ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, April 23, 1996 TAG: 9604230077
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
COLUMN: Reporter's Notebook
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER
Could Pulaski's efforts to improve its image, its economic climate and its quality of life be sabotaged by something as simple as a litterbug?
"Don't litter" sounds as elementary as "Look both ways when you cross the street" and "Don't take candy from strangers" - admonitions you probably heard from your mother, and which have reached the point of conventional wisdom.
But there are still some people who haven't gotten the message.
Consider: Draper Mountain Wayside and Overlook had to be closed several years ago because some people were using it for a dumping ground. Pulaski County officials are looking into the possibility of renovating it and reopening it so residents and visitors can once more enjoy its view, hike its byways and drink in its scenery. But some of the officials are hesitant to make the financial investment because, they ask, what will stop litterbugs from messing it up again?
Consider: Downtown merchants in Pulaski had decorated a section of Main Street with flower barrels, keeping nature's colorful decorations trimmed and adding to the sprucing up which has been going on in that part of town. But the barrels eventually had to be removed because there were a few people who dropped in cigarette butts and various other items of debris not conducive to horticulture. The flowers died, and so did another attempt to beautify downtown, at least for now.
Consider: The town has a wonderful recreational resource in Gatewood Park, but the route leading to it is sometimes marred by junk having been dumped into drop-offs along roadsides.
Consider: Pulaski Town Councilwoman Bettye Steger last week passed out to reporters copies of existing garbage, rubbish and weed regulations because she thought a significant number of people are unaware of existing regulations about those things. Dumping garbage or rubbish on highways, rights of way or private property, for example, is a class I misdemeanor. Council probably will be enacting more stringent regulations along those lines.
Consider: The town set aside two Saturdays (the second one is this weekend) during which volunteers clean up selected areas where the blight is worst. Mayor Andy Graham has said such cleanup efforts need to be continuous, rather than once a year.
And consider how much of all this effort would be unnecessary if careless littering could be curbed, once and for all.
On another subject, I owe an apology to every teacher in Pulaski County.
The teachers attended a workshop last month at which William Purkey, an educational consultant from North Carolina, gave them a pep talk both amusing and inspiring. Superintendent Bill Asbury had been scheduled to follow it with a talk on next year's school budget. After Purkey's talk, Asbury figured that was the last thing the teachers wanted to hear about and gave them "a gift of time" instead.
So I wrote that the teachers had the rest of the day off. Not so! They only had off the time which would have been devoted to the budget talk. After that, it was back to other workshop segments.
The next time I talked to School Board Chairman Lewis Pratt, he had a message for me from some teachers: "You tell Paul that we did not have the rest of the day off!" By then, a "Getting It Right" would have required as long an explanation as this one is becoming, so I saved it for now.
How many teachers had sent that message? Pratt thought it over, and you could almost visualize the numbers growing as he recounted them mentally. "Several," he finally responded. Well, I apologize to those several and all the others - although you probably did deserve the rest of the day off.
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