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Former Roanoke City Councilman — and former Explore Park director — Rupert Cutler has been pushing for some time for the National Park Service to take over the former living-history state park just outside Roanoke.

Today, he sends us a copy of a speech he gave today to the Roanoke Valley Democratic Women’s Club (Cutler is a Democrat). In it, he notes that he recently received a letter from Rep. Bob Goodlatte — a Republican — expressing skepticism about that proposal.

Cutler quotes Goodlatte’s letter as saying: “I do not believe that it would be prudent to launch a study of whether the federal government—specifically, the National Park Service—should take over operation of the attraction. Because of the deepening federal budget crisis, I do not believe such a study would be a wise use of taxpayer dollars at this time, nor do I believe that the funds would be available in the foreseeable future for the Park Service to take over operation of the park.”

Cutler points out, though, that the local branch of the Sierra Club wants to make a fed takeover of Explore a top priority, and he urges the Democratic group to push candidates to support the move.

Here’s the full text of his remarks, which also touch on a variety of other Roanoke Valley topics:

It’s a pleasure to have lunch with you again and to have this opportunity to bring you “up to speed” on three local environmental and cultural policy issues I’ve been involved in recently.

I want to begin by thanking you for the important financial and other campaign support you gave me when I ran for Roanoke City Council in 2002. I and many other Democratic candidates for elective office are in your debt for your important help to our campaigns. Long may you continue to play that important political action role! We need your help to win. Electing Democrats is important.

For the record, my professional education was in wildlife biology and natural resources economics and my vocation was administration of environmental protection agencies and organizations such as the U.S. Forest Service, Defenders of Wildlife, and Virginia’s Explore Park. My hobbies are the study of history, the watching of birds, the taking of photographs, the making of barbershop quartet harmony, the protection of open space and historic structures, and the support of arts and cultural organizations.

The one favor I asked of my colleagues on Roanoke City Council, when my second term on Council ended on June 30, 2010, was to be appointed to the Roanoke Arts Commission.

I wanted to stay involved in the City’s strong program of support for arts and artists of all sorts—painters, sculptors, musicians, ballerinas, architects, mimes—yes, mimes–zoo curators, greenway planners, “green” architects, public broadcasters—because a city known as friendly to artists, with a thriving art community, is a city that’s fun to live in.

How often have you figuratively pinched yourself while attending a performance of the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra or Opera Roanoke or a church organ recital or a performance by one of the great choral societies here or a tour of the Taubman Museum’s galleries and whispered to a friend, “Wow, aren’t we fortunate to have such world-class talent and art here in little ol’ Big Lick?”

That’s part of what makes life here enjoyable.

An equally important contributor of our Valley’s quality of life is its outstanding outdoor recreation opportunities in a beautiful forested mountain and river setting I go from listening to great music at the Jefferson Center one day to listening to the musical calls of birds on the Lick Run Greenway the next. I thank my lucky stars that I live in a town with both opportunities within a mile of my downtown home.

If you agree with me, then let’s get down to brass tacks with respect to how the Roanoke Valley Democratic Women’s Club can put its collective shoulder to the wheel and help support and advance the cultural and environmental advantages we enjoy here.

Our cultural and environmental legacies need effective advocates. The Philistines in our midst would eliminate funding for public art and sell public parks and forests to the highest bidder “in a heartbeat,” in the holy name of the free market at work, and let the Devil take the hindmost.

Can you imagine the carnage if that took place? The profit motive can’t be the only motive driving our decisions. Environmental stewardship, the Golden Rule, and looking out for future generations have essential places in our American system of values and beliefs. We must help one another, in both a social services sense and in a protection-of-the-quality-of-life sense. It takes a village to maintain these important non-monetary conditions and services. Men and women who believe this are needed in public office.

Here’s “breaking news” on two environmental quality matters. Then I’ll tell you about the City of Roanoke’s new arts and culture plan, about to hit the street.

Let’s think about Virginia’s Explore Park. For all practical purposes it has been closed for years. I ran Explore between 1991 and 1997 when it served thousands of tourists coming off the Blue Ridge Parkway. It served even more western Virginia school children by teaching them how Native Americans and our forebears lived here in the 18th and 19th centuries. It’s closed now because the Commonwealth of Virginia walked away from it, funding-wise, after several years of generous operating budget support, and Roanoke County could not go it alone. It came close to being turned into a for-private-profit, overdeveloped resort, but that scheme thankfully fell for lack of interested investors.

In my view, Explore Park qualifies for inclusion in, and should be added to, the Blue Ridge Parkway. It is contiguous to the Parkway, contains valuable forests and wildlife habitat, and offers the National Park Service an opportunity to interpret life on the western Virginia frontier and succeeding decades through the use of the many historic buildings that were moved to and reconstructed in Explore with great care, at great expense.

Have you visited Mabry’s Mill on the Parkway? Have you been to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and gone from Gatlinburg into the Cades Cove log cabin frontier community there? I’ll bet we’ve all visited Revolutionary War and Civil War battlefield parks run and interpreted by the National Park Service and seen what a great job the park service does in bringing history to life.

