I try to focus on key issues, particularly those relating to the statutes and codes because I find them so fascinating. I learn something new about them every single day. In the first psychology course that I took I learned one key lesson about being human. ‘ There is no such thing as an unbiased opinion’. Every piece of information presented to you through someone else is either intentionally or unintentionally screened through the values and beliefs of the person giving that information. Being unbiased is a goal to work towards but is never achievable. Some people come closer to that goal than others.

Enough of that, now on to my ‘not totally unbiased, but striving’ report of today’s activities:)

The Planning Commission met at 3pm today but did not have the quorum necessary to take any action such a voting on a recommendation to the Town Council. After some discussion on other items not requiring a vote, the meeting was continued to 6:30pm. At 6:30pm there was still no quorum but shortly after 7pm a 4th member appeared and the 3 items to be voted on were addressed. PC voted to recommend approval of the Main Street Baptist Church and the 1225-C Roanoke St game room Conditional Use Permits.

A major ‘hitch in the get along’ occurred when a motion to approve the rezoning of the Albert Land, LP property (Ivy Ridge/Sage Lane) died on the table without a 2nd to the motion.

At the Town Council meeting the 2 items with PC recommendation to approve passed handily with only a little bit of discussion. A second ‘hitch in the get along’ involving the Albert Land property came up the motion was made to approve but after a lengthy discussion, the motion was pulled from the table and, instead, it was decided that the issue should be returned to the PC for another assessment and possible recommendation in 2 weeks. It was verified that there was ample time for this to occur without TC losing control of the situation and having it default in favor of the developer due to in action.

Unfortunately, sending this back to PC only means that the PC will need to vote or possibly end up with another ‘no vote’ or tie situation. The public hearing has already occurred so no modifications to proffers can be made without starting the process over and holding another public meeting with any new proffers included.

Part of the discussion centered around the issues that all of those nice drawings are pretty worthless if there are not things in the proffers that insure that the concepts such as greenspace, trails, etc. would be followed. (If you want to see the particular issues that Mr. Barber and Mr. Stipes pointed out, you’ll have to watch the videos which I am working on while I write this – hopefully, they will be available early tomorrow.) Once the property is rezoned, the developer can do any by-right development desired. There is no guarantee that there would be any sort of special development requiring a CUP with TC could have some control over. The 4 per acre proffered in the rezoning request, is the same that is required in the requested rezoning. Where the drawings display extensive green space and open space (20-30%) it was not proffered as such so when the subdivision ordinance is applied, it could actually be developed with a minimum of 10% green space. This is a perfect example of how it is that people believe one thing is going to happen but something else is the reality. And, it is all perfectly legal.

I’ll let you know when the videos are ready, in the meantime, suffice it to say that the Albert Land deal is doing a great imitation of a Carousel, going round and round without making any forward or backwards progress. (This soap opera may ultimately top the Edge of Night for run time.)

The Planning Commission Meeting begins at 3pm rather than the normal 4pm giving an indication that there will be a lot to discuss:

1. The Sage Lane issue is up for a vote by the Planning Commission so that they can present their recommendations to the Town Council at the following Town Council Meeting
2. Main St. Baptist Church comes back for a repeat performance of the Conditional Use Permit that they are requesting be renewed. This is for the industrialized building units they have been using for offices and classrooms at 106 W. Main St. for several years now. There will be a vote to determine a recommendation to present to Town Council.
3. Another Conditional Use Permit concerns a request for a game room to be added to the businesses at 1225 Roanoke Street. There will be a vote to determine a recommendation to present to Town Council.
4. A rezoning request will be discussed for property on the southern side of Radford St. west of Melody Drive where it is requested that the zoning be changed from Agricultural to Single-Family Residential. This is a 8.25 acre plot and the public hearing on this matter will be held on the same night at the Town Council meeting.
5. A Conditional Use Permit for a commercial garage at 1020 Radford St. will be discussed with a public hearing to be held at the following Town Council Meeting.
6. A review of a Conditional use Permit at 155 Howery St. for a major home occupation will be done to insure compliance with the conditions.

