The Long Withering Arm of Radford University

The speaker discusses the decline of Radford City and the impact of the closure of the Lynchburg Foundry. The Foundry was a major source of revenue for the city, but it closed in the early 2000s. The speaker emphasizes the need to learn from the past and find solutions to revive the city. They also mention other businesses that have closed and express concerns about the lack of development on the Foundry property. The speaker suggests involving the Economic Development Authority (EDA) to expedite development. They also mention a potential issue with Radford University's influence on the city. I can see clearly now the rain is gone I can see all the sickles in my way Gone are the stars, love, they're passing by It's gonna be a bright, bright, bright, bright sunshiney day It's gonna be a bright, bright, bright, bright sunshiney day Oh yes, I can make it now, the rain is gone All of the bad feelings have disappeared Here is that rainbow, I'll say it's rainbow It's gonna be a bright, bright, bright, bright sunshiney day It's gonna be a bright, bright, bright, bright sunshiney day It's gonna be a bright, bright, bright, bright sunshiney day Sometimes you gotta be your own man. But sometimes, you need to learn how to be your own city. And I think we've forgotten just how to do that. Here's how we change it. Come on, let's get in the rain. I'm your host Keith Marshall, and let's go one more round. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Fear itself is what? We will make America great again. If I say something that you don't want to listen to, don't listen. One more round. Welcome to One More Round Podcast. I'm your host, as always, Keith Marshall. Hey, welcome to the rain. I'm glad to have you here today. We're going to talk about Rafford City. It seems to be a subject that we all are stuck on, we all want to hear about right now. But I'm going to get into some issues that I think are important to us going forward. How do we, you know, I've talked a lot about over the recent weeks about some of the problems that Rafford's had. I think we need to talk about solutions. As we look at unprecedented financial issues, as we look at the possibility that we could wind up being a town rather than a city. I think we need to have a game plan so as not to make that happen. I'm not setting policy. I'm just one old guy that has a few opinions. But I'm going to put them out there. Maybe someone can use them. Maybe they can use a little of them, maybe they won't use any of them. I hope they're not too proud to use them if it's something that works. But let's talk about how we could save the city in the next six months to a year. How could we turn things around in a way that we could start to see some daylight at the end of the tunnel? Well, I think one of the things that you do in order to turn things around is you've got to know from where you came. What was Radford 15, 20 years ago and what is Radford now? What changed about Radford that absolutely kind of pulled the rug out from under us and turned us in the wrong direction? Well, I think we need to talk about what happened with the foundry property many years ago. If you grew up in Radford, one of the sounds that you heard, I remember distinctly, was the 12 o'clock whistle. You could hear it at 12 o'clock every day and in the summertime when we were kids, we didn't play inside, we played outside. So at 12 o'clock every day you would hear that whistle. And I grew up in West End, I grew up in Forest Park, so you could hear it well from then. And of course every dog in the neighborhood would start bellowing and barking when they heard the whistle. And what that whistle was, if I understand it right, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, those of you that worked at the foundry, that was literally the 12 o'clock lunch whistle. It would go off and that would be lunchtime and everybody in the plant could hear it and they'd know what time it was. That's pretty cool. And actually, if you look back on Radford's history, that 12 o'clock whistle was the sound of progress. That was the sound of what funded our public schools. That was the sound of what paid for our infrastructure, what built new buildings, what repaired water and sewer lines. Because we brought in a tremendous amount of revenue as a city because of that foundry. We brought it in not only in real estate taxes, we brought it in heavily through electric rates. They melted steel there on site. They melted steel and they used electricity to do so and it burned a lot of electricity and those were dollar signs for the residents of Radford City. Those monies were used continuously to upgrade the city and to make sure we were prosperous. It was the center of business in the city as far as economics, the Lynchburg Foundry. Now, I know we also had other strong businesses that did the same on a smaller scale like Burlington and Colonial Box Factory and some others. Inland Motors has been there still kicking for a long time. I know they go by a different name now. They were, of course, Cole Morgan for a while, but now they're named Regal Rexnord. I hope I got that name correct. I did get some bad news, by the way. This kind of isn't a part of this particular podcast, but there's been some layoffs going on at that location. I think there was