The Cape Charles Town Council and Town Manager John Hozey will reveiw the current set of town priorties for the coming fiscal year at the November 28th work session. The session is scheduled for 6:30 PM and will be held at the town Civic Center on Tazewell Avenue.

Below is the current list that has been prioritized into the Town work plan for calendar year 2023.

1. Finalize the sale of our water/wastewater utilities
   1. Compile/file application for the VA State Corporation Commission
   1. Complete appraisals
   1. Effectuate closing and transfer of assets

• Negotiate and develop settlement agreement for Preserve Communities’ liabilities under the Annexation Agreement (needed for utility sale)

• Update Community Strategic Plan to be consistent with the new Comprehensive Plan and 2022 Community Survey (needed for FY24 budget development)

• Work with consultant on Zoning Ordinance updates (phase II of Comprehensive Plan)

• New Municipal Center and Library building

• New Downtown Restroom and Visitors Center

• Trail Project – Phase 3 – Peach Street

• Work with developers/agencies to facilitate workforce housing

• Connect Keck Wells to WTP (needed for workforce housing)

1. Develop beachfront master plan (beach, dunes, boardwalk, LOVE sign area, bathhouse, etc.)

1. Work with consultant on overall municipal code update (outside of zoning)

1. Develop short-term rental regulations/ordinances

1. Develop harbor area master planning and new design guidelines

1. Develop comprehensive parking strategies for the historic and commercial districts

1. Pursue development of shared revenue agreement with the County

It almost time for the for annual Community Survey. Town Council will be releasing and discussing the basic draft document during a work session scheduled for Monday, November 28th at 6:30 PM. The official survey document should be available soon after the work session.

The work session will be held at the Cape Charles Civic Center, 500 Tazewell Ave.

The survey is a very useful tool for the Town Staff, Town Manager Hozey, and especially for the incoming new Mayor and Town Council–it will help determine what is important to the citizens of Cape Charles, and will help the Town Council and Manager in setting future priorities.

Here is a quick look at some of the topics that may be included in the survey:

1. Please choose the closest one that applies to you:

____ Full-time resident living within the corporate limits of Cape Charles

____ Resides in Northampton County but outside the corporate limits of Cape Charles

____     Owns property within the corporate limits of Cape Charles but maintains a primary residence outside of the town 

____      Resides outside Northampton County but a frequent visitor to Cape Charles

• How long have you lived or owned property in Cape Charles? ________________       N/A

• Do you own a business in Cape Charles?    Yes _____   No _____

• Are you employed?  Circle the closest one that applies:

               Full time             part time           retired    between jobs          prefer not to answer

• Is your employment based primarily from your home?    Yes _____   No _____

• Do you think town public services are appropriate for a community of our size?

               Yes _____   No _____        (Please feel free to attach comments)

• Are you satisfied with the quality of town public services?

               Yes _____   No _____        (Please feel free to attach comments)

• Do you feel the Town has maintained or improved its small-town character in recent years?

               Yes _____   No _____           (Please feel free to attach comments)

• For a small town, Cape Charles has many priorities on its plate; more than we can do at one time.  Please help prioritize the following, with 1 being the highest priority and 5 being the lowest:

_____ Develop beachfront master plan (beach, dunes, boardwalk, LOVE sign area, bathhouse, etc.)

_____ Develop harbor/railroad area master plan and design guidelines for future development

_____ Develop comprehensive parking strategies for the historic and commercial districts

_____ Develop short-term rental regulations/ordinances

_____ Other: _________________________________________________________________

1. The Town Council believes that Cape Charles should strive to have a healthy mix of economic sectors, which include tourism related businesses, commercial/service-oriented businesses, manufacturing/light industrial type of businesses, and other businesses associated with a working harbor.  As we begin to update our master planning/zoning for the old railroad areas, the Town Council wishes to be sensitive to implications future development might have on our existing working harbor.  For example, high-end residential or tourism related uses too near the harbor could potentially drive out our traditional harbor uses (like watermen), eroding economic diversity.  

Do you agree with the Council’s view regarding maintenance of economic diversity? 

