The following letter was submitted by citizen Ken Dufty of Wardtown. Mr. Dufty’s points revolve around Tourist Cottages and PC Commissioner Sturgis’s insistence that farmhouses and barns be allowed to convert to apartment complexes. and evade density regulations.

The comments addressed: 1) the proposal by the Northampton County Board of Supervisors (BOS) to remove “tourist cottages” from our 2016 amended Northampton County Zoning Ordinance (“ZO”) a.k.a ZTA 2022-03; and, 2) the deliberation by the PC of the ongoing draft and eventual recommendation to the BOS of a ZO amendment to allow “adaptive reuse” of structures to purportedly address the shortage of affordable and workforce housing in the county.

I. Proposal by the BOS to remove “tourist cottages’ from the definition section 154.2.003 and to remove Category 2-Commercial Uses, line 101, “tourist cottage (not intended for permanent residence up to 12” from Appendix A of the Northampton County Zoning Ordinance.

  On this issue, I adopt by reference and support the Staff Report dated April 27, 2022, by staff reviewer Kelly Parks, CZA, Acting Zoning Administrator.  In particular, the Acting Zoning Administrator holds that: 1) the removal of this use is consistent with the 2009 and 2020 Comprehensive Plan; 2) the use as written can be confusing to an applicant because the more recent adoption of “Short Term Rentals” has a more up-to-date definition of this type of use; 3) the misinterpretation of the Tourist Cottage Use could result in density violations which were set by the majority of residents when drafting and finalizing the 2009 and 2020 Comprehensive Plans; and, 4) the intention of the removal is “only..to clean up the ordinance and delete a conflicting term and use”.

   During the public hearing phase of this proposed action, however, I did point out that the recent applicant(s) Angelo Manuel and Bill Parr are both accomplished and seasoned real estate agents and developers and it is difficult to even imagine that this use included in Appendix A would obfuscate or evade density requirements. In short, there is no language anywhere in our zoning ordinance that would anyone to believe that tourist cottages are exempt from density (dwelling units per acre) regulations. Indeed, it is also close to astonishing that they would think and argue that a tourist cottage is not a dwelling unit, and that their 40+/- acre parcel, by those very defined density requirements, could legally contain 12 dwelling units (Dus) when the ordinance explicitly limits DU’s to 1  per 20-acre parcel of land zoned as Agriculture/Rural Business. I will add to my comments last night that it is equally surreal and impalpable that the applicant argued that the home that he is intending to build on the former Taylor parcel in Townsend does not count for density calculations because it is “by right”.       I pointed out to the Commissioners that I am not an attorney, nor am I a real estate agent. But when it was argued by the applicant that tourist cottages “up to 12” are allowed on A/RB land, I naturally assumed that they would understand that meant that an applicant proposing to put that many dwelling units on a parcel so zoned A/RB, would have to own 240 acres (1 dwelling unit per a 20-acre parcel).  Note that proposing to put 12- or even 6- dwelling units on a 40 +/- parcel is in direct contradiction to our duly and recently adopted Comprehensive Plan (as well as all other archived plans) and stands in stark contrast to the spirit and legislative intent that were adopted when determining zoning districts, their use, and regulation pursuant to 154.2-082.

    Our adopted legislative intent of agricultural zones, including A/RB, which was read into the record last night, is listed as:

        154.2.082 (B)

1. To preserve prime agricultural soils’
2. To maintain the rural character

          5) to provide for low-density rural housing compatible with

            the rural agricultural quality to minimize the impact upon agricultural activities and to maximize open space which may be used for agriculture and forestry. (emphasis added).

    Legislative intent for any particular zoning district, including the spirit and adopted blueprint for the development of each particular zone is ministerial. It cannot be cavalierly discarded, ignored, or eviscerated like the applicant tried to accomplish when proposing the development of the Manuel parcel in Townsend. In short, tourist cottages stand in opposition to the sprit and intent of agricultural districts in Northampton County. They are a commercial use that cannot survive even a cursory challenge when attempting to sidestep density requirements. Indeed, the Supreme Court of Virginia ruled that “legislative intent” is what constrains or enjoins the adoption of a zoning ordinance, which will be discussed below.

