LETTER: 9/11 Juxtaposed Man’s Inhumanity with Humanity

August 25, 2013

DEAR EDITOR,

Last week my spouse and I took a mini-vacation to the Inner Harbor area of Baltimore. While walking over to visit the National Aquarium I noticed a pile of twisted steel girders outside a tall building. The building turned out to be the Baltimore World Trade Center and the girders were part of a memorial to the 68 Marylanders who perished as a result of the 9/11 tragedy.

While I continued walking, my mind returned to what I was doing and where I was on that fateful day. Whenever I think back, it is always with an overriding sense of sadness.

[Read more…]

LETTER: Save the Bottlenose Dolphins

August 24, 2013

DEAR EDITOR,

Over the last few months this summer, many of us that have been out on the water have been discovering dead dolphins, stranded in and around the Bay. What at first appeared to be a local event has turned out to be more widespread. Bottlenose dolphins are being found stranded all up the mid-Atlantic coast from North Carolina to Maine, with at least 124 strandings (45 possible deaths) reported since July, a death rate seven times higher than normal.

This has led the National Marine Fisheries Service to declare a federal UME, or “unusual mortality event.” At the top of the list of possible causes is a measles-like infection called “morbillivirus,” which has been associated with previous sickness events of dolphins and seals. Since mid-summer, marine science organizations such as the Virginia Aquarium, the Marine Mammal Stranding Center in New Jersey, and Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation in New York began documenting an increase in bottlenose dolphin strandings along the mid-Atlantic coast, and these strandings are continuing into late summer.

So far, all ages of bottlenose dolphin strandings have been reported. The NMFS reports, however, that there are no unifying necropsy findings aside from some dolphins having been found with pulmonary lesions. Preliminary testing of tissues from one dolphin indicates possibly a morbillivirus infection, although it is too early to say whether this is the cause of the UME. [Read more…]

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Town Businesses Urge Halt to Highway Sewer Line

By GEORGE SOUTHERN
Cape Charles Wave

August 23, 2013

Just as Town and County authorities were running full speed ahead on plans to pipe sewage from Route 13 into Cape Charles, the Town Business Association has asked Mayor Dora Sullivan “to put the matter on hold.”

Vocal members of the Cape Charles Business Association had already told Mayor Sullivan what they thought of the plan at their meeting July 23. But now Association President George Proto has put it in writing.

“There does not appear to be any significant benefit to the Town of Cape Charles from the proposed connection,” Proto wrote the mayor August 19. Instead, “There does appear to be a potential long term downside for the town in terms of the availability of future capacity, even with plant expansion, to contain demand as the town expands through the build out of Bay Creek and as more properties in town are renovated and occupied.”

Business Association Vice President Andy Buchholtz put it more bluntly to the mayor last month: Providing sewerage to the highway “totally promotes growth on [Route] 13,” he said. “The County should be helping drive business into town.”

President Proto listed the following reasons not to pipe county sewage to Cape Charles:

— Based on discussions with Assistant Town Manager Bob Panek, the reduction in sewer charges to Town residents “is believed to be minimal”;

— No technical benefits (such as reduction in noxious odors from the treatment plant) have been identified;

— Accepting sewage from out of town “might cause us to run out of capacity even with expansion,” which “could unduly burden future generations financially”;

— A more cost-effective solution for the County is “to design an expandable county system that could better meet future needs”;

— And finally, a survey of 64 property owners on Route 13 “showed minimal interest (5 yes’s and 4 maybe’s out of 64 surveyed).”

“Given these concerns the business association urges the town council to put the matter of the PSA [Public Service Authority] line on hold and not to proceed with further work which would commit the town and expend county funds,” Proto wrote. [Read more…]

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LETTER: ‘The Old Man and the Fountain’

August 22, 2013

DEAR EDITOR,

The street has its lights, garbage cans, and sewers, but is rare to find a water fountain in Cape Charles.