somewhere between around 15 people laid off somewhere in that neighborhood, which is sad news for those people and those families. We hope that's not any kind of omen of things to come. Hopefully, that's just some cycles of going through their particular type of business and market and not anything where we're going to see any kind of closures in the city. We did, of course, have the closure of Moe that's in progress right now. They'll be leaving Radford here soon. Looks like in the summer, late summer, they'll be gone. A lot of people losing their jobs is really a sad thing. Also, a couple other closings we've seen in Radford that I've heard about. I know many have heard about the, I think, is it the Family Dollar in West End? It's one of those in that kind of chain is closing. Also, I'm hearing that we're going to be losing a restaurant, and that is Applebee's. It's over there near the bridge. I'm hearing that they're closing. I hope that's a false rumor. I heard it from a pretty good source, too, but those are all disappointing. Hopefully, we can see some businesses quickly jump into both of those locations. The buildings will still be there. We'll still be bringing in real estate taxes on the structure, but obviously, especially with a restaurant, we need that going. Sales and meals taxes are important. Same thing with the manufacturing plant. They generate a lot of revenue through use of electricity, use of water sewer, things like that, and residual taxes from their sales or machinery and tools, things like that. We really need those. When we look back at our past, the Lynchburg Foundry was a key linchpin in our success. It was very important. You probably did not, it'd be strange for a family, extended family especially, not to have someone that worked at the Lynchburg Foundry. They were a good, solid employer. They paid a fair wage, decent money. I think the employees there had pensions and other things, and it was just a good place to work, and it was devastating to the city when it closed. It closed somewhere in the 2006, 2007, 2008 range, somewhere in there. It opened back up again for a few short years for a short run, and then it closed again, and it's been shuttered ever since then. Most of that property is undeveloped right now. It's sitting still. It's making no money for the city. As I look back and I talk about how we need to move forward, I think it's important that we change where we're at now. We need to look back the way it was. We need to see how we are now, and we need to take a look at what we need to do for the future in order to change things around. Now, I have to say in this particular case, I think the best formula for Radford City, considering our borders, considering how we can expand, is for us to look at our past in order to determine our future. What formula worked then for Radford City that we can duplicate now? Now, the Lynchburg Foundry is not coming back. I don't even know if they're in business. I know that the actual foundry building and some of the front parcels were purchased by someone else. There's been a dispute with the city. Right now, that business is closed down for some issues, for fire code and some other things. They're shut down, and we're generating no revenue from the owners there that have purchased the property. I think they were in the business of batteries and recycling batteries. It was kind of a neat business when I learned about it, how they took batteries and they actually farmed the minerals and products that are inside of the batteries out of it, and they shipped those things out. I think they had a fire there. I think now that they're fussing with the city, and even though they're a large user of electricity, and we could use that right now. Right now, for whatever reason, the city and them can't come together to get some things done. Now, that's another episode. I might dig into that a little more and see exactly what's going on. I don't know who's right, who's wrong, or if anybody is. I just know we're generating no revenue, really, from that location when we could. But the back parcels that are right now owned by the city, we recently purchased them for a little over $200,000. They're sitting still, and there appears to be some sort of other issues going on. I've kind of harped on it over and over and over and over. Let's get that to the EDA. The EDA has plans to develop that. They have the capabilities that no one else has because of their mandate from the state of Virginia doing what they do for economic development. They have so many more levers to pull to get that developed. So, as quick as that can be moved over, it needs to be done. I'm starting to sense, though, I'm starting to sense that there's something nefarious behind the fact that it has not moved. And that's kind of going to be a large part of what the podcast is today. The whole long arm that has been stretching across Radford since the Foundry's closure that I think has, in many ways, harmed rather than helped the city. And we're going to talk about that. And that is the long withering arm of Radford University. And I'll explain more what that title means, each part of it, as we go. All right, so let's take a look at the past. Let's take a look at the formula that worked for the city of Radford in the past. Now, I know there's a lot of people that