Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, February 7, 1991                   TAG: 9102070575
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-1   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: JOEL TURNER MUNICIPAL WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

OFFICIALS TARGETS JOB ISSUE/ CITY SEES NEED TO PROVIDE HOPE

"We have too many young people who have a sense of hopelessness," White said during council's recent retreat on long-range planning.

"We need to do a better job of imparting a feeling of hope - that young people can get a job if they remain in school and get training," he said.

Many people don't feel the benefits of the economic development program are "trickling down" to those who most need the jobs, he said.

"I am happy we have done what we have and I know it helps the tax base, but some people don't think it has benefited them," White said. "They don't understand the indirect benefits for them."

Councilman David Bowers agreed that the city needs to better communicate the benefits of the program and make certain it helps poor people as well as the rich.

"There is the lure of economic development, with new glass buildings, industries and things like that, but we need to be concerned about our poorer and older people too," he said.

Bowers says he thinks the city should try to develop a "trickle up" strategy to ensure that more people benefit directly.

"We need to have better communication with laborers and working people - and to see how we can develop our human potentiality," he said. "We need greater benefit for more people."

Council members agreed the city needs to seek more manufacturing and high-tech jobs as well as service industry jobs.

To ensure that the city will have a work force that can fill the jobs, council members said the schools need to make sure they have adequate vocational training programs.

"We must educate our children for the labor force that will be needed for those kinds of jobs," said Vice Mayor Howard Musser. "We can't educate everyone for college."

City Manager Robert Herbert said the city might want to appoint a committee to study the issue and make recommendations on training programs for the work force in the next decade.

Brian Wishneff, economic development chief, said the city continues to have a diversified economic base, despite the decrease in manufacturing employment in the past 20 years and increase in jobs in wholesale and retail sales and services.

In 1970, manufacturing accounted for nearly 24 percent of the jobs in the Roanoke metropolitan area, but that dropped to 15.8 percent in 1990. The statewide decrease was even larger during the same period, dropping to 14.9 percent.

"Our trend is reflective of what is happening around the [state] and country," Wishneff said.

The percentage of jobs in services, including health and medicine, in the metropolitan area increased from 16 in 1970 to 25 in 1990.

Wishneff said the number of people who work in Roanoke has grown steadily in the past seven years - from 53,000 to 70,000. This represents 58 percent of the estimated 121,241 people who work in the area, maintaining the city's status as the major employment center in Western Virginia, he said.