Michele Edwards – Looking askance

Data center FOMO with a side of nuke

(Reading time: 7 minutes)

What’s going on with Staunton Crossing?

Fifteen years and tens of millions of dollars after it was first conceived, the 300-acre industrial park at the corner of I-80 and U.S. 250 has finally achieved Tier 4 status, which signifies it is ready to do business. Which raises the question: what now?

What kinds of businesses should be recruited for Staunton Crossing, and how will the city measure the project’s overall success? Should Staunton put more emphasis on job creation—or on increasing its tax base? How much disruption to its infrastructure and social fabric can the city tolerate, and what’s a fair trade-off for the jobs and tax dollars that result?

These and other issues were raised last week at a regular city council meeting in a rapid-fire presentation by Tim Davey, a professional engineer and director of economic development for the Timmons Group, which had created Staunton Crossing’s master plan by late 2018. “In the marketing world, six years is a long time,” he conceded Thursday, explaining why the plan should be updated. Seven-plus years is an even longer time, but Davey was not one to get bogged down in details, rushing through his remarks as if by doing so he could somehow turn back the clock. Along the way, he managed to toss a couple of hand grenades.

The most obvious casualty of time’s passage has been the master plan’s inclusion of a data center, an industry that was all the rage last decade but which has since lost much of its luster, and which dominated much of last week’s discussion. Just how much of a data center was being contemplated in 2018 is hard to tell from the documents produced at the time. Maps of the site allocated 831,250 square feet to a data center that Timmons projected would be built in the fifth year—which is to say, before now. Elsewhere, however, in a chart that includes water and sewer consumption, the data center was inexplicably reduced to 375,000 square feet, shrinking its hefty water needs below those of a light manufacturing plant. And water, as the master plan noted, is key: “Nothing else matters more than water.”

The intervening years have had other implications for the master plan, which includes a modest level of retail but a significant amount of office space among its target end-users—two categories, as pointed out by Mayor Michele Edwards, that have seen significant post-Covid shifts in demand. Such changes, in turn, affect bottom-line calculations about how many jobs and how many tax dollars Staunton Crossing might generate. Office space, for example, requires relatively little taxable capital investment but generates a lot of jobs when compared with light manufacturing, which requires more taxable spending on equipment and facilities but hires fewer people. Back when the master plan was first assembled, the outlook was for “3,000 quality jobs,” apparently considered a sufficiently high return on the many millions of state tax dollars lavished on the site in the name of job creation. But whether that’s still in the cards remains to be seen.

Data centers completely flip the calculus. Once such a center is built, typically by a transient workforce, its employee headcount is measured in dozens rather than hundreds. A data center’s potential boost to the city’s tax base, on the other hand, is enormous, thanks to its capital-intensive nature. In one sense, then, Staunton’s financial interests are at cross-purposes with Virginia’s, since state-funded land development allocated to a data center essentially transfers state capital to the city’s coffers—a nice offset for Staunton taxpayers, if not so great for the Staunton workforce.

A questionable transfer of tax dollars aside, data centers over the past decade have evolved in public perception from a relatively benign, low-impact and “clean” form of industry into power-guzzling, water-sucking vampires that can be noisy neighbors and a threat to local air quality, thanks to their reliance on diesel- and gas-fired emergency generators. With residential electricity rates climbing and water scarcity exacerbated by such developments, progressive Democrats are pushing a national moratorium on the construction of data centers nationally. A growing number of municipalities are following suit on a local level.

Despite all that, however, Tim Davey clearly believes that data centers should stay in the mix for Staunton Crossing—and not just a data center, but possibly an on-site electric plant to supply its energy needs, up to and including a “small” nuclear reactor.* Data centers and their associated energy sources are “things that people are asking about, and I’m not advocating for it, I’m just telling you that it’s just one of those things that people are asking about and you need to have an answer for that,” he counseled.

City councillor Corrie Park pushed back on such assertions, citing all the drawbacks associated with data centers and the resistance she has encountered from city residents on the subject. It would be “inefficient of us” to pursue a data center at this time because Staunton residents “won’t go for it,” she contended, a waste of time better spent going after more acceptable land uses. Davey, on the other hand, wasn’t having any of it, suggesting various work-arounds for some of the objections, offering for example that some data centers are using closed-loop cooling systems to reduce water consumption. And, of course, there was that whole nuke thing to avoid distorting local energy costs.

