Jason Sandford
Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.
Residents 1, Progress Energy 0
The Woodfin town board voted against a Progress Energy proposal to build an auxiliary power plant in the town Monday night (or early Tuesday morning). Residents had complained about power plant emissions and the fact that a power plant would lower property values.
No official word on whether Progress Energy will appeal the decision in court. But we’ll go ahead and tell you now – Progress Energy will appeal.
The power plant is an interesting conundrum. The Woodfin town board voted it down, and turned down a tax revenue boon, in part because of the massive amount of high-end home-building that’s happening there right now. The town has doubled in size over the last few years.
So thanks to all the rich folks moving in to Reynolds Mountain and bitching about the possibility of property values declining, the Woodfin board votes down a new power plant. But we wouldn’t need a new power plant in the first place if all these folks weren’t moving here.
Whatever…
Choir director charged
Leonard Smith, the choir director at Sycamore Temple in downtown Ashvegas, was charged with a couple of sex offenses with minors, WLOSers told us. The music minister knew the girls through the church.
Car hits building – guess what happened
Yeah, you got it. It was an older driver, who, (say it with me) thought she was hitting the brakes when instead, she hit the gas, and ran into the offices of Friends of the Smokies nonprofit on Main Street in Waynesville.
Send out the clowns
The nonprofit Health Adventure has announced that it’s cutting its clown school. The clowns have been known around town for, well, clowning around. But no more. The program isn’t profitable, so it’s getting cut.
lurker,
Your nomiker is deliciously ironic now, you know.
I don’t know about what is "corporate media’s job".
If the AC-T folks are interested in suing Progress for the info, then they’ll do so. The same goes for Mtn. X. I know that Canary Coalition is raising money for attorneys’ fees, and I rather like the grassroots effort.
AC-T lovers are very nice to so vociferously defend the paper. We have a lot of excellent reporters there, and it’s a shame they couldn’t hire a dozen more (some of them from here, preferably). I’d love to be able to say something less than complimentary about the newspaper’s reportage without having folks go ballistic, but I guess that’s the way it is.
The C-T had a guest editorial by Avram Friedman on 3/11. He didn’t mention a lawsuit, but recent stories in the newspaper have reported that the Canary Coalition and Mtn Voices Alliance had asked for all the records pertaining to meetings between the county and Progress Energy and gotten no good reponse. I haven’t seen anything about a lawsuit, but I assume that if the county did break the law, it (we as residents) will be sued, deservedly. If Mtn X is on the right side of this issue, then they should go ahead and sue the county. Or is that just corporate media’s job?
I MISSED YOU – so glad you’re back 🙂
And not to be the comment slut all of a sudden, but is anyone else annoyed by this?
2007 Lineup Coming Soon
The line up for Bele Chere 2007 will be announced around the end of March. Check back often for updates.
Granted, the first week of April could be considered AROUND the end of March, but I’m still feeling slighted.
Aw why not tack on one more comment?
The AC-T does an excellent job in many areas. I’m not trying to dismiss the entire paper. I’m simply saying the Mtn. X covered this story with a diligence that no other media outlet came near.
Sorry if that bugs some people. Also, when you so emphatically state that no law has been broken, I assume you don’t know the facts of the case, and, since you’re such an ardent admirer of the AC-T, I assume that if you don’t know the facts they weren’t in the AC-T.
Am I wrong?
Oh yeah…
The Canary Coalition ?was/is? preparing a lawsuit surrounding the violations. This was also reported by Mtn. X.
The lawbreaking was outlined in this post: http://scrutinyhooligans.blogspot.com/2007/03/woodfin-diesel-power-plant-breaking-law.html.
Here is the salient statute, as reported by the Mtn. Xpress and nowhere else that I saw:
"According to professor David Lawrence of the School of Government at UNC-Chapel Hill, a specialist in municipal-property issues, N.C. general statute 158-7.1 allows counties to engage in private negotiations concerning sales or long-term leases for economic-development purposes provided certain conditions are met. The property in question cannot be leased at a discounted rate, and the lessee must be creating a substantial number of jobs paying more than the local median wage. In determining the value of a property, a municipal government may include anticipated tax revenues from a proposed development"
It appears that the commission broke the first criteria by offering a $1/year lease during secret meetings and possibly the third criteria because the county failed to evaluate the acreage for salability before offering it.
Screwy, what was the "likely lawbreaking"? Government officials can legally meet and talk about issues as long as a quorum isn’t present. This was the case in the power plant situation. No law was broken.
The C-T has been a staunch defender of the public’s right to know and has filed a number of law suits against local governments to that effect. How many lawsuits has the MtnX filed? None that i’m aware of, though i think they’ve joined the local paper in a couple.
i’m all for calling politicians on the carpet. i just do not see it in this case.
The AC-T has done some coverage. What I refer to, of course, is the underhanded dealing and likely lawbreaking that never seemed to constitute a major issue for the major news outlets. The MtnX seems to have covered the story with due diligence.
And by "govern responsibly", I mean don’t intentionally inflict harm on the citizenry. If this is merely an opinion, then I’ll assume that other think that hurting the citizens is sometimes responsible governance.
fact check – that was my assumption
screwy, you really don’t get out much, do you? there have been more than 30 stories in the local daily newspaper since December of last year by a quick archive count. there’s been regular WLOSer coverage. not sure about other local weekly coverage, or radio news coverage, or other blogger coverage. but it’s a stretch to say that MountainX has been leading the way in covering the Woodfin story.
also, if by saying "govern responsibly" you mean "agreeing with you," then i guess you’re right.
what makes you think the victims are girls?
Great news about the power plant. Not that you’d know it from local coverage outside of the Mtn. Xpress, but this whole deal was conceived in secret meetings with Progress Energy for two years and the deal itself violated statutes against offering sweetheart deals without proper public notice. The County Commission has egg on their faces over this thing.
It’s a sad day when Woodfin has to show the county commission how to govern responsibly.
it makes sense that as the population increases, so does the demand for energy… but a diesel-burning plant? prevailing winds shoving the plant’s emissions directly into west asheville? more pollution to add to what we’re already getting from the tva’s coal-fired plants? doesn’t make sense.