Category: Dear Editor

Letters to the editor of local newspapers.

Why infrastructure matters

Infrastructure is more than highways and bridges anymore. In today’s world, it includes energy and water utilities, internet and cell phone service, health care, education, and the environment. It’s more complex and interrelated than it used to be.

Also, it’s more vulnerable to internal neglect as well as external attacks like the Texas power grid failure and the Colonial Pipeline ransom, respectively. Neglect of the former caused deaths and unnecessary hardship for Texas citizens. Tactical attacks on the latter caused inconvenience to East Coast states but also identified vulnerabilities to national security, to ourselves as well as those intending us harm.

These warning signs are obvious, or should be, to all elected representatives. Denial by Republicans, en masse, that there is a problem, or if there is then we should pay as little attention to it as possible to resolve it, is simply myopic. Even more so, it’s dangerous because propagating that thinking interferes with preventing the consequences we’ll inevitably have to solve in the near future at much greater cost, both human and financial. With Republican denial, the hazards have only increased in duration and intensity and I wonder if, as a country, we can survive the lack of fiscal morality that’s been displayed so far.

So-called financial conservatives are failing to make decisions in the best interest of the general public to mitigate the risks that are expected to be fulfilled in the future. Nothing we deal with today lasts forever. Everything we know and have contact with will wear out, erode, fracture, break down, stop working, and just die. The only thing we can do is to take care of it long enough so we don’t become its victims. If we can’t, or won’t, take care of infrastructure, replace it with something better. Somehow, the wealthy are able to get better service from Republican politicians than the rest of us. Instead, we the people are left behind to clean up after the roads buckle from heat and water resources get plagued with “colorful” algae blooms (if there’ll be any water available at all).

The Republican policy to minimize the risk while remaining reluctant to protect citizens is disturbing. Supporting a platform to cause self-harm is beyond comprehension. The addiction to short term gains blinds these elected “representatives” and their supporters to the magnitude of the losses that will need to be repaid. The most recent tragedy with the condominium collapse in Surfside, Florida is just another example of ignoring the consequences in favor of inaction.

How many catastrophes will it take before we all realize that policies need to be in place to make the best use of resources before disaster strikes? A simple analogy comes to mind: Do you make a habit of changing the oil in your car before or after the engine blows up? If infrastructure had a dashboard with a warning light, would we be ignoring it then too? As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what’s happening.

Stacy Briley
Zion Crossroads

This letter was previously published in the latest edition of the Central Virginian newspaper and is reprinted here with the author’s permission. 

Money shouldn’t be all that talks in politics

Should the people with the most money get to make the laws in Virginia?

There’s a cycle. In order to write laws, legislators need to be elected. They need money to get elected. It’s often the one with the most money that gets elected because they are able to get their name before more people. The corporations and industry lobbyists who give them money ask for laws that favor their business dealings in return.

The legislators say they don’t let these large campaign con-tributions influence their lawmaking, but how can you believe that? If they were not impacting legislation, why would they give candidates money?

Who is giving candidates money in Virginia? The candidates for the 56th district of the General Assembly show a marked contrast. From his own campaign finance reporting we see that John McGuire has taken in a considerable amount in donations from Dominion Energy and industry lobbying groups, such as the auto dealers association and beer wholesalers.

His opponent, Blakely Lockhart, on the other hand, is relying on small donations from ordinary people, and has pledged to refuse donations from Dominion.

Whose interests will be represented when bills are proposed and voted on? I want our lawmakers to work together to solve our problems without being under pressure to satisfy the demands of large donors.

Mary Kranz
Louisa

This letter was previously published in the latest edition of the Central Virginian newspaper and is reprinted here with the author’s permission. 

Frustrated with Supervisors

The Louisa County Board of Supervisors has demonstrated its inability to pursue the stated core value of stewardship in a number of ways. I expect it will continue on the path of spoiling and destroying the county’s resources to chase down the mythical beast called economic development. It’s likely that the quality for thinking ahead has never been a strong requirement to serve on the board. Otherwise, we would’ve had results better than we’ve seen.

Before going too far, let me clarify that the county’s resources include not only natural resources, but also tax dollars and the citizens that pay them. The supervisors have seen fit to lay waste to these categories. And, I’ll apologize if I missed some details along the way, but in general, Louisa County citizens have to pay closer attention to, and prioritize, those resources that are especially significant. In my opinion, that would be water.

Right now, it’s being squandered in the name of a promised economic
development that may likely not happen. At least not without placing
an excessive burden on the citizens. It wasn’t that long ago that the supervisors claimed to have hearings about the level of groundwater relative to Spring Creek.

Dr. Nick Evans, a recognized expert in hydrogeology, presented an understandable analytical explanation of the potential risks to the groundwater in the county. The supervisors obviously ignored that report – easy enough to to if it hadn’t been read – in favor of a more familiar “disunderstanding” offered by Pam Baughman, Louisa County Water Authority general manager. Despite her lack of technical expertise, the supervisors allowed her to make the defense for development anyway.

