at eight instead of six. But they don’t come to the one at six either!”
The day of the meeting, the time was pushed back two hours so that Council Member Danny Crawford could attend after work. Most of the meeting was in closed session to discuss hiring a town manager.
The town followed legal requirements about advertising the meeting, but the last-minute nature was not well-received by the community.
A lot of the commentary took place on Facebook.
Tammy Purcell had posted her take on her public Facebook account that night, saying in part, “After talking with the town clerk, I understand that the meeting was properly advertised, but this isn’t transparent or accessible government.”
The post has 50 comments, mostly expressing disappointment or suspicion about the meeting change.
“Man that’s shady as hell,” read one.
“It would be great if whoever scheduled the meeting for that time explained themself. It certainly does seem to lack transparency and it would help town residents understand their motives. This is the kind of stuff that erodes trust in officials,” said another.
In an interview with a Charlottesville Tomorrow reporter in September, Tammy Purcell said, “You’re at a point where people have a lot of questions about what [Town Council is] doing. People don’t trust institutions anymore, and when you’re having a meeting at 8 o’clock on Friday night on a holiday weekend, people think it’s shady. It’s bad optics.”
Since becoming fully staffed again, the town has begun discussing steps toward improving its communication with the public. However, it’s been slow-going.
For one, some councilors are considering rolling out mass-texting or an app for emergency alerts, according to council members Vicky Harte and John Purcell.
This is something multiple residents have been calling for.
“If there’s a boil water advisory, they post about it on their website and on Facebook,” said Dana Racette, a town resident who regularly attends meetings. “And I don’t find that adequate for the 21st century.”
In an ideal world, Racette said, “I would like text messages the same way I get texts from the county. Snow day, storms, wildfires, the county tells us. I get a text. It exists and is easy to access. I don’t know why the town council can’t do this.”
Racette is not alone.
“That has been something that numerous residents have brought up to me as I’ve been knocking on doors,” said Ashley Michael, who was elected mayor on Nov. 4. Her term will begin in January. “They say, ‘Hey, we get your [campaign] text messages. Is that something the town could do too?'”
Even those on town council say it’s a problem.
“We need to have better flow of information from the town to the citizens,” said John Purcell, who has served on Town Council since 2018. (He said he is a distant relation to Tammy Purcell.)
He said the town has discussed app possibilities over the last year, but has not pursued it yet.
“That’s kind of what we’ve talked about a couple of times since the budget cycle, but we really needed the staffing to carry that forward,” he said.
And before they get to that, the town plans to look at posting video recordings of meetings, something it has never done before. This has made them an outlier in the county. Both the Louisa County Board of Supervisors and the nearby Town of Mineral post video recordings.
“I think that video is an important part of accountability for what they do,” said Racette. “I think: Why, what are we waiting for? It’s not that hard to add a page and drop it in there. If we don’t know how to do it, we can figure it out.”
Council members say they hadn’t recorded videos earlier due to poor internet connection in town hall. After changing internet providers over the summer, the town began video-recording meetings in August. However, they have not posted the recordings online, citing that they are in the process of upgrading their website from a .org to a .gov domain.
In September, Town Clerk Stephanie Dorman estimated that upgrading the website could take two months. Until then, some on town council have reservations about posting the videos onto other sites.
“We want to make sure we’re doing it right before we just put it on YouTube,” said John Purcell. “AI is coming out. We think we know where it’s going, but we’re not quite sure. So I’ve got to be a little safer than sorry… we want to make sure our information is accurate.”
Since then, Louisa had a mayoral election. The winner, Ashley Michael, has made transparency a large part of her platform.
“I do think there are some very small adjustments that could have been made and should be made that can make a very large impact on the way that your community trusts you,” Michael told Charlottesville Tomorrow. “They don’t have to be big, grandiose items. They can be very small things, like posting these videos, getting them updated, getting a text message out, getting a robo call. I feel like that is where we can really start to rebuild that trust within our community.”
Meanwhile, town councilors told Charlottesville Tomorrow they are just excited that they are fully staffed again and the staffing problems can hopefully be put behind them.
“We’re in that period where everyone’s catching up or learning how to do everything,” said John Purcell. “We’re just making sure there’s nothing else left behind before we spring forward.”
