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It’s time for a heritage exemption for longtime mountain residents
To the Editor:
I am writing this letter to the natives of Jackson County and Western North Carolina because this has been on my mind a long time. I think there should be a heritage law or heritage exemption for people who have owned their land for four or five generations or 70-100 years.
Why should we, the natives, have to pay a higher tax because someone else comes in here in a Cadillac Escalade or Humvee with a sack full of money, when we’re still driving a Ford pickup and trying to get by?
Is this county so strapped for cash that it can’t take care of it’s own? We are getting people in our county government that aren’t from here and don’t have the natives’ interest in mind, but those of out-of-staters – i.e. more money. Their plan seems to be to get rid of the natives and tax us out. The ones who were born and raised here and stayed through thick and thin and toughed it out are now to be taxed out.
Why can’t we pass our land on to our children and grandkids so they can stay on home ground without paying so much taxes that they can’t afford it and have to sell out and move. A new family of our descendants can’t afford to live here. You wouldn’t believe how many people from here leave because of this.
What about these big, new developments that are causing everybody’s taxes to go up from $400 to $900 on a piece of ground that nobody lives on and hasn’t for 20 years. Because of Bear Creek Reserve, Balsam Mountain Preserve, Trout Creek and all the gated communities in the Cashiers-Highlands area and all over WNC, we – the natives – can’t even get into the places where everyone used to hunt, hike, and fish. They are now posted or gated.
The small pieces of ground that we own are being taxed until we have to stay on it because we can’t afford to go anywhere even if it weren’t posted. Is the purpose of the taxes on the natives to get us to sell out to some out-of-stater with the bucks to buy us out and then the county can build up more tax base?
We didn’t cause the taxes to go up. We just want to live where we were raised and not have to pay everything we make in taxes.
Who are more important: the people who made this county and state or the almighty dollar?
Let’s ask our county commissioners and state representatives to take a bold step and give us a tax break.
Bear-, coon-, deer-, turkey-, grouse- and squirrel-hunters, and fishermen still have to buy licenses. Can’t the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission and game wardens help us out a little too?
If we have no place to hunt or fish, then they have no job.
Drew Hooper
Sylva
New jets could have big impact on small airports
To the Editor:
On July 28, the Federal Aviation Administration gave certification to a Very Light Jet manufacturer. I believe that VLJs could be a very positive benefit not only for the citizens, but for future tourism in Jackson County.
They could provide air-service to and from the Jackson County Airport, direct to any other small or large airport. The cost is projected to be only about 30 percent more than a regular airline ticket. No more having to drive to Asheville, Atlanta, Charlotte or Knoxville to catch a plane on their schedule.
The Small Aircraft Transportation system is a joint research project between the FAA and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It is designed to facilitate transportation between small general aviation airports using small aircraft as an alternative to traditional airline travel. Here are a few excerpts that explain the new aircraft and its potential to serve small airports like Jackson County.
This is from the July 28 issue of USA Today:
“A new fleet of very light jets that could redefine the way Americans travel has received preliminary certification from the Federal Aviation Administration.”
“Thousands of new jets like this are going to redefine the way Americans travel, help cut airport congestion and drive economic growth in cities and towns across the country that today only dream of commercial air service,” acting Transportation Secretary Maria Cino said Thursday.
“Very light jets weigh 10,000 pounds or less, feature twin engines and automated cockpits and have room for five or six passengers, aviation experts said.”
Six other very light jet manufacturers are in the process of being certified by the FAA.
Honda Motor Co. announced this week that it will start accepting orders for its HondaJet, this fall.
These excerpts are from July 17 Earth and Sky magazine:
“Bruce Holmes is a chief strategist with NASA’s Small Aircraft Transportation System project. His team collaborated with private industry, in hopes of building an air taxi network that utilizes small airports. He also said that Very Light Jets cost millions less than similar corporate jets. They can also take off and land at slower speeds than large airliners, and that enables them to use shorter runways.”
Holmes provided these examples of how VLJs might be used:
– Can you imagine a business trip to call on clients in Arlington, Va., Norfolk, Va., and Charlotte and still make it home in time for your child’s Little League game?
– Can you see a family of four making an affordable weekend round-trip to visit the grandparents more than 300 miles away?
