Mr. McCracken's letter to the editor of last week is a testament to misinformation! I have no evidence of a 2015 Master Plan! If Mr. McCracken has such a plan in his possession, I would like to see it. There were a lot of ideas floated around at that time, including some mentioned by McCracken but, in fact, several of these were shouted down by the membership, including the "Championship Golf Course" and the Proposed Community Center!
I don't ever remember the board discussing BV as a "tourist destination" although that idea may have been thrown around in City Hall. Berksdale, Kingswood and Brittany came under the microscope because, in the case of Berksdale and Kingswood, upstream development has caused major damage to the courses in the past and it's not going to get better.
For McCracken to state that the back nine at Berksdale rarely had significant damage shows that he is not in possession of the cleanup numbers over the years! Unless McCracken is an engineer, then I wouldn't second-guess the costs of repairing or rebuilding the bridges at Berksdale. In every case, we had more than one estimate and it is expensive depending upon the work to be done. We've kept Brittany open at cost. Enough said there.
By McCracken's own estimate, BV is not a sleepy little, idyllic village anymore. It stands smack in the way of progress as evidenced by the 49 ByPass and the tremendous growth occurring throughout our 36,000 acres. We will not be able to stop the growth around us. The best we can do is attempt to stay ahead of it. If people like McCracken continue to propagate ill will, it becomes like much of the misinformation and fake news that is so public today.
Bruce Portillo
Bella Vista
Editorial on 05/13/2020