               Yes _____   No _____           (Please feel free to attach comments)

1. Should the town acquire the resources to fund new capital projects, please help prioritize the following possibilities, with 1 being the highest priority and 5 being the lowest:

_____ Renovate the beachfront/Bay Ave (beach, dunes, boardwalk, LOVE sign area, bathhouse, etc.)

_____ Create a new recreational park (sports fields, pavilion, picnic areas, restrooms, etc.)

_____ Assist with sidewalk infill throughout the historic district

_____ New harbor amenities (aesthetic upgrades, shaded gathering areas, vendor space, etc.)

_____ Other: _________________________________________________________________

1. What tools do you use to stay in touch with town happenings?  Circle all that apply: 

Facebook      Gazette      Nixle      Town website      Staff weekly reports      Word of mouth    

Newspapers      CC Happenings      Mirror      Other _________________________________

1. Your Name:  ___________________________________________________ Street Address:       ___________________________________________________ 

       Email Address:  ___________________________________________________

                                                Note: anonymous surveys cannot be counted

May we contact you regarding this survey?                    Yes _____   No _____     

Responses are due back to Town Hall no later than 2:00 pm, January 13, 2023

Surveys may be dropped off, mailed (2 Plum St), or scanned and emailed to Clerk@capecharles.org

An electronic version of this survey is also available on the Town’s website

The Cape Charles Town Council will meet on December 1, 2022 to interview two citizens for open seats on the Town Planning Commission. This is a Closed Session that is scheduled for 6:30 PM at the Cape Charles Civic Center.

The reason for the closed session is derived from the Code of Virginia § 2.2-3711-A, Paragraph 1: Discussion, consideration, or interviews of prospective candidates for employment; assignment, appointment, promotion, performance, demotion, salaries, disciplining, or resignation of specific public officers, appointees, or employees of any public body.

Specifically for this case, the town’s Interviews for Planning Commission.

After the interviews, the appointment of new Planning Commission members will be effective January 1, 2023.

The Cape Charles Rotary Club will again participate in the Salvation Army’s Holiday Bell Ringing campaign at the Cape Charles Food Lion.

The Rotary invites community friends and neighbors to join this Holiday tradition on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays from December 1st until December 17th .

If you’d like to help those less fortunate enjoy the Holiday Season, call Bill Payne at 757 390 7253, to sign up.

The Holiday Season has begun in Cape Charles and it’s time to get ready for a CC tradition, the Lighted Golf Cart Parade. The parade is scheduled or Saturday, December 3rd. View the Parade at 5:20 PM at Central Park just prior to “Grand Illumination”.
Bring your holiday decorated cart and line up at the LOVE sign at 4:45 PM for a chance to win a
$100 Visa Card for Best Cart! Ribbons for 1st, 2nd, 3rd place.

Visit www.facebook.com/lightedgolfcartparade for more information.

Eastern Shore Custom Carts CC Ryder Rentals are providing FREE CART RENTALS in exchange
for a $25 monetary or food donation to the Cape Charles Foodbank.

Looking for the perfect Christmas hostess gift, stocking stuffer, Cape Charles homeowner or Vacation memory piece? This year’s ornament features Peach Street Books and hanging it on your tree will had bit of the Holiday magic in Cape Charles to your Christmas tree.

The ornaments are sold at various businesses in Cape Charles: Bailey’s Bait & Tackle, Bay Haven Inn of Cape Charles, Buoy56, Cape Charles Candy Company, Chuckletown Productions, Drizzles, Kelly’s Gingernut Pub, Peach Street Books & The Boardwalk.

164 B.C. The Jewish general Judas Maccabeus restores proper worship to the Temple in Jerusalem. The event is celebrated annually during Hanukkah. The Maccabean Revolt (167-60 B.C) was one of the signal events of Jewish history, and represents one of the last periods of Jewish independence prior to Roman subjugation of the region.

1095: The First Crusade: In response to a request from the Byzantine Emperor Alexius I, Pope Urban II convenes the Council of Clermont, in the French city of that name. For the next week, over 300 prelates and nobles from across France review the state of play within the Catholic Church, and more importantly, the request from Alexius for military assistance to help eject the Seljuk Turks from Byzantine Anatolia.
Byzantine Empire was explicitly Christian and was, in fact, the last surviving remnant of the Eastern Roman Empire. During the Council, the arguments in favor of assisting against the Turks quickly evolved into what was seen as a God-directed desire to re-capture the Holy City of Jerusalem from the Muslims who had controlled it for the previous 350 years. The council will end on the 27^th with Urban II’s famous speech calling for a Crusade.

1343: An underwater earthquake in the Tyrrhenian Sea initiates a tsunami that devastates Naples and much of the low-lying Amalfi coast.

1491: Opening guns in the Siege of Granada, where the combined forces of Aragon and Castile begin their final push against the stronghold of the Emirate of Granada, last remaining vestige of the 780 years of the Moslem empire of Al-Andalus.

1594: Death of Martin Frobisher (b.1539), an English sea-dog contemporary of Francis Drake. Frobisher made three trips to the New World, landing principally in Canada, where he explored for both the fabled Northwest Passage, and for the elusive mother lode of gold that was always just one more day away. He was one of the key English leaders during the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588.

