Wednesday, June 18, 2014

PART VII - SNOWSHOE RAD - THE END OF POCAHONTAS COUNTY AS WE KNOW IT!



18 JUNE 2014, Vol.1, No.59 > PART VII – SNOWSHOE RAD – THE END OF POCAHONTAS COUNTY AS WE KNOW IT!

The POCAHONTAS CRIER
‘When the Righteous succeed the people rejoice,
But when the bad govern, men groan!’ – Proverbs 29:2
[New Email address: pocahontascrier88@gmail.com]


PART VII – SNOWSHOE RAD – THE END OF POCAHONTAS COUNTY AS WE KNOW IT!

THE DILEMMA

For all those that happen to be ‘homeowners’ of a condo, townhouse, or whatever on Snowshoe Mountain or Silver Creek – then you know, or should know by now – exactly what is in store for everyone come 07 July 2014 when a meeting is scheduled for a discussion of whether to accept or reject the idea of turning Snowshoe & Silver Creek into a ‘Resort Area District’ (RAD) and in point of fact actually surrendering all your rights & claims for the benefit of making Donald Trump even richer at your expense!  And for all you ‘nay-sayers’ – perhaps you have not read the entirety of the ‘RAD LAW’ – if not, take a look-see at:  < http://www.legis.state.wv.us/bill_status/bills_text.cfm?billdoc=hb2600%20intr.htm&yr=2013&sesstype=RS&i=2600 >!

Kindly take notice of who actually gets to vote:

§7-25-5. Petition for creation or expansion of resort area district; petition requirements.
     (a) The owners of at least sixty-one percent of the real property, determined by acreage, located within the boundaries of the resort area described in the petition, by metes and bounds or otherwise in a manner sufficient to describe the area, may petition a governing body to create or expand a resort area district.

Guess who owns 63% or more of the REAL ESTATE BY ‘ACREAGE’?  Oh, so you do know Donald, do you?

And guess whose property-equity will be monetized for an ‘assessment’ to borrow against for ‘the cost of a project or projects’?  Ah, don’t worry – it’s just a fee ADDED ON TO all taxes & other fees levied on the property!

§7-25-3. Definitions.
For purposes of this article:
     (a) “Assessment” means the fee, including interest, paid by an owner of real property located within a resort area district to pay for the cost of a project or projects constructed upon or benefiting or protecting such property and administrative expenses thereto, which fee is in addition to all taxes and other fees levied on the property.
     (b) “Assessment bonds” means special obligation bonds or notes issued by a resort area district which are payable from the proceeds of assessments.

     (c) “Board” means a resort area board created pursuant to this article.

Guess how much DEBT can be added on to all monetized-equity?  NO LIMIT!

§7-25-20. Indebtedness of resort area district.
_____No constitutional or statutory limitation with respect to the nature or amount of or rate of interest on indebtedness which may be incurred by municipalities, counties or other public or governmental bodies shall apply to the indebtedness of a resort area district.
No indebtedness of any nature of a resort area district shall constitute an indebtedness of any county creating and establishing such district or a charge against any property of said counties but shall be paid solely from the resort service fee or assessments which the resort area district is authorized to impose on the owners of the property within the district by this article. No indebtedness or obligation incurred by a resort area district shall give any right against any member of the governing body or any member of the board of a resort area district.

Ah, don’t worry, even though ‘Snowshoe-RAD’ will be a private corporation owned by Donald Trump, he still will not be able to levy any ‘taxes’ upon you – only an ‘assessment fee’ for your monetized-equity!  [For those that may not know, the ‘equity’ is the amount of value between what the property-taxes are assessed and the actual fair-market selling price.  For example: if a property is worth $100K, the taxes are based on 60% of retail or $60K, and the ‘equity’ is 40% of the retail or in this example, $40K.  So all the equity of all the owners can be monetized to create a collateral base for an unlimited amount of DEBT of which each property will be charged an ‘assessment fee’!].


§7-25-7. Creation of resort area district; resort area district to be a public corporation and political subdivision.
     (a) Each resort area district shall be created by adoption of an order by the governing body.
     (b) From and after the date of the adoption of the order creating a resort area district, it shall thereafter be a public corporation and political subdivision of the state, but without any power to levy or collect ad valorem taxes.

