Colonials lose their biggest fan--RIP Duane Smith

"I felt a great disturbance in the Force.”

                                                                                Obi-Wan Kenobi

For years now my photography friend, Al Goulder, and I have been taking pictures at Colonial Heights High School sporting events, perhaps too many to count. But in the last five years or so, we have made a point of getting at least one picture of the person who may be the Colonials most faithful fan, Duane James.

I don’t remember when I first met Duane, or for that matter, which baseball cap he may have been sporting at the time. He seemed to rotate between Colonials, University of Richmond, and Randolph Macon.  All places he attended and from which he graduated.

Sports fans in general are an odd lot, but those who come out to high school sports venues over time may be the strangest of all.  Duane was tall and lanky with a flash of black hair that seemed only under control due to the constraints of his current ball cap.  I know I have seen him without a ball cap on, but that image lives way back in my mind.

Duane passed away this week and he will be sorely missed by hundreds of current and former Colonials.  He was a fixture at football games, basketball games, and baseball games. And when the Colonials’ took home their State Championship this year in Volleyball, only the third State Championship in school history, Duane was right there in the Siegel Center cheering his Colonials team on.

It was rare for him to miss a game.  And recently, as he was laid up in the hospital for a heart problem, he would keep track of his Colonials Baseball Team as they played through the season.  Despite not being at the game, Duane was aware of what was going on and often posted a “rah rah” comment on his Facebook page.

All of us who attend the games missed him being there. And it isn’t like he was very demonstrative, his support was the kind of support all teams need, a sort of quiet, appreciative, and understanding look at things. He loved it when the teams won, and always seemed to “get it” when they struggled. He was well aware of the uphill battle the Colonials faced as one of the smaller school districts around constantly “playing up” against the likes of Thomas Dale, Meadowbrook, and Matoaca.  Those are the kinds of games that harden a fan.  They turn a fan into a hardcore supporter, which is a perfect description of Duane.

I’m not really certain when Al and I started shooting pictures of Duane.  I do remember getting one that really was not very flattering and which I pulled down shortly after posting it, and realizing it wasn’t exactly what we were trying to convey.  I immediately deleted that image from my files.

At some point, when I have an extra minute or two, or maybe a few hours, I will go out and dig up a bunch of Duane James pictures. I have them taken at the gym, on the football field, and at Shepherd Stadium. I probably have them at many other places, but it will take me some time to dig them out.

It will be different now at a Colonials’ sporting event.  There will still be the same bunch of old reliable fans like Mickey Goulder and Hank Vencil.  But it just won’t be the same without Duane.

How Local Government Ought to Work

At this point in the game it’s hard to determine what, exactly, the City Council is trying to do with this parking ordnance change.  As it came out of the Planning Commission, the rewrite of that segment of the City Code caused a bit of a stir.  More than 60 people packed City Council chambers and more were standing outside listening over a loudspeaker.

The Planning Commission, one would have to think under the direction of City Council, came back with a fairly restrictive plan for parking campers, RVs, trailers, and commercial vehicles.  The plan, as it was first proposed, would have created significant changes, for instance, the planners recommended limiting trailers to 21-feet.  Most trailers used for camping start at 21-feet, and I own one and know it is really a bit on the small side. I mean, as a camper, we like to have our controlled environment as comfy as we can make it.  They also wanted to restrict the number of such vehicles, not to include the commercial vehicles, to one.

Both of those ideas hit the pavement at last week’s work session when council voted against prohibiting the size and the number of such vehicles that a home owner can own and park on their property. In fact, Councilor Betsy Luck said it best when she commented that “Size doesn’t matter.”

The big Magilla left concerning campers, trailers, and RVs appears to be where a resident would be allowed to park them. At first, I thought that Council would stick to the back yard or behind the front plane of the house ruling. It seems, at one level, to be a fair and practical way to handle the issue.  In fact, last week, it seemed readily apparent that council was leaning toward that standard, which exists as is today.

But something happened along the way that may have opened the door to a change in that posture.  Several citizens spoke at the hearing. Two people spoke directly against the commercial vehicle parking regulations, stating that parking large commercial vehicles in their residential neighborhood were, basically, a nuisance. For the most part, they were upset about tow truck drivers parking their vehicles by their homes.

In the parlance of land use planning, these people are often referred to by the acronym NIMBY, or not in my back yard. For the most part, the idea is that such people wouldn’t care about parking a commercial vehicle in a residential neighborhood, except that it is their neighborhood and perhaps their neighbor.

I am certain that having a large roll back style tow truck starting up at all hours of the morning might be cause for concern for a neighbor. It may well be inconvenient or annoying to have someone crank up one of those big diesel engines at 2 a.m. when they are called out to pick up a vehicle. But I think people have a right to park their commercial vehicles on their own property.

It’s a tough discussion.

Council, at the work session, seemed set on limiting the number of commercial vehicles at a residence to one. But the people who spoke Tuesday night at the public hearing made solid points as to why they may need to have more than one parked at their homes.

For what it’s worth, the City is having a hard time coming up with a good definition for a commercial vehicle. Is it a vehicle with a painted on logo? Is it determined by the number of axles the vehicle has? Is it determined by the type of license plate it sports? Is it determined by gross weight?

