Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 14, 1995 TAG: 9503140104
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-5 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
As an outgrowth of the stalled Patton's Grant retirement community proposal, Blacksburg and Montgomery County may soon negotiate the provision of utility services to growing rural areas just outside town.
Six Town Council members and two county supervisors met for 90 minutes of talk last week that centered on one issue - money.
The questions are who will earn it from utility revenues and who will spend it to provide new sewer and water service. How they're answered could end up saving or costing county and town taxpayers millions of dollars. The county has resolved such questions with Christiansburg and Radford, but lacks an agreement with Blacksburg. Patton's Grant brought the issue to the front burner.
Patton's Grant was to have been a 300-acre retirement community north of Blacksburg, with all but 50 acres in Montgomery County. Its developers withdrew rezoning applications March 1 after a spate of questions from Town Council and hesitancy from the county Board of Supervisors because of unresolved utility issues. The developers still hold options on the land, however.
Thursday, both town and county officials agreed to submit lists of questions to launch negotiations in coming weeks.
Town Council, with all but member Joyce Lewis present, also agreed to Montgomery Supervisor Ira Long's demand that a small committee of elected officials and bureaucrats conduct the actual negotiations, rather than just staff experts, as Blacksburg Mayor Roger Hedgepeth wanted.
Long's small-committee wish was the reason the full Board of Supervisors wasn't present. One other supervisor did attend - Jim Moore, who represents about 10,000 people in Blacksburg and the rural areas just adjacent to Patton's Grant - but he had to sit in the audience. Supervisor Joe Gorman, who represents Patton's Grant and the Blacksburg neighborhoods next to it, was unable to attend because of a scheduling conflict.
Thursday's discussion contrasted the differing management styles and philosophies on guiding growth between the county and the town. While most of Montgomery's board favors hands-on management, Blacksburg's council acts as more of a corporate board of directors. While the town sees sewer lines as a means to guide growth, a majority of the county board has been content to let the market dictate suburbanization.
Most of Patton's Grant is in the drainage basin that empties into the North Fork of the Roanoke River. Blacksburg could provide sewage service with pump stations linked to its system, which flows to the treatment plant at Stroubles Creek, a tributary of the New River. If the county Public Service Authority simply built the water and sewer lines for the Patton's Grant area and bought service from Blacksburg at a bulk rate, the town would lose out because it wouldn't recoup the cost of adding capacity to its system, Hedgepeth said.
Meanwhile, it would cost the county millions to build its own sewage plant along the North Fork somewhere in the Ellett Valley. Besides serving Patton's Grant, such a plant could open up the now-rural Lusters Gate and Catawba Road areas to high-density development.
In the end, supervisors Chairman Larry Linkous conceded Blacksburg could provide the service the cheapest. But he was worried about giving away the potentially lucrative rights to serve the rest of the basin should growth spread east from Patton's Grant.
To serve Patton's Grant, the town - known for its tight development rules - may have to loosen up a bit and not insist its standards prevail. Council member Michael Chandler indicated the town could be flexible. "Sidewalks leading to nowhere make no sense," he said.
Blacksburg won't reap direct real-estate tax benefits from growth in nearby areas of the county, so it wants the utility revenues. The county - and specifically Long - is decidedly protective of what he says is the Montgomery Public Service Authority's turf. The utility provides limited water and sewer service to rural, unincorporated areas of Montgomery and was a perennial money-loser until recently. The PSA's getting a piece of the action on any new sewer and water revenues might be crucial to keeping it in the black and may, too, be part of the negotiations.
Thursday's talk could mean there will be a utilities framework in place should the developers of Patton's Grant return with a revised proposal later this year.
by CNB