A few hours later, at 7:30pm, Christiansburg Town Council will meet.

There are 2 Joint Public Hearings: 1) the Rezoning request noted in #4 above, and 2) the Conditional Use Permit (CUP) noted in #5 above. Joint Public Hearings are the time where citizens have the opportunity to address issues and bring forth information that the Town Council may find useful in making decisions on the issues.

There is a PUBLIC HEARING concerning the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) – Consolidated Plan and Annual Action Plan. This involves federal grant money that can be used for specific types of projects. The intended projects are required to address the issues and needs most relevant to low and moderate income citizens. The proposals found in the links I have provided show the intention of adding additional sidewalks in some areas of town. You might want to set aside some time to at least scan these documents to see what is being discussed.

Then we get to the Regular Meeting where the Planning Commission will provide their recommendations to Town Council on a) the CUP for Main St. Baptist Church (see above #2), b) the CUP for the game room at 1225 Roanoke ST (see above #3), and last but certainly not least — c) the rezoning of the Albert Land, LP property that includes the Sage Lane issues.

Following that will be a presentation from Ms. Rebecca Martin concerning the Christiansburg Bus System. This is where citizens may get an idea of any changes to bus routes that are being considered, or even if the bus service might be discontinued.

Next on the agenda is a open forum where any citizen may address Council on any issue, concern, kudos, etc.

Once all of that is out of the way, we move into part III of the agenda. This is the section where the public is silent and the Council makes their decisions known. They will be voting on: a) the CUP for Main St. Baptist Church (see above #2), b) the CUP for the game room at 1225 Roanoke ST (see above #3), and last but certainly not least — c) the rezoning of the Albert Land, LP property that includes the Sage Lane issues.

Potential budget cuts are again on the agenda for discussion. This is followed by a “Memorandum of Understanding — Sustainable Communities Consortium.” (The link is to a Roanoke Times article discussing this project. I was unable to find any information on the Town’s website.)

Next to last for the evening is the report of the Street Committee. Although the Town has many different committees, this is the only one that routinely provides reports to the Town Council. On this evening, they will primarily work on subdivision plat changes and lot line adjustments.

Finally, the last item of the agenda is the Town Manager’s Report where the Town Manager will provide the monthly bills to be paid and progress reports on various projects in the works.

Now, if you didn’t get much of a chance to grab a bite between the two meetings, after adjournment, you might want to wander over to Macados’ or over to Sonic for a bit of a snack or hmm…maybe an ice cream sundae.

Please try to come. Every decision made by Town Council has the potential of having a positive or negative impact upon every citizen. Just because it is not happening in ‘your backyard’ doesn’t mean that it will not affect you in the long run. Listening, asking questions, and talking with other citizens is the best way to keep yourself informed. Who knows, you may have the perfect answer to some problem that arises. Hope to see you there.

The Mayor and Town Council are ultimately responsible. Simply replacing the Town Manager will not accomplish anything unless you are very fortunate in finding a replacement willing to stand up to Town Council if they are wrong about something. “Simply Following Orders” should be the flag Mr. Terpenny is carrying around.

It is the role of the Mayor and Town Council to put someone in as Town Manager. Then, it is their role to monitor performance, give direction, and make changes as necessary. This requires that Mayor and Town Council learn a little bit about the processes involved.

If any Town Council hires someone to do a job and doesn’t know enough about the job itself to monitor job performance, then they have failed the public.

Personally, I imagine that Mr. Terpenny will do quite well in Floyd where you have a very different sort of base of elected officials. I just don’t see Floyd doing the hands off approach that the Town of Christiansburg government has done. Floyd officials are more likely to ask questions and expect answers.  They may not try to ‘run the show’, but they will be asking questions and expecting answers.

The elected officials of the Town of Christiansburg seldom ask questions, and when they do, are far to quick to take answers such as “I think” or “I believe”. Is it Mr. Terpenny’s fault that this is not done? Absolutely not! With such vague responses, the Mayor should have followed up with asking for more details.

There are a few of the council members who do try to ask questions and push to get answers, if you watch the video recordings you will see a pattern of the majority of them simply ignoring the issues presented by the few.

