Transcript for Paul Lancaster--Incumbent

1. Please take 3-5 minutes to give an opening statement about your candidacy and your vision for Blacksburg.

I’ve been on town council for 4 years. I have yard signs but I’m asking people not to put them up until April 17 out of respect for those observing April 16. I’ve been in the area for 23 years and at Tech all that time. I moved into town in 1999 and have been active in town government. "Blacksburg's vision is to be a dynamic, sustainable, livable community fostering environmental stewardship, economic opportunity, technological leadership, and the arts." It would be great if I could make this happen by a wave of my hand. We have to take into consideration all the citizens of the town.

I am the council’s representative Environmental Advisory Board and we are about to complete converting the town vehicles to bio-diesel. We are greening up town code, working on green certification of town buildings, hoping the Doc Roberts building will be a LEED certified building. We are starting an environmental purchasing task force..

I’ve worked on the mixed uses development ordinance. I’m chair of the middle school transition committee. There is an international competition for the design of its use.

When I was elected to town council, I took on the task of revising the comp plan to make it tougher to resurrect the Toms Creek sewer issue. I’ve worked on committees for child care and the Women’s Resource Center.

My projects for the next four years: What will it take to finish Toms Creek greenway system? Find out the cost and if the taxpayers are willing to do it.

Complete the tree program – Paint the Town Green. Discourage poor practices such as tree topping. The town is planting two trees for every one that has to be taken down.

Expand bicycles. There are probably have enough racks downtown, but they are not easy to find. We need to bring them forward.

Roads – build bike lines so it is better for bikers. Main Street rom College Avenue to Prices Fork will have one lane for cars and a real bike lane with green space between the road and sidewalk.

So much more to do in downtown. The College Avenue design needs to be kid friendly with a kids’ wall in the arts district. A place where they can draw with chalk and that can wash off easily. We need to put in a public restroom downtown. We need a new dog park and a new rescue squad facility. We need to make the rescue squad more at home in our community.

The Windsor Hills project will have 100 affordable homes.

I worked with 11 other people on the comprehensive plan. We have provided direction for 40 years, as well as next 4. I’ve done a lot of good and would like to do some more.

2. In the context of smart growth, can you please give a local example of smart growth and a local example of growth that was planned badly.

Smart growth – lot of examples. The Village at Toms Creek has open space with houses close together. Ellenbogen at University Mall area has been good. He improved on the outside, built a parking garage and the adjacent Gateway Center which puts people working in offices next to commercial.

Kent square is an example. He could have put up a parking garage that looked ;like one, but he put up one that looks good. People still rail about it, but it brought a mix of retail, civic, and residential. It has four times the development on the next block with the Seven-Eleven, bank, bookstore, and a whole lot of asphalt.

A bad example: Look at the way we used to do stuff – building big subdivisions 5 houses on 5 acres lots. You have to drive everywhere. We need to get back to traditional neighborhoods. I grew up with a corner store. There is an opportunity to go back to that. There are places that can be developed that offer that convenience – opportunities at the north end of town. Hethwood was developed with that idea. I can’t understand why the little convenience store doesn’t succeed there.

• What specific actions would you initiate to preserve the town's green and common spaces?

We have done a lot so far in terms of Heritage Park. Lee Street is good example. Duplexes along the front, a pocket park behind. It is not big, but it has playground equipment and creates a green space where there was none. We need to redevelop the farmers market. It is a parking lot. It isn’t conducive to a meeting place. It needs permanent stalls and better designed stalls off the alleys behind. That will allow vendors to back in and park. There needs to be a large open space with a stage.

One goal is to get water supplies up for 72 hours. It involves tanks. Tanks are big.

We are trying to find an area for a dog park. Heritage Park has traces of animals – not all of them wild.

3. What do you see as the three major problems facing downtown Blacksburg, how would you prioritize them and what specific measures would you champion to help solve these problems?

Ambience or lack of , nice pockets, but awful pockets
Need for incentives for development
Achieving critical mass

Ambience – We are starting to address that. Increase the meals tax by 1%. That would pay for additional officers to patrol and give us a maintenance crew to clean up Wednesday through Saturday nights. Bless Citizens First and its attempts to clean up. It is time for us to work on it. We cannot clean the walls so we need to work with owners to clean up their property. Find a better way for Emilio’s to take down the cardboard in the windows. It looks terrible.

We can’t get rid of what is there because of the grandfather clause. We are working on the arts district, redeveloping the farmers market, College Avenue that will unite the university and the town, the performing arts center.

Incentives – gives tax credits to those who want to redo façades. We need historic tax credit from the county. We don’t allow first floor office use. There is a synergy of the arts center and middle school property. We have opportunities.