But the bottom line for Davey seemed to be . . . the bottom line. The Virginia boom in data centers will have run its course in another five years, he predicted, so it would be in Staunton’s best interests not to miss the gravy train. “I pose the question to my clients, do you want to be the only jurisdiction in Virginia without one, and the tax revenue that could come from it?” he asked the city council, leaning into fear-of-missing-out anxieties. “If the answer is yes, then that’s great—but the tax revenue is pretty impressive.”

What happens next is not clear. Davey’s presentation ended with several recommendations, starting with development of “a diverse, internal marketing team” and creation of “a target marketing portfolio,” which presumably would revisit the kinds of industries the city would try to recruit for Staunton Crossing. Yet the overall package smacks of a rush job staffed by insiders. There is no suggestion that public input would be sought—even for so weighty a subject as the desirability of having a “small nuke” within city limits—and the whole business plan refresh could be done within just 90 days, Davey assured the council.

Doubts about data centers aside, other questions about Staunton Crossing abound. For example, a key question raised by Davey on behalf of Staunton Crossing prospects is, “Where will my employees live?” To that, Davey replied, “I believe you guys are in a very good, healthy position to answer that,” which may come as news to the recently created Staunton Housing Commission and various local groups grappling with the inadequate supply of affordable housing—and all the more so if Staunton Crossing delivers on its promise of 3,000 new jobs. That’s a lot of fresh housing demand!

It’s also worth noting that whatever goes into Staunton Crossing, whether light manufacturing plants or a data center or both, will put additional demands on a water and sewer infrastructure that is already under stress. It’s ironic, therefore, that Davey’s presentation was immediately followed by a request to increase utility rates by 5% to 7% to pay for long overdue water and sewer improvements and maintenance. The increased amount, everyone agreed, will raise only a fraction of what’s actually needed.

There were no comments made at the public hearing on the rate increase, which was then approved.

*Once you’ve picked your jaw up off the floor and want to get the full context of the casual reference to nuclear reactors, you can find Davey’s comments here, starting at around the 54-minute mark. It should go without saying that any onsite power plant, nuclear or otherwise, would need additional coolant water.

We’re not moving the needle

(Reading time: 5 minutes)

Maybe it’s just the cold that’s slowing everything down, with much of Staunton still sheathed in so much ice it could be the setting for “Dr. Zhivago.” Nearly two weeks after a devastating winter storm hit the region, we’re still digging out and only weakly reestablishing life’s normal routines. A lot of important things have been put on hold.

But attention fatigue and disengagement with issues of affordable housing and homelessness, of such prominent concern in 2023 and 2024, had already set in before the storm. Where once scores of people attended the two housing summits hosted by the Community Foundation of Central Blue Ridge and the Community Action Partnership of Staunton, Augusta and Waynesboro, only a few dozen soldiered on in two working groups that were spun off to address issues of housing stability and housing stock. Monthly workgroup meetings soon bogged down into every-other-month events, attendance dwindled, the focus blurred.

Most recently, when the oncoming storm threatened a housing stock working group meeting scheduled for last week, the meeting was scrubbed altogether. Not postponed for a week or two, which one might expect if weather were the only problem, but canceled outright. That created a four-month gap between meetings, but it’s doubtful anyone views that as a problem—not when there’s so little to show for the past two years.

Then there’s the much-heralded Staunton Housing Commission, which after a similarly lengthy gestation, was scheduled to meet for the first time in early January. Instead, supposedly because just six of its nine members have been appointed to date, the commission’s inaugural meeting will occur later this month. Or maybe in March. With only four meetings per year, there’s really no rush—although it’s fair to ask how this leisurely pace fits in with the city’s “housing strategy,” for which an 18-month clock started ticking last July 1, and for which the housing commission was to be the lead advisory board.

And here’s an ironic twist: the Point in Time (PIT) count, which attempts to enumerate all the homeless people who can be found on one specific night per year, was scheduled for last Wednesday. But because of the extreme cold and generally impassable roads, any homeless people who might have been stuck in their cars, tents or other improvised shelters were given a pass—the only ones who (were) counted were those who reached homeless shelters, like Valley Mission or that week’s WARM emergency facility, which was in Waynesboro. So the “good news” in this year’s PIT count will be that 100% of those who are homeless were sheltered—no unsheltered people were found!

We may hope there will be an asterisk after those numbers.

