ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, March 25, 1997 TAG: 9703250046
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: LETTERS
Spruce up parks to attract newcomers
YOUR MARCH 9 news article (``Problems in the parks'') on the Roanoke city park system struck a nerve.
In the past two years in my work, I've traveled in eight states - from Pennsylvania to Alabama - and in large cities and small towns. Because exercise is a part of my life, one of the first things I look for is a good park. Most places have one.
Increasingly, though, I've realized how poor a park system our city has. Considering the amount of unused land and how poorly maintained some of it is, our park system is a tax scam being pulled over the eyes of residents by the people who run it.
River's Edge, for a city the size of Roanoke and the money that is here, is a joke. Many smaller communities put greater design and detail in their parks. Remember the ``no trespassing'' signs that graced River's Edge for years. It meant that if you weren't on an organized team, you couldn't use the park. How ridiculous.
Want to improve neighborhoods? Improve the parks. Fitness trails and jogging trails with fishing ponds grace other parks. Why not ours? Instead, we compete with cars and fishing poles on Wiley Drive.
Just think: Roanoke could employ people to improve our parks, those people would become taxpayers, and the parks would attract other industries to come here. Can we do it in the remaining years of this century?
DANIEL DOVE
ROANOKE
Unfair competition to private day-care
I AGREE with some of Carolyn Krisha's concepts (Feb. 26 letter to the editor, ``Society must recognize the value of child-care workers''). I question her statement: ``I am amazed that a profit-making business would value its employees so little as to make their compensation dependent on the charity of others.''
Krisha works for a church, and churches and their massive entry into the day-care business are one reason why private centers need to raise money. While considered nonprofit for tax purposes, churches make money from their day-care operations. Churches use donations to pay for their buildings and grounds, and don't pay taxes. This gives them an unfair advantage over private day-care centers that must pay taxes, be licensed, pay for real estate and buildings, etc. ``The charity of others'' supports church day-care, too.
Another unfair competitor is the city. The school system (using tax money, including that paid by private day-care centers) pays teacher salaries that a private day-care operator can never hope to match. When the schools need more money, City Council raises taxes; day-care centers cannot. They lose a lot of good teachers to the school system, and nothing can be done about it.
Government also sets regulations that private day care must abide by to stay licensed. Some regulations are vital, of course, but many are silly, expensive and needless.
And Krisha is ``amazed'' that day-care centers are attempting to offset this burden by selling candy? What amazes me is that the government hasn't had to take over day care already. If government continues to both be and help the competition with no relief for private centers, we may one day have government-provided day care. And you thought taxes were high already!
TONY WILLIAMS
SALEM
Road building, in the pre-VDOT days
IN NOVEMBER 1746, two of my ancestors, Humberstone Lyon and Jacob Harmon, along with 19 others, were ordered by the Augusta County court to work on the road from Adam Harmon's (near Prices Fork) to the north fork of the Roan Oak River. No doubt that was the first road through Ellett Valley connecting the North Fork of the Roanoke River to the New River.
When a road was needed in those days, the courts ordered citizens of the area to build it (no bridges, just fords). Now comes the Virginia Department of Transportation with its so-called smart road that is calculated to ruin the beauty of the pristine valley in which Humberstone and Jacob labored. I bet no one with VDOT would look either of these intrepid pioneers in the eye and tell them they had built a "dumb" road.
CHARLES W. STEWART JR.
PULASKI
LENGTH: Medium: 81 linesby CNB