COMMENTARY: On a Come-Here Meeting Born-Heres
Just outside Cape Charles, the wheat field has gone golden. (Photo by Sher Horosko)
By SHER HOROSKO
June 12, 2013
Outside my window, a fleece of gray wool covers the sky. A white ibis with her pinky-orange beak prowls the ground while a blue bird stands atop his new cedar house. The wheat field has gone golden. I came here a couple of weeks ago to fall into the arms of wonder. I haven’t been disappointed.
The stories of the “born-here’s” captivate me. Your language is filled with color and sound. You may not even know this is so, because you’re steeped in a lifetime of conversation that draws from the storm and bounty of the land and water, that is tuned to the rhythms of harvest and migration.
But I know a living language when I hear it. I came to Cape Charles with ears used to listening to the thin, plain, read “dull” language of people who live as far away from the natural world as they can be. They don’t know when the flounder is running or the sweet corn will be picked. They buy food from six grocery stores, not one. [Read more…]
COMMENTARY: Wake Up and Trim the Fat, Cape Charles!
By DEBORAH BENDER
May 18, 2013
It has come to my attention that the Town of Cape Charles is having budget problems. There is not enough money and too many expenses.
In order to help, I did a little homework. And after speaking with the Town of Onancock’s administrative assistant, I have some advice: Trim the fat, Cape Charles.
According to the 2010 census, Cape Charles has 1,009 full-time residents. The town of Onancock has 1,263 full-time residents.
The Town of Cape Charles has 10 employees in the administrative offices at a salary cost of $509,875.
The town of Onancock has 3 employees in the town office for a total of $195,000 in salaries. That is $314,875 less spent on employees in Onancock than in Cape Charles.
How does Onancock manage with such a small staff? For starters, their town manager is also their town attorney, thus avoiding the price tag for a town lawyer.
The two people who work in the office do all the billing, accounting, customer service, and take turns taking minutes at the town meetings.
They run the entire town office with just three employees! Onancock does not have a town planner, a treasurer, an accountant, a building code enforcer, a community recreation activities director, or an assistant clerk. [Read more…]
LETTER: Thanks for Supporting Crabby Blues Festival
May 7, 2013
DEAR EDITOR:
First of all, thanks to the over 1,000 persons who attended the Crabby Blues Festival on a sunny but blustery day at Cape Charles’ Central Park to benefit the Cape Charles Christian School.
Our school is thriving in no small part thanks to the generosity of a host of people year round and to sponsors who make fundraisers like this one possible.
Using the park is just another way the school maintains its connection to the fabric of the Town; our kids also helped move the library materials to their new location just the day before the festival.
Thanks for the draw provided by the diverse talents of John Baldwin, Johnny Mud, the Cape Charles Band, the Shy Teds, Frank Russell and The Fish Band, Scott & Melinda, and Heather and the Oyster Boys, all of whom generously donated their time, and to Heather Travis who arranged for them to do so.
Thanks to the donors of items to the silent auction and to Leslie Savage for her hard work in pulling in an excellent variety of items. [Read more…]
COMMENTARY: Cut Taxes to Reflect Lower Property Values
By TIMOTHY J. KRAWCZEL
April 29, 2013
Ronald Reagan famously said, “Government is not the solution, government is the problem.”
A Cape Charles town employee told me last summer, “We don’t need anything except money.”
The thinking seemed to be: Money is supreme, run government like a business, we know more about it than you, don’t argue with us, we’re technocrats.
A few weeks ago, my wife and I bought a new fax/printer. It cost $125 and is better than the one we paid $400 for four years ago. Why? Because when there is competition, prices go down and quality goes up. That is the free market.
If the cost of a product is too high or the quality is too low, a consumer is free to buy somewhere else. Business responds by cutting costs and improving quality.
Not so with our Town government. It has a monopoly on service, and the Town Council year after year has allowed monopoly power on setting prices, i.e. tax revenues.
The taxpayer has no choice — pay the tax or face a penalty and a property lien.
This year the money numbers are indisputable. Real estate assessed values are down 20-38 percent, depending on the source of the estimate. Undeniably, the sale value of real estate in Cape Charles has declined from the last assessment five years earlier.
In real terms, many taxpayers have seen the market value of their investments evaporate, and some have lost their life savings.
But what is happening with the cost of local government? Has the Town reduced the burden of taxes in response to lower property values? No. All the Town taxpayers have gotten is a flaccid discussion of whether taxes will go up or stay the same. There has been no discussion of actually cutting tax rates, — of making choices that every homeowner and investor has to make, namely, how to do more with less. [Read more…]
LINDEMAN: Bless Those Worms!
Where would the New Roots Youth Garden be without blessed worms? Kaylen Fitchett picks tomatoes during last year’s harvest on Randolph Avenue and Fig Street. (Wave photo)
By BRUCE LINDEMAN
Cape Charles Wave
April 22, 2013
Last year, I got to meet one of the volunteers of the New Roots Youth Garden (NRYG), Tammy Holloway. Through my story about picking pecans one Sunday morning, Tammy inquired about the location of these trees that were so giving this past year so that the NRYG kids could pick some for the holiday pecan pie sale.
Having watched the NRYG take shape with interest since its inception, I thought that helping those kids any way I could would be fun. Gardening. Kids. Education. All good stuff.
Then I met Tammy and her husband, Jim, and realized: I really need to help these people!