While sitting in Council chambers on Tuesday evenings, I frequently get this vision of ostrich butts sticking straight up in the air. It is easy to get the feeling that many of those elected officials have an attitude of “just do what needs to be done and don’t bother me with details”.

Being a competent elected officials is not about delegating all authority to someone else. It is not about dressing up to look good and simply voting based upon recommendations or the voices of a few residents. I certainly do not expect them to make decisions based upon what I write here or what I say in Council Meetings. I just want them to do the job of leadership. Listen, learn, ask questions, and make the best possible decision that they can while asking for all of the information that they can get.

The Council should not sit back and make decisions based upon what developers, citizens, business owners, or anyone else say. They should be using the resources of the Town such as:

• the Planning Department (of course, that would require that the Council knows what questions to ask of the Planning Dept. or to have people in Planning who will voluntarily provide all relevant information),
• the Town Attorney (in my opinion, the Town Attorney should be an active participant in discussion, providing Council with information that is needed to make decisions including relative State and Town Codes),
• the Finance Officer as to the current financial status of the town and projected revenues before investing money in a project)
• the Police Chief for current traffic and crime stats and projections based upon proposed projects
• The Fire and Rescue Chiefs for information concerning access to areas where development is to occur and response times.

It is likely that some of the Council members may have information from those individuals but does it ever get to the rest of the Council or become accessible to the public? No.

For example, much of this type of information would be useful at the Planning Commission stage of things. Recent discussions concerned sidewalks and walking trails in developments. Where is the input concerning crime rates? I did a bit of looking around and it appears that sidewalks tend to decrease crime while trails going through people’s backyards tend to increase crime. Although I did not look around long enough to come up with anything definitive, isn’t it worth the time to look? Was there ever any consideration given to those features? What about emergency access to someone should an accident occur on a trail?

Listen to some of the Planning Commission Meetings and you will hear a lot of phrases that indicate that a particular Planning Commission member does not like something, but they are not appointed to represent their values and beliefs. They are appointed to look at the impact of decisions on the whole of the Town. The Planning Commission should be comprised of a variety of people, representing the variety of citizens. Adding more members would allow for younger voices to be heard, to include more variety in race, sex, education, and socio-economic status.

This rather makes it appear that the Town Charter and/or Code would have had to have been changed before said 3 year contract could have gone into effect. The other localities that I found to have gone with a longer contract for Town Manager, have specifically generated ordinances/charter changes in order to support those. My guess is that the reason for that was this state code.

So, should the town council have been looking at such a contract without having first established that there was such a need as to warrant Charter and/or Code changes. I never heard of any discussions concerning those changes except for some mumblings on how they could enter into the contract first, then change the  Charter/Code afterwards. Maybe there are some lawyers out there who have a better understand of the intent of this State Code and would care to comment.

Is it possible that the 3 year contract was merely a ‘smoke screen’ simply to get people riled up so that they wouldn’t see what was really going on. If so, then you have to wonder who the ‘they’ is in this situation. Certainly with Showalter and Carter being the last to find out anything, they are ruled out.

Of course, the town attorney was in the meetings so if this was actually an issue, one would expect it to have been raised.

Fortunately, the State Code also makes sure that the public will know the full extent of the severance packages of any individuals to which they have or shall be awarded. If it is consistent with the document read by Mr. Barber, there are some pretty vague places that I hope will be clarified before the deal is finalized.

§ 15.2-1510.1. Public announcement of severance packages for certain officials.

Severance benefits provided to any departing official appointed by a local governing body or school board shall be publicly announced by the local governing body or school board, respectively, prior to such departure.

(2006, c. 254; 2007, c. 257.)

It sounds like the details should be pretty specific to me, but I am sure that someone can argue that the Letter of the Law was met in Mr. Barbers statement. However, I wonder if it will truly meet the Spirit of the Law. After all, it is the citizen’s money being used for any such severance benefits.

