Month: October 2025

Paper or cell phone? No contest.

(Reading time: 5 minutes)

Maybe this comes as no surprise to anyone but me. Maybe it’s become a commonplace too obvious to prompt comment—but when did it become a given that you are no longer an accepted member of society if you don’t have a cell phone?

One reminder of this was driven home at this past week’s session of Staunton Citizens University, which included a couple of representatives of the Central Shenandoah Planning District Commission (CSPDC) extolling the virtues of the BRITE Bus public transportation network . There is, indeed, much to praise about this shuttle system, especially given the largely rural nature of our region, which is not particularly suitable for mass transit. And the CSPDC has done a masterful job of building up the system, most recently spending almost $2 million rebuilding the Hub in downtown Staunton to make it more rider-friendly. Benches, shelters, landscaping, lighting, abundant parking—it’s all there. All except those most basic tools for anyone who wants to take a bus, i.e. a schedule and a route map.

Virtually any mass transit system you can think of posts schedules and large maps behind glass at its sheltered stops. The lack of these essential clues for accessing the bus system is so obvious that the same CSPDC reps, asked about their absence at the Hub this past winter at a Staunton City Council meeting, assured council members they would get right on it. Ten months later, still no maps and still no schedules—but those apparently weren’t in the cards, anyway. Rather, the CSPDC folks said they had intended to post QR codes at the bus shelters, so that passengers could use their cell phones to scan the codes and thus get the information they wanted.

Which assumed, of course, that those passengers had cell phones. And that the cell phones were charged and had QR-code reading capability. And that the QR codes actually got posted, which to date they have not. . . .

More recently, Augusta County alerted the citizenry that it is changing its emergency notification system, going from “Code Red” to “Augusta Alerts” on Nov. 15, and that anyone signed up for Code Red needs to switch to the new system. Augusta Alerts, the county proclaims, “gives users flexibility to choose how they receive alerts—by phone, text, or email,” which may indeed be the case, but first people need to re-register. And the new registration form, in addition to requesting a preferred language and an address, insists that registrants provide a cell phone number. No cell phone, no sign-up. Got a tornado heading your way? Too bad you didn’t have a cell phone to register for that life-saving phone call or email!

This is not the first time I’ve encountered a survey, order form or other screen-based interrogation that won’t permit me to proceed to what I really want without entering a valid cell phone number. There’s no skipping the blank box. No opportunity to write “no cell phone.” And entering my home phone, which is a valid phone number but not a cell phone, just means someone somewhere will be sending me text messages that will never arrive but will leave that person smugly confident that I have received . . . whatever.

It’s not just the expectation that everyone has a cell phone that’s a problem; it’s the assumption that any phone number you provide is for a cell phone. Nobody asks; they just assume. There have been countless times I’ve been assured that someone sent me a text message—not realizing that it’s floating somewhere in cell phone purgatory. But the lack of a response from me seems not to trouble anyone, since apparently it’s inconceivable that I wouldn’t have received a message that was sent, so I’m either ghosting the message sender or just plain rude. Or it doesn’t matter, which is weird no matter how you look at it.

Cell phone networks, unlike the largely abandoned system of wired telephony, are far more precarious than most people realize, making them most vulnerable precisely when they’re most needed. I was working in downtown Washington D.C. when the Pentagon was targeted by al-Quaeda terrorists in 2001, and again a decade later when Virginia was rattled by a 5.7 earthquake. In each case, cell phone networks were overwhelmed almost instantly, transforming those handheld devices into electronic paperweights. Trying to call home, or indeed anywhere, was futile, but that didn’t keep people from trying, growing increasingly frantic with each rebuffed effort.

None of that should signify that I’m opposed to cell phones, just that I recognize their limitations and refuse to build my life around them. I actually have a cell phone but rarely carry it—nor should I have to!— and then chiefly so I can call my wife when I’m away from home. My home phone is more reliable and has better sound clarity, and when I give out that number I’ve now learned to say it’s not a cell so please don’t try texting. My desk top computer, meanwhile, is far more versatile and useful, especially when it comes to looking at a screen dense with information that would overwhelm a hand-held device—like a map. Or a bus schedule.

Neither of those electronic devices can read a QR code, and neither lends itself to being carted around town. And neither is as task-specific as a map or a printed schedule, posted at the site where it’s most needed.

