Flock Cameras Come Down, Google Breaks Ground, and Dolly's Books Find Roanoke

Full Transcript

Intro

Alex: Welcome to The Roanoke Weekly. I’m Alex.

Morgan: And I’m Morgan. And before anything else — hi. It’s been a minute.

Alex: It has. We took some time off this summer. That’s the whole story. We’re back, and we’re back to weekly — every Monday morning, same as before.

Morgan: Good to be back.

Alex: This is your locally curated, AI-narrated look at the week in the Roanoke Valley. Everything we cover comes from local reporting — The Roanoke Times, Cardinal News, WSLS 10, and WDBJ7.

Morgan: And this week has a real shape to it. Some things around here are getting pulled back out of the ground. Other things are just getting started.

Alex: Plus a holiday weekend with more happening on Saturday night than any one person can attend.

Morgan: We’ll get to that argument.

The Lead: Flock Cameras Come Down Across the Region

Alex: We’re starting with something we’ve been following since the spring. And this week, it moved fast.

Flock cameras — the automatic license plate readers. Across this region, they’re coming down.

Christiansburg first. Tuesday night, the town council voted six to nothing to end the town’s contract with Flock Safety and take all six cameras down as soon as it can. The mayor didn’t vote, in accordance with state law.

The Roanoke Times reported that three council members led the push — Kim Bowman, Christine Waltz and Johana Hicks — and their objections were about privacy and the Fourth Amendment. One of them had voted for the cameras back in 2024, and said this week she didn’t have a clue at the time what the system could actually do.

Morgan: That’s the part that keeps repeating. People approve the thing, and then find out what it does.

Alex: The other three members had a different reason. They weren’t arguing about the technology at all. They said their community doesn’t trust it, and that’s reason enough — because they want people to trust the town, and trust the police.

There’s a money detail underneath it, too. A state police grant would have covered ten thousand dollars of Christiansburg’s eighteen-thousand-dollar contract. By canceling, the town gives that up.

Then Wednesday, Giles County. The sheriff’s office ended its contract a full year early — its two cameras come down October sixteenth. And the office was clear that its own audits found no misuse. The reason was public concern. Their release put it this way: maintaining public trust requires more than determining whether a program can be legally operated.

Morgan: That’s a striking thing for a sheriff’s office to say out loud.

Alex: It is. Though here’s the wrinkle — DeFlock, a site that maps these cameras, shows at least eight license plate readers in Giles County, and six of them aren’t the sheriff’s. Ending one contract doesn’t clear a county.

Cardinal News put Christiansburg and Giles side by side and called it opposition growing. And it kept growing. Halifax County said this week it won’t use them either. And Thursday night, Goochland’s sheriff suspended his, citing community input and what he called an evolving legal landscape. That’s Christiansburg, Giles, Henry, Lynchburg and Goochland. Richmond, meanwhile, still has ninety-nine cameras running.

Morgan: So where does that leave us here?

Alex: About where we left it. Roanoke’s gunshot detectors are gone — all forty-one that got installed came back out. But the twenty-four license plate readers are still up, and they were never part of that repeal vote.

Morgan: And it’s effectively on the ballot. At a candidate forum in Greater Deyerle Thursday night, mass surveillance was one of the top issues Roanoke Times readers said they wanted candidates asked about — alongside the budget and housing. Seven candidates, three seats, November third. Early voting starts September eighteenth. And if you’re wondering how we got to seven — Raekwon Moore, Danny Clawson and Vivian Sanchez-Jones came through the Democratic primary earlier this month.

The Rundown

Alex: Botetourt County announced Friday that Google has its land disturbance permit. Which means grading can begin on the three hundred and twelve acres it bought at the Botetourt Center at Greenfield, in Daleville.

Google’s own project site says construction starts immediately after that permit. The county’s release lists what’s coming — erosion and sediment controls, rock removal, and site prep that’s expected to involve blasting.

There are conditions. No wetlands disturbed. No noise-generating work between nine at night and seven in the morning. And Google will run sound monitoring on site, during construction and after it opens.

Morgan: So after a year of hearings and drawings and public comment, this is the week it becomes an actual construction site.

And right on cue, the Western Virginia Water Authority released the results of its water supply study at an open house Tuesday on Hollins Road.

Here’s the math. The valley’s sources can produce forty-five million gallons a day — eighteen from Carvins Cove, eighteen from Spring Hollow, nine from springs and wells. Right now, the authority treats twenty-one million.

Google’s initial request is two million gallons a day. Spokesperson Sarah Baumgardner told The Roanoke Times they’re “very comfortable” supplying that. And if Google came back asking for six million more, the signed agreement puts that cost on Google and on Botetourt County.

They’re planning forty to sixty years out — the state requires a long-range plan by 2029. Options include pulling from the New River, the James, Smith Mountain Lake, and even filling in the Rockydale and Roanoke Cement quarries once those close.

