Please come and speak at a crucial Town Council meeting!

We urge all concerned citizens of Blacksburg to attend the meeting of the Blacksburg Town Council this Tuesday, November 13, at 7:30 PM, in the Municipal Building, 300 S. Main St. This is a rare opportunity to address Town Council on two critical issues:.

1) Let Town Council know: we want an independent traffic study. During the Citizen Comments section of the meeting (item VI on the agenda) the Town Council needs to hear from as many voices as possible in favor of an independent review of the S. Main development traffic study. The key talking points are:

• The development will bring 20,000 additional car trips per day to the area, in addition to existing traffic
• The current traffic study was conducted by Anderson & Associates, which has other large contracts on all phases of the project, and therefore has an interest in minimizing the projected impacts
• Lori Blanc's meticulous review of all versions of the traffic study found numerous discrepancies, including changes to the raw data
• Very small adjustments in the inputs to the analysis and to the model used can have large consequences for the results

For more information, see Lori Blanc's op-ed piece in this week's New River Current.

Each speaker in the Citizen Comment section has three minutes. If you are not a brilliant orator, all the better! Tell town council how your life will be affected by 20,000 more cars passing through town.

2) There will also be a public hearing on Ordinance 1460, which proposes to change the date of town elections from May to November of even-numbered years, to coincide with state and federal elections. This change will have a major impact on town politics. Concerned citizens have opposed this change, and are circulating a petition for a ballot measure that would change town elections to November of odd-numbered years. This would remedy problems with turnout in a May election, but avoid the negatives of including town issues with state and national elections.

BURG is not taking a position on this issue, but we urge all concerned citizens to let town council know where you stand. The public hearing will include a Public Comment section, and this is one of the last opportunities to be heard before Ordinance 1460 comes to a vote in December. For more information, contact Jane Sprague or Kay Moody.

Please attend the meeting. You can speak on either one, or on both of these issues.

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