NEAR MISS
We have just come through a crisis of sorts here in this somewhat withdrawn village in the Shenandoah Valley section of the Commonwealth of Virginia known as Weyers Cave.
It is a loose community of a thousand souls at the most joined together, one might say, by the homes which make up the local mail delivery route. We have a post office but the city “limits” are rather vague – extended further into the county at some points than others. We are a rural community as well as a bedroom community. Dwellers herein are farmers, industrial workers who part-time it as farmers and farmer workers who part-time it commercially or industry in one of three cities nearby – Staunton, Waynesboro or Harrisonburg or one of some a fed other villages of small towns nearby such as Mt. Sidney, Verona, Grottoes, Dayton, Bridgewater. It would be difficult to say, for sure, where our bounds might be at any one time.
About sixty days or so, a lady who lives in a totally different section of Augusta County asked the Staunton “News-Leader” how she could best make use Freedom of Information legislation to determine how and why our Board of supervisors could keep all proceedings secret. Public funds expended would suggest public awareness assured. The Board refused to make the information public with two members dissenting and the battle was joined.
Looking back at it all now during the last days of June 2006, I find it all Our board of super-visionaries took upon themselves a task far beyond their capabilities. The put their trust in secret with an unknown "agency"of statewide powers rather than regional or national. They bought a rather shadowy bill of goods. The contest was a case of amateurs dealing with other amateurs. They let their warped concept of what they thought they were doing rest on a single auto maker. When political factions started warning landowners about possible exactions under eminent domain rulings of recent years the mega-balloon popped.
You can't go back and erase all the harsh things which were said, the inconsiderate or undo acts taken by some in their worse moments during the weeks of sand-lot managers attempting to head up major league operations. Overall results may be evident after the next local elections.
We should have learned,too, that not all clowns are not in circus tents.
Andrew McCaskey amccsr@adelphia.net 6-28-06 [c415wds]
