Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 8, 1995 TAG: 9502080030
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Fort Lewis Elementary School was promised renovation months ago, but we have yet to see any firm evidence of such a project, i.e., architectural designs, plans, funding. It's one of only two schools left in the county that isn't air-conditioned. It doesn't have a cafeteria equipped with a cooking kitchen. Our children eat meals that are trucked in every day from Glenvar, and they eat in a room in the basement next to the boiler. The playground consists of three old dilapidated structures and a disheveled baseball field that's reminiscent of a World War II mine field.
Hello! Is anybody listening? I don't want to make this an issue of West Roanoke County vs. South Roanoke, but let's be real. We have some major problems with our schools, and there must be minimum standards that all Roanoke County children are entitled to.
Why must Fort Lewis' 200 children be given lower minimum standards just because of the school's population? There's an elementary school in the county with a much smaller enrollment that's about to receive its second renovation in five years!
If Fort Lewis Elementary is too small to qualify our children for what every other child in the county has at their disposal, then I believe Roanoke County should close Fort Lewis, move our children to Glenvar, and give our kids the advantages every other child seems to be enjoying. Or simply fix Fort Lewis now.
AMBER T. SAGESTER
SALEM
Apply the thinking to the smart road
RIGHT on with your Jan. 23 editorial, ``Follow the plan, Montgomery.'' Now for some consistency.
The same points you made apply to the Ellett Valley route for the ``smart'' road you support so fervently. Open up yet one more scenic byway to commercialism and others will eventually fall like tenpins. The proposal to tie in the smart road with U.S. 460 bypass construction, using ancillaries if necessary, would save money and hasten both. Yet the Virginia Department of Transportation and the ``powers'' refuse to address this suggestion. Why?
LEONARD J. UTTAL
BLACKSBURG
No ifs, ands or buts - we're overtaxed
I REREAD your sophistic argument entitled ``Forty-sixth in tax burden'' (Jan. 14 editorial). Like the rest of the dominant news media, you refuse to get the Nov. 8 message. We are overtaxed, and we want spending cuts and tax cuts - in that order.
Your argument is like saying most other states have a serious AIDS problem, but Virginia is lucky because we have only terminal cancer (taxes).
Look again at Aaron Smith's Jan. 17 letter to the editor (``Localities should follow his lead'') that pointed out the efficiency of Salem, which increased its employees by 31 percent to service an increased population of 1 percent (105 more employees to serve 66 more citizens). Then, there's the Bureau of Indian Affairs at the federal level, with a budget of $1.8 billion, keeping 80 percent for administrative costs with the rest going to ``help'' Indians.
We taxpayers have had more than enough. Cut waste and fraud, at all levels. It's absolutely appalling that businesses have to pay tax on their gross receipts. That, sir, is tyranny, not taxation. Gov. Allen is right to try and end it.
It's estimated that all taxes from the feds on down to Botetourt County, with its ``temporary'' (10 years!) $3 tax on our electric bills, cost us average blokes 50 percent of our incomes. This is theft. It ain't your money Mr. Congressman, Mr. State Assemblyman, Mr. City Councilman, Mr. County Supervisor. It's ours. Cut spending and taxes, or don't get re-elected.
The rest of the world, beginning with the former Soviet Union and most recently Sweden, that socialist paradise, have gotten the message. We cannot afford socialism because it doesn't work. And we're better qualified to spend our own money than some faceless bureaucrat. Get your hands out of our pockets, or suffer the consequences in the next election.
DICK LAMBERT
EAGLE ROCK
State has no right to kill
I CONGRATULATE you on your excellent Jan. 21 editorial, ``Killing them softly,'' and the courage to criticize the existing penal code. I know this isn't the first time the Roanoke Times & World-News has taken this stance.
We have no right to take away human life. This prerogative is God's privilege only. Instead, a much more humane and, at the same time, severe punishment in the form of lifetime hard labor for bed and bread only with no parole should be substituted for the death penalty. In case a person is eventually found not guilty, he can be released. Those in favor of ``frying them'' don't deserve to be called humans. May God have mercy on them, too.
I don't talk compassion. I talk humanity, dignity and morality above and beyond primitivism.
IGO WITIWICKI
ROCKY MOUNT
Don't defeat reason for inspections
A JAN. 19 letter to the editor from Dr. A. Lynn Beavers (``When quality meets the bottom line'') included concerns about hospital-accreditation inspections that are announced in advance.
Inspections (surveys) of hospitals and related facilities are conducted by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. Because these voluntary inspections take place every three years, hospital officials know what year their respective inspections will occur. However, hospitals are also informed as to the month and days an accreditation team will visit. That's too much information. Therefore, Beavers is exactly right.
The only timetable information hospitals should have is that an accreditation team will visit sometime during their inspection year. Additionally, hospitals shouldn't be inspected during the same month every three years. That defeats the purpose of the inspections.
The fact that our nation's hospitals are given too much information certainly isn't their fault. The fault lies entirely with the Joint Commission. The accreditation process is tedious and stressful to be sure, but it can be strengthened in the long run if exact times of inspections weren't known. The change will show that hospitals are truly ready for the accreditation teams year-round, not just in weeks prior to and immediately following inspections.
WILLIAM G. BRANNON
GALAX
Bias against affordable housing
AFFORDABLE HOUSING is discriminated against by Roanoke County, and by most other counties and cities in Virginia.
Local governments are empowered to protect the life, health and safety of its citizens. But, in housing, what they do is discriminate by ``looks.'' All national studies made on manufactured homes show they're as safe or safer than site-built homes. So local governments cannot say they're protecting life, health and safety.
What difference is it that Frances Lamb's (the lady who lives in an illegally located trailer in Roanoke County, and must move her trailer several hundred feet to Montgomery County) will now be on the opposite side of the road? Do counties lower the appraisal on a neighbor's home if a manufactured home locates next door?
Governments and citizens should seek subdivision and/or deeded restrictions for their likes and dislikes, and governments should allow citizens freedom on the land citizens own. Or government should have to compensate for the taking of land, as in Lamb's case. (Remember, this is our tax dollars they would use.)
Governments should quit trying to fool us that they're really concerned and searching for answers to affordable housing to help our young citizens, our elderly and those who choose a different style of home. After seeing the failed attempt of subsidized housing, ownership and rental, we see the one safe form of housing that has had virtually no government assistance discriminated against the most. Is there a connection?
Incidentally, I did have a single-wide manufactured home move in next door to our brick home. And I still believe in people's rights.
When governments are allowed this power to discriminate on looks, tomorrow it may be discrimination against fat people or something else as absurd. To change things, citizens must register to vote and help those candidates who have moral and ethical concerns for their constituents.
WILLIAM D. WARD
ROANOKE
by CNB