ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, March 23, 1996 TAG: 9603250015
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
note: below
AFTER 34 YEARS of requests to city officials, the Johnsons still are waiting for a curb along 22nd Street Northwest.
The Beach Boys were really boys and cutting their first record when Geneva and William Johnson began asking Roanoke for curbing on the street outside their home.
President John F. Kennedy was riding out the Cuban missile crisis, John Glenn was orbiting the earth for the first time, and the latest scary movie was "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?"
It was 1962.
Whatever happened with the Johnsons' curbing?
Nothing.
They've been waiting 34 years.
Six mayors, five city managers and 32 members of Roanoke City Council after their first request, the Johnsons still don't have their curb.
The city has built a civic center and a new city hall. Center in the Square, First Union Tower, new bank and office buildings and the Hotel Roanoke and Conference Center have appeared downtown - but no curbing for the 1100 block of 22nd Street Northwest.
``We don't mean to be pushy,'' says 80-year-old William Johnson, eager not to come across as a rabble-rouser. "Just a curb. I'm not looking for a sidewalk."
The Johnsons say they've repeated their request regularly over the years, often offering to pay half the costs. They asked for curbing most recently last year.
Geneva Johnson's brain surgery and second bout with cancer eight years ago left her dependent on a walker. The uneven, often muddy ground along the street makes it difficult for William Johnson to get his 70-year-old wife safely in and out of their car.
He has a friend ready to install a metal railing near the street for his wife, if he ever gets the curbing to support it.
Daughter Francene Johnson says her mother's volunteer work for the Southwest Virginia Community Development Fund, Northwest Child Development Center and St. Gerard Catholic Church keeps her going. On rainy days, though, her mother sadly cancels out on meetings rather than risk a fall in the mud. She watches Mass on TV instead.
The city asked the Johnsons this month to fill out another application for curbing. That puts them back on the list of street improvement requests for at least another year.
``I don't doubt that they asked in the '60s,'' says Charles Huffine, Roanoke's chief engineer since 1985. ``Very few curbs and gutters have been built ... probably because the city didn't realize how important it is to people.''
Right now, there are 379 requests on the books for curbs, gutters and sidewalks. Only 16 will be filled this year with $1 million from a bond issue. The Johnsons are not included, though a curbing project three blocks away - in the 1400 block of 22nd Street Northwest - is among the 16.
Curbing costs $8 to $12 a square foot, coming to about $12,000 for a 1,000-foot block, Huffine said. Sidewalks are an additional expense.
Northwest Roanokers' 180 requests account for nearly half of the 379 on the city's to-do list. Southwest put in 96; Southeast, 65, and Northeast, 38.
Geneva, William and Francene Johnson say they hate to think the city discriminates against black neighborhoods like theirs in Northwest. ``But that's what you're left thinking,'' says William Johnson.
He and Francene Johnson, both former cab drivers, say they have noticed for many years that streets in black neighborhoods need more curbs and sidewalks than those in whiter sections of town.
The city engineering office never has figured out which quadrant of the city needs the most curbing, said Jan Bruce, a project manager familiar with citizens' requests.
City agency heads say a new process for deciding whose curbs and sidewalks get built should target those in greatest need and keep the others posted on when their streets might get attention.
City Council should get more information on safety considerations, drainage problems and other reasons why residents like the Johnsons need help with their streets, Huffine said. Council decides whose streets get fixed, he said, not him.
John Marlles, Roanoke's chief community planner, helped city engineers come up with the new ranking system. He couldn't say how long some residents have been waiting for curbs or sidewalks. "The most I've heard is 10 or 15 years."
Of the 16 street improvements set to begin this spring, seven are in the Northwest quadrant, where most black Roanokers live; seven are in mostly white Southwest, and one each in mostly white Northeast and Southeast.
Marlles said until now Roanokers had little way of knowing why their curbs and sidewalks weren't being built. "You could stay on that list for years, and you would not know if that project was going to happen or not."
This winter, the situation got worse at the Johnson house. Geneva Johnson said that when her family complained to the city that slick gravel almost caused her to turn her ankle, the city sent out a truck and sucked up all the gravel. ``Now it's all mud,'' she said.
Another petition from the 11-house block recently went to the city.
Geneva Johnson has thrown away most of her decades-long correspondence with the city and she's reluctant to fill out another application.
``I have been paying real estate taxes over 50 years," she said. "I thought I'd get a little more consideration than I have.''
LENGTH: Long : 102 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: WAYNE DEEL/Staff William and Geneva Johnson walk on theby CNBstreet edge in front of their Northwest home where they have been
asking the city for 34 years to put a sidewalk or curbing. color