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County should act against gun club
To the Editor:
As a member of an old and lovely mountain cove community not too far from Tilley Creek, I write to oppose the Smoke Rise Gun Club and to support any form of county intervention to prevent this and other forms of serious nuisance from threatening innocent homeowners countywide.
Even some opponents have said that appropriate places exist for such activity. I disagree.
Western North Carolina seems bigger than it is due to dense forests, imposing ridges and deep valleys. However, few tracts of land are large enough to contain the silence-shattering, nerve-wracking and peace-ending sound of all-day repetitive gunfire. A homeowner should be able to sit on a deck, walk in the woods, sleep in a bedroom with the windows open, or eat an afternoon meal without enduring the constant bark of small arms or the ongoing bangs of distant shotguns.
Extensive zoning, moratoriums, noise ordinances and stiff penalties should all be considered as acceptable means to prevent such mean-spirited and selfish abuse of property rights by commercial enterprises or private citizens alike.
As a native of our southern foothills and mountains and as a homeowner in Jackson County, I do believe in property rights and also support gun ownership as a privilege that should be maintained. However, the owner and members of Smoke Rise and similar interests must recognize that when their activity threatens the right of their neighbors to enjoy their own homes, then it becomes abusive, un-neighborly and downright wrong.
Faced with so much concern and anguish from the good folk in this community, these people should either change their intentions or move far away from our mountains to someplace else, where peace, beauty, privacy, serenity, generosity and goodwill among neighbors are not so highly regarded. County interference shouldn’t be necessary, but I hope our representative government steps up in the face of this threat.
Mike Despeaux
Cullowhee
‘Double standard’ in code enforcement
To the Editor:
I have been reading about how Zoning Administrator Jim Aust has been enforcing the ordinances for the town of Sylva in the matter of Performance Motors. To us, there seems to be a double standard for businesses and residences of this town. We find it to be perplexing how all of a sudden the city has found a need to enforce the ordinances on Performance Motors when the lot is kept very neat and clean.
I would like to know how many people find these flags not having grass by the sidewalks a nuisance. There are many people who own homes that are a mess and their yards look like a junkyard.
Our question for Mr. Aust is, “Since when do you care about ordinances, when for years we have been trying with no help to figure out a way to clean up a house in our neighborhood inside the city limits that is breaking over 20 ordinances?”
This, honestly, should be your biggest concern, not if Performance Motors has flags flying or no grass.
We have had not one bit of help from Mr. Aust in this matter. We have been told by city officials that there is not much they can do. Well, they need to read their own ordinances – we have.
We even purchased a copy and went to several meetings for which we were told, “We are looking into this matter.” So to see this fuss he is making about the car lot is ludicrous to us. Personally, how he has a job is a mystery to us.
Try living next to a neighbor who piles trash up in his yard and then works on a race car in the summer late at night. Now we have a house that has been abandoned for several months. They left their trash all over the yard.
Mr. Aust, you know where we live, so bring your code book and try doing your job in our neighborhood and help us out.
Lisa Muscillo
Ann Von Hofen
Sylva
Time for Sylva leaders to plan for growth
To the Editor:
A test of Sylva leaders’ commitment to “smart growth” is the proposed Lowe’s at the N.C. 107/116 intersection.
I’ve heard it said that “smart growth requires smart planning.” It’s also said that “a failure to plan is a plan to fail.”
Smart growth means having and implementing a plan to guide development in and around Sylva for the next 20 to 50 years. Growth is happening, and the challenge is to have growth with a vision other than unguided market forces looking out for corporate interests without direction from those forced to live with their actions.
I believe the responsibility to require good neighborliness from Lowe’s rests with Sylva’s elected officials.
The site is in a larger area studied by land-planning students for “new traditional” neighborhood development designed to reduce dependence on the automobile. The west side of 107 south of Wal-Mart is one of very few areas that are suited for a walkable neighborhood. Webster Road from Southwestern Community College to Smoky Mountain High is an area of high employment (second only to Western Carolina University) and is a place where home-to-work and home-to-school trips don’t need to be by car.