• Please share your ideas for how Council and staff can play a more supportive role in attracting and keeping small businesses in downtown and making Blacksburg a more family friendly place?

The work on College Avenue – let’s incorporate kids into that. It is easy to complain that building codes are too tough. Our first goal is to protect health, safety, and welfare of the town. That is why inspectors do what they do. The first arts music festival wanted to move to the old Corner Drug store, but inspectors said it was not safe. You don’t know when you have done a great job because nothing happens. There needs to be more incentives for sprucing up store fronts and further work on the arts district.

4. Council was blindsided by the big box proposal. In response, Ordinance 1450 was passed to require that future commercial buildings in excess of 80,000 sq. ft. receive special review. How can we make sure we don’t get blindsided again? What criteria other than size might be useful in evaluating a proposed development?

We still can be blindsided with 1450. Someone can build two 79,000 sq. ft. buildings close together with a short covered passage.. What if it were LEED 100,0000 sq. ft. building? We should put more of what we are looking for to get them to build better. If we put up too much in regulations, nothing will happen. We passed mixed used. If you have to go through mixed use and then go through 1450, that will add three months to the process.

We have to look at 90% of rules that are for 10% of the people. Downtown or neighborhood issues, you have to deal with that 10%. We’re trying to come up with laws that don’t need over-burdening. We can’t let simple opposition stop something, just because people don’t want it next to them. Shadow Lake wouldn’t have happened.

5. There is a process underway to develop the old Blacksburg Middle School site. Can you discuss specifically how this process will ensure the development of the site in accordance with the community’s wishes and reassure a skeptical public that this development will become a proud reflection of Blacksburg’s unique character?

I am chair of middle school transition committee. We have tried to build in public input. We will start May 14 and have folks come before competition starts to see what they want. Rescue squad space is desperately needed. We need a compromise that works for the town and the county.

We are accepting international entrants; then a juried panel will select five finalists. Another public comment period and the five finalists will come back with ideas from the public. Then we have to find someone that can actually build the thing. Economic development people as well as architects are on the juried panel to select the winner. The county and the town are working on an agreement. The county will be the applicant for rezoning. Rezoning is the town’s big stick. The county wants as much money as it can get out of it. The county will bring the application with proffers needed to make sure there is no bait and switch and we’ll get some better writing.

6. In these times of economic and racial challenges for large segments of our nation’s population, what do you think the Town and the Council’s roles should be to assure that Blacksburg recognizes and addresses the local manifestation of these national issues and promotes and monitors progress toward greater inclusion of members from racially/ethnically different groups into Town affairs and the broader community?
The problem we have is in getting real diversity. We have tried to do some recruiting. It is long hours and thankless work. It is tough to get people to apply. There is no easy solution. It is economic – keep working on affordable housing. Lee Street should be finished the end of this year. A good way is building a neighborhood, not just affordable housing. We are working to acquire 12 acres at the top of Harding. Affordable day care and homeless prevention are important.
Why not a graded real estate tax? I mean different rates for different valuation. That is a state issue, but it is my dream. I would like to work on that. I am hoping to get on the laws committee of the Virginia Municipal League to propose such legislation. We need traditional neighborhoods where people don’t have to have a car. There is a tremendous amount of people in this community that don’t have a car. We need to work on it.

• What strategies would you suggest the Town pursue to increase the amounts of affordable housing and public transportation, particularly for those who want to live where they work, and/or who could benefit from easier access to their place of work?
We are trying to do it with mixed-use development; with residential next to offices and commercial. Blacksburg Transit is a wonderful thing. Tech student fees pay the bulk of the cost. I would like to eliminate the rider fees for non-Tech people. Why not run a free system? I want to work on the industrial park. There is a fair amount of space there. Most of the industrial development is left up to the county. We are trying to get some of those spaces filled. We need jobs that don’t qualify as retail or professor. We need to look at other opportunities.

7. Given the Town's decreasing net operating revenues and increasing long-term debt, what is your position on the $.01 increase in the meals tax, currently proposed to address Blacksburg’s immediate need for more police officers and additional staff to maintain downtown cleanliness?
We are getting more revenue , but are trying to get more services. Our long term debt is not in a bad situation . Would we be willing to get a 20 year debt to get the greenway system finished? Look at the industrial park and. I would love to charge an admission tax at football games. We need a meals tax at Tech. We need to get that revenue back. Tech owns the franchises themselves - all except Burger King. The Chick Fil-A there is one of the largest in the country. There are five franchises planned in the new dining hall to be completed in five or six years and that will be close to downtown. It is just not fair. I am on the town-Tech committee. We have been talking, but frankly I don’t think we are going to get anywhere. We have an intern working in the town manager’s office working on this information. We are talking about a big chunk of change. I wish I could get a quarter on every hotdog sold in Lane Stadium. We are the only one with this big of a problem. Other universities don’t have the impact and the scale that exists here. It makes it harder to get it done statewide. It is obvious to us. We are starting to work on The Inn to collect tax.. They advertize they price 5% less because they don’t pay the tax. It isn’t going to be easy. We haven’t gotten very far with Tech.