They can do the same in what is now Explore Park but could be a feature of the Blue Ridge Parkway. All it takes is political will on the parts of local, state and national elected officials. The Parkway right of way was donated by the Virginia to the federal government, and the donation of Explore to the feds would be no different. Fifth and sixth graders could once again learn Virginia history there in a hands-on way, and tourists would put Roanoke on their “bucket list” to see Explore, just as they put Asheville on their must-visit list to see the Smokies.

What’s the current state of play with regard to Explore? The board that runs Explore is the Virginia Recreational Facilities Authority, or VRFA. True to human nature, it does not want to lose control of the park despite having failed to come up with a plan to re-open the park that protects its environment and maintains and interprets the historic buildings.

Our Member of Congress, Bob Goodlatte, is skeptical regarding transfer to the feds. In a letter to me dated March 22, 2011, he said: “I realize that (Explore Park’s) ties to the Blue Ridge Parkway are unmistakable because of the spur road leading there and the visitor center located at its entrance.

“However, I do not believe that it would be prudent to launch a study of whether the federal government—specifically, the National Park Service—should take over operation of the attraction. Because of the deepening federal budget crisis, I do not believe such a study would be a wise use of taxpayer dollars at this time, nor do I believe that the funds would be available in the foreseeable future for the Park Service to take over operation of the park. I hope you will appreciate my being hesitant to ask the federal government to take on yet another task not originally intended to be its responsibility.”

The Roanoke group of the Sierra Club has voted to make Explore Park its primary conservation campaign issue of 2011 and the local chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution has voted to support the re-opening of Explore under the auspices of the National Park Service to provide history education to the region’s children. The VRFA’s proposals are underwhelming. Your active support for Explore Park’s transfer to federal administration would be most helpful. As you meet with candidates for office, you can bring up this concern and ask for their position on the matter.

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When I moved here from Washington 20 years ago, my college forestry classmate Charlie Blankenship, who’d worked for the Forest Service here for a long time and had just retired, saw to it that I was elected to the board of a small but potent group here called the Valley Beautiful Foundation. At a meeting of that group in 1993, the idea of a greenway trail network for our valley surfaced. Bob Fetzer and Lucy Ellett were among its early advocates.

When Roanoke Valley-Alleghany Regional Commission Executive Director Wayne Strickland offered office space, forester Liz Belcher agreed to serve as staff, and the localities of Roanoke, Salem, Roanoke County and Vinton agreed to pay Liz’s salary on a split based on their relative populations and agreed to support creation of a Roanoke Valley Greenways Commission, a model program of regional cooperation to build a network of recreational trails along the Roanoke River and its tributaries was off and running.

Today there are 169 miles of trails in the Roanoke Valley Greenway system. There are 16.2 miles of paved trails: three miles of Lick Run Greenway and 3.1 miles of Mill Mountain Greenway which join in Market Square downtown (so it’s really 6.1 continuous miles); half a mile of Mudlick Creek Greenway in Garst Mill Park; 1.2 miles of Tinker Creek Greenway; and, along the route of the Roanoke River Greenway, 5.9 miles in the City of Roanoke, 0.8 miles in Green Hill Park, and 1.7 miles in the City of Salem. There are 6.9 miles of cinder-surfaced trails: 1.7 miles in the Hanging Rock Battlefield Trail, 2.2 miles in the Wolf Creek Greenway, and 3 miles in the Murray Run Greenway. There are 17.5 miles of dedicated bicycle lanes and routes. And there are 128.3 miles of natural-surfaced trails, including 37.2 miles of Appalachian Trail, 16 miles of trail along the Blue Ridge Parkway, 46 miles of trail in Carvins Cove Natural Reserve, 12.3 miles of trail in Explore Park, 10 miles of trail in Mill Mountain Park, 1.4 miles of trail on Poor Mountain, and 1.9 miles of trail on Read Mountain.

That is an amazing record of accomplishment in a short period of time. These trails make our community one of the most attractive in the Nation to hikers, runners, mountain bikers, and naturalists. But one critically important element is missing: a paved trail along the entire length of the Roanoke River connecting Roanoke and Salem.

There is a 4.1-mile gap in the very popular riverside greenway trail between Bridge Street in Roanoke and Rotary Park in Salem that, if completed or “bridged,” would create an 18-mile recreational trail from Green Hill Park in western Roanoke County to Vinton and the Tinker Creek Greenway. What an attraction that would be to locals and visitors alike!

To make that attraction a reality, leaders of Roanoke and Salem, the members of the Roanoke Valley Greenway Commission, and volunteers with Pathfinders for Greenways recently put their heads together and came up with an ambitious plan to raise the necessary money to connect our communities. Called “Bridging the Gap,” this plan calls for raising $7 million by June of 2012 to cover engineering, securing right-of-way, and construction of this four-mile “missing link” in the urban part of the river greenway. It’s expensive because it includes the construction of another four steel bridges across the river similar to the one just built to connect Wasena Park and Vic Thomas Park.