The traditional Lowe’s is the antithesis of this style. Lowe’s is auto-centric due to the nature of its product and should be located where a walkable community is less likely to work, like a half-mile farther south on 107, where more efficient access by car can be provided. If the reason that didn’t happen is because that site isn’t inside town limits, Sylva leaders should offer to help with city services in exchange for protecting the proposed site for a developer who would help build a community. Perhaps town officials could facilitate a property swap to make this happen.
If Lowe’s has to go to the 107/116 site, Sylva should require it to be something different. Instead of a “big box” in a sea of asphalt, it could be an attractive multiple land-use landmark of which the town and Lowe’s could be proud. Lowe’s will absorb scarce highway capacity and create a visual impact and should mitigate these impacts.
Suggestions include: building residential collector roads to foster neighborhood growth and interconnectivity; bringing the building closer to the road with parking behind; making the building attractive, not the blue box, but more an “Eckerd’s with windows” using materials that complement the credit union; adding wide (8-foot) sidewalks with a 6-foot grass buffer, with the sidewalk fronting the building (which I assume would face 116); providing pedestrian access and checkouts on the street side; including lease space for a sandwich shop (like Quizno’s or Subway) so employees and others could get a meal without hopping in the car; displaying lawn furniture outside the eatery in a roadside courtyard; complying with the stormwater runoff ordinance by using pervious pavement; weaving pedestrian islands with landscaping through the parking lot to get shoppers to the door safely and facilitate pedestrian traffic; and using attractive pedestrian-scale lighting and turning the lights off shortly after closing.
Lowe’s will offer salaries in the $24,000-a-year range and should provide a multi-story apartment/condo building, or townhome-style residences, on site or on adjoining property, for employees.
If Lowe’s complies, Sylva should slash required parking – I’ve never seen the Franklin lot more than a third full, even when the store seemed crowded.
Lowe’s has shown cooperation in Brevard and Murphy, and I believe they can rise to this level. They might even sponsor a design forum for community input.
Why is it so important to act now? A friend at church told me tonight that he heard on public radio that the world has reached “Hubbard’s Peak” – the point where half the oil in the world has been consumed. Consumption of the second half will go much quicker, with gasoline prices rising the entire time.
Americans spend a quarter of the gross national product on transportation with gas at $2 a gallon, while Europeans spend an eighth with gas at $6 to $7 a gallon. Imagine a redirection of American resources away from consumed fuel and depreciating vehicles to investments in infrastructure: schools, libraries and parks.
If we don’t act, who will? If not now, when?
Americans are dependent on gasoline-powered car travel. We need to change our built environment so we can live our daily lives without this dependence. Our American freedom requires that we regain this independence.
I implore Sylva leaders to exercise their authority and help lead us to that place.
Reuben Moore
Cullowhee
Ordinances aren’t the answer
To the Editor:
Suppose I own a house on Glenville Lake and especially enjoy tranquil times.
All of a sudden I have new neighbors. One likes to mow his lawn every Sunday and another has children who ride a loud ATV most every day. There are also several people who ride their noisy jet skis close to my property. Two homeowners across from me have dogs that bark at each other a lot and at times there is an extremely loud airplane that circles overhead. The man who mows on Sunday also has a huge fireplace and cuts a lot of firewood with a chainsaw without a muffler.
How should I handle this situation? Should I try to work things out with them, ask that our noise ordinance be enforced, learn to put up with them or go to the county commissioners and ask for ordinances on lawn mowers, weed eaters, ATVs, jet skis, dogs, airplanes, motorcycles, chainsaws, loud music, etc.?
I must understand that new ordinances, that may or may not help me, would also impact every citizen of Jackson County. I don’t believe I should try to take the liberties of so many others just for my benefit.
