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Commissioners do not deserve praise
To the Editor:
Do not give the Jackson County Commission praise for action on the Tilley Creek Road and Smoke Rise Gun Club problem, for the actions they have chosen are very time consuming and the problem is time is of the essence (immediate).
Bureaucracy is slow and ordinances must be crafted, not popped out of a microwave; environmental assessment of a site must be documented, again slow.
It will do the Tilley Creek Road residents no good for an ordinance to be passed three months after Smoke Rise has started construction, nor will it protect the creek for the results of an environmental assessment to be reported three months after construction has started.
County commissioners all know this to be true, but they must believe that we do not.
It would have been a simple matter to have passed a moratorium on the construction of new shooting facilities in order to create a breathing space so that a solution benefiting both sides might be defined.
William Lyons
Cullowhee
Letter writer will be ashamed
To the Editor:
One of these days when he is older and a bit wiser, Gregg McGraha (“Forest Hills leaders are a ‘bunch of dirtbags’”) will re-read his letter to the editor and be ashamed.
Gurney Chambers
Cullowhee
Some students not being good neighbors in Forest Hills
To the Editor:
Students in Forest Hills, please permit me to clarify.
We read Mr. McGraha’s letter to The Sylva Herald and we felt an obligation to respond. We must say he is obviously a very young Western Carolina University student; no mature student would use the term “dirtbags” to describe any group of people.
We know many of you have heard about our situation in Forest Hills involving some WCU students. Understand that we are not referring to all students in Forest Hills. Most of them are good neighbors and bring a diverse balance to our community.
We think we speak for many of the people in Forest Hills by saying that all we want is a clean, quiet neighborhood so we can walk in our beautiful woods and on our streets with our children and pets and feel safe without looking at litter on the road and beer cans in our beautiful little mountain stream that runs from the top of Forest Hills to the entrance.
We don’t want to walk outside our home to find our fence kicked over and our mailbox destroyed. We don’t want our children to experience the loud noises in the middle of the night, and, most importantly, we want to feel safe by not having guns shooting from the rental homes jeopardizing our lives and the lives of our children.
Believe us, all the above examples have occurred. By the way, the people in Forest Hills caught the shooters. They were students in one of the rental houses.
We have been to many beautiful homes in Sylva and Cullowhee. The neighborhoods are lovely with well-kept yards.
Imagine, if you will, that the house across the street from you is rented to irresponsible, young students with no supervision who have loud parties until 3 a.m. (they end by that time if you’re lucky). When they finally leave, they throw beer cans in your yard and in the mountain streams and woods you love so much.
What would you do? Who would you call? Would you feel frustrated?
Up to this point, the only recourse we have had that has been somewhat successful is to talk with the owners of the property, and not all of them are cooperative. As a matter of fact, a few of them are very uncooperative. We would like to thank Rick Bennett for being a responsible owner and talking to the kids that rent his houses; he does a great job.
We would appreciate owners placing mature, responsible students in their units. Students that are good neighbors would be welcome in our little town, and again we repeat, we do have some excellent students who are good neighbors and don’t litter and scream at 3 a.m. I hope they stay.
For the rest of the students, you know who you are, and our message to you is you are in a neighborhood. You are not in the dorms – please understand what we are asking, and be good neighbors.
Ken and Linda Dickert
Forest Hills
Forest Hills mayor apologizes to sheriff
To the Editor:
I submit this letter to correct misconceptions fostered by recent reporting of Forest Hills’ May 2 council meeting. That report’s opening sentence stated the council felt the Sheriff’s Office was ineffective. This is not an accurate representation of the meeing’s tenor. Let me state that our discussions in no way referred to the Sheriff’s Department as a whole, as the lead sentence in the May 5 Sylva Herald intimated.
Part of our meeting dealt with the proposed budget for the coming fiscal year. A large item was brought up for discussion – the funds paid to our contracted sheriff’s patrols for two nights each weekend. These provide us with surveillance, noise control, safe roadways, safety concerns and more. For the last three years, these deputies have served us in addition to their scheduled shifts.
Living across from a university campus brings a unique set of variables, not all bad. But often a few students throw a party that exceeds limits of neighborliness. Loud profanity, shouting and music continue for hours. Party-goers – sometimes in the hundreds – have no place to park except villagers’ manicured lawns, flowerbeds, and driveways. Often, long lines of cars park right in the road, creating a hazard for emergency vehicles.
