Quiet! The city is sleeping

Excitement these days in Waynesboro is rare and fleeting, which perhaps explains the recent mild euphoria generated by piffle. This takes vague shape in the decision to purchase a $7,000 modular trailer to house the Rockfish Gap Tourist Information Center in a new home to open this summer atop Afton Mountain.

Hooray.

“I’m very excited about this opportunity that has been presented to us,” Waynesboro Tourism Director Lianne Crookshanks gushed Monday at the City Council meeting during which the deal was announced. Well, of course, Crookshanks is excited. One of the stoneflies recently discovered on the South River carries greater weight in this town than does tourism, so Crookshanks is likely to be thankful for even splinters of bones tossed in the vicinity of the agency she leads.

This stems from the thinking of some elected officials that tourism, like economic development, is an area that substantively falls outside the city’s purview. The council’s conservative bloc – we’re not so sure where to place Mayor Tim Williams any longer, but Vice Mayor Frank Lucente and Councilman Bruce Allen remain aligned – is principally concerned with keeping taxes level and slashing spending.

In this, we support them. Cries are rising from their opponents that this entails on our part supporting budget cuts to city schools, something Lucente has proposed in the form of a deferment of some city money from this year to next. School officials, who have the option of rejecting Lucente’s idea, are sifting through the implications. Our position is that if the district can make a deferment work, then by all means it should be pursued. If school officials oppose deferment, they are acting within their right.

That discussion is an indicator of Lucente’s particular sensitivity to the times and to a view we also hold, that government budgets almost invariably contain fat that can be trimmed. Officials like him and Allen, who are willing to plunge into the books looking for savings, are rare to the point of vanishing. Government needs more leaders who live out the fiscal conservatism they espouse on campaign trails.

But there is more to consider in Waynesboro than tightening the budget and holding the line on taxes.

The Tourist Information Center is emblematic of this. Some of Waynesboro’s best hope for revitalization spring not from downtown but from Afton Mountain, where the Blue Ridge Parkway and Skyline Drive end, and from which travelers in an ideal world would flow into Waynesboro.

Adventurous sorts taking one of those exits now are greeted by dilapidated buildings on the mountain and, if they dare venture toward town, a kind of Death Valley entering Waynesboro. Tumbleweeds would be an appropriate addition, if they could bear the deafening quiet.

Changing this does not start with the sort of activity that causes Lucente and Allen to recoil – mindless spending. It starts rather with a recognition that developing that side of town as a gateway is of high importance. Next should follow a plan that reflects that recognition. How can this area be developed? What should it look like? How can private developers be lured in to drive the growth? What’s needed?

At this point, spending determinations should be made, not blindly but with the advantage of foresight. To gain that, city leaders must open their eyes to the opportunities that Waynesboro’s unique geography provides. Mountains need not be moved. But neither will moving trailers up mountains suffice.