Category: Blue Louisa

News and views contributed or curated by our members.

Business park plan is ‘sloppy and disingenuous’

I was unaware of the Aug. 17 presentation to the Louisa County Board of Supervisors by Timmons Group on the Shannon Hill Business Park study and was glad to read The Central Virginian’s report.

Timmons expressed great confidence that the kinds of buildings they propose for the property will be in high demand in an era of increased e-commerce. Are they not aware that abandoned malls and other failed commercial sites, already complete with infrastructure and utilities, are practically begging Amazon and others to repurpose their locations for their fulfillment and data centers?

And what about costs for us to provide the same?  Along with Andy Wade, Louisa County’s economic development director, what Timmons was selling on Aug. 17 is more of the same fantasy they have sold to our county through this whole expensive fiasco.

To start, if you place the building layout published in the CV from that meeting next to a topographic map of the property, it will reveal a good bit of fantasy. The single largest building, labeled Logistics and Distribution, located far from the park entrance, is directly on top of the steepest slopes of the property, with elevation changes of at least 25 feet throughout. What will it cost to get that site flat enough for a million-square-foot building plus parking on narrow ridge terrain? The rest is not better. You wonder about the costs of working through the state Department of Environmental Quality for the dozens of large culverts and maybe a bridge or two needed to span the 25-foot-deep creek bottoms for tractor trailers.

Timmons says Louisa needs to spend $18 million to bring water from Ferncliff to a new “elevated” water tower. Water to be supplied by a source with as yet no location, no budget and no permit. The design cost for the water tower is more than a third of the total cost of Timmons’ current contract. It is nearly three times the total amount budgeted for “master planning.”

To my knowledge there has been zero outreach to the public in the development of these plans. The original contract called for two “stakeholders’ meetings.” The first included only one Louisa County person. A second was set well before the COVID-19 crisis but was canceled without notice or explanation. In the contract, Timmons was to “share results of preliminary master planning” and begin the preliminary engineering report which would be the guide for at least three alternative master plans.

Timmons has proposed only one “final master plan” as outlined on Aug. 17. No preliminary engineering report or any other report has been published, much less reviewed, by the public.

Is this because what Timmons persuaded the county to buy will be enormously expensive to develop? Under the contract, Timmons must provide “likely” professional “cost considerations” to build any project they design. The huge extent of those likely costs would have been evident to anyone who has seen the property. The contract says that the County, not Timmons, was responsible for convening and running the scheduled stakeholder meetings. They bailed.

This is not responsible leadership. It is not careful stewardship of our money, resources and credit. No one, certainly not Timmons, should be paid for work this sloppy and disingenuous.

Surely, we can do better.

William Hale

Louisa

[CV] Hale Business Park Letter

Our Nation Needs a Leader to ‘turn on the lights’

”We have nothing to fear, but fear itself.”

—Franklin Delano Roosevelt

In the darkest days of the Great Depression, after the stock market crashed, half the banks had failed and 15 million people were out of work as the economy bottomed out, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt acted boldly to address the uncertainties and fear that gripped people. He united Americans.

Today, we are struggling with a situation similar to, but in some ways worse than, what was faced by FDR. Thanks to the worldwide pandemic and the administration’s response, not only are more than 30 million people out of work, but more than 180,000 are dead. Instances of police brutality have sparked nationwide protests.

Instead of promoting unity, however, President Donald Trump on Fox News’ Laura Ingraham show recently talked of people in the “dark shadows” who are “controlling” presidential candidate Joe Biden and “thugs” in dark clothing flying into Washington, D.C., to stage violence. On the same show he claimed, falsely, that Portland, Oregon, had been burning for years.

Asserting that America has descended into chaos and its cities are burning, Trump wants us to forget that if this is true, it is happening on his watch.

To anyone old enough to remember the 1967 Detroit riots, the unrest that followed the 1968 murder of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. or the 1992 police beating of Rodney King, today’s Portland and Kenosha events barely register on the chaos scale.

Trump’s insertion of multi-agency federal troops and mercenaries inflamed these situations, not only in Portland but also right across from the White House at St. John’s Church near Lafayette Square. None of his actions have contributed to public safety.

And what are we to make of Trump, or Culpeper’s Jon Russell, implying that Black Lives Matter marches cause suburban women and children to quake in fear? This is an old dog whistle, which was employed by racist real-estate agents and bankers in the 1950s and ‘60s to keep minorities out of white neighborhoods.

Most of Culpeper’s neighborhoods are a rich combination of races, creeds, ages and political viewpoints. Today’s “suburbanites” are nothing like those of 70 years ago.

This summer’s Black Lives March in Culpeper and hundreds more in cities and towns all across American were nonviolent examples of our right to peaceably assemble, guaranteed by our Constitution.

Some who may have been fearful appeared to be the St. Louis couple who brandished firearms at peaceful marchers as they passed their door, and the 17-year-old in Kenosha who killed two protesters and wounded a third, in cold blood. The St. Louis couple was made heroes at the Republican National Convention. And Trump has defended, rather than condemned, 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse.

Many parents have had to deal with their children’s fears of “monsters under the bed.” The patient parent turned on the lights to show that there was nothing there.