Staunton Crossing dissonance

(Reading time: 4 minutes)

When it comes to its plans for Staunton Crossing, the city is being less than forthright. Coy, even.

Making this evident was session six of Staunton Citizen University, held last week and focused on all things economic. That, of course, meant paying special attention to Staunton Crossing, the hugely ambitious but largely vacant crown jewel in the city’s efforts to gin up economic development.  With its roots dating back to 2009, when the Staunton Economic Development Authority (EDA) shelled out $15 million in a land swap with Western State Hospital, Staunton Crossing now represents an investment of roughly twice that amount. The number of jobs attributed to Staunton Crossing over the past 16 years? Perhaps 200—and some unknown number of those aren’t new to Staunton, since they merely involved a move from one city location to another.

At its best, then, the money sunk into Staunton Crossing currently works out to a per-job cost of approximately $150,000. That’s hardly a bargain, and even less so considering that most of those jobs are on the low end of the wage scale: desk clerks and housekeepers at two hotels, food servers and salesclerks at a handful of fast-food franchises and retail outlets. But to be fair, the Crossing still has another 275 empty acres just waiting for someone to move in. And city officials say that could mean more than 3,000 additional jobs coming to Staunton, resulting in an enormous shift in any cost-benefit analysis, so perhaps it’s still early days when it comes to doing the math.

But that’s where the coyness comes in. What new businesses is the city trying to recruit, and at what additional cost?

Among the six types of industries advertised on Staunton Crossing’s internet pitch is “logistics and transportation,” which sounds an awful lot like a warehouse distribution center. That’s low-hanging fruit, one might imagine, given the Crossing’s touted “easy access to the East Coast and Midwest” because of interstate and railroad proximity. But apparently it’s also forbidden fruit, at least for now. Asked when a large tenant for the Crossing might be recruited, economic development director Amanda DiMeo responded that a warehouse operation could have been landed “yesterday” if that’s all the city was after. Clearly, there’s hope that there are bigger fish to fry.

Which brings us to the second questionable industry on the Crossing wish list: Data Centers & IT. When it comes to recruiting this latest “must have” industry, the EDA marketing push goes all out in playing the environmental hazards card without any apparent irony. Staunton Crossing, declares its website, “is a prime location for data centers due to its low risk of natural disasters. The area is not prone to earthquakes, hurricanes, or severe weather events, which can disrupt data center operations. This provides peace of mind to organizations that rely on the secure and continuous operation of their data centers.”

And that’s not all! Staunton Crossing has an irresistible supply of low-cost and reliable electrical service, according to its website. It has state-of-the-art fiber internet infrastructure. It has “a large pool of highly educated and experienced IT professionals,” which might be expected to raise  quizzical eyebrows among the relatively sparse IT workforce currently in the city. But notably lacking in this recitation of virtues is any mention of the copious amounts of water that data centers require, although the website does give assurances elsewhere that the city can provide 2 million gallons a day.

And that’s a problem.

Two million gallons a day represents the entire output of one of the city’s two major water sources, drawn from the headwaters of the North River in the George Washington National Forest.  The possibility of such an outsized claim on a critical natural resource, in an age of global warming and greater weather instability, including droughts, has not gone down well with community residents with a less boosterish outlook. There have been rumbles of discontent—which may explain a curious comment about the matter by Rodney Rhodes, the city’s director of community development.

Speaking immediately following DiMeo’s presentation, Rhodes led off with the observation that Staunton’s zoning ordinance does not permit data centers. Any attempt to bring in such a center therefore would require that the zoning code be amended—and that, he assured the class, would be “a hard slog.” Not impossible, of course. But hard, so nothing to get excited about.

Nothing to see here!

And yet, why would Staunton keep chasing after a substantial capital investment that its own rules do not permit? Does the question answer itself? A substantial capital investment of the sort represented by a data center wouldn’t provide much in terms of permanent employment, but it would add handsomely to the tax base. And given the many millions already spent on the Crossing with remarkably little return to date, the promise of a big chunk of tax revenue might be expected to transform a hard slog into a greased done-deal.

As I said: coy.

Housing advocates: it’s all a dream

(Reading time: 7 minutes)

There was something forlorn about the forum earlier this past week, sponsored by Building Bridges for the Greater Good, which was intended to spotlight teenage homelessness. The microphones offered frequent bursts of loud, jarring static. The stage of the Kate Collin Middle School in Waynesboro, where a similar forum was held a year ago, was more sparsely inhabited this time around—and looked it. The youngest person to take a mic was no longer a teenager, although finding someone of school age to bare his or her soul to several dozen onlookers might have been too much to expect.