Most of the money will come from federal and state grants and city capital construction budgets. But backers of the “Bridging the Gap” campaign are hoping to raise some $2 million of that $7 million from the private sector here in the Valley, including both businesses and individuals, to get the job done in a timely manner.

What can you do to help us achieve this important quality of life goal for the Valley? Urge elected officials and candidates for office to support the inclusion of funds for Roanoke River Greenway construction in federal, state and local government budgets and to speak out in favor of matching private donations for this cause. As a united community we were able to raise sufficient funds to renovate and re-open the Hotel Roanoke on this kind of matching public-private fundraising basis. We can do the same to complete the most important outdoor recreation amenity in the Roanoke Valley, the Roanoke River Greenway. Please support the “Bridging the Gap” greenway campaign!

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My third issue is the Arts and Culture Plan for the City of Roanoke, being written as a supplement to the City’s Comprehensive Plan. It is being prepared by city staff, the Arts Commission, and a consultant from the Council of Community Services. As a member of the Arts Commission, I can report that the members of that commission are very excited at the prospect of making their work public soon.

You may not know that the City of Roanoke provides more support to its artistic community than any other locality in Virginia. It has provided capital construction grants, forgiveness of real estate taxes, annual competitive grants to support the program offerings of arts and culture nonprofit organizations, advertising and marketing support for festivals and other events, an outdoor sculpture acquisition program, and a percent-for-art policy that guarantees that art will be a part of every new City construction project.

But the City’s efforts to date, and those of private organizations that sponsor cultural events, have seemed fragmented and uncoordinated, and not as mutually supportive as they could be.

More can be done to make Roanoke known as the arts and cultural capital of Virginia, for both the enjoyment of its residents and the benefit of its economy. To do those constructive things at minimum expense is our goal. Here’s some background information on the arts and culture plan.

Our “vision statement”: “We envision a vibrant and prosperous community where innovation in arts and culture engages people in all aspects of life while contributing to sustained economic growth and development.” That may sound obvious, but it took a lot of work to nail down.

Excerpts from the opening statement of the plan, still in draft:

“The City of Roanoke has a long and distinguished record of investing in quality of life amenities that make the Roanoke Valley a region of choice. Strategic and catalytic investments such as Center in the Square have leveraged private dollars, attracted businesses and retained a professional workforce….

“Certainly, Roanoke has earned a reputation as a center of creativity in Western Virginia. But are we on track? And where are we headed next?

“From May 2010 to June 2011, the City of Roanoke, guided by the Roanoke Arts Commission, gathered the input of residents and regional stakeholders in order to refine the City’s approach. The goal: To further integrate the City’s existing arts and cultural efforts into the comprehensive plan. With this Arts and Cultural Element, we establish the detailed foundation to:

· coordinate our approach, increasing effectiveness and reducing costs of arts and cultural investments across the community;

· increase opportunities for the strategic alignment of private dollars and entrepreneurial initiatives; and

· measure the outcomes of policy-guided actions.

“We have to do more with what we have, but fortunately for us, we have a lot: museums and musicians, actors and artists, dancers and documentary film makers, writers and rail heritage. The region is rich, and when we collect and coordinate all of the parts, we can have something truly spectacular….”

The statement goes on to explain how implementation of the plan will help develop the economy, increase livability, and foster an environment of lifelong learning and education.

The parts of the new arts and culture plan that excite me the most are (a) the notion that arts and culture are for everyone in every part of town and (b) that there should be a cultural affairs office in City government where all the now-fragmented and sometimes competitive efforts to organize, promote and run festivals, art shows and other cultural events are overseen by a cultural affairs officer. This latter idea may be hard to find in the plan text because City staff members are reluctant to suggest changes in their own organization. But there are models in other cities for a strong central presence in city government that can support:

· collaboration on marketing, ticketing, promotions, and a community calendar;

· collaboration in programming and administration; and

· continued local government funding of demonstrably successful and effective local nonprofit arts and cultural organizations.

What this boils down to is that arts and cultural activities are important and essential to a successful community and that local government can play a useful supportive role in seeing to it that those activities are available in very part of town for every segment of our society.

Therefore I hope you will let the elected officials and candidates for office you talk to know you expect them to learn about and support the City’s new arts and culture plan. It will be drafted and be the subject of community meetings in March and April, revised in May to respond to the suggestions made at those public meetings, and presented to City Council for adoption in June.

Between now and then the plan is wide open to amendment and improvement, and any thoughts that you contribute will be considered as important as anyone else’s. I hope you agree that arts and cultural opportunities are important to our citizens and that you will support adoption of the new Roanoke Arts and Culture Plan.

I would be pleased to send you this talk by e-mail and provide you with additional talking points if you would like to help lobby for any or all of these initiatives. My e-mail address is rupert.cutler48@gmail.com. United we stand!

Thank you for your invitation and your attention.