THURSDAY, JULY 30, 2009

THURSDAY, JULY 30, 2009

Economic

vulnerability

In her column on the opposite page, Rappahannock

County resident Beverly Hunter states: “Our citizens

contribute an amazing amount of time and talent to a wide array of charitable works.”

She then explains how Rappahannock County’s economy is “highly vulnerable” because, being spread so thinly throughout the county, people rely on the automobile, and that the vast majority of residents’ money is spent outside the county.

Recently, events such as the Castleton Festival, have relied heavily on volunteers to contribute time and even housing for musicians invited to attend.

Yet there are many in Rappahannock who are not only vulnerable, but desperate for work, for housing, for food.

Beverly’s husband, Hal Hunter, seeded the “Plant-aRow” for the hungry which, coupled with the new food bank in Washington sponsored by Commonwealth Community Action Program of Fauquier County has created a mini-supermarket with fresh and healthy food for those having difficulty getting by.

In addition to this, the county Board of Supervisors created an Economic Revitalization Advisory Committee to explore opportunities to improve the economic base in Rappahannock County and make recommendations to the Board of Supervisors.

While we truly support all of these initiatives from volunteerism to chanty food banks to economic revitalization, we also think there is a tendency to overlook some unintended biases.

For instance, volunteers do jobs for free when there may be money to pay someone to work who desperately needs it.

Likewise, putting people up in homes takes business away from local bed and breakfasts. Yes, we want these events to continue, but there are costs to doing these things and when too many volunteers show up or are incorporated, business, and money, that could have come to the county goes elsewhere.

Part of the initiatives being explored by the ERAC include bringing wireless broadband to a greater portion of the county. But here, too, bias is in favor of the more educated population of Rappahannock.

Making it easier to telecommute does nothing to help an unemployed workforce that maybe does not have the skills required to perform a job via the Internet.

Too, there are plenty of unused buildings in Sperryville and Washington that already have broadband access and putting these to use with businesses that would hire local people may be a higher priority than making it easy for others to work from home.

Our vulnerabilities, as Ms. Hunter so ably points out, are not just limited to high fuel prices and adjacent communities with discount supermarkets. Our vulnerabilities also include our own blind spots where in the rush to pat ourselves on the back, we sometimes overlook the very people who are most affected by economic circumstances.