Derek Myers

• Age: 71
• Occupation: Retired Virginia Tech art and art history professor.
• Community roots: 35 years living and working in Blacksburg
• Affiliations: Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy, Luther Memorial Lutheran Church, Valley Interfaith Childcare Center, NAACP, AARP
• Education: Master of fine arts from State University of Iowa, 1969; bachelor’s degree from Knox College, Illinois in 1959

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• Other candidates in the NRV answer your questions

Derek Myers: If I take on a task … for a group, I think people will tell you I can be counted on to finish that. I actually get a lot of personal satisfaction out of bringing people together for common projects, networking, uniting people behind a common goal and working with them. I’ve been fortunate in my time in Blacksburg, while I was at the university and while I’ve retired to know lots of people in town who have great resources … and skills … for the community and for various causes. I’m also concerned about the interface between businesses and town government, okay, and doing whatever I can to help town government be business friendly while keeping the community sustainable. I’m concerned about … improving communication between town council and some of the departments in town where perhaps in some cases citizen needs, citizen opinions, are not always reaching up to that level of the departments. My wife is a former rescue squad member. I’m very, very concerned about the overcrowded situation, not just for the fire departments … but especially for the rescue squad where there is no immediate relief on the horizon. There’s a plan to do something, but that needs to happen soon. I will certainly do everything in my power to try to see that that gets online as soon as it can. That’s another priority.

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?”

DM: [As a board member for the Valley Interfaith Childcare Center], what I’ve advocated for a long time is that we serve as a model and we encourage citizens in localities like Radford, some of the communities in Giles, Pulaski, Shawsville … [to] help them open a VIC of their own. I would say encourage neighborhoods if necessary, or towns to build their own. See, the interfaith model works very well because you can get churches associating to make that happen. They’re a tremendous source of volunteers for that. The town has stepped forward, certainly with the CDGB [Community Development Block Grant funds] grant and that kind of support. These are not great times budget-wise for that type of thing … government is perhaps at this point not living up to its role — state and federal government. Town government needs to really stand behind, recognize, look for, be creative [about] what can be done because this is an economic necessity. This hits the pocketbook … not only of the people who can’t get to work, but also the businesses who have trouble finding help that can stay there and perform because they are secure about their children. It is a great big priority. … It’s a huge hidden need in the community.

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?”

DM: Any development out there shouldn’t burden roads and shouldn’t burden schools and it shouldn’t burden, you know, other infrastructure. … As far as I know there has been no action. … So the whole thing right now is a big question. I have worked with the couple … trying to give them information, where to look … and how to be on top of things when it starts to happen. … But what I would stress is that as far as I know this is going to be a project with heavy public input. There’s going to be public input … and nothing has been decided as far as high-density or anything else. … I would urge citizens to be vigilant, but also patient and open-minded about what’s going to happen in that area right there, and not to get into hardened position immediately until all the facts are known on that. Development of that parcel may be inevitable. But I would certainly do everything I could to see that that was something that made Blacksburg better for everybody around there. I don’t think the development should be allowed to be harmful to residents around there.

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

DM: I think foremost would be to protect the ecology of that watershed. I think that the footprint of any development there needs to be as light as we can make it, OK, while still keeping that development economically feasible. And if a developer can’t honor the light economic footprint, then perhaps it should not be done. I think it’s almost a no-brainer that development in there should favor cluster-type housing that spares the green space, OK. There are many pieces to responsibly developing that place. And I would underscore …. responsibility and sustainability. Another thing that comes up is cost to the town in terms of added infrastructure — that needs to be done in a way that doesn’t overburden the town, which is already kind of overburdened in that regard. Another piece of it would be something that maybe up to five years ago wasn’t considered so much in development and that is will there be alternative means of transportation for people who live there. Will it be possible for BT [Blacksburg Transit] to get out there for people who don’t want to drive? I’m not an engineering expert, but what I understand of the STEP/STEG plan for sewer in that area sounds right to me. And at this point I couldn’t support going back to something like the old gravity sewer. It endangers nature in that area and is just kind of retrograde technology.

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?”

DM: I would certainly be on guard against any proposals for ordinances that were discriminatory, as we see in Prince William County right now, Loudon and other counties in the north where a very heavy burden is being placed on the immigrant community, particularly the Hispanic community. So I would be on guard against that. I would hope that council, the next time it presents its resolution to the General Assembly, would speak out very strongly in favor of curbing this kind of discriminatory legislation that has to do with language discrimination, that has to do with taking away places where workers could gather to find employment in a community. This has been done in Northern Virginia … so I would hope that council would encourage welcoming legislation. Council has some power to enable affordable housing. … We know right now that housing is too expensive, certainly for lower-income people and where we really feel it of course … housing for police officers, rescue squad volunteers, teachers that go elsewhere — out in the county or to Christiansburg — to find cheaper housing. I think that we would be a much healthier community and a more diverse community if we had nice neighborhoods with affordable housing. I think there is a little bit of a spirit of “not in my backyard” in Blacksburg. These are good folks, and when something is about to happen in your backyard, you do react. But, I think that council needs to do what it can to mitigate that kind of thing, to help us get beyond that, so that we can start to enrich our community with neighborhoods that include lower-income people, some of whom may be from ethnic minorities or immigrants. … We’ve taken away several large settlements where there were low-income people. When we did south Main, when we took away one of the mobile home parks up here. Those don’t seem to be being replaced. There’s a place where improving these relationships and smart growth meld, because smart growth encourages diversity of housing opportunities and … diversities. A smart growth town is not a town that’s just filled with rich people.