IF you don’t continue to pay your assessed property-taxes, the County Sheriff can sell your property to someone else for the cost of a ‘tax-ticket’ – and if you don’t recover your property within a year or so, the purchaser of your ‘tax-ticket’ will own your property!

But the County Sheriff can also now TAKE YOUR PROPERTY FOR FAILING TO PAY THE ‘ASSESSMENT FEE’!  Ooops – someone forget to mention this part!  And Geewiz, it seems that your monetized-equity will be the collateral for BONDS and BONDHOLDERS! 

§7-25-21. Payment of assessments to sheriff; report to resort area district; collection of delinquent assessments.
_____(a) The assessments authorized to be imposed pursuant to this article will not be considered to be ad valorem taxes or the equivalent of ad valorem taxes under any provision of this code: Provided, That for the exclusive purposes of collection of the assessments authorized to be imposed under this article and enforcement of the assessment liens created by section twenty-two of this article, the provisions of chapter eleven-a of this code shall apply as if the assessments were taxes as that term is defined in section one, article one of that chapter.
_____(b) The sheriff shall promptly deposit all assessments upon receipt thereof in a segregated account established by the sheriff for such purpose and shall maintain a record of the assessments so received. Each month, the sheriff shall pay all moneys collected for the resort area district into the district treasury or, if the sheriff consents, to a trustee for the benefit of bondholders if assessment bonds are issued by the resort area district.

THE REALITY

Donald Trump is a ‘developer’ who makes his money building via cost overruns and playing all the angles he can muster!  Trump does not manage!  Trump builds & sells what he builds!  And Trump always carries a large DEBT so as to appear ‘lawsuit-proof’ and ‘too-big-to-fail’ – until someone calls his bluff as the folks did in Scotland recently when they sent Trump packing with his tail between his legs!  Now he has become OUR PROBLEM – but Trump had his LOBBYISTS in Charleston piece-meal the ‘Resort Area District’ nightmare into a state law over a five or so year period of time!  Who & how many were bought off is not as important as the fact that Trump is now in Pocahontas County – in TOTAL CONTROL OF IN EXCESS OF THE 60% OF THE LAND – BY ACREAGE – REQUIRED, AND IS ABOUT TO RIPOFF EVERYONE HE CAN ONCE AGAIN!

DOWN TO ONE OPTION LEFT!

Knowing the state of our educational system nationwide, and knowing the state of our educational system statewide, let alone countywide – it is no surprise that the State Legislature established that ownership decisions can only be made by the OWNERS OF ACREAGE instead of ‘Square-Feet’ as private homes & such as measured!  BUT THAT IS ILLEGAL UNDER FEDERAL LAW SINCE THE MID-1830s! 

Ever hear of the battle between the TIDEWATER (Plantations) and the PIEDMONT (Mountainfolk)?  When this country was founded, ONLY LANDOWNERS COULD VOTE, and the Plantation-Owners of thousands of acres thought that they should have ‘one-vote per/acre’ compared to an Indentured Servant set free after seven-years of servitude that moved to the Wilderness (Indian-Land) and carved out ‘one-acre’ or more from the forest!  When it came time to vote, anyone owning land (except for women) were allowed to vote – BUT the Plantation-Owners did not like a former ‘servant’ having an equal vote to them!  So in the mid-1830s the matter was settled when Congressional Districts were standardized according to population rather than ‘acreage’!  But now along comes Trump and, “LAWS – we don’t need no stink’n Laws – we make our own!”

Trump has build into the RAD-Law that a ‘super-majority’ of six or seven board members must agree before anything major can occur!  Does anyone really believe that Trump would leave that to chance – instead of GUARANTEEING THAT HE WILL CONTROL EVERYTHING HIMSELF?  It is a given fact that already Trump controls 4 of the 7 seats, but he needs SIX to control every decision – and the last three-seats are supposed to be chosen by the current property-owners as members of condo-associations, etc.  But CONDOS are sold by the SQUARE-FOOT – and the new RAD-Law requires ACREAGE – so guess who controls in excess of 60% of the acreage?  Gee, and you thought you lived in a democratic-republic!  Were you absent the day they taught civics in eight-grade?  Oh, that’s right – THEY DON’T TEACH CIVICS IN SCHOOL  ANYMORE – that’s so the rich can get richer over the ignorance, i.e., lack-of-knowledge, of the peasants & minimum-wage-workers – you know, the kind that work for Snowshoe!

THE BETRAYERS, THIEVES & LIERS!

