Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 15, 1995 TAG: 9505160005
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Virginia's Explore Park survived another funding scare last week when Congress came close to eliminating federal funding for the yet-to-be-built access road that will connect the park with the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Congress approved $12 million for the road back in 1987, although various delays have pushed the opening date back until 1997.
Explore planners thought the road, to be part of the National Park Service system, was a done deal. But they hadn't counted on a budget-cutting Congress. Last week, the Senate passed a bill that rescinded funding for some projects that had already been approved. On the hit list were roads included in the 1987 highway bill that hadn't been built yet - including the Explore road.
The Senate bill would have slashed funding for those uncompleted 1987 projects from $250 million to $120 million, and left it to the Secretary of Transportation to figure out which survived and which died.
But when Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke, learned of the action, he alerted Explore and swung into action - lobbying Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Fairfax County, who heads the House Appropriations transportation subcommittee. In the end, Wolf was able to make sure funding for the Explore road was spared.
"This was a hot item burning up the phone lines between Roanoke and Washington for 72 hours," said Rupert Cutler, Explore's executive director, who described the threat to the road's funding as a "crisis."
"I'd just like people to know Goodlatte did a good job of keeping that project alive," he added.
Goodlatte's top aide, Tim Phillips, said the 6th District congressman was just doing his job:
"Bob thinks this is important for the Roanoke Valley, so he went to bat for it."
Not sold in stores
Record-keeping in Roanoke Circuit Court is about to enter the disc era.
The clerk's office recently received a $129,000 state grant that will be used to convert some 300,000 pages of deeds, wills and other documents onto optical discs, Clerk Arthur "Burt" Crush said.
For now, the discs will be kept in storage as a backup to the microfilmed records that are currently used in the clerk's office. Court officials sought the grant because they had no extra copies of about 550 large, bound books that contain records from 1947 to 1965.
With the grant being used to convert those records to both microfilm and optical disc, Crush said, the office will be protected in the event of fire or other accident. The rest of the documents in the office already have additional copies stored in another location.
But by also having the information on disc, the office is preparing for the day when its records will be available via computer to people who won't have to make a trip to the courthouse.
"That's looking three to five years down the road," Crush said.
The grant, which will be used to pay a Northern Virginia firm that will convert the records page by page, was obtained after months of planning and research by Chief Deputy Clerk Mary Jane Barrett and Deputy Clerk Mark Hartman.
by CNB