HILL TOP REALITIES

SWaN Investors have done a masterful job orchestrating an “echo chamber” of positive media.  Countless Letters to the Editor purportedly from Harpers Ferry “residents”, news releases, and unsubstantiated assertions, have flooded local media.

SWaN’s goal is to stampede four of the seven voting Members of the Harpers Ferry Town Council to ignore, bend, and invent rules in order to give the out-of-state billionaires everything they desire as quickly as possible.

Facts and laws must drive the decision that will shape the next century of Harpers Ferry. 

The first reality check is to remember that the Hill Top Hotel was fully operational the day SWaN bought it.  Tour groups filled its rooms, hungry customers lined up for Hill Top’s famous fried chicken and buffet, and community groups regularly met there. 

The second reality check is to remember that it was SWaN, no one else, who closed the Hill Top Hotel. They asserted that Hill Top must be completely torn down.  To validate their assertion, SWaN allowed Hill Top to become derelict.  No repairs occurred, windows were broken, and water seeped in, collapsing the hotel’s front facade.  Those saddened by Hill Top’s current state of disrepair should remember who is responsible.

The third reality check is that the Town of Harpers Ferry owns the roads and undeveloped paper streets that SWaN so desperately craves.  These streets were laid out by War Department engineers under President George Washington.  They were officially documented in the 1869 War Department plat.  These streets are not “fake”.  They contribute to the integrity of Harpers Ferry’s Historic District, which was established by the Department of Interior in 1976.  Harpers Ferry’s Town Ordinances do not allow for the sale or transfer of these streets to anyone. The 2016 Ordinance amendment was only intended for disposing of Personal Property. No street has ever been given, sold, or ceded to anyone since 1790.  No amount of undocumented assertions changes this.

The fourth reality check is SWaN’s heavy-handed efforts to control public access to the Promontory.  Armed thugs brandishing guns have accosted members of the community when they are on paved portions of East Ridge and Columbia Streets.  In one instance, Harpers Ferry police had to order a SWaN thug to “stand down” and retreat to actual SWaN property.  SWaN refuses to release its “Security and Safety” Policy that will dictate when the community can access the Promontory.  Their secret policy could all but eliminate access. 

SWaN’s proposed land swap of their nearly vertical property for all the adjoining paper streets would bankrupt Harpers Ferry.  Accessing the Promontory using a massive zig-zagging wooden stairway would generate lawsuits and costs for making the 45% incline comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.  No-one in a wheel chair, on crutches, or infirm may be able to enjoy one of our region’s greatest vistas.

The fifth reality check is that the number of Harpers Ferry visitors has increased since Hill Top Hotel closed in March 2008.  That year 260,000 visitors entered the Park.  In 2017, there were 342,534 Park visitors, an increase of 31.7 percent.  Since Hill Top closed, Harpers Ferry has been listed as one of America’s top tourist destinations in countless travel magazines and websites.  Harpers Ferry is certainly not a dying ghost town portrayed by SWaN’s acolytes.

The final reality check is about the true nature of SWaN and its proponents.  None of those appearing at Town meetings, or writing as “residents”, were involved, in any way, with the thirty preservation initiatives, since 1988, that saved the historic and scenic resources of the Harpers Ferry area from being destroyed. None of SWaN’s “community” proponents helped with the 50^th Anniversary of the Park, the Centennial of the Second Niagara Movement, or any of the Sesquicentennial commemorations of the John Brown Raid or the area’s Civil War battles. 

No one from SWaN even had the decency to attend the funeral of Bill Stanhagen, the person who sold Hill Top to SWaN.

These are the realities of the Hill Top project, and its supporters. 

Hopefully, they will be aired during the March 9 Town Workshop on the Concept Plan.

Scot Faulkner is President of Friends of Harpers Ferry National Historical Park and co-chaired the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Park.

SAVING AMERICA'S HERITAGE

Harpers Ferry NHP 1985

Harpers Ferry NHP 2004

[Published on Newsmax]

Imagine America without scenic vistas or historic sites. These physical touch stones define American Exceptionalism, and remind us who were are and why we are.

One of the reasons our defining landscape remains mostly in tact is the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF). On September 30, this Fund vanished. Lack of Congressional action allowed this fund to expire and with it countless opportunities to preserve uniquely American places threatened by sprawl and short-sighted development schemes.

The Land and Water Conservation Fund is funded by a small percentage of federal oil royalties from offshore drilling in public waters. No tax dollars are involved.

