I have been a bit busy with some research, but I just had to stop and write because this issue has really upset me.
What he said!!! Council stalls plan to add to bus service. In this Roanoke Times article, Lerone Graham hit the proverbial nail on the head. When I left Town Council meeting Tuesday night, I was livid. I could not believe that 2 of the Town Council members and the Mayor were trying to shut down negotiations on extending bus service when they have had weeks to study this issue and have their questions answered. Now, they suddenly want more questions answered, they want more information. Well, it is pretty clear to me that either they haven’t a clue as to how grants and such work, or they are simply postponing until the deadline is close enough that they can then blame it on someone else. These additional questions have been bantered around with citizens but NOT to the people with the answers. A great example of smoke and mirrors government.
What the article does not go into is that these very council members and the mayor were very active participants in planning commission recommendations to the town council concerning the ongoing unplanned growth that is consuming the Town of Christiansburg like a cancer. Items like the Aquatic Center and even a Civic Center were discussed by the Planning Commission and included in the Comprehensive Plan. However, look for areas where traffic concerns, walkways, sidewalks, accessibility by citizens to shopping, healthcare, etc. (i.e., through a bus service), small neighborhood parks suitable for families and neighborhoods to use (many of the ones the Town claims are actually the retention pond areas of developments…isn’t that sweet of them!) and other issues which have a direct impact on daily quality of life.
A tremendous amount of energy has gone into finding ways to take money from the Tourism Development Committee so that Christiansburg can do its own promotions for tourist, yet they can’t take the time to research and investigate what it is that would make the lives of citizens better.
As one planning commissioner recently noted: bringing in businesses increases taxes and therefore is good. Duh! Bringing in businesses without proper planning, assessing the impact on neighborhoods, traffic, law enforcement, fire department, rescue services, roads needing to be built, other infrastructure being over stressed or needing to be expanded, all of those take up more tax money than that business is going to generate.
It is time for elected and appointed officials to get a clue! YOU WORK FOR US!
Kudos to Michael Barber, Brad Stipes, and Henry Showalter. All of them showed that they had taken the time to do some of the homework and they supported having the means to support the bus routes ready should a decision be made to do so. The way that Ernie Wade, Jim VanHoozier, and Mayor Ballengee want to do it means that it would be another year or more before grants could be reapplied for…given that the town didn’t have to pay for those grants, one can only wonder if that opportunity will even exist next year. Other people and agencies are not going to keep doing the town’s work for them.
Chritiansburg doesn’t do grants because they do not have the staff or the expertise. Instead they sit back and wait for someone else to come up with grants …. maybe that’s what “wait and see” is really all about….”let’s wait and see if someone else will do it for us, that way we don’t have to do anything except show up at meetings.”
We need Town Council members to start looking out for citizens, or we need citizens to start looking out for new Town Council members. Wonder which one it will be.