Still, without the first-hand testimony of young lives wounded by the uncertainties and instability of homelessness, all that was left were the same old arid statistics that shock but often fail to move: 52 unhoused students in Waynesboro as of Oct. 13, 28 of them living in hotels and motels. Another 26 Waynesboro students living in foster homes, which Ryan Barber, the district’s assistant superintendent, described as “homeless adjacent.” Nearly 200 families across three schools turning to local food pantries each Friday.

No one from Staunton spoke on behalf of that city’s homeless youths. A social worker from Augusta county schools had little to add, seemingly content to let Barber do most of the heavy lifting.

If there was any strong audience reaction to what was said at the forum, it came—twice, with hearty rounds of applause—in response to statements that the long-term solution to such problems is more affordable housing. It’s hard to argue otherwise, since it’s obvious that without affordable housing more people will end up in the streets, but it’s also a term that goes largely undefined and unexplored. The upshot locally has been at least two years of hand-wringing and unfocused discussion that rarely gets at the heart of the issue, which at its core is nothing more than the mismatch between household incomes and housing costs.

“Affordable” housing, including rent or mortgage plus utilities, is typically defined as housing that doesn’t exceed 30% of one’s income. More than that and other basic needs get strained or unmet, including food, clothing, medical expenses, transportation, child care and so on. The sad part is that we haven’t seen anything close to that 30% ratio since March, 2022, when affordability fell of a cliff (see chart below) to levels not seen since the Great Recession of 2008.

This and other illuminating graphs, compiled by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, illustrate in several ways how badly we as a society are dealing with our housing issues. For openers, observe that housing today is even more unaffordable than it was in the period leading up to and following a global financial crisis that was triggered by a collapsing U.S. housing market. Although the two crises have differing causes, it’s worth noting that the 2008 collapse resulted in massive government intervention and an all-out effort to stave off another Great Depression. There is nothing comparable today, which means that our housing recession has not only been completely uninterrupted—none of those blue spikes to interrupt a sea of orange—but with no hope that anything’s about to change.

Here’s another way of visualizing the same dynamic, charting the median household income needed to buy a median priced house:

Again, the current lack of affordability exceeds that of the Great Recession. Moreover, the reality is worse than depicted above, since the Atlanta Fed’s statistics include all the components of mortgaged home ownership but do not include utilities. But what is measured is bad enough. The most recent (August, 2025) share of median income going to housing is 39%, the same level reached in July of 2006. By comparison, the lowest share of median income going to housing was in April, 2015, when it dipped to 23%.

With only two statistics going into computing affordability, it’s worth drilling down a bit to see how much each has contributed to our unbalanced ratio. The median household income for our area was $42,819 in mid-2006, $46,661 in April of 2015 and $67,199 a couple of months ago. The median homeownership cost for those same months was $194,033, $164,533 and $308,900. In other words, the cost of homeownership in 2015 was 3.5 times household income, compared to 4.6 times today.

Looked at another way, household income rose 9% over the first near-decade of this comparison, even as homeownership costs dropped 15%. In the decade since? Household income went up 44%, but homeownership costs exploded at twice that rate, by 87.7%. No wonder home ownership has become unaffordable—or that rental rates are likewise skyrocketing, thanks to frustrated homebuyers turning to other shelter options. And just like a rolled-up toothpaste tube, those who can’t keep up get spit out at the other end, ending up couch-surfing or in short-term motel rooms or in their cars or a tent.

Since we’re not about to see a doubling of household income—indeed, given current economic and federal policy trends, we’ll be lucky to see any increase—the only alternative for lowering the affordability threshold is to decrease the cost of homeownership. One way for that to happen is through lower mortgage interest rates, but that’s beyond our meager capabilities, and interest rates are in any case only a secondary factor in housing costs. Even more on the margin are property taxes and home insurance, both of which have climbed over the years but still remain relatively minor components of a monthly mortgage payment. That leaves just one thing we might influence to promote affordable housing: the cost of home building itself. That’s where the conversation should be focused, and it’s also where the conversation has been most lacking.

