Paul Lancaster

• Age: 54
• Occupation: Broadcast media coordinator for Virginia Tech’s university relations department
• Community roots: Has lived and worked in Blacksburg for more than 20 years
• Affiliations: Blacksburg Town Councilman since 2004, Blacksburg Planning Commission, YMCA at Virginia Tech, United Way of Montgomery, Radford and Floyd, Free Clinic of the New River Valley, Virginia Wildlife Foundation
• Education: Bachelor’s degree in Journalism from Washington and Lee University

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Paul Lancaster: I think residents of Blacksburg should vote for me because I’ve done a good job the past four years. I think I’ve taken every issue and taken a serious look at it. To me, for example, the Blacksburg [High School] stadium was an obvious choice [Lancaster was one of four council members to approve it]. It was either going to be there or not in town, and I can’t have the Blacksburg Bruins playing in Prices Fork. And, that frees up the option of working on the [Old Blacksburg] middle school and trying to get that done. One thing I’ve talked about … when I cast a vote, it’s the middle of a process. There’s a lot of work before, and there’s a lot of work after. And that’s the kind of way I approach things, and I think it get things done.

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

PL: I’ll start out by saying that I was on the group that picked the [Valley Interfaith Childcare Center] folks to start affordable day care as part of the CDGB [Community Development Block Grant] money a few years back. And I think that’s worked out really well. I think especially as we look at expanding low- to moderate-income housing, that we need to expand those kind of services to go along with it. If you’ve got two kids and try to hold a job, trying to find affordable day care doesn’t give you many options. So, I think as we look more into providing the housing, we probably also need to continue to increase the attending services.

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?

PL: I still haven’t seen all the details in that, so I’m not sure of all the specifics. Yeah, it’s high density. Yeah, Harding [Avenue] needs to be widened at some point. … I’d like to say that’s in VDOT’s [Virginia Department of Transportation] six-year plan. But six-year plans tend to go 20 years with VDOT these days. If we’re going to do affordable housing, we’ve got to do it somewhere, and there’s not a whole lot of options. … Everybody wants open space. Everybody wants affordable housing. And the two are in utter conflict with one another. Having a condensed development, earth friendly, on what would be a slight extension of the bus route, I’m not sure there’s many other locations we can take that into affect. If we want to limit this town to rich people, then we can just give up affordable housing. But we can’t do that. I’m for the idea in general. Obviously, I have to see the specifics.

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

PL: Well, we’ve kind of laid that out in the Comprehensive Plan, that it’s going to be pretty limited development. What I’d like to see is a) no sewer line and b) the use of cluster housing. The nice thing about cluster housing is that you can develop it around STEP/STEG [sewer] systems, and everything is kind of concentrated in one area. It allows development of the area in a way that doesn’t just plaster the whole area with driveways and pavement and that sort of thing. I think Shadowlake [housing development] has turned out to be a good example … You’ve got all the houses condensed into a couple of acres and about 30-some acres free space. And that worked out pretty well.

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?

PL: I had a conversation with Ben [Dixon] about that about a year and half ago when we were talking about committee appointments. We talked a lot without coming up with any great solutions. One idea he had was to try to reach out more into nontraditional sources of government to find people, obviously one being churches. And I think that’s a pretty good idea. I think it’s a combination of us trying to reach out a little bit more, but also trying to make sure the word is out that we welcome applications from anybody and everybody. I think we’ve tried to make that point. But if you’re not actively involved. … Sometimes you need a little direction or an invitation. Maybe we need to do more of that.