Editorial: Gaslighting permeating Purcellville

“Gaslight” was a film of the 1940’s in which a husband tried to convince his wife through the flickering of the ominous gas lighting that she was going mad; “losing it,” in today’s vernacular. The term has made it into the present-day to mean a manipulation the purpose of which is to make people believe something is true that, in fact, is not; a question as important today as it was in 1945 when Ingrid Bergman won the best actress Oscar for her performance as the wife in the film. 

Purcellville’s Vice Mayor Erin Rayner used the concept of gas lamp to describe the gas lighting she proposes to use in a revitalization, if one could be called that, of Purcellville’s Historic Downtown Area centered around 21st Street. She said she borrowed this idea from San Diego California’s Historic Downtown. Using a million-person metropolis as the model for a new gateway to a revitalized business section of small-town Purcellville is indeed a Brave New World. Rayner left open if and how Purcellville’s government would accomplish this and for whose benefit. 

One has to wonder whether the term gas lighting could also be used to describe what Mayor Stan Milan, Vice Mayor Erin Rayner, and Council Members Caleb Stought, Kevin Wright and Mary Jane Williams are advancing to justify a large increase—unprecedented might be a better word—of water and sewer rates. These double-digit rate increases over a period of years, certainly aren’t what any of these representatives proposed when they were running for election. We note that council members Chris Bertaut and Carol Luke opposed the new town budget, as well, lamenting in the strongest terms the haste in which the whole sorry mess was passed. 

Purcellville can continue to be a great small town while maintaining some fiscal prudence without dipping into its citizens’ pocket books with huge rate increases. The power to tax is a power that must be wisely used whether it is the taxation power or the power to raise rates on our basic necessities.

Are we dipping ever so slightly into hyperbole in linking gaslighting and this recent council’s actions? A resounding yes. But sometimes it is necessary to alert and be a watch dog on behalf of the town, its future, and its past.