Letter to the Eastern Shore News, October 13, 2007

Thornton ‘unworthy of public trust,’ should withdraw

To the editor:
I am writing to thank the Citizens for a Better Eastern Shore for hosting the forums to meet the candidates for Accomack Board of Supervisors. While I am encouraged by the ability to hear the candidates speak their minds on a number of issues, I was appalled that District 1 Supervisor Wanda Thornton used this forum, along with a public meeting in Chincoteague, to deliberately spread wrong information and poison public opinion about several very important issues this county faces.

These falsehoods concern the claim that the draft Comprehensive Plan advocates 10-acre lot sizes for the County, that the Board of Supervisors intends to move all Chincoteague Fire and EMS assets to Route 13, and that the county attorney stated that Aquaculture Enhancement Study would preclude central sewage in the County. All of these claims are simply false.

As if this disinformation campaign were not bad enough, there are several other candidates who have bought in to these falsehoods. At the forums, District 2 candidate Tim Raynor, District 6 candidate Wayne Wills and District 5 candidate Jack Gray spoke of the comp plan advocating 10 acres for the whole county, also.

They can’t have read the report. They are participating in the Thornton falsehood.

The report advocates higher density affordable housing built out around existing towns where public sewage disposal can be provided along with the graduated lower densities in environmentally sensitive areas to protect our waters from runoff.

Nowhere in the document does it say that a lot size should be 10 acres. I encourage others in the county to read the report for themselves.

Furthermore, contrary to the implications of Wills and Raynor, this report is what the citizens of Accomack asked for at a number of public meetings attended by hundreds of people over the last year and a half.

By spreading falsehoods about the draft Comprehensive Plan, Thornton is attempting to poison public opinion about the most important and well-balanced document the County has produced in a decade.

After these episodes, I read Chincoteague Reports, the independent island news Web site, to see what Thornton said at the Oct. 1 Chincoteague Town Council Meeting. Here it gets worse. Thornton initiated the following falsehoods:

· That in the June Accomack County Public Safety Systems report, “The ultimate goal of the study is to move everything out on (U.S. Route) 13.” This is patently false and is an effort to poison opinion against the study.

· That the Accomack County attorney said that the Virginia Aquaculture Enhancement Study for the Eastern Shore could stop central sewage from being developed in the County — this is also not true. This falsehood poisons public opinion against a very important initiative that would grow a year-round multi-million dollar industry benefiting thousands of people.

· That the draft Comprehensive Plan is more than 500 pages and that Chincoteague could never meet many of the requirements of extending the Bay Act wetlands protection requirements to the sea side. The plan is not over 500 pages, it is 226 pages with 26 pages of maps, easily skimmed in an evening. Existing structures in a developed town would obviously be grandfathered. An exception may be in egregious cases such as wetlands with illegal roads, spills or dumps (see saveournecks.com photo gallery for Chincoteague aerials).

Thornton makes decisions that affect the entire county. Apparently, she feels that spreading falsehoods, fear, uncertainty, and doubt and fostering an adversarial climate between the citizens of Chincoteague and the rest of the County serves her constituency. Nobody is served by falsehoods.

Thornton has shown herself unworthy of the public trust, and I urge her to withdraw from the election. I urge the citizens of Chincoteague to vote for Terry Elliott for Supervisor in District 1. He is an honest man. He will work with cooperatively with other supervisors to solve mutual problems.