    In closing on this point, this letter is to fully support and encourage the removal of “tourist cottages” from our current zoning ordinance because and including the fact that an interpretation that these dwelling units are exempt from density requirements is in contrast to the legislative intent of the district, among other reasons.

    And that nicely segues into my final comment to the Planning Commission last night during their deliberation of a proposed zoning text amendment to allow Adaptive Reuse of buildings built prior to 2009 to be converted into multiple family apartment buildings containing 2 or more dwelling units, mentioning that it could be more.

II. Adaptive Re Use and a PC Commissioner’s spirited insistence that the PC can propose and recommend a zoning text amendment that would allow existing farmhouses, accessory dwellings, and even barns to be converted into apartment houses, sidestepping density requirements ( overriding and elimination the density requirement of 1 dwelling unit per 20 acres in ag districts).

      The Planning Commission has been charged by the BOS with proposing remedies for the fact that Northampton County is in an “affordable” and “workforce” housing shortage. At least one Commissioner conveniently only mentioned in passing the fact that we are indeed in the middle of this crisis because a former iteration of the Commission recommended allowing Short Term Rentals “by right” with little meaningful regulation.  By the hundreds long-term rentals have been and are being converted into mini-motels and Air B &B’s and nothing is being done to correct that with the excuse that both the BOS and the PC are waiting for a A-NDPC housing study which is now 2 months overdue.  As one of our astute writers wrote: “the job of an expert is to tell you what you already know but didn’t want to!”.   Most feel that by the time the BOS admits that they made a grave and irreversible mistake (or was it?), the available housing stock for affordable and workforce housing will be listed on an AiR B&B website for hundreds of dollars each night.

     Now, in a near surreal attempt to clean up this mess, Commissioner Sturgis is aggressively stumping to sidestep density calculations and regulations on our farm fields by allowing farm houses and accessory dwellings to be converted into 2-4 (or more) apartment complexes.  At one point last night she complained that “we are surrounded by agricultural” lands and actually claimed that “affordable” or “workforce” housing would be about $1600/month. She also argued that she indeed lived in a farmhouse that was located on an active farm and was converted to a 4 family apartment complex and she enjoyed living there.

     Other members including Commissioner Wiggins remarked that such a proposal would result in about 400 people packed into the legislative chambers, and we agree.

    During public comment, this writer pointed out that the conversion of farmhouses and barns to apartment buildings in the name of “workforce” or “affordable” housing is disingenuous because there is no mechanism in Northampton County to ensure that rents in a converted barn or farmhouse (in violation of our established density regs) would be affordable or available to workers that certainly could not pony up to Sturgis’s benchmark of $1600/month which she claims is “affordable’.   Indeed, passing an ordinance that supersedes our Comprehensive Plan with the justification that the ZTA will accomplish the goal of providing affordable or workforce housing with no mechanism to ensure the attainment of that goal is a textbook example of an arbitrary and capricious act by local government and it will be challenged in District Court, make no mistake about that.

    During this writer’s oral comment on this very issue last night, the PC was informed that in 2018 the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth of Virginia exclusively looked at language in a zoning ordinance and declared that a proposed or existing ordinance can be overturned if it is not consistent with the “legislative intent”, meaning the spirit and intent articulated when the district was created by the local government. See Board of Supervisors of Fairfax County v. Douglas Cohn, 2018. In this case, the court opined:

                 “When constructing a statute, our primary objective is to ascertain and give effect to legislative intent, as expressed in the statute. If the language in the statute is subject to more than one interpretation, we must apply the interpretation that will carry out the legislative intent behind the statute”  (page 6, emphasis added).

    This is far from an isolated decision by the Supreme Court when reviewing, upholding or overturning a local government’s decision on land use or zoning.  In fact, in Turner v. County Board of Supervisors (2002) [citation omitted], as well as Board of Supervisors v. Snell Corp [citation omitted] the Supreme Court sided with their decision in Rowland v. Warrenton that “a rezoning can be overturned if it ‘bears no reasonable relation to the public health, safety, morals or general welfare “ of the residents.