Home construction is a numbers game that is most profitable when it enjoys economies of scale. As with interest rates, many of the costs that go into that equation—labor, materials, weather—are beyond our control except at the margins. But the one variable over which municipalities have a say is land use. The more housing units that can be built on a particular lot, the lower the per-unit cost of the finished homes. Build a $500,000 house on a half-acre because a lower-cost house won’t pencil out, or build a four-plex with each unit priced at $200,000 and make the same return on investment—and create four times as much housing, each at an affordable price.

That latter option, however, requires a wholesale reexamination of zoning codes and maps, and that’s something Staunton has avoided. The city’s 11-point housing “strategy,” conceived by a working group of housing advocates that not once discussed the role of zoning in driving up housing costs, nibbles around the edges of land-use policies by exploring the possibility of allowing accessory dwelling units. The bulk of the proposed housing strategies, however, merely advocate lots of talking and not so much action: legal services for renters, for instance, or landlord “education.” The nitty-gritty task of grappling with outdated notions of urban planning, meanwhile, apparently proved a step too far.

And so we have moments like Monday’s forum, offered under the hopeful tag line, “I am homeless and still I dream.” Those of us who aren’t homeless are also dreaming—dreaming if we think we’re actually moving the needle on affordable housing, as even a quick look at the charts above should drive home. What’s that phrase, often mis-attributed to Einstein, about the definition of insanity. . . .?

Ambling toward a housing disaster

(Reading time: 9 minutes)

There’s never a good time to be homeless—but there’s bad, and then there’s infernally bad. We’re now well into Dante territory, hurtling past limbo, lust and gluttony to start ricocheting off greed’s boulders.

On a federal level, the gap between supply and demand for housing for the homeless was already skyrocketing before the Trump administration took office (graphed above) but exploded in the past year, thanks to a combination of funding rescissions and deep staffing cuts in departments serving the poor and unhoused. That notably includes the departments of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and of Health and Human Services, which just in the past couple of days have been whacked with further unprecedented layoffs, shredding what little remains of an already tattered social safety net. If there’s any doubt about the local implications of all this, see the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank and its increasingly alarmed appeals for community support.

But there’s also a deeper, more profound shift in housing policy underway that will have the perverse effect of pouring gasoline on the fire. That shift dates back to a July executive order, issued by Donald Trump under the provocative title “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,” that ends support for the “Housing First” approach to a growing unsheltered population. While Housing First advocates contend (often with references to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs) that people’s basic needs for food, warmth and shelter must be met before they can effectively address addictions, psychological ills or lack of job training, the executive order claims Housing First policies “deprioritize accountability” and fail to “promote treatment, recovery and self-sufficiency.” The better approach, according to the executive order, is to slash funding for such assistance while instituting sobriety requirements for people living in federally funded housing. Can’t stay straight? It’s back on the street with you, where the physical struggle for survival will take all your energy.

Meanwhile, the current trend toward criminalizing homelessness only adds to the problem. A U.S. Supreme Court decision last year empowered municipal officials to fine, ticket, displace or arrest people sleeping in public spaces, and more than 200 localities around the country have since criminalized homelessness. But other jurisdictions—including Staunton, Waynesboro and Augusta County—already had similar laws on their books. And while our local law enforcement agencies thus far have taken a restrained approach to people camping on public property, acting mostly in response to complaints by directing the offenders to move elsewhere, that could change with any pronounced shift in the political climate.

Homeless people who get jailed for failing to have a sanctioned place to sleep become, ironically, ineligible for certain housing programs. No surprise, then, that once they’ve been incarcerated for not having shelter, many end up in a cycle that perpetuates their homelessness. More than 50,000 people who are released from prison or jail each year go straight into homeless shelters and then into the streets, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, which reports that formerly incarcerated people are ten times more likely to become homeless than the general public due to a lack of financial and social support.

What little support for the homeless that still exists is being chopped away almost on a weekly basis. As reported by Politico a couple of weeks ago, the Trump administration is looking to move as much as two-thirds of HUD’s funds designated for permanent housing projects to transitional housing assistance “with some work or service requirements.” Those who can’t meet the requirements—such as a mother with young children, or someone who’s disabled—may end up on the street again, but as explained by a HUD spokesperson, “HUD is no longer in the business of permanently funding homelessness without measuring program success at promoting recovery and self-sufficiency.” That’s consistent with the administration’s overall “suck-it-up-buttercup” approach to social services but does nothing to address root causes, leaving it up to overwhelmed and unfunded local agencies to deal with the fallout.

