First ladies: Women taking increasingly active role in politics

Jean Donovan had to make sure that she had a babysitter lined up.

That’s what she remembers about her early years on Staunton City Council.

“I don’t think anybody else on council had to do that. That was partly a function of being a woman – and in particular a single woman,” said Donovan, who is finishing up her second term on the city council.

Having to line up a babysitter in advance of attending public meetings is just one of the challenges that women in politics face. But more and more women are facing up to the challenges – which include the overt sexism of peers and the more subtle decisions of voters who cast their lots against female candidates based on prejudice.

“There are some preconceived stereotypes that exist that can serve as an obstacle. But I think it’s getting better,” said Lorie Smith, the current chair of the Waynesboro School Board, who is readying for her first campaign for Waynesboro City Council this spring.

“We’ve seen a dramatic shift in the ’80s and ’90s and into this century with more political involvement by women, and I think that’s a good thing,” Smith told The Augusta Free Press.

Indeed, the talk about the role of women in contemporary politics is getting serious with the expectation that New York Sen. Hillary Clinton and Secretary of State Condolezza Rice will be among the top contenders for the White House in 2008.

“Having several women receiving serious attention as presidential contenders is going to have an impact on the number of women who want to get involved at every level,” said Marie Wilson, the founder of the New York-based White House Project and the author of Closing the Leadership Gap: Why Women Can and Must Help Run the World.

“That’s where things really have to start,” Wilson told the AFP. “It can be difficult for organizations to go out and recruit and train women for involvement in politics because many women who have the skill-set to be effective political leaders don’t see themselves that way. So the attention being placed on women like Hillary Clinton and Condolezza Rice can serve to help more women see themselves as being potential political leaders.”

“Every time a high-profile woman runs for office, it breaks down the barriers,” said Laura van Assendelft, a Mary Baldwin College political-science professor and author of Women, Politics and American Society, which examines issues related to the increasing presence of women in modern political life.

“Even if she is not successful, she paves the way for the next attempt, and the novelty of a woman running for elite office wears off,” van Assendelft told the AFP.

“Little girls see women run for the presidency, and they might dream of doing it, too. Women at the local level may become inspired by the high-profile women and the issues they draw attention to. It’s all good,” Assendelft said.

That women running for political office draw attention to issues that their male counterparts often overlook was evident in Virginia Democratic Party lieutenant-governor candidate Leslie Byrne’s 2005 campaign – which focused on matters related to family health care, primary and secondary education and jobs.

“What I like to pose to my students is, what if the delegates and senators representing this area in Richmond were young, black females? How would policy differ?” said Donovan, herself a political-science professor at Mary Baldwin College.

Donovan’s first campaign for public office eight years ago came after she spoke out about an issue near and dear to her heart – her children’s education – at a city-council budget hearing.

“I felt that my kids’ education should be more well funded in the city of Staunton than it was. For example, when I went into the classrooms, I was really shocked at how old the materials were, the books, the play materials, the toys, and I thought, my goodness, this is a surprise. And plus the physical facility not having air conditioning and being such a dingy old building,” Donovan told the AFP.

When the council voted against a proposal to increase funding for the school system, “I was angry,” Donovan said.

“And then I looked at who was on council, and I saw a very monolithic group – mostly older white men, none of whom had children in our school system. And I thought, this is not really an appropriate situation in a representative democracy. How can retired white men represent the interests of young families today?” Donovan said.

Still, Donovan recalls having to be talked into running for one of the open city-council seats in the next year’s election.

“Some people who were school advocates asked me to run. I thought about it for six or eight months. They volunteered to help, and I took them up on it and decided to run,” Donovan said.

Men “don’t have this problem” as far as needing encouragement to run for public office, Wilson said.

“Men who run for office don’t have a problem identifying themselves as leaders. But women tend to need a push from somebody who says, ‘The way you worked through that problem with the school was great. You should run for the school board,’ ” Wilson said.

The University of Virginia Center for Politics is working to bring attention to these issues involving women and politics. Its National Symposium on Women and Politics kicks off this week with an event focusing on the activity involving Clinton, Rice and others for the 2008 Democratic Party and Republican Party presidential nominations.

“We at the center want to get people from all walks of life to be more involved in politics. This series, in particular, we hope will generate more interest among young women in politics. We hope that young women will see that they can be more involved in politics themselves,” said Holly Hatcher, the assistant director of programs at the Charlottesville-based Center for Politics.

