Forum aims for answers to issues

The News Virginian
Published: April 22, 2008

Happy families are all alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
— Leo Tolstoy

Anticipating an election that will vigorously stir their dysfunctional dynamics, members of the City Council have drifted into a state in which confusion is everything. How should the city pay for repairs to a stormwater system that treats rainfall like an unruly house guest, rejecting the gushers and sending them into the streets? The City Council is not so sure. On the subject of revitalizing a downtown where potential persists in lingering, the City Council is almost mute. So the days pass.
Against this backdrop, six candidates for two contested seats will gather tonight to tout ideas along with political merits in The News Virginian/NBC 29 Forum in the Kate Collins Middle School auditorium. The at-large race pits incumbent Frank Lucente against challengers DuBose Egleston and Jeremy Taylor. Seeking the Ward B post being vacated by Mayor Tom Reynolds are Bruce Allen, Greg Bruno and Chris Graham.
The election is not likely to clear the clouds of dissent so much as configure them. Taylor and Graham are aligned with the majority now composed of Reynolds, Vice Mayor Nancy Dowdy and Councilwoman Lorie Smith. Allen is linked to the minority of Lucente and Williams. All insist their votes will be independent. But the allegiances are known and politics being such as they are, the era of voting blocs figures to endure.
Unhappiness on the council centers largely on fiscal philosophy. Lucente and Williams are virulently opposed to increasing taxes and such initiatives as investing $300,000 in the Wayne Theatre with more money to come. The majority regards its foes as a drag on progress, citing stonewalling on the five projects that wound up on the city referendum last fall. Voters backed three – a new fire station and library expansion and stormwater improvements.
Both sides are guilty of miring the city in minutiae, trading verbal jousts over ostensible backroom negotiating to, among other things, broadcast a candidates forum that never came to pass on a government access channel. Meanwhile, downtown languishes for lack of vision.
Our ears will be carefully attuned to answers from the candidates on that topic. City staffers’ shelves are lined with studies on how to revitalize the city core, but the City Council chambers has become the place where ideas go to die.
Candidates who can explicate a clear, concise plan for dismantling that trend in place of action are those whom voters should most seriously consider May 6. The News Virginian/NBC 29 Forum provides our would-be leaders with a platform to shift the sights of our city from political antics to the remarkable place that we believe our city can become.
We are sufficiently well informed regarding what divides the council. Now we would like to be presented with a look at a future around which all of us can rally. Tonight is the time for that to happen and real progress to start.