    To ascertain whether Commissioner Sturgis’s relentless campaign to turn agriculturally-zoned parcels and dwellings into multi-family dwelling units is allowed by land use law and precedent, we merely have to look at the legislative intent of the district as quoted in the section on tourist cottages above and/or turn to Section 154.2.082 of our zoning code.

    Conclusion

   Northampton County is, and remains so because of public participation, one of the most protected pieces of real estate east of the Mississippi. Thanks to input and engagement by thousands of residents in the drafting and adoption of our four (4) Comprehensive Plans over 20 years we: have no industrial poultry farms en masse on our agricultural lands; have no large proliferation of poultry processing plants draining our finite aquifer and creating an industrial flavor to our rural quality of life; are home to one of the most important and preserved (thanks to the Nature Conservancy) migratory bird habitats in the world as recognized by the United Nations; are one of the top tourist destinations in Virginia; lead exports in agricultural produce as well as clams, oysters, and shellfish; have a night sky that enjoys top billing among stellar places to star gaze io the Eastern Seaboard because of the limited artificial lighting that can and does obscure that view; and, most of all, offer a rural quality of life that is becoming very, very scarce during today’s migration of city dwellers into more rural or suburban areas.

    We merely have to travel over the CBBT to see what happens when density regulations are eroded, bite by bite, as has been the trend in Northampton County lately.  How often do we hear Virginia Beach visitors say that Northampton County reminds them of the way it used to be in their town, with rolling farm land, open meadows, and productive farms.

    There are several safeguards that will prevent what happened to Virginia Beach, Hampton Road, Ocean City, Crisfield and now even Chincoteague from happening in Northampton County as it pertains to over development that has ravaged their homeland and sent taxes, crime rates, noise, light pollution, and congestion skyrocketing.  

   First and foremost it is our legislative intent and spirit that defines our rural character and quality of life, as we mentioned before, and is encoded in 154.2.082. It is ministerial, as also argued above, and will be defended if we are forced to do so.    Second, we have one of the most threatened and finite aquifers in the world. We cannot afford to follow in the footsteps of Commissioner Sturgis’s reported homeland of Virginia Beach.  Indeed, because the citizenry there did not fight for their rural quality of life that is now only a memory, they drained the Potomac Aquifer dropping it over 200 feet from pre-mass-development levels and had to pay a half billion dollars to run a pipe from Lake Gaston to the Hampton Roads area, suffering through water use restrictions from 1978 to 1995. We do not have that luxury, even if could afford to apply such a remedy (which we can’t). 

    Third, we have an engaged and ready army of citizens, many of whom are here because they experienced chaos, over-crowding, traffic, noise, high taxes, and higher crime rates elsewhere, and have migrated here to spend their life savings investing in a unique and indeed threatened rural paradise.

    Unlike the citizens in places where what we here in this rural mecca have is simply a distant memory, our people are fully committed to protecting this county and its rural quality of life with everything they have. In short, their rural quality of life depends on it and most know it.

     We must not let our density calculations and regulations be chipped away and eroded by some unsupportable justification that doing so will provide “workforce” and “affordable” housing when that reasoning has no evidentiary basis or weight.

    Therefore, allowing farm houses and barns to be turned into apartment complexes in direct contrast to our Comprehensive Plan and Legislative Intent of Agricultural Districts in our zoning code must be rejected.  There are more suitable zoning districts to allow for Adaptive Reuse to be encouraged and supportive.  Agricultural lands are not one of them

The Libertarian National Committee sent out a mailer titled “No War with Russia.” It accurately explains a brief history of Russia and the US’s brainless relationship and the role the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has played in all of this. The letter prescribes noninterventionism because “when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

But, we have seen all of this before, especially from a state dominated by the American Left– along with its media allies, you see a pattern of concocting crises to perpetuate the power of this hammer: “What defines our present condition is how the moral panics are used to rally a civilian army that revels in the demise of the nonconforming opposition…. The Russia-Ukraine War is an easy lightning rod that the government and established centers of power in society can use to demonize Americans who hold the wrong view.” — Alice Salles. “The answer for why Americans pine for more war is probably complicated, but it’s clear that they generally hold simplistic views of the situation over there.”

