Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 5, 1995 TAG: 9502060006
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ELIZABETH OBENSHAIN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The "vision" for the New River Valley - the image we "sell" to new industries or tourists - always begins with a panoramic view of our stunning mountain scenery.
But when the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors decides reality, the future is service stations and more strip highway development on the major gateways into the valley.
The Montgomery board voted two weeks ago to allow a local property owner to build a service station on 12 acres of mountainside alongside U.S. 460 where he will store "disabled vehicles," repair cars, and sell used cars and farm equipment. This will be the first commercial development in a relatively untouched mountain panorama between Blacksburg and Giles County - the valley's most scenic entrance.
We can all understand the financial interests of the property owner, a longtime local resident.
The disappointment is with the Board of Supervisors and the county administrators who ignored their own long-range plan for the county and have made no effort in this or other cases to come up with ways to encourage conservation of this county's significant and irreplaceable natural assets.
There are options other than strip developing every inch of highway in the county or freezing life as it was in the '50s. The supervisors can ask property owners for legal commitments to develop sites to blend with natural surroundings. They can purchase scenic easements or use other options to compensate a landowner for conserving his land - thus helping to preserve this region's quality of life.
Now, our valley is eating its seed corn - destroying the very assets that could attract new industry, new residents, new opportunities to our region.
Gov. George Allen declared Virginia "open for business" when he stepped into the governor's office a year ago.
When talk turns to economic development, business and community leaders speak reverently of higher education and research institutions, such as Virginia Tech, as the magnets drawing new businesses into the region.
Yet Allen's budget continues the fiscal drain on higher education. Academic research has also become a political whipping boy. Virginia Tech and the state's other universities are in a fight that will define their futures.
Universities, like businesses, can benefit from occasional belt-tightening and a re-examination of priorities. But the loss of half a billion dollars in the past six years has dramatically altered the outlook for our state's universities. Business leaders have joined university presidents before the General Assembly to protest further cuts on a system that has already plummeted in a national ranking for state support.
As home to the state's largest university, to Radford University and New River Community College, the New River Valley feels these cuts more than any other region of the state. In addition to the direct impact on the university, it also feels the cuts in fewer state dollars, fewer faculty and staff, fewer salary dollars multiplying in local businesses and fewer people moving to the county.
If you doubt the impact, check the latest population figures. Montgomery County disappeared from the list of fastest growing counties in Western Virginia over the past four years, according to a census study released two weeks ago. The county's growth has slowed to 2 percent. Neighboring Pulaski County continues to lose population.
The future that business leaders and academics envisioned two weeks ago at the latest New Century Council session included the region growing its own entrepreneurs with the creativity and drive to start their own businesses. Reality is a state budget that cuts funds to the very programs that can help develop such creativity.
Are we so financially desperate we must cut funds for our libraries to buy books and for fine arts and museum programs? These programs open our children's minds to the realm of human possibility. They are also a bargain because communities raise most of the money for these programs themselves, relying on the state for only a portion of their funding.
Despite the talk and planning for this area's future, reality threatens to make a mockery of our visions.
Our representatives are merely dancing to the tunes they heard us play on Election Day.
Are we willing to pay for the vision?
Elizabeth Obenshain is the Roanoke Times & World-News' New River editor.
by CNB