Fear and Loathing: Moving Waynesboro Forward
Fear and Loathing in Waynesboro column by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net
When the editorial page at The News Virginian is compelled to complain about the new conservative city council, then you know that something worthy of a closer look is taking place.
“(W)hat Waynesboro needs is a quickening of the pulse,” the NV opined today, and I can’t agree more. We’ve all been lulled to sleep by the quiet summer on city council that followed one of the more tumultuous springs in recent local political memory. The firing of Doug Walker that was engineered before the election and was brought to fruition just after was the first in a series of serious missteps by the new majority, which has made peace and tranquility its primary motivating goal since.
But of course, peace and tranquility in the political arena also serve the do-nothing nature of the Frank Lucente-Bruce Allen duo that makes up two-thirds of the new majority well. For it has been Lucente, famously now a vision-hater, and Allen who made it clear before the election that they have no interest in the future of Downtown Waynesboro or anything else in the economic-development sphere that doesn’t involve cuts in the cost of the city doing business in the development game. The Lucente-Allen team is about as laissez-faire as it gets, which would be fine if the city were sitting pretty with an economy purring on all cylinders and an education system that was funded adequately to meet the needs of its children and a quality of life that didn’t include dangerous holes in the sidewalks in downtown and a general lacking in basic recreational and cultural amenities for its citizenry.
As a committed fiscal conservative, I am not suggesting that I think it’s the city’s job to make all of the above happen with a snap or two of the fingers. But neither do I think that we can expect that any of the above will ever happen without the city playing at least some kind of role. Which is to say, economic development doesn’t just happen, fully funded education doesn’t just happen, we won’t wake up tomorrow and have 10 entrepreneurs open up thriving new businesses in our downtown.
“(W)we are disturbed by what strikes us as an eagerness to accept Waynesboro’s present state of affairs,” the NV wrote today, and I can’t say that I think they’re overstating things here at all. Lucente, the new vice mayor, has effectively bogged city council down in various and sundry mini-projects involving new traffic lights that he thinks could mitigate the need for a new West End fire station and a new setup for the Economic Development Authority that he has suggested rather incredulously could somehow save the city a million dollars a year in its commitment to local economic-development efforts while actively opposing efforts of the council’s third conservative, Mayor Tim Williams, and its two progressives, Nancy Dowdy and Lorie Smith, to actively engage in a look at the big picture in Waynesboro.
I can’t think this is accidental, though I still struggle with the why part of this strange equation. I can’t imagine that anybody would look at Waynesboro today and think that it would be wise to leave well enough alone.
I’ve been wrong before, and spent three months of my life and $10,000 on a losing political campaign proving the point.
Is Waynesboro worth the effort to try to move things forward? I think so, and I’m happy that my friends at the NV agree.
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I have been hearing so long about the city doing something downtown that I hardly read the articles anymore. I remember them planting the trees down there…years later they cut them back down…put in new sidewalks, but rthe stores remain empty. I am not sure that the current council deserves much blame (yet) because they just started in July and downtown has been empty for years.
Yet. The operative word. But my critique is about more than downtown.
There can be little doubt in ones’ mind that the newly elected Council members are blind to even the most basic needs of the city.
For Example: The sidewalks, where they do exist, are in need of repair and upgrading. The lack of mass transportation and the skyrocketing cost of fuel have increased the cycling and pedestrian traffic while reducing the safety of same: and the danger especially on those of the East/West and North/South heavily trafficked streets mandates the need of sidewalks on BOTH sides of the street.
We need a plan to address the
method and manner in which we determine the placement of CROSSWALKS at every one of our public schools. And we should do as the more progressive cities do, flank them with signage stating “Pedestrians in crosswalks have right-of-way”
We should evaluate the removal of “no right turn on red” signage. The waste of fuel during idling is costly to already pinched budgets! There are many other “LITTLE THINGS” that support the growing cynicism in the people that the council is out-of-touch.