Suggestions for local economies

Nelson Graves
Published: May 21, 2008

I’m not a travel, engineering or financial expert but I do quite a bit of thinking and, I hope, reasoning. With that thought in mind please bear with me for a couple of suggestions and questions. And if there are engineers and experts reading this, by all means respond, either by way of a letter to the editor or to me directly and I’ll present them in a future column.
We don’t think so now, but with gas prices rising daily and sometimes more than once a day, the growing cost of fuel may be a blessing.
During the recent Staunton and Waynesboro city council campaigns, one candidate stated that he wanted to see both cities and Augusta County work more cooperatively. His goal is one that I’ve promoted in the past.
With high gas prices, vacationers – local, regional and national – are rethinking their travel plans. Higher prices for fuel and food will cause many to stay closer to home and choose less costly fun and entertainment.
For instance, 28 years ago, according Waynesboro Parks and Recreation Director David Van Covern in a July 14 piece in The News Virginian, the city began its Summer Extravaganza. My guess is the Waynesboro event was moved to the following week to avoid bumping heads with Staunton’s Statler Brothers’ July 4-Happy Birthday USA festivities.
Waynesboro’s willingness to change attracted visitors, gave its own and local residents another celebration as well as allowed all city and county businesses to make more money.
Had any of us known how much the cost of gas and food would go up this year, municipal-appointed and volunteer committees could have joined forces to take advantage of today’s higher prices. It’s too late to properly plan this year but in the future, instead of holding two separate weekend celebrations in both cities why not merge them into an inclusive, one or two-week long one?
My engineering and finance thought: When plans were promoted a while ago to construct wind turbines in Highland County, its residents objected. Their objections ran from property value concerns to environmental ones to just plain bad “looks.”
I wonder if Highland County property owners and residents are similar to Saudi Arabian sheiks and residents. Highland County residents could be sitting on America’s future “oil fields.” If recent articles projecting that by 2020 wind turbines will generate enough energy to compete with the cost to refined oil, Highland and other nearby counties will prosper. At the least, owners of wind farms wouldn’t have to buy electricity. Who knows, they might eventually live property tax free.
While on the subject of wind turbines, think about this: With the growing cost to re-string and replace fallen electricity and telephone wires and poles due to bad weather, couldn’t the Valley (and America) be money ahead to begin burying those lines underground?
As they say on TV ads, but that’s not all: We’ve been accustomed to poles every hundred yards or so along city streets and highways, so keep the poles, bury the wires but place small energy making turbines on top of them.
Nelson Graves, Western Virginia director of the Virginia Minority Supplier Development Council, writes a weekly column for The News Virginian. E-mail him at .