THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 8, 1995 TAG: 9510070090
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 07 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: On The Street
SOURCE: Bill Reed
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
Now that the O.J. trial is over and the seemingly endless post-mortem blather is trailing off to a muffled roar, folks around here finally can divert their attention to some real issues.
Like, can the Redskins win two in a row after whompin' those hated Cowboys?
Can quarterback Gus Frerotte hang on to his job when starter and multimillionaire Heath Shuler recovers from his shoulder injury? Will team owner Jack Kent Cooke allow Frerotte to replace his expensive backfield bauble?
The Skins play Philadelphia today at Philadelphia; if Frerotte continues his winning ways, Cooke and coach Norv Turner may find it difficult to justify benching the redoubtable Frerotte.
And then there's Dallas, sans starter Troy Aikman. Can the mighty Cowboys tame the frisky Green Bay Packers without him - even on home turf?
How about the baseball playoffs? Do you think they'll replace O.J. mania?
Will the Atlanta Braves make it to the World Series again only to fold like a wet noodle?
And, how 'bout them Yanks? Can they survive the Mariners and Ken Griffey Jr. and get by the Cleveland Indians to move on to the World Series?
If so, it would be like the old days when the Mick, Yogi, Whitey and Maris lorded it over the base paths. Just to make the picture perfect, the Dodgers would have to survive their series with the Cincinnati Reds, then probably the Braves. It would be another Yankee-Dodger series and the meeting would warm the hearts of many an old-timer who remembers those famed confrontations in the '40s and '50s.
Then again, maybe nobody really gives a gnat's eyelash if there is a Major League Baseball playoff at all.
Even those of us with short-term memories can hark back to this time last year when a bunch of greedy players and a bunch of greedy team owners shut down baseball altogether. For the first time in big league history there was no World Series. And guess what? The world didn't come to an end.
A few local issues may supplant the need for a daily O.J. fix. They might even replace the Skins or Major League Baseball as hot conversational topics.
One of them could be wrapped up in a question like this: What really happened to make last year's Virginia Beach public-school budget at least $7.4 million short? And if we find out the real skinny, to whom will the fickle finger of fate point as the culprit or culprits responsible for the fiasco?
There are other questions arising from the budget quandary. One of them is: Will the shortfall exceed $7.4 million? Another is: Did the overspending take place over more than just a year? Is it still going on? Will it ever end?
Probably the most important question for us working stiffs is: Who pays the tab for the school budget shortage?
Will it be the city taxpayer? Can he or she be dunned for more money to get schools out of hock, just as Norfolk taxpayers have been asked to cough up $1 million a year for the next 20 years to bail out Nauticus?
And once the answers finally come into focus, will the average city taxpayer get the full picture from city officials?
Only time and a lot of digging by your friendly neighborhood auditor can provide the answers.
Now, see, haven't you forgotten about the O.J. trial already? by CNB