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Another small step for school

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A Congressional committee has approved the leasing 10 acres of National Park land to the VI government for construction of a high school.  The Committee on Natural Resources sent the authorization bill to the full House.  Virgin Islands Delegate Donna Christensen, who authored the bill, told the Virgin Islands Daily News she expects House action by the end of the month.

Interestingly, Christensen’s Web site makes no mention of the matter.  In fact, her Web site has been virtually dead for five months. A link to "Newsletters" has nothing more recent than Summer 2006.  There have been no press releases since late April. Looks like the Delegate is ignoring the Web site.

3 thoughts on “Another small step for school”

  1. I am happy for the schools but not so happy of how they are doing it. What is going to be the next project the parks department will agree to lease land for. A shopping mall at the Grand Canyon? I can be dangerous to start something like this.

  2. Support for this analogy can be found in the Virgin Islands Daily News article covering this bill on October 11. A quote from the article reads “Christensen said that the bill almost did not make it out of the committee unscathed. Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., was concerned that other states – like Arizona, Utah and Wyoming – might not receive similar treatment, Christensen said.
    She assured him that if any of those states need to use park land for a pressing civic need, she would support legislation to allow those leases. In return, Flake did not challenge the bill.” With land everywhere in the United States becoming scarce and expensive this is a precedent that may end up costing the NPS far more than this land on St. John.

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