Steve Rigby: The Maud Party Line

At one meeting, the record shows that the issue with Mr. X's sign was that "it didn't have enough white in it." Whatever that means? I guess Maud would say it was "garish"...

The very next meeting, Mr. Y's Sign "had too little white in it!"

Nowhere in the code does it list anything about how to weigh or define the amount of white to be placed in the sign. Yet, Damon and Maud's cronies have been getting away with this type of back room dealing and abuse for years. Makes me wonder, if they are messing with these folks because they want some sort of payment to "fix the problem(s)."

Save this website, no one would even know of the abuses that happen in this Town.

Of course there is no law about color in Vienna.

Beyond that, look what these ding a lings have actually done by forcing certain colors on a whim on citizens?

Can anyone drive down Maple Avenue and see any rhyme or reason as to why the colors on signs and commercial structures exist? All of those colors as far as you can see were approved by the government!

Much of Vienna is freaking brown! Boy that Shirley Damon sure has an eye for aesthetics. Her canvas of downtown Vienna is beautiful.

As they have said for 20 years, Vienna is brown Town - after that gross brown/yellow puke shade they have mandated everywhere.

Historic Vienna wrote:

There are (3) lawsuits pending against the Town of Vienna regarding their historic district

To which I say:

Good. If the law is being broken, then sue.

I note, however, that you have not indicated what these three suits are about. Do they have anything directly to do with signs which is what we have been discussing? Are you perhaps a party to any of these lawsuits, and thus you have an axe to grind?

By the way, I do not even know Maud. I am, however, very flattered to know that I am capable of somehow knowing and/or sensing exactly what her party line is without having ever met the woman in my life. What a talent I have that I was not even aware of!

How would you, were you in charge, handle signs and building design and parking lots and other zoning-type issues?

Historic Vienna wrote:

Can anyone drive down Maple Avenue and see any rhyme or reason as to why the colors on signs and commercial structures exist? All of those colors as far as you can see were approved by the government!

Much of Vienna is freaking brown! Boy that Shirley Damon sure has an eye for aesthetics. Her canvas of downtown Vienna is beautiful.

As they have said for 20 years, Vienna is brown Town - after that gross brown/yellow puke shade they have mandated everywhere.

To which I say:

The "brown" and boring sign thing is most likely, as in most other jurisdictions, not the plan of the town government, but rather the brainchild of the developers of the properties. Almost every shopping center, anywhere, has the same brown or gray scheme with backlit letters on sickly yellow or white plastic, and all tenants must comply.

These business interests come up with these plain and pitiful designs that are most certainly not offensive or garish, and since they are not, it is difficult for any board of review to reject them even if they do not like them. Boards of review thus have, at times, become trapped within their own guidelines and rules about not wanting anything "outrageous" or garish.

So, perhaps something in the town code to disallow brown, gray or sickly yellow or white colors in signs would be a good idea, eh? Of course, then all the folks who like those colors would be up in arms, which would mean all the shopping center developers.

You just cannot please everyone.

"The "brown" and boring sign thing is most likely, as in most other jurisdictions, not the plan of the town government, but rather the brainchild of the developers of the properties."

Nice try. No banana. You are very wrong. Result of Maud and your boss. Go read Town minutes and stop being intellectually lazy.

BTW, where do you get these half-baked opinions from? You talk with authority, but factually have no clue.

Historic Vienna sez in reference to brown signs in Vienna:

Nice try. No banana. You are very wrong. Result of Maud and your boss.

To which I respond:

Please see this post to the original thread that started all of this. From "my fanny," May 31:

"I voted for Maud so you know how old I am. I am also old enough to remember when the only sign color that was acceptable to the board was Oxford Brown."

Apparently the brown thing is not, in fact, attributable to Ms. Damon AND Ms. Robinson as you appear to claim with factuality. It probably predated at least Ms. Damon's participation on that board from the look of that post.

