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Downtown development needn't cause a parking nightmare

Jeremy Holmes

Holmes is the program director of RIDE Solutions in Roanoke.

Recent days have seen two interesting developments for downtown Roanoke. The first was the welcome announcement that Ed Walker, father of the Cotton Mill Lofts and the Hancock Building, has purchased the redoubtable Patrick Henry Hotel. Walker made clear in his morning press conference that, whatever else happens with the building, we could count on at least 100 new apartments being at the core of the project, significantly growing downtown's residential capacity.

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Health care isn't just a product

From the RoundTable blog

Read the latest entries

• Friday's letters to the editor
• Friday open thread
• Has Susan Willis been 'vindicated'?
• GOP Health Care 'Reform'

Darrell K. Shomaker
Shomaker, of Pearisburg, teaches bioethics and critical thinking at Jefferson College of Health Sciences in Roanoke.

The economic recession in the United States appears to be drawing to a close. Despite that encouraging news, the nation's economy continues to lose jobs in traditionally strong sectors such as manufacturing and construction. The health care sector, on the other hand, is adding jobs. Throughout the course of the recession, the health care industry added an average of 8,800 new jobs every month. Consequently, the industry has become known as the "recession-proof" sector of the U.S. economy where displaced workers and recession-motivated career switchers can find good-paying positions with benefits, and most important, job security.

A return on tax rates

Norb Weckstein
Weckstein is a retired G.E. engineer and manager. He lives in Roanoke.

As Virginia Tech finance professor G. Rodney Thompson noted in his Sept. 11 commentary, "Return taxes to '60s levels," the "heady days of the 1950s and 60s, when the U.S. was ... the envy of the entire world" was also a time when taxes on the highest increment of earnings (affecting only the top 1 percent of taxpayers) were appreciably higher. Financial analyst Bob Barnes' failed attempt to ridicule those facts not withstanding ("Confiscatory tax levels stifle the economy," Oct. 19 commentary), the issue of excessive executive pay that has resulted from lowering the top tax rate is a major problem.
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Young workers will prove themselves worthy

Nada T. King
King lives in Elliston.

Recently, I had a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the graduations of two of my daughters, both having completed their education in a medical field: one as a lab technician, another in hospital administration. But as the time passed and I watched them going about placing their applications and résumés, diligently seeking employment in their fields of study, I've seen discouragement, disappointment and their hopes go dim.
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Roanoke needs a chief financial officer

Robert Craig
Craig, of Roanoke, is a retired Marine Corps officer who spent 25 years working in financial management in both the private and public sectors.

At a Roanoke city manager public input meeting on Oct. 15, the analogy between our strong city manager form of government and a corporation was frequently invoked. City council makes policy. The underlying assumption is council is qualified. The city manager implements policy. The city manager suggests initiatives to the council. In a perfect world, the city manager presents all the risks, rewards and outcome probabilities and council members completely understand.
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Gender is not always absolute

Betsy Biesenbach
Biesenbach lives in Roanoke and is a freelance writer and title examiner.

A few months ago, AOL ran a story from TheLocal.se, an English-language site for Swedish news, about a young couple who was determined not to reveal the gender of their firstborn. According to the article, the only people who know the child's sex are the ones who change his/her diapers. The child wears the clothes and hairstyles of both genders and plays with all kinds of toys. For good or for ill, the parents do not plan ever to tell anyone the sex of their child. They are leaving that up to him/her for whenever he/she is ready. My guess is that will be the first time he/she is faced with going into a public restroom on his/her own.

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My daughter, the voter

Luanne Traud
Traud is a member of The Roanoke Times editorial board.

As the teenager rambled on about her day, I was only half listening until I caught, " ... and, oh yeah, I found out today at school I'm a Libertarian. What I couldn't figure out is why they asked what we thought about pornography and sex between consenting adults. Do you know?" Huh? Libertarian? Porn? Sex? Who's "they"? They, it turns out, is the very same school that yanked a book off the library shelf because a father was upset by his son reading it. I've since read "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" and found it a deftly told tale of difficult, sensitive subjects. We would all wish to shield our children not only from incest and sexual assault but from the knowledge that such horrendous crimes occur. But, ignorance is not in anyone's best interest. The book handles the topic and adolescent dalliances into sex, drugs and "Rocky Horror Picture Show" with great care.
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Confidence in the provost is shattered

Matthew J. Franck
Franck is the professor and chairman of political science at Radford University.

In October 1996, Dr. Douglas Covington, in his second year at Radford University, faced the first-ever formal evaluation of a president by the university's board of visitors. Some of us at RU were concerned about how fair the process would be. I wrote then in the pages of this newspaper that it should be "an orderly and institutionalized process rather than ad hoc ... deliberately paced rather than rushed." The same alternatives present themselves again in Radford's current crisis of mistrust between the faculty and the administration. In recent years, familiar and proven processes of academic decision-making have been bypassed, ignored or reinvented on the fly by an administration more concerned with immediate results than with the legitimacy of the process by which they are achieved, or even whether the new curricula and programs make the best sense for the education of Radford's students.
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Project Vote Smart tries to educate Virginia voters

By Dan Radmacher

Radmacher is editorial page editor for The Roanoke Times.

The overwhelming majority of candidates on Tuesday's ballot have already failed voters. Given an opportunity to tell citizens of Virginia where they stand on the gamut of issues, most candidates declined.

Only four candidates for delegate or statewide office in area elections passed Project Vote Smart's political courage test.

Those candidates were Del. Onzlee Ware and his challenger in the race for the 11th District, Troy Bird; Carter Turner, who is running against Del. Morgan Griffith in the 8th District; and Will Smith, a Constitution Party candidate running in the 19th District.

Project Vote Smart's test of political courage is simple: It offers candidates the opportunity to fill out a very broad survey of where they stand on the issues. Those who take the test pass. Those who refuse fail.

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Voters have only themselves to blame

By Christian Trejbal

Trejbal is an editorial writer stationed at the papers New River Valley.

New River Valley governments recently experimented with two types of parenting. In Radford, the city council prefers tough love; in Montgomery County, supervisors shelter their charges.

The constitutional officers in both localities have fallen on hard financial times thanks to revenue shortfalls in Richmond.

Commonwealth's attorneys, sheriffs, circuit court clerks, commissioners of revenue and treasurers get most of their money from the state, and four rounds of state budget cuts in two years have taken a toll.

The most recent cuts, to help make up a $1.35 billion statewide shortfall, could break them.

These offices ran lean operations before the state started slashing. Now they must provide essential services without adequate resources.

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