To the Editor:
I owe an apology to the Pocahontas County Board of Education. In my March 23rd Letter to the Editor, I wrongly accused the Board of supporting the effort to do away with some of the best academic programming available to our high school students.
I have since learned that the Board was not aware of this effort when the students and parents first learned of it. While I remain steadfastly opposed to the effort, I believe the Board was not originally involved in promoting these disgraceful cuts.
I hope the Board will unanimously oppose these efforts moving forward.
To the members of the Board, I sincerely apologize for my past comments. I allowed my emotions to get the better me without first speaking to you directly.
Josh Hardy
Hillsboro
Dear Editor;
I would like to take a few moments to address a couple of issues. Did you know that, when adjusted for population, Pocahontas County has a murder rate that places it in a league with the top 50 murder cities in America?
Drug offenses and theft are so far off the charts as to have no comparison to any city in America.
Why is this?
There are a few reasons I am aware of having grown-up there.
Hope is something that either you have or you do not have. Unless you come from a family of means or land ownership you have two choices there. You can make peace with the fact that you will forever scrape by financially as a member of the servant class or you leave. For all the splendor and culture of Pocahontas County, it’s major export is its graduating high school class every year. Sure a few souls are special enough to be entrepreneurs and make it work but that is not the norm. Most people just wish to work and provide for themselves and their families. That is hard to do in Pocahontas County.
For at least five decades, the various County Commissioners over that time have touted tourism as the answer. Tourism is good as a third tier commerce tool but it is not a thing to base an economy upon. It turns into feast and famine periods making it very difficult for businesses to keep their doors open.
It also invites out of state landownership which initially boosts tax coffers, but it is outweighed by those seasonal people’s problems, complaints and suggestions.
Take Snowshoe for instance, it provides many of the jobs in the County, and I’d imagine has considerable political clout with the powers that be. It also has been instrumental in a massive drug problem. Drugs lead to theft to support the drug addictions. Violence goes hand in hand with drugs. Prostitution goes hand in hand with drugs. People are literally not in their right minds. All of these things have sidebars. Things like spousal abuse, child abuse, sexual assaults and any number of other bad things.
There are environments created that influence behavior. In a place with little hope, substance abuse becomes much more likely. Thefts skyrocket, violence skyrockets, and then the dying starts. Someone breaks into the wrong house and gets shot. Someone under the influence kills innocents “by accident.” A high schooler, underage drinking at a bonfire, tries a pill someone gives them only to OD. Addicts go to rehab and then die when they relapse. Families are destroyed and lives are lost. Children are left as orphans or go into the CPS system. Children are raised to be felons by the abusive home life they had no choice in. Employers cannot find reliable employees, businesses fold.
Some of the requirements of government are to provide safety for its people, establish justice, and promote the general welfare of the people.
Have these basic requirements been met? I say no.
I no longer live there but maybe it’s time that Pocahontas County takes a hard look at the way things are versus how they should be, then make the appropriate changes. Some of the choices are easy but more of them are very hard. If this does not happen within a few decades, the native people and culture of the county will cease to exist.
John Berry
California