COMMENTARY: Old School Gets Its Day in Supreme Court

By DEBORAH BENDER

October 14, 2013

Tomorrow the Old School Cape Charles civic group will get a second chance at justice. On Tuesday, October 15, the Virginia Supreme Court will hear an appeal of a lower court decision allowing the historic school in Central Park to be given to a developer.

Those who have been reading the Wave know the sad story of the Town’s secret negotiations and purported “sale” of the school for $10. One can barely buy lunch for $10, but our Town Council sold valuable town property –including the Town’s only two basketball courts — for that “price.”

But it gets worse: Not only did they sell the school for $10, they then gave the developer $41,000 in insurance money for earthquake damage not noticed until three months after the fact.

The Town bumbled about for several months trying to issue a legally acceptable rezoning and conditional use permit, which they were never quite able to do.

The Town signed a contract and enacted an ordinance to sell the school to Echelon Resources. But when Mayor Sullivan signed over the deed, it was to Charon Ventures — an entity that was never mentioned in the contract or the Town ordinance.

Town residents who value public property and care about the local children thought better of the school than to give it away. They formed a group and named it Old School Cape Charles. Old School set to work alerting townspeople through signs, leaflets, and petitions. In reaction, Town Planning Commissioners have spent months working on the Town’s sign ordinance to ban protest signs.

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Over 300 people signed a petition asking Town Council to negotiate with Old School Cape Charles, but Town Council never negotiated.

Regrettably, Town Council has also driven a stake into the town body politic by pitting Historic District residents against the residents of our gated community, Bay Creek, who have their own private amenities.

The Old School group thought we would have our day in court last January and be able to demonstrate that the Town disregarded its own rules and Comprehensive Plan in “selling” the school. But justice was aborted before the issues were even raised, as Circuit Court Judge Revel Lewis decided that we had “no standing.”

Ironically, we are residents of the Town of Cape Charles, whereas the purchasers of our historic old school do not live in town, do not buy or sell in our town, and have demonstrated no concern for our town or its children.

We asked the developer if we could at least use the outside basketball court until he began work on the building, but with total disregard for both local children and visitors, he said no. The Town removed the basketball hoops on December 26, 2012, and the court has stood unused ever since.

We hope that the Virginia Supreme Court will recognize that citizens of this great land should have “standing” to pursue justice for themselves and their children. That is the right thing to do.

Deborah Bender is the community relations spokesperson for Old School Cape Charles LLC.

Submissions to COMMENTARY are welcome on any subject relevant to Cape Charles. Opinions expressed are those of the writer and not necessarily of this publication.

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One Response to “COMMENTARY: Old School Gets Its Day in Supreme Court”

  1. Wayne Creed on October 15th, 2013 12:24 pm

    As the leaves finally begin to turn, and Halloween creeps up on us, the football season for my son Joey and his buddies is also coming to an end. At this point, they hang up the cleats until next summer, and turn their attention to the basketball court. In years past, they would amble over to the old school and try to shake the rust off with a few sloppy dribbles and very sad attempts at jump shots. The good news is that they really couldn’t get much worse, but by banging the ball off the rims at the old school, a marginal bit of improvement was beginning to take hold.

    Until this year. Where exactly are the kids supposed to practice now? For OSCC Cape Charles, this is the major point—not so much property or money, but the loss of public space that was supposed to be reserved for these kids.

    Thanks again to Ms Bender for her continuing integrity and for fighting the good fight. This town needs her more than ever. It should be noted that OSCC did not have deep pockets, and carrying this scheduled 12 round fight the distance has been very expensive (physically, spiritually, socially and monetarily). Unlike the Town, we could not reach into the tax payer pockets (how much $$$ was taken from us?) to finance our fight against governmental abuse, aggression, civil rights violations and racism, but had to pay for it the old school way, by selling good old Eastern Shore oysters, clams and Chesapeake Bay blue crabs (and a little beer).

    Hopefully, the Supreme Court will understand just who we are what this fight has always been about, and will do the right thing by setting a precedent for the rights of all citizens in Towns across Virginia.