Waynesboro has a chance to move forward: The future is in your hands

Waynesboro voters have a chance to set city government in a new direction in the 2024 elections, with a slate of candidates intent on moving the city away from the do-nothing attitude that has been entrenched here for a generation.

Two former mayors, Terry Short and Bobby Henderson, and former long-time Economic Development Authority member Lorie Strother, are on the Nov. 5 ballot, with early voting set to begin in just six weeks, on Sept. 20.

Short is running for the Ward B seat currently held by Bruce Allen, who was elected in 2008 on a ticket led by the leader of the local do-nothing clique, a guy named Frank Lucente, whose goal as a member of Waynesboro City Council was to keep taxes and spending low, tying our ability to do anything to how it would impact retirees on fixed incomes, to the detriment of our public schools, crumbling infrastructure and struggling local jobs sector.

Henderson is running for the at-large seat, where he will be opposed by Jeremy Sloat, whose name might be familiar for his candidacy for the Ward C seat in the 2022 elections, on the Republican ticket alongside our current vice mayor, Jim Wood.

You might remember this Jim Wood guy. He’s the one who lobbed a homophobic slur at Transportation Secretary and VP short-list candidate Pete Buttigieg last year as the city was petitioning Buttigieg for help in obtaining federal dollars on a city development project, and faced weeks of public pressure to step down, including from his fellow members of the City Council.

Strother is competing in Ward A against another Republican, David Goetze, the vice president of research at the North Carolina-based Electoral Education Foundation, which, you can tell from his party affiliation and the group’s name what the focus is there.

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Waynesboro

• He’s back: Bobby Henderson eyes at-large seat on Waynesboro City Council in November
• Unfinished business: Terry Short Jr. hopeful for another term on Waynesboro City Council
• City Council members, city residents, urge Waynesboro Vice Mayor Jim Wood to resign

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Waynesboro is the rare city in Virginia and really in the whole of the United States that still leans right-of-center, though it will be interesting to see the impact of the change implemented ahead of the 2022 elections moving the city elections to November, alongside the federal election.

Even in that 2022 race, without a presidential contest to drive voter turnout, Wood, the Republican, won a narrow 17-vote victory over Sam Hostetter, the left-of-center incumbent, and Sloat came up short in his Ward C race to independent candidate Kenny Lee.

No doubt, Goetze and Sloat will attach themselves to the MAGA agenda, championing the do-nothing approach long advocated by Lucente – doing nothing to address deficiencies in K-12 education, doing nothing to address the infrastructure issues we face, doing nothing to address housing insecurity, doing nothing to address the dearth of living-wage jobs.

Henderson, Short and Strother are Waynesboro’s chance to reverse course from two decades of pretense that we can do nothing and still somehow move forward.

Our kids, nearly two-thirds of whom are on free and reduced lunch, deserve better

Their parents, who have to sign their kids up for the lunch programs because of the lack of economic opportunity, deserve better.

People across the spectrum who can’t afford to make ends meet, and those who aren’t sure of having a place to put their heads down every night, deserve better.

Waynesboro has so much potential, with its natural beauty, located at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains, with its access to the Blue Ridge Parkway and Appalachian Trail, to I-64 and I-81, 20 minutes from Charlottesville, a bustling economic engine that we have barely tapped into.

The do-nothings who have been in charge here for as long as anybody can remember seem to think that Waynesboro’s best days are behind them. That’s why they don’t want us to invest in our kids, why they don’t want us to seek new opportunities.

Their approach, the past 20-plus years, is to do everything they can to keep things the way they are, which is fine for those at the top who’ve already gotten theirs, but for the rest of us, not so much.

The voters of Waynesboro can chart a new course beginning Sept. 20 and running through Nov. 5.

Waynesboro’s best days don’t have to be behind us. We can move forward into a brighter, more inclusive, more prosperous future.