BY TED SHOCKLEY, Eastern Shore Post
The Northampton Board of Supervisors is paying its former county administrator $150 per hour to help the town of Eastville sort out a staffing and financial conundrum, according to county documents and interviews.
Northampton County is funding the work of Katie Nunez, who served as county administrator for an 11-year period that ended in 2016, to help Eastville resolve municipal issues.
Eastville Mayor Eleanor Gordon confirmed Nunez is helping the town. She said the board of supervisors’ offer to hire Nunez to help the town was accepted during a vote by the town council.
Gordon, however, was not entirely sure of Nunez’s role.
“It’s not clear to me what we needed help with from the county,” she said.
She added, “The county appears to believe that we’re in a mess of trouble at the moment.”
In recent months Eastville’s town manager and town clerk/treasurer have left their positions.
Gordon said Eastville has advertised for a new town manager, but its financial straits are so bad that paying a new hire is not an option.
“It’s clear we don’t have enough money to pay a town manager for the foreseeable future,” she said.
Eastville’s town council approved a $1.92 million municipal budget for fiscal year 2026, with $1.67 million in revenue expected from traffic infractions. The fiscal year ended June 30.
The town council approved a $1.78 million budget for fiscal year 2025, with $1.5 million in revenue expected from traffic infractions.
However, the town council pared back its budget for the current fiscal year, advertising a $1.15 million spending plan with $870,000 expected from traffic infractions.
The board of supervisors on July 1 voted unanimously during a special called meeting to hire Nunez to a part-time job of 10 to 20 hours per week for two weeks, with extensions as necessary.
The meeting was held, in part, to discuss retaining “a special advisor.” Because it was a personnel matter, by law supervisors were able to hold discussions about the matter in private.
On July 14, Nunez signed a services contract with county attorney Ellen Bowyer that set the pay rate and length of part-time employment, the contract shows.
The contract does not specify that Nunez is helping Eastville. Bowyer did not release a document regarding Nunez’s work tasks or working conditions, saying those records are exempt from state records requests.
Gordon said “appropriate authorities have been brought on board” to investigate the town’s financial shortfall. She said more information would be available in the future.
For a town with fewer than 300 residents, Eastville has been in regional and state news in recent years for its high revenue gained from police and court fines, its workforce turnover, and its apparent financial issues.
Anthony Owens, a former town police officer, told WTKR-TV of Norfolk last month that one of his final paychecks from the town bounced. A town official said there was no knowledge of bounced paychecks.
According to WTKR, Owens resigned, but he also received a termination letter from the town in May. He said the town council was unaware that he had been driving a town-owned police vehicle to his Virginia Beach home for three years, which he said was part of his employment agreement. The town paid for his fuel and tolls.
Earlier this year a former Eastville town police officer was sentenced to three years in federal prison after pleading guilty to convincing 13 people, including a former mayor and town council member, to loan him $831,000 during a four-year span in a scheme to pay gambling debts.
The former mayor and police chief retired less than two months after the officer was charged.
The town has had four police chiefs since the spring of 2024. WTKR reported that one of them, Linwood Christian, was dismissed as chief because he was not writing enough tickets.
Eastville was admonished in 2023 by the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit public-interest law firm in Northern Virginia, for “policing for profit.”
The Virginia Mercury, an online newspaper, reported in 2019 that Eastville received a bigger portion of its municipal budget from speeding tickets than anywhere else in Virginia.
The town received 72% of its revenue from police tickets that year.
