Bojin | Wikimedia Commons

If you’re curious why Roanoke County is sponsoring a bicycle safety event June 8 at Tanglewood Mall, you should listen to the stories of local lawyer David Harrison.

Twice in the past five years, he has been hit by cars while riding his bike carefully and legally. The first time was on the Blue Ridge Parkway in 2008 when he was bumped off the road by a passing sedan pulling a fishing boat. It knocked him off the pavement and he landed in adjacent grass.

That one left Harrison with some bruises and a busted cellphone. He rode away from the crash, but on the next one he wasn’t so lucky.

It happened on Edgewood Street just off Brandon Avenue Southwest in 2010. Once again, a car bumped Harrison as it passed him too closely; this time he went down hard on the asphalt. He fractured five ribs, broke his collarbone in two places and his shoulder blade in one, and suffered a collapsed lung. Read more »

Roanoke.com

Guest Post — May 14, 2013

Note from Dan: Al Bedrosian won a drawing this morning that followed a tie in Saturday’s GOP firehouse primary. That makes him the Republican nominee for Roanoke County supervisor from the Hollins District. Because opening prayers at supervisors’ meetings have been debated before the board recently, and because Bedrosian has specifically made that a campaign issue, the following essay he wrote seems relevant. It was published in The Roanoke Times in 2007.

By Al Bedrosian

As a Christian, I think it’s time to rid ourselves of this notion of freedom of religion in America.

Now that I have your attention, let me take a moment to make my case. Freedom of religion has become the biggest hoax placed upon the Christian people and on our Christian nation.

When reading the writings of our Founding Founders, there was never any reference to freedom of religion referring to a choice between Islam, Hindu, Satanism, Wicca and whatever other religions or cults you would like to dream up. It was very clear that freedom to worship meant the freedom to worship the God of the Bible in the way you wanted, and not to have a government church denomination dictate how you would worship. Read more »

Created by Dan

The Post of the Day — April 30, 2013

Note from Dan: Raymond Flory is leaving town, to relocate far from Roanoke, right around the same time that Al Bedrosian makes another run at public office, this time for the Hollins seat for Roanoke County supervisor. Below is Flory’s parting shot at the semi-perennial candidate, which came in as a comment posted Monday.

“It warms my heart to see that after so many years of wandering blindly in the wilderness, that a great arbiter of culture and morality “Brother Al” Bedrosian is back in the spotlight to grace us lost sheep with his profound guidance.

It might predate Mr. Casey’s arrival in Roanoke, but around the turn of the century Mr. Bedrosian was in the news for whacking a toddler that was misbehaving. Notwithstanding the fact that the incident did not take place in WalMart where this is common, it was newsworthy because the child was not his. Not recognizing that Mr. Bedrosian is one of those rare people who never has to say “I don’t know”, the parent took exception to this.

A few years later Mr. Bedrosian wrote an editorial in the Roanoke Times where he stated that since the culture of the United States is rooted in Christianity, the United States should be a Christian theocracy where being an infidel would be a crime. Read more »

Robertstown, Ga. | Wikimedia Commons

Your daily Letter to the Columnist — April 29, 2013

Dan,

I read your article about the Tea Party forum with interest. I also spoke just last night with Joe McNamara about the candidate forum with the Tea Party.

What you may not know is that the current extremist conservative group that controls the Roanoke County Republican Party will not allow ex-members of the Executive Committee back into the party if they believe that they are not conservative enough. The current chairman is professional political staffer who works for Ralph Smith. He is firmly behind this extremist group and their passion and ability to turn out volunteers. Read more »

What the heck has happened to politics in Roanoke County?

For evidence of its depressing state, you need look no further than the Roanoke Tea Party’s forum Thursday night for Republican candidates for the Board of Supervisors.

Tea Party hijinks have more or less driven Republican supervisors Richard Flora and Mike Altizer into announcing their retirements. Now, unfortunately, the Tea Party has hijacked the GOP issues agenda. The result was lots of hot air wasted on things that are part mundane, part insane.

One was the county’s membership in an environmental organization, ICLEI — Local Governments for Sustainability, which has long been thorn with the Tea Party.

Another was whether the county should have wasted taxpayer dollars fighting for unfettered prayer at board meetings. A third was whether restrictions on backyard chickens violated the constitution.

Loony-bin issues are bad enough. But the Roanoke County Democrats seem in even worse shape. Their problem is loony-bin infighting.

A bitter leadership struggle between former party chairman Richard Evans and Brian Lang, the current chairman, has hamstrung the party and dragged it into both civil and criminal court.

READ THE REST OF THIS COLUMN HERE.

Javi | Wikimedia Commons | Text added by Dan

We’ve had a lot of debates on this blog about bicycles, cyclists and traffic laws. Some drivers in particular (I’m thinking of Bob H) have seethed about cyclists “flouting the laws.”

For that reason I thought I’d run down some information shared Thursday night at a public meeting about bicycling and cycling safety that was held at the South Roanoke County library. It was convened by Supervisor Charlotte Moore.