say, you know, why do you want to go back? We need to move forward. Well, you know, sometimes formulas just work. You know, two plus two is always four. We don't have to invent a new formula to come up with four when we have two factors like that. And sometimes we think we need to reinvent the wheel. And we talked about in the last issue when we were discussing Radford being a bedroom community and the fact that, you know, we have all these small businesses, things we like to do, you know, coffee shops and donut shops and pizza places and all those things. And all those things are great. We need all of those. I love them all myself, most of them. So they're important. But the real driver of economic growth, the real driver of funding a city is this industry, especially in this area. I mean, we talk about tourism and we talk about some of those things. Those things are very residual. They're very on the fringes, very much on the edge. Even if we pushed it and were really successful, they would only be a contributing factor to our success. They would not be the driving factor to our success. The driving factor to our success, I believe, is to look at the things that we have inside the city. What are our assets and how can we use those in order to bring in revenue to our city? Let me name one really great asset that I know we all agree on, and that's the New River. It runs right along our boundaries, the New River does. We have free access to it. Now, from a tourism aspect, that's obviously a positive. We bring people in. They smallmouth fish, they wade the river, they float the river. That does bring a few people in, a little bit of revenue to the city. Not a lot, though, guys, not a lot. There's just not the draw. I mean, we don't live on Lake Norman here, okay? We live on a river, so there's only so much. But that river, that river is a key product that we have in the city as far as industry. Now, what do I mean? Well, we pull directly from the New River. I don't know if most of you all understand how this works. I think you probably do. But we have intakes. Intakes mean things that bring water in, out in the center of the river. And we draw that water in. And that's the water that we drink here in the city. That's the water that is supplied. Of course, we trade it. Radford City has an excellent water department. Has for many, many, many years. But we have almost unlimited capacity because of that river. Of course, our plant can only do so much. But we're nowhere near it. We can produce millions and millions of gallons more of water. Cheaply, that we can sell. So that is an asset. We have plenty of water, and we can deliver it. That's an important aspect. Now, what else do we have in Radford City that's an important aspect? Well, we have a railroad that runs right through us. Okay? Railroads are pretty important for transporting products. And we have one right in our city. Actually, the Foundry property has a railroad spur, which means they can deliver water to us. Actually, the Foundry property has a railroad spur, which means they can back cars right onto the property, load those, and pull them right off onto the tracks, and distribute them across the United States. That is a very positive aspect that we have right in our city. So that's two. We have water, an almost unlimited supply that we can sell, and we can use to draw businesses in. We have a railroad, and that railhead, particularly on the Foundry property that we have. Now, what else do we have? We have electricity. Now, everybody has electricity, but most towns and localities, they don't benefit from the sale of electricity. Why? Because their electricity is just supplied by AEP. In our case, we have a co-op, so to speak, and we purchase our electricity wholesale from AEP. And there's a lot of regulations, and there's co-op groups, and way over my head, but just look at it this way. Basically, we're allowed by law. We purchase that electricity at a wholesale rate. We sell it at a retail rate, so we make money off electricity. So we have a benefit. By the way, we have an excellent, we have an excellent electric department. We have good capacity in our lines, and an ability to deliver that capacity to the Foundry property, and any other property throughout the city. We have that. So the sale of electricity is the number three and the big three for Radford City that we need to go after, that we need to focus our plan around the big three. It's really important. Now, why are those three important? Well, I mean, just look at water. When you have that kind of facility, that much water, you open the door up to all kinds of bottling plants that use massive amounts of water to build their product. I mean, there's a Gatorade factory, I think, wherever in Dublin, or maybe it's Westfield. We could have got that. We could get places like that, places that are dependent on that water. They need that huge supply. We could provide it. It'd be a huge asset and a big boon as far as revenue for the city of Radford. A railhead? Well, anybody that is selling products around the United States can use that for quick transportation of their products to get them to market. Well, every business, especially manufacturing, is going to use electricity. So those big three that we have, huge assets to the city, we need to focus. And those three, by the