1694: Birth of the French intellectual and writer Francois-Marie Arouet, better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire (d.1778).  He was an outspoken advocate of civil liberties, free trade, freedom of religion, all of which were prominent among the core values of the Scottish Enlightenment. He moved in the highest circles of intellect and politics, spending over two years in the court and the private table of Prussian King Fredrick the Great, among others. His work greatly influenced the thinking of Virginia’s Thomas Jefferson and other leading lights of the American Revolution. 

1703: Death of The Man in the Iron Mask, held in a variety of French prisons under the supervision of Cardinal Richelieu during the reign of Louis XIV. His identity has never been confirmed, and the conditions of his 34 years in somewhat stately captivity created a cottage industry of novels, plays and monographs attempting to deduce his identity and his supposed crimes.

1718: Death of Edward Teach (b.1680), better known as the fabled pirate Blackbeard, who terrorized the southern seaboard of the English colonies, at one point blockading Charleston, South Carolina for ransom. He spent the majority of his pirating career based out of Ocracoke Inlet in North Carolina, using its strategic location to survey the shipping moving up and down the coast and dashing out in his ship Queen Anne’s Revenge to plunder and kill. Teach is finally brought down by the Royal Navy’s Lieutenant Robert Maynard, who crafted an attack which played on Teach’s propensity to attack weak-looking vessels. The surprise appearance of Maynard’s men from below decks fractured the integrity of the pirates’ attack, and Teach himself was mortally wounded with five gunshots and no fewer than 25 severe cuts from swords and cutlasses. Maynard decapitated the corpse and hung the head from a yardarm on his return to Hampton, Virginia to prove to citizens ashore that Blackbeard was indeed dead. 

1739: Ships of the Royal Navy descend on and capture the Spanish fortress city of Porto Bello in Panama. The lopsided battle was hailed as a great victory in England, and served as the first step of revenge in the War of Jenkins’ Ear (1739-1748) between Spain and Great Britain. The war was eventually subsumed by the larger War of Austrian Succession.

1748: Death of the great British hymnist Isaac Watts (b.1674): When I Survey the Wondrous Cross; Joy to the World; Jesus Shall Reign Where ‘ere the Sun; Alas and Did My Savior Bleed; I Sing the Mighty Power of God, and over 700 more songs, to say nothing about his scholarly writings on logic and its relationship to faith.

1789: New Jersey becomes the first state to ratify the Bill of Rights.

1820: The Nantucket whaling ship Essex, on station in the South Pacific, is repeatedly rammed by an enraged sperm whale and sinks. The story of the sinking and the subsequent survival of members of the crew was part of Melville’s inspiration for Moby-Dick. 

1835: Birth in Scotland of American industrialist, steel tycoon and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie (d.1919), often considered the second-richest man in history behind J.D. Rockefeller. Carnegie’s philanthropy exists today in the form of the magnificent Carnegie Hall in New York, and hundreds of libraries across the country.

1835: The Provincial Government of Texas authorizes the establishment of a core of mounted state law enforcement officers, known as the Texas Rangers.

1859: Publication of Charles Darwin’s  The Origin of Species.
 
1863: President Abraham Lincoln, presiding over the dedication of a new national cemetery where are buried the Union dead from the great battle of four months prior, delivers his Gettysburg Address. Its providing the intellectual underpinnings for not only the post-Civil War reconstruction, but for the very nature of the United States as it went forward.

1863: At the Battle of Lookout Mountain, just south of Chattanooga, Tennessee, a Union force of 10,000 under General Joseph “Fighting Joe” Hooker fights an uphill battle through fog and rocky defiles to defeat one of Confederate General Braxton Bragg’s brigades defending the heights. The battle is often called the “Battle Above the Clouds” from the way the two sides blindly fired towards each other during the course of the day. Confederate Brigadier John C. Brown, positioned atop the mountain, was himself unable to see or direct the defenses due to both the fog and the steep geography that blocked sight lines to the fighting below. That night, the Confederate force withdrew to establish a better defensive position on nearby Missionary Ridge.

1863: After the Union victory at Lookout Mountain, the forces meet again for a vicious and decisive day of battle on Missionary Ridge, just a short distance away from yesterday’s fight. Both sides suffer major casualties, but the Confederate position could not hold against Grant’s and Sherman’s relentless attacks, and Confederate General Bragg withdraws his army to Dalton, Georgia. The Union victory in the Chattanooga campaign allows them to consolidate their forces and supplies in this critical railroad junction city, which becomes the base for Sherman’s drive toward Atlanta the following year.

