Editor, The Smithfield Times:

Key Surry County officials boasting of “progress” have lost sight of the word’s meaning.

Overruling a unanimous Planning Commission on “substantial accord” for Sycamore Cross Solar, approving noisy data centers despite overwhelming citizen opposition, claiming to represent a shadow majority who don’t show up for board meetings … these are not hallmarks of progressive, principle-focused leaders.

Progress is “forward or onward movement, as toward a destination.” The destination is key.  Citizens, both long-term and come-heres, prize our rural character. Planning Commission member Dianne Cheek put it this way at a June 24 meeting: “The highest priority of our Comprehensive Plan is improving the quality of life for Surry residents… and this involves themes of preservation of the county character. I just don’t see where a solar project will be in accord with that main vision.”

Ms. Cheek has her eyes not just on our ship’s speed, but also the rudder. Improving quality of life is the core of our Comprehensive Plan, our destination. Filling county coffers with cash no matter the source (and cost) is sailing into fog despite the laudable goal of raising up our most vulnerable citizens. If we don’t sail intentionally toward a shared destination then we are not “progressing”; we are drifting and calling wherever we land the destination.

Real leadership is principle-driven. Until at least three members of the Surry County Board of Supervisors take the rudder and steer toward our shared purpose, we will continue to gain speed towards a rocky future where we pave paradise and put up parking lots. In that dystopian and likely future we will take Uber to meet at the local Starbucks or Target and argue about the definition of progress in a noisy industrialized wasteland of our own making, our pastoral rural character preserved only in databases housed in ever-humming data centers. That would be a shame.

Change course. Now.

 

Dr. Daniel A. Shaye

Surry