One good thing that did come out of the storm was a last-minute, hastily assembled temporary emergency shelter thrown together by Staunton Mayor Michele Edwards—although she did so, she struggled to explain, as a private citizen and not as a city official. At least I think that’s the distinction she was trying to draw. Housed in the basement of the Central United Methodist Church, the emergency shelter was full to its limited capacity right up until it closed this past Monday morning, when presumably the emergency was over and the “temporary” aspect of its existence kicked in.

Anyone looking at a landscape torn from Boris Pasternak’s novel might have been puzzled—local schools wouldn’t reopen for another couple of days, after all—where the people who had stayed at the Central United shelter would go that day, or even that night, but that’s how the icicle crumbled. As Edwards emphasized, “temporary means temporary.”

The thing that’s clearly not temporary is Staunton’s ongoing lack of sufficient affordable housing, which persists despite the two years of chin-wagging mentioned above. Also not temporary is the lack of additional resources to cope with the inevitable consequences of that housing shortage. The emergency shelter program operated by WARM has an increasingly shaky roster of local churches willing to have their facilities used for a week at a time. The Mission continues to be backed up, as its supposedly short-term residents are unable to find permanent housing. And despite months of shambolic efforts at creating a day shelter for the homeless, we’re no closer to having one today than we were a year ago.

All that talking and meeting and feel-good assertions of what we’re going to do have made not one bit of progress in either stemming the tide of homelessness or of providing for the most basic needs of the unsheltered. We’ve just been treading water.

The online meeting that came up with an eleventh-hour plan to create an emergency shelter for the homeless took place two weeks ago today. There was much agreement, among the dozen or so participants, that this stop-gap measure should serve as a teaching moment—that the lessons learned from this intervention should result in better planning for the next emergency. Doing so, it was remarked both at the meeting and in subsequent emails, would be best served by sharing insights and observations as soon as possible after the fact, while memories were still fresh.

Two weeks later, and a week after the emergency shelter was closed, that conversation has yet to take place. The temperature tomorrow night is predicted to drop back into single-digits, and the ice and snow won’t melt significantly until mid-week, when the climate rollercoaster we’re riding may push us into the 50s. It is not outside the realm of possibility that when the melt occurs it will uncover someone who did not make it to a shelter, who was not found by a non-existent PIT count, who believed with good reason that there really was no refuge to be had.

That would be depressing, if, we may hope, unlikely. What’s more depressing, precisely because it is more likely, is the thought that a year from now essentially nothing will have changed.

What we should be learning

(Reading time: 9 minutes)

Four degrees this morning, according to my outside thermometer, which with a mild breeze of six miles per hour pushes us into sub-zero wind chill territory. That white stuff on the ground stopped being snow—if it ever was that—several days ago, compressing into an ice cap you can walk across without breaking through the crust. The city finally realized that this is not your normal snowstorm and brought in massive farming and road-building machinery to break up the ice still coating most roads, impervious to workaday snowplows mounted on pickups and garbage trucks. The deep freeze will extend into next week.

And yet, this could have been far worse. Had we had a widespread power outage, caused by storm-toppled transmission poles or a fried substation, many hundreds of city residents would have faced a life-threatening situation. No heat, no light, and often no way to get out of the house to seek help—if any help could be found. In many cases, the extreme cold would have resulted in burst pipes, which not only would have meant no water now but too much water later, when a thaw eventually arrives. And those in greatest danger, as always, would have been the most vulnerable: the elderly and disabled, those relying on medical devices, families with small children.

What would they have done? Who could they have called, and what help would have been provided?

A day before the storm hit, the city put out a press release announcing that it had declared a state of emergency. This apparently was intended to provide some kind of assurance that matters were well in hand, with references to the activation of an Emergency Operations Plan and a claim that it “removes any barriers to our response efforts and allows us to mobilize additional resources, if necessary.” Just what that was supposed to mean for the average Staunton resident was never explained, however, and aside from advising people to call 911 in an emergency, the only direct communication to the public was a stern reminder about shoveling out the sidewalks. As if!

Meanwhile, the city’s lack of foresight and advance emergency planning was captured in microcosm by its response to the unsheltered residents who live on our streets—which is to say, no municipal response at all. Whatever resources are unleashed by the Emergency Operations Plan, apparently none are extended to people sleeping in their cars or huddled in a tent somewhere. If a declared state of emergency is in any way meaningful, that umbrella doesn’t cover those who need it most.