• (If against - do you have other solutions to offer?

8. The new Arts Initiative is often cited as an indication of positive Town/Gown relations. What are the opportunities and obstacles to improving mutual support? What are some ideas you’d like to bring to Town/Gown discussions?

Having just blasted Tech, there are a lot of things we do cooperatively with Tech. We do a lot together: the transit system, the airport, the water authority, sanitation. A lot has been going on for quite a while. Greenways work with Tech. The master campus plan is to connect greenways. Tech has made an effort to build on-campus fraternity and sorority housing. BEV is town-Tech cooperation and we have the police mutual aid agreement. It has proven to be a good agreement. There remain challenges. Virginia’s motto is, “ It’s never been done that way.” Change is a long slow process. Tech is an arm of the state, but we are getting there. We’ll keep plugging away. Students and off campus visitors that don’t pay meals tax need to change.

9. Recently stakeholders—including citizens, small business owners, and entrepreneurs—have expressed concerns about the responsiveness and transparency of town staff. How can Council address this problem?

It is hard for me to respond without specific examples. You have to hire good people and work on improving the process. We have had glitches over the web site and launching the new site. If you don’t agree with staff reports, that doesn’t mean they aren’t good people. They are human and make mistakes. Mark Verniel is installing a new executive management system and there is a lot of buy-in from the employees. That can’t hurt. Mark’s building that kind of team.

10. Which issues will be the focus of your time and energy on Council? If you could only accomplish three things on Council, what might they be and why?

1. Meals tax – That might be longer than 4 years.
2. Continue to work on downtown – street scaping of Main Street and new street trees, College Avenue design coming out this summer, streaming Main Street from College to Prices Fork, working on the middle school property that will serve everyone.
3. Mixed-use bubble beyond the middle school to adjacent areas. The Verizon tower drives me nuts. It is the ugliest thing. We have $100,000 in redesign for the farmers market.
4. Completing the greenway system. If we can get a system where people don’t have to compete with vehicles more connections will be made.
5. Neighborhood development with a little bit of commercial. Rework our zoning ordinance. R4 neighborhoods have a 30 ft. setback. It can be much smaller, 4 feet in some towns now. Green principles and better principals. The long range planning committee will be looking at these things.

11. What skills, experiences and personal characteristics do you possess that would make you a more effective Council member than other contenders in achieving cooperation with the public, with fellow council members, with the business community, and with Virginia Tech?

A decision doesn’t start or end with a vote. The vote is the mid-point. When a decision is made we need to make sure it is implemented. The Toms Creek sewer is an example. We took the time to redo comp plan. We said we would not build it, but undid what could make it happen easier. I wish I could snap my fingers, but it doesn’t work that way. Everything figures into everything else.

What bugs me about downtown is that there are newspaper kiosks everywhere. We need to incorporate them into an information center.

For Incumbents: (Mary, Paul, Don)

12. How did you vote on the rezoning of First and Main and on the stadium and why did you vote that way?

I thought it was going to be a great project – mixed-use residential next to commercial. I’d seen the Lake Terrace – taken out as a significant water feature. What I voted on and what happened are two different things. I voted for the stadium I would do so again. We now have the opportunity to turn the middle school into something exciting – the other side of downtown’s anchor. I grew up a block and a half from stadium. It wasn’t a big deal. Then we moved to half a block away and it wasn’t a big deal. It was part of the neighborhood. It wasn’t noise, it was music. And it was a wonderful thing. We needed to keep the stadium in Blacksburg. The county was not going to reinvest in old middle school site. The new stadium is something that is good for the Prices Fork area and good for downtown.

13. Are there votes or other actions that you've taken that you would change? What did you learn from this experience and how will you apply the lessons in the future?

That is a hard one to answer. I can’t dwell in the past. What is done is done and we move on. The vote was right. The circumstance turned out not what I wanted. You learn to be cautious and not have as much faith as you had. We have to be extra careful and say, “Prove it to me.” It is kind of sad.

Audience questions
1. You’re answers seem to be contradictions. Saying that downtown there were a lot of regulations, but for safety reasons and that for development there was too many obstacles and we have to figure out a way.

The standards now are that any new development must far exceed anything that exists downtown. If we let something pass and a building falls down, I can’t have that. New structures have to meet current codes so safety isn’t an issue. We charge a fee per lot. If you are building 6 affording houses, why can’t you pay one fee instead of 6? If you are building green – less carbon, can we make it easier to not follow guidelines that made sense 10 years ago and don’t now. Neighborhoods built in 70’s, what were they thinking? Putting houses so far apart, no cluster zoning then and one house per acre in Toms Creek. Shadow Lake Village shows a better way to do it.

