Speaking of open government, if you took advantage of your right to attend the Feb. 26 Blacksburg Town Council meeting and stuck around to the end, you would have heard Mayor Ron Rordam reveal that I am leaving The Roanoke Times. Let that be a lesson that one never knows what surprises will pop up during a public meeting.

My last day was Friday, and this is my final signed column. A few editorials about Sunshine Week that I left with my colleagues will appear in the coming days.

Some friends and coworkers suggested I devote today’s column to my departure, but Sunshine Week really is more important than one editorial writer. Besides, I’m not a big fan of such journalistic navel-gazing.

It has been an honor and a pleasure to get to know many of you and to share my opinions in the pages of The Current and now The Burgs. Thank you all for reading these last eight years. Whether you agreed, disagreed or some of both, my goal was always to encourage you to think about the issues in new ways, especially the ones important to a region with so much potential.

Best of luck wherever life takes you.

— Christian Trejbal

Twitter: @ctrejbal