Just the facts, please

I agree with Cedar Run District Supervisor Lee Sherbeyn that the Times-Democrat editorial was wrong in deprecating monthly meetings of supervisors with their constituents. I, for one, intend to attend the inaugural meeting of this citizen consultation in February.

I hope that the turnout shows more interest in local government than the Times Democrat editorial would suggest.

But I must part company with Mr. Sherbeyn for the rest of his over-the-top attack on our county’s only newspaper.

His letter has two problems. First, it ignores the awareness that one shouldn’t pick fights with organizations that buy ink by the barrel. Worse, he seems oblivious to the fact that the Cedar Run supervisor does not actually decide what is to happen in his district.

He or she must coax a majority of the board to agree.

Mr. Sherbeyn could well benefit from visiting other parts of the county and acting more like a collaborative supervisor than a cowboy.

In the four years since I moved to Fauquier County, I have found the Times-Democrat to be an unfailingly informative source of current information and facts about the county. Even during the recent political campaign, I think there was no basis for Mr. Sherbeyn to complain about media bias against him.

I agree with Mr. Sherbeyn on one other point. The paper needs to provide Fauquier residents with available facts about the county. I complained earlier that the Times-Democrat was ignoring readily available monthly unemployment data for every county in Virginia.

For the newspaper’s information, the latest (November) unemployment rate in Fauquier is 4.3 percent, about half the national average and lower than all but four other counties in the commonwealth.

Unemployment is substantially higher in many of our bordering counties. Culpeper, Mr. Sherbeyn’s poster child for a good business climate, had a November unemployment rate of 5.9 percent — more than one-third higher than Fauquier’s.

In sum, more facts help provide for a more-informed debate about public issues. And the Times Democrat should be a major source of such facts.

James W. Fox

Bealeton