1869: Launch of the clipper ship Cutty Sark in Dumbarton, Scotland. The ship participated in several great races between the tea markets in China and the London docks, with speeds under sail averaging over 15 knots. The ship’s preservation was for years the center of a bitter and perpetual argument between two historic camps, the first being those who wanted to preserve as much as possible of the original “fabric” of the vessel, believing that once the original material is gone, the history of the design and construction go with it. The other camp believes in maintaining the ship to an operational standard, which would of necessity mean the replacement of materials whose structural integrity is suspect. As a point of reference, USS Constitution up in Boston retains its status as the “original” frigate of 1796, even though only about 10% of its current materials remain from the original construction. Its provenance is secure because every repair and replacement was part of continuous maintenance, not fundamental changes and upgrades.
The foundation that owns Cutty Sark was in the height of the preservation argument as the ship went into a major re-fit in 2005. In May of 2007 a suspicious fire broke out on board and burned for two hours before the fire brigades were able to get in and contain it. As damage assessments came in, the curator announced that most of the “fabric” had already been removed and stored, and that damage from the fire was repairable. Part of the fire’s aftermath was the ascendency of the fabric-preservationist camp, which finished up work on the re-build with a completely new display concept for public viewing, referred to by one kind soul as, “…plonking it into a fishbowl.”  The ship re-opened for visitors in the Spring of 2012.

1876: The head of New York’s Tammany Hall, the notorious William M. “Boss” Tweed, is returned from Europe via extradition to NYC by Spanish authorities, who recognized him from the series of famous Thomas Nash cartoons lambasting his egregious corruption. Tweed escaped from prison a year earlier, where he was serving a sentence after conviction on a number of corruption and money laundering charges. After today, he remained locked up, and died in custody in 1878.

1888: Birth of Dale Carnegie (d.1955), one of the original lights of training in business improvement methods. His original work, “How to Win Friends and Influence People” (1936) remains a staple in business circles.

1914: Birth of Joe “Joltin’ Joe” DiMaggio (d.1999), who spent 13 years as center fielder for the New York Yankees (1936-42 and 1946-51), providing the team and the country with a record of baseball superlatives: 3-time AL MVP, 13 consecutive All Star games; a 56 game hitting streak*- unsurpassed to this day, #5 in career home runs (361),  #6 slugging percentage (.571), 10 AL Pennants, 9 victorious World Series. The Yankees got their money’s worth when they hired the “Yankee Clipper” from his original ball club, the San Francisco Seals. His post-baseball career saw him very successful in business, but less successful in a string of dramatic but short-lived marriages and love affairs with beautiful actresses, including Marilyn Monroe.

1920: In Dublin, the Irish Republican Army assassinates 12 British informants who worked with the Royal Irish Constabulary to help put down rebellion that was raging throughout Ireland. In response, a vigilante militia group of “Black & Tans” from the RIC burst into a stadium during a football match and fired several hundred rounds into the crowd, killing 14 and wounding upwards of 80 civilians. The event became known as Bloody Sunday, and served to harden against the Crown those souls whose earlier sympathies during the revolt had been ambivalent.  

1921: Birth of the most respected comedian, Rodney Dangerfield (d.2004).

1928: First performance of Maurice Ravel’s Bolero.

1947: Great Britain’s Princess Elizabeth weds Phillip Mountbatten.

1955: First publication of William F. Buckley’s National Review magazine, in which the erudite conservative Yale graduate declaimed that his (and his magazine’s) purpose was to “Stand athwart history, yelling ‘Stop!’” You know why, of course: the institutional Left- which constituted most of post-WWII academia and media- almost always framed their arguments on the basis of the inevitability of history showing they were right. Buckley initiated the “not so fast” movement that continues to this day.

1959: French President Charles de Gaulle gives a speech in Strasbourg, France, where he forcefully outlines the ultimate vision of the recently established European Coal and Steel Community and European Economic Community (a.k.a., the Common Market (precursor to today’s European Union)): “Yes, it is Europe, from the Atlantic to the Urals, it is Europe, it is the whole of Europe, that will decide the destiny of the world.”  At the time of this pronouncement, France was embroiled in war in Algeria, had recently been forcibly ejected from its colony in Indo-China, and along with the British, failed to prevent Egypt from nationalizing the Suez Canal.

1960: Birth of John F. Kennedy, Jr. (d.1999).

1963: John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was assassinated on Friday, November 22 at 12:30 p.m. CST in Dallas, Texas, while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza.