Here’s what the Town Charter says:

1) He has 10 days in which to deliver all property, books and papers:

§ 2.1 2. Surrender of Papers and Property.–If any person, having been an officer of said town, shall not within ten days after he shall have vacated or been removed from office, and upon notification of request of the council within such time as it may allow, deliver to his successor in office all property, books and papers belonging to the town or appertaining to such office, in possession or under his control, he shall forfeit and pay to the town a sum not exceeding five hundred dollars, to be sued for and recovered with costs; and all books, records and documents used in any office by virtue of any provision of this act, or of any ordinances or order of the town council, or any superior officer of said town, shall be deemed the property of said town and appertaining to said office, and the chief officer thereof shall be held responsible therefor. (1954, c. 240)
2) This raises the big question of who his ‘successor’ is going to be if the job has not been advertised and the position filled by that time. The Town Charter again comes to the rescue:

§ 2.14. Duties of Mayor.–The mayor shall preside at the meetings of the council, voting only in case of a tie, and perform such other duties as may be prescribed by this charter and by general law and such as may be imposed by the council consistent with his office. He shall perform the duties of the town manager during the absence of the town manager or while the office of town manager is vacant. He shall have power to investigate the acts of the various town officers, members of the police, fire and public works departments and all other departments of the town government, whether elected or appointed. The mayor shall have and exercise all power and authority conferred by general law on mayors of towns and not inconsistent with this charter; and shall, from time to time, recommend to the council such measures which he may deem needful for the welfare of the town. (1 954, c. 240; 1968, c. 173)
Clearly, it will be Mayor Ballengee who is taking over the Town Manager’s roles until such time as the position is filled. Christiansburg is lucky to have an Assistant Town Manager, Barry Helms, who is very experienced to be the ‘right-hand’ of the Mayor.

This should make for a fairly smooth transition period, providing ample time for the Town Council to begin development of a job description, job advertising, and the interviews required to find the ‘right person’.

Perhaps the Council will even choose to add some citizens to the review committee as they did with the position of Police Chief. Or, if they choose to handle it like the Rescue Squad, let the members (citizens) elect the person they want to fill the position:) (Wouldn’t that be a hoot!)

Time will tell, and I’ll be watching to see what is done. I am sure it will be an interesting process however it is done.

An additional side note to this is also found in the Town Charter:

§ 2.06. Compensation.–The council shall by ordinance or resolution fix the salaries of all officers and employees of the town elected or appointed by it, or appointed by its authority and may so far as is not inconsistent with the provisions of the charter, define the powers and prescribe the duties of all such officers and employees. To effectuate the powers conferred by general laws as well as the powers herein specifically granted, the council may employ all such persons as may be necessary. (1 954, c. 240)
and in the Town Code:

Sec. 2-3. Record book for ordinances and resolutions–To be kept by Clerk of Council.

The Clerk of the Council shall enter in a well-bound book copies of all ordinances and resolutions passed by the Council. The book in which such ordinances and resolutions are thus entered shall be known as the “Ordinances and Resolutions of the Town of Christiansburg.” The Clerk of the Council shall index such book. (Code 1972, § 2-3)

• Revenue from local taxes and fees increased by 120.06%
• Expenditures increased by 120.32%

Expenses:

• Government Admin Expenses increased by 156.35%
• Public Safety Expenses increased by 234.30%
• Public Works Expenses increased by 128.30%
• Parks & Recreation Expenses increased by 315.24%

Revenue:

• Real Property Revenue increased by 156.20%
• Public Service Corporation Revenue increased by 34.39%
• Machinery and Tools Revenue increased by 178.34%
• Penalties decreased by 36.53%
• Interest increased by 0.79%
• Other Local Taxes increased by 173.44%
• Permits, Fees, & Licenses increased by 241.76%
• Charges for Services increased by 374.55%
• Miscellaneous Revenue increased by 1,499.73%

Specific to Local Revenue:

• Local Sales and Use Tax increased by 87.14%
• Business License Taxes increased by 264.35%
• Franchise License Tax dropped by 18.69%
• Hotel and Motel Taxes increased by 359.70%
• Restaurant and Food Taxes increased by 192.83%

Safety Expenses:

