Okay, that last blog got a few people's blood flowing. It seems there are a lot of different perceptions concerning take home vehicles for town employees. Personally, I just want people (citizens) to know how tax money is being used, and I want it to be used in an honest and forthright way that allows citizens to hold elected officials and town manager accountable for those monies.
I made another requests for documents. This time for the Parks and Recreation Master Plans and for the Bills list presented to Town Council each month for approval. Those documents are now available online. To get to them go to
Town of Christiansburg Public Information: and select the link (center of the page) to either the "Pay the Bills" link or one of the two parks and recreation master plan (A.K.A. 10-Year Plan) that are below it.
Jumping to conclusions and making assumptions just leads to chaos and confusion. In my opinion, it is always better to have at least a few facts in hand to make assessments with.
There are also several other links on the page that you may find of interest.
Let me point out that I greatly appreciate the help of town staff in getting these documents. Michele Stipes, in particular, has been quite gracious in responding to each and every request for information that I have made. I do pay the cost of copying the documents which is only fair. Taxpayer money should not be used to respond to individual requests. I could easily view the documents at no cost, but it is my choice to obtain copies and to share them with the public.
There are no current legal requirements for these documents to be placed on the town's website (although that is very likely to change in the near future with pending legislation). The most recent Town Budget is on the town's webpage and is consistent with the new State Law that required that the budget be posted there. It is my hope that with the new webpage that is coming online soon, many other documents will be made available to the public. That would be consistent with recommendations by the Governor that are likely to become law in the future. (Definitely not a "Let's Wait and See" moment.)
When looking at any of these documents, don't get so caught up in the fact that 'something' happened that you don't go a bit further and try to find out the WHY!! It is the WHY of things that allows for the type of analysis to find behaviors/activities that could be changed. And, before any change is made, take the time to look at all the possible outcomes of that change. Sometimes, what appears to be change for the better can make things a whole lot worse!