Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 26, 1994 TAG: 9411180016
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
On Nov. 8, they'll have another opportunity to serve their city, by voting "yes" on $23 million in bonds for new investments in Roanoke's future.
Properly used, bonds allow a jurisdiction to maintain and improve its public infrastructure, keep tax rates moderate, and assure funding fairness by spreading the burden of paying for long-term capital projects over their useful life.
Passage of the Roanoke city bond issue isn't expected to force any rise in municipal taxes. That's because the new bonds, which could start to be sold on Jan. 1, 1996, would essentially be a rollover of old bonds scheduled for final payoff soon.
The 20-year bonds, appropriately, are for capital items that can be expected on average to last that long.
Most of the nearly $7.2 million for schools, for example, is for renovating Jackson Middle School (about $5.3 million). This follows and precedes orderly rehab of other city schools. Another $400,000 is to replace obsolete air-conditioning systems at four schools and to upgrade fire-alarm systems at nine schools. All necessary stuff.
The remainder of the schools' share of the bond issue is a $1.5-million portion of a $7.5-million technology-upgrade project, a public-private partnership whose goal in part is to provide a computer per every five students throughout the city. This, too, is needed in an age when communications equipment is infrastructure as vital as bridges or water lines. And the bond-issue part of the money is for long-term improvements, such as retrofitting buildings for the necessary cable links - not for items that likely will require more frequent replacement.
Similarly, the $813,000 in the proposed bonds for the Virginia Museum of Transportation represents the city's half of the cost of planned renovation and enlargement of the building that houses the museum; none is to go for ongoing museum operations.
Like the museum expansion, the $1.5 million in the bond issue for the first phase of a proposed linear park connecting the museum to the City Market area is a high-profile project designed both to enhance Roanoke's quality of life and to further develop the downtown's attraction as a tourist destination. These are thoughtful, future-oriented uses for public dollars.
The vast majority of the bond-issue money, however, is either for the schools or for nuts-and-bolts items that often are taken for granted. The prudent course is to maintain such services at a sufficient level for Roanokers to continue taking them for granted, rather than suffer critical breakdowns and the higher costs that accompany them.
And so there is money to fight deterioration of the city's bridges; improve storm drainage; maintain streets and sidewalks; install a new computer system for controlling traffic flow in downtown Roanoke; complete the jail expansion downtown, and build a new fire station when the Peters Creek Road extension is completed. Such items lie at the heart of what is expected of municipal government.
For any proposed bond issue, three questions should be asked. Is it affordable? Are the intended uses appropriate for long-term financing? And do the intended uses, regardless of how they're financed, represent wise use of public money?
Because answers in this instance are yes, yes and yes, city voters would do well to approve the referendum.
by CNB