ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, October 31, 1996 TAG: 9610310018
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG
SOURCE: By KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER
Montgomery County officials will meet today to settle a rent dispute that has kept half of a new government office building vacant two months after its completion.
The building off Pepper Street - built with money from a 1993 bond referendum - was designed to house the Health Department and county Social Services Department.
The Health Department recently signed a 25-year lease for 12,000 square feet. Social services, however, has been in a holding pattern as it tries to come up with the rent for the other 12,000 square feet.
County Board of Supervisors member Jim Moore, who serves as a liaison to the Board of Social Services, said he hoped the meeting can lead to some action.
"We need to find some compromise," he said. "Here we've got half a brand-new building sitting idle."
The state government created a shortfall when it refused to pay a higher rent for the new building. Now county and social services officials must decide how or whether the difference will be made up. The rent that social services would pay the county would come from a combination of state and local revenue.
The Social Services Department already pays $18,600 a year in rent to the county for its present Roanoke Street office.
Moore said that when the $2.9 million bond referendum was held, the Board of Supervisors "really believed if the voters [said] yes that the state would pay back 80 percent of that [cost] over the 33 1/3 years" of the lease.
But Moore said a letter from the commissioner of the state Department of Social Services received this week stunned him.
Commissioner Clarence H. Carter wrote that the department "has been unable to approve any such requests for new funding associated with office costs since 1989 because funds have not been available."
If "no funds have been available since four years before the referendum where in the heck did we get the impression" the state would pay up? Moore asked.
Moore, Supervisor Mary Biggs and two representatives from the county Board of Social Services will meet Thursday to discuss various possibilities and suggestions to overcome the impasse.
"I hope this smaller group can come up with something," Moore said. "I'm hoping we can find some compromise that doesn't make the Social Services Board and my board look like a bunch of idiots."
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