JCC Supes Choose 2 New Planning Commissioners

By Desiree Parker Wednesday, January 27, 2010

At their Tuesday night meeting, James City County Supervisors chose two new planning commissioners and refused to reappoint an incumbent after weeks of discussion.

The board unanimously chose Michael Maddocks to serve as at-large commissioner to fill George Billups’ seat. Maddocks is currently president of the Williamsburg Rotary Club and is active in various nonprofits in the community. He has served as a Senior Vice President for Old Point National Bank; he's now a senior vice president and community executive for the Middleburg Trust in Williamsburg.

In an unusual turn of events, when the board returned after their brief closed session Powhatan district supervisor Jim Icenhour called for a vote to reappoint current Powhatan commissioner Debbie Kratter, though he knew Republicans on the board wouldn’t vote for her.

Kratter had voted for the county's Comprehensive Plan, but had been a strong voice for controlled growth - one thing she said residents wanted.

Typically, Icenhour said later, the board prefers to hash out personnel issues during closed session, but he decided to force the issue. “In my mind this [vote] is a direct affront to the citizens in my district, that my first choice wasn’t acceptable to them,” Icenhour said after the meeting.

The vote was politically motivated, Icenhour said, and he thinks “the public will want them to answer for what they did.”

Icenhour assumed Kratter would not be chosen, so he had a second choice lined up, Alfred Woods, who supervisors did select unanimously after a second closed session discussion.

Woods is chairman of the board for Insituform Technologies, a pipeline technology firm, and is also an active member of several boards in the county and in his community, Ford’s Colony. He moved to the county in 2002.