Basically, people are lazy and want to be spoon-fed media narratives that they can easily understand. The history of Russia and the area we refer to as Ukraine, and the context of the conflict is too complicated to grasp which leads them to swallow whole the simplistic narrative they are fed.

Noninterventionism takes the position that Putin is not our leader and that thus Americans can’t hold him accountable for bad behavior. Conversely, if we at least acknowledge the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s role in provoking this conflict, we can work toward holding our own leaders accountable and press them to stop creating these vicious boondoggles around the world.

Why would US military officials acknowledge and even boast that we are providing Ukraine with intelligence that allows them to kill Russian generals and sink ships if not to escalate this war? Why is Biden pushing us into war with a nuclear-armed Russia? Why isn’t Congress asking?

As citizens, we need to be more skeptical of narratives running rampant in the mainstream media. They are hurting our country, even more than it did during the “freedom fries” Iraq War era.

Like Saddam, Putin is being portrayed as the big evil bad guy, yet the US and NATO have never even offered to meet with him. Despite what is said in the media, the demands are pretty legit–Ukrainian neutrality, withdrawal of surrounding NATO forces, or independence for Donetsk and Luhansk. The media’s narrative is to ignore the US’s role in the 2014 Maidan coup, which resulted in the installation of a Russia-hostile NATO puppet, and to ignore the neo-Nazi element of the Ukraine government (Azov Battalion et al.), which is responsible for many of the fourteen thousand deaths in the Russian-speaking Donbass regions over the last eight years–which has led us to where we are now.

Biden has already committed an act of war against the Great Bear. We have done so by supplying the billions of dollars in weapons we have sent Ukraine over the last several years. The Biden administration continues to ramp up spending to arm Ukraine, and Russia has formally warned it to stop doing so. How far will we push, and is Biden doing this just to cover up his family’s dealings in Ukraine–corruption plane and simple.

Despite the low-bandwidth talk surround the ‘heroic’ Ukraine, Ukraine is not going to win any kind of war against Russia, no matter how much money and weapons we send them. Military experts that actually understand the long game note that Russia’s failure to achieve a quick and decisive victory is due mainly to restraint and the limited scope of its military goals.

The ignorant notion that we need to help Ukraine “win” this war is as bogus as Barack Obama’s “Afghanistan is a war we have to win.”

In the Dave Smith interview below, Colonel MacGregor notes that we need to return to being “the kind of country that we were a hundred years ago, which in most cases, was interested in intervening to end conflicts, not with military power, but to offer its services as an objective partner, as someone who could bring two sides together and avoid a larger more destructive conflict“

This commentary is special to the Mirror, written by Charles Landis.

When I was a young boy growing up on Oakley, an historic plantation in Virginia, I learned dam Yankee was one word and referred to northerners who invaded the South and occupied for 12 years.. The War was over but there was respect for the leaders and fallen on both sides in that great conflict .About two decades ago the narratives began to change and the history rewritten to conform with the woke progressive agenda;. Southerners were demonized and their memorials disparaged and now vandalized and torn down; the 16199 Project, cancel culture ,and Critical Race Theory became the new standard of learning of the progressive woke.

Today, we are told a revisionist fabrication of the Cause of the War and the conduct of it. My purpose here is, to paraphrase Washington, to take the pains to bring to light the truth. Inter alia:

The Cause of the Southern states was as in the Declaration of Independence and provided for in the compact for federation in the Constitution….secession. Period. The cause of the Northern states was sectional domination, greed, and to fundamentally change the Constitution to a more centralized federal governance. Period.

The War was not begun because of the institution of slavery or any other moral construct of the North. The issue of whether new territories would be admitted as slave or free was an issue because of the consequence on balance of power in Congress for dominance of sectional interests.

