Thumbs up, down

Thumbs up to fall in Madison County. Mother Nature sure has quite a beautiful palette to use in these parts as she paints the mountains in rich autumn shades of gold, red and brown. Things are still fairly green, but at the county’s higher elevations, the dogwood leaves are turning orange and the Virginia creepers are now a brillant scarlet. More lively leaf changes are coming day-by-day and if you need an event to get you in a fun fall frame of mind, the Apple Harvest Festival up in Syria is this weekend and the next one.

Thumbs down to the poor grass growth at Madison County’s 11-field Hoover Ridge athletic complex. Including what the county paid for the complex’s entire, sprawling 182-acre site behind Madison Primary School, taxpayers have already forked over nearly $2 million, yet none of the fields can even be used to play on yet. Folks are getting anxious.

County Administrator Lisa Kelley was on target when, speaking at a recent Madison Lions Club meeting, she said, “There’s so much potential here, it doesn’t all have to be done at once and particularly in these economic times it’s not contemplated that all of these things are going to be achieved in the immediate future.”

Why not set a specific scaled down goal – say to create a single, reliable softball field for the high school team. (Its current field at the elementary school floods too easily after most rains.)

In a tough economic period, it’s asking a lot of taxpayers to keep paying for a grand, multi-field complex, especially when other major projects like the courthouse renovation are under way. Also, missing from the county’s discussion on the field shortage are concrete plans to expand use of the wonderful Criglersville public athletic field behind the old elementary school. The lush, well-established grass there is all ready to go and the site is convenient to residents living in the northern end of the county – Criglersville, Syria and Etlan.

Thumbs down to casting a blind eye to the national debt, which zoomed past $10 trillion last month. Yes, there’s a compelling case for passing the $700 billion bailout bill – without it, there’d be a financial system freeze up and it would stay harder to borrow money, even for those with strong credit histories. (U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Richmond, whose district includes all of Madison County, voted in favor of the bailout, which congress passed 263-171.)

But bailout benefits aside, more talk was needed on how this huge addition to the nation’s already gargantuan debt could ultimately make things worse. Big government borrowing doesn’t “solve” problems so much as it sweeps them under the rug for future generations to clean up. Clearly, those in government can’t keep on sweeping more and more under the rug forever.