ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, December 1, 1995 TAG: 9512010035
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-7 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: SCRUGGS
SOURCE: TODD JACKSON STAFF WRITER
Hilde Hussa, let go as Rocky Mount's Main Street program director in September, has been hired as the new director of the Smith Mountain Lake Policy Advisory Board.
The announcement was made Thursday by the board's chairman, Jim Brown, at the start of a multicounty lake planning summit at the Bernard's Landing Conference Center.
Hussa flew in from Chicago, where she was helping her daughter move, to attend the conference.
"I'm extremely pleased," she said.
Hussa left the Main Street job amid a swirl of controversy. The board that governs the Main Street effort - the Community Partnership for Revitalization - voted 14-1 during a closed-door meeting to ask her to resign.
The board did not disclose its reasons for the vote, although several board members later said a clear majority of the board felt Hussa's priorities didn't match the partnership's goals.
Hussa, who defended her efforts as Main Street director, refused to resign and was forced out by the executive committee of the partnership's board.
She later wrote a long letter to a local newspaper that described the tasks she had taken on since she was given the job in October 1994.
Hussa said Thursday that she harbors no resentment toward any of the partnership's board members, although, she said, "There's several other people in the town that I don't like."
Hussa, who has lived at Smith Mountain Lake since she moved to Franklin County several years ago from the Chicago area, said the partnership board "did what they had to do."
As executive director of the advisory board, Hussa becomes the point person for the interjurisdictional policy-setting body at the lake, which is bordered by Franklin, Bedford and Pittsylvania counties.
Hussa said she had not applied for the position prior to her problems as Rocky Mount's Main Street director.
She said a friend told her two weeks ago that the lake board had not yet filled the director's post from which Liz Parcell resigned in August.
Parcell, who plans to go back to college to get a teaching degree, agreed to stay on until a hiring decision was made.
Brown said Hussa will be paid $27,000 a year. She earned $21,000 as Rocky Mount's Main Street director.
Brown said Hussa was picked from a pool of nearly 80 applicants.
Asked what distinguished Hussa from the rest, Brown said: "It's her energy and her enthusiasm."
The two-day planning summit that will end this afternoon was trying to reach a lofty goal: Establishing an interjurisdictional vision for the future of the lake.
Supervisors, planning commission members, planning staffs and state representatives from each of the three lake counties were invited to attend. About 30 attended Thursday's session.
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