The War did not begin with South Carolina firing on Ft. Sumpter. Prior to Lincoln assuming office, South Carolina and Florida s had an agreement with President Buchannan that he would not reinforce or resupply Federal forts at Charleston, South Carolina and Pensacola, Florida.. The South did not want war but peaceful resolution. Upon assuming office, Lincoln ordered Fort Sumpter in Charleston, South Carolina, and ort Pickens in in Pensacola, Florida, be reinforced and resupplied in deliberate violation of the agreement.

Clearly Lincoln’s action was an act of war or intent. The shots fired on Fort Sumpter were to prevent the reinforcement and resupply. In fact, s before the shots were fired on Fort Sumpter, Union troops had begun to reinforce and resupply Fort Pickens; thus it was Lincoln who initiated the first act of war.. Also, the commander of Fort Sumpter, General Winfried Scott, Lincoln’s Commanding officer, and other cabinet members warned Lincoln his actions would precipitate war. His intent was war and excuse to call up 75,000 troops to invade. Thus Lincoln started the hostilities.

Neither Jefferson Davis or Lee was ever tried for treason, secession, rebellion, or any other crime. After the war, a committee of uncompensated Northern lawyers was tasked to determine if Davis should be charged. They reported they could find nothing for which he could be charged…not rebellion…not treason,… nor any war crimes.. After several attempts to charge and bring Davis to trial, prosecutors approached Davis’ s attorneys with an offer to pardon him if he would promise to never request there be a trial. Davis agreed and he was pardoned.

It is often said by woke progressives that Lee was a traitor .This is not and can not be true. In ratification of the Constitution, Virginia expressly stipulated the caveat that it had the right to secede . Lee was a citizen of Virginia and he followed that loyalty after resigning his commission by the Union..

The great fear of the North was that, if there was a trial, Davis would or could be acquitted of any wrong doing. By trial all that Lincoln and h his high command had done would be brought to light; from violation of the Constitution and oath of office to war crimes.

At Lincoln’s second inaugural he spoke to need for malice toward none and charity for all… two weeks before, Sherman had completely destroyed Columbia, South Carolina, then inhabited by defenseless women, children, sick and feeble. Graves were dug up looking for treasure and remains scattered all about.;, going forward with 123 wagons of loot taken from the conquered defenseless non -combatants.

Honest Abe, he was called, much the same as the biggest bully on the block is called Tiny Tim…and the Great Emancipator who sold the slaves he inherited rather than emancipate.

Damnyankees had malice toward all in the South and charity to none.

The following Op-Ed is special to the Mirror by Paul Plante

Actually, I was going to title this “History Should Be Our Guide in Ukraine,” but I didn’t for several reasons, starting with the fact that that title was already taken by a dude named Victor Davis Hanson in a RealClear Politics article on March 31, 2022, where he started out his essay by saying, and I completely agree with him, that there are “several historical referents we should keep in mind about the Ukraine war,” and there is where our thoughts diverge, mine and his, which is why I instead chose the title above, because while his version of history is more about some events, relevant, or not, mine is about the people who wrote that history, both recently, and going back to the end of WWI, when what we call Ukraine today was then the Bolshevik Ukrainian republic founded in December 1917, as Ukrainian Soviet Republic, after the Bolshevik Revolution started in Russia.

So, as we see, or shall see, what is called Ukraine today has no history of democracy, and in an Associated Press article titled “Ukraine president’s ratings fall as crisis with Russia brews” on February 14, 2022, we see “democracy” in Ukraine in more recent times described as follows:

Zelenskyy tried to calm the political turbulence Sunday by downplaying the stepped-up warnings from the U.S. about the imminent possibility of a Russian invasion.

“We understand all the risks,” Zelenskyy said, adding that if anyone has any “information regarding a 100% certain invasion, beginning on the 16th,” they need to come forward.”

