VA - Virginia Tech Airport
In a lively two hour discussion last night, the nine candidates for Town Council answered a wide range of questions about their views and ideas for the Town of Blacksburg.
The meeting was moderated by Beth Obenshain of the New River Land Trust, and written questions were submitted by the audience. This was a good format, as it kept the questions short and to the point.
Greg Fansler, who is an avid biker, wants to put more effort into bike trails in Blacksburg. I do a lot of biking myself, and while the Town does try to promote biking, we have a lot of disconnected bike paths and routes in Town, and I agree with Fansler that more could be done. The other thing I liked was Fansler's comment that sustainability has multiple dimensions, including economic sustainability; he made the point that a healthy business community provides the tax dollars to support green initiatives, and so Town support of businesses is important to the environment.
Krisha Chachra went even further, and enumerated three kinds of sustainability that she thought was important to the future of Blacksburg: environmental sustainability, economic sustainability, and social sustainability. Her view was that social sustainability was important to attract and retain young professionals in town, who in turn paid taxes and helped support environmental initiatives. She also distinguished between "growth" and "development." In her view, uncontrolled growth was problematic, but "no growth" was unrealistic. Instead, she talked about sensible and sustainable development--working closely with developers and property owners to promote green housing and commercial projects that are closely aligned with the Town's comprehensive plan. Too often, I think we are presented with a false pair of choices: either you are for "uncontrolled growth" or you have to pick "no growth." I like the fact that Chachra is saying, "Look, there is a third way that can really improve quality of life in the Town while preserving the environment."
Tom Rogers wins kudos for being the only candidate I've heard so far who talked about the environment of our Town parks and recreation fields, which are frankly embarrassing. As a former softball coach who has seen the excellent parks in almost every other town and community in the region, I can tell you that Blacksburg's parks really need time and attention. Rogers also talked about expanding the size and number of community gardens; as far as I know, we have only one very small community garden behind the cemetary. Rogers had a terrific idea, which is to place community garden spaces in our Town parks, so that while the parents garden, the kids would have something to do. I liked the fact that Rogers had sensible, concrete proposals that could be achieved without great time or expense. Many of the candidates had a lot of vague ideas that seemed unrealistic or difficult for the Town government to do.
Frank Lau was impressive. He has really done his homework, and was able to provide answers backed up by facts and data, and it demonstrated that he is not afraid to do the research to reach an informed decision. He also talked about bike paths, and made a really interesting point--that when developers include bike paths as part of their proposal (e.g. for a new subdivision), they often stick the bike path on the least desirable part of the property--where they can't build anything. He says (and I know this to be true from my own bike rides) that this leads to bike paths that are hilly and difficult to navigate and that often don't connect to anything. This reinforced Fansler's point about the Town being more pro-active on bike paths. Lau said the Town has the option of asking developers to provide better bike routes rather than just signing off on whatever they offer. This is another example of concrete ideas, and it is an approach that would cost the Town little or nothing.
Fansler, Rogers, Chachra, and Lau all really seemed to be fundamentally committed to the environment, and had good ideas that the Town could actually act upon and implement.
