South Mills, N. C. moving ahead fast. Officials broke ground for a new state park 31 years in the making. It will take another 18 months and nearly three million to complete it. Visitors will cross the inter-coastal canal on a hydraulic bridge to a 6,500 square-foot visitor center that will be used to welcome thousands of boaters traveling north and south. Of course it will be open to the public and interested tourists. They are working on nearly eight miles of trails and visitors will be surrounded by 14,000 acres of the Great Dismal Swamp. That trail will connect to another 11-mile trail in Chesapeake. Nearby North Carolina State Park, Merchants Millpond, drew mor than 90,000 visitors last year.

This Dismal Swamp State Park will provide picnicking, hiking trails, canoeing and kayaking, primitive camping, bird watching and snake observation. Despite the many thousands invested in our lobbyists in Richmond it appears we are hat in hand waiting for dollars to flow in Suffolk’s direction. North Carolina is going hard after the Dismal Swamp business. So do we really need a massive visitor center across from the Hilton on the Hill? Perhaps we can do better with our own Lone Star Lakes. In many ways it could pass for the Dismal. Start with the shabby entrance tollbooth where even local taxpayers are charged to enter and use. It has many little lakes, fresh and salt water, hundred of acres for all those facilities planned for the North Carolina State Park and horse trails. It’s much closer for residents in easterly sister cities. And if were not for certain bull-headed individuals it would also contain Matanock Town, an Indian village now lost in the haze of fuzzy thinking.

Are we missing the boat, as we did when Chesapeake Square slipped across the boarder and could have been Suffolk Square? Not capitalizing on Lone Star will not be as important a loss as losing our lakes to Portsmouth and Norfolk. But there is great potential there and far less risk of being killed by a bear. We are not even going after the pleasure that would result from promoting it for Suffolk citizens. How much have we invested in a piddling park surrounding the Hilton? Sorry, that park is for downtown villagers, TGIF beer parties, and Hilton customers.

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I loved that tax chart in the News-Herald showing the comparison of Suffolk tax take and the various nearby cities based on an average assessment of $125,000. I wonder where that average house is located; I’d like a picture of it before it collapses. I have a total of $72,000 invested in my home, property, dock, deck, and landscaping. Before this new assessment increase the city had it valued at over $300,000 and we have always felt 1,600 square feet was an average home.

Recent and current city managers have convinced council members that in order for success we must have a shining nub on the hill called, in every city, a downtown. It is, they say, terribly important for growth, a thing they are fighting constantly to no avail. We must have an exciting scintillating downtown or people and industry will not come. Hah, that notion was dispelled long before the idea of UDO. Surry, a next-door neighbor is a great place to live and not much has changed there at all. Anyway, councils bought the idea, still believe it, and our downtown has flourished. But at the expense of who and what…where have millions gone? Council still believes a bustling downtown will spill over into all other neighborhoods and communities…but has it, will it?

The mayor doesn’t think we should compare Suffolk with other cities, nor emulate them. Out school system, however believes our teachers deserve the same wages as much more successful schools to our east. Our police department believes they do too but has had little luck attaining them until now. Make up your mind, Mr. Mayor, which is it? Why not emulate the Beach where they are considering real estate tax relief? And which council member dreamed up a whole nickel decrease in the tax rate? He or she must be a comic.

If I just want to save enough for a dinner for four at a good restaurant I will give up my celebrex for a month.

At the retreat, at the Hilton to encourage use of the place, (they must have felt small in

that big room) the entire staff focused remarks on the wonderful plan that council created in 1988 as well as the funding priorities. So they must have figured on those ever increasing assessments. They would look pretty silly now if they hadn’t happened.

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It appears the United States Congress has the courage to save the life of one vegetative state woman but can’t see the need to stop cruel partial birth abortions.

Robert Pocklington is a regular columnist for the Suffolk News-Herald. Reach him at robert. pocklington@suffolknewsherald.com