Some of these issues may be addressed Monday evening at Kate Collins Middle School in Waynesboro, when Building Bridges for the Greater Good will host a forum on teenage homelessness. That’s because homeless teens are supposed to be served by the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, which created the Continuum of Care (CoC) program that Politico reports is under attack—indeed, as Politico also noted, Trump’s budget for the next fiscal year proposes cutting all CoC funding. Loss of those funds will mean dozens of students in the SAW region who currently receive emergency housing, transportation and other necessities of life, including food, clothing and personal care supplies, will be at risk of losing their ability to stay in school.

CoC funding also assists 22 households in a program of permanent supportive housing administered by the Valley Community Services Board (VCSB), but their future is equally uncertain. The current funding runs out in December, and while a larger successor grant has been approved, there’s no certainty that money will be released. “If the Politico article is correct, this program would certainly be in jeopardy, but I am not sure what calendar year we will actually feel the impact,” said Lydia Campbell, assistant director of community services at VCSB. “It’s terrible that our community members with the most significant barriers to housing that are finally in their own places could be at risk.”

In the face of this onslaught, local efforts to cope with homelessness and a severe shortage of affordable housing have been lame, at best. That’s partly due to a lack of money, of course, but being cash-poor is insufficient excuse for a city that spends big bucks on a new pool house, golf carts and 50-gallon trash cans for everyone—all welcomed expenditures contributing to Staunton’s quality of life, but at the cost of letting internal sores fester. With only so many tax dollars to go around, expenditures in one area mean belt-tightening in another. In the end, it all comes down to the choices we’re willing to make—or ignore.

Take, for example, the request to city council by Alec Gunn, director of the Waynesboro Area Refuge Ministries (WARM), for financial support for a day center for the homeless at First Presbyterian Church. As initially conceived, this would have been a warm day-refuge in the winter and a cool one in summer for an unsheltered population that otherwise resorts to camping out in the library or in fast food restaurants to escape the weather. Talk of the city providing some modest start-up money for such an effort, perhaps $30,000, has been kicking around since the start of the year, with little to show for it and with ambitions for the day center’s scope of services diminishing with each passing month. More recently, rumblings of resistance from the church’s neighbors have been heard, and Gunn did himself no favors with the skimpy “budget” he presented to city council in early September—but neither has anyone on city council stepped up to press for a resolution. And so. . . still no day center.

As much—or little—can be said of the city’s pursuit of affordable housing, a critical component of any serious effort to eliminate homelessness. A key to this somnolent exercise has been creation of a housing commission that could “provide expertise and guidance regarding the amount and quality of affordable and workforce housing in the City,” an initiative first proposed by Councilor Brad Arrowood in March. That’s March of 2023. This past Thursday the city council finally received a resolution to do just that—but it won’t actually vote on the measure until an unspecified “later date.”

Not that there’s anything to be lost in this slow-walk to another grouping of chin strokers. Six of the proposed nine commission members are to be drawn from the ranks of the housing strategy working group that labored for a whole eight hours spread over 12 months to produce the city’s “housing strategy.” That group served mainly as a sounding board for city planners to present their ideas, and for the most part it resonated in tune; this was not a group brimming with ideas. The new commission will likewise meet only four times a year and, under the influence of its carry-over members, presumably will serve a similar role, with similarly minimal results. If there is to be any hope for the housing commission to provide meaningful input, it will have to come from the three non-working group members, ideally including representatives from the building and development sector and at least one person who has been homeless.

But first, of course, there actually has to be a city council vote to ratify the resolution. Assuming it does so in the next few weeks, and that the housing commission holds its first meeting in January, that will mark nearly three years since Arrowood’s initial proposal.

All this foot-dragging might be tolerable in a slower age, but that’s not where we are today. Instead, we’re hurtling toward a precipice with preternatural speed, the economy teetering toward recession, our political machinery seized up and normal middle-class people growing angry, suspicious and resentful under the weight of a disintegrating social order. How else to explain recent events in Waynesboro, where local residents circulated a letter deploring “the homeless problem” and criticizing St. John’s Episcopal Church for allowing a man to sleep in its bushes and a homeless couple to stay on an empty church lot. The letter expressed concern that mental illness, drug addiction and increased crime rates would put the neighborhood at risk, albeit without linking any of those problems to the three specific people prompting the writers’ angst.