• Law Enforcement and Traffic Control expenses increased by 223.16%
• Fire and Rescue Services expenses increased by 322.66%
• Inspections expenses increased by 176.02%
• Overall increase for services 234.30%

Services:

• Maintenance of Highways, etc. expenses increased by 111.23%
• Sanitation and Waste Removal expenses increased by 200.67%
• Maintenance, Bldgs. and Grounds expenses increased by 42.08%
• Total Increase in expenses of 128.30
• Revenue from Local Charges for these services increased by 395.33%

Parks and Recreation:

• Expenses increased by 319.59%
• Revenues from local charges for services increased by 206.04%

Government Operation:

• Personal Services expenses increased by 202.32%
• Fringe Benefits expenses increased by 332.50%
• Contractural Services expenses increased by 287.43%

Gross Debt:

• Total Gross Debt of the town increased by 205.02%
• Other General Government debt increased by 221.49%
• Enterprise Activities debt increased by 181.36%
• Unfunded Debt has increased by 205.47%

Well, there are the numbers. Feel free to go to the APA site and check for yourselves. Do remember however, that these numbers do not include any of the 2010 fiscal year information where a more than $2 million deficit is hanging. Maybe there is something to be said for Mr. Lemley’s ‘pay as you go’ philosophy that didn’t stay around after he left.

The simple fact is that if the ‘goes out’ is higher than the ‘comes in’ things have to change. Keeping this 14 year pattern going in the same direction is only going to worsen the problem. Town Council needs to get involved in decisions involving expenditures and more aggressively monitor what is spent and where. The Town Council get routing reports from the Town Manager and absolutely nothing in this article should come as a surprise to any of them. After all, it only took me a couple of hours to get all the reports and set up multiple spreadsheets for analysis and I am not a high paid professional. In fact, I did it for free. Now, what will the Town Council do about the budget, expenses, and revenue?

Over the years, the Town Council has slowly (sometimes not so slowly) diverted almost all of its duties over to the Town Manager. We essentially have a ‘show’ council with the Town Manager making virtually all decisions, establishing contracts (i.e. the Aquatic Center), and choosing which laws and ordinance to enforce and when to enforce them (i.e., multiple violations of Erosion and Sediment Control on Town owned property as well as privately owned). The contract is established to maintain it this way, prohibiting the Council from taking back any of that responsibility. Nuff said by me. Please take the survey. It is short, quick and easy. Your input matters.

Town Manager Contract Survey

Radford and Christiansburg have very different contract issues for very different reasons.

Radford officials have at the front of their concerns list making sure that citizens are protected by insuring that the position of town attorney is being put out for bid and a new contract developed. An interesting aside to this is “who is writing the contract?” The rfp and contract do not, in any way, exclude the current town attorney from competing for, and winning said contract. It is a far and open process. Radford is simply joining the growing number of jurisdictions who are moving to a dedicated attorney.

Christiansburg, on the other hand, is involved with allowing the Town Manager to compile a contract for him that is in his best interest. The sample document used by the Town Manager is one that is provided at a website that focuses on the needs of those appointed officials, regardless of whether or not it is in the best interest of the Town.

While the contract itself has not become public knowledge, the sample contract used for the C’burg Town Manager contract is available online. Clearly, this is a document written to protect the Town Manager NOT the town. It will be interesting to see if the town attorney suggests modifications that support the interests the town or those of the Manager. It will also be interesting to see which of the ‘elected officials’ are supporting the town’s interest and which support the manager’s interest.

Given the Town of Christiansburg’s history of getting into contracts, discovering that mistakes were made, and then struggling to get out of those contracts (Tourism Development, Blacksburg Transit). It would be silly for them to enter into ANY contract that lasted for more than one year.

As to the Town Manager’s dedication to the citizens of the Town, all one needs to do is to read the original contract he set up with VT for the Aquatic Center, then read the one that was finalized after citizen uproar forced a re-evaluation. The version here shows the changes made in red. Please note that the Town Manger was essentially the only one working up this contract with the Town Attorney reviewing it. He was all but giving the Aquatic Center to VT.

