Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 9, 1991 TAG: 9104090450
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS/ NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Long
Taylor Cole, an officer with Central Fidelity Bank in Christiansburg, asked the Board of Supervisors on Monday night to contribute $1,000 toward a design study of downtown to be done by Virginia Tech's Community Design Assistance Center.
Cole said his bank was willing to put up part of the $3,500 needed for the study, and he was volunteering his help to raise the rest from the Christiansburg business community.
Cole noted that all of the town's property owners would be affected by projects that county government has proposed for downtown. "It may be prudent for us before we take off on these projects to develop a comprehensive plan," he said.
Supervisors Chairman Henry Jablonski said he supported beautification but said he had a problem with the protocol on Cole's proposal. Jablonski and other supervisors want the Christiansburg Town Council to make a commitment to the study first.
Cole said he was proposing a public-private partnership. If the community backed the study, then the Town Council would be more apt to follow along, Cole said, conceding that the council has never been excluded from the project and, in fact, has to be involved.
The supervisors tabled consideration of the $1,000 request until their next meeting.
In other action:
Resident highway engineer Dan Brugh told the supervisors that secondary road funds in the coming year will be about $1 million - $500,000 less than current funding because of state budget cuts.
Brugh said he has worked with the county's roads committee, and it is recommending that the county's six-year secondary road plan be followed as it is laid out.
A contract could be advertised as early as August for work on Smith Creek Road and Virginia 675, and another advertised in the fall for Virginia 723 through Ellett, Brugh said. But he said money won't be available next year for improvements to Prices Fork Road.
On top of the state budget cuts, new storm-water management regulations that took effect Jan. 1 are adding as much as 20 percent to the cost of some road projects, Brugh said.
When he sits down with the supervisors later in the year to update the six-year secondary highway plan, 13 projects that have been added to the end of the plan will have to be cut, Brugh said.
The board set a secondary road hearing for May 28 at 7 p.m. in Courtroom B on the third floor of the courthouse. It will listen to ideas on secondary road improvements for the next fiscal year.
John Hubbard, an assistant county administrator for Roanoke County, briefed the supervisors about proposed storm-water control procedures at a new regional landfill, which sits a mile over the Montgomery County line in Bradshaw Valley, below Fort Lewis Mountain.
Three planned ponds will be able to control all the water running from the 150-acre landfill site during a 25-year storm - one that drops 6 inches of rain in a 24-hour period, Hubbard said.
A 100-year storm - one that dumps 7 inches of rain in 24 hours - would raise the level of the creek about 4 percent at its confluence with the North Fork of the Roanoke River, he said. That is a change in the creek's height during such a storm from 17 feet without the landfill to 17.35 feet with it, Hubbard said.
Hubbard told the supervisors that Roanoke County also has asked Norfolk Southern Corp., which is designing a track to the landfill site, to consider possible runoff from track construction. "They're going to make every effort to stay away from that creek," he said.
Residents of Bradshaw Valley have been pushing the Montgomery board to take a position against a proposed trash train to the landfill. The supervisors, however, have shown an interest in Montgomery County's using the landfill to dispose of its trash because the current landfill between Blacksburg and Christiansburg is nearly full.
Appointment of Joseph R. Hunnings as a new part-time agricultural extension agent for Montgomery County was approved.
Hunnings, a graduate student at Virginia Tech, will assume the position full-time after he completes work on his degree. He was formerly an extension agent in Warren County.
The board was told by Sam Tollison of the Montgomery Industrial Development Authority that bids for the new 81,260-square-foot shell building in the Blacksburg Industrial Park have come in under estimate.
Joe Bandy & Son was the low budder on the site development at $155,000 and H.S. Williams Co. was the low bidder on the building at $699,882 for a combined cost of $854,882. The architect had estimated the building alone would cost $884,387.
Several Christiansburg residents who oppose the proposed demolition of the 200-year-old courthouse annex addressed the board. Nell Frederickson of the New River Valley Arts Council said her organization would like to have the building.
by CNB