Maud and her dead husband created this silly commercial ARB with no rules. That Board is responsible for Brown Town. Your boss is either incompetent or corrupt and when you stop being lazy (that is if you were ever serious about truth to begin with) you will read and listen to Town Minutes. You would only have to listen to a few meetings to see the liberties your boss takes. She is gross in her Vienna political behavior.

The same reason here. This is exactly why the TOV doesn't want to televise their meetings, when they can obviously afford it. They don't want anyone to see their abuses, They want to keep running the TOV like when C, Robinson was in power, corruption, abuses, and election fraud, etc.

Re: "The "brown" and boring sign thing is most likely, as in most other jurisdictions, not the plan of the town government, but rather the brainchild of the developers of the properties. Almost every shopping center, anywhere, has the same brown or gray scheme with backlit letters on sickly yellow or white plastic, and all tenants must comply."

You simply do not know the facts. These brown signs have nothing to do with the "the brainchild of the developers of the properties."

It was Maud, and still is. She has been involved with TOV decisions long before her being appointed to council.

And your comments: "Almost every shopping center, anywhere, has the same brown or gray scheme with backlit letters on sickly yellow or white plastic, and all tenants must comply..."

This has nothing to do with the landowners, tenants, or citizens. All you have to do is sit through some of the meetings, and you will see what isn't printed in the minutes, or press, or official TOV newsletters. No television either.

Maud wanted TOV to be something akin to Hilton Head with the same color scheme, subdued browns. If you don't believe me, just ask her. She will tell you openly that this is what she thinks Vienna should be like. And to reject a sign simply because Damon thinks its ugly, doesn't fly. I have seen "people she doesn't like go before her and get an earful, and rejections, even when there was nothing wrong with their sign. So when you allow such decisions to be made without objective guidelines, appropriate codes or laws to follow, abuses will exist. Ask yourself, why did Maud push through the decision making of having all the "Historic District signs put up around our neighborhood, when clearly more than 80% of the people that came before her stated that they did not want the signs put up?"

Dig deeper. Maud is not an ethical person. She's mean spirited, hateful, and vengeful. Don't believe? Just sit behind any of the meetings she "owns" and see how she yells at her appointees when they try and make their own decisions. You call that good government?

I don't. This town deserves much better. Don't hold your breath to see if Dellinger opens up and tries to express his own ideas. If he tries to come out and include all of Maple Avenue in a vision, and actually fight for it, not like Edith Kelleher and Mike Polychrones, who simply came out with the party line, he will not last long. These two don't fight for anything, they are just seat warmers. Both of them want to stay on council, so they won't bite the hand that feeds them.

Don't believe me, sit through the meetings. Sorry you can't watch them on TV, or archived web footage like every other town in Virginia, you have to see it with your own eyes. Don't worry, no flashes in Council.

Maud may have won the last election, but at what cost? Election tampering is wrong, is a serious crime, and the fact that nothing has been done about it, does not mean they didn't do anything wrong, it simply means, there is a bigger problem we have to deal with. And this site and new found press interest from the Washington Post, the DC Examiner, and posters on this site are a step in the right direction into uncovering the plethora of problems and corruption this Garden Club Government has been getting away with for too long.

Deep Throat said:

And this site and new found press interest from the Washington Post, the DC Examiner, and posters on this site are a step in the right direction into uncovering the plethora of problems and corruption this Garden Club Government has been getting away with for too long.

I respond with:

I fully agree with you that the meetings of the Town Council should be televised.

I fully agree with you that the election process in terms of how the poll workers are selected is horrendous.

I disagree with many things the town has done in the past. You would be a bit surprised to discover how critical I have been of the town's actions on many fronts, but that is not the issue here, on this site, for me.

The issue here for me that gives me pause are the ad hominems, the insults that rain down almost immediately, the ridicule upon offering another take on an issue, and insinuations that a contrarian must be either dumb or ignorant does not know of what they speak.

All of these slings and arows are easy to hurl at participants in this forum when the hurlers are hiding behind pseudonyms and are anonymous. Were we to all gather together in order to have a dialog between ourselves in some venue, would all these folks come wearing masks or have paper bags over their heads so they could not be identified?

