Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 25, 1994 TAG: 9405250146
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Medium
The supervisors will fill three 18-month appointments in June, for districts B, F and G. The board held a public hearing on two of those seats Monday and will hold one for District F, from which longtime member Virginia Kennedy is resigning, on June 13.
But the supervisors' final School Board appointments will come next spring, according to a memo prepared by County Attorney Roy Thorpe.
The supervisors reviewed the memo, the first recent public explanation of the transition, on Monday and approved it. An effort to urge changes in what some members see as unfair extensions and abbreviations of several School Board appointments failed.
The transition is necessary to bring School Board members' terms in sync with those of the elected Board of Supervisors, as required by state law.
The two 18-month appointments the board will make in June 1995 will be for the Blacksburg seat, now held by School Board Chairman Roy Vickers, and the District C post, now held by Rebecca Raines of Lafayette.
Three other appointments will be extended and one will be shortened. The posts now held by Annette Perkins of Blacksburg and Barry Worth of Christiansburg will gain an extra 18 months to expire at the end of 1997. The Christiansburg seat held by David Moore, the board's sole black member, will gain an extra six months.
But retired teacher Lou Herrmann will see her term shortened by 18 months. Her District E seat will be up for election in November 1995, along with those for districts B, F and G.
With the extended appointments, the second round of elections would be in November 1997, when districts A, C and D will go before the voters.
The two town seats will be eliminated as of Jan. 1, 1998, under the principle in constitutional law of one person, one vote.
But supervisors Nick Rush, Jim Moore and Henry Jablonski had some problems with the transition.
Rush thought the town appointees should leave the School Board in January 1996, once the first elected members come on. Because of the state law, the portion of Christiansburg that includes his District B will have two votes on the School Board for those two extra years, Rush said.
Their effort to urge the General Assembly to alter the transition failed by a 5-2 vote, with Moore and Jablonski voting for it. Moore conceded that if the board wanted a different transition scheme, it should have worked for it before the past General Assembly session, when state Sen. Madison Marye, D-Shawsville, introduced a special amendment for the county that is now the law governing the transition.
Thorpe will use the memo to work with School Board attorney Kimberly Ritchie to submit a plan to the U.S. Justice Department before the 1995 election. Under the Voting Rights Act, any Virginia locality that wants to change a voting plan must submit it to the federal government for approval.
In other business Monday, the Board of Supervisors appointed former Republican House of Delegates candidate Ward Teel to the county Planning Commission to replace outgoing Chairman Jeff London. The board also reappointed Richard Daub.
And the supervisors appointed their chairman, Larry Linkous, to the Montgomery County Public Service Authority board, replacing its chairman, Todd Solberg, whom Linkous defeated in the 1991 election. The PSA board, which governs public water and sewer systems in the unincorporated areas of the county, is now made up of former Supervisor George Gray and all the current supervisors except Joe Gorman.
Gorman, of Blacksburg, is an outspoken critic of past and present county tax subsidies to the PSA, which is supposed to be self-supportive.
by CNB