Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 5, 1990 TAG: 9003052077
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-3 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: Southwest bureau
DATELINE: WYTHEVILLE LENGTH: Medium
He is challenging Dr. Carl E. Stark, who has been Wytheville's mayor since 1962. Stark has not announced his bid for re-election but has been getting voter signatures on candidacy petitions.
"I realize that my opponent has done an awful lot of good and the town has benefited from his service," Crewe said after making his noon announcement on the steps of the Wythe County courthouse. But, he said, it was time for some new approaches to government and he wanted to offer voters a choice.
Stark has been unopposed since the town charter was changed in 1977 to allow direct election of the mayor. Before that, council had appointed the mayor from among its members. Stark had been the highest vote getter in his first bid for council in 1962, and was first appointed as mayor then.
He has been president of the Virginia Municipal League and active on many state and regional organizations and committees. He was out of town during the weekend and could not immediately be reached for comment on Crewe's challenge.
Crewe was appointed to fill an unexpired council term in 1983, elected to a full term in 1984 and re-elected in 1988. He resigned Feb. 27, 1989, before completion of his second term. Dr. D.B. Cox, a Wytheville dentist, was named to complete the term and is now a candidate for a full term of his own.
At the time of his marriage in May, 1988, Crewe moved to a new home on the outskirts of Wytheville. Attorney General Mary Sue Terry, in an opinion sought by state Sen. Daniel W. Bird Jr., said the home did not meet the definition of a residence within the town limits and Crewe was ineligible to continue serving on council.
But Crewe, who maintained that he was still a legal resident of Wytheville because part of his residential property was within town limits, said at the time he was not resigning because of Terry's opinion. He said he was stepping down because some Wythe County officials had taken exception to some opinions he expressed in a newspaper letters column about an upcoming annexation, and he did not want to stand in the way of its implementation.
The town and county reached an agreement - announced a few days after he stepped down - in which Wytheville annexed 4.42 square miles of Wythe County effective this year. The annexed area included Crewe's property, making him unquestionably a town resident.
In his announcement, Crewe pointed to the agreement as an example of the town and county working together as never before. "I believe that cooperation must continue and increase," he said.
He said the county and its two towns, including Rural Retreat, have some exciting opportunities ahead, partly because of the development being spurred by the crossing of two major interstate highways in the county. But the next four years will be critical in planning how to handle it, he said, and all three governments must coordinate planning as never before.
Among his priorities would be to strengthen the framework for cooperation that already exists among the three local governments, he said. Problems in developing new sanitary landfill disposals for solid waste will be one of the next big crises to be overcome, he said.
by CNB