That’s not to say nothing was done. To her enormous if paradoxical credit, Michele Edwards spearheaded a mobilization effort last week to find, transport and shelter the homeless before they froze to death—but she did so as a private citizen, not as the city’s mayor. Edwards’ initial outreach was an email, written “with urgency and with hope,” to approximately 40 local religious leaders, homeless advocates and social service agencies, seeking their help “in an 11^th-hour effort to protect life and dignity.” But as Edwards also made clear, “I am writing as a local government leader, and I’m not representing the City of Staunton. So, I am not writing with local government solutions.”

Why this official hands-off policy was necessary was not explained. Equally inexplicable was the distinction Edwards drew between acting as a local government leader and as a representative of the City of Staunton: is not the local government she leads that of Staunton?

That confusion aside, Edwards’ outreach resulted in roughly a dozen participants meeting online Friday night to brainstorm a last-minute response to a humanitarian crisis. Thanks to their efforts, an emergency shelter was thrown together at Central United Methodist Church (CUMC), under the direction of the Rev. Won Un. Food donations were received, as were 17 cots on loan from the Boy Scouts at Camp Shenandoah. The YMCA made a large donation of bedding, sleeping bags and pillows, and others also donated blankets. Volunteers to staff the shelter were recruited from Mary Baldwin University (MBU), and Edwards recruited a friend, Bill Woodruff, to supervise them for the first three nights.

All good, right? Five homeless people were housed by the shelter Saturday night, including one who was transported from the current WARM shelter in Waynesboro because it’s at full capacity. (Another three people were provided emergency shelter at the Valley Mission, a high-barrier shelter that serves people working toward permanent housing and does not normally offer transient services.) The headcount Sunday night increased to nine, including one woman and a Vietnam vet that Staunton’s own Spiderman—who was walking home after volunteering at the shelter the first night—found in the snow and escorted back to the church. Two-dozen or so volunteers, many from MBU, signed up for eight-hour shifts at CUMC.

But as with most such reflexive volunteer mobilizations, interest and commitment wane with time. People eager to help at the outset of an emergency become distracted by other, more pressing needs on the home front—driveways to shovel out, children who must be tended because schools remain closed—or believe the situation is well in hand and they’re no longer needed. Communications begin to break down, with group chats suddenly funneled through a single person—supposedly in the interests of efficiency—but with daily updates becoming first scarce, and then non-existent. Energy dissipates, and the few people still working at the center of it all become over-stretched and frazzled.

The danger here is not that the current effort will crumble, although that’s certainly a possibility, but that nothing changes going forward—that the next time we’re in a similar situation, the people who stepped forward this time will be a little less eager to do so again. For that not to happen, we have to learn that extreme conditions must be met with advance planning and an organized response, and that’s really a government function. No church or nonprofit social agency has either the resources or the authority to marshal what’s needed when the general population is fragmented and isolated by extreme weather or other disasters.

What should we have learned from current events? At the very least, the following:

Meaningful communication with the public is crucial. General, nonspecific assurances about disaster declarations and emergency operations plans don’t convey any useful information. Nor does hectoring people about shoveling their sidewalks demonstrate any understanding of how much outside the norm a situation has become.
Any city emergency plan should include a centralized relief center that is opened to the public when a disaster is declared. In Staunton’s case that could be the gym at Gypsy Hill Park, or it could be the National Guard Armory—but wherever it is, that information should be widely communicated to the public, and ideally it should be widely known before there’s a disaster.
A centralized relief shelter should be stocked with, or have ready access to, cots, bedding, food and water. Of less critical importance, but still desirable, would be showers, cooking facilities, accommodation for pets, and games, books and other activities, especially for children.
Both paid and volunteer staffing are needed at a relief shelter. Paid staffing is needed to assure reliable oversight and accountability, and could consist of cross-trained city employees who are not front-line responders and are recruited ahead of time. Volunteers are needed to fill the many roles that would stretch paid staff too thin, but also should be recruited ahead of an emergency (more on that below) and contacted via a master list maintained by the city.
Transportation, of both volunteers and people in need of emergency shelter, is a critical but overlooked necessity when people are trapped in their homes. The city should have an emergency list of residents with four-wheel-drive vehicles they are willing to operate in such circumstances, to ferry volunteers, refugees, food and other supplies as needed. This may extend to National Guard equipment as well.