The maneuverings and the dismay among ordinary Ukrainians present a significant challenge for a country where democracy has been shambolic for decades.

end quotes

Yes, indeed, people, in Ukraine, the Ukraine Joe Biden is backing with our U.S. tax dollars in his proxy war with Putin of Russia, democracy is shambolic and has been for decades, which is why Joe Biden is so interested in protecting it, because in the end, Joe likes to have corrupt strongman autocrats like this Zelensky loyal to him and son Hunter in countries like Ukraine with its long history of corruption which draws American politicians to it like flies to a family picnic.

The Ukrainian SSR was established by the Bolsheviks following the defeat of the Ukrainian People’s Republic in the Soviet–Ukrainian War during the Russian Civil War.

Throughout its 72-year history, the republic’s borders changed many times, with a significant portion of what is now Western Ukraine being annexed by Soviet forces in 1939 from the Republic of Poland, and the addition of Carpathian Ruthenia from Czechoslovakia in 1945.

And there is some essential history that this Victor Davis Hanson dude either is unaware of, or he simply chooses to ignore it, that taking of land and peoples from those other countries and awarding them and it to Ukraine, instead, as if that essential history, inclouding the fact of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, a Ukrainian nationalist paramilitary and later partisan formation that during World War was engaged in guerrilla warfare against the Soviet Union, the Polish Underground State, Communist Poland, and Nazi Germany, playing a substantial role in the ethnic cleansing of the Polish population of Volhynia and East Galicia which now are part of what is called Ukraine, could not possibly be relevant to what is going on there today, which brings us back to the AP article “Ukraine president’s ratings fall as crisis with Russia brews” on February 14, 2022, where we find as follows as to who supports this Zelensky and who does not in what is in actuality a country cobbled together out of pieces of other countries, whether the people in those countries wanted to be part of Ukraine, or not, and so much for self-determination, to wit:

“The biggest risk for Ukraine and the biggest risk for the sovereignty of our state … is destabilization within our state,” Zelenskyy said last month.

But Ukrainians have little confidence that Zelenskyy can ensure that stability.

According to a January poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, only 30% of the country’s people want Zelenskyy to run for a second term and even fewer — 23% — would vote for him.

end quotes

In that, of course, the low ratings, I mean, this Zelensky in Ukraine is mirroring Joe Biden in this country, where Joe is not popular, at all.

So why isn’t Zelensky popular?

Let’s go back to the AP article to see what we can learn on that score, to wit:

The continuing conflict in the rebel east and the prospect of a full-scale war aren’t the only factors in his declining support.

“Zelenskyy promised to end the war and defeat corruption, but this did not happen,” said Anatoly Rudenko, a 48-year-old driver in Kyiv.

“Prices are rising, corruption has not gone away and we have begun to live even poorer.”

“The miracle did not happen.”

“The situation is only getting worse,” said Tatyana Shmeleva, a 54-year-old economist.

end quotes

And there is what attracts Joe Biden to this Zelensky – the corruption, because like everybody else, a politician has to eat, and when a politician eats, they want to eat well, and nothing pays a politician like corruption does, so there we have it, people.

A simple formula, indeed.

So who is this Zelensky whose action we should be backing in Ukraine, because Joe Biden tells us we have to?

Here is what AP has to say on that, to wit:

Zelenskyy initially made his name in Ukraine as a comic actor portraying on television a teacher who inadvertently becomes president after railing against corruption.

end quotes

Yes, people, Ukraine is going to war against Russia with a comic actor who has no military experience of any kind, let along experience of the real world outside a television studio, who is now threatening nuclear war as we see in the CNN article “US and NATO face new dilemma on Ukraine aid” by Maeve Reston on 18 April 2022, to wit:

As world leaders try to glean what Putin is thinking — and how far he might go in trying to punish the nations that help Ukraine — Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer, who met face-to-face with Putin last week, said it was clear that Putin believes he’s winning the war and is operating “in his own war logic.”

“He thinks the war is necessary for security guarantees for the Russian Federation.”

“He doesn’t trust the international community.”

“He blames the Ukrainians for genocide in the Donbas region,” Nehammer said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, referring to the fictional propaganda that Putin has spouted to justify his acts of aggression against Ukraine.