way, those three assets, we used mightily in the past for the Foundry property. They were one of the reasons that we were prosperous. The Foundry was using lots of water, lots of electricity, and that railhead helped them and it could do the same for future businesses that work out of that industrial park or the industrial park to be, I should say, if they ever get off their dust and get that moving. Now, as the city of Radford had that industry there in West End, they had the Foundry there, our neighborhoods built out, we grew, there was other businesses that were created, residual businesses to the Foundry, and when you have manufacturers of that nature as supporting manufacturers to them. If you go to Volvo and you look at Volvo in Dublin, you will see in the surrounding area many other manufacturing type businesses that are there to support the large and growing business that is Volvo. We need the same sort of thing. Now, we may not get a Volvo and we may not get something the size of the Lynchburg Foundry, but we also could produce other manufacturing type businesses that have the same needs or the same uses on a smaller scale and combined together would be a huge asset to the city. That's why, you know, we talked about in our last episode, if you haven't listened to it, here comes the tax man, you need to go back and listen to it. It focuses on your taxes and the reason your taxes are going up here in the coming months as we're getting ready to see a potential 5 cent increase or even 15 cents more because of the drop in manufacturing dollars that are coming into the city from their real estate. We're having to make up the difference in real estate taxes and it's killing us financially as homeowners in the city. It really is. So, as we look at this, we have to look back at the past, what worked in the past and how are we going to change it for the future. I was talking about this in my episode today when I was talking about it. Right now, since the Foundry closed, we developed or we come up with or somebody come up with the new model that for Radford's future it was going to be about Radford University. I don't know who come up with that. It's something that's been going on really since the Foundry property become idle and that's, hey, our number one revenue producer and business type aspect to the city even though they're not a business and we relied on that heavily. We kind of decided we would live and die with Radford University and quite frankly, I think it's pretty clear, we're dying and one of the reasons we're dying, number one, the number one reason we're dying is that wasn't a good model to begin with. I mean, basically, we're going to cut our revenue up and carry what was lost for the Foundry with that. That is not going to work. Even when they were approaching 11,000 students, just that type of income from sales taxes and meals taxes and other goods and services purchased within the city, it just wasn't enough. In fact, just to prove that to you, look back five, six years when Radford University had it towards its peak of students, we were not seeing our West End businesses grow. We were still seeing those college students go outside of town to buy their goods and services because there just wasn't enough there apparently to keep businesses going in West End and throughout the city just with the student base. It just wasn't completely working. That was not the formula that would work. We tried it, but it just hasn't worked. Now, we didn't help ourselves by putting in bus lines that bussed them to the mall and bussed them outside the city. Those kind of things do not help our local businesses. We also probably in years past did a pretty poor job recruiting businesses that would fit into the niche that those college students needed, a place for them to shop or a place for them to spend their money that would be in line with their appetite of spending. Instead, though, we've seen businesses creep in that probably appeal to their worst demons, you know, the hookah houses and the tattoo parlors and the other things that, yeah, they may spend some money there, but it's really not a positive thing for the city overall and not necessarily positive for them either. So, we kind of dropped the ball on that, but even with a good game plan for that, it still was not going to bring in the millions of dollars of revenue that strong manufacturing can do in a city. I mean, it'd be nice if we had that industrial base in West End as we had before instead of relying on a university in East End to carry us. Now, we got some numbers out to kind of prove my point that that formula is not going to work. It didn't work then and it's definitely not going to work now and whatever benefit that we've been gaining from Rafford University as far as their students is faster is fast shrinking. It's shrinking. Now, their enrollment numbers come out here in the last day or so and I haven't had time. They kind of showed up at the tail end of my episode or my preparation for the episode, but there's enough there that I think it makes a fine point to us about what we're dealing with and how we need to stop and when I'm talking about the long withering arm of Rafford University, they have a lot of control over the city because of those students and those numbers. I think, my personal opinion, they have kind of