BY TED SHOCKLEY, Eastern Shore Post —
It was a typical and expected Eastville scene: On Wednesday, Oct. 7, shortly before 11 a.m., a town police officer pulled over a highway driver for a traffic infraction.
In recent months, however, nothing about Eastville has been typical or expected.
A town once flush with cash from traffic fines suddenly was short on money. The town’s manager and clerk/treasurer left, and their jobs have not been filled. Northampton County stepped in and paid its former county administrator for several weeks of work to untangle town problems.
Eastville has been in regional and state news in recent years for its high revenue gained from police tickets, its workforce turnover, and a town police officer who pleaded guilty to federal charges after he gambled away $831,000 he borrowed from friends including a former town mayor and a councilwoman.
From the ashes, Eastville’s government has labored to reset itself, councilwoman Diane Crockett said.
“We’re working to get it strong again, where it needs to be,” Crockett said of the town.
Part of that has been paring down town expenses.
Eastville once had six police officers for a town of fewer than 300 people. Crockett said there are now three officers employed by the town.
The town has a $230,000 offer from Eastville Baptist Church to purchase the town community center, a former furniture store at 17202 Courthouse Road.
Two black Chevrolet sport utility vehicles equipped for law enforcement use are parked in front of the community center and are for sale.
Elected officials like Crockett, who is running for mayor, have been tending to day-to-day town matters.
She and others have been handling tasks once handled by the town manager.
“Town council is doing all the work as volunteers,” she said.
The town’s adopted fiscal budget includes an estimated $480,000 in police revenues. Last year’s budgeted police revenues were $1.67 million — and $1.5 million the previous year.
“That’s a definite reason why the (budgeted) income was less,” said Crockett of the reduced police force.
Eastville was criticized 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 — 72% in total — from speeding tickets than anywhere else in Virginia.
Still, the question of where the town’s revenue from previous years’ went looms large.
“We are still searching to find out what happened to that big, old nest egg everybody said we had,” Crockett said.
She said she could not address further questions about financial issues.
Minutes from an Aug. 31 town council meeting show a closed session permitted by the state code included two “guest speakers” with long careers in the banking industry — John Burdiss, a Northampton County attorney, and Julie Badger, of Melfa.
Minutes from municipal meetings never include information from closed sessions, but Eastville’s draft minutes from the meeting briefly touch on the content of Burdiss’ and Badger’s talk.
“Mr. Burdiss explained that they were not auditors but investigators,” the minutes state, adding, “They were quite interesting.”
The minutes do not say what Burdiss and Badger were investigating.
Still, on a recent day, there was the palpable sense that the worst was over and Eastville was bouncing back.
The police officer who pulled the driver, Bryan Satchell, smiled and chatted with a reporter who took a photograph of him. Crockett was forthcoming with information and answered questions freely during three phone calls with a reporter over two days. Customers at a downtown cafe dined outside under blue skies on a crisp fall day. A historic town with a recently troubled past seemed to be actively solving its problems and inviting a brighter future, one interaction at a time.