As everyone knows who attended a recent county commission meeting, watched it on a computer, or read the report in The Pocahontas Times, our very own ‘de facto-assistant-county-prosecutor’ took it upon himself, contrary to his ‘Oath-of-Office’, to request the county commission deny a county citizen from discussing the RAD-Issue before the county commission, especially the legal right of everyone to vote, whether a property-owner or not!  This ‘chor’ of ours went so far as to threaten the county commission that they might be ‘sued’ IF the private-citizen were allowed to speak – i.e., let the private-citizen exercise his FREEDOM OF SPEECH in a public meeting!  Fortunately the county commission did not listen to such stupid advice and the private-citizen made his content known to all – AND HE MAY BE RIGHT – Acreage has nothing to do with voting!  

Ironically enough, our ersatz ‘de facto-assistant-county-prosecutor’ neglected to mention to the county commission HIS OWN potential conflict-of-interest in supposedly being a liaison for the commission AND at the same time being a property-owner on the same mountain designated to become a RAD!  Like what else is new in this county when it comes to ‘conflicts-of-interest’?

THE END OF THE COUNTY AS WE KNOW IT!

If anyone can remember, when Intrawest first took over Snowshoe from a Japanese company almost two-decades ago, the FIRST THING mentioned was the potential to build a CASINO on the mountain!  The SECOND THING was the WV-DOH did a ‘study to improve’ Rt. 92 between I-64 in Lewisburg and Corridor-H in Elkins – and to include that into the plans for a four-lane from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico!  For the few that actually read the proposal, the ‘improvement’ was to REPLACE RT. 92 WITH A FOUR-LANE RIGHT DOWN THE VALLEY – wiping out all the farms in between!   Due to an uproar of opposition, the proposed projects fell into the shadows – but then along came the 2010 Winter Olympics whereby Intrawest fell into a massive $1.5 BILLION DEBT and took on Donald Trump as their controlling partner!

Trump as a self-styled developer builds CASINOS and then sells them off, and now he has his own RAD and can do whatever he wants – and the first will be to require a FOUR-LANE to get to HIS MOUNTAIN!  Then build his Casino, sell it to Jim Justice of The Greenbrier Inn, who will then do to Snowshoe Mountain what he has done on the property in Greenbrier – BUILD large homes for the super-rich on the back & surrounding acres!  Goodbye ‘pristine-Pocahontas’ as the ole-folks once called this county!

Now we ask you, WHAT will the likes of David McLaughlin & Bill Beard, Jr. really going to be able do about it should they become the next county commissioners?  Both have spent their entire adult life chasing after the DERRIÈRE of COWS, and Dave has the added experience of ‘driving around in circles’ delivering mail – SO WHAT DO THEY KNOW ABOUT GOVERNMENT?

THAT’S WHY…

On 04 NOVEMBER…there’s no excuse…
 IT’S YOUR CHOICE…
TO CHANGE THINGS FOR THE BETTER!

Just say ‘NO’ to those who want to keep this county in Poverty & Pauperism
– and –
Just say ‘YES’ to real Progress & Prosperity for the future!

On Primary Day – YOU have a chance to elect two persons that will always put YOU first!  They know that:

THE GREATER COMMON GOOD ALWAYS COMES BEFORE SELF OR ANY SELF-SERVING SPECIAL INTERESTS!

Keep up to Date – Stay tuned to these Websites:




   On 04 NOVEMBER it doesn’t matter how you are registered – YOU CAN VOTE for:

CHARLES WILFONG – ND
&
NORMAN LEE ALDERMAN - SD

The Pocahontas Crier is an independent Internet News Service that has now endorsed
two candidates for County Commission
      CHARLES WILFONG & NORMAN LEE ALDERMAN  
in addition to providing in depth news reporting on important issues directly affecting the Citizens of Pocahontas County!

Email comments & suggestions to: pocahontascrier88@gmail.com  

The Pocahontas Crier is a free, non-subscription, Internet News Service meant for entertainment in the true ‘muckraking’ tradition of questioning authority, challenging corruption, and offering Common Sense Alternatives for The Greater Common Good before Self or any Special Interests!  We struggle for Social Justice on all levels and are part of The Crier Coalition of Internet News Services comprised of The Pocahontas Commentator, The Pocahontas Crier, Signal Fires of WV, Rolling Thunder &  Echoes from the Holl’r.


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