We’ve cleared another Roanoke City Council election cycle, but this time around, the residue of it includes more than bad feelings, losers and some new faces on the council dais.

It includes a special prosecutor and allegations of candidates and an unregistered political action committee running afoul of state election laws.

It also includes what is now an incomplete record of the financing of this election, despite laws that demand a complete, accurate and transparent record.

As a data-geek, a journalist who believes fervently that open government is good for everybody, and the purveyor of a database of city council campaign contributions , that troubles me.

The record of this election apparently has a signifiant hole in it. How big a hole?

Continue reading "Citizens for Sensible Decisions: Re-create the books on this off-the-books PAC" »

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When we started the DataSphere, we knew online crime data would be a staple of what we offered. Crime and where it happens are important indicators of quality of life and the level of safety in a community -- not to mention just good ol' nosey stuff people like to know about.

We've been offering crime data for months now, and have moved from our first static-but-clickable maps for Roanoke, Roanoke County and Salem to searchable databases with mapped results.

Now, we're closing in on full crime data coverage for the heart of The Roanoke Times circulation area.

Last week, we added data for Radford, and today, data for Montgomery Couny is now online.

As always, the offering is only as good as the data we get. We have to start someplace, so there's not a ton of data available, but as time passes, the databases wil become richer and more informative.

The Montgomery County map -- built and maintained by Online Production Editor Jim Ellison, who works in our New River Valley bureau -- shows misdemeanors and felonies recorded by the Montgomery County Sheriff's Department. It doesn't include offenses reported to the Christiansburg and Blacksburg police department.

We may never have every place covered, but this is a pretty darn good start. It's valuable information which, if you pay attention to it, can help you live your life in the best and safest way. Check it out, and as always, let us know what you think.

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Our Roanoke Valley crime database got its weekly infusion of new data today, as did the Salem felony offenses database. Dig in.

And, if you live in the New River Valley, we now have something closer to home for you. Thanks to Jim Ellison, online production editor in our New River Valley bureau, you can now search a crime database and map for Radford.

Jim says a separate map for the rest of Montgomery County should be up in the next few days.

So if you live in the NRV, thank Jim, and thank local law enforcement for making the data available.

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Today, the city of Roanoke is once again auctioning off properties on which there are unpaid local real estate taxes, assessments for weed and trash abatement, and demolition or board up costs. They do this once or twice a year. More than 30 properties are on the auction block this time, a number of which are vacant lots.

You can see the list on the city's department of billings and collections website, and there are photos on the Woltz and Associates site.

But I wondered where they were, so I tossed the list onto a map:

No surprises here, really. It's the more depressed parts of town where the pinpoints fall. But part of the story might be in where there aren't any pinpoints.

As Roanoke blogger and neighborhood activist Chris Muse points out, the presence of delinquent properties "a fairly good sign of the progression or regression of a neighborhood."

Chris is rightly proud that there's a single delinquent property on the list this time in his part of Old Southwest. I know that property, and while I haven't asked Chris, I wonder if some aren't glad to see that vacant property seeing some action and the potential for a new owner to make it a credit to the neighborhood, and not a blight on it.

That, after all, is what the city says it's up to with these tax sales. It might be a bad sign when your neighborhood is host to landowners who can't or won't pay their taxes or maintain their properties. But everytime one of those properties is turned over to a new owners, it's a new chance for the land, the house, and the neighborhood.

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What happened to Mayor Nelson Harris Tuesday?

Check out the precinct-by-precinct results for the Roanoke Mayoral and City Council races still online at roanoke.com. I think part of the answer to that question is in those columns and rows if you peer into them long enough.

Harris, a Democrat, split from his party and backed the independent “For the City” slate for Roanoke City Council in 2006. That ticket roared into office on the strength of victories limited almost exclusively to the populous and vote-rich Southwest quadrant of the city. It seemed precincts home to younger, middle- and upper-class Roanokers were ready to push progress in the city by choosing progressive council members.

That set up the conventional wisdom in this election was that heavy turnout in those same precincts in South Roanoke, Raleigh Court and Lee Hi would favor Harris, and might even be enough to give him a victory.

The theory didn’t hold up.

Continue reading "Why Nelson Harris went down: Is the answer in the data?" »

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