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Letter: Unintended consequences

Editor, Gazette-Journal:

I write this in my capacity as a private citizen and not in my public capacity as Commonwealth’s Attorney. On Aug. 23, 2022, the Mathews County Board of Supervisors unanimously voted that the Civil War monument on the Court Green, and the land beneath it, was public property, owned by Mathews County.

Supervisors held a public hearing Sept. 21 on whether they should convey the monument and land beneath it to a private entity. The goal of protecting the monument from being moved, as stated by some supervisors, can be accomplished by less drastic means than conveying away a portion of the Historic Court Green.

Some say the reason to deed a portion of the Court Green to a private entity is to honor the 80 percent of the voters who did not want the monument moved and to prevent a future county board from moving the monument. But placing the ownership of the monument, and the land underneath it, in private hands does to future voters exactly what the curren...

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