Gloucester Supervisor Woodard files bankruptcy
Daily Press August 17, 2010
Aug. 17–GLOUCESTER — Supervisor Gregory Woodard is making $900 monthly payments to creditors and had the second mortgage on his home erased as part of a Chapter 13 bankruptcy he entered last year.
Woodard filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy in April 2009, according to court records filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Newport News. Woodard listed debts of $396,327 against assets of $304,361, court records show.
Under a Chapter 13 bankruptcy, debtors with a regular income who would like to pay all or part of their debts in installments over a period of time can file a payment plan. Woodard’s payment plan calls for him to have $900 a month be deducted form his salary by his employer, the Church of the Living Word, where he pastors.
Woodard and his wife, Eunice Woodard, are current on their monthly payments and have 21 months of payments left, said an attorney acting as a trustee in the bankruptcy.
Woodard is one of seven county supervisors in control of millions of dollars of Gloucester County money. He has recently criticized the Gloucester School Board for its decision in May to hand out $400 bonuses to employees from savings incurred over the course of the year, calling it a “reckless decision” and saying it shows the School Board is “inflating” budgets.
It’s prompted Woodard to call for the School Board to have its funding from the county changed from a lump sum to several categories, giving the Board of Supervisors more control over how the schools funds are spent. The Board of Supervisors are scheduled to vote on a change in the funding method at the Sept. 7 meeting.
“We can do better,” Woodard said.
But his own finances have been in disarray. His ongoing bankruptcy is the second time Woodard has filed for protection from creditors; in 1995 he filed a Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
Woodard did not respond to Daily Press e-mail and phone messages.
When he filed for bankruptcy on April 24, 2009, Woodard had fallen behind on payments for a $2,720 Tag Heuer watch he bought on Dec. 23, 2008, from a Newport News jeweler that financed a payment plan at 21 percent interest, court records show. He had also missed three payments of $1,581 on the mortgage on his home and four monthly payments of $607 on a second mortgage taken out in 2006.
The dismissal of the second mortgage was entered in U.S. Bankruptcy Court on June 22 and filed in Gloucester Circuit Court on July 28, court records show. The holder of the second mortgage, Bank of America, did not contest Woodard’s attempt to have the debt erased.
The value of Woodard’s home is $250,000 — less than the $258,000 he owes on the first mortgage, according to court records. The erasure of the second mortgage is “pretty standard” in bankruptcies, said R. Clinton Stackhouse Jr., the trustee in Woodard’s bankruptcy.
“There’s no equity in the house for that particular debt to attach to,” Stackhouse said.
Among the creditors Woodard initially listed in bankruptcy documents was Sands Anderson Marks & Miller, a law firm representing him after he had been indicted in 2008 in Gloucester on criminal charges by a special grand jury and citizens had filed a petition seeking his removal from office. Woodard’s legal bills, amounting to tens of thousands of dollars, were erased when he and three other supervisors voted last November to have Gloucester taxpayers pay them..
Woodard also listed personal loan and credit card debts of $32,687, court records show.
Woodard earns $3,033 a month in salary from his church and also receives a monthly housing stipend of $2,164, according to court records. In addition, he lists net wages of $570 a month from Gloucester County for serving as a supervisor and $180 a month as a Gloucester substitute teacher.
In July, Woodard and his wife traveled to a National Association of Counties convention in Reno, Nev. Gloucester taxpayers paid $2,215 for Woodard’s trip, according to county records. He paid $710 for his wife’s registration and airfare.
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