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Forest Service land should not be sold
To the Editor:
The Sylva Herald has provided good coverage on the sale of U.S. Forest Service lands. I’m hopeful that constituents in Western North Carolina will continue to protest the sale. It is wrong. The land does not belong to the federal government. It is public property. Once it is sold, it is gone forever, and the school needs will continue to be there.
My husband was a bear hunter and a fisherman as is our son, son-in-law and grandsons. My family loves our beautiful mountains. We did not inherit them, but we should be good caretakers for future generations. We did not elect Rep. Charles Taylor to go to Washington, D.C., and vote to sell our mountains. I hope he will be bombarded with lots of negative letters, phone calls and e-mails. We have only March to let the powers-that-be know that we don’t want our mountains sold.
Esther Cunningham
Franklin
Neighbors deserve help
To the Editor:
Randy Marrinan wrote a letter to the editor asking for help and support from the people of Jackson County and also from the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office. He told how he had been shot by his neighbors with a pellet gun. Randy had to go to court over it.
But the two people that live at the top of West Ridge community can look down on where Randy and all the neighbors live and shoot them or do whatever. They ride the roads on four-wheelers fast up and fast down without watching the school kids get on or off the bus.
They lied under oath to the judge and should be required to take a lie detector test.
They have been really mean to Randy and some of the rest of the neighbors. This has been going on ever since they have lived up there, which has been more than five years. One of them ran over Randy, and they have told the neighbors that if they go to the law that they would burn down their houses or hurt them.
We think being mean to people and running over them should be stopped.
They all hate Randy and have for a long time. Some of the law officers dislike Randy also.
We think Randy is a good person and so are the rest of the neighbors who are being threatened by the two who live at the top of the road.
Please, Jackson County citizens, write to the newspaper and give your opinion. The Sheriff’s Office should listen to the neighbors of West Ridge and investigate the matter.
These two have done so many mean and hurtful things to the other people in West Ridge community. The judge should check into this before making a decision.
Brenda Shuler
Webster
Traci Robinson
Sylva
Mixed-drink referendum likely to pass
To the Editor:
As America has gradually, morally and surely gone wet since World War II (1940), I predict that Sylva will go wet during May’s primary election.
After the peace treaty was signed, the dancing, singing and celebration on Back Street in Sylva will long be remembered. Most were sober. It was up until this time that a “good old boy” from Sylva had to go “over the hump” (Balsam Gap) just to purchase a beer for a quarter. Sylva was dry.
Today, after 60 years of prosperity, Main Street, Sylva, has slowly-but-surely become a drinking “Bourbon Street.”
I predict that Sylva will go wet with the May election, and no one will have to drive over Balsam Gap in order to get drunk.
The church bells will continue to ring with each passing hour, reminding us that God is still on the throne, looking down with dismay.
Lloyd Cowan
Sylva
Taxpayer’s Alert
To the Editor:
We have read a bit of sage advice and warning from the past: “The citizens aren’t safe in their beds while the Legislature is in session.” I say “amen.”
Since the Sylva town board and Jackson County commissioners meet frequently and either promote and plan a lot of harmful policies as they give in to developers and monied interests, vociferous cries of “put the pressure on the commissioners” to fund, not an affordable community library with a design to increase space in the future, but an edifice, “the Jackson County equivalent of the Taj Mahal.”
The local library board has only one mountain bred person, and, as I told him, “you are just window dressing to impart a local flavor.”
We have read in The Sylva Herald of their expressed desire to put their little heartfelt vision on the walls of our library. Their library is not for their glorification; it is an important part of the people’s lives, and we pay the taxes that will fund it. This library should not be funded until we elect new commissioners who will have an input into servicing the long-term debt of several million dollars. The local, multi-generational citizens will be paying this debt for generations to come, while a lot of these “johnny-come-latelys” will leave in the years to come. I have seen it in Hendersonville (a long-term retirement area), as a spouse dies, or elderly people move back to be near their children. If our johnny-come-lately people want to call a town hall meeting and put out a hand to some of the silent majority who have dropped the Sylva library’s circulation (by 1,000 – the only one that dropped in the Fontana system. Think about it.), I believe the people I have talked with who express concerns to me and assure me they agree with the issues I address, whether it is dirty water, the airport, the funding of the Economic Development Commission, the commissioners’ failure to address the rape of the mountains by greedy, heartless developers and leaders’ failure to address the economic impact (of this development) on homeowners, will work toward a very simple, well-planned, with an-addition-plan-for-later library space.
I do not believe the people will stand to have the “Taj Mahal” rammed down their throats by the quote, unquote, experts. One old politico – a senator running for office who thought he had it made – said this after his defeat: “You had better look out for these mountaineers because they will come out of these bushes and hills and beat your a--.”
My late husband, who was a multi-generational, dyed-in-the-wool, bred-in-his-bones mountaineer, laughed until he nearly cried. History repeats itself, and these mountaineers are still in the bushes and hills of what is their land.
Information to taxpayers: I addressed the Sylva board on their plans of “multiplicity usage,” which is, simply put, the breaking into neighborhoods by greedy people who want to start a business either in a purchased residential house or vacant lot next to your home; devalue your property; and destroy your neighborhood to get more tax money. Since it would be a policy applied to the weakest who are unable to defend themselves (not the “rich and famous”), I consider it victimization of a certain segment of society, and therefore not even constitutional. Having been victimized for more than 17 years, I can tell you how it feels; I am an expert on the subject.
More information: Tom McClure’s assertions about the airport (“Airport officials say they’re ready to move ahead with projects,” The Sylva Herald, March 9) losing money and naming Jackson County commissioners as the scapegoats have no truth. The Courthouse records on the airport in my file date back to 2004 when I addressed the commissioners on this issue. The record shows a loss from 1979 through 1999 of $47,103.
The Airport Authority took over the taxpayers’ “money pit” with a consistent loss until now. With matching funds from the county (fiscal year 2001-05), the Authority has had access to $733,336. What they used only the Authority can say. The figures tell me this airport, for a select few, is feeding every year at the public trough. Whatever benefit the county derives would be minimal at best, and if you did cost averaging for our tax dollars, we would be in a state of shock.
Let us vote for change in our county.
Marie Leatherwood
Sylva
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