Nash Farm Battlefield

[Busterbuttonboy]

The National Park Service has designated Nash Farm Battlefield as one of 384 core battlefields in the Civil War.

This is the highest validation a battlefield can receive, and the designation was given upon the completion of the comprehensive Update to the Civil War Sites Advisory Commission Report on the Nation’s Civil War Battlefields, published in June 2010.

As a result of, Nash Farm Battlefield is one of 27 battlefields in Georgia now eligible for a listing in the National Register of Historic Places, which would make the park and battlefield eligible for grant funding to assist with preservation efforts.

In the report, the American Battlefield Preservation Program completely redrew the 1993 boundaries for the Battle of Lovejoy’s Station to provide a more accurate and complete picture of the federal approach from the northeast toward Lovejoy’s Station, and the Confederate response along the Macon and Western Railroad.

Based on recent archaeological studies by the LAMAR Institute and the Georgia Department of Transportation/Southeastern Archaeological Services team, the core battlefield area was expanded to the east to include fighting at Nash Farm and the rearguard action at Walnut Creek, both in Henry County.

The National Park Service conducted its study of Nash Farm Battlefield for this update in March 2008. National Park Service officials with the American Battlefield Protection Program visited the site, and met with multiple historical organizations, archaeologists, historians, and others to compile and corroborate the information about what took place there.

As a result of the study, the core battlefield map was expanded to incorporate both the Nash Farm and Walnut Creek battlefields.

Because 204 acres of the core battlefield area has been preserved by Henry County, the Battle of Lovejoy’s Station was given a tier 2 designation as one of eight important battlefields in Georgia that are in “relatively good condition” and “present some of the best possibilities for Civil War landscape preservation in Georgia.”

The Nash Farm Battlefield is the only segment of the fractured 1,179.98 acre Lovejoy Station core battlefield area that is preserved.

Additionally, a 75-acre segment across Jonesboro Road from the Nash Farm Battlefield site has been designated by the National Park Service as one of the top 15 most endangered battlefield sites in the United States.

Information: www.henrycountybattlefield.com.

http://neighbornewspapers.com/stories/Nash-Farm-listed-as-core-battlefield,162286?content_source=&category_id=6&search_filter=&event_mode=&event_ts_from=&list_type=&order_by=&order_sort=&content_class=&sub_type=&town_id=&page=

[MissMia]

Re: Nash Farm Battlefield

Very informative!
I saw that they won't be having a re-enactment this year--what happened?

[toptimlrd]

Re: Nash Farm Battlefield

Not an event that normally plays here but for what it's worth, I think the organizer wanted to back off and hold it only every 5 years.

[Southernlady1862]

Re: Nash Farm Battlefield

The county pulled all funding from the re-enactment this year due to budget cuts...... the 30th GA (I spoke with them last week) hopes to locate enough sponsors by next year to reinstate the event.

[Hawke_Man]

Re: Nash Farm Battlefield

This is the same battlefield that they used "Imminent Domain" to aquire. Battlefield or not it was a sneaky way of doing things.

The Following is an older post from around the web but a good one about the cost of the "battlefield" on the county. Original post can be found at http://www.jasonpye.com/blog/eminent_domain/

Revelations on Nash Farm
I received the information pertaining to my open records request yesterday, which included BOC meeting minutes, court exhibits from the condemnation hearings, court transcripts, maps and a copy of the $8,077,000 check used to pay Maxie Price.

In my request I asked for, "all documentation related to the source of the funds paid to acquire the property; by this I do not intend to ask for tax records etc. Rather if special sources such as grants, loans or other financing were used..."

There was no specific mention of where the money came from in the 450 pages I received from the county. So I sent an e-mail to the county employee that put together the request basically asking where the money came from and that was the purpose of my request.

Here is her reply, "Please be advised that we have provided you with all of the financial documents responsive to your request. The $8 million payment came from the County’s General Reserve Fund. It is virtually impossible to determine the source of this fund because it is comprised of various revenue generating sources such as property taxes, sales taxes, etc."

So, I was right. However, that is not nearly the end of the story. Included in 450 pages were the minutes to the July 25, 2005 (pages 4 & 5). There are some very interesting things in these minutes.

The first thing is that the BOC pretty much sacrificed the YMCA for Nash Farm. Here is a relevant portion:

Commissioner Adams directed his question to Mr. Magnaghi, “how are we going to finance this?”

Mr. Magnaghi replied, “it will be financed by impact fees. The figures we reviewed were based upon $11 million; $6 million for this particular project, $5 million for the Y.M.C.A., and a debt incurred over ten (10) years would be approximately $1.3 million. The two (2) combined would be about $1.3 million a year for ten (10) years. That would constitute about 65% of the projected impact fees for the next ten (10) years. This would leave approximately $500,000 a year for additional projects from impact fees.”

Commissioner Stamey asked, “only if we use the Y.M.C.A. money, correct?”

Mr. Magnaghi said, “I keep saying that because the figures have been run on both of these projects, and if we back that out, we said that would constitute about 55% of the $11 million, so the $1.3 million would probably go down to $650,000 for just this project as debt service.”

Now, impact fees must be used for infrastructure improvements only, "development impact fees shall not be expended for any purpose that does not involve building or expanding system improvements that create additional capacity available to serve new growth and development" (County Code Sec. 3-6-86b).

This is an illegal use of impact fees. The county can pay it's self back for "system improvements intended to be funded by such impact fee." But the uses for impact fees and what a system improvement is are clearly defined in county code.

Now we come to an even more interesting part and I wonder how my friends at the Henry Council for Quality Growth feel about this:

Commissioner Stamey added, “we also talked about on the next SPLOST fund, we could put something in there concerning parks and recreation, and maybe we could create a resolution to allow us for an expansion of parks and recreation and use a portion of the SPLOST money to pay off this early.”

Chairman Harper said he thinks the next SPLOST should have greenspace and park money; he said DeKalb County just developed a SPLOST for that purpose. He said DeKalb is leading the whole State in their Arabia Mountain Project, which is huge with the trail system. “On capital, if we built a new Administration Building today, and in two (2) years pass a SPLOST, we could put on the SPLOST we could retire the debt by putting it on there. I do not know if you can do that on land; I know you can on capital. Also, there is other land we have been considering, and it is a perfect place for a Y.M.C.A.

Not only is the county running to Congress trying to get pork money for Nash Farm and spending $8 million from the general fund (money that should have been spent on real needs) and impact fees (which is nothing more than a tax on the consumer)...the county is floating the idea of allocating more money to Nash Farm through SPLOST III.

Three paragraphs of clearly modern politics removed. - Silas

[Silas]

Re: Nash Farm Battlefield

Although it's tough, please make an effort to keep the modern politics out of the discussion.

[Tom Dodson]

Re: Nash Farm Battlefield

please delete this post.