If you’ve lived here long enough, you understand that truth can be stranger than fiction, many people will lie when the truth would sound so much better, and rumors usually turn out to be true.

The Mirror is your local sounding board for all of this, either publically, or offline. This scuttlebutt is the line of demarcation for what the street knows versus public proclamations, backroom deals, and what takes place in ‘Executive Session’.

The water deal with Virginia American Water has many worried, especially some folks in Bay Creek. Word has it the Town has stopped platting new lots in Bay Creek until they study and work out the water issues. What water issues? Is there a problem with the wells, or just waiting to see what shakes out with the utility sale? There are many that now believe Bay Creek (Preserve Communities) is deeply involved in the water and wastewater sale.

The Federal Reserve is trying to fight the highest inflation in 40 years: Boosting interest rates. On Wednesday, the central bank said it is increasing its benchmark short-term interest rate by 0.5%, marking the largest increase since 2000. 

The Fed’s goal is to tamp down demand from consumers and businesses for goods and services. Higher rates make it more expensive to borrow money to buy a home, car or other needs, prompting some people to hold off on purchases. A drop in demand could help tame inflation, which accelerated to 8.5% in March, the highest increase since 1981. 

When the bubble bursts, this is going to hammer Cape Charles. While the purse is fat, many are content to just look away. Don’t want to be there when the laughter ends.

It’s already bad at Bay Creek. The golf courses are bleeding out and losing a couple of million a year. Avid golfers that used to cross the Bay to play those courses are completely disgusted with how they were chopped up to create the conservation easement scheme. They avoid the Shore like the plague now, and Bay Creek is the laughing stock of the golfing community…how the hell do you do that to world-class golf courses? It’s going to hit the fan when they start building on the remnants of the old courses.

Bay Creek residents are also concerned that Preserve is not building the amenities that they previously discussed. To alleviate some cash flow issues, they tried to start charging a fee for the exercise classes–people just stopped showing up so they had to walk that back.

Like the rest of the Shore, they are struggling to find workers.

All that fancy talk about the developer coming to create affordable housing, well there are rumors that development is tied to Preserve, and it will serve to entice workers, both full-time and seasonal. It sounds crazy, but so did selling the old Cape Charles High School, which at the time was assessed at over 1$million, for a mere $10 dollars. The Mirror asked John Hozey for the 411 on this, but we have not received a response.

Stranger than true, we know.

So it goes.

This was sent by email to the Cape Charles Mirror, highlighting citizen’s concerns about the growth and safety of our town.

Cape Charles offers its unique and wonderful beach to its residents and visitors but parking is limited. Safety and convenience must coexist.

Please consider the following:

1) golf cart parking only along Bay Ave.
2) golf carts park head in
3) no bicycles or vehicles of any kind on median strip along Bay Ave.
4) limit # of food trucks/stands/food carts permitted on Bay Avenue

This will create a second problem; where do the cars then park?

Please review how our sister beach towns have handled this problem: Dedicated parking lots with fees.
Full time CC residents would be exempt and have an annual decal to park for free. Rental properties could issue this decal to renters for one car per home.

Please consider the following for safety on the beach.

1) Personal watercraft is to remain 1000′ from shoreline IAW regulations set by the National Park Service, example Fire Island.
2) Exceptions would be the navigational channels leading to the Town Harbor and the Bay Creek Marina.

Enhances safety, noise reduction, pollution reduction.

Dear Cape Charles Mirror,

The Fourth of July was very busy this season, with much more out of town car traffic speeding through our streets. The safety of children and adults is compromised severely by street parking of boats, trailers, and RVs. To help alleviate the problem, I believe a couple of things could help to make it safer.

First, RVs are not to be parked in town or parked for overnight camping in town. All RVs are to use designated camping and storage facilities. Second, boats/trailers are not permitted to park on town streets. Parking lots exist for boat launches and storage areas exist for boat storage. They need to put them there.

Safety first

This note was forwarded to the Cape Charles Mirror by our friend and neighbor Jennifer Ingram. This was a short, small note, but it spoke to where live in a very big way:

$265…Just now at Foodlion. the gentleman behind me bought the groceries for the woman in front of me. When she went to pay, she found that her card had been cancelled…he just paid for it. She thanked him and hugged him. Kindness and gratitude, humanity.

IT WAS ALL I COULD DO NOT LOOSE IT AND START CRYING. I mean I was teary eyed cuz hello it’s me and I’m emotional anyway, but who wouldn’t be?

For folks that are not local, trying to work with a non-business friendly town like Cape Charles can be frustrating. Owners have told the Mirror that if you can’t physically walk into the Plum Street offices, it is nearly impossible to get things done, despite a brutal and capricious business tax structure. Business owners have complained about the town’s reluctance or inability to get derelict shops to clean up their act. A case in point, 207 Mason has been in a state of disrepair for 7 years, and continues to spiral downward.

Code Enforcement has been contacted by adjacent owners concerned about 207 several times, but was told that the town could do nothing about it. These folks had to obtain an engineer at their expense. It wasn’t until the report was given to the town that the owners of 207 were required to take down a cracked wall that joined the adjacent property. The report exposed a wall that was in danger of falling and causing bodily harm.

The town also never inspected the 2-3 inch cracks in the common wall that was causing it to bow and increase damage to the adjacent building.

Even after having the special use permit revoked, the back of 207 still has cinder blocks piled up on town property. Rodents continue to call the building home.

“The building remains a danger and eyesore. How long and how many times will the town allow permits that result in no improvement. A two story building on that site will take a long time, should never have been approved because of the future water runoff on a common wall will cause damage to both buildings on each side,” said a business owner. “It leaves other businesses who work hard to stay compliant, to do the right thing, feeling like they are treated unfairly for trying to correct a situation that should have had more attention and has decreased their ability to market and sell a property because of the building next door and its poor perception and noncompliance to correct the faults. Not to mention what it does to curb appeal and its street view.”

While many of us think factory poultry farms are Accomack’s problem, that may not longer be the case, as this citizen explains in this comment sent to the Mirror:

I don’t think there is much that smells worse than chicken manure fertilizer. The new trend among the local farmers is using chicken poop ( presumably coming from the factory chicken operations up in Accomack County) to spread on their farm fields. The odor is a combination of dog poop and rotten fish. As I like to keep my windows open (for “fresh” air) my entire house reeked yesterday. I had to burn candles. To top it off, our large, very hairy dog comes in the morning having trudged all through said fields and rolled enthusiastically, so she is now coated with the horrendous ( toxic, too, no doubt!) stuff. We NEVER had these issues with regular fertilizers or fungicides. I can only guess that the chicken poop is cheaper.