What’s wrong with Roanoke. For 35 years now, I’ve published a magazine, THE ROANOKER, with the overriding mission of promoting Roanoke, featuring what was right about our area.

But where has it really gotten us? Exactly no where.

The city of Roanoke is going nowhere. People are voting with their feet, with 12,000 fewer residents than 50 years ago.

The only real growth in this valley is local government. It takes three times as many employees today to serve 12,000 fewer residents in the city. Roanoke is one of the highest taxed cities in the state, and Roanoke County is just as bad.

Despite spending million for economic development professionals at the city, the county, Salem, and for 25 years now, for a separate economic development office to bring in new business and industry, the results have been dismal.

Graduation rates in the city high schools are deplorable. Countless millions get wasted on RAIL WALKS, golf courses, and splash parks while leaders fail to support popular ideas like an inn on Mill Mountain. Instead they donate land on the Historic City Market for a post-modern museum that threatens to suck the life out of several struggling non-profits.

Taubman leaders tell us 1 million visitors are on the way. They haven’t shown up yet.

If you look at this valley like a football program, we’ve had losing seasons for 40 years.

But who’s the coaching staff we need to fire.

Seems like the last time Roanoke had any leadership was back in the 1970s when a council dominated by successful business leaders brought in a brash young city manager named Bern Ewart.

He transformed the city market and downtown and got us started in the tourism business.  He even tried to help us develop a genuine attraction ( Explore)  before the governmental bureaucrats got involved and emasculated the entire idea.

And after him,  we returned to the doldrums.  Where we’ve been ever since.

Roanoke seems to be a market where bad ideas come to die. Where we’ve lived with failure so long, we don’t trust our own judgment.

What to do about the city market building? Ask folks from Florida, or Washington, D.C. Need to hire a new city manager? Hire a guy from Florida and pay him to come to Roanoke and ask the citizens what they want in a city manager?

This is what we pay our leaders to do? Why don’t we hear these same folks campaigning on the promise to HIRE A HIGH PRICED CONSULTANT FROM SOMEWHERE ELSE — ANYWHERE BUT ROANOKE — TO HELP ME MAKE EVERY DECISION?

Roanoke would do well to follow Salem’s example with regard to decision-making. Maybe it’s because you have business people on Salem council and you don’t have but one on Roanoke council.

I think it’s time we took back our valley. It’s time we started starving this pig we call local government. Let’s get back to having them work for us rather than us working for them.