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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 1, 1995                   TAG: 9502010052
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-1   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG                                 LENGTH: Medium

SUPERVISOR JOINS COMPUTER AGE WITH ELECTRONIC SURVEY|

Supervisor Jim Moore, a retired Virginia Tech professor and budding computer enthusiast, is soliciting responses to his annual issue survey via the Blacksburg Electronic Village.

In the past, Moore has used paper alone to survey civic groups and clubs.

Late last year, just a few months after getting an e-mail address at his Blacksburg home, Moore decided to take the survey online with the help of electronic village staff.

It's available until Feb. 14 through the local government section on the village's Gopher server. For those with Netscape and Mosaic software or other ``web browsers,'' it's available through the electronic village's home page (at http://www.bev.net/) under local government. Respondents are asked to copy the survey into a new message field, answer the questions and e-mail it to surveybev.net.

So far, about 50 people have responded.

For those without a computer, public access to the Blacksburg Electronic Village is available at the Blacksburg branch and Christiansburg headquarters of the Montgomery-Floyd Regional Library.

The survey is nonscientific because it doesn't include a random sample of the voters in the county. Also, users are on their honor to vote only once, and only if they're Montgomery residents age 18 and older. (Computer users from Christiansburg and Blacksburg are also Montgomery County residents.) But even with those weaknesses, Moore says the survey is helpful in deciding how to vote.

Other supervisors have kidded Moore this year about the wording of some of the 12 questions, saying the phrasing all but dictated the response.

For instance, one question asks, ``The sheriff says that it costs $12,687 per year to house one prisoner. The superintendent of schools says that it costs $5,072 per year to keep one child in school. Where should our tax dollars go? Jails? Schools?''

The questions cover trash, school funding, environmental regulations, taxes, a huge retirement community planned for northern Blacksburg and other issues. Moore has also posted background information on six of the questions along with the survey.