held that over our heads and said, hey, we're number one here and you need to do a few things to make us happy or we're going to really make you unhappy. Well, so far, in my opinion, they've done a lot to make us unhappy. They've bought up a lot of our business and residential property taking tons of property off the tax rolls for different things and it's killed us. We're paying higher taxes now because of that. You think about that as you're writing your tax check each year that the reason it's so high, one of the driving reasons is the fact that they've taken a lot of great property off the tax rolls and we're having to make up the difference. But anyway, they've held that over our heads and I think it's time, I think it's time that the city come up with a new plan that doesn't involve the dependence on Rafford University. They're not number one anymore and they cannot be number one going forward if we're going to survive or we will fail just like they appear to be failing now. So I mentioned those numbers and I'm looking at them. It looks to me like for their fall or spring enrollment that's just come out, their enrollment has dropped. They're sitting at about 4,474 students on campus. That's all. That's on campus. Now, their overall enrollment, their overall, if you look at, you know, online students, students that are in other places, it looks like their fall, their number was around 7531 for the fall. But this spring, it's dropped to 6886. And that's the difference of about 645 students that they have lost after fall graduation, a combination of graduation, a combination of students leaving. So when those numbers drop, they're having students graduate or quit and they're not replacing them with new students. They have 565 less freshmen from the fall to spring. Now there's reasons why they left, but in the end though, those are the numbers. So we went from a university that was approaching 11,000 students to a university that's dying on the vine. They're at 6886 for everything. When I say everything, many of those are not on campus. They're students in Roanoke, they're students that are online, they're not even around here. And even in some of the numbers of the ones that are actually going to be on campus this spring, which only totaled 4474, some of those are part-time, some of those are commuting, they're not necessarily even living here. Which means, for example, you know, if you're a student that grew up in Montgomery County and your parents lived there, you may be just driving every day to go to class and driving back home. You live in Christiansburg, you live in Blacksburg, you live in Gillespie County. Okay? You're not going to make your home in the city where we will benefit. And this is not a negative shot at Ralphord University students. Hey, we need them here, but they're fast becoming, instead of a primary, they're becoming a secondary source of income. We've treated them like a primary and that method and that idea and that plan has to end. It's not working. We need a new one. Now, does that mean we need to have a poor relationship with Ralphord University? Absolutely not. Does that mean that we can be partners and friends in a lot of areas? It sure, it still means that. We can. But we need to quit looking up to Ralphord University and we need to look out towards Ralphord University as equals. All right? But when it comes to what's necessary that needs to be done for the city of Ralphord, we need to focus on our citizens first. Matter of fact, there shouldn't be any thought of focusing on anyone else but our citizens. We pay the taxes, we live here, we have our futures invested here, we need to be the number one focus. And the thing that we need right now, the thing that we need right now is more revenue coming into the city. And the quickest and best way to do that is to grow our manufacturing base. That long arm of Ralphord University's influence is dying. And it needs to die. It needs to die out. Where we work together as equal partners not as Ralphord City being subservient to them. Can't do that anymore. That's a bad plan. And it's hurt us greatly. We watched it. We watched how that process works with the new hotel that was built. We watched how they used employees and other things to influence us. We're seeing right now how that is being held over our head. And if we're not paying these fees each year to give back part of their taxes there's threats that I'm hearing about of them pulling themselves off the tax roll. It almost sounds like blackmail to me. Me personally. My opinion. Nobody not making a statement of fact I'm giving you my opinion. It feels like and sounds like and looks like blackmail to me. I don't think it's fair. I don't think it's right. And that's not the kind of dependency we need to have. That's not the kind of people we need to be dependent on. We need to be dependent on ourselves. We need to be our own man our own city and make decisions that move the city forward. So we've talked about how it was in the past. We just finished talking about how it's been in the last few years since the foundry closed. So how do we change it? How do we develop a new model? Well we develop that foundry property. We develop it. And I believe strongly looking at the members of the EDA looking at their track record over the last few years and how judicious