ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Saturday, October 5, 1996              TAG: 9610070032
SECTION: CURRENT                  PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
DATELINE: PEARISBURG
SOURCE: CLAYTON BRADDOCK STAFF WRITER 

GILES, PEARISBURG SET BOUNDARIES, NEAR FINAL PACT

Pearisburg's long struggle to annex parts of Giles County is nearing an amicable conclusion.

The Giles County Board of Supervisors on Thursday approved annexation boundaries by a vote of 3 to 2. Supervisors Larry Blankenship and Barbara Hobbs opposed the measure.

The vote is a prelude to consideration of a final annexation agreement, which could come up before the Board of Supervisors later this month.

The linchpin to Thursday's vote was assurance that Pearisburg would provide water, sewer service and lights for some of the areas to be annexed.

The process began in January 1995, when the state Commission for Local Government issued a proposed agreement that's been batted back and forth between the county and the town ever since.

The board asked Roger Mullins, Giles County's administrator, and Ken Vittum, Pearisburg's town manager, to hammer out a final agreement that could be accepted by both sides.

Vittum and two Town Council members were present Thursday.

The agreement would fine-tune a resolution that's been in the works for weeks but is still filled with important gaps. Key is the need for water and sewer facilities in Bluff City, a developing area just across the New River from the Hoechst Celanese Corp.'s Celco plant. "Bluff City is our greatest concern," said Supervisor Jay Williams of Pembroke.

"If you don't put it in writing," warned Blankenship, a board member from Narrows, "it ain't worth a damn."

Thursday's vote on the boundaries should remove any chance that the annexation will fall apart, officials said. The annexation attempt has been contentious at times. It drew crowds of angry residents who felt threatened by the annexation and subsequent increase in their local taxes. One of the loudest areas of annexation opponents - Virginia Heights - is no longer under consideration to become part of Pearisburg, the largest of Giles County's five towns, with 2,000 residents.

The final memorandum of agreement will be presented to the Board of Supervisors on Oct. 18.

"We're in the process now of crunching numbers and other details," Vittum said Friday. A next step will be a meeting with the Commission on Local Government, but no date for that meeting has been set, he said.

Yet a copy of the final agreement is expected to reach the commission by late October, he said.

In other business, the Giles supervisors approved Anderson and Associates, a Blacksburg engineering firm, to design a new water system for the village of Newport.

LENGTH: Medium:   58 lines
ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC:  Staff. Three areas would be added to Pearisburg's 
          boundaries under the proposed annexation agreement: A. the Bluff 
          City area; B. the Lilly Fair, Mason Court and Woodland subdivisions;
          C. the Mountain View Industrial Park.