Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 27, 1994 TAG: 9403270025
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
This time, the city is asking for their help in winning multimillion-dollar federal help for Roanoke's poorest neighborhoods.
Roanoke wants to become one of 65 "enterprise communities," one of the plum housing initiatives of the Clinton administration. With it would come tax breaks and at least $3 million in aid.
About 100 people gathered in the Addison Middle School gym Saturday to hear former city grants administrator Marie Pontius urge them to sign up for subcommittees.
The subcommittees are supposed to draw up a proposal for how Roanoke would help the neighborhoods in question - Downtown, Old Southwest, Gainsboro, Lincoln Terrace, Lansdowne, Loudon/Melrose, Gilmer, Melrose/Rugby, Harrison, West End, Hurt Park and about half of Southeast.
The city's on a tight schedule. It must get the application to the state for review by June 6, and the proposal's due at the Department of Housing and Urban Development by June 30.
HUD requires that citizens work up the proposal, and more than 75 people eventually signed up for subcommittees on housing, education and other areas of concern.
But first, they wanted to know if they would have real influence, and not just rubber-stamp what officials want.
Brenda Powell, who lives in the Melrose/Rugby neighborhood, expressed apprehension about the process laid out by Pontius.
"We want what's best for our community," she said. But in the past, Powell said, "Things have not happened the way they were supposed to have happened. We are a little leery about accepting things from the city of Roanoke."
Dr. Walter Claytor, a dentist whose family of medical professionals cared for generations of black Roanokers, recalled two occasions when the city's promises to the black community were not kept: when a $600,000 Gainsboro grant went for an industrial park across town, and when Gainsboro residents gave up homes and businesses for a Coca-Cola plant expansion and never got the promised permanent jobs.
So, he said, how can people be sure this time? "These grandiose schemes - we are the ones who always have to pay for it. We are buying a pig in a poke again."
Pontius, on the planning team overseeing the federal proposal, said she wants the whole process to be as sensitive to neighborhoods as possible. "I hereby issue an invitation: You all come."
"I'm working for you all," she said. "I am not a city employee." She left city government last summer to start a consulting business in her Radford home. She will work on the project as a subcontractor under a Richmond consulting firm.
Jamie Booker, president of the citywide council of Roanoke's public housing residents and member of the enterprise community steering committee, said she will make sure residents have their say.
Roanoke chief community planner John Marlles said at least one person from each affected neighborhood will be at every steering committee meeting.
No scenarios of what good could come from being an enterprise community were spelled out at the meeting. Pontius said that was because residents themselves should decide. She and other planners "don't have that kind of detailed action plan," she said.
But after the meeting, she said that under federal rules a $3 million social services block grant could be used for job training, entrepreneurial help, shelter for homeless people and other programs. And because several bankers have shown an interest, she said, perhaps they could set up a loan program for residents.
George Franklin, a city school administrator who once headed a federally funded job-training program, said he understands the skittishness expressed at the meeting, but he plans to get involved.
It's probably true that all the governments involved already have their agendas for the enterprise community program, he said, "and I hope we have ours."
by CNB