ROANOKE COUNCIL DEFERS TO LEGISLATORS ON DRUG-CLINIC ISSUE

The council will ask the General Assembly to require state officials to
notify a locality when a company applies for a clinic license.

Frustrated Roanoke officials will pressure state legislators to revise
Virginia's methadone clinic licensing laws.

The Roanoke City Council on Monday took two actions to make it potentially
harder for such clinics to open in the future, but neither will stop a
proposed methadone facility on Hershberger Road Northwest, said Bill
Hackworth, Roanoke's city attorney.

The council will ask the General Assembly to require state officials to
notify a locality when a company applies for a clinic license in that
particular jurisdiction. They also set a process in motion to change
Roanoke's zoning ordinance.

"We believe this is a good start," City Manager Darlene Burcham said,
adding that the city is doing all it can to help Northwest residents who
were upset by the proposal.

Council's afternoon decisions preceded its night meeting in which close to
100 Northwest residents packed the council chamber to oppose the clinic.

Lynn Johnson, who lives near the proposed clinic site, told the council,
"As the watchdogs of this city, I urge you to find legislation to keep it out."

The crowd offered city leaders ideas on other locations where such a
facility could be located including a former blood bank building on
Campbell Avenue in Roanoke and the Veterans Administration hospital complex
in Salem.

Burcham, council members and other city hall leaders have said they were
caught completely off-guard recently when Nashville, Tenn.-based National
Specialty Clinics obtained a business license to open a methadone-related
drug treatment clinic in a vacant medical building on Hershberger Road. The
city site, as well as another proposed clinic in Roanoke County, have
touched off public opposition because the locations are near schools and
neighborhoods.

While National Specialty Clinics has a city business license, it has not
yet obtained a state license, she said. The company must also get a city
certificate of occupancy for the building it plans to use.

Burcham said Monday that she's learned that the Nashville company first
notified the state Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and
Substance Abuse Services of its general intentions more than a year ago,
but the state wasn't required to inform Roanoke officials.

Burcham maintains that she and members of her staff knew nothing about the
proposed clinic until last month when the company had already received the
business permit from the city's office of the commissioner of the revenue .
It was at that point that the city realized it was dealing with a methadone
clinic request and also realized that the Hershberger Road site is in a
commercial zoning classification, known as C-2, that allows such a use.

The city will request that state law be changed so no state clinic license
can be issued until the governing body of an affected locality is notified
and has at least 30 days to submit comments.

In addition to the state law revision, the city council voted to pursue a
Roanoke zoning ordinance amendment that would make it harder for outpatient
mental health and substance abuse clinics to locate in the C-2
classification. The city already has more stringent regulations in several
other commercial classifications.

Brenda Hale, president of the Roanoke NAACP branch, told the council that
the Northwest community has a number of serious concerns about the
methadone clinic and urged the council to try to find other ways to
regulate the facility, such as its hours of operation.

In other items Monday, the council:

* Learned that Roanoke has been chosen as the top digital city in its
population category for the third - straight year by the Center for Digital
Government. No other city in the country has earned that distinction three
years running, Burcham said.

* Was told by Downtown Roanoke Inc. Director David Diaz that the H&C Coffee
sign downtown will likely be moved to the top of the Shenandoah Hotel
building at the corner of Williamson Road and Campbell Avenue.