Henry Showalter

• Age: 37
• Occupation: Broker for Alcova Mortgage
• Community roots: Christiansburg native and son of Dr. Joe Showalter, a Christiansburg physician
• Affiliations: Christiansburg Presbyterian Church, Junior Achievement volunteer
• Education: 1988 graduate of Christiansburg High School. Attended Radford University, but studies were interrupted when he was deployed to Germany with the U.S. Army Reserve. Served eight years with the Reserve.

Election index

• Other candidates in the NRV answer your questions

Why should voters vote for you to serve on the Christiansburg Town Council?

Henry Showalter: Voters should vote for me because I’m energetic, I want to get involved with the community and I want to see a future for the town. I graduated in 1988, I’ve lived here my whole life and we all know things change in 20-year cycles. It seems to me with the current town government and council members we’re not looking down the road, we’re not anticipating change, and I would like to be part of that — to look ahead, to ask questions: “Should we, should we not? Why should we do these things?” And enhance the community. That’s the main thing. And it’s not just one or two things. I think a community is like a puzzle. If you miss a couple pieces of the puzzle, you’re not done. I think we are missing a few pieces. We have done major facilities but we forgot about the simple things that make up our community that enhance our lives. I think I can make a change. I can be a voice for the people in the area.

First-time voter Sarah Hamed, 18, asks “When will the town ever put in sidewalks uptown? The area is inaccessible for pedestrians.” Coreen Mett, 60, also wonders about foot traffic around the New River Valley Mall area: “My question is how soon are we going to be able to cross [U.S.] 460 as a pedestrian?”

HS: That’s a great question and it’s one I’ve thought about during my election and prior to that. What you look at again is the 20-year plan. If we go back when the mall was first built, we had a huge opportunity right then to not do major changes in our ordinances for commercial developers, but we could have instilled that back then. You’ll have current incumbents saying, “Well, you couldn’t do that. They wouldn’t come.” I disagree with that. Christiansburg was a community that was starting to grow and we all know why. Virginia Tech is a major employer, it’s a major college in the nation and that’s why we don’t get hit as hard as most communities during a recession. Colleges will continue to grow. We flourish off that. But we should have tweaked the ordinance there to allow them to put in underground cables, sidewalks for pedestrians. But the question is what to do now. Now to be honest with you, with the construction of the aquatic center taking up a lot of resources — more resources that people even are considering and even the council understands — this is going to make that so difficult. Believe me, if I could build sidewalks all over town and if we could all chip in without increasing taxes, without increasing meal taxes to make it so unbearable to go out to eat because your tax would be so high, I wish I could do that. But the key is to correct Peppers Ferry Road. I think that’s a main issue. And then once we get the aquatic center at least hopefully close to paying for itself annually — which means paying the money back that we borrowed to build it and then the operation cost — those are the things that we have to look at. I do see most recently new builders or commercial builders are putting in sidewalks. I think they did correct the code. Again, that’s why I’m running is so we can look down the road and treat all builders equally. This might be rumor, but I’ve heard some builders say, “Well, somebody didn’t have to do this.” From here on out, we need to look at making it more pedestrian friendly in our downtown and in the mall and commercial area. How to do that without increasing taxes? That’s very hard. And then with the aquatic center, as I said before, this is really going to limit our services. Your council members won’t tell you that but considering in my opinion they don’t have a plan, which means they didn’t look at every scenario prior to building this project, it’s going to make it tough to do certain things like that.

Doris Oliver, 74, has a follow-up question to a recent news story about Christiansburg’s failure to follow open meeting mandates in the Virginia Freedom of Information Act: “Do you intend to acquaint yourself with FOIA rules prior to taking office?”

HS: Absolutely. I think this is the major issue, other than the soon-to-be costs of the aquatics center that we face. First thing you look at is the town attorney and the town manager. It’s their job to train us. True, during this process I’ve looked online and I’ve learned a lot about it. Basically, the Freedom of Information Act is to keep governments from going corrupt. It takes journalists and people investigating things. I agree wholeheartedly with it. I think the government should open up. If you see right now what’s going on, they’ve been called on their private meetings, things like that, but if you pay attention, I don’t think anything’s been done. You’ve heard training is going to happen. Well, you know, this is a law, OK? And we violated the law. Our town government did, our town council did, our town mayor. You know, they are good people, but this has been going on for a long time. This is a law and they’re finally getting called on it. Now, what have they done? In my opinion the first thing I would have done is open everything up. You want to see it, it’s there. Our Web site, they say, is inadequate. Well, we could go on and create PDFs for people to go on, we could send out a newsletter — which I’m huge for this, a community newsletter to inform citizens. Bulletin boards at the senior center and the rec center — good bulletin boards where people can go and update. Really, the government, are they taking this seriously? I really don’t think we are. The key is, it’s a straight question, you should get a straight answer. This has been going on for months and they’ve knowingly violated. It feels like that the council and the government believes people will forget about it. Hopefully, they won’t. Because this is a law and they should open up. We should do an audit of the government to make sure, to reinforce the citizens that everything’s OK. You’re starting to hear people say, “Well, they’re doing it because they’re hiding something.” I don’t want to believe that but I think the more they keep ignoring bringing open government about, the more I’m starting to question it. We should open up immediately. That’s going to be the first thing if I get elected that I’m going to do. And I’m going to hold the town manager accountable. One of the things I wanted to say about this is just go on the town Web site. If you look at the administration, it’ll give you a detail of what they’re here for. The administration part is the town manager, the assistant town manager. It says under their duties they’re responsible for fiscal budgets, administering town code in accordance with applicable state and federal laws, long-range planning, legal matters and procurement. The key is we should have been doing this all along, and we haven’t. You’re ignoring a law.

