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When Marc Verniel was hired on to the Blacksburg town staff 11 years ago, one of the first things he did was buy a house for his fiancee, Kristie Rowe.

His entry-level planner salary hovered at about $22,000 then. And the house cost about $87,000.

Today as Blacksburg’s new town manager, Verniel’s salary has more than quadrupled to $110,000. And the tax value of his house, according to county records, has risen by more than 50 percent.

A lot of other things have also changed since 1994, the year Verniel earned his master’s degree in urban and regional planning from Virginia Tech and went to work for the town. Not least among them is his perception of Blacksburg.

“When I was a college kid I would define Blacksburg as campus and downtown and the apartment I lived in,” he said.

But his exposure to all levels of town government, from founding its technology department to writing its first modernized comprehensive plan, has broadened that view and taught him to look at the town as a whole, rather than in parts.

As he rearranges the furniture in the manager’s office, issues such as a dearth of affordable housing and retail businesses, a tightening town budget and the ever-present questions of how much and what kind of growth residents will support, have already started knocking on the door, asking for an audience.

In the midst of this transition, Verniel sat in his back yard last week to talk about the town’s challenges and his plans for its future. much and what kind of growth residents will support, have already started knocking on the door, asking for an audience.

In the midst of this transition, Verniel sat in his backyard last week with reporter Tonia Moxley and talked about the town’s challenges and his hopes for its future.

I think a lot of people don’t understand what a town manager is. What is your job?

Mark Verniel: You have seven elected officials and their role is more in setting town policy and big picture items. And then it’s the manager’s role to carry out the day-to-day operations of the town. … It’s really my job to make sure that those operations are being carried out effectively and efficiently, make sure we’re meeting the needs of the citizens, and to communicate both ways between the staff and the council.

Do you consider the public to be your employers, as well as town council?

MV: In a strictly technical, contractual sense? No. I work for the council. It’s my job to satisfy the needs of the council. Now, by doing that, I should really be satisfying the needs of the citizens …When you’re in public service, you’re there to serve the public.

During your career with the town, you’ve worked under two very different town managers, Ron Secrist and Gary Huff. Secrist, by reputation, remains very popular and was well liked for his people-centered approach to leading the town. Huff was much more introverted, more involved with the business community and sensitive to public criticism. What did you learn from each of them?

MV: There were several differences between them. But there were a lot of similarities, too. They both had high expectations, both were very professional, both had a high level of integrity. Neither one of them was a micro-manager … they hired good staff and let them do their jobs. Ron, I learned from him probably how to deal with the public…he had a gift for that. From Gary I probably learned more about operations. … Internally, he brought a lot of teamwork to the town.

Did you ever think of yourself in their position and think about what you would or wouldn’t do?

MV: I always respected that they were the manager and it was their decision to make. … But they were both very open. You could approach both of them and you could disagree with them … that’s something that I took from both of them. I don’t mind – and I’ve told the staff this – I don’t mind if you disagree with me. I don’t want a bunch of people around me that just tell me what they think I want to hear.

According to town code, the town manager “serves at the pleasure” of the seven elected council members. Your bosses might not always want the same things from you. How are you going to please them all? What happens if they split on a contentious issue, as they did two years ago on the Toms Creek sewer?

MV: Those situations are going to come up, there’s no doubt. I think the key is to have a good working relationship up front and to have open lines of communication both directions … that way when you do get into a situation where there may be a split on an issue, then the trust is already there.

They already know that if one council member sends me a question, for example, then I’m going to communicate that information to all seven of them. I’m not going to give information to just one of them that’s going to help their argument … I think you establish that trust now.

The May 2004 election brought out more registered voters than any Blacksburg election in more than a decade and changed the political balance of Town Council, which then killed the plan to build a Toms Creek sewer. Many council watchers saw it as a referendum on the sewer and on the council’s way of conducting town business. Did town staff see it also as a judgment on the job they were doing? What was the mood inside the town government after the election?

MV: First, I think people turning out to vote is great. In Blacksburg, we always want a high level of citizen participation … If you don’t participate, then your voice may not be heard.

From a staff standpoint, it [the election] didn’t create a lot of stress. But the sewer issue did. … Anytime you have a split on an issue like that, you need to be really careful and find the right direction to go. … Maybe it was a learning experience for us. I don’t think we’ve dealt with an issue where we had a split council in a long time.

Since the election, the council has been functioning well, I think. And the staff has been functioning well with council. We have a very professional staff … and we have a professional council. A lot of localities don’t have that.

Did the council vote last year to kill the Toms Creek sewer plan resolve this 30-year-old issue or did it just put it off one more time?

MV: It’s definitely not resolved. I think we’re in the process of resolving it now.

You mean the $270,000 sewer study?

