Krista Conner (left) and Melissa Miller near a stormwater retention pond they they blame for flooding troubles down at their homes on Narrows Lane in the Southern Hills area. The pond is owned by Rockydale Quarries. Its president, Ken Randolph, said the pond is not the source of their stormwater flooding issues. Photo by Kyle Green | The Roanoke Times

You’ll have to forgive Melissa Miller if she sounds aggravated these days.

When heavy rains hit at the end of January, floodwaters filled the disabled grandmother’s yard and rose almost up to the bottom sash of her bathroom window. It was the umpteenth time in the 46 years she’s lived in her home that this has happened.

Miller and her 5-year-old grandson, Daymien[cq], spent that night with a friend in Vinton. They fled right after she called 911 and begged operators to have the fire department shut off electricity to her house, so it wouldn’t burn up from a short.

Once she returned, she found out a firefighter had reported her for hoarding, because she had piles of family possessions in her yard and house. Flurries of desperate and angry phone calls to Roanoke City Hall elicited only more vague and unsatisfying promises. Miller has heard them before. Read more »

A note from E. Duane Howard today:

A neighbor in S.E. says she has contacted the city on this location and this most unbelievable, unacceptable situation and no response.

She said they said they can’t do anything because the property is in foreclosure — Bank of America.

I’m sorry, but I can’t help but to go back to my old line: If this were in South Roanoke, how long would the problem be allowed to exist?

You can see this neighbor’s comments on the Southeast Action Forum FaceBook page.

I think this is such a perfect examples of the problems we have in S.E. that the city seem unable or unwilling to go after.

Patriarca12 | Wikimedia Commons

First there came the Roanoke City Market Building project, a multimillion dollar rehab of the market area’s jewel. While it was underway, the market area was a mess.

Depending on your perspective, that either vastly improved the aging food court or it robbed the place of its character and soul. It pushed out some longtime and popular tenants, but now we have some new (and good) ones.

During that came an underground gas lines upgrade. That discouraged even more foot and car traffic for awhile, adding greater hiccups and stress to Market Area businesses and vendors.

Next came the Center in the Square project. That building has been mostly empty since 2011, and the work there has pushed around a bunch of the market’s indoor and outdoor tenants. It should be done by May.

With all they’ve had to put up with in recent years, the business folk who rely on the market for their livelihoods have been eagerly awaiting the end to 2-1/2 years of disruptions. But they’re finding out finality can be an elusive thing.

Now another project’s on the horizon, with a new scope and schedule that will exacerbate the disruptions and drag the work out for even longer, during spring and early summer, their high season.

READ THE REST OF THIS COLUMN HERE.

Friday Column Reprise

Note from Dan: While I’m on vacation I’m treating you to oldie-but-goodie columns from the past. This one orginally appeared Nov. 20, 2o11, and it was follow-up to a May 5, 2009 effort.Meanwhile, the first traffic circle in Roanoke (it’s in the Southeast quadrant, where Riverland Avenue meets Bennington Street and Mount Pleasant Boulevard) should be open next year.

More than two years ago in this space, there was a column headlined, “Meet me at the corner of gridlock and dysfunction.”

It was about one of the most (at that time) head-scratching and maddening intersections in Roanoke: Aviation Drive at Towne Square Boulevard, near the entrance to Roanoke Regional Airport.

Today, that crossroads stands as a jewel of common-sense and appropriate traffic engineering. A new signal and a new egress from Towne Square Boulevard has made all the difference in the world.

Monday, Mayor David Bowers will hold a news conference and dedication there. Normally a news conference for a new traffic light would be a stretch, even for him.

But not in this case. This may be the most significant Roanoke street improvement in the past two decades.

Allow me to take you back to just a couple of months ago, when Towne Square Boulevard was a one-way exit off Aviation Drive.

READ THE REST OF THIS COLUMN HERE.

Australia | Photo credit: mugley | Foter |CC BY-SA

Your daily Letter to the Columnist — Dec. 17, 2012

Dear Mr. Casey,

Great article!

It will be a sad day if developers get hold of the top of Mill Mountain. All we have to do is cast our eyes upward to the South Peak/ Slate Hill project and be assaulted with the word “development.”

This “developing” debacle/drama is also cloaked in shortsightedness and suspicion. Too bad our council can’t envision the long-term benefits of keeping the most iconic symbol of the greater Roanoke Valley: Mill Mountain, in its natural, pristine state of being.

Yep, “we think there is something rotten in Denmark!” A plague, perhaps, one that eats land, vegetation, animals and natural habitats, rendering the city soulless, a victim of its own ill-plotted devices.

Bill and Mary Ellen Stokes
ROANOKE

P.S. Love your column. My personal all-time fav column was the one about Texas Tavern. My hubbie LOVES that motor oil stuff.  NOT ME!!!!!!!  Second fav . . . the one about Fralin and Taubman . . . too funny.  The reactions were funny!  The reactions to the reactions were the funniest!  OMG!  People just need to lighten up and not sweat the small stuff.  Life is too full of what really counts and needs our attention.

