Nick Hagen for City Council
Urban Heat Island & Tree Equity
The 2040 Comprehensive Plan Harmony With Nature states that we need to bring our tree canopy to 60% with 40% coverage needing to be met per city block.
What specific measures will be implemented to maintain our current tree canopy, as well as guarantee tree equity throughout the whole city?
ANSWER: First off, advocate to preserve the existing tree canopy in Roanoke. One of my goals is to ensure that we take another look at the incorporation of the Evans Spring Plan into the “Master” plan that Council voted to implement earlier this year. As one of our last untouched areas, we need to ensure its protection through the legal processes afforded to Council. This will likely mean acquiring the property and placing covenants that run with the land to protect it. Long term when it comes to Evans Spring, I would want to see a way to protect that entire area in perpetuity even from development by a future Council.
Second, in the short term, the City should implement an education program to help tout the benefits of tree coverage (e.g. lower energy costs to property owners) to try to encourage new trees to be planted.
Finally, in the long term, we need to look into the possibility of offering tax incentives to those who plant trees on their private property. If this is afforded to the City by state law, then we should seek to incentivize private owners with these types of incentives. If it is not afforded to us by state law, we should advocate with our state elected officials to permit localities to offer tax incentives in this way.
Flood Resilience
Downtown Roanoke was built on top of wetlands and tributaries to the Roanoke River. The topography of the region makes downtown Roanoke vulnerable to the stormwater runoff from bordering localities. There are state and federal funding incentives to encourage localities to be flood resilient.
What is your plan to protect Roanoke from another catastrophic flood like the Flood of 1985?
ANSWER: I should preface this by saying I am not an engineer. I am just an attorney and I rely on experts to share with me their insights on certain designs for the city. I have been told that the area around Evans Spring is instrumental to protecting the downtown area from flooding and as such I would seek to preserve that natural barrier (see my answer to the previous question). Of course, as new technologies (e.g. permeable pavement, smarter city design, etc.) develop and are shown to help mitigate the risk of flooding I would seek to implement those. I intend on working with our surrounding communities to ensure that the runoff can be mitigated on their end. I hope to work with gaining grants to help mitigate stormwater. One of the main concerns I have with the possibility of another flood like the one we had in 1985 is that in 1985 we did not have approximately 1% of the City’s population living in downtown. In the last fifteen years, Downtown Roanoke has seen an explosion of people who live downtown. One percent of residents in the city being displaced is a massive concern just on the human element, with nothing to say about the possibility of loss of millions (or potentially billions) of dollars in real and personal property. As such, it is imperative that we can utilize new technologies while still preserving those natural areas that provide free flood barriers to help prevent massive flooding.
Roanoke River & Tributaries - The Roanoke River and 11 of the 13 tributaries are currently impaired and are on the 303(d) list for exceeding safe levels of either bacteria (E. coli), sediment, temperature, and PCBs or a combination of these pollutants since 2006. Over the next year DEQ will be conducting another Benthic Clean Up Study of the Roanoke River, Tinker Creek and Wolf Creek.
Regarding the restoration of the cleanliness of our waterways and mitigation of stormwater runoff, please outline the specific initiatives that you intend to implement?
ANSWER: Based on the last DEQ public meeting (4/10/24), there did not seem as though there was enough data on which specific pollutants that were concerning and that they needed to wait for the study to be completed to be able to isolate some of the confounding factors. In short, we know that there are pollutants, we are just unsure what is causing them and there are still confounding factors to isolate to ensure proper scientific data. I look forward to reading DEQ’s assessment of our waterways. Once those studies are complete, they will provide the data necessary for us to act in a responsible way to ensure our waterways are healthy. To advocate for any specific method of restoring our waterways without that data would be disingenuous at best and possibly dangerous at worst. At this time, I have no reason to believe I would not advocate for DEQ’s recommendations for the Roanoke River, Tinker Creek and Wolf Creek
Airport Pollution & Runway Extension
The Roanoke-Blacksburg Regional Airport “Master” Plan is to extend one of the runways for safety reasons. The plan is focused on creating more growth opportunities based on the increase of air travel. Small jets typical of the ones that land at our airport usually are older and use lead gasoline. Levels of airborne lead in the United States have declined 99% since 1980, but emissions from aircraft that operate on leaded fuel may still pose risks to nearby communities. Airport air pollution can also disproportionately impact sensitive subpopulations. Henry et al. (2019) studied impacts of several California airports on surrounding schools and found that over 65,000 students spend 1 to 6 hours a day during the academic year being exposed to airport pollution, and the percentage of impacted students was higher for those who were economically disadvantaged. The airport is near William Fleming High School, Round Hill Elementary, and Roanoke Area Math and Science Elementary as well as being surrounded by predominantly Black communities that have already been harmed by urban renewal.