On May 20 of this year, The Central Virginian posted a warning on its Facebook page to run both the cold and hot water, until it was clear. There were no other details I could find about this incident but it should be counted as one indicator, among many, that the stewardship by the supervisors, foresight in particular, won’t be counted as a feature of a functioning board.

We have droughts and oppressive heat in other parts of the country. Around the world, actually. Somehow, the supervisors must’ve deliberated and voted that Louisa County is an exclusion zone from the perils of the rest of the world. That’s not only negligence, but arrogance as well.

The Nestle Company diverted water from the local citizens’ water supply in Michigan to operate its water bottling plant. The concern was focused on environmental impact of the water withdrawals and the impact of privatizing water resources.

The Bechtel Company devised a scheme where the citizens of Bolivia had to pay for rainwater they collected for personal use. This was in 2006. Fortunately, the citizens fought Bechtel and won.

The Timmons Group has been successful in influencing the supervisors to push forward projects that aren’t always in the best interest of Louisa County citizens. I keep waiting to see how long the supervisors persist in abusing the public before there’s an appropriate backlash.

Joe Mikolajczak
Gordonsville

This letter was previously published in the July 8, 2021 edition of the Central Virginian newspaper and is reprinted here with the author’s permission.

Bad Votes on Education Bills

Education is something Virginians really care about. Virginia Commonwealth University took a poll recently and found that 70 percent of Virginians think Virginia schools need more funding.

Louisa’s delegate in Richmond, however, consistently votes against issues the Virginia Education Association calls “crucial education bills.” In 2021, John McGuire voted against five of the six such bills in the House. Accordingly, the VEA gives our delegate a 17 percent score in supporting education.

The six bills included the following:
House Bill 1736 – School Nurse bill, McGuire voted against.
House Bill 1904 – Cultural Competency, McGuire voted against.
House Bill 2027 – Growth Assessment, McGuire voted for.
House Bill 2176 – Abusive Work Environment, McGuire voted against.
House Bill 2305 – Governor’s Schools, McGuire voted against.
House Bill 1257 – Standards of Quality, McGuire voted against.

On education, John McGuire earned a failing grade.

Jim Wolf
Louisa

This letter was previously published in the July 8, 2021 edition of the Central Virginian newspaper and is reprinted here with the author’s permission. 

Questions why MaGuire opposes the ERA

The 19th amendment to the Constitution, the one that gave women the right to vote, was passed on June 4th 1919. On this 102nd anniversary we still have not added the 28th amendment, the amendment that will give women equality of rights under the law.
 
75% of US citizens favor this amendment according to a recent poll by the Associated Press Center for Public Affairs. This includes a majority of both Republicans and Democrats. And yet our representative in the general assembly, John Maguire, voted against ratifying it. Fortunately, it passed last year without his vote and Virginia became the 38th state to say yes.
 

Why did he vote against it?

 Some say that women already have equal rights and that it’s already in some state constitutions. But states can change their constitutions. We need to make equality permanent. My mother remembers when women could not have a credit card in their own name, could not serve on a jury, and were denied many other things we consider unthinkable now. We don’t want to risk returning to those days.
 
So what’s the real reason? Does he not think women should have equal rights?
 
Fortunately we have a choice this November and can vote for Blakely Lockhart to represent the 56th district in Richmond. Her votes will represent the views of most of her constituents rather than the dictates of an extremist ideology.
 
Thank you,
 
Sara Macel
Louisa
This letter was previously published in the Central Virginian newspaper and is reprinted here with the author’s permission

County needs to slow down on business park 

I see in last week’s Central Virginian that Louisa County Economic Development Director Andy Wade is once again proposing that we spend $2.5 million to plan and buy easements for bringing utilities to the proposed Shannon Hill Business Park. He’s not only asking to put his request in the budget, he’s also asking to fast-forward the process so that the money would be available immediately rather than after July 1.

He is asking to spend this money for a project that has been dogged with problems. Parts of the due diligence report, on which further site study must be based and costs calculated, are not completed. We know this site has rugged terrain which will be a problem. These problems have not been solved and we have no information as to the cost.

Is this another government project where the taxpayers are seen as a bottomless pit whose money can be used so carelessly, without knowing the cost and feasibility of the project?

Just recently we saw what happened by pushing ahead with a plan in which we did not have all our ducks lined up. We put money into a pumping station on the James River at a location that was known to be the historic capital of the Monacans. We were warned that this would be a problem, but on the advice of our subcontractor, Timmons Group, we ignored that and plowed ahead until we were brought to heel by the Department of Historic Resources and the threat of overwhelming lawsuits. We lost the money we had put into the location.

 Timmons, the contractor who advised them to ignore the claims of the Monacans and hired unqualified people to try to get around laws regarding artifacts on historic sites, is the same contractor doing the engineering on this project. This should raise some eyebrows.

 We need to slow down. We do not know whether this park will be built. In every public hearing, the room has been filled with Louisa citizens saying, “We don’t want this kind of development in Louisa.” It’ It’s way too soon to commit more money to this project.

Mary Kranz
Louisa

This letter was previously printed in The Central Virginian newspaper and is reprinted here with the author’s permission.