I don’t think it’s hyperbolic to observe that in a different time, extreme situations like the one we’re confronting—and inevitably will be confronting again—resulted in the creation of civil defense organizations of various sorts. Although often associated with wartime conditions, civil defense forces were designed to supplement the military and civilian first-responders by fielding volunteers to do the more mundane tasks of shepherding people to shelter, cooking and serving meals, driving and delivering people and goods where needed, checking in with refugees to ensure their needs are being met, and so on.

The irony is that an organization like this is on tap in many communities around the country—and until a few years ago was available locally, as well. Known as Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT), the FEMA-sponsored program at its most ambitious trained and organized groups of community volunteers into emergency teams, with an internal command structure and in a subordinate position to first responder agencies. A watered-down version of the concept was taught locally by Rebecca Joyce, currently the city’s housing planner but at that time an employee of the Central Shenandoah Planning District, which apparently terminated CERT training without public explanation. A shadow of the group lingers on, primarily to recruit volunteer victims for local disaster drills but without any presence when the real thing strikes.

Whether reviving CERT is either feasible or desirable is open to discussion, but it’s clear that something of the sort would have been an enormous help in recent days. But that’s not a program that can spontaneously combust: it, or something similar, requires advance government initiative and government resources, as do the other elements of a meaningful disaster plan sketchily outlined above.

This won’t be our last rodeo (and indeed, this one isn’t even over yet), so the question that must be answered is, what have we learned from it? And how will that education inform our actions going forward? Failure to respond is not an option.

Jan. 29 postscript, 4 p.m.: the CUMC emergency shelter reports it is full.

What we need is a matchmaker

(Reading time: 13 minutes)

The growing mismatch between people’s needs and the resources available to them keeps growing, and with Congressional Republicans hell-bent on adopting a “big, beautiful bill” that will slash Medicaid and other social spending, the gap is certain to keep widening. Care to guess who’s getting hurt the most?

Actually, there’s no need for guesses. Dr. Ryan Barber, whose increasingly sad job it is to ensure that homeless school children have their educations disrupted as little as possible, has been speaking out a lot about an increasingly fraught situation. Barber works for the Waynesboro School District, where at this time last year there were 100 children sleeping in cars or hotels or on a relative’s couch. A few weeks ago that number was 107, continuing a steady upward trend. Staunton, meanwhile, has seen a 50% increase in student homelessness over the past three years.

Traumatized children are not likely to be good students, so public servants like Barber do their best to keep disrupted young lives on an even keel. Local public schools have laundry machines for washing limited wardrobes, give out new clothing to replace what’s worn out or embarrassingly unfashionable, provide food for after-school consumption. If a student’s family is forced to shelter outside the district, Barber and his counterparts will pay for transportation so a child can keep attending the same school, with its familiar teachers, friends and routine.

Yet all that costs money—a surprising amount of it. In one case Barber recounted at a recent SAW housing luncheon, a Waynesboro student whose family moved in with relatives in Swoope continued to attend her same school—at a cost to the district of $250 a day for transportation. Funding for such expenses comes partly from Project Hope, a state program that last year disbursed a total of approximately $45,000 to Staunton, Augusta County and Waynesboro schools—a drop in the bucket when $5,000 of that can get eaten up by driving a single student.

Paltry though it is, however, Project Hope is among the funding sources getting cut. So is Title 1 money, which is federal assistance for schools with children from low-income families, of which there is no lack locally. Ditto for Title 6b, which provided funding for educating students with disabilities, which as Barber noted, is a people-intensive business. So too with a slew of other federal programs that have provided Waynesboro schools with $2.9 million a year, the loss of which would mean losing as many as 30 staff positions.

It’s not just public schools that are getting whacked, although their casualties will be the most poignant. Speaking at a Building Bridges for the Greater Good event three weeks ago—at which Barber also appeared—Staunton city manager Leslie Beauregard summarized the current budget cycle as “the most difficult ever.” There won’t be any FEMA funding to repair severe flood damage under the Wharf parking lot, money for digitizing the city library’s archives has evaporated, and Covid-related funding that paid for approximately 10% of local health staffing has been cut as well.

Meanwhile, Beauregard added, the city received $140,000 in additional requests for new funding from non-profits that were casting about for whatever financial help they could get. A grant for extending water and sewer lines to Uniontown is in jeopardy. And while the city’s annual Community Development Block Grant seems stable at the moment, “if that goes away, it will affect our housing programs greatly.”

These are, in other words, bleak and troubled times. So what’s to be done?

