By Nathan Ham
The activist group Residents & Friends of Historic Valle Crucis is doing everything they can to try and change some people’s minds about the location for constructing a new school in Valle Crucis.
According to information provided by the group, information postcards have been or will be sent to a total of 869 property owners, landowners and residents of The Valle Crucis Historic District, and residents of the Valle Crucis area, as well as to 139 publishers, editors and reporters of the 10 biggest daily newspapers in North Carolina from October 6 through October 15.
On October 16, the second mailing of 723 postcards will be sent to state government officials, North Carolina watchdog agencies, local and statewide media, state agencies and non-profit organizations with a stake in clean water, environmental, heritage and outdoors tourism, historic and cultural preservation.
In addition to the mailers, the group has purchased a 30-second television commercial spot that will air 60 times a day on Spectrum for the next two weeks, and 30 times a day for the subsequent two weeks. The spot will air on 18 channels including MSNBC, CNN, National Geographic, History, Hallmark, HGTV, TLC, Travel, TV Land and MTV.
Lyle Schoenfeldt, the chairperson of the steering committee for Residents & Friends of Historic Valle Crucis, is still hearing from people inside and outside of Valle Crucis that seem to be in favor of preserving the history and current look of the community.
“We’ve had 400-plus people submit petitions and we are using that to communicate with our followers and we’ve pushed out some mailers to them in the last week to keep them informed,” said Schoenfeldt. “Followers on vallecrucis.net are widely dispersed throughout the county and in some cases beyond.”
The postcard is concerning this week’s Watauga County Commissioners meeting on Tuesday that will vote on whether or not to exempt schools from having to meet certain historic provisions that were passed in 1990 under the Valle Crucis Historic District Ordinance.
“We just want to state our case as much as possible,” Schoenfeldt said.