How will you protect Roanoke citizens, especially marginalized communities, from more noise and air pollution that could be created by an increase of more air traffic to our area? Will you support an investigation of how the current pollution created by the airport is impacting public health, especially the children?
ANSWER: I have no issues supporting a study to see if the airport is impacting public health. As for how to ensure that marginalized communities are not as effected by noise and air pollution, I would love to see in our schools air quality monitoring stations to help gather data for scientific research into the issue. If the data shows that there is a statistically significant number of pollutants in our air that would have a negative impact on human health, the city would need to address it and likely expand such a program throughout other areas of the city. As for addressing the older leaded gasoline engines on older planes, the City currently taxes aircraft at a significantly lower rate than other personal property (such as automobiles) (As of this writing on 4/26/24, the City taxes personal property at $3.45 per $100 of assessed value except for aircraft which they tax at $1.06 per $100 of assessed value.), the City should reevaluate this policy when it comes to aircraft which continue to utilize leaded gasoline. If the City currently operates any leaded gasoline aircraft, we need to reevaluate the need for them and whether or not switching to unleaded aircraft gasoline is feasible. Also, we need to understand why there is an increase in air traffic locally. The Pandemic and the Wars in Ukraine and Israel as well as increasing tensions with China have shown that the global supply chain is not as immune to socio-political changes as once thought. In order to ensure that our people in Roanoke are safe and healthy, we should be trying to strengthen our local economy by becoming as self-sufficient as possible. This means helping local businesses grow and prosper in ways that are long term sustainable. By ensuring a strong and self-sufficient local economy, we are able to address many factors at once including reducing carbon emissions (e.g. less travel time for goods and food to reach their destination), more resilient economics (e.g. not specializing in one industry tends to produce healthy economies), bringing down the cost of living (e.g. less transportation time means lower transportation costs), addressing food insecurity and generally bringing a sense of community again as the interconnectivity of the system would express itself.
Community Engagement - Which initiatives will you lead and implement to ensure that our marginalized communities, inclusive of public housing residents, are effectively engaged with?
ANSWER: I try to get everywhere I can. What I mean is that I take the view that being an elected official is a public service and not some right bestowed upon the elected official. I am the one seeking your vote and you are putting your trust in me that I will govern reasonably and with wisdom. I believe that individuals in our community should not have to come to members of council or their city government begging for a chance to be listened to, rather elected officials and government appointees should seek out individuals and neighborhoods they seek to govern to hear from the people. I take the general philosophy of meet people where they are. I am personally tired of the type of politician who comes around only during election season asks for your vote and then leaves never to be seen or heard of again until their next election. Since I am tired of seeing those types of politicians, I seek to be better than that. I hope that my philosophy on politics will be adopted by other political leaders. As for a more formal way of ensuring community engagement, I want to make sure that the City’s website has an open and transparent comment system where people can share their concerns directly with the City government. I want to make sure that we have open communication with our elected officials. I also want to make sure that laws which require council to hear out public comment are implemented into our charter. The current state minimum requirement of public comment only being required once a quarter is abysmal. Roanoke City can and should do better and no one should feel as though their voice has not been heard. Ultimately, our City's charter needs to reflect that. Finally, we need to make sure that Council does not only become merely a rubber stamp. Virginia law requires two readings of ordinances specifically to allow for the public to be notified on issues. The exception being when there is a super majority. I have lost count on how many times people have come to me and said, "I didn't know about [an] issue before Council voted on it and now its not coming up again." Having the exception swallow this rule is disheartening and keeps people out of the political process. I would work to ensure that the public have more time to hear and voice their concerns about issues.
Parks & Recreation
Parks & Recreation is an important necessity for the City and aides in mitigating stormwater runoff with tree equity, flood resilience, climate change and community participation and engagement. There needs to be equity to ensure that the public, including marginalized communities, have access to natural areas to improve their health and well being.
What measures will be implemented to ensure that the Parks and Recreation Department has the necessary financial resources to fulfill its duties and operations?
ANSWER: I want to double their budget as a percentage of the overall budget. Roanoke's natural beauty is important and a marketable aspect of tourism and encouraging people to move here. Ensuring that our Parks and Recreation has all the resources that they need provides many benefits including a sense of community, positive health outcomes, flood mitigation and much, much more.
To learn more about Nick Hagen you can go to his website. https://www.nickforroanoke.com/
