ROANOKE TIMES

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, May 19, 1990                   TAG: 9005190276
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: MARION                                  LENGTH: Short


WYTHE GETS BARGAIN

Mount Rogers Development Partnership board members voted Friday to let Wythe County join at half-price, but they were not happy about it.

The marketing organization also voted to give other counties and cities in the Mount Rogers Planning District the option of reducing their own $1 per capita assessments to 50 cents, but hoped the others would stick with the $1 for 1990-91.

If the district's six counties and two cities all reduced their per capita payments to the 50 cents being allowed for Wythe, it would cut the fledgling group's budget by $90,000.

Wythe is funding its own organization and director to seek new industries, which is why its Joint Industrial Development Authority and Board of Supervisors felt it should not commit a lot of money to a similar regional effort.

"But I think our first priority this year is to have eight localities," said William E. Mitchell Jr., partnership board chairman. "We'll just have to do more for less in the first year to show them that we do need that extra 50 cents in the '91-92 year."

The concept behind the partnership is to market the entire region, as do marketing organizations set up in the two coalfield planning districts and the New River Valley. But partnership representatives of several localities said they would not agree to let Wythe in at half-price a second time.

- Southwest bureau



 by CNB