Dick F. Harshberger

• Age: 72
• Occupation: Retired from Virginia Tech; COO of Strategic Decisions Alliance; Transportation Construction Management Institute
• Community roots: The founding director of The Long Way Home in 1971. Moved to Radford 1975.
• Affiliations: Past president of the Radford Rotary Club; member of the Radford Noon Rotary Club; Futurist Society; board of Radford Chamber of Commerce; advisory council of the New River Valley Agency on Aging; executive board of Radford Bridges; board of Fairview Home; board of New River Community Partners; Radford Heritage Foundation board; Radford tourism task force; Highlander Festival Committee; Radford University Art Council Leadership Committee
• Education: AB in economics from the University of Pittsburgh; master’s in theater arts from Villanova University; Ph.D. from North Carolina State in higher education administration

Election index

• Other candidates in the NRV answer your questions

Dick Harshberger: Since I am an incumbent, I can say I have experience. I have not lost my enthusiasm for what I’m trying to do. I have a can-do attitude, highly positive. I’ve worked hard to help develop a sense of urgency. I think you’re seeing more urgency here in what we’re trying to do. We’re seeing shorter timeframes. We’re getting people moving in the right direction. I feel very much a part of that. I see much more to do. I see so many more possibilities out there. For example, I see one of the possibilities with the box factory is to actually create a campus like presence there for the city. Right there you’ve got Glencoe on one side. You’ve got the box factory on the other side. Robertson Street there. Can you see us going down Robertson street into the park going around or over or under or whatever the trestle and opening up a west end entrance to the park, which helps us so much with the west end, creating more traffic flow there, creating more business opportunities there as we get more traffic flowing there. There’s just so much we can do an I’m really caught up in it. That’s why I’d like to get re-elected.

Kim Irby, a 46-year-old school employee, asks: What are you going to do to develop the downtown retail area? What plans to you have for the vacant buildings?

DH: One thing, of course, is that we have in place a very good executive director for Main Street Radford, Becky Haupt. I’ve been very supportive of her, but I think we’re going to have some incentives put in to getting people into these buildings. I think that’s something we’ve talk some about, but I think we’re going to have to get serious about, because some of them has set empty for a long time. The other thing is we’re to have to get meetings with some of the owners and start to explore this question on a one –on-one basis with them This is something I think that Becky has tried to do. I’m not saying she hasn’t tried, but I think we’re going to have to get in there and help her.

What are your plans about recycling, reusing and green building?, asks Nicci Cramer, a 21-year-old Radford University nursing student.

DH: I’ve pushed really hard, with others. Read the comprehensive plan and you’ll see that we have green all over it. We really, really are looking for our future development to be LEED, green buildings. And that our development always be taking into consideration, both our green spaces that we’re trying to preserve and the small carbon foot print that we want to be sure that we maintain. We want the smallest carbon footprint we can get as we continue to develop the city.

Charlene Jordan, a 34-year-old nurse, asks: What can you do about energy cost?

DH: We are entered into a 20-year contract now, with AEP. We distribute the electricity. We have the distribution system. One of the problems we have here is we went, I believe, 17 years without a rate increase. And then, when we had one, ti was big. This isn’t fair to the people. When people are budgeting, they could have absorbed a 1 percent a year increase. You can adjust your budget pretty easily on that. But when you hit them with a 20 percent all at one time, that really does hurt people. We’ve done a pretty good job negotiating a contract to help contain it.

What about plans for more sidewalks, more green space, public transit, Jordan also wants to know.

DH: People’s private property is hard to influence. It’s their private property and that’s what makes this country what it is, because of private property. But we do control the streets. Attractive streetscapes is something we can do And we can use streetscapes — improving our streetscapes with trees, with better sidewalks and curbing and all the other things — to bring out the aspiration levels of the people who own those properties.

Public transportation, we lost that and we never should have. One of the interim things that we can do for more of a mass transit is taxicabs. For many years to get a license to drive a taxi was almost prohibitive. We simplified the regulations so that people didn’t have so many hoops to jump through. I think, looking back, we probably should go farther on that. We probably should provide some incentives for people to start taxi businesses in this city. Because we do control the rates on that and it does provide the kind of services that are needed by a lot of people like handicapped people, people who are older and infirmed, but also just a person who wants to go somewhere. It also would provide a service for anybody who’s had two drinks. They could call a taxi and be taken home. That’s one thing. I think another thing, if we could work more closely with Radford University on sharing mass transit, I think that would be really something. I think they’re open to that because that’s a win-win situation if we can make that work.