Ryane Doyle, 23, is a Florida native who has lived in Christiansburg for the past 1½ years. She asks, “Do you intend to continue attracting retail growth in Christiansburg? What could be done to attract business to the downtown area?”

HS: As a community that prides itself on retail, which Christiansburg has and we’ve developed that, of course we want to continue to bring retail in. One of the main things I look at is eventually you’ll see Roanoke Road start to redevelop — places being bought, torn down. You have to have a future vision here. One thing we need to do is keep it pedestrian-friendly, create ordinances now, especially with the economy slowing down. We all know things work in cycles. So the economy will slow down now, but 10 years from now it might pick right back up. If we put ordinances, overlays into place for certain communities, we can encourage growth. We are a thriving area, low-cost housing. You’ve heard a lot of people talk about that. We’ll continue to have people move in. Businesses will want to move here for overall retail. The downtown, I believe with the improvement going on downtown, the key is our major retail has moved out of downtown and it’s happened like that all across the nation. What the town has done — they have done new sidewalks to enhance downtown — but is that going to cure the problem? I don’t know. They are putting on more events than they used to and I think when you encourage a community to come out and especially go downtown, I think that will get more people down there. But you also have to look at the Christiansburg downtown. We’re spending $1.4 million on just one section. Another section is getting ready to start. Are we holding our business owners and private citizens downtown responsible for the upkeep of their buildings? I know the town has put a lot of money in it. If you look at the old FNB building on Main Street, it’s been boarded up for almost five years. Nothing has happened, nobody is contacted. It really is your town council’s responsibility to make sure the town and its private owners keep it updated and nice. But one of my big platforms is historic districts. I think right now we have to create overlays for our historic districts. Remember, our downtown is not part of our historic district. It’s South Franklin, up on the hill where those round houses are. It’s around The Oaks. And it’s Cambria. So we need to create an overlay and create historic districts. One, if we create those now and they start to grow and retails come in, they’ll recognize that. The actual downtown is wide open. You could have a major developer come in, buy it. That’s one of the things we have to look at, too. But I think if you create certain ordinances, zoning ordinances, to eliminate and allow public review prior to building, I think that’s a good way to go. And it’s not a major undertaking by our government to do this. It’s basically tweaking certain ordinances that we already have.

“Will Christiansburg raise real estate taxes as the county plans to do?” Is there some way to maintain tax relief for the elderly citizens?” asks William June Smith, 70. On the subject of taxes, 21-year-old Danielle Akers wants to know if the town “will consider expanding town limits to increase revenue taxes?”

HS: Since I’ve been going door-to-door, I’ve heard a lot about that. If you look at the history of Christiansburg, usually when it comes to tax increases or breaks on taxes for the elderly they follow suit right with Montgomery County. Right now if we look at our real estate taxes in Christiansburg, we’re the lowest in our area. If you look at real estate tax assessment, they tax per $100. We’re at 11 cents per $100 on your tax assessment. Wytheville is the next closest at 16 cents. Blacksburg is at 22 cents. Radford, I believe, is at 73 cents. But we are the lowest. In my opinion, what we should do is keep it low. Now, what you’re going to see in the next two months and prior to me being elected, is you’re going to see an increase and that’s my prediction. It’s coming. At the last forum, you’ve heard one of the incumbents say we’re losing $300,000 out of our budget. Well, where are they going to make that back? The aquatics center when it gets done is going to cost more than what the current town council is telling you — just to operate it. So how are we going to pay for it? And this is going to be for every year after that. This is going to be a drain on our resources every year, and it’s there and we have to plan for it. Do we need to increase taxes to match Blacksburg at 22 cents? No. But they are going up. That’s the position that our council and our government have put us in right now. And that’s why I’m running.