Shot by Dan

Ladies and gentlemen, there’s a festering boil on the buttocks of Roanoke’s city government. The bacteria is spreading. It requires precision lancing. This must be dealt with now, lest the infection spread, after which God only knows what will happen.

It is the Mill Mountain Advisory Committee, a bunch of do-gooder citizens who have shown no small measure of concern over the largest and most prominent park within Roanoke City limits.

I am kidding about the MMAC, of course. But it’s no joke that at least once council member wants to get rid of it. Councilman Ray Ferris put the question on the agenda for Monday afternoon’s City Council’s meeting, along with a two-page letter that attempts to explain why.

Allow me to boil down his argument for you.

READ THE REST OF THIS COLUMN HERE.

Ray Ferris, from his law firm’s website

There’s been a lot of hemming and hawing by Roanoke City Council about the Mill Mountain Advisory Committee lately. One member, Councilman Ray Ferris, has finally come clean regarding his intentions for that panel.

Ferris wants to dissolve it, at Monday afternoon’s City Council meeting, and he’s put a three-page letter on City Council’s agenda explaining various reasons why.

One is that it’s become clear to him that the committee is “ad hoc,” rather than permanent. An ad hoc committee, Ferris writes in his letter, is formed for a specific purpose and “goes out of existence as soon as they have completed a specified task.” (click here to download the council agenda and read it, car-12-17-12.pdf, it’s agenda item 6A).

That’s an odd argument, given that City Council formed the committee resolution in 1976. Has council been so asleep at the wheel that they have neglected this for 35 years?

Another argument is that since City Council placed all except 8 acres at the top of the mountain under a conservation easement in 2009, the committee is not needed any more. Read more »

Comfort Inn, Silver Spring, Md. | Farragutful | Wikimedia Commons

Note from Dan: The following was written by Patrick A. Corp, who lives in the Dorchester Court neighborhood near Valley View Mall. It’s a bit dated; he sent it to me on Nov. 5. Since then, a meeting with residents has been held. The Planning Commission meeting on the project has been postponed until December 20.

By Patrick A. Corp

On November 1st I attended, along with about 15 other residents of the Dorchester Court neighborhood, a public forum at the VFW Hall on Grandview Drive concerning the proposed development of the Huff Lane School site.

Due to a snafu in the mailing of the meeting notices most residents were not informed until the day of the forum. Because of this, a second forum will be held on Nov. 12th at 7 p.m. at the same location.

All of the city representatives in attendance at the forum, including council members Court Rosen and Bill Bestpitch, along with a developer representative, were very pleasant and attentive to concerns and questions that citizens voiced.

That being said, after listening to the proposal I did say I was opposed to the project, and here are my thoughts: Read more »

We have a new mini soap opera on Roanoke City Council. It seems like it’s a little bit of a hot potato, too. It concerns the Mill Mountain Advisory Committee, the panel’s future, and all the vacancies council has deferred filling on it for months now.

In case you haven’t caught all the episodes here’s a quick and dirty synopsis to fill you in.

1) Sometime over the summer, Roanoke City Council began some closed-door discussions over the fate of the committee, which council created by ordinance in 1965. These occurred as council deferred appointing citizens who had applied to fill vacancies on the panel.

2) Mayor David Bowers went to the MMAC’s September meeting and told them council was considering abolishing the committee, or making it a subcommittee of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board.

3) MMAC Chair Nancy Dye went to council’s Oct. 1 meeting and asked council what was up. Beyond other council members expressing outrage that Bowers had breached a vow of secrecy by spilling those beans, there was mostly a lot of hemming and hawing.

She was back again Monday, as council seemed to continue struggling to make a “decision” that has left more than a few people asking, “is it necessary to make a decision about this at all?” Read more »

Shot by Dan

A minor dust-up occurred at Roanoke City Council’s meeting Monday afternoon that you probably didn’t notice. It was about the Mill Mountain Advisory Committee.

That panel, which dates to 1965, is charged with advising council about Roanoke’s highest-profile park.

Dr. Nancy Dye chairs it. She asked council about its intentions for the group’s future.

Dye was concerned because at the MMAC’s Sept. 27 meeting, Mayor David Bowers unexpectedly showed up and informed members that council was considering disbanding the panel.

It was the first time most of the committee’s members had seen a council member at one of their meetings. The other shocking thing was the mayor’s statement. So Dye, who is no shrinking violet, went to Monday’s meeting in an attempt to get some answers.

The advisory panel has nine members, and among them are representatives of the Mill Mountain Zoo, the Mill Mountain Garden Club and the Fishburn family, which donated the mountain to the city. One of its current focuses is pushing the city to repair an eroded rock wall along Prospect Road, which is a Roanoke greenway.

“Members of this committee walk the mountains, clear the trails and devote countless volunteer hours to keeping Mill Mountain accessible to those who enjoy it. Committee members have spearheaded the effort to restore the historic toll booth by forming a public-private partnership with the city,” Dye said.

“Should this committee be disbanded, I would be saddened and shocked by this sudden and unexpected action.”

Following her remarks there was a lot of hemming and hawing.

READ THE REST OF THIS COLUMN HERE.