Dear Editor:

Jay Miller’s arguments in favor of developing a “comprehensive” plan for the county have, in this writer’s opinion, practically no merit. His major justification is that we may—not will—may lose access to funds and opportunities which require that such a plan exists. He then goes on to inform us that virtually no government or private entity actually does require one.

One day Congress or the State Legislature may require some sort of plan. Then we’ll have to spend scarce money and time to hire a semi-competent plan-making outfit to come in and start a whole dispute which will drag on for years and get everybody tea-party mad. Next, Miller proposes that we “plan to plan.” Oh boy—we get to waste even more time and energy.

As I see it, the relationship a plan bears to actual reality is largely determined by three characteristics: its time on the horizon, the number of factors it must consider and the number and strength of exogenous factors—i.e. stuff happening which we can’t foresee or have no control over or both.

The shorter the time horizon, the more likely things will turn out as we expect. If I make a list of things to do tomorrow, there’s a pretty good chance I’ll get most of them done. If Greenbrier County had erected a land-use plan in 2004, what bearing would that plan have had on wind turbines or waste coal plants? So time horizons in excess of two or three years must assume increasingly unlikely futures.

Miller’s list of factors, activities and issues to be considered in the “comprehensive” plan he espouses is fearfully long: it contains 13 “required” topics for which we must forecast goals, objectives, schedules and budgets plus six additional “may cover” topics. The expectation that we can predict, analyze, agree upon and control such a list seems utterly delusional. Look what’s gone on with the sewage treatment issue in Slaty Fork. And that’s just one part of the issue.

Is Miller saying that what cannot be resolved within the political process can be tied up and neatly packaged ahead of time simply with the right plan? In that case the commissioners should just appoint a planning commission and all resign and save us holding elections.

As for exogenous factors, let’s bear in mind that more than two-thirds of the land in Pocahontas County is under the ownership and control of the U. S. Forest Service and of state parks and forests. Now, that’s a couple of elephants in the room for you. And let’s face it: so-called comprehensive plans focus largely on land use; the rest is just eyewash and hubris.

Miller makes the valid point that a plan is only as good as its assumptions. Well, his major underlying assumption seems to be that a centralized planning commission is a better way to anticipate and deal with issues and problems than just muddling through an uncertain future and dealing with things as they arise using the existing formal and informal political and social processes.

Personally, I’ll take uncertainty, the very quality that makes life interesting, over the hubris of those who would impose their “vision” on those of us who prefer just to row our boats “gently down the stream.” By all means bring college courses to the county; figure out how to get along on lower tax collections. Address the real issue. Forget the grand plan.
Lawrence Cameron
Hillsboro


Dear Editor:
Upon the death of Cathleen Hoover in 2009 I was the beneficiary of one of her family Bibles.  Tucked within the pages of that holy writ was a clipping from the October 6, 1932 edition of The Pocahontas Times.  The editor, Calvin Price, was commenting on automobile tours out of Elkins as part of the Forest Festival.  The tours had been organized by the Monongahela National Forest and the one for which Mr. Price and Dr. Fred Allen were the narrators was "from Elkins to Marlinton by way of the Seneca Trail, thence east over the Nancy Hanks Highway to Bartow, thence west across Cheat Mountain and back to the Seneca Trail at Huttonsville: some 140 odd miles to travel.”

Mr. Price gives an interesting insight to the geology of the landscape and historical accounts of features along the way.  What has tickled my curiosity, however, is why the road from Marlinton to Bartow was referred to as the Nancy Hanks Highway.  There is some suggestion that Nancy Hanks, who will be remembered as Abe Lincoln's mother, was born or lived for a short while somewhere in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia, but what has that to do with the Marlinton to Bartow road being called the "Nancy Hanks Highway?"  Any insight to this ignominy would be greatly appreciated.
Bob Kellison
Raleigh, NC