ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, June 2, 1996 TAG: 9606040003
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
TYPE: ETTERS
A tragedy occurred in Christiansburg on March 20 when Angie Knowles was killed in front of her family's eyes. A second tragedy occurred on May 21 when Town Council refused to waive the $1,000 water and sewer connection fee for a new house being built with donations from the community for the surviving family members. By waiving this fee, our town could have shown compassion and charity.
Comments made by the council members after turning down this request don't hold water. Councilman [Eddie] Lester said that this may be against town ordinance and therefore illegal. All he needed to do was contact the town attorney and ask if it was illegal. If it is against some ordinance, the council that writes the ordinance can change the ordinance to allow whatever exception it wants.
Councilman [Scott] Weaver was worried about setting some precedent. I hope and pray that we do not have a rash of domestic violence that leaves many orphans who would then be asking for their sewer hookup fee to be waived. This is a special circumstance that needs to be viewed as such.
Could it be that we are no longer the small town portrayed by the incumbents in the past council election and we have grown into a cold, callous town with no compassion? Or maybe this just describes the Town Council.
Jay Newman
Christiansburg
High school pageant teaches wrong lesson
We, a group of concerned students at Blacksburg High School, would like to take this opportunity to express our concerns about the Miss BHS Pageant.
Studies conducted by Dr. Carol Gilligan at Harvard University have found that around the age of 12, females become obsessed with conforming to society's idea of the "perfect girl." They try to reflect someone who is pure, skinny, complacent, not especially ambitious and not good at math or science.
Unable to fit the standard idea of physical attractiveness, girls generally do not like themselves. Sixty-four percent of young women have negative body images - a reason why girls become depressed and develop eating disorders in their teen-age years. We feel the Miss BHS Pageant perpetuates teen-age girls' low self-esteem by appearing to judge the contestants primarily by their outward appearance.
Unlike most pageants, the BHS competition has no talent portion. Only the finalists answer questions to give an indication of their personalities. We have been told that for some teen-age girls in this contest, their physical beauty is "all that they have." For them, losing the pageant would mean they had lost everything. We strongly encourage Blacksburg High School to stop supporting this pageant.
As students determined to address women's issues, we feel a change is needed. Think about beauty and how it relates to self-esteem and write Blacksburg High School administrators voicing your opinions.
Rachel Barker, Cassie Seiple, Shannon Williams and Jane Taylor
Blacksburg
Bus drivers make less than you think
In the article "Town reviewing bus-system complaints" in the May 16 New River Current, Michael Connally, Blacksburg Transit manager, states that the pay range for bus operators runs from $4.85 an hour to $6.35 an hour. Connelly is in error.
The pay scale for transit drivers is: $4.25 an hour while in training, $4.75 an hour when you start driving routes, $4.85 an hour after a 300-hour probationary period, and a top wage of $5.35 an hour.
The $6.35 an hour Connelly mentioned is only available to "paratransit" drivers who operate the vans outfitted for disabled riders or those using wheelchairs. Drivers must separately apply for these positions.
As if this weren't enough, it seems that Blacksburg, far from valuing its bus drivers, considers them to be worth less than part-time janitors. An employment ad in the May 22 New River Current by Blacksburg for a "temporary custodial position" offers a salary of $7.50 an hour, a starting wage $2.15 per hour more than the top wage for bus driving.
I ask the Town of Blacksburg to please explain how pushing a broom is more difficult, more responsible, more valuable to the public welfare than driving a bus.
Dana Atchley
Blacksburg
Public comments lacking in article
Meetings between the Radford City Council and city residents consist of suggestions and opinions offered from both sides to meet an equilibrium. The May 15 article "Radford council challenged on parking woes" by Kristen Kammerer in the New River Current is biased. Kammerer focused on council's stand on several issues while offering few opinions from the 30 people, including several downtown business owners, at the council session.
Suggestions by Ed Cox, owner of Radford's Fitness Center, were mentioned in this article, but the writer focused on the verbal attack Cox sustained from Councilman David Worrell and Councilwoman Polly Corn.
I would also like to comment on Corn's statement that "no one goes through the downtown more than myself." There is a difference in "going through the downtown" and working downtown all day. The shop owners and their employees, not Councilwoman Corn, must interact with the people who cannot find a parking spot.
There are 1,600 employees in the city's business district. These people have first-hand experience in the problems that business owners and employees face daily from parking.
In addition, I would like to comment on Councilman David Worrell's statement to Cox: " ...it's funny, isn't it, that people who are coming to your place to lift weights don't want to walk just a few blocks for parking." Why is Councilman Worrell making such remarks against Mr. Cox's clientele?
The article should have focused on comments and suggestions from the public that, I am sure, the public would have liked to hear.
Barry Roberts
Christiansburg
Work of real experts left out of story
Seven residents of the Miller-Southside District in Blacksburg spent seven years documenting properties of the neighborhood and helping to rewrite a historic overlay ordinance - all at the request of Town Council. The work was financed by the residents of the neighborhood. The overlay ordinance proposed for the district had been modified considerably and was modeled not on the state and national design guidelines, but on similar ordinances from Leesburg, Pulaski, Charleston, S.C., and Loudon County.
In the May 11 article "Town seeks funds to restart historic suervey" by Elissa Milenky in the New River Current, there are a number of inaccuracies. It is too bad she didn't see fit to talk to some of the seven residents of the Miller-Southside District in Blacksburg who spent seven years documenting the properties of the neighborhood and helping to rewrite the overlay ordinance - all at the request of Town Council. The work was financed by the residents of the neighborhood. She would have discovered that our overlay ordinance had been modified considerably and was modeled not on the state and national design guidelines, but on similar ordinances from Leesburg, Pulaski, Charleston, S.C., and Loudon County.
We wish to take issue with several statements in the May 11 article "Town seeks funds to restart historic survey" in the New River Current. We are not sure who the town or Jack Davis consider "experts,'' but we were guided throughout our work by Gibson Worsham, [former planning department Director] Bill West and Dirk Geratz. The last two were town employees with expertise in this field. Gibson Worsham is a local architect specializing in historic preservation whose credentials are beyond reproach. All the information we compiled, documented (with pictures) - everything is on file at the Town Hall, unless it has been "lost."
All that was required for declaring Miller-Southside a historic district, according to the then-town attorney, was a letter from us to the Town Council requesting that we be declared "historic." This we did. Then the council decided it should poll the neighborhood (after seven years) - disregarding the fact that a few residences had changed hands. The district already has national and state designation.
It would be very pleasant if - just once - when people are writing or talking about this that they would talk to some of the people who gave seven years of intensive work at no cost to the town (except the salaries of those employees who helped us). We did the documentation research at the county courthouse; we did the typing; one of our number took all the pictures; another did all the proofreading; all of us went door to door for documentation; and throughout we were guided by Worsham, Geratz, West and Richard Kaufman, the [former] town attorney.
We hope this is enlightening to you and to the town people who are talking about "experts" and don't know what designations we already have.
Louisa G. Dekker and Anne W. Holberton
Blacksburg
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