That’s a lot of questions and a lot of different answers. If I have two tow trucks and I park them in my driveway who exactly am I bothering? Response time seems to be a big part of the equation. When someone needs a tow truck, the sooner it gets there the better. The City is aware of things like response time, response time is a big driver when it comes to analyzing the value of fire and rescue departments. While the tow truck may not be involved directly in life and death issues, there’s something to be said for getting one at the scene as quickly as possible.

Council, showing infinite wisdom, opted to table the final two decisions until they could work through them at their next work session.

By the end of the public hearing, Council seemed no further along than they were before they even started reviewing the code.  If they get out of this by only keeping the front line of the house portion, we will be basically right where we are today, except that the code will have been addressed in 2016 and not in 1980. Some people might scoff at the idea of attending a public hearing. Some might say, “You can’t fight city hall.” But judging from the changes already made, and the sense of things that may be coming, it looks like the citizens who showed up and spoke did have an impact on the code discussion.

It probably didn’t hurt that five council members are up for election this cycle, but it’s still interesting to see how “We the People” can still effect change instead of sitting back and allowing change to affect us.  It’s still possible that City Council will approve a change that is more restrictive than what we have now.  And yet there seems to be some movement toward a more amicable solution.

Had no one showed up at the past two meetings, it would have been simple for Council to summarily approve the changes. Had council chambers been empty, the most restrictive parts of the Planning Commission’s recommendation would likely have passed without a hitch. Instead, citizen stood up to be heard. That’s how local government should work.

Pulling the old Switcheroo!

Perhaps bait and switch is a bit harsh, but near the end of Tuesday night’s City Council work session, after council discussed the situation with the sewage treatment plant in Petersburg, the reworking of City Code to address parking in residential areas for personal use campers, boats, and recreational vehicles, and commercial vehicle parking, City Manager Tom Mattis, said, “And we have one more matter to address and I held it till the end because it only requires a vote.”

By that time, most of the 60-odd people in the audience had already slipped out the door for private discussions.  And so just like that the city introduced a new pay scale for planning requests that run the gamut from signage costs to plan reviews.  In fairness, the cost increase make sense because they are directed at a specific person and the requirement to advertise legal ads can get pretty costly, ranging up to $300 per ad times as many as four printings.  I’m not as concerned about the cost for an employee to do the work, after all that’s why they have a job in the first place.

Still, it’s pretty shocking to see the costs jump by as much as 300 percent or more.  And while it is perfectly understandable that the project should pay at least most of its own way, it makes one wonder why we waited so long to increase the fees.  The costs that are not covered by the fee are paid for by “we the people” and come out of the General Fund, otherwise known as your tax dollars.

Still, it’s hard to swallow having to pay so much for something that could, and probably should, be handled differently today.  To me, the newspaper industry is nearly dead.  This is especially true of smaller papers, but even the big ones have a hard time keeping up.

Papers like the Richmond Times-Dispatch might as well ditch covering International and National news and put the stuff in a roundup column on page 3. By the time you read it in that paper, the news is at least two days old.  If it isn’t time to shed advertising in the papers, it’s so close that municipalities ought to petition to change the “must be advertised” clause that forces them to print legal notices in a “newspaper of record.”

While I realize there are still a few Luddites (people opposed to … new technology) out there who are not “plugged” into the Internet and its various wonders, the number grows shorter with every obituary.  Most people today have access to the news, for whatever it’s worth, either by computer or through a smart phone.  We know almost the instant something happens, think “I-reports.”  Big news events are online the instant they happen.

The ISIS attacks in Paris were out almost before the police knew it had happened.  Posting a video to snapchat or any of the too-many-to-name social media sites happens in the blink of an eye. Someone is there, someone has a video, someone has access, and someone knows how to use it.

Even here in the US, the video of the cop gunning down a man who was running away.  The cop didn’t shoot that video, a passerby did.  And yet, it was out in the public domain faster than fast.

So, if we believe that to be true, then why do we waste our time and our money, and this does cost us mind you, in paying for Legal Ads?  Why not just allow the municipalities to post their own legal ads on their own websites?

Think of the cost savings.  In this day and age when things are getting more and more expensive, why shouldn’t we take advantage of our investment in technology?  Back in the day, back in ancient times, like the 1980s, computers were not so prolific, websites were not so numerous.  There hadn’t been a huge push to get an “Internet presence.”  Today we have it.  Today everyone knows about Google, in fact Google is in jeopardy of losing its brand name because it has become a verb.  Who hasn’t said, “You can just Google it,” I mean other than the few remaining Luddites like my brother, Mike?  Remember Xerox? It took them forever, and a clever Saturday Night Live skit, to get people to call it making copies, instead of saying, “Can you Xerox this for me?”

The fee increases probably will never affect me.  I doubt I am ever going to need it.  I will either move out of the city or be buried in it before I have to have any zoning done.  But doesn’t it just make sense to stop paying the newspapers for Legal Ads when posting the information on the City Website would be just as effective, if not more effective, and would save the city and the residents some money to boot?

Raise the fees if you must, but if it were up to me I would look at getting rid of the fees altogether.  That would be a greater benefit to the community and to the city itself.