1963: Dallas police move to transfer Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald from the basement of the Dallas police headquarters to the county jail, when, from out of the crowd of reporters at the door, nightclub owner Jack Ruby* lunges forward and shoots Oswald in the abdomen. He died 90 minutes later in Parkland hospital, the same place where President Kennedy was declared dead two days earlier. All the national networks were broadcasting Oswald’s transfer, providing the country with a live broadcast of the murder that Sunday morning. 

1963: After three days of a State funeral, President John F. Kennedy is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. The unprecedented live television coverage of the assassination and events leading to the funeral created a riveting cultural touchstone for a generation. 

1969: Apollo 12 -The lightning strike from last week’s launch so scrambled up the telemetry from the rocket and onboard systems that the crew had to perform an obscure procedure, practiced only once in the year before the mission, that provided alternate power to the telemetry encoder. The quick thinking of the flight director at KSC and Alan Bean’s memory on the procedure allowed the flight not to abort. They continued into a parking orbit and performed a thorough systems checkout before igniting the Saturn Upper Stage for the trans-lunar injection (TLI) burn. The lunar landing occurred on this day. When the diminutive Pete Conrad climbed out of the LEM on to the surface of the moon, he exclaimed those immortal words: “Whoopie! Man- that may have been a small step for Neil, but that’s a long one for me!” The landing site was chosen to be close to a Surveyor III probe that touched down on the surface two years earlier. Automated systems guided the LEM with near-perfect precision, but Conrad chose to move their touchdown point about 600 feet short because the intended touchdown point looked too rough. Conrad and Bean spent over 31 hours on the surface and made two excursions outside the LEM. 

1975: Death of General Francisco Franco (b.1892). Franco declared himself Caudillo of Spain at the close of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. His close ties with Nazi Germany during the civil war, his studious neutrality during WWII, and his strident anti-communism made him a particular object of left-wing loathing. In his later years he re-established a representative parliament and set the conditions for a restoration of the Bourbons under a constitutional monarchy.

1977: Egyptian President Anwar Sadat becomes the first Arab leader to visit the State of Israel, making an unprecedented speech to the Israeli Knesset, calling for peace between Israel and its neighbors. For this act of grace and strength, he was assassinated by the Muslim Brotherhood.

1990: Death of British writer and WWII fighter pilot Roald Dahl (b.1916). He is best known for his children’s stories, including Matilda, The BFG, The Twits, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and his stories from his time in the RAF: Going Solo, Over to You, and Shot Down Over Libya. 

Article submitted by Dustin Smith, Public Information for Jehovah’s Witnesses

Study Links Trauma Resilience to Reliance on Scripture

As school shootings bring heartbreak to one community after another, a new national study affirms that turning to the Bible during traumatic events can bring comfort and hope, sustaining families through the crisis and beyond.

A nationally-representative study, commissioned by the American Bible Society and conducted in collaboration with the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago, found that people who have suffered trauma are better able to cope when actively engaged with Scripture.

“When trauma sufferers are Scripture Engaged, they flourish more than trauma-free people who are not Scripture Engaged,” the researchers concluded. “But for all the damage done by trauma, there is restoration and healing to be found as people interact regularly with God by reading his Word and living it out. That’s what these numbers show us. There is life beyond the trauma.”

Such an impact was apparent when the son of Brenda Curtis’ Bible student was murdered in August of 2021. “My student was in a state of loss,” said Curtis, a volunteer minister of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Baltimore, MD. 

“I personally saw the comfort that the Bible brought to her,” said Curtis. “She went from feeling lost during that traumatic time, to feeling that she wouldn’t have survived this if it weren’t for God and the Bible in her life.”

The NORC study used a 10-point Human Flourishing scale to assess the effect of actively reading the Bible. The study found that those who had experienced trauma and who regularly turned to the Bible for comfort had an average score of 7.7 points compared to a score of 6.3 points among those for whom the Bible had little influence. The report concluded that “engagement with God’s Word leads to a better life — fruitful, prosperous, flourishing.” 

Curtis supported these findings. “When I spoke to her, she felt that God came into her life at the right time. The Bible scriptures that were shared with her soothed and calmed her and they still bring her relief as she continues to deal with the aftermath of that trauma,” Curtis said. 

Brenda Curtis spent the majority of her days providing comfort to her Bible student. “My family and fellow congregants all tried to comfort her in many ways; from text messages to phone calls and personal visits, anything practical to help out,” she said. “As I get older, I am limited in what I can do, but to see how she is relying on God and in the promises that the Bible contains, reinvigorates my own faith.”

To download a free copy of the Bible and examine its statements about why God allows such tragedies, visit jw.org, the official website of Jehovah’s Witnesses.