MV: The sewer study’s just the first step. The study will define the problem. Then we’ll have to use that to decide what kind of sewer goes where, if any. … If we put the right process in place to make a decision, maybe we can avoid what happened the last time.

The former town manager, Gary Huff, and the town attorney advised council on the sewer issue. After the election, they both took other jobs. Were those departures due, at least in part, to the sewer fight and the election?

MV: Yeah, I know the paper [The Roanoke Times] has kind of linked those two things together a couple of times in a couple of articles when people have left. … But I don’t know that people left because of the sewer in either case.

But weren’t people pretty beaten up by that?

MV: Like I said, it was a stressful period for folks. So, you know, how that factored in, I don’t know. That’s really a question for the people who left. But like in Gary’s case, he was able to retire with full retirement from the state of Virginia, move to Indiana to be a town manager of a quick growing, active place, and make a full salary there. And he was able to move closer to family, which I think was his goal all along. … Gary could have stayed. It wasn’t a situation where he needed to leave.

What about Kathleen Dooley, former town attorney, who advised council during the sewer fight?

MV: I think she went on to a good situation up in Fredericksburg. She’s a great attorney – really bright, hardworking, sharp. … They’re happy with her up there, too. I’ve seen their manager at conferences, and she’s doing a great job for them.

So how did you avoid being involved in the sewer issue? Or were you involved in it?

MV: I wasn’t directly involved in it. … I wasn’t up there gathering information and presenting data. The engineers were doing that. I was involved indirectly as a member of the team. But I definitely didn’t take a side or wasn’t a proponent of any alternative.

I think we do need to make a decision as to what happens in the Tom’s Creek basin. Now whether that’s a centralized system, a decentralized system or a hybrid or a combination of all the above will probably be determined in the future. I think any of the options probably will work. It’s a matter of deciding what’s the right one.

What changes are you planning to make now that you’re manager? Will there be other staff changes that you know of?

MV: We’ll be hiring a deputy town manager. We’re just changing the name. It’s the same job [as the former title of assistant town manager]. Chris Lawrence is also in the office. He had kind of this awkward title of management administrator. Now he’ll be the assistant to the town manager.

Four council seats, including that of longtime Mayor Roger Hedgepeth, will be up for election in May 2006. Conceivably you could have four new bosses next year. What will you do to prepare for that possibility? Does it worry you at all?

MV: No, I’m not worried. … If you look back at history in Blacksburg, when we’ve had a change in council, the overall direction hasn’t changed.

If you do have new council members, of course you have to help train those council members, … give them information, teach them about the budget and the comprehensive plan and zoning. And any time we deal with an election we [the staff] has to prepare to deal with information requests from candidates and make sure we’re providing the same information to the candidates and not give anybody an advantage. … But no, I don’t worry about it.

Some people credit Michael Vick and the Virginia Tech football team with driving real estate prices up. That’s good for some people. But it’s also forced working class people and even some lower-paid professionals to live outside of town. What should town government do, if anything, about that?

MV: Well, I don’t know that it’s attributable to Michael Vick. I think real estate has been going up everywhere.

You don’t think the ACC [Atlantic Coast Conference] had anything to do with that?

MV: I think that’s a hard link to make for me….Whatever the phenomenon is, whether it’s people buying a condo for game days or people buying a condo for their college kid, it definitely affects the real estate market here. But I think that’s always been the case. It is harder to afford a home in Blacksburg than anywhere else in the surrounding area. And it’s definitely something we’ve been concerned about.

We’re starting to make some efforts ... they’re very significant, but they’re just a start, I think. With the Roanoke-Lee Street project, some of the rehabs we’re doing. We’re building some new units there with this [federal] entitlement money … to make it more affordable. We just got into this business, really, a couple of years ago. I think it’s something we’re going to be involved in from here on out.

Mayor Roger Hedgepeth has said during public meetings that he’s worried that competition from restaurants and other businesses on the Virginia Tech campus will hurt local businesses. He’s also pointed out that restaurants on campus don’t pay local meals taxes. What effect do you think this competition has the local economy?

MV: I think it’s an issue that we’re slowly talking to Tech about. I think if you look at what has happened on campus … it’s changed. Now they’ve got real restaurants – the Chick-Fil-As and the Au Bon Pains -- and they’ve slowly started to creep to the edges of campus. … They may be competing directly with businesses in the town. But we have a good relationship with Tech. … so it’s something we’re starting to discuss.

A lot of people who are active in town government, either on council, committees or people who lobby council on issues, generally came from somewhere else and often are affiliated with Virginia Tech. Is the janitorial worker who was born and raised here and who lives in Clayton Estates trailer park getting enough attention to his issues?

