Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 9, 1995 TAG: 9511090033
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ROBERT FREIS AND PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Voters swept incumbents out of office on Election Day like so many autumn leaves, expressing their desire for changes in the way local governments do business.
In Giles County, with four new members on the Board of Supervisors, issues from fiscal policies to public works projects to public officials' images will be re-evaluated.
Pulaski County's Board of Supervisors will have a new balance of political power. And the School Board is likely to become even more questioning of administrative initiatives and recommendations.
"People wanted a change. They were fed up with government," said Barbara Hobbs, who will become the first woman to serve on Giles County's Board of Supervisors.
Giles voters decisively cast supervisors George Hedrick, Bobby Compton and Herbert "Hub" Brown out of office, and re-elected the current board's arch nemesis, Treasurer Rick Cook.
Cook and the board have engaged in public fights over record-keeping procedures during the past four years. The board won a 1992 court battle with Cook over releasing financial data, but lost the war when the incumbent treasurer bested five challengers.
Hobbs, a former Giles County administrator, gained her own measure of Election Day revenge. She will take a seat on the board that fired her in 1988 after 15 years of working for the county in a variety of positions.
Yet she stressed cooperation among county officials and an end to the squabbling that characterized the past four years. "I don't like the publicity Giles County has gotten. We're a proud people."
Joining Hobbs on the new board as freshmen will be William P. Freeman, R. W. "Bob" Williams and Larry A. Blankenship. Larry "Jay" Williams was the sole incumbent to win.
Hobbs, Freeman, Bob Williams and Blankenship apparently found a receptive audience by pledging to restrict governmental spending. Costs incurred by public works projects initiated by the current board may increase per capita debt by as much as five-fold.
In low-tax Giles County, that figure unnerved many voters, even though officials defended the improvements as necessary and advantageous.
Gary Eaton, chairman of the county's Public Service Authority, said many office-seekers touted economic development while criticizing the county's attempt to create a unified water system.
"Now I am concerned about leaving a large debt to the next generation as anyone, but I am more concerned about leaving the next generation without jobs and without adequate water," Eaton wrote last week to the Virginian Leader, the local weekly newspaper.
"The utilities burden has hit us all at once," said Tim Brown, the PSA's executive director, of Giles' expensive attempts to organize the water system and dispose of solid waste.
Brown said he's talked with several of Giles' new supervisors, and is encouraged by their wait-and-see attitude.
Hobbs, who has been on both sides of the table, said she intentionally de-emphasized campaign promises because of uncertainties that face elected officials.
"When you are on the outside looking in, things look a whole lot different than they do on the inside looking out," she said.
A new skepticism also may characterize Pulaski County's new School Board, with three of five new members elected Tuesday.
Sybil Atkinson, who lost the Robinson District seat, raised her share of questions but not as many as Rhea Saltz, who will replace her, when he served on the at-large seat from 1990 to 1993. Saltz and Draper District representative Lewis Pratt, who was unopposed, always went into more detail than other members in scrutinizing issues before the board.
Massie District member Nathan Tuck and Cloyd District representative Carolyn Brown were among the more quiet participants in board discussions. It is unlikely that Jeff Bain and Beth Nelson, who unseated them, will be.
Bain is coming in with an agenda to make board meetings more accessible to the public, first by removing the sign-up sheet required before anyone can address the board. Nelson has an extensive background in education ranging from the classroom through administration to posts at Radford University before her retirement, and is likely to have her ideas on issues as well.
One issue that Saltz, Pratt, Bain and Nelson already seem to agree on is that a recommendation from a county building needs task force, to consolidate the Pulaski and Dublin Middle Schools, is a bad idea. The remaining member, current Chairman Ron Chaffin who won a new term in the Ingles District, has said only that the board needs to study the task force recommendations and involve the community more in such decisions.
The Pulaski County Board of Supervisors will get two new members next year: Charles Cook, who ousted Ira "Pete" Crawford in the Draper District, and former sheriff Frank Conner, who narrowly won the Massie seat being vacated by Mason Vaughan in a race with Andy McCready.
Vaughan, like Conner, is a Democrat. But Crawford is a Republican, and Democrat Cook's victory over him will change the majority party on the five-member governing body.
Keywords:
ELECTION '95
by CNB