This is not an indictment against all Western Carolina University students; I digressed to illuminate the party problem and why we sought assistance from the Sheriff’s Department. The questions about effectiveness were in relation to our particular agreement with off-duty deputies, the amount of money spent for weekend patrols, whether the party environment is being contained and controlled, and how do we know if anything is being done during patrols?
Others complained to some board members that they never “see” a deputy in the area, so why are we paying for the “service.” The answer is simple: the deputies patrol in unmarked cars from 11 p.m. until 2 a.m. when most villagers are in bed. The average start time for parties is midnight.
Council members asked questions reflecting input from constituents. Several questions were not gracious and arose from frustration at not knowing what is happening for our dollars.
For that, I must take most of the blame. I set up the patrols and asked that extraordinary circumstances be reported to me to pass on to the board. If there are none, I don’t report. Hence, the unfortunate remark about ‘what are they doing out there?’
But the content of the questions were not out of line considering the nature of our meeting. I feel the emphasis on their negative nature was portrayed out of context and at the expense of other Village items.
Lt. (Kim) Hooper is always available to me to answer my questions, and advise me of happenings. He has always been professional and helpful as we have worked to make the village quiet and safe. It has not been an easy task, and it has taken several months to get the word out that the Sheriff’s Office is on patrol in the village, and they are a force to be reckoned with.
An important positive item that was not reported is that the board voted to continue patrols. Consensus was that noise levels are being controlled and party frequency reduced.
We appreciate the job the deputies do. It takes guts to walk into a crowd of several hundred people, primed with “go” juice, and issue a warning or citation. Last week it took seven squad cars to break up and disperse over 500 people partying in Valhalla. Deputies also perform routine license and breathalyzer roadblocks, cite littering, and arrest those who are belligerent or intoxicated. Those of us who live across from “Party-ville” know that a difference has been affected.
I extend special thanks to Sheriff Jimmy Ashe, who has been gracious with the village council. This somewhat “exploitive” story has brought unnecessary and erroneous disparagement upon his department and for that I sincerely apologize to him, and his department. Sheriff Ashe has agreed to implement monthly reports of all actions taken by patrols in Forest Hills so that our constituents can see the actions taken by the good deputies on our behalf. He has also agreed to make sure the civilian dispatch department will call our patrol unit when a villager calls 586-1911, so that we may enjoy rapid responses (providing we have a patrol unit that night – every Thursday; and Friday or Saturday).
To Sheriff Ashe and his department, Forest Hills officials say “thank you” for all you do, and risk.
Jim Davis
Mayor, Forest Hills
WCU student should apologize
To the Editor:
There is a growing divide forming between Western Carolina University and the citizens of this town, and Gregg McGraha’s letter only serves to further alienate the school from the community. McGraha is a member of WCU, but his letter shows that he is not a member of our community. It is the citizens of this town that make this place a friendly and communal environment, and it is us that (McGraha has) insulted and ostracized (himself) from.
The residents of Forest Hills pay attention to and question what goes on at Western because they realize that Forest Hills and WCU are neighbors. McGraha’s letter, however, is written with utter disregard to the concerns of the community around him, making him the “selfish” one.
The citizens of Sylva, Cullowhee, Forest Hills, Dillsboro, Webster and all the little towns and communities that make up Jackson County have every right to criticize what goes on here, because lately the decisions made by WCU, as well as Sylva’s town board, have not been in our best interest. If the town keeps moving in the direction it is going, adding countless big businesses and encouraging unsustainable growth, and the university continues its plan to double in size, then leaders can expect to keep hearing a lot more from us.
People like McGraha should start listening to us now rather than throwing out our concerns and calling us names. Our citizens do not want our small-town way of life taken away and replaced with high-rise buildings, large expanses of concrete, and people that cannot understand what it means to live in a community.
WCU’s decision to ignore the concerns of its neighbors, double its size, and add these big high-rise developments will only increase traffic, crime and congestion, and take away even more from our already-depreciating natural environment. There will no longer be that small college atmosphere of familiar faces and a small town that interacts on a cooperative level with its small college friends. McGraha’s letter is only one symptom of what happens when towns and schools get too big for their own good and can no longer sustain a communal environment.
Gregg McGraha, you are a new and transient addition to this community, but it welcomed you and has already given you a lot. When you come back next year, it might not be the same town and you might not get the same greeting. It is about time that you thank and show some respect for this community before you go home for the summer. Myself, and many others, will be awaiting your apology to our community in next week’s edition of The Sylva Herald.
David Nestler
Sylva and Chapel Hill
(Editor’s note: Nestler is the son of Larry Nestler, chairman of the Town of Sylva’s Planning Board.)
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