Orange County's two homegrown political action committees of being accused of using pressure tactics to try to derail plans for a new middle school near Lake of the Woods.
Last week, LOW residents received a letter citing concerns about high-voltage power lines running through the school site. It says the Board of Supervisors is "one vote short of being able to correct this enormous mistake" of planning a middle school on land at State Routes 20 and 601 in the northeastern corner of the county.
The three-page letter was signed by two mothers who want a new elementary school on State Route 3. The envelope carries a return address for the Orange County Citizens Committee.
The Jan. 21 letter urges LOW residents to call their newly elected Supervisor Lee Frame "and tell him it is his responsibility as your elected official to PROTECT OUR CHILDREN and the proposed school site is unacceptable." It encourages recipients to call Supervisors Teri Pace and Zack Burkett for more information.
Frame called this latest effort to scuttle the school plans "payback" by Marcia Landau, Burkett's wife and principal of the Orange County Taxpayers Alliance. The OCTA has been financially supported by the Orange County Citizens Committee.
"Marcia said she'd do this to me after we voted on this at the first supervisors' meeting," Frame said in a telephone interview this week.
Landau hung up when contacted by The Free Lance-Star and did not return a subsequent phone message seeking comment. Jack Snyder, treasurer of the Orange County Citizens Committee, did not return a call seeking comment.
At the first meeting of the new board, Burkett attempted to get supervisors to revisit financing for the new school, which was approved by the previous board. In a separate motion, Pace tried to get the work stopped until she gets her questions about what she called "inconsistent" enrollment projections answered.
Burkett and Pace supported each other, but the majority of the five-member board voted to move along with the school design.
Frame, who had supported building the school when he was a member of the Planning Commission, said that he saw no reason to change course.
"There is not enough argument to disrupt the ongoing process," he said at the meeting. He added that if he heard from his constituents, he would look at it again.
The letter, signed by Winoka Nicklow and Jill Harrison, claims that the 165-acre site is dangerous because it is traversed by high-voltage power lines that "give off high levels of EMF, the name for the emissions put out by these powerful electric lines and the adjacent substation."
School Board members and the supervisors heard arguments on this issue last year and were convinced that the school would be far enough from the lines to prevent any danger to children or staff.
Frame calls the Internet sites referred to in the letter "a little funny, such as a lobbying site whose biggest contributor is the Common Benefit Litigation Expense Trust."
In a phone interview Sunday, Harrison--a neighbor of Landau and Burkett in Unionville--said she didn't write the letter, but is concerned about the EMF issue and was aware the letter had been sent with her signature.
"I'm not certain who all had a hand in it," she said.
Nicklow, whose children would not attend the proposed middle school, did not respond to phone messages.
Lake of the Woods' newly elected School Board member Jim Hopkins was enraged by the letter.
In an e-mail sent to The Free Lance-Star last week, he wrote, "In October, the Orange County Citizens Committee made a $4,000 donation to the Orange County Taxpayers Alliance in an attempt to take control of the Board of Supervisors in the November election. They won one and lost one."
The citizens committee supported Burkett, who won. The alliance supported Steve Satterfield, who lost to Teel Goodwin.
"Now they are trying to extort a vote from Lee Frame," Hopkins continued. "They could not win at the ballot box so they are stooping to coercion. LOW residents need to know who is sending such letters."
Robin Knepper: 540/972-5701
Email: rknepper@earthlink.net
|
To read the full letter sent to Lake of the Wood residents, go to fredericks burg.com. For more information about high-voltage lines, visit the National Institutes of Health Web site at ncb.nlm.nih.gov and search its PubMed database for "high voltage power lines." A copy of the EMF report prepared by Moseley Architects for Orange County can be found at jimhopkins.com. |