A shot from Monday's girls' soccer game at Floyd County High School.

Citizens Telephone Cooperative, Floyd County's largest private employer, is strapped for cash and talking layoffs, cutbacks and trouble for the future.

At a recent company meeting, Citizens executives told employees that the company must raise revenues or it will cut staff, salaries and services.  The situation is so bad that Citizens is considering taking sales personnel off salary and putting them on commission and sending a strong message to others that they might want to think about seeking employment elsewhere.

Over the last few months, Citizens has quietly outsourced many of its services that once were local. Many service calls now go to a call center in Montana, the company switched its web hosting domain registration to GoDaddy, a Scottsdale, Arizona, computer giant and its cell phone service, launched with fanfare a couple of years ago, is actually rebranded from Verizon.

Citizens's problems stem from too-rapid growth, expansion into counties outside its traditional service area and a general slowdown in the economy. The company spent far more than anticipated in deploying fiber optic lines throughout Floyd County and on a wireless broadband service in the New River Valley.

As a cooperative, Citizens is supposedly owned by its customers but the customer-owners have not been told of the company's recent problems and employees were advised to avoid discussing the situation with the very people they actually work for. Those same employees have endured cutbacks in benefits from a company they feel cares more about the bottom line. Some disgruntled employees have filed suit and their cases were settled, quietly, out of court.

Floyd Countians pay more for most telephone services than residents in more populous areas like Montgomery and Roanoke counties. Our DSL Internet service, while extraordinary for a rural area, is more expensive than faster service in urban areas.

As customer owners of Citizens, we deserve more information about the company's problems. Citizens needs to be open and honest about the uncertain future it faces. We own the company. We need to know.

In 1992, I opened my one-man free-lance photography business in Arlington County, Virginia. When you open a one-person shop in Arlington, home of 39 Fortune 500 companies, you don't expect to make much of a dent in the local economy.

Yet, in the first month of business, the county administrator, chairman of the board of supervisors, my local supervisor, the director of economic development, the fire chief and the police precinct captain, dropped by to say "hello" and to welcome me to the Arlington business community. Several gave me their home and cell phone numbers and urged me to call them anytime I had a question or problem.

Over the next 12 years, I had contact with many county officials and most always asked "how's business?" and "is there anything I can do to help?"

In 2004, Amy and I opened a studio in the Jacksonville Center and stayed there for three years. During that time, no county official set foot in the studio or dropped by to say howdy. Last year, we opened a new studio in The Village Green in downtown Floyd. On Sunday, a member of the town council dropped by -- not so much to visit but to discuss a recent story critical of town government. He was the first town council member to pass through the door.

Newcomers and those interested in relocating to Floyd often ask me if the area is friendly to small business. I usually tell them of the contrast between the welcome I received in Arlington and the indifference in Floyd. Floyd is not unfriendly to new business. It's just indifferent at best. It might offer rent subsidies to a Volvo-owned company that wants to locate a recycling plant in the industrial park but it is, by and large, benign when it comes to the many small, more entrepreneurial operations that form the backbone of new business in the county.

During a break at a recent meeting of the county board of supervisors, which I attend each month to cover for The Floyd Press, I told the story about the treatment of small business owners in Arlington and noted that no supervisor has ever set foot in my either of my earlier businesses in the county or come to the front door of my home.

Virgel Allen, newly-elected supervisor of Little River District, overheard the conversation and said: "Doug, if I were your supervisor, you would have heard from me."

I laughed.

"Virgel," I responded. "You ARE my supervisor."

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An all Floyd Saturday night at the Country Store. Bernie Coveney, Mike Mitchell and Abe Goorskey opened the evening with their eclectic mix of music, followed by Upland Express. My shoulder went dead halfway through the opening show and I wasn't able to get Upland but here are some photos of Bernie, Mike and Abe.

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Prom Night Saturday night. Tuxes, evening wear and all that jazz. Abbey Bowen (right) dropped by the Foyd Country Store with her friends to show off their prom finery and pose for some pix.

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Musicians try out the new sidewalk alcoves in Floyd on a Friday night.

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The 16 Hands weekend studio tour kicked off with a reception Friday night in the Hotel Floyd Conference Room in the Village Green.