Leslie Hager-Smith

• Age: 51
• Occupation: Director of the Downtown Merchants of Blacksburg
• Community roots: Has lived and worked in town for 26 years
• Affiliations: Sustainable Blacksburg, Blacksburg Downtown Revitalization Committee, Epilepsy Foundation of Virginia, church and various civic organizations
• Education: 1977 graduate of the University of Georgia

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• Other candidates in the NRV answer your questions

Leslie Hager-Smith: [Working as the director of the Downtown Merchants of Blacksburg for a year] has … brought me into a situation where I’ve got working relationships with the town staff and sit on town committees. So in effect, I feel as though I’m already accomplishing the work that takes place on council. And being part of council itself will take that to the next level. My personal background I think is important because it not only differs from the present council, but it differs from councils historically. I’m not an academic. I have business background, I have newspaper background and I have background in nonprofits. I’m not finished raising my children. I have recent experience with Montgomery County Public Schools, and I have connections with people who sit on the board of supervisors, on the county school board and … in other towns. So I bring something to it that isn’t purely academic, and I think that’s going to be critical in the next term. I think that we’ve got a short window of opportunity here. We’ve wasted time, made some regrettable decisions, and we’re not ready for the amount of growth we’re about to see take off. So I think I’m a “get’er done kind of person.”

Jeanne Roper, founding member of the Valley Interfaith Childcare Center, asks: If elected, what could you do about the rapidly decreasing options for child care in the town and the New River Valley?

LHS: Well, I think the town and the university need to see the [Valley] Interfaith Childcare Center as a clear-cut asset. But having one is not enough, and everybody putting their eggs into that one basket is not adequate.

I think it does make some sense to be in conversation, possibly a summit or an ongoing multilateral committee … to try to identify other places in the community where we could use that model and support the creation of more childcare options. I think an enlightened group of corporations are starting to understand how important that is as a benefit to their employees. An obvious place to begin would be the CRC [Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center], to try to get that group of people who are well organized and who can be addressed as a group, to get that group together and see what possibilities might lie there for creating a kind of another daycare setting.

Bijaya and Hara Misra, residents of the Harding Avenue area, say they are concerned that an idea to build, with some federal funds, a 130-home affordable housing project near them could cause problems. They ask: Should council bring a high-density, low-income development to this area where the roads are already burdened with traffic from apartment complexes?

LHS: I have heard from them at two different forums and I think that she’s [Bajaya] raised a lot of thoughtful questions. And it’s interesting for me to see the whole thing play out because I think the world of Janaka Casper and the people who are coming together to bring that housing development there. I trust them at gut, but I realize that public officials have a higher order of accountability than that. It’s not adequate for me to know his reputation …to know where he began 30 years ago, know that he’s philosophically committed to doing the right thing. That’s still not adequate because those people are posing really good questions. And I did not know the answers to all those questions when she asked me this earlier. I don’t think it’s just the traffic that concerns them. She also raised issues about water. How is that going to work out in a karst terrain and that’s a hilly road. I think she and her neighbors are on wells and she’s wondering how the area is going to be served if you bring in a whole other whole large group of people. She is clearly a thoughtful person who has researched the project more than I have at this moment. And … what I told her, and what I will do about it, is to become as versed in that as she is. My sense is that it’s a sound project. My belief is that we are fortunate that Janaka Casper and the Community Housing Partners are still willing to continue to partner with us given how many years they put into trying to redevelop the … Givens Lane subdivision [Clayton Estates Mobile Home Park], and years of effort didn’t pan out. We’re lucky he’s still in the trenches. And that is the type of people I would like to see [the town] continuing partnerships with.

Toms Creek basin resident Mary Houska asks: “What is your vision for the Toms Creek basin?”

LHS: I think growth is going in that direction, however, I think we have committed ourselves to make sure that it remain … low-density residential. I hope that it will be in the short-term served by the STEP/STEG sewer system that we all in effect have already agreed upon and that the town has committed itself to. I think it’s adequately well researched and I think a beautiful model already exists at the Village at Toms Creek, where I understand the same technology is in place. So I would expect that area to remain largely open space, low-density residential served by the STEP/STEG system.

Retired Virginia Tech Vice President for Multicultural Affairs Ben Dixon asks: As a council member, what will you do to encourage equity, access and inclusion of people from other countries, people living on lower incomes and other minorities?

LHS: It’s a big, dense question. … I think across the boards that an overbusy, overtaxed staff and council have perhaps grown accustomed to calling up on the usual suspects each time that a committee is formed. And I think that it might not be easy, but that it is time that the effort is made to start reaching a little bit farther to get a new group of people involved. The truth is this town is filled with people from all variety of interesting different cultures and backgrounds. … We have a rich, rich mix. But there is the 2 percent of people in the population who are of African-American descent and distinctly under-represented in most of the local governments in Montgomery County or whether it’s Christiansburg or Radford or Blacksburg. So there’s that piece of it. The other thing that I am increasingly aware of is that … we have a group of young people here who are looking for all the amenities we already possess, but they will also need inclusion in the community. There are plenty of young adults who are staying here. They’re attracted by Tech or they are attracted by the environment and the sports activities opportunities. … We need to reach out to that sector, too.