Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 1, 1992 TAG: 9201010097
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: HOLIDAY
SOURCE: By MARK LAYMAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
HOPES, NO REGRETS FOR OUTGOING OFFICIAL
Dick Robers realizes that his support for consolidation and for a
controversial - and still unbuilt - apartment complex on Colonial Avenue might
have cost him the Cave Spring seat on the Roanoke County Board of
Supervisors.
But Robers, who lost to Fuzzy Minnix by 101 votes in November's election,
said this week that he doesn't regret the stands he took.
"I never made a vote for the purpose of getting re-elected. That's obvious
now," he said with a laugh.
"I don't begrudge what the voters did. It was a privilege to serve, but I
wouldn't compromise what I thought was right. . . . I always felt [a
supervisor] was elected to study the issue and make his best judgment, rather
than caving in to large groups of people who come out to try to pressure you.
Sometimes you find that maybe the majority isn't right, because they haven't
studied the issue as much as you have."
Minnix, a retired air traffic controller who's a coach at Cave Spring High
School, will take Robers' place when the Board of Supervisors holds its 1992
organizational meeting Friday. For the first time in at least 15 years,
Republicans - led by Windsor Hills Supervisor Lee Eddy - will hold a 3-to-2
majority.
What does that bode for Roanoke County?
"I don't think they'll be as progressive" as the Democrat-controlled boards
in the past decade, Robers predicted. "They'll tend to get more involved in
the day-to-day running of government than Steve McGraw and I did." McGraw, a
Democrat, gave up the Catawba seat on the board and was elected Circuit Court
clerk. Republican Ed Kohinke is taking McGraw's place.
Despite the change in philosophy, Robers doubts that County Administrator
Elmer Hodge's job is in jeopardy.
"I think most people realize Elmer Hodge is a pretty good administrator.
He's sincere, he's knowledgeable. . . . In a business or government of this
size, you want some consistency in management. If Elmer leaves, I think it
will be because he decides to."
The biggest challenge facing the board this year will be balancing the
budget, Robers said. The county is bracing for further reductions in state
money in the remaining six months of the 1991-1992 budget year and in the
1992-1993 budget year. Local sales tax revenues are down, too.
That raises the specter of higher taxes, cuts in public services and
layoffs.
"It's going to be worse than [1991]," Robers said. "How bad, I don't
know."
He hopes the supervisors will reconsider a cost-saving idea he pushed, but
never got far with, while he was on the board: turning over some jobs, such as
park maintenance or school lunchroom services, to private businesses.
Robers is vice president for human resources at Maid Bess Corp., which
manufactures uniforms for nurses, fast-food employees and the like. So it's no
surprise that "efficiency" and "economic development" were his bywords on the
board - and the reasons why he favored consolidation.
Until the valley governments consolidate - or at least combine services -
"there's not going to be the one-ness there needs to be for us to be
successful," he said. "With the economy the way it is, we see every day that
things could be done much more efficiently if we were doing them as one."
The valley governments have an opportunity to take a step in that direction
by combining their economic development departments under the umbrella of the
Roanoke Valley Economic Development Partnership, formerly the Regional
Partnership, he said.
"The question I always have is, how many opportunities have we lost because
we have three separate economic development offices: the city's, the county's
and the Regional Partnership?" he said.
The county has made that suggestion before, but it was rejected by Roanoke.
Robers acknowledges that downtown Roanoke has special economic development
needs. Still, those needs could be handled by the partnership, he said.
It is unlikely Robers will vanish from the public eye now that he's out of
politics. He is president of the Blue Ridge Regional Health Care Coalition and
is on the board of the Virginia Museum of Transportation. And for the time
being, at least, he is one of the county's representatives on the Roanoke
Regional Airport Commission.
Robers will continue to promote the proposed expressway linking Blacksburg
with Interstate 81, which would speed travel between Virginia Tech and the
Roanoke Valley. He was the first to suggest that the expressway be used to
test "smart car" and "smart highway" technology - an idea that Tech's Center
for Transportation Research quickly embraced.
"The `smart road' will boost economic development in the entire region,"
Robers said. Unfortunately, he said, "I would guess that less than 10 percent
of the people know what the `smart road' really is."
As for the Board of Supervisors, "I wish them the very best, and the very
best for Roanoke County, in what are going to be some difficult years," he
said.