New choices in Suffolk have vision and plans

The race for the Chuckatuck Borough seat on the Suffolk City Council presents the kind of choices any voter would be glad to have.

Caroline Martin, an executive retired from Riverside Health System, is now energetically involved in everything from chairing the housing authority to sitting on the board of the Western Tidewater Free Clinic. She's running for the vacant seat against Mike Duman, the owner of an eponymous car dealership and member of the city's Economic Development Authority.

Both are smart. Both are capable. Both are successful.

In the final analysis, though, Martin's experience in managing a sprawling organization and her vision for the city's future make the most compelling case for her election to a City Council that needs her perspective.

"All it really takes is a vision that's visible to your constituents," she said in an interview. "And then a very good, detailed business plan to show them how it will work."

Like every candidate, Martin emphasized the need for openness at a City Hall filled with transparency advocates who rarely deliver it: "Could we hear the 'why' behind the 'what' of how decisions are being made?" Martin asked.

In the past several years, the Suffolk City Council has managed money as assiduously as it has discarded principles of smarter development. Perhaps the only salutary effect of the dreadful housing market has been that few builders have taken advantage of that.

Councilman Jeff Gardy, a lawyer running for re-election in the Holy Neck Borough (which never re-elects anybody), epitomizes the council's laissez-faire attitude toward growth management. For that reason he should, like his predecessors, be turned from office.

Gardy's approach to development is informed by a passivity that creates unnecessary misery. "You've got to react to what comes and what is," he said.

That passivity is not unusual on the City Council. It should be.

Gardy is challenged by J.B. Varney, a longtime high school baseball coach and a one-time supervisor in Botetourt County. His experience in government and in planning would allow him to make sound decisions from the start.

He advocates that infrastructure be in place before encouraging development, an especially critical question in Holy Neck. That's where the council has already approved a massive new transportation hub that will require widening or bypassing a stretch of Holland Road. In the absence of money from Richmond, that fix could cost the city millions.

"Our City Council is reactive rather than proactive," Varney said in an interview. "... You have to have a happy medium between growth and being overwhelmed by that growth."

It would be hard to argue that Charles Parr, the councilman from the Suffolk Borough, has been anything other than active during his four years on council. Parr owns property across the city - as he said in an interview, in every borough but Cypress. One of the first votes the council took after Parr was elected was to overturn a zoning decision on property he once owned.

Every council decision has had his fingerprints on it, including one four years ago to remake city management and the heedless 2009 approval of the CenterPoint complex. Parr, however, does have a vision for Suffolk's future - and for the downtown. He is a prime mover for a rail station and a new City Hall complex.

His opponent, Alvin Copeland, appears to be running largely to unseat Parr and to oppose the current makeup of the City Council. That is not quite enough, but his broad support throughout the borough should tell Parr something about how his constituents feel about his tenure.

Finally, Charles Brown deserves re-election to his Cypress Borough seat. Brown's emphasis on a City Council "team" provides some pause, since unanimity is the last thing anyone should expect or want in a legislative body.

School Board

Two issues are likely to dominate the next several months: The seating of a new superintendent to succeed Milton Liverman, who has retired, and how to replace Southwestern Elementary School.

The School Board is likely to hire a new superintendent before any new members take office, but the decision on a new school - or schools - to educate elementary students in Whaleyville and Holland is likely to go on for months. The right answer is to build a school in the village of Holland to replace Southwestern and renovate Robertson in Whaleyville.

Unfortunately, the City Council has inserted itself too aggressively in a decision that belongs to the School Board. It has also refused to spend the money necessary to build both schools.

School Board Chairwoman Lorraine Skeeter, from Cypress Borough, has resisted City Hall's push. Because of that, and because of her experience on, and knowledge of, the School Board, she should be returned to office.

Holy Neck's Enoch Copeland is running, he says, largely to make sure a school to replace Southwestern is built in Holland. He brings experience on the City Council as well, a perspective that would be valuable as this fight between the two bodies drags on.

He is opposed by Bill Owen, a longtime educator in schools both public and private and a professor at Old Dominion University. Owen, like almost everyone running, prefers a school in each village but would settle on a school between them. If Holy Neck refuses to re-elect Copeland, Owen will hit the ground running and be a strong advocate.

Linda Bouchard, a former city school teacher, would bring a teacher's perspective to a board that could use more. She has earned our support for the Chuckatuck seat with her plain speaking and her focus on children.

Finally, the Suffolk Borough features a rematch of the city's first mayoral election in 2008. Mike Debranski earned our endorsement in that race. He deserves it again in 2010.