ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, April 15, 1996 TAG: 9604150078
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: & Now This
Most everyone recognizes the need for highways, landfills, industrial parks and sewage-treatment plants.
The problem is that people don't want them in their own neighborhoods. And thus the now-familiar acronym NIMBY (``not in my back yard'') was born.
The recent school bond referendum in Roanoke County has spawned a new acronym: NOOMP, "not out of my pocket."
Roger O'Dell, a parent with children at Penn Forest Elementary and Cave Spring High schools, coined NOOMP to describe the opposition that defeated the $37.4 million bond issue for a new Cave Spring High and several smaller school projects.
"We all recognize the need to finance improved educational facilities, just not out of my pocket," said O'Dell, a planner and engineer. "NOOMP came to epitomize for me the basis of the mounting opposition to the bond referendum."
O'Dell said the opposition seemed to rest on selfish monetary motives, not on preferred visions of the future.
O'Dell voted for the bond issue and worked for its passage, but he said he was glad it was defeated, because it provides the county an opportunity to plan anew. He favors a decentralized Cave Spring High with several smaller campuses distributed throughout Southwest County, rather than one large new school.
- JOEL TURNER
Have a belt - the safe one, that is
Wearing one can increase your chances of surviving a car crash by 70 percent, according to state statistics.
Some describe it as the single most important thing a motorist can do to save a life.
Increasing seat-belt use is one of the goals of Campaign Safe & Sober, a statewide traffic-safety program to reduce highway fatalities and injuries. Virginia State Police and local law enforcement will run sobriety checkpoints and radar through April to aggressively enforce drunken-driving, speeding and seat-belt laws.
Several sobriety checkpoints are scheduled for Roanoke County and Montgomery County, State Trooper Steve Fijalkowski said.
According to the Virginia State Police, nearly 1,000 people die in highway accidents in Virginia each year. About 400 of the deaths result from alcohol-related crashes, and 200 result from crashes caused by speeding. In more than half of the fatal crashes, motorists are not wearing seat belts.
In Virginia, motorists can be cited for seat-belt violations - which carry a $25 fine - only if they have been stopped for another traffic infraction.
Campaign Safe & Sober will run until April 28 and will be repeated in July. In between, state troopers will conduct a survey to see if seat-belt use has increased. State police estimate about 70 percent of Virginia motorists use seat belts.
- DIANE STRUZZI
LENGTH: Medium: 59 linesby CNB