Thursday, August 28, 2008
Countryside neighbors blindsided again
From the RoundTable blog
Read the latest entries
Valerie Garner
Garner is chairwoman of the Countryside Neighborhood Alliance. She lives in Roanoke.
In May 2005, the Countryside neighborhood in Northwest Roanoke woke to the morning Roanoke Times newspaper to find that Roanoke had taken an option to purchase the Countryside Golf Club property ("Week in review," May 8, 2005 Virginia section).
The neighborhood was in shock. I decided to e-mail the councilman whose name was quoted in the paper to find out what was going on. That was Brian Wishneff. Wishneff and Councilman Sherman Lea along with Brian Townsend (with the planning department at the time) came to my house. There was no room for every neighbor, so they lined my driveway, hallway and back porch.
I remember Lea and Wishneff at the time were surprised our homes were even here. No one on council had visited the property or knew what they were buying.
We were promised inclusion in the plans for the property. I know both Wishneff and Lea made efforts to get us in on the ground floor because my Freedom Of Information Act request of e-mails demonstrated it to be so. These e-mails also demonstrated that the other members of council and the city administration felt otherwise.
So to this day we continue to be twisted and turned, lifted up and let down and surprised. Just when things relaxed as they did a week or two ago and we plan great things for our neighborhood, we get our legs swept out from under us again. We have gone through so many council members now I can't count. There is only one original member left who was serving in 2005, and that is Lea.
I ask all who criticize our neighborhood's distrust to put yourself in our shoes. First, we are stunned in May 2005 when we first found out it was purchased, then a developer pulls out with us never seeing any plans, more requests for proposals lead to nothing, one last minute proposal is replied to, resulting in one nightmare of a plan. So that plan goes back for revision and a year goes by; the plan is rejected, and we are back to square one.
We attended every Parks and Recreation Master Plan workshop hoping for a crumb, but got nothing. Then, the previous council left it for this council. Then, as it seems a longer term lease with an operator is going to relieve the tension -- wham -- let's put selling it on the table and see if it floats.
We were promised that it would never be cut up into pieces. We were promised we would be included in the process. Inclusion never happened, and, as the Aug. 18 council meeting proved, it never will.
So walk a mile in our shoes before you cast a stone on our mistrust. We don't need surprises like that council meeting and Councilman Court Rosen's pronouncement that now we might sell it, either keeping it a golf course for a certain amount of time or turning it into half park and half business.
Were we included in the discussion of that option? No. It was purely a financial and business idea. Where have I heard this before -- "It's not personal; it's business" -- the reply from the affected person in this movie was, "It was personal to me."
If anything about a city council is true, it should be that each member was elected to be personal with the citizens.
Look at the organizational chart for the city. Who is on top? Is it the mayor? Is it the city manager or some CEO? No. It says "The Citizens of Roanoke."
So pardon me if I don't think council's ideas are good ideas. No one has asked us for any of our ideas, ever.