So, in light of the compared progressive and regressive actions of the two jurisdictions, I have a survey that people can take to evaluate the performance of Mayor, Council, and Town Manager in 4 areas:

Your participation will be greatly appreciated.

Christiansburg council discusses contract for manager – Roanoke.com

Why rush a contract? – Roanoke.com

It appears that someone outside of town government has received a copy of that document. Since it wasn’t me, I had to resort to a more inquisitive approach to try to determine what might be up.

Starting with the assumption that the Town Manager is not an Attorney as well as an Engineer, I went back through the data on the ‘pay the bills’ sheets looking for any organizations that the Town might be paying membership fees to that would offer this type of document.

My first look was to the VML site where I found nothing. After a few more trial and error episodes, I finally landed at the ICMA site online where they have a sample government document “Model Employment Agreement that is a downloadable pdf format. Since I did a fairly extensive search and this is the only model I have found, I feel it is safe to assume that this model document is likely to have formed the basis for the Town Manager’s contract. You can view the document as a pdf here or simply click on the link on the ICMA page above. (Please note that this particular document was generated in 2003 and there is no evidence to indicate updates have occurred. This could mean that parts of the document are no longer consistent with State Codes.)

You will find a lot of blank spots on this document which would be where the specifics of a given contract were denoted such as the length of time that the document is in effect. That could be 3 months, 1 year, 3 years, 10 years, etc.

Page 1 of the document (page 3 of the pdf), under Section 3: Compensation subsection C provides information on an annual basis to increase compensation with 4 options available. All of the options address pay increases or bonuses (read the document for more details).

Oops! Sorry got ahead of myself. Start with the Table of Contents. Here is where you can get an overview of everything covered in the document. For example:

• Section 6 Automobile

• Section 7 Retirement

• Section 8 General Business Expenses

• Section 9 Termination

• Section 10 Severance

• Section 11 Resignation

• Section 12 Performance Evaluation

• Section 13 Hours of Work

• Section 14 Outside Activities

• Section 15 Moving and Relocation Expenses

• Section 16 Home Sale and Purchase Expenses

I included those examples because if a precedent is set whereby such a contract is used in the future for the hiring of any new Town Manager, Section 15 and 16 could be particularly important.

Section 9 includes a lot of Termination related details such as #2:

2. If the Employer, citizens or legislature acts to amend any provisions of the [charter, code, enabling legislation] pertaining to the role, powers, duties, authority, responsibilities of the Employee’s position that substantially changes the form of government, the Employee shall have the right to declare that such amendments constitute termination.

So, not only the Town, but the citizens and EVEN THE STATE OF VIRGINIA are limited in making any legitimate changes to the Town Managers functions without the Town Manager being able to decide he has thus been terminated and is entitled to all benefits under the terms of termination.

No reduction in pay can occur unless it is applied equally to all department heads. (How does that encourage good performance?) There are several options listed there which all have the Town as the short end of the financial stick. However, Section 11 gives the Town Manager the right to resign any time he wants without having the town for any inconvenience or extra expense the town incurs due to his actions.

Section 10: Severance, recommends a minimum of one years salary at current pay to be paid in a lump sum. (Glance back at termination section to see that virtually any reason for the Town Manager leaving his position, including breach of contract by either party, warrants this severance pay.)

Section 17: Indemnification, even requires that the Town go beyond the applicable Federal, State, and Local Law to provide legal coverage for the Town manager “against any tort, professional liability claim or demand or other legal action, whether groundless or otherwise, arising out of an alleged act or omission occurring the the performance of Employee’s duties”… This even includes independent legal council for the Town Manager at the Town’s expense.

Please read this document. If you have any information as to how accurately this reflects the contract that the Town Council is currently working on, I would love to hear about it.

I cannot believe that this sort of manipulation is under consideration by our Council. At first, I was irate about the timing. Now, I am just disgusted in general.

I want to know what Town Council members knew about this before it was presented by the Mayor in those nice little manilla envelopes. I want to know what Council members may have even provided feedback in setting up the final copy that includes all of the dates and rates.

If Town Council and the Town Manager had any hopes of restoring trust with citizens, this should just about ‘sink that ship’. But, obviously, it is business as usual with no respect for citizens.