Historic Vienna posted:

There are (3) lawsuits pending against the Town of Vienna regarding their historic district.

I ask:

What does the term "pending" mean in this instance? Are you a party to these lawsuits? What do the "pending" lawsuits seek to accomplish in 100 words or less, please?

To Steve Rigby... You cannot get a free pass to just spew your misinformation and spin control and not expect to have critical posts in return, then go onto state that we are all being too cavalier with our slings and arrows. The truth may not feel good to you, and it may sting, but we are not being wrong in bringing it into the news front.

Deep Throat wrote:

To Steve Rigby... You cannot get a free pass to just spew your misinformation and spin control and not expect to have critical posts in return

My response:

Here we have another example of exactly what I have already pointed out regarding the crude and rude approaches taken on this website. Critical is one thing, arrogance and rudeness, the use of perjorative terms to describe someone because you disagree is another thing altogether, and there is one hell of a lot of that going on here, almost as if you are all mostly children, not adults.

You are claiming, erroueously, and without any substantiation, that my purpose in visiting this site was and is to, in your own words, "...to just spew your misinformation and spin control..."

No. I never visited this site and have never held any agenda whatsoever to be a spewer of misinformation or to enter into exercises of spin control.

This claim of spin control, in context, clearly implies that I am willingly, knowingly and with purpose working with and on the behalf of persons that you have arguments with. And I am not talking about the fact that I happen to simply be employed by someone that you despise.

This claim of spin control could not be further from the truth and I challenge you to show a scintilla of evidence to support this claim that I am, as has already been stated here, "in bed with the enemy." Again, none of this "you work for Shirley Damon" line of reasoning because that appears to be aimed at insinuating that I have no mind of my own and am but her little slave minion of one sort or another.

Oy Vey! Can't you people tell that Steve Rigby's goal is to distract and divert us from the real issues?

As a reminder:

1. We have a Town Council that was illegally elected to office.


2. We have a Town Council that has hired and appointed friends and family to positions of authority over town residents and the issues that affect our quality of life.


3. Our Town Council members have taken financial and other gifts from developers - then voted to approve said developers building projects.
4. We have a Town Council that doesn't take care of Vienna's basic needs, while misappropriating and wasting our tax dollars.


5. We have a Town Council that lives in the past and fails to plan for the future.

Under the Goober and Gomer heading the subject of Home Owner's associations came up. I believe they would be interesting under this category since they too are maintained by busy bodies. Case of a friend who sought out the paint code and repainted his door only to be threatened with a fine by the HOA. Friend had to explain that it was the same color but the old paint was faded and that was the reason it was redone. Another case where it took two weeks of trying to get in touch with the HOA representative regarding paint color. Worker was advised that the information was available at the local library. Then a similar case where when the HOA was reached the President said: "Oh, you could have painted it any color that was close". Reasonable and Unreasonable.

Pay Attention!!!, as with most others here, makes another assumption:

Oy Vey! Can't you people tell that Steve Rigby's goal is to distract and divert us from the real issues?

I say:

Yet another statement of conjecture. Ever since it was revealed that I work for Ms. Damon, the issue with me has not been with anything that I post, but rather that fact I post at all. The fact that I am who I am and the alleged serious "issue" of who I work for is now what has become paramount.

Woe be unto any town employee who has his or her paycheck signed by the devil incarnate herself who may post here. Surely to God, any one of them has to be the spawn of the devil and therefore a "dope," a "spewer of misinformation," "in bed with the enemy," "intellectually lazy," "doesn't know what he is talking about," and always and forever "wrong."

Historic Vienna and Deep Throat apparently believe that rudeness and name calling are tactics that can help them win rhetorical points. Those techniques are having the opposite effect. Congrats to Steve Rigby for his futile effort to speak dispassionately here. Best effort in a losing cause.

And OBTW: Are the sponsors of this blog the same people who wanted to rezone Historic Vienna so that they could build condos and/or townhomes there? The same people who got trounced in the recent local elections? Just wondering.

25-year resident glad you are here. You are right about the condos, read up.