THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, June 2, 1995 TAG: 9506040256
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Medium: 100 lines
Governor Allen has signed the bill to form balanced districts for all of Virginia Beach and also ordered a new referendum on the requirement that applicants for office from those districts must be elected only from those districts as well as reside within them.
This is a ward system. Good or bad?
The history of Virginia has shown and proved this system to be the very best possible one, a true grass-roots system making the applicant elected responsible to the direct electorate. He or she is your neighbor responsible to you for his or her actions and re-election. Local council members are important people; your tax rates, trash and utilities, licenses, etc., are directly affected by them.
With a ward system, no longer will an applicant for office have to spend thousands of dollars to represent his district - or be the slave of political action committees and special interests.
Wards got a bad name years ago because of thieves and crooks in Boston, Chicago, etc.. These cities still house wards, but now good, informed citizens keep tabs on them. Norfolk has a good ward system because of an active electorate, to which the incumbents are ac-count-able!
Several members of the Virginia Beach delegation to the General Assembly are opposed to a true ward system. All members of the House of Delegates and all state senators are elected this way. Why are they opposed to giving direct elective power in the balanced districts to citizens? What do they know that they don't want you to know? Are they afraid of the truth?
Sam Houston Jr.
Virginia Beach Shrubs on turnpike berm burn taxpayer
I travel Centerville Turnpike daily. When I saw shrubs being planted alongside the road on top of a berm approximately eight feet or higher, I thought, what a waste of poor people's donations to the Christian Broadcasting Network to plant those shrubs so they would not have to see the backside of about six to seven houses located about a quarter of a mile away from the road.
Then I read the article ``103 shrubs worth $4,500 stolen from road project'' (Beacon, May 17) and now I feel bad about harboring ill feelings toward CBN. If I knew whom to apologize to, I would most certainly do so and at the same time, ask them to pray for me and for my ill feelings and thoughts about whoever authorized taxpayers' money ($4,500, and just half of the shrubs were stolen) to plant shrubs on a high bank because the citizens in that area requested it.
Was it that simple? Past articles in The Beacon have me believing that it's not that simple to get help from the city when a person is down and out. The city asks us for more money in the form of taxes and to make do with fewer services. That shrub money would have gone a long way to keeping someone in our great city or given to our school system.
Tom Wright
Virginia Beach Civic leagues crucial to Clean the Bay Day
The Seventh Annual Clean the Bay Day, which is Saturday, June 10, from 9 a.m. to 12 noon, is taking a little different direction in Virginia Beach. Emphasis is being placed on all the city's inland waterways that are tributaries to the Chesapeake Bay: Broad Bay, Linkhorn Bay, Crystal Lake, Lynnhaven River, Lynnhaven Bay, Eastern Branch of the Elizabeth River, Scenic Waterway, etc.
To cover all this shoreline, which runs scores of miles, civic leagues that encompass any of this shoreline are being asked to participate. Nearly every mile of the shoreline of these waters is the border of, or is contained, in some civic league's area.
The president of each of these civic leagues has been asked to name a zone captain for the civic league. The latter, in turn, is requested to develop a task force to clean the trash and litter from league shoreline that has public access. Through a civic-league flier or newsletter, persons with private shoreline are requested to pay special attention to their shoreline on June 10.
In about 20 instances, shallow-draft john boats with volunteer skippers are being dispatched to civic leagues with the greatest shoreline. League zone captains will be there to show them the best waters in which to operate. Zone captains should call Ruby Arredondo at 427-4104 by June 3 to give her the address at which collected debris can be picked up.
The city's inland waterways have been divided into west and east sections. Mary Heinricht is in charge of organizing the west section and Maurice Jackson the east section.
Civic league persons interested in participating in this effort should contact their Clean the Bay Day zone captain through their civic-league president.
This civic-league effort is but one of the many Clean the Bay Day programs. Persons interested in volunteering for any CTBD effort should call Ms. Ruby Arredondo, Virginia Beach clean community commission coordinator, at 427-4104. If we work hard enough, we may get the Bay back to the way John Smith found it nearly 400 years ago. Remember those delicious Lynnhaven oysters!
Maurice B. Jackson
Chairman, Virginia Beach Clean
Community Commission by CNB