This just totally STINKS!!! Read it and form your own opinion.

CMA site online where they have a sample government document “Model Employment Agreement

As to a roughly 3 year contract, there are citizens who have complained to the Town Manager about problems for years without the problem ever being addressed. Maybe that contract should include something whereby he is responsible for paying for the damages to property from sewer and stormwater, for devaluation of homes because of that and because of poor decisions made (i.e., Aquatic Center expansion). Maybe he needs to cover the costs for every time DCR has had to come in and enforce the very laws that the Town is suppose to be enforcing concerning Erosion and Sediment Control.

Maybe, just maybe, if the Council and Town Manager had paid a bit more attention to what citizens wanted instead of what they wanted, citizens would be a bit more agreeable to this contract.

This is the site of the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services that is dedicated to the Certified Crime Prevention Program. You will find a brief history of the project, links to the Manuals used for Certification and Re-Certification.

Then, incentives for localities are discussed including:

• giving the police department preference in state criminal justice grant application process
• a marketing tool for tourists, businesses, conference planners, and people considering relocating to the region
• citizens in Certified Crime Prevention Communities can be eligible for discounts on insurance premiums (you’ll need to contact your agent about this)

Next is a lit of the eligibility requirements that must be met in order to be in the program. These are pretty much self explanatory and fall upon the police department to fulfill.

Then to the really interesting part. There are 12 Core Community Safety Elements Needed to Qualify: 9direct from the website:

1. Development of a local community crime prevention/community safety council or coalition.
2. A DCJS-certified crime prevention specialist assigned to crime prevention duties in the law enforcement agency.
3. A neighborhood watch program with training and documented support of watches.
4. Community policing or a crime control planning process.
5. Organized distribution of community safety information (literature, videos, and Internet resources) to citizens.
6. An identifiable staff person or planning committee trained to conduct community security and safety assessments of at-risk neighborhoods and businesses.
7. Functional crime analysis capability.
8. Identifiable staff person or persons trained to conduct school safety assessments/audits (applicable only to jurisdictions operating schools).
9. A business watch program with training and documented support of watches.
10. Access to a victim/witness services program.
11. A delinquency prevention program targeting at-risk youth.
12. Local law enforcement agency must either be accredited or seeking accreditation from the Virginia Law Enforcement Professional Standards Commission (VLEPSC) or CALEA.

Then there is a huge list of  Optional Community Safety Elements of which a minimum of 7 is needed to comply. (from the website)

• Class Action, DARE or a similar school-based drug-abuse prevention program
• McGruff House program
• Employee Watch program
• TRIAD Program
• National Night Out
• Crime Solvers/Stoppers
• Gun safety program
• Crime prevention newsletter
• School resource police officer
• Annual crime prevention awards
• Campus crime prevention outreach
• Crime prevention speaker’s bureau
• Domestic violence response program
• Inter-agency code enforcement team
• School violence prevention curriculum
• Cooperative agreements between jurisdictions around crime/community safety issues
• Crime prevention in public housing
• Contact list and process for crime prevention liaison with community leaders and groups
• “Zero tolerance” policies in schools
• Fatherhood responsibility/accountability initiative
• YAADAP
• Truancy prevention initiatives
• School crime lines
• Pre-trial corrections program
• Any other programs deemed appropriate by the New Partnership Commission for Community Safety

There are links to the Certified Crime Prevention Community Program Manual and the Certified Crime Prevention Community Re-Certification Guidelines that have a lot of information as well.

If you dig around on the Town of Christiansburg website, you can find a page for the Police Department that provides information specific to the programs offered to citizens. In addition to the 12 required programs, they offer DARE, TRIAD, Gun Safety, School Resource Officer, Interagency Code Enforcement, Domestic Violence Program, and Project Lifesaver.

For further information on any of these programs or some of the additional programs you would like to see offered, Contact the Police Department and speak with Sgt. Kevin Tucker.

If you are interested in finding out how this might save you money on your insurance, you will need to contact your insurance agent.

Please take some time to check out these resources.