WataugaWatch

The Watauga Democrat on Monday and the Mountain Times today (not yet on-line, at 11:30 a.m.) has published two separate articles (the second one much expanded) about the Citizens for Change political action committee (PAC), both by the same reporter, finally making widely public what had already been reported on this site here and here and here.

The Watauga Democrat/Mountain Times reporter adds valuable color to the record. He got PAC organizers to talk about their motives. Jim Hastings calls the town "socialist," which he does all the time on his morning radio show, and PAC treasurer Reba Moretz says her motivation is the lack of cooperation between the town and the university, on whose Board of Trustees she sits. By "lack of cooperation," Ms. Moretz means to condemn the town. She is either ignorant of, or failed to take note of, the several failures of cooperation on the university's part, which go under the general heading of "Lawlessness," subheading: "We Don't Care What Your Development Rules Are." All of that lawbreaking by the university was detailed here. Ms. Moretz might want to research it.

And while she's talking cooperation out of one side of her mouth, she might want to ask Chancellor Ken Peacock why he still has not signed the water interconnect and sewer maintenance agreements with the Town of Boone, legal documents that he had his staff attorney work on with the town attorney a long time ago but never signed. Those were all detailed here.

Since Ms. Moretz herself raised the issue of cooperation, perhaps the local press would like to dig into the university's actual behavior there too.