The effort will begin at home, so to speak.

“Virginia has an interesting history. We didn’t ratify the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote until 1952 – well after the amendment was ratified at the federal level giving women the right to vote,” Hatcher told the AFP.

“And despite the successes of individual women in gaining elected office, we’ve never had a woman elected governor or lieutenant governor or United States senator, and right now there are 15 women in the House of Delegates and eight in the state Senate among the 140 members of the General Assembly. So while strides have been made, there is plenty of work still to be done in that respect,” Hatcher said.

Smith sees the light at the end of that tunnel – and it’s not far down the tunnel, either.

“I think there’s a little less sensitivity today to gender bias, and I think that has to do with the way that we’re raising our young children,” Smith said. “I think that parents are trying to raise children that are highly competent, that are self-confident, that are critical thinkers and are decision-makers. And I think in particular women are trying to ingrain these characteristics in their daughters.

“When women grow up surrounded by these values and surrounded by the thought that they can achieve, I think we will continue to be producing more and more female leaders in our country because of that,” Smith said.

(Published 02-20-06)

A cartoon controversy – or something like it

Story by Chris Graham

It has been described as a cartoon controversy. But the issue involving the drawings depicting the Prophet Muhammad published in a Danish newspaper last fall is a lot more than that.

“I liken this to a stovetop, and the pots are at a rolling boil right now in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Libya, Iran, Syria, the UK and in lots of other places. Well, those pots were already simmering on the stovetop long before the cartoons appeared, and so it is somewhat deceiving to depict the demonstrations and riots as purely responses to a cartoon,” said Timothy Gianotti, a professor of Islamic philosophy and theology at the University of Virginia.

The boiling reaction of Muslims to the publication of the cartoons – which have appeared in newspapers worldwide in recent weeks since their first appearance in September – has led to 19 deaths in the past month in demonstrations in Europe and the Middle East.

That the protests have taken on a more generally anti-Western and even specifically an anti-American tone is perhaps a sign of the times that we live in.

“This is not just about a cartoon. This is not just a cartoon controversy,” Gianotti told The Augusta Free Press. “This is part of a much larger historical evolution – at least to Muslims a continuation of the colonial period. This is not just about a cartoon. This is about the whole conglomeration of issues that are coming to a head with the publication of this cartoon and then the defiant republication of the cartoon in France and other places.”

The violence associated with demonstrations overseas has yet to appear in the United States – where Muslim leaders have been urging restraint on the part of the faithful.

“We do not condone the violence which has erupted in many Muslim countries,” said Ehsan Ahmed, the secretary general of the Harrisonburg-based Islamic Association of the Shenandoah Valley.

“We believe that Muslims around the world must follow the example of Prophet Muhammad, who was compassionate and man of mercy,” Ahmed said.

“During his lifetime, when he was insulted or encountered offensive behavior, he did not respond with rage or violence. Instead he taught his followers to respond with mercy and best behavior,” Ahmed told the AFP.

That isn’t to say that the American Islamic community hasn’t been impacted at all by the images that have stirred up passions across the globe.

“The global community should not allow people to humiliate the sacred and religious values and dignity of any people in the name of freedom of expression, and should assure respect for the beliefs and religions for all, even if they are of other religions or ideologies,” said Amer A. Al-Zubaidi, a minister at the Roanoke-based Kufa Center of Islamic Knowledge.

“There is no place in this world for racism and prejudice. Unity and avoidance of sectarian and ethnic differences should be strongest goal of Muslims, so that they might prevent people from indulging into extravagance and immoderation, and bring the human-self under the control of reason and the law,” Al-Zubaidi told the AFP.

The more peaceful reaction to the controversy in the States could be due in part at least to the decisions of editorial leaders at all but a few major American newspapers against republishing the cartoons.

That approach has not exactly been met with universal praise by media watchers – whose criticisms have ranged from concerns about the implications on press freedoms to others that question whether the news media has allowed itself to be backed into a corner out of fear.

“I think that they’re just scared. They’re intimidated,” said Cliff Kincaid, the editor of the conservative Accuracy in Media Report.

“They feel that if they publish these cartoons, they will offend Muslims, causing more demonstrations, perhaps even riots. And that some of their own journalists may be targeted. I think that is, frankly, what explains it,” Kincaid told the AFP.

Robert O’Neil, the director of the Charlottesville-based Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, focuses less on the fear factor and more on the relative wisdom of showing voluntary restraint.

