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LETTERS / Hugh Sturgill’s Comments on The Right Side

Dear Editor,

Hugh Sturgill’s comments yesterday morning on the WATA The Right Side program concerning the old WHS property and the shape of the old high school were outrageous lying spins and after-the-fact, lame justifications of the resulting grossly expensive WHS project and unnecessary land purchases under the BOC chairmanship of Jim Deal. 

Sturgill said we in the county were fortunate regarding this wonderful new school and quoted some source, I could not remember the name, who claimed that the old high school was a “death trap and could not be rehabilitated”. Oh sure, just like the supposed, well compensated ‘engineering’ and ‘construction’ assessments regarding what renovation and a new building would cost. This alleged ‘assessment’ was as impartial and based on sound business and construction guidelines as a biased government pork giveaway. As many engineers and construction analysts will admit, these assessments are usually as the experts believe what their clients want to hear. 

Also, Sturgill was exonerating Jim Deal and remarked that Deal did not know of the resulting financial and economic difficulties. ‘In a pig’s eye, Mr. Sturgill! There were several qualified warnings re: the financial and economic meltdown of 2008 – 2009. I even knew of these warnings, and these warnings was one of my reasons for opposing such a gigantic, expensive project, which we strongly suspected would put this county in huge, unprecedented debt. Also, Mr. Sturgill, in his comments, totally ignored the new high school building problems and extra costs that resulted and will continue long after the construction was supposedly ‘finished’. 

When, one of the hosts, I believe, Mr. Hastings, countered that the county people deserved a referendum on the new school issue and were denied the right to make that decision, Sturgill used the same argument that ‘the new school was an absolute must’, and it would have been difficult to overcome such opposition. Oh, yes, Mr. Sturgill was speaking from the arrogant standpoint that the presupposed need’ justified ignoring the proper legal and traditional referenda process. Of course, the project was a PREDETERMINED CONCLUSION; a decision made by a relative few, years before, even by the mid-to-late ’90’s, and some were adamant that nothing would deter them from their desired goal. Even some within the media at that time period contributed in the conditioning propaganda process. Also, from good sources, necessary repairs to the old school were deliberately not funded or performed, which caused the building to deteriorate faster. 

Mr. Sturgill is just another example of the neo-con, fascist, big bureaucracy, so-called ‘conservative’ Republicans who are in cahoots with their ostensible Democratic opposition. Again, this entire impasse is the results of the FORCED agenda and deceitful propaganda to build a new school and make needless land purchases, which is just as much the fault of many Republicans, as well as the ‘spendthrift’ Democrats.

 

Madeline K. Carter