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

DATE: FRIDAY, January 13, 1995                   TAG: 9501130105
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                                 LENGTH: Short

WHERE WE ALL WANT TO TOSS 'EM SOMETIMES

``Lord knows what happened,'' said a chagrined Robert P. Vaughan, the commissioner of revenue. ``It baffles me that someone could come along and throw out the tax booklets, but that's exactly what happened.''

The mix-up occurred last Friday on a loading dock at the city's operations building at the municipal complex, he said. The tax forms, complete with their familiar gummed labels, were sitting in eight post office mail crates awaiting pickup by the Postal Service.

Next to the mail was a pile of scrap cardboard that city workers had been instructed to haul away. That morning, a city trash truck pulled up and everything was hauled away.

When a city mail room worker realized that the carts had been full of mail and were now empty, he called the sanitation department, which radioed the trash truck to stop.

The truck was already at the trash-transfer station - half empty.

``Those forms were so pitiful, all covered with garbage,'' Vaughan said. ``You know how people sometimes throw away a half-empty soda? A bunch of them were all soaked through. I took one look at what remained, at what they were able to salvage, and I said, `Forget it.'''