MV: We are concerned about the folks who were born and raised here. And we do hear from them….they let you know that they’ve been here. They haven’t just come here a couple of years ago for a job at Virginia Tech. Their family may have owned land here for 200 years. But it’s hard to really categorize their issues…they have all different perspectives. You can’t really lump them into a group.

What are some of their issues, though, if you’re looking at them beside the issues of other people, especially transplants?

MV: It really depends on the issue and their situation. The sewer issue, for example, you may have people who have owned land in the Toms Creek basin since before the annexation in the ‘70s and they feel they were promised a sewer….Is that because they were born and raised here? Not necessarily. It may be just because they’re a landowner.

But people that were born and raised here do come and let us know. I appreciate it when they come and talk to me. They can give me perspective on things that I may not know. They can tell me what happened 20 years ago.

If you look back to the ‘70s and you read some of the things that were before council … a lot of it is the same issues we’re dealing with today. It’s downtown parking. It’s the Toms Creek annexation and the sewer. It’s Tech’s growth and the ability to tax on campus. It’s a lot of the same stuff we’re still talking about today.

There have been lots of other contentious issues in Blacksburg in the past few years – whether the town should invest $2 million in the Kent Square parking garage, the debate about whether to leave Heritage Park natural or develop it for recreation. People inside and outside the government seem pretty beaten up. What will you do to help heal these wounds on all sides?

MV: I think we went through a period where we’ve dealt with a lot of tough issues over the past six or seven years. … When you talk about any kind of change, you’re going to have different people with different opinions and its going to create some friction and some disagreement.

I think we need to take a look at every situation, at every issue we’re getting into and really look at the process we’re going to use to make the decision. And make sure that we choose a process that people feel involved in and feel like they are being heard.

Not to the point where we bog it down and we can’t make a decision. We need to ultimately make a decision. But we need to set it up so people feel their voice has been heard. Then it’s up to council to make the decision, even if it’s a tough decision.

How much control do you think you’ll have over that process?

MV: I think I can have a pretty good impact on that. And I think council feels the same way. I think they are concerned about doing things the right way. We’ve always taken pride in citizen input and involving the community in what we’re doing.

The town has been roundly criticized for a lack of communication in the past two years, by residents and business owners. Has the government earned its reputation for being secretive and unresponsive? And is repairing that reputation on your list of things to do?

MV: I don’t know that we have a reputation for being secretive and unresponsive. One of the things I do want to work on is public trust in local government. It’s one of those things you can’t take for granted. … I think we have a high level of public trust in Blacksburg and I think any time it starts to wane just a little bit, it feels like we’ve got a problem. And I don’t think we’re in a situation where we have a problem. But I think it is something we have to be conscious of.

I’ve already talked to the staff about it. And we’re going to be working, at least as a staff, on defining what is the issue and how we deal with it … how we communicate.

And, you know, it’s also citizens’ role to pay attention too. We can send information out. We can invite people to meetings. But the citizen has to show up at the meeting. And we go to great lengths to make sure our meetings are publicized … but still people have to take an active role in their town. It’s a two way street.

One thing I was thinking about when I created that question was the public hearing presentation policy that was a policy that had to do with people’s involvement with the government. And it was done by memo and was never publicly announced by the town. That seems secretive.

MV: I understand where you’re coming from with that. … When I go into a process, that’s one of the first things I think about is how are we going to involve the public and how are we going to notify folks ... That’s the way, as an organization, we’ve always done things. And since that’s the way I do things, I think the organization will continue to do it that way.

Blacksburg, like other localities in Southwest Virginia, has been, in the past at least, violating the state’s Freedom of Information Act and Public Records Act by deleting e-mails about public business. Has any process been put in place now to save those e-mails, either by staff or council?

MV: I don’t know that we’ve been violating the law. I’m not aware that we’ve been doing that.

Some people have, at least on council. I don’t know about staff. But some council members have told me they’ve been deleting e-mails that deal with public business.

MV: We don’t have some master storage device that saves every e-mail. … I don’t know if there’s enough storage in the world save every e-mail that comes in. But the way I treat them and the way staff treats them is they’re like any other written communication. … They have to be retained.

Let’s say I make a request or a citizen makes a request. Let’s say there’s this zoning amendment and I want to see all the correspondence, e-mail and otherwise, memos, etc., between council and staff and any citizens.

MV: Usually we’ll send it to Donna [Boone-Caldwell, the town clerk] or the department that’s dealing with it, usually by e-mail because that’s the easiest way to get in touch with everybody. … Then they’ll have to search their emails or their paper documents.

So are they given advice on how to sort and organize that information as it comes in?

MV: I think every department handles it differently, just like their paper filing systems are all different. … It’s probably something that’s an issue for all local governments. And I think it’s something we’re just going to have continually train on.