MONEY IS ALWAYS NICE, of course, and many times it’s indispensable. But the other great resource available to almost every community is . . . the community. The people who sometimes open their wallets to others, but who also can contribute their time and energy to help each other. Some people can afford to write a check but don’t have the time to do volunteer work, and some people are just scraping by financially but have time on their hands that they can contribute to their neighbors.

It’s this latter group we need to do a better job of recruiting. And enabling.

When Dr. Barber disclosed that it costs $250 a day to transport a student from Swoope to Waynesboro, the obvious question from an audience member was why that service couldn’t be provided by community volunteers. Oh, that simply wouldn’t be practical, came the flustered response (not from Barber, it should be emphasized), what with liability and insurance issues and the problem of ensuring reliable pick-up and drop-off times and, well . . . on to another topic. And just like that, a potential gift horse was smacked on its butt and sent on its way.

In plush times, which these are not, that might be an understandable if still unfortunate response. Volunteers can be a real pain in the ass. They don’t always donate their time for the best reasons, they sometimes acquire an off-putting sense of entitlement, they can be fickle and unreliable. Scheduling them can be a nightmare, you can’t always know how they’re representing your organization to the public, and the turnover rate can be nightmarishly high. How much more convenient just to pay someone to do a job!

Yet for all those headaches, fiscally strapped communities have long depended on volunteers to provide some of their most essential services. Even today, a substantial number of volunteers staff ambulances and fire apparatus in the SAW region, working alongside career staff whose ranks are kept lean because of budgetary constraints. Volunteers pick up, sort and distribute groceries at food pantries, swing hammers and saw lumber for home-repair non-profits, deliver blood and plasma for the Red Cross, cook and serve meals at shelters, and perform a hundred other tasks that quite often remain invisible to the general public.

Asserting that volunteers are an impractical resource is a lazy dismissal, and especially so in miserly times like these, when the only alternative may be nothing at all.

Consider, for example, the need for some kind of daytime refuge for the area’s unsheltered homeless population. Some homeless people have jobs to go to during the day, but many don’t and are left to roam the streets, regardless of extreme summer heat or winter cold. Where do they end up going? To the public library or the YMCA, to a Hardees or McDonalds, or riding a Brite bus interminably—to wherever they can keep cool or warm and dry, even if they discomfit those around them.

How much more humane would it be to provide a day shelter, complementing the emergency night shelters that the Waynesboro Area Refuge Ministry operates from November through March each year?

Several initiatives are underway locally to create just such a facility, including one spearheaded by Staunton Mayor Michele Edwards. A local church has offered use of its space, Edwards and a WARM representative are discussing whether that agency can staff the operation, and the mayor has said city council might be able to provide some start-up funding. There’s also talk of Augusta Health providing visits by a mobile clinic, and of Mary Baldwin social work students playing some role.

It all sounds promising, but look more closely and you’ll see some cracks. The church in question has scheduling conflicts. WARM is in a financial hole following this past winter’s severe weather and seems unlikely to afford additional personnel costs. And Edwards has emphasized that the city won’t be able to cover operating costs, which means that once this boat is pushed into the river, it’s on its own and with no readily identifiable captain to steer it.

Perhaps for these reasons, there are a couple of other preliminary efforts underway to achieve the same goal. Yet woven through all of these initiatives is the same hurdle: who’s going to man the ship? Who’s going to unlock the doors, fill the coffee pot, ensure that the bathrooms are clean, maintain order, provide counsel to those who look for it, sweep the floors and put out the trash? There’s really only one answer: it will have to be community volunteers, and more than just a couple of Mary Baldwin students. But where will they come from?

WHICH BRINGS ME, at long last, to the underlying thesis of this essay: in Staunton, we do a poor to nonexistent job of matching people willing to work on behalf of others with people who need that help. And we do a similarly poor job of matching people who need help to resources—including volunteers—that could give them what they need.

Consider for a moment that you’re a first-time visitor to Staunton, a tourist, and you want to know what’s worth seeing or doing in the neighborhood. What’s a good place to eat? How can I get to the Frontier Culture Museum? Are there any antique outlets locally? Hey—you’re in luck! The city elders have thoughtfully funded and staffed a centrally located store-front where you can get answers to all these and any other questions you might have, plus brochures, maps, web sites and QR codes that put the entire area at your fingertips.

But if you’re a local without money but with a problem? Good luck finding an equally accessible and helpful resource center.

