Valley Business
Page 10 | The Roanoke Star-Sentinel | 6/11/10 - 6/17/10
Stricter Laws Put The Skids On Eminent Domain For RRHA
The South Jefferson Redevelopment Plan is being amended effective June 30, 2010. The amendment is a reworked 5-year plan that will accommodate Virginia’s newer property rights laws. Council will vote on the amendment at its June 21 meeting. The Roanoke Redevelopment and Housing Authority has no plans to initiate future eminent domain proceedings. In April 2007 multiple bills were enacted: • House Bill 2954 sponsored by Delegate Rob Bell (R-Charlottesville) gave definition to “public use.” • Senate Bill 781 sponsored by Ken Cuccinelli (R-Fairfax) gave voters an option to select the definition of “public use.” • Senate Bill 1296 sponsored by Tommy Norment (R-Williamsburg) restricted transfer of taken property to a private party for five years. Mark Loftis, attorney for the Roanoke Redevelopment Housing Authority laid out how these bills effectively put the skids on eminent domain used for taking property in South Jefferson and Gainsboro. The RRHA will have to directly negotiate private transactions with owners if it wants other property. Large parcel redevelopment will be severely curtailed. Smaller parcels with single owners have a better chance of succeeding under the newer laws. In all, stricter limits on public use, the taking of property for private benefit and the tightening of the definition of blight are the new rules. The taking of non-blighted property just because the property is located in a blighted area is prohibited. The new law was not in time to
Monday morning’s RRHA briefing. help Jay and Stephanie Burkholder when the housing authority condemned their Reserve Avenue property. It still does not go far enough for some people, including Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. When Cuccinelli addressed the Roanoke Chamber of Commerce on April 6, he made it clear that he would pursue adding stronger property rights protection to Virginia’s Constitution. “There is no consistency on the application of eminent domain throughout Virginia,” exclaimed Cuccinelli. He and the Governor “plan to rectify that” in the next legislative session. He added that “growth is a good thing but there is a wide variety of aggressiveness by local governments and housing authorities.” Cuccinelli noted that Southwest Virginia is the most aggressive in that regard.
to the event, GearJunkie.com will hold online contests for its readers. "Treasure Hunt is a first-ofits-kind event," said Stephen Regenold, founder and editor of GearJunkie.com. "Roanoke provides a great venue for this activity, which will blend elements from adventure racing with a substantial gear scavenger hunt." The Roanoke event is presented in partnership with Odyssey Adventure Racing, Roanoke
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Blue Ridge Autism Center Enjoys Renovated Facility
By Valerie Garner info@newsroanoke.com
Unique Outdoor Treasure Hunt Planned For Roanoke RoanokeOutside.com – a resource for the Roanoke region's outdoors – has teamed with GearJunkie.com, a leading outdoors blog and publication, to host a one-day-only Treasure Hunt event in a Roanoke wilderness park on July 11. The event will be called "Gear Junkie's Treasure Hunt: Roanoke." More than $40,000 in outdoor gear – from backpacks to kayaks – will be given away to an estimated 300 participants. Additionally, during the run-up
Parks & Recreation, and Roanoke County Parks, Recreation and Tourism. "The Roanoke region is one of the best spots anywhere for outdoor recreation," says Pete Eshelman with the Roanoke Regional Partnership. "By teaming up with Gear Junkie – a nationally-recognized web site that specializes in outdoor gear – we hope to further solidify our region's standing."
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In 2002 Angie Leonard learned that her then two-yearold son had autism. Searching for resources in the Roanoke Valley to her son, she discovered there were none. What happened next was a classic case of an individual motivated to fill a need she saw in her community. “I went to Pastor Mike (Grooms) at Rainbow Forest Baptist Church . . . and said, ‘You know, there’s no resources around here. Could we start thinking about ways that we could reach out to the autism population?’ He suggested that we start at 501C3, and so we had a big informational meeting . . . We build a board of directors and, from that, started the Blue Ridge Autism Center.” The center’s original location was Rainbow Forest Baptist Church. As time passed, the center outgrew its space there. Fate then intervened. Another facility, the Achievement Center, was struggling financially, and unable to keep the number of kids it wanted to, and was on the verge of shutting down. The Blue Ridge Autism Center came to the Achievement Center’s rescue. “Our board of directors met with their board of directors,” Leonard explains, “and decided that we would merge together ...and the Achievement Center owned this building. So we merged together, and formed one board and took the Blue Ridge Center and the Achievement Center and formed the Blue Ridge Autism and Achievement Center on June 15 of 2009, and then moved all of our students in here.” Following the merger, some donors told the newly formed institution that they wanted it to upgrade with some color, adding some character for the kids, and upgrading its technology. With the help of the Foundation of the Roanoke Valley and a private donor, the center did
The Blue Ridge Autism & Achievement Center. just that. In late April the Blue Ridge Autism and Achievement Center held a ribbon cutting ceremony to kick off a one-day open house event there, giving the public a glimpse at the center’s new and improved look. “It’s us saying, ‘OK, we’ve gotten into a school year, we’re settled, we’ve taken the money that’s been given to us, and we’ve revitalized the school,” says Leonard. “It’s a new organization.” Among the center’s operations is a school that, Leonard explains, is “licensed by the Virginia Department of Education, and we serve kids ages two through fourteen.” Some of them have autism, while others have other kinds of learning disabilities: dyslexia, attention deficit-hyper activity disorder, and Asperger’s Syndrome. “There’s a variety of different needs that we serve here at the school.” The center covers grades kindergarten through eighth. The school day runs from eight in the morning to 2:30 in the afternoon. “This is their school. Instead of going off to a public school, they come here. We have teachers and we educate them here. They have very individualized plans that help them with their deficits.” The center also has a program where its staff goes to students’ homes and works with them, their parents, and families. Another program is aimed at the school districts. “We have six full-time people that work in Roanoke County schools alone, providing training for teachers . . . We
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also do national training. We’ve been to Africa. So we’ve done international training on how to work with individuals with special needs.” Foreign students have been educated at the center as well: “We have had a student from Egypt and we’ve had a student from Africa.” Once a student has completed his or her education at the center, where they go next depends on the child and the families and what they want for the students. “Most of them transition back into public schools and go on into high schools. Some of them aren’t ready to go into public schools, or it’s too overwhelming of an atmosphere, and so they may go on to another private, special-ed day school such as the Minnick Center, or Rivermont in Roanoke, that serves individuals all the way up to twenty-two years of age.” As for attending colleges or universities, “We just kind of link them to people like Roxanna Hartman in Blacksburg, in Virginia Tech, and they kind of pick up the transition time at that point.” Leonard explains that the center has different training programs as part of its outreach to the community. “We have monthly parent training. Panera Bread . . . is doing an autism awareness campaign for Autism Speaks (a national organization). We’ve been going out into their cafes and hosting informational sessions. We have some grants that we’re hoping to get funded where parents who have just had their kids diagnosed come to us and find out exactly what we do by community trainings on Saturdays . . . If anybody calls us and says, ‘Can you bring your information to us?’ we will. We just booked some time with the local firefighters group that wanted to know more about how to react to situations where there were kids with Asperger’sautism special needs. So if they call and ask us to come out, we will.”
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