Martinsville Henry County - Comedy of Errors
Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2006 5:11 pm
I must voice a few thoughts on my hometown. Thanks to the efforts of previous local political leaders who did their best to protect the local family owned textile and furniture factories by keeping more modern companies out of the area so that the locally owned companies could get by with paying low wages to their workers. This was the decades old way of doing things in Martinsville & Henry County Virginia. Now that the factories have mostly closed, ( over 15,000 manufacturing jobs lost in past decade ), the area has thousands unemployed, a few more thousand who have left the area all together. The Weldon Cooper Center at UVA announced 2 weeks ago that the Martinsville & Henry County area has lost over 3,500 citizens from December 2000 through December 2005.
To make matters worse, the local city and county government leaders still refuse to work together. City leaders have been working on a possible reversion to "town" status because of a worsening economic situation in the city, but county leaders want no part of that. This lack of cooperation is one of many reasons why prospective companies will not locate to that area. Another reason is that 40% of the adult population in Martinsville & Henry County Virginia has no High School Diploma or GED. Decades of coddling the local families who got rich have left the area with an over supply of poor.:-1
To make matters worse, the local city and county government leaders still refuse to work together. City leaders have been working on a possible reversion to "town" status because of a worsening economic situation in the city, but county leaders want no part of that. This lack of cooperation is one of many reasons why prospective companies will not locate to that area. Another reason is that 40% of the adult population in Martinsville & Henry County Virginia has no High School Diploma or GED. Decades of coddling the local families who got rich have left the area with an over supply of poor.:-1