BLACKSBURG – Vice Mayor Michael Sutphin says he is addressing top concerns expressed by Blacksburg residents along with his desire to work towards a better community in his run for mayor.
Some of Blacksburg residents’ concerns for affordable housing, improved water and sewer infrastructure, additional parking, and creating or improving local recreation areas were stated in a survey by the American Rescue Plan (ARPA).
“The American Rescue Plan was signed into law by President Biden on Mar. 11, 2021,” according to the Let’s Talk Blacksburg website. This program was established to assist communities struggling to recover from the covid pandemic aftermath.
The ARPA community survey was included in a report dated Nov. 17, 2020, to April 17, 2022. In one question of the survey, residents were asked to select up to three areas of improvement that ARPA funds should be used for. Investments for the most vulnerable community residents such as food, childcare, and senior support received the highest number of responses. Affordable housing received the second highest selection. According to the survey, improvement to pedestrian and bicycle transportation areas was also high on the list of needs.
Sutphin agreed that housing is a top concern.
“Housing is one of the biggest problems we are facing,” Sutphin said. “We are facing somewhat of a housing shortage.”
A recent decision by the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors to discontinue a project for student housing called the Student Life Village, caught many Blacksburg Council members by surprise.
“We were all quite surprised that it got removed this past week,” Sutphin said. “We did approve a ton of additional housing but in 2019, we did a resolution basically that we were going to be picky about what we approved in the town. We have provided over 5300 campus housing beds over the past 10 years, and it hasn’t been kind of a similar commitment from Virginia Tech.”
The Board of Visitors announcement followed a recent decision for Blacksburg Council’s approval of an eight-story housing development and adjacent townhomes in the town, which will primarily be marketed to Virginia Tech students. However, Sutphin pointed out that the new development comes with a proffer that $1.1 million will be placed into funding to support additional affordable housing.
Sutphin also wants to see improvements to the water and sewer infrastructure, which he says would help in the construction of more affordable housing in the town. One example he mentioned is the location of the old Blacksburg High School, which required the resolution of rezoning the property to residential use. However, even with that resolved, construction has stopped due to the aging water and sewer infrastructure that cannot support the development.
Additional issues in the town that Sutphin would like to continue tackling are recreational areas and parking.
“We made some changes to our capital improvement plan and the biggest was adding $10 million to go into recreation spaces in town,” Sutphin said. “We have to make some changes to some parking as well, and there was a proposal for a very large parking garage downtown. We changed that to an over under parking deck and then moved some money into recreation.”
Overall, Sutphin knows how difficult it is to find affordable housing in the area and believes that improved infrastructure and addressing zoning issues will provide more opportunity for affordable “starter” style homes for individuals and families.
“I’m excited to run for Mayor,” Sutphin said. “I’m currently the vice mayor, and I was previously the vice mayor in 2020 and 2021, and before that in 2018 and 2019. I was the town council’s representative to the planning commission, so i think my experiences in both the council and planning commission, and as vice mayor, that sort of experience, is helpful in this campaign,” Sutphin said.