Not all local residents shared that view, and in a couple of meetings pushed back vigorously against such stereotyping. But as the homelessness problem deepens and more people are forced to live in their cars and on the streets, similarly charitable responses may become more strained. We’re in a race against time that community leaders have not yet recognized, for money, effort, planning and initiative, and it would be reassuring to get even a whiff of urgency over what needs to be done.

A ‘Failure to Act,’ a 28% water loss

(Reading time: 4 minutes)

I was fast enough to secure one of 25 slots at this year’s Staunton Citizen University, which are parceled out on a first come-first serve basis and are in surprisingly high demand. Last year I waited until the early afternoon on the first day of registration, and by then all 25 had been snatched up. This time I called at 8:05 a.m. and was glad I did, as this is a really great opportunity for city residents to look behind the curtain and see what makes Staunton tick .

A 10-week program that meets for two hours (and sometimes longer!) once a week, Staunton U trots out a parade of elected officials and city employees and a welter of statistics and budget figures to explain how the various components of city government mesh together. Field trips take class participants to the water treatment plant, city parks, a fire house, the landfill and other key facilities. Questions are encouraged.

Revelations abound.

One of the most disturbing, especially in the context of the recent water main break, is the D-minus rating that municipal water infrastructures have received from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)—not just this year, but every year since at least 2009. That’s much more than a decade of being graded just a hair above failing, a track record succinctly summarized in the report’s title, “Failure to Act.” Any child with that kind of track record would be attending remedial classes, working with tutors and mourning the loss of their cellphone and internet access, but America’s cities have been blithely rolling along as if nothing is amiss.

Staunton is no exception—indeed, it may be worse than average, given the age of its system. The Aug. 14 water main break, which resulted in a multi-day “boil-water advisory,” a two-day public school closure and untold economic impact on local businesses, should have been a wake-up call. But any appropriate sense of alarm was undercut by self-congratulatory relief over the swiftness with which the rupture was repaired, which was understandable; and by the widely accepted explanation that this was, in essence, an act of God, which it wasn’t. As explained to city council members by public works director Dave Irvin, “It would be great if we could predict breaks like this. We can’t.” And with that, everyone seems to have moved on.

But as I wrote a few weeks ago, that dismissal of predictability is accurate only in the most technically narrow sense: whether a water main will break in this spot or that, on this date or another, is indeed unknowable. What is known, with a high degree of certainty, is that there will be more breaks—indeed, there already are, on average, 40 a year somewhere in the 160 miles of the city’s water distribution system. Most simply aren’t on the same scale as the Aug. 14 rupture, but that doesn’t mean we’ll avoid “the big one,” as the ASCE report should underscore.

Nor should we be oblivious to the cumulative impact of smaller losses. Staunton overall is experiencing an ongoing 28% loss in its distribution system, day in and day out, as measured by the difference between the amount pumped out of the water treatment plant and the total amount recorded by customers’ meters. The lowest loss he’s ever seen in Staunton, Irvin said, was 12%, and that was quite a few years ago. The national average loss is 15%. In other words, more than a quarter of all the water Staunton pulls out of its reservoir and pumps from Gardner Springs, an average total of 4 million gallons a day, simply disappears, at nearly double the national rate. That’s more than a million gallons a day that just goes poof.

To put that in perspective, the Aug. 14 break spilled perhaps a million gallons before the supply was cut off.

Where do those millions of gallons of water go? Some of it is legitimately unmetered use, as when firefighters hook up to a hydrant or the city waters its golf course. Some of it is stolen—often from those same fire hydrants, by unscrupulous developers or others, but also by people rigging systems to bypass their meters. But most of it spurts out undetected from a rotting distribution network considerably past its “sell by” date, then quickly disappears into a karst topography without leaving a surface clue to the loss.

This is the month in which the city begins its annual budget planning—a month in which, it should be noted, we also are under drought watch. Again. It remains to be seen if more than a decade of near-failing grades for our water system, a major pipeline break and an ongoing loss of 28% of our treated water will be enough to jolt city planners and political leadership into paying pertinent attention to the way they raise and allocate funds. That includes not just taxes but also water and sewer rates, which by all accounts are comparable to or lower than those set by similarly sized Virginia municipalities.

Nobody wants to pay higher prices for life’s essentials, but as any homeowner knows, deferred maintenance saves money only in the short-term and always, always exacts a higher price down the road.