Melvin Henson, the most senior member of Buena Vista City Council who has an encyclopedic knowledge of the city’s public works infrastructure and history, is seeking to continue his service to the city. He wants to be elected to a fifth four-year term.
If he is reelected and serves out a fifth term, Henson will have been on City Council for more than half the time he worked for the city’s public works department, where he worked 33 ½ years. He’s long been the city’s “go to” person for finding out intricate details concerning the location and size of pipes and other infrastructure artifacts.
Henson hopes to continue serving on Council because “Things are happening and I want to see them develop.” He says he has “the ability to look outside the box. We need to look at where we would like to be in five [to] 10 years down the road.” He believes he has the wherewithal to know “what is needed to achieve these goals.”
An upgrade to the city’s wastewater treatment plant, he said, is the city’s “top priority right now,” With an estimated $25 million price tag, help from federal and state grants is essential. “Our aging infrastructure is in need of upgrades,” he noted. “Part of this goes with the WWTP upgrade.”
As for other priorities, he said, “Our youth and their education is on all of our minds, but there may be other alternatives to the building issues that will come under the $69 million price tag” – an allusion to what a consultant estimated it would cost to build a new merged middle and elementary school next to the high school. “Money is tight and we have a lot of items on the back burner,” he said, adding he’s hopeful of grant assistance to help hold the tax rate down.
On economic development, he commented, “Things are turning around for us. We would like to see more but we need community support to make them happen.” A recent walking tour led by Main Street Buena Vista, he said, “showed that we have eight empty buildings in the downtown area. This group is looking at what may be a good fit for these buildings.” A lot of improvements have been made to Glen Maury Park in recent years, he observed, “but there are many more that are needed to make it a true destination and a pure gold mine for our city. I know that a lot of our citizens don’t support the park’s events but these events do bring outside people into our city. We need to add items that will attract people to our park. A good example is the new playground, which has been an attraction to a lot of people and youth. How many people know that we have a disc golf course in our park?”
The Municipal Building, he said, “needs to be looked at to make it a much safer environment, especially on court days, along with citizens trying to get in to take care of their city business … A lot of departments have run out of space to properly perform their duties.” A couple of other issues he’d like the city to address, he said, are a housing shortage and the need for more child care.
Also, “We need to keep abreast of the state and federal requirements/mandates that are placed on our volunteer fire department for equipment and training as well as other first responders.”
He said he’s encouraged by the enrollment growth of Southern Virginia University and what it’s meant to the city. Steps are being taken, he said, so that SVU is making more of an investment in the community and getting students into “our downtown area to spend money [to support] our merchants.”
HENSON