“Some may have assumed that there could have been some potential liability. I think that is most unlikely. My assumption is that they were acting voluntarily and chose not to run them on two separate grounds – one, the fact that you have a free-speech or free-press right to say or to print something doesn’t mean that you need to exercise it, and two, that there is a sense that it may actually be undermined if you exercise it in a way that creates consequences and makes it harder to exercise it in the future,” O’Neil said.

“There may even be a kind of perverse argument that as a matter of policy your free-press interests are stronger if you don’t push it to the limit,” O’Neil said.

“There almost certainly would have been consequences if that had been the more common action on the part of editors. For that reason, I think the policy of not pushing it to the limit has some considerable value,” O’Neil told the AFP.

And that is true even outside the bounds of journalistic standards and practices.

“Although we as Muslims hold freedom of speech as one of the unalienable rights of human beings, we believe that press has the utmost responsibility to exercise restraint when it comes to the basic beliefs of human beings,” Ahmed said.

“We also believe that Muslims must use restraints in reacting to these cartoons and use educational methods to teach fellow human beings about Islam,” Ahmed said.

“We must lead by example of mercy and forgiveness, a trait every Muslim must have by very definition of being a follower of Islam,” Ahmed said.

Fox station coming to Harrisonburg lineup

Story by Chris Graham

The Harrisonburg television market is starting to get crowded.

“This is a big step forward for us,” said Tracey Jones, the general manager of the Harrisonburg-based WHSV-TV3 and a regional vice president for the Atlanta-based Gray Television, which announced earlier this month that it is adding a Fox affiliate to the local station lineup.

The station will be broadcast digitally and will be available at the outset to Adelphia Cable customers who subscribe to the service provider’s digital tier, Jones said.

The affiliate is scheduled to be up and running by the first of September, Jones told The Augusta Free Press.

The addition of the local Fox channel will bring the total of commercial stations in the Harrisonburg market – ranked 181st among the 210 television markets tracked by Nielsen Media Research with 86,000 TV homes – to two.

The nearby Charlottesville market – ranked 186th by Nielsen with 70,000 TV homes – has been a relative hotbed of activity with the addition of three stations to mainstay WVIR-TV29 in the past 18 months.

“It would be surprising to see this growth in the Harrisonburg market if the population of the region was not growing like it is. Frankly, I’m a bit surprised that we hadn’t seen something like this happen sooner,” said Rustin Greene, a professor in School of Media Arts and Design at James Madison University.

“What this says is that they see the potential in the local market for revenues to grow – enough to justify the investment that they’re making in the technological upgrades needed to make this possible,” Greene told the AFP.

Gray is investing $2 million in upgrades to its Harrisonburg facility related to the addition of the Fox station, Jones said.

“Obviously, we would not try to do something like this if we didn’t feel that there wouldn’t be an advantage to having a locally branded, local-feel Fox station in this market,” Jones said.

“Fox programming reaches out to a different demographic. We’re going to be reaching out more and more to that demographic with companion programming and our local news product as well,” Jones said.

The station will initially use news programming originating on WHSV, Jones said. Down the road, Jones envisions the development of an independent news operation for the Fox channel.
“I can certainly see us taking advantage of the ability to offer a 10 o’clock prime-time newscast at some point in the future,” Jones said.

Painful cuts could impact public broadcasting

Story by Chris Graham

Supporters of public broadcasting had thought that the war on PBS and NPR was over.

“Basically, what we’re seeing here is that the administration is laying the foundation for the elimination of all federal funding for public broadcasting indefinitely,” said Kristin Wilson, a spokesman for the Washington, D.C.,-based Association of Public Television Stations, reacting to the recommendation from the Bush administration from last week for deep cuts in federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The administration included a total of $157 million in cuts for public broadcasting in its budget proposals for 2007 and 2008 – including $103 million that would go in the form of direct grants to public radio and TV stations across the country and millions more earmarked for a series of mandated technological upgrades.

The budget plan would eliminate all federal funding for the CPB in 2009.

The impact of the cuts would be felt from Washington to the front lines of public broadcasting. The Harrisonburg-based public-television station WVPT, for one, is facing the prospect of losing up to $150,000 in annual funding, said Bert Schmidt, the station’s president and general manager.