Imagine an old man nearing 90 in front of the Palace Theatre on a blistering summer day, filling the air with music of many years ago, accompanied by the sounds of water spurting at the top of the fountain and returning from the bottom in a perpetual ecstasy of affection with itself.

The mosquitos and flies biting those with short sleeves, the gang of motorcyclists wheeling by with blaring muffler pipes, muzzling the lyrical melodies specified in an instrument of pride from the gray baldish instrumentalist perhaps making his last performance before he joins the angels of strings.

Inside the climate-controlled theatre, a proud gentleman on stage in uniform of a Confederate soldier reads letters from loved ones. They were fighting a war between the American states that destroyed millions of lives.

The old man standing outside in front of his vehicle with license plate CV-12 (the identification of the USS Hornet aircraft carrier of World War II that engaged the enemy in the Pacific Ocean) received three war medals to save the human race from domination.

Now less than a million remain out of 18 million that served gallantly in the war. [Read more…]

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COMMENTARY: 26 Years Later, School Fight Continues

By LENORA MITCHELL

August 21, 2013

Looking through some old files recently, I reflected on how much time I had spent being a community servant, running up and down Highway 13 attending board and committee meetings in Northampton and Accomack counties. And then I found a file that documented the demise of the Cape Charles school system 26 years ago.

I was appointed to the Cape Charles School Board in 1982. As I looked at documents from the United States Justice Department Civil Rights Division, Northampton County School Board, the county superintendent, Cape Charles School Board, the town superintendent, the State Board of Education, and numerous letters from attorneys involved in the case, including from the Department of Justice, I remembered how long and intensive the battle was to retain the independent school system in Cape Charles, along with ownership of the building.

The battle started civilly, but then it turned into a major war. The Town was divided and there were heated exchanges wherever you went, especially at the Town Council meetings.

The Cape Charles School Board accused the Northampton County School System of violating a consent decree by allowing Cape Charles students to attend their schools.

The Town Council charged the School Board with malfeasance or misfeasance and demanded an investigation by the State Police.

Meanwhile, the Cape Charles School Board charged the Town with siphoning off funds earmarked for the school. These were just a few of the allegations and charges being thrown around during that time. [Read more…]

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AUCTION RESULTS: Occhifinto Opts for Oyster

By GEORGE SOUTHERN
Cape Charles Wave

August 20, 2013

Northampton County’s newest land baron Robert Occhifinto bought three out of five County properties offered at a bankruptcy auction yesterday at Aqua Restaurant. The properties are in or on the road to Oyster, about seven miles northeast of Cape Charles. Occhifinto dabbled in bidding for other properties, but never seriously.

Two Bay Creek houses, including one built by developer Dickie Foster, were the big-block items. Foster’s former house, known as Heron Pointe, crossed the auction block at an even $1 million. Its tax assessment is closer to $3 million.

All the auction properties belong to the Madonia family, whose tomato growing business on the Eastern Shore and Florida is in receivership.

Another Madonia house in Bay Creek, “Magnolia Plantation,” did almost as well, despite its tax assessment being over a million dollars less than the Heron Pointe property. Magnolia Plantation sold for $950,000.

Two properties in Chincoteague and one in Painter were also part of the auction. A Chincoteague house sold for $257,000, and a .14-acre waterfront lot brought $47,000. The Painter house was the lowest bid of the day at $41,000.
[Read more…]

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Action at the Auction: 3 Minutes of Bay Creek Bidding

CAPE CHARLES WAVE

August 20, 2013

Watch this 3-minute video of auction action yesterday as buyers bid on Heron Pointe, the former home of Bay Creek developer Dickie Foster. (Click bottom right of image for full screen view.)