Mike Clark
Cullowhee
Contradictions considered
To the Editor:
Many folks say that they believe in capital punishment, providing someone else will pull the switch.
Others say they see no harm in helicopter pads, race tracks or shooting ranges, providing they are located on the other man’s property and not across the branch from their front porch.
There are those who believe that there is no harm in a bulldog, until it mutilates a neighbor’s child and ultimately their own.
And finally, there are those who actually believe that God concocted noise for their neighbor only and not for themselves.
Who’s going to pick up our trash?
Lloyd Cowan
Sylva
Gun club using ‘false logic’
To the Editor:
After the March 21 meeting of the Jackson County commissioners, I learned about one of the Tilley Creek residents suffering two flat tires the prior week. The cause was nails, “About 20” I was told. This I found very disturbing.
As I left the building after the commissioners’ meeting, I exited through the main doors for administration and the sheriff’s office. I had parked right outside those doors and as I came out, I saw a man crouched over my left rear tire. He got up and walked over to a car about two parking spaces down from mine and got in with some other people.
I saw that my tire was partially flat, so I apparently interrupted him. I got in my car and backed out at the same time they did.
We drove away in opposite directions and they did not turn on their lights until I was well past them so I did not get the license plate number.
I reported this to the sheriff’s office with a description of the man. The officer was disturbed that this was going on right outside of the sheriff’s office and he said this indicated these people “don’t care” – his inference was – about the law or anything else. He said they have a surveillance camera outside the front door and he would pass the complaint to the lieutenants who would pull and review the surveillance camera tapes.
The inaction by the commissioners (on the shooting range issue), for what ever reasons, is fostering a confrontational environment where some people apparently feel they have an opportunity to affect the outcome by attempts at intimidation.
Separately, after the commissioners’ meeting I was talking with some of the Smoke Rise Field Club people. One of them got belligerent and yelled to me, “We’re going to take that land and there isn’t a thing you can do about it!”
Barry Moore and his supporters act one way in front of the commissioners, professing to want to be good neighbors, but show their true feelings out of their sight. Their true feeling is that they don’t care and they seem to think there is nothing anyone can do about it.
Among the misrepresentations they don’t care about is the idea that somehow regulating shooting ranges will mean private gun owners like myself and my neighbors will not be able to shoot on our own property.
There are strict regulations on gas stations concerning the safe storage and dispensing of gasoline and oil. These regulations include specific requirements about the kind of material used to build storage tanks and specifications for catchment systems to contain any spilled petroleum products and prevent them from getting into the soil and water.
It is silly to say we shouldn’t have these regulations because it would prevent homeowners and farmers from having a can of gas in their garage and prevent them from filling their lawn mowers and tractors on their property.
Smoke Rise is using this false logic, trying to scare everyone any way they can.
They don’t care. They don’t have to. They don’t live on Tilley Creek.
Louis Spagna
Cullowhee
Curbside recycling needed in Jackson
To the Editor:
There is great opportunity for citizens in our community to recycle. I feel we are not capitalizing on this opportunity.
We have recycling centers and ways to recycle almost everything. Even though there is a recycling center, many people still fail to recycle common products such as cans, bottles and paper. Why is this?
There is on extremely obvious solution to our present issue. If we would like our community to be environmentally friendly, we should implement curbside recycling. We take out our trash once a week; why not separate the recyclables?
With curbside recycling everyone would be able to start recycling from their homes. Older adults in the town that do not drive anymore would be able to assist in this effort. Parents could reinforce what teachers in our schools teach about helping to save our world.
If we support recycling today, think how much better off we will be in the future. Change needs to start somewhere, which is why I am fully supporting the establishment of a curbside recycling program in our town.
Making sure our recyclables are actually recycled is of utmost importance. Please look into our current waste disposal plan to be sure recycling is a valuable component. Also, please help this effort by making sure Jackson County has every opportunity to participate in recycling.
Kelly Robertson
Cullowhee |