“The impact would certainly be felt on our end in local programming and children’s services. Those things would be the first to be cut. Losing $150,000 really hurts our ability to provide the local kinds of services that people really value about WVPT,” Schmidt told The Augusta Free Press.“Some people say, ‘Let’s wean PBS off the federal dole.’ But what you’re doing is you’re hurting the local small stations the most, stations like WVPT,” Schmidt said. “The things that we would have to cut are educational services, services to the kids, children’s programming. What we would have to do most likely is focus on more standard PBS fare and less on local programming because, frankly, local programming is the most expensive thing that we do here.

“We want to be different and have local programs,” Schmidt said. “But when you have cuts of $150,000, that can be really significant. It’s really, really early in the process, so I don’t want to get people too worried right now. This has been fairly standard in this administration that we have to deal with proposed budget cuts, but fortunately, we’ve seen the American public step up every year and say no, we don’t want you to cut public broadcasting.”

That was the message last year when Congress and the president publicly mulled over similar CPB budget cuts.

“This is something of a surprise just because the backlash was so strong last year to reinstate full funding,” said Craig Aaron, a spokesman for the Washington, D.C.,-based media-advocacy group Free Press.

“A million people signed a petition distributed by MoveOn saying basically to leave the money there, to put it back. We saw hundreds of thousands of letters and e-mails going to Congress over the summer – and big gatherings on the Hill of schoolchildren and members of Congress and people dressed up as cartoon characters. There was a very powerful pushback, and it’s been repeated every time dating back to when Newt Gingrich was in office and tried to take away this money, to defund public broadcasters,” Aaron told the AFP.

The defunding movement has its roots in the pushback from conservatives who feel that public broadcasting serves a partisan political agenda.

“We’ve always maintained that, and continue to maintain that. I think it’s fairly obvious,” said Tim Graham, the director of media analysis at the conservative Media Research Center.

“When you spend any amount of time monitoring the content of public broadcasting, it’s still a liberal playground. They won’t admit that, but it’s true,” Graham told the AFP.

“What’s interesting is that we had this big fight over Friday night the past couple of years. The liberals were upset over ‘Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered’ and ‘The Journal Editorial Report.’ This time last year, these were two of the things that they were fighting about. Neither one of them are there anymore,” Graham said.

“The joke at the time was, good for Ken Tomlinson, he succeeded in balancing Friday night, but how about Saturday through Thursday?” Graham said. “I always thought it was funny that they basically thought that you put on an hour of conservative-leaning programming on Friday night, and suddenly the whole network is Bush TV.

“I don’t quite see where liberals get upset about this being in danger. It obviously isn’t in danger. That said, this obviously continues to be on a routine basis a biased set of radio stations and TV stations,” Graham said.

Schmidt countered that the public broadcasting’s conservative critics “simply can’t be watching.”

“You have to watch to be able to make a judgment. We allow all voices. Sure, there are some liberal voices on. There are some conservative voices on. There’s a mix. That’s the beauty of public television – there’s a wide variety of voices, intelligent voices,” Schmidt said.

“When you have Jeff Ishee or Mark Viette or Richard Parker doing local shows, they’re not liberal or conservative. But what they do is important to the local community,” Schmidt said.

“We don’t do anything with the idea of advocacy toward any political point of view. It’s just a reputation that people who don’t even watch public programming have in their mind,” Schmidt said.

Schmidt is hopeful that Congress will see through the politics – as it did last year.

Wilson foresees a similar course of action taking place.

“The budget proposal goes against what the public wants and what Congress wants. Last year, folks on the Hill and the public were very supportive. We’re working toward getting the same outcome this year. That’s really our only option,” Wilson told the AFP.

Even Graham doesn’t expect anything in the way of serious cuts being approved by Congress this year – with midterm elections looming on the horizon.

“After what happened in this last round last spring, where they began by proposing the cut, and then ended up basically giving them more money after it went through the House and Senate, I don’t think that I’d be any more enthusiastic about this year. I suppose that all I could say is if we can keep CPB’s federal funding even, then maybe that’s a moral victory of some sort,” Graham said.

A Riverfront runs through it: Development project could reverse fortunes in downtown Waynesboro

One problem that Waynesboro has with regard to its plans for revitalizing its downtown-business district is “the fact that we don’t have buildings,” downtown businessman Len Poulin said.

“But as I like to say, the biggest advantage that we have in rebuilding downtown is that we don’t have buildings,” said Poulin, a driving force in Waynesboro Downtown Development Inc., which has been working behind the scenes for the past three years to build support for a nine-figure redevelopment project that is increasingly being talked about as the next big thing in the River City.

