This letter was sent to the Mirror over the transom. The writer wishes to remain anonymous, except for the moniker CCP (Cape Charles Pirate).
For those of you come here’s like myself please remember we have sold our souls to the Northampton Commission. It doesn’t matter how much money you have or what your political party is. The Commission is God in Northampton County and “Northampton is poor by choice”.
So having said that and to prove the point those two beautiful private Rail cars ,” The Southern Comfort and The Philadelphia Star”, each of which have American historical Significance. They are now in the cross hairs of the Northampton County Commission to be cut up for scrap.
Knowing full well that the elderly owners either cannot move them easily and that Heavy lift truck permits are not issued for thirteen over the holidays they gave these folks one of whom has Covid and is in the hospital an eviction notice notice on 11/6/2020 telling your neighbors to remove these cars by Dec 21 2020 deadline or a lawsuit would ensue to give the Commission the “Right” to cut them.
John Coker now filling in for Spencer Murray told the museum they could not have any of the land behind the museum for possible further expansion even though they have succeeded in destroying your railroad. This means even though the owners agreed to an arrangement for the museum the museum has no place to put them since once again the commission successfully blocks the saving of these historical cars. (Briefly Sir Winston Churchill and Roosevelt had a meeting on the Star).
These are our community organizers telling us what is good for us because WE are too stupid to know any better. I like many others recently have decided to leave this communistic run local government.
The word on the street is three years left on the gravy train.
And here’s the real kicker that most of you don’t know and don’t even care about, John Coker is in charge of the Northampton tourism Commission and by his actions indicates he is against tourism unless it is done his way or the people who manipulate him.
But your investments in this town are at stake here, so yes that makes every tax paying citizen a stakeholder in not only this endeavor but also “The Railraod property.”
As I understand it and in my title research of said properties the abandonment of the railroad leaves the PRR property available. However, it was both counties tax dollars that paid for the property, so my question for all you stakeholders is “Why should Cape Charles have to buy what they really already own?”
Canonie is a shell company owned by you the people of Northampton, and it has no right to sell what is owned by the people if the people want to keep it for town projects. And why are our Council people too stupid and ignorant to understand this?
Ignorance is bliss, I get that. But with all that is at stake here are you going to sit back on your laurels and think that one person is going to save the day? Is it fair to that one person to expect them to save your community? I think not.
But if they do, then they deserve whatever they get out of you and you have no room to voice your opinion since you didn’t speak out in the first place. I might be a tad off base here, but I don’t believe the baseman can tag me out.
You better wake up and get involved or your meager investments will go the same way mine did. You will be bullied like those elderly folk and me by Mr. Coker and the Commission’s Dave Fauber and Spencer Murray. You will lose your personal property. You will lose everything.
Next it will be your guns. Have a nice day God Bless you all and I hope you wake up soon enough. So what was once ,”The Gateway to the South” moves into obscurity all because of greed and ignorance.
About the Author
I am not giving the writer a hard time when I say I do not understand the background and basis for the letter, and hope to understand when/if feedback begins. It appears as though The Commission wants to change the waterfront, so it wants the rail cars removed. The cars have been there for as long as I can remember. Has there been a prior time frame placed on the cars for removal ? Has that passed ? Has there been a time frame pledged to restore the cars ? Has there been a plan to make the restored cars part of a museum ? And to move them to a different location ? Has there been a large investment to purchase these 2 cars ? When ? Were the buyers mislead and/or deceived on a plan to make use of these rail cars after discussions with The Commission ? And the Commission is now ignoring the agreement ? Lotsa questions.
This is the same bunch who drove the railroad into the ground and now they want to finish it. This is the saddest case of bullying by public officials I have ever heard but considering who is doing it I am not surprised.
The owner of those rail cars avoided paying property taxes for years! Just ask Anne Sayers.
If in this paragraph ‘museum’ refers to the Cape Charles Museum, all the information referring to ‘museum’ is false.
John Coker now filling in for Spencer Murray told the museum they could not have any of the land behind the museum for possible further expansion even though they have succeeded in destroying your railroad. This means even though the owners agreed to an arrangement for the museum the museum has no place to put them since once again the commission successfully blocks the saving of these historical cars. (Briefly Sir Winston Churchill and Roosevelt had a meeting on the Star).
Well I always come in here and just ask people to try to find a way to get along when there is a squabble such as this. Not too much info has been provided here but I’ll try to read between the lines. First off, has anyone noticed you don’t see trucks and trailers full of scrap metal on the road any more ? Scrap ain’t worth diddley. I tried to discover the weight of these RR cars and I didn’t get a real quote for them specifically. BUT if I went to the correct place I am finding these RR cars to weigh about 95 tons each. 190,00 pounds. If that is indeed the case I would think that the commission would incur one hell of an expense to get rid of these cars and I don’t see how they’d recover the money spent because the sale of the steel sure wouldn’t cover it at all. So the commission is threatening to cut off their nose to spite their face if my findings are correct. Who will then pay for that mistake ? Therefore, may I suggest the powers that be find a real solution. I see that there are several RR cars near/behind the Museum already. Do they have historical significance ? Cannot the 2 historically significant cars be substituted for 2 that have no specific historical significance ? And the non significant cars be culled out at a later date when scrap value gets higher ? Or just stop being stubborn and allow these 2 to be added to the museum collection ? There is no possible solution w/o causing harm ? Sounds unnecessary.