Each year, four percent of $20 billion collected in offshore royalties is deposited in the LWCF account in the federal treasury. It is less than the rounding errors across the Federal Budget. It is less than one quarter of one percent of the annual documented waste throughout the Federal Government.

Over its 50-year history, LWCF has protected land in every state and supported over 41,000 state and local park projects. It pays dividends well beyond preserving what makes America America. Outdoor recreation, natural resource preservation, and historic preservation activities provide a powerful building block in our national economy that supports 9.4 million jobs and contributes a total of $1.06 trillion annually to the U.S. economy, according to the National Fish and Wildlife Federation.

West Virginia is an excellent example of what the LWCF can do. West Virginia has received approximately $241 million in LWCF funding over the past five decades, protecting places such as the Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge, Harpers Ferry National Historic Park, Monongahela National Forest and New River Gorge National River.

The Outdoor Industry Association has found that active outdoor recreation generates $9 billion in consumer spending in West Virginia, 91,000 jobs which generate $2.4 billion in wages and salaries, and produces $660 million annually in state and local tax revenue.

There are amazing stories behind these numbers – here is one.

In the late 1980’s, Harpers Ferry National Historical Park (HFNHP) was threatened on all sides. Neighboring Loudoun County, Virginia was the fastest growing county in America. Developers looked to land around HFNHP for intensive development. They hoped the Loudoun real estate boom would spill over Loudoun Heights and create a deluge of new housing and strip malls. The developers saw riches on the hallowed ground where Americans fought and died during the Civil War. Access to the Washington, DC MARC commuter trains trumped historic preservation.

In March 1988 a small group of concerned local citizens met with the Superintendent of HFNHP. The result was chartering Friends of HFNHP as the official Friends Group for the Park. Its mission was to preserve precious historic and scenic resources before the bulldozers arrived.

Senator Robert Byrd became the “patron saint” for the preservation forces. He funded a Resource Study that defined core battlefield land (where troops actually engaged in fighting and tactical movement) and buffer lands that preserved the vistas and maintained the contextual integrity of the many battles fought in the area.

The study, adopted after extensive scholarly documentation and public meetings, became the new “battle map” for the preservationists.

What followed was forty separate preservation projects over thirty years. Twenty six successful legal and regulatory actions stopped developers from destroying earthworks, and blighting vistas with townhouses, apartments, subdivisions, strip malls, and in one instance, a strip club. In their place is now over 1,500 preserved acres in three states, which were ultimately transferred into the National Park system.

The preservation battles in the Harpers Ferry area all banked on the Land and Water Conservation Fund being all or part of the final financial arrangements. In some cases, the LWCF allowed the Friends’ group and its partners to outbid developers for unspoiled farmland. Willing sellers desired their legacy to be open land, not concrete and vinyl. In other cases, legal actions slowed or stopped developers, forcing them to the bargaining table.

Through it all, the LWCF was the financial “cavalry” that would arrive just in time to acquire land or reimburse preservation partners who were holding land in trust.

Today, 500,000+ visitors, from all over America and the world, can roam one of the nation’s most fully preserved battlefields. Countless travel and history rankings list Harpers Ferry as the top historic & scenic community in the U.S. None of this would have been possible without the tireless commitment of local citizens, the hard work of preservation and conservation groups, and the LWCF.

Permanent reauthorization, and full dedicated funding, of the LWCF will ensure other communities have this same access to vital preservation resources for facing current and future challenges.

Inside Baseball

There are daily reminders why Americans hold their Congress in such low regard. Today’s example comes from a “dust-up” between Representative Nick Rahall (D-WV) and the Secretary of Interior. It is all outlined in the June 19 issue of The Washington Post.

The National Park Foundation decided to hold a reception celebrating National Parks. Unilever underwrote the festivities. The “dust-up” occurred when the announced venue was the Capitol Hill Club, the national Republican club situated across from the Cannon House Office Building.

On April 21, Rahall wrote Interior Secretary Kirk Kempthorne decrying the partisan venue. National Park Director, Mary Bomar, responded to Rahall on May 30, defending the location.

This is the kind of “inside baseball” that fills an average day in our nation’s Capital. Minor slights over protocol can derail major policy initiatives. Personal feuds can sink compromises. Egos get in the way of the peoples’ business.

The case of Rep. Rahall, taking the time to engage over a reception’s venue, and the media’s reporting, gives us a glimpse into a strange parallel universe where such things matter.