– Could you appreciate having outpatient surgery at Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Maryland and returning to your own bed that night for home recovery?
This excerpt is from the Aug. 6 issue of the Business Journal:
“Honda Aircraft will be based in a facility at the Piedmont Triad International Airport in Greensboro, where the prototype HondaJet was assembled and test flights have been carried out for more than three years.”
Another benefit available now to residents of Jackson County include hourly and historical weather data information that can be obtained from the N.C. Forest Service weather station at the airport. It can be accessed on the Internet at http://raws.wrh.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/roman/meso_base.cgi?stn=CUWN7&time=GMT
Also, an Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast antenna was installed last fall by the FAA as part of the Safe Flight 21 project. It is providing real time weather and collision avoidance data to the scores of Commercial Airliners that fly within 250 nautical miles of the Jackson County Airport every day. Scott Seritt, Atlantic District FAA office manager, said “these antennas normally are only found at large commercial airports.” It is located here because of our airport’s unique location/elevation at 2,857 feet in the mountains of Western North Carolina. The Macon County and Andrews-Murphy airports are located in valleys.
I want to thank Commissioners’ Chairman Brian McMahan for his leadership in going forward with appointments that filled the vacancies on the Jackson County Airport Authority. We hope that his and the Airport Authority’s efforts will soon make the airport self sufficient and provide the potential services shown above for the citizens of Jackson County and at no cost of their tax dollars.
Because I’m limited to 750 words, please contact me at wcaustinfmy@yahoo.com for online links and additional information.
Bill Austin
Sylva
Tired of litter, signs along roadways
To the Editor:
I have long been impressed with the great job that is done to keep our roadsides beautiful. The road department and volunteer groups spend many dollars and countless hours to keep our roads looking good. We have perhaps the best flower plantings of any state in the nation, and I am proud to live in a state that values this beauty.
There are however a few people who care little for public lands. They trash our roadsides and parking lots with drink cans and food containers. They dump old furniture and garbage bags along the wooded roads. They seem content living in a garbage dump. As bad as this is, I was just as appalled when the local Democratic Party began displaying groups of five or six signs along many roads in Cullowhee and Sylva, and perhaps other parts of Jackson County, and placing them in these beautiful flower beds. There are many ways to get a message out to the public, but destroying the beauty of our roadways with cheap signs is not acceptable.
Let’s keep Jackson County clean and beautiful.
Homer Royals
Cullowhee
Economic development concerns
To the Editor:
Concerns about the impact of economic development in Western North Carolina (including real estate development and the creation of business opportunity) often are considered in relation to sustaining a “quality of life” valued by previous generations.
In the ongoing dialogue about these issues, I want to urge consideration of a basic and crucial flaw in orthodox economic thinking: the assessment of economic growth on the basis of Gross National Product. By focusing on the accumulation of capital, the GNP accounting assumptions omit two critical realities: the depletion of raw materials and the impact of waste disposal on the environment. It is unrealistic to believe that the activities of production and consumption are a self-contained system. The narrow definition of capital in terms of human-produced assets fails to acknowledge “natural” capital upon which all economic activity depends. It further fails to consider that depletion of “natural” capital also contributes to the devaluing of human produced assets. This type of thinking reveals the truth of an ancient Sufi Muslim insight: the desire to always appear successful leads one to deceive oneself and then others. This thinking also represents the “Old Bottom Line” that can no longer sustain the advanced or the developing communities of the earth.
There is a growing movement with indebtedness to the freedom movement of Americans of African ancestry, the movement for equal opportunity for women and the environmental movement that is calling for a “New Bottom Line” to replace the “Old Bottom Line” centered on maximization of profit and power. The Network of Spiritual Progressives advocates a spiritually based political and economic order in American society that supports institutions, corporations, laws and social practices that generate compassion, kindness and generosity, sound stewardship of the environment including other creatures, a sense of wonder, awe and gratitude in response to the universe and a recognition of the sacred human being. Spiritual Progressives believe that it will be the citizens of this democracy who will create the ground swell of change that will move our society beyond its present materialistic values and political ineffectiveness in meeting serious challenges we face in education, health care, justice and meaningful employment that strengthens families.
To learn more about the Network of Spiritual Progressives, visit their Web site at www.spiritualprogressives.org.
John Bickerstaff
Sylva
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