2. How do we hold developers accountable to reach our vision rather than their own?

With a mix of small and large housing, when we looked at it, it really wasn’t affordable. They would build a $270,000 instead of $ 280, 000. It is ok to have $100,000 house in $250,000 neighborhood. It doesn’t make it a bad neighborhood. Low income housing in the 60’s set up barriers instead of neighborhoods. Zoning does that. With 4 houses per acre, it is hard to get affordable housing. Easy to say, but hard to work out details.

3. Comment on 2 things – lack of ownership by people that run business downwtown and how you passed rezoning for First & Main. The decision made at midnight and being driven by time. Why do you have to make a decision the same night as public hearing?

We have changed that. The public hearing was on the budget. The vote on the budget will be in 2 weeks. We have agreed to do that in future. It makes sense. It is not a good time to make decision after a meeting of 4 hours.

Ownership downtown. There was a serious offer on the old bank building, but the guy just won’t sell. I can’t do anything about that. The Lester Group bought College Avenue a few years ago, but it looks a lot better now. Creating incentives. We are doing a little with CDG money now. We don’t tax them on the increased assessment for 12 years. The county does not give them a break. We got to do more to offer incentives.

4. Has it got more to do with incentives than ownership?

Incentives are a carrot, but I don’t understand why people let buildings sit empty. Commercial enterprises that sit empty for months and months, I don’t understand the reason for that. The arts district will help to bring elements we have talked about. Extra tax will just raise the rents on people.

5. Thanks for support of greenways. 1. Bicycle parking downtown is hard to find. Not there very much. We have parking spaces for vehicles that are not used.

We have to do a whole lot more. Blacksburg is on the top 10 list of development for a small town according to Forbes, but we have all those empty spaces.

6. What’s going on? Safety is the problem, but there are internal things that are costs to entrepreneurs yet we give incentives for facades? Why don’t we provide incentives for structure?

Do you want the town to pay for people to go inside that they don’t see until they go inside? Upgrading of infrastructure that owners aren’t doing, the sprinkler systems are expensive? I am not sure town tax payers should put a sprinkler system in a bar.

7. Can’t we help a business that wants to open up that is not a bar?

If it takes 5% of the budget for one building, I can’t do that unless we double your taxes. I can’t build someone’s private enterprise with town money. We’re putting money toward public infrastructure – farmers market, Doc Roberts building, and the middle school.

8. Shadow Lake wouldn’t have happened if NYMBY ruled. My place is on the bus line. I could get everything on the bus line if Wal-Mart were built. The town is strapped for money – but it is putting in a lot of money on tilting at this windmill. We’re talking about affordable shopping center that is Wal-Mart, but why are we spending a lot of money trying to keep it out?

I would rather be talking to them, but they won’t talk to us.

9. Zoning is for protection. When the property was rezoned from residential to commercial. Now I see the special use permit. Why should we make this exception, but I see is there any way we can make this exception? To me that is not what special use should be. What are your thoughts?

We need to look at how we do special use permits. We categorized things in special use because we didn’t know what to do with them. Outside speakers should be regulated by town code – if it can’t be heard past the edge of property, there shouldn’t be a problem – it should be a technical problem.

We should look at a proposal to see if it doable. It is easy to come up to say I don’t like this, but if it doesn’t meet the building restrictions, it can be done.

10. Leadership within the town by example. Work on Doc Roberts – LEED project, that is a good example. Another town project the Alexander Black House is an empty structure downtown? What about it? There is a hodgepodge of sidewalks and greenway, could the town consider asking the developer to set aside funds so the town can make a logical expansion?

It is a problem. We apply the same standards all over town. We don’t address that well. Maybe we need to be more flexible there. We need to have a better standard.

The Black house - $8,000,000 for a house, now down to $3,000,000. Lots of money is put into studies. Nobody wants to donate to something owned by the town. We need to get into a non-profit venture – not just a town building. All we need is $3,000,000 and we can get it done – also the Odd Fellows house. When you get to history people don’t make the priorities that they should.

11. My kids grew up going to outdoor pool? Is there a plan for an outdoor pool?

Pool – sure – have you got some money? But right after the Black house. The town had to do something about the old pool. It was leaking right into the ground. The golf course is a park – it is an enterprise fund that always loses money. There are opportunities to do other things there.

12. Town-town-county problems. Have you ever thought of becoming the City of Montgomery?

No, it never crossed my mind. I am not sure how that benefits Blacksburg. We don’t operate schools. How much money you got is always the question.