ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, February 1, 1997 TAG: 9702030052
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEFF STURGEON STAFF WRITER
Maureen Hart bashes impersonal statistics that speak to the nation's economic health but say little about what's going on in the typical household.
"The Consumer Price Index went down. Do you feel any better?" Hart said.
Her business? Statistics that mean something at the kitchen table. Hart, who spoke to a Roanoke audience Friday, tries to help average people appreciate their communities and their problems.
The New Century Council asked Hart how to determine whether this region is moving ahead, going backward or simply stagnating. The Roanoke-based council began devising a set of measures last year of progress and decline for the Roanoke and New River valleys, Alleghany Highlands and Bland and Wythe counties. Ferrum College is helping with that effort.
Hart, a community "sustainability" consultant from North Andover, Mass., said localities nationwide use more than 400 measures, or indicators, of cultural, economic and environmental change. Advocates of sustainability want communities to govern themselves so they can meet their basic needs forever. Hart thinks human beings have a long way to go in that area, because some experts say if every earthling lived by the standards set by North Americans, three planets the size of Earth would be needed.
"And the population is supposed to double between now and 2030,'' Hart said. By then, it would take six planets.
Communities get started with measuring just as the Roanoke region has, Hart said, through the efforts of interested residents who write a vision. Here, a leading vision is the 250-page New Century Council plan, released in the summer of 1995, for improving economic development and quality of life.
Once indicators are chosen, communities set benchmarks to track progress and the availability of resources such as water and jobs that will be needed indefinitely, said Hart, who does business as the QLF/Atlantic Center for the Environment.
Hart recommended replacing what she called one-dimensional business measures often reported in local newspapers, such as the number of business permits issued, with measures such as the percentage of products and services local businesses buy from other local businesses. The most meaningful indicators track something a community wants to achieve, and show the interaction between the forces in a community.
Like much business data, environmental reports often baffle people who are not experts in those fields, Hart said.
"How many people have ever seen a part per million?" Hart said. "Maybe you should be looking at something like the asthma rate." She suggested counting fishable and swimmable lakes or miles of river, or acres of restored or natural wetlands.
In education, the closely followed Scholastic Assessment Test scores are a poor indicator to watch, because they predict only the potential success of students who enter college and say nothing of students' readiness for work, Hart said. A better measure would be the number of technical school graduates working in their fields of study, Hart said.
A Franklin County resident suggested taking a look at rural trash dumping. From the audience, someone suggested measuring how the quantity of trash dumped in any one place corresponds to the distance to a legal dumping site. It appeared to be an example of Hart's claim that creative indicators can help identify problems and possible solutions.
There is no deadline for completing the local benchmarking project and no sure way of paying for it. But it has the support of Ferrum College and a nucleus of committee members, who include Robert Manetta, assistant general counsel at Carilion Health System; Rupert Cutler, the departing Explore Park leader who is starting a land trust; John Leffler, a biology and environmental science professor at Ferrum College; Don Dougherty, a Franklin County planner; Helen Smythers, chief of community development of the Roanoke-based Fifth Planning District Commission; and civic leader Cabell Brand of Salem.
For more on Hart's theory of indicators, visit her Web site at http://www.subjectmatters.com/indicators
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