Over the last four years the Bush Administration has been gutting the National Park Service under the guise of a management review called “Core Operations” (see my February 15, 2008 blog – “National Treasures"). Entire park units have been closed, major education programs have been curtailed, and priceless national treasures have been put at risk. Yet, not one hearing or public letter from Rep. Rahall on the wanton and fundamental destruction of one of the major agencies under his committee's jurisdiction.

This is one more reason why there is so much disdain for Congress. Real things happen, that affect real Americans, and nothing is said or done. The priority and zeal is for making an issue out of the trivial. The only value of these minor issues is to placate the ego of some official or provide an opportunity for some pedantic partisan cheap shot. Shame on Congress, for wallowing in non-issues to the detriment of those that really matter. Shame on The Washington Post, for covering such stories while ignoring the real world.

National Treasures

I do not understand why the Bush Administration hates the National Park Service (NPS).

Over the last seven years the Bush Administration has under funded park operations by over $600 million a year. They have also created a $5 billion backlog in deferred maintenance. They have also reorganized in ways designed to hamper land acquisition and derail private partnerships and donations. These actions have ground construction and land acquisition to a virtual halt. The President’s FY 2009 Budget identifies $351 million in unobligated NPS construction funds and $185 million in unobligated land acquisition funds. These NPS funds are found on pages 649-650 of the President’s budget appendix (pdf pages 53-54). http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2009/pdf/appendix/int.pdf

However, the most heinous Administration actions strike at the fundamental survival of the National Park System. The Bush Administration has been secretly shutting down park operations and undermining our park system through a program called “Core Operations”.

“Core Operations” is mandating that every national park reduce its current operations by at least twenty percent over the next five years. In addition, each park is being told that they will have to absorb all cost increases related to inflation, personnel, and benefits within these reduced budgets. “Core Operations” has already resulted in wholesale terminations of public programs, firings and forced transfers of personnel, and the closing some park units. All this is being done without public knowledge or input. In fact, this program’s guidelines specifically ban public input and prevents park managers from considering customer and stakeholder interests.

The first signs of this resource starvation have recently surfaced in a report from the Inspector General of the Department of Interior. That report disclosed how the National Park Police are being plagued by low moral, poor leadership, and bad organization. Most importantly, the report sounds the alarm that our national monuments are at risk http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/02/06/travel/14_50_482_4_08.txt.

The Administration’s reaction to this report, and other reality checks, is denial and punitive efforts to silence its critics. Theresa Chambers learned what happens when career officials speak out about what is really happening. In 2004, Ms. Chambers, as the Chief of the U.S. Park Police, spoke out about the Bush Administration’s neglect and its impact on our national parks and monuments. Her concern for our nation’s treasures earned her a rapid demotion.

The Park Service is not always the most efficient or effective at preserving our national treasures and providing public programs. We all remember the $1 million spent in 1988 on an “environmentally friendly” outhouse in Glacier National Park http://www.jldr.com/oh1mill.html and the $330,000 spent in 1997 on an outhouse along the Appalachian Trail that did not have any running water http://www.theplumber.com/outhouse.html. But such fiascos do not justify the current systematic undermining and dismantling of the agency protecting our national treasures.

If the Bush Administration is right about our being in a global struggle against radical Islam then it should be of paramount importance that we preserve and protect the icons that define our nation. During the Christmas season the Bush White House made a big show of promoting the Park Service. The official Christmas tree featured park ornaments and the family’s dogs became junior Park Rangers in the annual Bush Christmas video. There is clearly a disconnect between these symbolic acts and the Bush administration’s own jihad against our national treasures.

This assault on the Park Service comes at a pivotal time in America. We are facing a major crisis in our civic culture. We are victims of our own success. Today we can watch 100 different television stations and visit millions of websites. This means we are no longer obtaining information in any common format or source. We are rapidly losing the collective experience and collective memory that are the foundation of a civic culture. We no longer have a common frame of reference that defines us as Americans and as a nation.

The collapse of civic culture has ended more civilizations than invasions and disease. This is not about immigration or diversity. It is about how we maintain our public values and institutions when people forget who we are and how our system works. In West Virginia public high schools civics is now an elective. Guides at the U.S. Capitol have to explain federalism and the three branches of government to US tourists and school groups.

The basic principles of our civic culture, and the history that created it, must be taught as a central part of preparing the next generation. One way to preserve our civic culture is to support the stewards of our collective memory – the 388 units of our national park system. This fundamental concept seems to be lost on President Bush, Secretary Kempthorne, and Park Director Bomar. We may have to wait until the next President before there is a clear commitment to preserving our past in order to assure our future.