“He is now in his world, but I think he knows what is going on now in Ukraine.”

Given the immense challenges of facing off against a leader with that warped and rigid mindset, Zelensky is trying to persuade world leaders to become more involved in the next phase by warning that they should be worried about the possible consequences of Putin’s next steps — including that he could use a tactical nuclear weapon because he has shown so little regard for human lives during his invasion of Ukraine.

end quotes

And with that bit of paranoia and hysteria in front of us, the threat that Putin is going to nuke somebody, let me stop here for the moment to let this all sink in.

This special commentary is from citizen Lindsey Horne.

Why do we get to pick and choose which Executive Orders we should and which ones we shouldn’t follow? When Governor Northam put his EO into effect regarding masks, all private and public schools had to abide. Now that Governor Youngkin has rescinded this, we don’t have to comply? Our children are seeing this play out in front of them and we should not set the example that we only have to comply when it’s convenient. I am for the safety of our children, teachers, and school staff but clearly, masks are not the answer or we would not still be in this situation. How much longer are we as a society going to let fear control us?

How much longer are we going to let the Government control how we should think and what we should do?

 “Any Society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither & lose both” ~ Benjamin Franklin 

No one is asking masks to be banned, parents are simply wanting the right to make a decision on what is best for their child. It should have always been the parent’s choice. School Boards both private in public throughout the Eastern Shore are directly defying EO #2. It clearly states, “A child whose parent has elected that he or she is not subject to a mask mandate should not be required to wear a mask under any policy implemented by a teacher, school, school district, the Department of Education, or any other state authority.”  It also references 44-146.17 of the Code of Virginia, stating any violation of this EO is in violation of the law, a Class 1 misdemeanor.  “Executive orders, to include those declaring a state of emergency and directing evacuation, shall have the force and effect of law and the violation thereof shall be punishable as a civil penalty of not more than $500 or as a Class 1 misdemeanor in every case where the executive order declares that its violation shall have such force and effect.” 

School Boards are using the excuse; masks are mandated by the CDC or use the excuse they have to get more information and guidelines. There was no step-by-step instruction on how to put them on but we need the step by step to take them off.

Senator Chase said it best, “To school boards and administrators looking for suggestions on how to implement this policy, here’s my suggestion. If a child comes to school on Monday without a mask, leave them alone. Don’t require them to wear a mask. If a child comes to school with a mask, leave them alone. Do not require them to take off their mask. Before a child goes to school on Monday. parents should talk with their student(s) and together make a decision on whether the child will wear a mask or not beginning Monday. Teachers can now fully focus on teaching and not worry about enforcing a mask mandate.” I’d like to also remind everyone, the CDC does not mandate mask use, they just recommend the use of masks – https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/schools-childcare/k-12-guidance.html. 

Obviously, School Districts are still entertaining the idea that masks actually work even though the CDC admits cloth masks don’t and only a fitted N95 mask is effective. I guess we shouldn’t worry because the Biden Administration has come up with a plan to have 400 million non-surgical N95 masks shipped across the US, limiting 3 per person. Will this finally end the pandemic? No, it won’t. 

There are 133 School Districts throughout the state of VA.  There are some districts that are choosing to continue to violate parents’ rights, there are some districts that are waiting to meet and discuss further, and then there are those that believe it is the Parent’s rights and is complying with EO#2.

Thank you, to those school districts that made it clear to put Children first by allowing parents to decide what’s right, and congratulations; you get to keep your schools funded.  

School Districts that are complying:

Virginia Beach Public Schools

Chesapeake Public Schools

Poquoson Public Schools

Roanoke County Public Schools

Pulaski County Public Schools

Page County Public Schools

Bath County Public Schools 

Orange County Public Schools

Augusta County Public Schools

Spotsylvania County Public Schools

King George County Public Schools

Prince George County Public Schools

King William County Public Schools

Powhatan County Public Schools

Signed a very frustrated mother who just wants common sense to prevail once again. 
Lindsey Horne