If you’ve met Tammy, you’ll understand. She and Jim have quickly become stewards of one of the most amazingly beautiful homes in Cape Charles, now Bay Haven Inn, but also active supporters of all things Cape Charles. They truly get what this place is all about and have poured their hearts and souls in to making our little town a better place for us all. [Read more…]
LETTER: Park Restroom Needs Better Design and Location
April 15, 2013
DEAR EDITOR,
I am writing to express concern regarding a proposed public restroom for Cape Charles Central Park from a risk management perspective, a functional perspective, and an aesthetic perspective.
While I do not disagree that public restroom facilities would be an enhancement to Central Park, I hope that decision-makers will select a more appropriate site and more architecturally appealing style for the project.
Aspects of concern include the following associated risks and functional challenges:
1. Flooding of facility: A number of areas within Central Park and the surrounding streets are flood-prone due to lack of drainage. The proposed location is adjacent to one of the areas most prone to large pools of standing water, and the foundation trenches already dug are largely filled with standing water and a substantial, virtually constant, area of standing water threatens encroachment into the footprint.
Dangers associated include:
— Public health risk from unclean facilities contaminated with bacteria-laden, stagnant water;
— Public health risk arising from proximity to a breeding ground for mosquitoes;
— Danger of slips, trips, and falls from known hazards, i.e. moisture on walking surfaces and higher potential of algal growth on walking surfaces constantly exposed to standing water as well as slips on icy patches in cold weather.
2. Potential for assaults and other illegal transactions in an unattended facility;
3. Public nuisance and public health risk if facilities are not maintained on a daily basis and locked overnight. The question of adequate funding to support cleaning, maintenance, and supplies should be addressed before the construction is approved.
4. Location relative to need: As a neighbor to Central Park, I have had the opportunity to observe traffic in and around the park. It appears that the area in most need of restroom facilities on a year-round basis is the children’s play area near the old Cape Charles school building. Parents and children are frequent visitors to this area. Tennis courts are also located in this area, although tennis court usage seems much lower than the former basketball courts. As proposed, the restroom facilities would be quite a distance removed from the area of need. [Read more…]
COMMENTARY:
Why I Went to Court over the Park Bathrooms
Site of future Central Park bathrooms. Due to flooding conditions, bathroom floor will be elevated to height of wooden crossmember behind yellow tape. Access will be via a 60-foot winding ramp. (Wave photo)
By DONALD RILEY
April 10, 2013
Do the people of Cape Charles want a bathroom in the park that mirrors a 1980s sewer pump station?
Do we want a bathroom that is closed in the winter? Does no one live in Cape Charles in the winter?
Do we want bathrooms with two stalls on each side? Are there safety concerns about that?
Those are some questions Citizens for Central Park might have considered when they decided to construct a bathroom in Central Park. They might have polled the residents of Cape Charles to learn their thoughts.
The location also could have been the subject of community input. Do we want the bathroom at the east end of the park, far from the children’s playground in what becomes a lake when it rains? The floor of the bathroom house will be three feet above the ground in order to avoid flooding. Do we want that kind of towering bathroom? [Read more…]
EDITORIAL: The Cost of Lawsuits
April 1, 2013
Last week somebody posted the following notice on the Cape Charles Post Office telephone pole:
DID YOU KNOW??
ATTENTION
So far our town of Cape Charles has
spent $76,386.01 of your money for
attorney’s fees to respond to the lawsuit
from Old School Cape Charles.
You and every other town resident will
pay for this foolish lawsuit!!!
Ask the Wave . . . why they didn’t
publish this!
So far, no one has asked the WAVE — but if they did we would refer them to our March 4 analysis, where we wrote: Records show that since July 1 of last year, the Town has spent almost $64,000 on the [Old School lawsuits].
There were legal costs prior to July 1, so the anonymous telephone poll poster probably got it right: total attorney fees of $76,386 and, to be precise, one penny.
If the unknown informant had wanted that fact circulated to the most possible people, he or she could have written a letter to the editor at the WAVE. We would have published it. (Of course, that would have required the writer to have the courage to identify himself.)
But there was even another way: send it for publication in the ANONYMOUS section of the WAVE. We would have published that as well.
Regardless, the unknown writer raises a salient, if unintended, point: why does the Town of Cape Charles, with a population of 1,000, spend so much money on lawyers?
The $76,000 is not the total cost for Old School legal fees. As the WAVE has reported, the Town paid its own attorney $15,000 just to review the contract to convey the Old School to a developer for a price of $10.
That should make the Guinness World Records: legal costs were 1,500 times the sales price.
Worse, Town Council proceeded to ignore the Town attorney’s advice to require a performance bond and a buyback option in the contract. So if the developers fail to carry out their plan to convert the school and parkland into a 17-unit apartment building, there is no penalty, and nothing the Town can do about it.
Except, perhaps, sue. And at what cost?
The $15,000 legal fee also seems money badly spent considering that the Town attorney failed to raise a red flag over language in the contract stating that Purchaser shall not operate the Project as a low-income housing facility under any state or federal program. That got the Town in hot water with fair housing advocates and, as a result, state legislators. After the building was already sold, the Town revised the contract to drop the offending language.
So, adding the $15,000 fee to review the Old School contract to the $76,000 to answer the lawsuit brings the legal cost to the taxpayer to $91,000. [Read more…]