Now, America needs a responsible adult in the Oval Office who will “turn on the lights” and express empathy, inspire hope and faith in the future, and marshal the nation’s considerable resources to defeat the pandemic, attack racial and economic inequities, and restore America’s place in the world.

In contrast to Republican assertions, Joe Biden has responded to these crises as a unifier who understands the need to govern for the common good. He recently remarked, “I want a safe America, safe from COVID, safe from crime and looting, safe from racially motivated violence, safe from bad cops.”

Biden promotes law and order. He clearly stated, “Rioting is not protesting. Looting is not protesting. It is lawlessness plain and simple, and those who do it should be prosecuted.”

Vote like your lives depend upon it, because they do.

 

David Reuther

[Reuther] Turn On the Lights

Help for Farmers

Those of us who count on the productivity of the soil for our livelihood could use some help. We want to implement practices that make our soil healthier and stave off some of the effects of the severe weather we have been having. We know that this will increase profitability by making the soil more resilient in the face of erratic rainfall and extreme temperatures, and better able to support our crops We choose the best soil conservation practices we can afford.

But that’s the catch. Many of these healthy soil practices are out of reach financially for farmers, especially those with smaller operations. Farming is already capital intensive and we often don’t have enough cash left over to do what we know is right.

A couple of weeks ago our congresswoman, Abigail Spanberger, came to Louisa County to discuss this issue. She visited a farm owned by Dustin Madison, just north of the Town of Louisa. While there, she announced a new bill to help farmers use more conservation practices. The Healthy Soil, Resilient Farmers Act of 2020 aims to ensure that FSA loans are available to all farmers who want to do what we know is the right thing.

Her opponent, Nick Freitas, courts the support of the Farm Bureau. I’m wondering what he may have actually done in his current position to deserve that. Nick talks ideology, while Abigail is out here working for us. It looks to me like Abigail is the one walking the walk. A member of the House Agriculture Committee, she is using her position to help Louisa’s farmers. I’m voting for Abigail again in November, so she can continue her good supportive work for us.

Pam Dawling

Printed previously in The Central Virginian and reprinted here with the permission of the author.

Find Somebody Better for Governor

To the editor:

Last Friday state Senator Amanda Chase attended a pep rally at a private home in Mineral. Her purpose was to hit up unsuspecting Republican donors to fund her bid for the governor’s mansion in 2021. In pictures of the event, no one is wearing a mask or social distancing. I wonder if the Covid-19 numbers will go up in our county in the next two weeks.

Our country is in an unparalleled health and economic crisis. Regardless of your political affiliation, I hope we can all agree that our leaders need to be calm and make well measured decisions. Chase’s behavior has shown that she is the polar opposite of a competent leader.

For those unfamiliar with her, she earned the moniker #parkingprincess in March 2019 when she threw a temper tantrum in the General Assembly parking lot. She tried to park in a restricted area and an officer asked her to move her car. She responded by berating the officer with racial epithets and made denigrating comments about the clerk who was allowed to park there.

When interviewed about it later, she first denied cursing and then admitted it. The scene she caused prevented schoolchildren from exiting their buses for a field trip. She exclaimed, “Don’t you know who I am?”

In May of 2019 Chase used the Capitol Police for transportation so frequently during the General Assembly session that its chief asked the House and Senate clerks to remind lawmakers about accepted procedures. Chase received more than 20 police transports during the General Assembly session—all of them outside the established protocol outlined in a Jan. 24 email from Senate Clerk Susan Clarke Schaar to senators that “the Capitol Police staff are not to be used by members or staff for personal transport.” She also utilized the Capitol Police as her personal service in the fall of 2018 when the General Assembly was not in session.

The day after her appearance in Mineral, Chase attended another fundraiser event with musician Ted Nugent, an admitted pedophile. He wrote a song entitled Jailbait with lyrics like, “Well I don’t care if you’re just 13, You look too good to be true.” He also adopted a teenager with the express purpose of having sex with her. Ted purposely soiled his pants for a week in order to avoid the Vietnam draft. Why in the world would a gubernatorial candidate associate herself with someone like this? Is she that hard up for money?

It seems that Chase is desperate for the attention that the reality TV era has made seem commonplace. But this entitled and unhinged woman is the last thing the hardworking people of Louisa need in the governor’s mansion. We need a strong, decent and hardworking leader and I sincerely hope that the Republican Party is able to field such a candidate for governor in 2021.

Aleta Strickland
Louisa

This letter was previously published in The Central Virginian and is republished here with the permission of the author.

Payroll Tax Cut Imperils Seniors

Older Americans like myself depend on the Social Security checks we receive every month. For the past 85 years, the Social Security program has enabled us to retire with dignity. It’s our insurance policy. We paid into it. We count on it. Even so, the president made an announcement last Saturday that if re-elected, he will seek permanent cuts to the payroll tax that funds Social Security.

Our 7th district Congresswoman, Abigail Spanberger, has consistently worked to keep Social Security and Medicare functioning, pushing back against such threats. She has always focused on working with both Republicans and Democrats to maintain the benefits that employees have earned. We must support her efforts in the upcoming election.

Mary Kranz

This letter was previously published in The Central Virginian and is republished here with the permission of the author.