they've been I believe we've got a good chance to develop it. I believe they're ready to run. I believe we've got a hold to their belt loop and we're holding them back and we need to let them go and let them take off. But I will say this. I mentioned that there's a nefarious influence or something going on with that foundry property that's worrying me. And I don't have exact details. I have strong opinions but I don't have exact information. I have strong opinions based on some information I've dug up. But I do believe there's an influence there going on. I believe Radford University is involved in that process. I believe they are making requests and demands about how and what we develop that property for. I'll tell you this straight up. That property needs to be developed in a way that's most beneficial to Radford City residents. Period. Most beneficial. And in order to do that we need businesses that are coming in and they're going to use those big three that I've mentioned. Now the railroad is extra. That's extra. But the water and electricity are huge. We need businesses. We need to recruit businesses that fall into that niche. Yeah, it may not be popular right now. We may have a go-woke crowd that's running around talking about do not use fossil fuels. We need to be green energy, all that. Well let me tell you this. For Radford City and our future that does not pay the bills. Green energy does not pay the bills. Businesses that are dependent on utilities like electricity and like water that we have a natural resource that we have plenty of. Businesses that are dependent on that will make Radford rich again. At least put us back on strong financial footing where we can survive. And we do that by directly targeting businesses of that nature. Businesses that use the electricity. Businesses that use the water. And businesses that can benefit from the other big three which was the railroad. And there's other assets that we have. I'm just focusing on those three today. Now what I've seemed to notice and I'm not an expert on this. I have no inside track on this. It's just my opinion. It's just something I've observed. Just something I'm developing and still continuing to develop in my mind. But it seems that Radford University as its student numbers have fallen are turning towards a different strategy for generating money. And it seems to be a strategy of recruiting business or something along that line for campus. And I think we've talked about that in the past. We've talked about the fact that if they bring if they build a structure or they bring businesses onto their property we're not going to get the real estate taxes from that business. It sounds to me like they'll be selling that business their own generated electricity so we won't be getting the revenue there. It doesn't sound like a 100% positive. It's not a 100% negative but it doesn't sound like a 100% positive for us. Now I know that they're really serious about business and recruiting and doing that because they've went out and hired a big time recruiter for business. I know who it is. I'm not going to get into that. It's not necessary but look at it kind of like this way. If you were going to start a championship race team in NASCAR you're going to go out and hire the best crew chief you can find. Well they did that. They hired a high dollar crew chief to run this operation. Someone who's really good at what they do. So that tells me or at least just from my basic knowledge and my logic my own opinion that they are doing something in that line that they could possibly be wanting some say in how we develop that property and it concerns me that that's one of the reasons that it's being held up. There is some cog in the wheel. There's some stopper that's keeping this process from moving forward and I'm worried that it could be someone that's influenced by them and for them. I wonder who that could be. You can take your own guess. I don't know. I don't have direct information but I do have I do have some circumstantial evidence that's definitely pointing that way. I'm concerned about that. Get the property moved to the EDA and let them go to work. Solve the problems you need to solve and get it going and get it moving. There's some reason that that's not happening and I'm concerned that we're falling back into the same pattern of dependency on our youth. They're number one. We've got to do everything we do for them at the detriment to our citizens. I'm concerned about that. Prove me wrong. Get in the EDA's hands and let them get to work. That's what I say. Now, I feel like I need to say this because I think you could come to the opinion that, hey Keith, you just hate Radford University. You bash them every chance you get. Now, that's really not true even if it appears that way. If it appears that way, hey, I'm going to let it roll. I'm going to have to just I'm just going to have to let it appear that way. I'll just tell you though here's the truth. I love Radford City. They're number one to me. They're number one. Their best interests are what's most important to me as a citizen. It benefits me. It benefits my family. It benefits the future. And I have something invested both personally and privately in every way here in Radford City. I love the city of Radford. I grew up here. I want to see it do well. I've always been proud