More Opposition to Crooked Road Heritage Area

Dear Correspondents, can you guess why Yahoo misfiled Catherine Turner's e-mail, below, as spam? (Probably not, unless you've seen the e-mail or the flyer printed from it.)

"February 28, 2013

CAUTION! REALITY CHECK FOR The Crooked Road:

Fifteen SWVA Agricultural Assn. Member Counties REJECT The Crooked Road National Heritage Area Designation...see attached

The VA Farm Bureau tells Congressman Morgan Griffith: WE REJECT THE NHA!...see attached

Wythe County Commissioners Unanimously Reject the NHA Designation

Town Council of Rural Retreat Unanimously Reject the NHA Designation,

Tues. February 26, 2013

Excerpt from email, Executive Director, The Crooked Road, Jack Hinshelwood, December 17, 2012:

As we have stated before, a Crooked Road NHA would do just two things – give this region’s heritage music a well deserved national recognition, and make us eligible for possible federal funding to promote the region’s music. It is that simple. It would not in any way convey local governmental authority to The Crooked Road. Nor would local governmental authority be conveyed in any way to the National Park Service or the Department of the Interior – a fact confirmed by 13 county officials in three heritage areas in three neighboring states.

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'give this region’s heritage music a well deserved national recognition...'

Our response:

We believe that our heritage music pre-dated The Crooked Road's marketing efforts, and its future success should not in any way involve the National Park Service by imposing a boundary around nineteen SWVA counties.

'...make us eligible for possible federal funding...Nor would local governmental authority be conveyed in any way to the National Park Service or the Department of the Interior'

Tell that to the National Park Service, Mr. Hinshelwood! Since the NHA will be 50% funded by the NPS, we're pretty sure The Crooked Road will be playing by the Secretary of the Interior's rules:

http://www.nps.gov/heritageareas/REP/Notebook.pdf

The management plan also links the local coordinating entity [The Crooked Road Board] to federal funding and broadly sets forth how federal and other monies are to be spent over time. The management planning process must be completed in three years, as stated in the authorizing legislation, and include National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) processes and documentation in order for the Secretary of the Interior to sign the plan. Without the Secretary’s signature, a heritage area cannot receive further federal funding. (NEPA and NHPA outline planning and consultation processes which can be integrated into the management planning process and are explained below.)

'...Nor would local governmental authority be conveyed in any way to the National Park Service or the Department of the Interior – a fact confirmed by 13 county officials in three heritage areas in three neighboring states.'

We don't know who Mr. Hinshelwood's "thirteen county officials" are, but we have documented THOUSANDS of victims of property rights abuses as a result of Heritage Area management plans in our NHA Newsletter, 2nd Edition (see both issues, attached) including Heritage Areas in neighboring states.

For more information, contact: 276-274-8304

The Southwest Virginia Tea Party, Abingdon/Bristol/WashCo

www.swvateapartyab.org "

Why wouldn't this document have reached me until today, when I thought "Since the General Assembly have voted on legislation for this year, there's time to check the spam file," if it had been e-mailed three weeks ago? Links and attachments usually don't snag documents in the spam filter, although the computers I use often fail to open them, or, in the case of PDF documents, take more time to process them than I have. This document was filed as SPAM because it contained...a graphic. A picture of a road sign saying "Proceed With Caution." Apparently Google doesn't like the picture either, because it failed to paste into this document with the rest of the press release, but I assure you there's nothing offensive about it. You've seen similar signs on the road.  

Proceed with caution when e-mailing pictures, Gentle Readers.  

The fifteen counties that have rejected the National Heritage Area designation are: Bland, Buchanan, Carroll, Dickenson, Giles, Grayson, Lee, Pulaski, Russell, Scott, Smyth, Tazewell, Washington, Wise, and Wythe.  

So far as I know, everybody in these counties, without exception, loves tourists. And music. And music festivals. And parks. And scenery. Also crafts, bed-and-breakfasts, antique car shows, pick-your-own-fruit fields, and other things The Crooked Road has attempted to market. We just don't see a necessary connection between any of these things and a proposed land grab by a federal government careening toward bankruptcy and likely to sell the land it has grabbed to foreign interests.