OPEN LETTER:
Old School Cape Charles to Historic District Review Board

August 20, 2013

(EDITOR’S NOTE: The Cape Charles Historic District Review Board meets at 4:30 p.m. today (Tuesday) at Town Hall to further consider an application by developer J. David McCormack to convert the Old School, basketball court, and playground parking lot at Central Park into an apartment building and private parking lot. Town Planner Robert Testerman has recommended that the Historic Board approve the developer’s application, even though it has not been approved by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, and yet-to-be-met conditions have been stipulated by the National Park Service. On the eve of the meeting of the Historic Review Board, the community group Old School Cape Charles has submitted an open letter documenting why the Board should wait until the developer meets conditions required by the relevant state and federal bodies.)

TO THE HISTORIC DISTRICT REVIEW BOARD:

Old School Cape Charles is committed to the common good of our town. One of our town’s most valuable assets is Central Park, which until recently included the Old School, the basketball court, and the playground parking lot.

In order for an historic property to receive tax credits it must adhere to the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation, (Click to read) including the following:

A property will be used as it was historically or be given a new use that requires minimal change to its distinctive materials, features, spaces, and spatial relationships.

Converting our historic Old School, playground parking, and basketball court into an apartment house and private parking lot is a far cry from creating minimal change to the building and its use.

The historic character of a property will be retained and preserved. The removal of distinctive materials or alteration of features, spaces, and spatial relationships that characterize a property will be avoided.

The developer wants to call the side of the building the front, even though there will be no front door. Not only will the historic character of the building be lost, but the developer hopes to attract vacationers to rent the apartments. Town Council’s giveaway of a park resource thereby becomes competition to vacation and other rental property owners. [Read more…]

REVIEW: An Evening of Civil War Spies and Love Letters

By WAYNE CREED

August 15, 2013

Last night the Palace Theatre hosted an evening of Civil War history. This was most appropriate and timely, given last week’s presentation at the Cape Charles Museum finding Shore people complicit in the 1863 raid on the Cape Charles Lighthouse (Click for story). Last night included its own intrigue, with master storyteller Lynn Ruehlmann relating the tale “Spy! The story of Civil War Spy Elizabeth Van Lew.”

Elizabeth Van Lew was one of the most effective Union spies during the Civil War. Born to a prominent Richmond family, she lived with her widowed mother in a three-story mansion on Church Hill in the Confederate capital. Educated in the North, Van Lew took pride in her Richmond roots, but she fervently opposed slavery and secession, writing her thoughts in a secret diary she kept buried in her backyard and whose existence she would reveal only on her deathbed. [Read more…]

$18,000 Library Computer ‘Fine’ Overturned on Appeal

By GEORGE SOUTHERN
Cape Charles Wave

August 15, 2013

A demand by a state authority that the Town of Cape Charles return an $18,000 grant has been overturned by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The controversy surrounded the purchase by the Town of 20 computers with federal block grant money. Following an anonymous complaint to a HUD fraud hotline claiming that the computers were not available to the public, the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development conducted an investigation.

As a result of the investigation, the Virginia DHCD required the Town to return the grant money. Town Manager Heather Arcos appealed the decision April 25, declaring that “An erroneous statement made by an unidentified person does not change the facts. Obviously, the library is not open yet and the computer lab is not open in its normal fulltime schedule right now, so therefore would appear to be unoccupied.”

The DHCD then made another unscheduled site visit May 1, finding the computer lab still not accessible to the public. The DHCD reiterated its demand that the Town return the grant money. [Read more…]

THURSDAY 8/15: Town Council Considering Suing Sewer Contractor

Town Council will hold a closed session 5:30 p.m. Thursday, August 15, to discuss possible litigation over the “W.M. Schlosser contract.”  W.M. Schlosser was the contractor for the Town’s new $19 million sewage treatment plant. The agenda may be read here.

At 6 p.m. the public will be admitted for the regular monthly Town Council meeting at St. Charles Parish Hall, 550 Tazewell Avenue.  Business includes reports on Public Service Authority plans for piping in sewage from the highway; the traffic study at Randolph and Fig; and uses for the former library building. The complete information packet may be read here.