Some Montgomery County voters will go back to the future when they cast ballots in the June 11 Democratic Party primary.

Voters in Montgomery Precinct F-1 will use paper ballots when they step into the booths at Luther Memorial Lutheran Church in Blacksburg, but not in an old-school way. They will feed their marked ballots into a Unisyn OVO optical scan voting machine, a new piece of equipment scheduled to be phased in at other Montgomery precincts in time for the 2016 presidential election.

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Charles Steger

Through triumph and tragedy, Charles Steger kept Tech pointed toward excellence.

Charles Steger earned three degrees from Virginia Tech and devoted most of his professional life to his alma mater, working tirelessly to push it into the top tier of the nation’s elite universities. When he steps down in the next year as Tech’s 15th president, he will leave a voluminous legacy that includes major academic and research advances, a significant expansion of the university’s footprint, and the darkest days in the history of the Blacksburg campus.

Steger moved into the president’s office at the dawn of a new millennium and moved Tech on a path toward elevating its research enterprise and redefining its land-grant mission for a rapidly changing economy. Since 2000, the university has increased its research portfolio by more than 300 percent. It has established seven centralized research institutes, positioning the school to win large-scale research grants.

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by Michael Sluss

Wendell Jones had something to get off his chest Tuesday night before the Montgomery County School Board voted on a $94.6 million school division budget for the upcoming fiscal year. The board chairman called the public’s attention to county-generated funds that will be spent as a result of policy decisions made in Richmond and Washington, not Christiansburg.

Jones didn’t disagree with the most expensive of those policy decisions — a 2 percent pay raise for teachers and instructional staff approved by the General Assembly and Gov. Bob McDonnell. The state allocated a little more than $586,000 to pay for its share of the salary increase, the first state-supported pay raise for teachers since 2007. But the county had to kick in more than $1 million of its own to fully fund the raise and to provide the same benefit to other school division employees.

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Sluss is a member of The Roanoke Times editorial board.

Michael Sluss

Little went right for Virginia Democrats in the 2011 General Assembly elections. The party lost control of the state Senate and its membership shrank to 32 seats in the House of Delegates.

Republican candidates made a clean sweep of House seats in the New River Valley, helped by a redistricting plan that was surgically drawn to fortify the GOP’s already solid majority.

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Sluss is a member of The Roanoke Times editorial board.

By Chris Tuck

Another year, another tax increase in Montgomery County. Last week, four of my fellow supervisors decided to raise taxes yet again, despite growth in tax revenues of $2.8 million and the promise of hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional state and federal monies. They voted to increase taxes despite the fact that over a seven-year period, our real estate tax rate will have increased 40 percent. It is now more than double that of Wythe County, which has the lowest tax rate in the New River Valley, at 44 cents.

The increase of two cents on real estate tax rates and 10 cents on personal property will generate $1.4 million and $500,000 respectively for a total of $1.9 million more taken from our residents.

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Tuck is a member of the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors.

A town police officer and a college security guard patrolled the New River Community College’s Christiansburg satellite facility Wednesday morning, five days after a shooting that injured an employee and a student.

The beefed-up security presence probably brought some comfort to students and employees as they resumed classes at the college’s New River Valley Mall location for the first time since the April 12 shooting. It’s not clear how long that presence will be maintained. But college officials are taking the prudent step of evaluating security in the aftermath of the shooting.

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Michael Sluss, The Roanoke Times

By Michael Sluss

While driving from Roanoke to Christiansburg Monday evening, mindful that I had this column to write, I rattled the memory bank for recollections of the two years I worked in this newspaper’s New River Valley Bureau before leaving to cover the state Capitol in 2000.

Dozens of news stories came to mind — fun features, horrific accidents, big court cases, amazing research at Virginia Tech. What stood out, though, were memories of the places I visited and the people I met while living and working here.

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Sluss is an editorial writer for The Roanoke Times.

Barbara Skinner and Bill Stephenson

Once again, the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors is contemplating raising tax rates even though our property tax rate increased by 12 cents last year.

Board members feel they’re supporting education by allocating as much money as possible to our school system.

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Skinner is the mother of a Montgomery County Public School student. Stephenson is emeritus dean of engineering at Virginia Tech and former PTA co-president of Blacksburg Middle School.

Sherri Blevins

I am writing in hopes of promoting awareness of the safety concerns and threats to our children, teachers and staff at Falling Branch Elementary.

Additionally, I hope to gain the support of leaders and citizens for the relocation of the park and ride off Interstate 81’s Exit 118A.

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Blevins is a small business owner. Her children attend Montgomery County Schools.

Montgomery County supervisors must remember the mistakes of the past and prepare for the future.

Montgomery County supervisors will vote Monday on a budget for the upcoming fiscal year that incorporates a modest real estate tax increase to make a down payment on future school construction needs.

With recent history as its guide, the board should adopt the spending plan developed by County Administrator Craig Meadows.

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