Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 7, 1993 TAG: 9311100267
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ELIZABETH OBENSHAIN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
They also showed they had more of these character traits than their own elected leaders gave them credit for.
At a time when it's more common for communities to feud among themselves, this county with its diverse personalities pulled together and voted for two bond issues that will help carry it into the 21st century.
The county seat will get a health and human services building, providing care for its citizens and decent working space for county workers whose commitment to their jobs had for too long been rewarded with benign neglect.
Blacksburg, which bills itself as a global Electronic Village, will finally have a real library where the roof doesn't leak and where children will be able to hunt for knowledge in computers as well as in books.
As heartening as these new community spaces will be is the fact that county voters showed they could think of themselves as one community with a shared need rather than fiefdoms arrayed against each other. The library bond issue passed not just because of the 6,230 votes from Blacksburg precincts.
It passed because 5,186 voters in the county pulled the lever for that bond issue, too.
The margins in both referendums were surprising and heartening for those who use and work in the Blacksburg library or the five buildings that house the county's health and social services agencies.
The two buildings will be completed in 1995 - a good start on the future we hope for ourselves in the 21st century.
If we expect to sell our valley as a choice spot for industries, "smart-road" technnologies or even retirement communities, these buildings are part of the government structure we'll need.
All of the region's economic summits and vision meetings and grand designs for the future won't amount to a hill of beans if we don't have the will to prepare - and pay - for the future.
Tuesday, the people of Montgomery County showed they were willing.
They also showed they were ahead of their own elected leaders.
The two supervisors re-elected to Montgomery's board in contested elections Tuesday were the very two who voted against these bond issues - whose opposition made the issues just that much harder to sell countywide.
In this case, luckily, the county had other leaders - volunteers - who stepped in to make the case and lead the county toward 2000.
The countywide support was a surprise to many ... but a lesson of what can be accomplished when we see the common bonds that knit us into one community and use this strength to build for the future.
by CNB