to be from the city of Radford. I have. I want to see it done well. I want to see things happen in a positive way for the city. I want Radford University to do well too. I'm not as tied into that. I did have a couple kids go there. They did great there. It's a great university. They provide quality education. I want to see them do well. But they're not most important to me. You know, I was watching I don't know why it reminded me of this but I was watching a series on Apple TV. I'm kind of turned into a streaming junkie. I'm not as I can't believe it but I am. But I was watching a series called and if you haven't seen it I think you ought to watch it it's called Masters of the Air. It's about World War II pilots. They're stationed in England and they're bombing Germany. The harrowing missions that they went on. There's one particular scene and I haven't watched the whole series yet but there's one particular scene that I've watched. They're in these big bombers. These bombers have a couple pilots and they have a bombardier and they also have men that are figuring out when to drop the bombs. There's other guys that are tail gunners. They're in these special spaces and they have machine guns and as these German fighter planes are coming in to try to take them out before they can bomb they're trying to shoot down those planes and protect the plane. But in one particular scene the planes hit and it's going down and everyone is bailing off the plane. And there's a limited amount of time and you know kind of how it works. You're in the sky as soon as you start flying as soon as you stop flying you start falling and they're falling. And the tail gunner in this particular episode is stuck. He can't get out. And one of the guys that's in the plane is doing everything he can to get the guy out of the plane so they both can jump out and use their parachutes. Now it becomes evident as they get closer and closer to the ground and as time runs out that there's only a limited amount of time to get out of that plane. And the tail gunner is stuck. He's not able to get out. But the guy trying to help him is watching the hours of the sand run through his hourglass you know most definitely. If he don't get out soon he's going to die right with the tail gunner. Now the one that's dying and the one that's stuck his most important thing is not the guy who can bail out on time and survive. His most important deal is himself. I don't blame him. He wants to live. But you know in that particular episode the guy trying to help him had to finally make a decision and say I've got to jump because I've got to jump soon enough where there's just enough time for my parachute to come out and work and for me to save myself. It doesn't do any good for both of us to die when one can't be saved. Now I don't know if our U can be saved or not. I've got a feeling that we might be seeing an additional Virginia Tech campus at some point here in Radford because they don't seem to be meeting the numbers they need to make in order to survive as a university. And I don't want to see us as a city go down on that plane with them. They're not going to go down with us if we're crashing and burning. I can promise you that. They'll separate from us quickly. But I want to see us make good decisions. I'd like to see them do well too. And if we can help them that's awesome. But we number one we have to focus on surviving as a city. And in order to do that we need to develop the old Foundry property. We need to bring those businesses in generate those revenues keying in on the areas where we can be most financially productive which is using that water and that electricity and recruiting the businesses that can use those things that can use the railroad spur and quite frankly our close access and proximity to I-81. That's another huge deal. We've got some really good things going for us. But we've got to utilize them. We have to put ourselves first do what's right for our citizens and pull that long withering arm away that's blocking our future. And we've got to do it now. And that includes to quit buying a product that's not good for us. I mean truthfully the university is struggling as it is. They're giving tuition away free and they still can't sell it. So that's an issue. But we need to move away from the model of depending on them we need to stop saying they're our number one business they're our number one employer all those things. We need to move a different direction and change that. Change that dynamic in the city. And we better do it fast. We can, we should and I believe if we're diligent about it we will. Alright as always I want to end this episode with my theme verse that's found in Ecclesiastes chapter 12 and verses 13 and 14. And God's word says this Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Fear God and keep His commandments. For this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment with every secret thing whether it be good or whether it be evil. I want to thank you again for joining me here in the ring on the podcast. I always enjoy you listening. I appreciate all the comments that I'm getting privately and in every form that I can get them. I hope you have a wonderful week. I love you again. May God bless you and your family. And I look forward to talking to you again here on One More Round Podcast. Thanks.