There are several pieces of property in the downtown commercial district now up for sale, including some of the signature old houses fronting Main Street. Some are worried about redevelopment in that historic district. What’s your vision for that part of town?

MV: We’re going to do a few immediate things … to make sure that if any buildings come up in the next few months they’re going to be required to maintain a certain sidewalk width. And then we’ll clarify the issue of parking on the ground level because really the intent of the ordinance is to have live [retail] space down there.

Longer term, we’re going to look at hiring a consultant to come in and look at design standards for the downtown commercial district. Now this isn’t going to be … anything that’s so strict that it regulates what your building looks like. This is going to be more like ‘What’s the appropriate scale for development in the downtown area?’ That way we don’t get buildings that don’t fit.

Staff and some members of council have been warning for years about a “structural problem” with the town budget. What does that mean and what is being done to fix it?

MV: Basically it means that your expenses … are growing faster than your revenues. Over the years, we’ve added a number of services. Of course, when you run a local government, your biggest expenses are personnel and benefits because your services are provided by people. … Then we’ve also got issues of state funding that’s been waning.

So, if you hadn’t done some slashing and raised taxes in the past few years, the budget would have been in a deficit?

MV: It’s really basic. You can do three things. You can cut expenses, raise revenues or both. And we’ve done that. This is one of the main reasons we’re doing a strategic plan. … We want to make sure we’re focusing our limited resources on our priorities.

Council has worried for the past 20 years about the dwindling number of retail outlets downtown. As assistant town manager, part of your job was to work with Branwick Associates, the Virginia Beach consulting firm that proposed building a large-scale retail mall on the old Blacksburg Middle School property. What’s the status of the mall proposal?

MV: Let’s go back to the retail recruitment piece. … In citizen survey after citizen survey, as far back as 1996 people identified that there’s nowhere to shop in Blacksburg. So we decided to make a conscious effort to recruit some retail. … We started actively trying to recruit some retail with Branwick Associates. … They did have a lot of contacts. They were getting us in with vice presidents and people who could make decisions….And there’s definitely retail interest in Blacksburg now.

The second part of that is then you’ve got to have somewhere to put them [new businesses]. Where Branwick went with that is the mall proposal. Now that plan is one of many and nothing has happened with it. There’s been no activity. There have been a number of folks who are interested in that property … but really, it’s not ready yet. It’s not the time to start putting the proposals out there.

I think what we’re going to do -- and there are a lot of different elected bodies involved in this because it’s of course controlled by the [Montgomery County] school board, owned by the county and located in the town of Blacksburg -- and I don’t think one any of us can figure out what happens there on our own. It needs to be some kind of cooperative effort…and then some kind of process that involves the public, gets some ideas about what we can put there.

Then maybe we put out a request for proposals and see what the private sector wants to do there. Maybe the planning process defines some parameters for what we’re looking for.

Now, I’m just one person and I don’t think we’re at a point yet of discussing the details. But it’s definitely something that’s coming in the near future.

Is there any timeline for when it’s coming?

MV: I don’t know what the timeline would be right now.

Does being on the spot like this and being up there as a target for public criticism sometimes and press scrutiny and all that, how does that make you feel? Is that a part of the job you’ve thought a lot about?

MV: Yeah. I’ve thought about that a lot. … I like it when people say good things about the town. And when people do criticize us, it hurts, whether it’s something I’m doing or something the organization is doing or something they think the council is doing. And I want to correct it. I want to fix it and do it the right way. But no, I don’t worry about it.

Does the scrutiny make your family nervous at all?

MV: Yeah, it probably makes my family more nervous than it makes me, to tell you the truth. … But I like talking about Blacksburg, too. It makes it easy when you care about what you’re doing. But it makes it tough when it’s critical.

I was talking to Clay Goodman the other night and I asked him what he thought of Marc Verniel being the new Blacksburg town manager. He said, “He bleeds Blacksburg.” What do you think he meant by that?

MV: He probably said that because he’s seen me work and he knows I really love this town. The main reason I wanted the job is to stay in Blacksburg … And I was fortunate enough to be selected to get it [the town manager job]….I’m going to work hard … I’m committed. I think that’s what he meant by that.

Last question: what do you want to have accomplished when you leave this job? What will the town look like, feel like, be like, when you move on to whatever the next thing is?

MV: Well, I wouldn’t mind retiring here, to tell you the truth. That’s kind of always been my plan, whether I had to leave somewhere in the middle or stay on through.

I think there’s a lot of things in Blacksburg we want to retain. We’re going to grow whether we want to or not … but it’s just a matter of how we do it. That’s something I like working on. It’s a challenge because there are all kinds of perspectives out there. … But we need to maintain the things we love.