About 25 people showed up. By the way, my Tuesday column is about one particular aspect of that meeting — pedestrian-bicyclist conflicts on the Roanoke River greenway. If you’re a pedestrian and you’d like to comment about that, please email me at dan(dot)casey(at)roanoke.com

One of the presenters was Roanoke County Police Officer Eric Orange. He ran down Virginia laws regarding rules of the road, which govern riding in Roanoke County but not necessarily localities, which may have their own ordinances, or the Blue Ridge Parkway, where federal regulations apply.

There was much discussion about certain malevolent drivers (they’re a minority) and their yahoo practice of leaning on their horns and driving close to cyclists while passing them. Some of the information Orange shared about laws and bike riding was very interesting: Read more »

Jeana and Tony Azar, at their kitchen table with court documents related to the troubles they’ve had trying to kick a 9-month-long house guest out of their Roanoke County home. | Photo by Rebecca Barnett | The Roanoke Times

Never before has this column ventured into a landlord-tenant dispute. They’re often messy affairs with little larger significance. But the case of Jeana Azar was hard to resist. She’s a homeowner and the “landlord.”

Back on Valentine’s Day, Azar’s former friend and current “tenant,” Teresa Martin, got Azar kicked out of her own house. Azar is back in it now.

The story behind this curious situation is a cautionary tale of personal friendship and kindheartedness that took a hard turn into bitter animosity, a claimed assault and a court-issued protective order.

It hinges on the surprising difference between a “guest” and a “tenant” under Virginia law.

The two women were in Roanoke County General District Court Wednesday and they’ll be back there March 11. In the meantime, they’re both still living in Azar’s Southwest Roanoke County home — and walking on eggshells. Read more »

Jodie McGrath | Wikimedia Commons

For years now the Roanoke Tea Party has waged a fruitless and embarrassing battle. The goal: persuade Roanoke County to drop its $1,200 a year membership in the International Council of Local Environmental Initiatives, also known as Local Governments for Sustainability.

The Tea Partiers believe ICLEI is part of a United Nations Agenda 21 scheme to control local land-use planning in America. This has elicited much eye-rolling from a majority of the Roanoke County Board of Supervisors, who’ve pretty given the bum’s rush to the Tea Party. Foiled at every turn, they’ve now taken their cause to the friendlier ears of state lawmakers in Richmond.

They’re proudly supporting HB 2223, a bill sponsored by Del. Ben Cline, R-Rockbridge County. It would prohibit Roanoke County from paying dues to ICLEI, which would end its membership. Cline says that specific consequence was not his precise intention. He’s seeking to bar every political subdivision in Virginia from membership in ICLEI and some other groups.

Those localities also include Roanoke, Arlington County, Richmond, Charlottesville, Harrisonburg, Alexandria and Winchester. The bill will be considered by the House Rules Committee this afternoon.

I predicted such legislation in this column back on Oct. 21. Tuesday, I read Cline’s two-sentence bill to Hollins District Supervisor Richard Flora, a Republican. He sounded incredulous.

“It’s pure hogwash,” Flora said. “To tell them ‘you can’t belong to an organization that’s concerned about the environment?’ Or ‘you should stop planning for the future of your community?’ Read more »

Darren Jones, outside his house in southwest Roanoke County, as agents from MKB Realtors build a ramp so he can get in. Jones was disabled by a 1994 motorcycle accident. | Photo by Don Petersen

Many of us walk around through everyday life taking a heck of a lot of things for granted. Consider buying (or renting) a place to live.

The big factors are price, location and size of the house or apartment. Some smaller ones might include the color of the walls, or whether there’s enough closet space or whether it has a dishwasher.

But for disabled people there are many other much more basic concerns. Today have a window into those, via Darren Jones.

He’s 41 and works as a data analyst in Roanoke County’s Geographic Information Systems department. Jones hasn’t walked since Nov. 13, 1994, when he lost control of his motorcycle and crashed on Yellow Mountain Road. He’s used a wheelchair ever since.

He drives a Scion sedan outfitted with hand controls. For years after the accident, he lived with his parents. Since about six years ago, he’s rented a one-bedroom apartment off Colonial Avenue. But he wanted to buy his own place.

By 2011, Jones was earning enough to purchase a home. So he went to MKB Realtors, where veteran agent Tina Hannabass agreed to help him look for a house.

That turned into an 18-month quest. It wasn’t so much a matter of finding the perfect place that was the right price and size in the right neighborhood, with the right color walls.

The question was finding one that wasn’t all wrong for a person in a wheelchair. That was more far difficult than either of them had anticipated.

READ THE REST OF THIS COLUMN HERE.

From rpcva.org

Wednesday and Thursday I was down at Mountain Lake, the 150-year-old resort in Giles County, as a guest speaker for the Rural Planning Caucus of Virginia.

That 34-year-old group shares information about the unique planning needs of small towns and rural areas, and it has many knowledgeable and welcoming members. They invited me to talk about columns I had written on the Roanoke Tea Party.

Those have mostly focused on the Tea Party’s long and unsuccessful campaign to persuade the Roanoke County Board of Supervisors to drop its $1,200-a-year membership in the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives.

What I learned from the folks at the RPC was probably more interesting than anything they learned from me. It was essentially this: the battleground over the ICLEI-membership issue is likely to soon shift to Richmond. Read more »