Dubbed Riverfront Commons, the plan calls for the development of more than 1 million square feet of residential and commercial properties on 50 acres situated between Broad Street and Race Avenue in the heart of downtown Waynesboro.

The idea came from a seemingly simple question that WDDI leaders posed to themselves in 2003 – “if you had a blank sheet of paper,” Poulin said, “what could you do in that space?”

“The vision is to get smart about the lay of the land, to try to understand the dynamics of the hydrology, deal with the stormwater issues, because a part of this problem is a stormwater-runoff problem, rebuild the common area smartly so that instead of it forcing water into private property, it becomes a detention area that relieves some of the pressure, and then redesign Arch Avenue into a promenade,” Poulin told The Augusta Free Press.

The trick, of course, comes in the financing – and specifically, finding investors willing to pitch in shares of the estimated $100 million-plus project costs.

“That’s a ton of money – which is probably why they haven’t been able to get anything going,” Waynesboro mayor Tom Reynolds told the AFP.

Don’t be surprised to see the city being asked to take part in some way at some point in the future – with issues involving floodplain management and stormwater management playing key roles in what can be done downtown.

“The city is going to be involved. There’s no way this kind of thing is going to come to pass without something in the way of tax breaks and infrastructure improvements. Developers just don’t do this without some incentives being on the table,” said Roberta Brandes Gratz, an urban critic and author of The Living City: Thinking Small in a Big Way, and Cities Back from the Edge: New Life for Downtown.

Gratz isn’t a big fan of expensive projects like Riverfront Commons.

“The kinds of projects that work better to regenerate and revive downtowns are things like the restoration of an old theater or the development of a farmer’s market. These bigger projects get a lot of attention, but ultimately, what they do is bring in chain stores that end up taking money out of your economy,” Gratz told the AFP.

“Unfortunately, the reality is that I’ve not met a mayor or city council or town council that looks at these kinds of projects with anything resembling a critical eye,” Gratz said. “If they did, they would see that this kind of thing is pretty standard. Everybody tries this, and the fact is, there are enough experiences of this kind of thing not working to know that this isn’t the slam-dunk that some try to make it out to be.

“All you have to do there is look to your west at what Staunton has done to get an idea of how to go about this the right way. Charlottesville is another example. Really, this is not rocket science,” Gratz said.

“Ask yourself – did they do one big project? No. Was what they did gradual, incremental, step by step? Yes. Did it take a long time? Yes. Once it got going, did the momentum stop? No. This isn’t hard. Just open your eyes, ask the questions. And be willing to work at it. Because there really isn’t a magic bullet,” Gratz said.

Poulin isn’t looking for a magic bullet.

“The window of opportunity for us is wide open,” Poulin said. “Albemarle County is seeing tremendous growth, and the board of supervisors over there is looking to control it, quiet it. Charlottesville is becoming cost-prohibitive to live. So if you’re one of these young professionals who’s going to work in one of the research companies over there, and want to live in a downtown environment, you’re not going to be able to afford a million-dollar condo. But you wouldn’t mind driving 30 miles and living in a more open type environment in Waynesboro.”

That aspect of the project caught the attention of William Lucy, a professor of urban and environmental planning at the University of Virginia.

“Projects of this size aren’t common in communities the size of Waynesboro. But the kind of project being talked about – a mixed-use residential and commercial development – is becoming increasingly common here in Virginia and nationally. And with Waynesboro’s proximity to the growing Charlottesville-Albemarle market, it makes sense to try to market to people who want to live in the Valley and commute to a job in Charlottesville,” Lucy told the AFP.

From a downtown-development perspective, Lucy said, “it helps to have a base of customers – and residential development can provide that base of customers for restaurants and shops and other retailers.”

“The new downtown is not a comparison-shopping downtown. It is specialty shops, it’s entertainment, it’s convenience,” Lucy said.

“In these kinds of mixed-use developments, typically what you see first is the residential development. That provides the base for the commercial development. You get young professionals who don’t mind commuting and baby boomers who are looking to put down roots somewhere before retiring. Developments that are attractive to these demographics have become increasingly popular in the past few years, particularly in the last year or two,” Lucy said.

Poulin foresees a growing synergy between Riverfront Commons and the historic Tree Streets neighborhoods located nearby.

