The Roanoke Star-Sentinel by The Roanoke Star

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Page 2 | The Roanoke Star-Sentinel | 2/11/11 - 2/17/11

High pressure will be in charge of our weather Friday through the middle of next week, bringing partly to mostly sunny skies with it. There might be the chance for a few sprinkles/ flurries in the mountains on Saturday morning and then again on Monday morning, otherwise we look dry through Wednesday. Temperatures will warm nicely during this timeframe: middle 40s on Friday, upper 40s Saturday, near 60 on Saturday, and mid-toupper 50s Monday through Wednesday.

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enue of Wal-Mart. City Manager Chris Morrill was more optimistic saying, “Kohl’s may be more of a regional draw.” People should linger in the city and spend time shopping at other stores and dining out. Poverty in the city has continued to climb. In 2010, 22.76 percent of Roanoke’s population was on food stamps – a 15.4 percent increase over 2009. Health insurance premium and retirement contribution increases add to the overall fixed cost increase. Long-term bond debt per capita has increased. Roanoke City has taken steps to toe the line on debt after exceeding the

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city’s debt policy in fiscal year 2010. It exceeded the 10 percent cap at 10.2 percent. Shawver warned that debt would hover at the 10 percent level for three more years. This leaves little or no room for funding additional capital improvement projects. Answering city council questions on pension funding, Morrill settled concerns saying, “there is a lot of hysteria out there about municipality’s pension funds going bankrupt - we have a sound pension plan.” The first cut at the FY2012 budget estimates an increase to the schools of $139,000 with total funding to schools just short of $69 million. Shawver said, “it is a little early

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Superman and Spiderman are the crime fighting heroes of the past. Today’s heroes will be facebook and twitter. Roanoke City’s Chief of Police Chris Perkins plans to use the tools of technology to foil the foes of today. The Roanoke City Police Department already has a twitter and facebook account but Perkins expects to be using the tools more frequently starting March 1. “We’re going to put out profiles on officers – profiles on cases – share information,” said Perkins. Perkins said that fraud increased sixteen percent in 2010. Perkins attributes the increase primarily to computer fraud. An irresistible e-mail is delivered to the victim’s inbox with an enticing message saying, “click here to win your prize.” Before the vision of the newfound fortune fades to an empty reality the victim has entered his personal information. The perpetrator then empties his victim’s bank account before he releases the grip on his mouse. In a briefing to Roanoke City Council Monday, Perkins had some good news--peppered with concerns over a 45 percent increase in domestic aggravated assaults for 2010. “A poor economy correlates with an increase in domestic assaults,” explained Perkins.

Child in Need of Services (CHINS) petitions were up 21 percent as well. Perkins said this increase was due to parental issues as arrest of juveniles was down. Overall, aggravated assaults and homicides each were up twelve percent from 2009. Of the nine homicides in 2010 four were domestic related. Others were suspected to have involved drugs. The good news is that overall crime is down four percent over 2009. In the past six years crime in Roanoke City has decreased twenty-three percent. Perkins humbly said, “that truly is [due to] this community - we’ve had some changes in attitude – we have a lot more involvement.” “Most of our criminals are opportunists,” said Perkins. Programs like “Lock it or Lose it” have made citizens aware that by simply locking their car and removing valuables, they can negate the opportunity of theft. Perkins said, “it amazes me people will still pull up, park their car, leave everything sitting there with the car unlocked and walk away.” That is where the community can help eliminate larceny by removing the opportunity. The sluggish economy has caused an increase in “white collar” crimes such as fraud, bribery and forgery. These cat-

that “Calculating the BPOL tax on net rather than gross receipts will result in less revenue for the City of Roanoke unless the Code of Virginia increases the established rates.” Roanoke presently calculates on gross receipts. Shawver thought it didn’t mean that you could do both but had to pick one or the other. “Localities would need to have uniformity in the application of the tax. This type of legislation shifts the political battle to the local level,” said Shawver in an e-mail. By Valerie Garner info@newsroanoke.com