Alex: Worth setting right next to that — Carvins Cove is at fifty-nine percent. Almost eighteen feet below full pond, and the authority is asking people to conserve voluntarily.

Morgan: Comfortable in forty years. Tight right now.

Alex: Mayor Joe Cobb gave his state of the city address Thursday at the Hotel Roanoke.

The numbers he led with: reported crime down nineteen percent citywide this year, down fifty percent downtown. Overdose deaths down sixty percent from their 2022 peak.

On housing he was blunt — one in four households in Roanoke spends more than a third of its income on rent or a mortgage. He pointed to three projects with more than a thousand units between them, including the Walker Foundry site in Norwich.

What he didn’t bring up is its own story. The Roanoke Times noted he steered clear of all three things council has actually been fighting about — the budget, the Berglund Center casino proposal, and Flock.

Morgan: And WDBJ7 put a number underneath the good one. Homicides this year have already matched the total for all of 2025.

Okay. Football is back, and Virginia Tech has a genuinely strange story attached to it.

James Franklin’s first season starts Saturday, and expectations are high — people are projecting a real jump from last year’s three and nine.

But the story is Brent Pry. Tech fired him as head coach three months ago. He’s back — as defensive coordinator. Same program. The Roanoke Times couldn’t find another example of that happening anywhere.

Alex: Three months.

Morgan: Three months. He’ll call defensive plays for the first time since 2022. He built top-ten defenses under Franklin at Penn State, and his players say he’s got his swagger back — that he actually gets to coach now, instead of sitting in meetings.

Alex: And an hour and a half up the road, Virginia opened Week Zero on Saturday and beat NC State thirty-four to eight in front of a sellout at Scott Stadium. Missouri transfer Beau Pribula ran for a hundred and ten yards. Tony Elliott’s team looked like it picked up right where an eleven-win season left off.

The Week Ahead

Morgan: All right — the week ahead. Holiday weekend, so it’s back-loaded.

Starting Tuesday and running all the way through Sunday, the RidgeYaks are home for six straight against the Hill City Howlers. Nights at six thirty-five, and the Sunday finale is a two-oh-five day game.

And I’ll be straight with you — Salem got eliminated from playoff contention Friday night down in Fayetteville. They’re fifty-two and seventy. But this is the last baseball at Carilion Clinic Field until spring.

Alex: Six chances at it.

Morgan: Six chances. Wednesday, the Grandin Theatre is showing Steel Magnolias as a Dolly Parton tribute, after her death last week.

Alex: That’ll be a room with some feeling in it.

Morgan: Then Saturday goes off. The Roanoke Labor Day Parade steps off at noon downtown, from Campbell Avenue.

And Saturday night — the Avett Brothers at Elmwood Park. Gates at six thirty, show at seven thirty. Beer, wine and food trucks on site, but no coolers and no outside food or drink.

Alex: Which is the exact same start time as Virginia Tech and VMI. Seven thirty, on ACC Network.

Morgan: I know. I saw that.

Alex: So that’s the Saturday night question.

Morgan: For me it’s not close. I’m going to Elmwood.

Alex: See, I’d have the game on and be checking the score from the lawn.

Morgan: That’s a very reasonable middle path that I will not be taking.

Then Sunday, Elmwood turns right around — Remember The Times, a nineties and two-thousands party in the park, four to ten in the evening.

Alex: Same lawn. Completely different decade.

Morgan: And Labor Day itself is that Monday, the seventh, which is quiet on the local calendar. So that one’s yours to figure out.

The Closer: Dolly Parton’s Books Find Roanoke

Alex: One more before we go.

Dolly Parton died Tuesday. And rather than tell you about her career, here’s what happened in Roanoke.

Parton started her Imagination Library in 1995, because her father couldn’t read. It mails a free book every month to a child, from birth until they turn five. Roanoke city and Roanoke County both launched chapters just this summer.

In the twenty-four hours after the news broke, both of them got flooded. Roanoke County signed up thirty children in a single day. A normal week is fifteen to twenty-five. The city saw the same kind of jump, and donations came in online from people who’d clearly just heard.

And Woodshed, the coffee shop and craft store downtown, started a fundraiser matching donations up to a thousand dollars. Co-founder Mark Lynn Ferguson told The Roanoke Times that Dolly showed him, personally, how to be proud of where he’s from, and how to turn people’s assumptions on their head.

Morgan: So somewhere in Roanoke, a kid who has no idea any of this happened is going to get a book in the mail next month. That’s the whole thing, right there.

Close

Alex: That’s The Roanoke Weekly. Thanks for sticking with us through the break — and if you know someone who’s been out of the loop, send them this one.

Morgan: We’re back on schedule from here. Every Monday.

Alex: See you next Monday.