Got a leaky roof that you can’t afford to repair but don’t know how to tap into possible help? How about needing free food but not knowing where local food pantries are located or their hours of operation? Or what if you don’t have a car but need to get to Augusta Health for medical attention, and you know there’s a Brite bus that might take you there but not where to catch it or what kind of schedule it follows—and if you go to the new, much ballyhooed “Lewis Street Transit Hub,” there’s neither a route map nor an operating schedule for you to look at? (Huh? How dumb is that?)

Tourists bring money, so perhaps it’s not surprising that we make information so much more accessible to them than to our own residents —unsurprising, but sad, nonetheless. But equally frustrating is that the reverse information flow is also stymied.

Live in Staunton, have some time and want to give back to the community? Maybe you’re a retired accountant or bookkeeper willing to tutor someone in basic financial literacy. Or perhaps you’ve got basic handyman skills and could spend four hours a day for three days a week helping someone with home repairs. Or you’ve got a clean driving record and are willing to spend a day or two a week or month delivering food to the homebound, shuttling supplies for a non-profit, or transporting elderly patients for medical appointments. Maybe you’re even willing to staff a day shelter for the homeless?

Terrific—but you’re on your own figuring out which local agency would benefit most from what you’re willing to offer, much less whom to contact and how to present yourself.

What these examples illustrate is a hole in Staunton’s social fabric whose existence has gone unnoticed. What the city lacks is an information broker to match people who have something to offer with people or organizations who need that something. We do that for visitors via the Staunton Visitor Center, offering a place for strangers to ask questions and get expert help in getting what they want while also providing local businesses and attractions with a way to advertise what they have available. What we don’t have is a Staunton Resource Center that can perform the same services for our neighbors.

Such a resource center could, for example, maintain an inventory of potential volunteers, together with descriptions of what they’re willing to do and their general availability. The center’s data banks would include such basic personal information as age, sex, educational level and any physical limitations, a description of the kind of volunteer work desired, and preferred work environments, such as indoors or outdoors, or working alone or with a group. Each entry would also describe a volunteer’s special skills or abilities, past volunteer work, language fluency, driving record and other relevant details. With that information in hand, a broker could let a church, school, social agency or other organization know of the best possible candidates for volunteer positions they may be trying to fill, or let a potential volunteer know what openings matching their interests are available.

Conversely, Staunton residents who are thinking of finding a volunteer position could review requests filed with the resource center by local agencies seeking help.

In addition, the staff at such a resource center could respond to local residents’ needs by providing basic information, be it as simple as a bus schedule or as complex as a list of contacts most helpful to someone who’s about to get evicted: legal assistance, emergency shelter, transportation, school personnel, and so on. By engaging one-on-one with people walking in off the street, resource center staff could identify needs that someone caught up in the emotional turmoil of a crisis hasn’t yet recognized, offering proactive rather than merely reactive assistance.

Yes, a resource center of this sort would cost money—just as the visitor center costs money, currently budgeted at a bit more than $62,000 a year. (That’s in addition to the city’s $665,000 budget for tourism in general.) But just as the money spent on tourism is viewed as seed corn, returning many times more than is expended through visitor spending on local restaurants, lodging, entertainment and so on, so a resource center to mobilize volunteer time and efforts should be recognized as enriching the community.

Unfortunately, the reflexive response to such suggestions is the pretense that online resources and cell phone apps can substitute for face-to-face assistance—which, yes, is cheaper, but hardly effective, as the city itself underscores with its spending on the visitor center. Not everyone has a cell phone, or a charged cell phone. Not everyone is skillful at using digital devices to obtain needed information. Most critically, people who need help often don’t know what they need to know—they don’t know what questions to ask. That’s where human intervention can be critical.

Meanwhile, the brokerage aspect of such a resource center presumably could have an online presence—as the real estate market has, with Zillow and Realtor.com—but ultimately, it’s human beings who create the most productive connections. We’ve got to find a better way to make that human link.

We’re only beginning to see the deprivation that lies ahead, as federal money dries up, the economy stumbles toward possible stagflation and critical community needs go unfunded. This is the time to figure out how we’re going to compensate for the loss of money that typically lubricates our social machinery, and really, the only alternative is the time, effort and concern we have for each other. The days when we can spend $250 a day to transport a homeless student to school are coming to an end, and yet it takes hardly any imagination at all to think of an alternative—it just needs organization.