“You’ve got historic homes in the Tree Streets, you’ve got modern apartments and condos downtown, you’ve got businesses, and all of the sudden, you get thousands of people here during the day, thousands of people in the evening, and what will happen after that is that restaurants will be fighting to come downtown. You’ll have theaters that will be fighting to open up downtown. There will be entrepreneurs springing up to find opportunities,” Poulin said.

“The market pressures are starting to come together. I think our time is near,” Poulin said.

And near might be nearer than you think.

“Keep your ears and eyes open. What WDDI has been doing is working behind the scenes marketing this project. There are people who have the means to do something and can see the vision of what we want to do here who are seriously considering at this,” Poulin said.

(Published 02-13-06)

Waynesboro elections ’06

Economic-development issues promise to dominate the discussions among the candidates for the two open seats on Waynesboro City Council leading up to the May city elections.

That is, if incumbent Ward D councilman Reo Hatfield has his way.

“I have to believe that people can just look around and see that I’ve fulfilled my campaign promise on economic development. We’ve been blessed to have this economic development, and we’re not going to stop now,” said Hatfield, who has served two terms on city council, the first running from 1994 to 1998 and the second beginning in 2002.

Hatfield emphasized economic development in his 2002 campaign – and development issues have taken center stage since, with the Wal-Mart SuperCenter that was already in the works at the time of the May 2002 elections spurring rapid retail growth in the city’s West End.

“Our success has been obvious, at least from the word on the streets, and I feel like we have opportunities that are still arising,” Hatfield told The Augusta Free Press.

“It’s important to have business leadership in there right now to continue this progress,” said Hatfield, the president of the Waynesboro-based Reo Distribution logistics company.

The man that Hatfield unseated in the ’02 elections – DuBose Egleston – thinks that the self-styled business leadership currently in place on city council failed to foresee impacts on traffic and stormwater runoff from the West End development.

“We knew when Wal-Mart came to town that things were going to start happening,” Egleston told the AFP. “What I would have liked to have seen happen was when Wal-Mart came in, we should have done a comprehensive traffic study on Rosser Avenue and Lew Dewitt to develop a comprehensive plan for traffic. We should have done a comprehensive study on the impact on stormwater. We didn’t have to wait around for the businesses to come here. Do it before they come in. We knew the development was coming.

“We should have had the tenacity to do these things from the beginning. We should have had the foresight to do these things when we approved the Wal-Mart coming here. Hindsight is 20-20, but we have to learn from our mistakes and not let this kind of thing happen again. We can’t afford to,” Egleston said.

The second of Hatfield’s two opponents in the Ward D race – Waynesboro School Board chair Lorie Smith – as well wants to see city leaders looking more at the “big picture” than seems to be the case at the present time.

“We’re sitting in a locality where for many, many years we’ve been ignoring a number of issues that have been allowed to regress. I’m talking about issues from stormwater management to retention of our first responders to equipment that’s ancient. We’ve got a laundry list of things that we’ve allowed to regress, and to date a lot of those things are not getting proper attention,” Smith told the AFP.

“My concern is that we’re growing, and we’ve got to try to establish some vision for where we want the city to go with the growth – and we’ve also got to try to strengthen up the bases from which we’re beginning to grow,” Smith said. “We’ve got to get the infrastructure sound. We’ve got to go back and pick up some of these things where we’ve regressed so that we can provide a vision, and we can work from a solid place.”

Vice mayor Nancy Dowdy – whose Ward C seat is also up in the May elections – says the council should focus more of its time on infrastructure issues, one, and two on diversifying the development base to expand beyond retail.

“I don’t think we should hang our hat on retail at the exclusion of other areas of economic development,” said Dowdy, who does not yet have an announced challenger in Ward C.

“Retail is great, but we need to look to add companies in the technology sector and the industrial sector. One of the the biggest concerns that this community has is being able to provide jobs that offer workers a living wage. Industry jobs and technology jobs can do that,” Dowdy told the AFP.

Hatfield, who got the development discussion going last month with a full-page ad that he ran in a local newspaper touting the growth that has taken place in the city in his term on council, thinks politicians “ought to be judged on what they have done.”

“And look around. We’ve got a downtown that for the first time in the history of this city has property sales of over a million dollars. We’ve got new businesses downtown. We’re setting aside money for the sewage-treatment plant and stormwater management,” Hatfield said.

“Economic development is necessary to allow us to do these things – to allow us to maintain and reduce our tax rates so we can take this burden off our citizens,” Hatfield said.

(Published 02-06-06)