Police Chief Chris Perkins addresses city council and others. egories increased from 673 in 2009 to 806 in 2010. Increases in various crimes vary from one quadrant to another. For example, Southwest City had an increase in assault while Northwest had an increase in robberies. Perkins cautioned not to draw any conclusions based on the quadrant, “you’ve got to draw down to the raw numbers to say whether it is bad or good or other.” For example Southwest, had young people who were stealing mopeds. Mopeds are considered “vehicle theft.” Cleared cases in 2010 have jumped an average of thirtyfour percent since Perkins became Chief, with some recently solved arson cases taking the percentage even higher. In answer to a question by council member Ray Ferris on

recording incidents, Perkins explained that “we have guidelines set out in a booklet by the State Police that “tells us how to classify these offenses.” Perkins stressed how across the nation there is under reporting of crime, especially in domestic abuse incidents. “We may have a problem. That’s why when we identified this [domestic] problem - it could be larger,” said Perkins. Domestic violence issues will be a priority for Perkins this year. Other than correlating some increases to the economy, over eighty percent of crime is directly or indirectly related to drug activity. “Overall Roanoke is fortunate in being a safe city,” concluded Perkins. By Valerie Garner info@newsroanoke.com

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can have high density oyster reefs that will be left alone.” A good spat set does not guarantee a boost in future populations. The 1997 spat set was followed by a series of poor years, driven in part by a four-year drought from 1999 through 2002 which saw oyster populations plummet even further as drier conditions allowed the diseases MSX and Dermo, which thrive in high salinities, to flourish. This year’s survey also showed good news for disease. While Dermo was widespread, infection rates were below averages seen over the past two decades, and the range of MSX continued to decrease. Non-fishing oyster mortality was just 12 percent, as low as it’s been in the past quarter century when the diseases began devastating oyster populations in the state. That was a dramatic drop from the worst year, 2002, when drought conditions resulted in

oyster mortality reaching about 60 percent. The survey showed that 2010 was the seventh straight year oyster mortality has been below average observed over the past quarter century. Biologists hope that means oysters are showing some signs of disease tolerance, or even resistance. “This is exactly what we need to have happen,” Naylor said. “We need to have disease resistance develop if there is any real hope of large scale recovery of oysters in the Bay.” But biologists won’t know for sure how tolerant oysters are to disease until there is another drought. “That is when you tend to have massive, widespread mortality,” Naylor said. “But droughts are natural, and to some extent, we have to expect that there will be setbacks. We are not going to just see a continual climb in oyster populations. We will move forward and backwards, hopefully

lurching in an upward direction.” Even if positive trends continue, the Bay is, at best, decades from seeing a large-scale recovery in oyster populations. The amount of oyster habitat in the Bay is thought to be less than 10 percent of historic levels. “We still have dramatically reduced physical oyster habitat,” Naylor said. “The better spat sets we are seeing are only occurring in a very small percentage of the historic habitat.” Creating large amounts of new habitat hinges on oysters being able to survive long enough, and grow large enough, so oyster shell builds up faster than it is buried by sediment. By Karl Blankenship info@newsroanoke.com

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in the process” and she expects a clearer picture of revenue from personal property taxes when vehicle data becomes available. For now a decline of 3 percent is expected. Real estate values will be watched carefully and are expected to remain flat for FY2012. General Assembly passes a BPOL tax change With the passage of House Bill 1437 the Business professional and occupational license tax (BPOL) can be calculated using gross receipts or Virginia taxable income. It now waits to be taken up in the Senate Finance Committee. The commissioner of revenue, Sherman Holland said

Chief Of Police Plans To Expand Use of Social Media To Fight Crime

The Roanoke Star-Sentinel is published weekly by Whisper One Media, Inc. in Roanoke, Va. Subscriptions are available for $44 per year. Send subscriptions to PO Box 8338, Roanoke,VA 24014. We encourage letters from our readers on topics of general interest to the community and responses to our articles and columns. Letters must be signed and have a telephone number for verification. All letters will be verified before publication.The Star-Sentinel reserves the right to deny publication of any letter and edit letters for length, content and style. All real estate advertised herein is subject to national and Virginia fair housing laws and readers are hereby informed that all dwellings advertised in this newspaper are available on an equal opportunity basis.

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