ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, December 5, 1996 TAG: 9612050015
PAGE: NRV-4 CURRENT EDITION: NEW RIVER
DATELINE: DUBLIN
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
Pulaski County has paid Dublin $100,000 toward construction of the town's $810,000 municipal building, going up in the developing Dublin Town Center.
In return, the county will be assigned three offices, and can also use the Town Council meeting room whenever the town has no meeting or event of its own planned there.
Current plans are to place county Youth Sports Coordinator John Myers and Regional Emergency Medical Services Inc. Executive Director David Smith in two of the offices. Myers now works out of Dublin Primary School and Smith in space at New River Community College. REMSI is a cooperative venture of the county and the towns of Dublin and Pulaski.
Dublin employees will also be able to take payments for county services from residents of the eastern part of the county, which will keep those citizens from having to drive to the county seat at Pulaski.
County Administrator Joe Morgan said such a town-county agreement is rare if not unprecedented. Town Manager Gary Elander said the county donation was important, but "just having a county presence out here is equally as important."
Board of Supervisors Chairman Joe Sheffey and Dublin Mayor Benny Keister signed the agreement at a joint dinner meeting Tuesday night in a new First National Bank building. The bank recently became the first building completed in the Town Center, and will hold a grand opening ceremony Dec. 18.
The 9,168-square-foot municipal building is expected to be complete in February and will replace town offices in an old building downtown on the corner of Main Street and Giles Avenue. The Dublin Post Office, on the opposite side of Main Street, is also expected to have a larger facility in the 18-acre Town Center.
The center is part of the former 270-acre Burlington Industries tract acquired in recent years by the town as an industrial park. The acreage became part of the town in 1995 through a town-county boundary agreement.
Another way the town is assisting the county is by providing a utilities department staff member to read all 3,000 county water meters outside the town of Pulaski. "It helps us because we only had one meter reader before and now we have a backup. And the county also has a backup," Elander said.
The town and county governing bodies also talked with Del. Tommy Baker, R-Dublin, about issues that could come up in the 1997 General Assembly.
Supervisor Jerry White noted that Pulaski County has a number of residents who send their children to schools outside the county, such as the city of Radford. That causes the county to lose "a fair amount of dollars" because state funding is based on student populations, he said, and suggested that the legislature consider some incentive to encourage student attendance at home.
Baker agreed that, at about $3,500 per child, "it adds up quickly."
In the offices agreement, the county agrees to pay its proportional share of utility, maintenance and insurance costs for the new town hall. The agreement can be ended by the town on refund on the county investment.
The space-sharing agreement and the countywide recreation program, REMSI, the boundary adjustment and a regional jail, are the examples of cooperation among Pulaski County jurisdictions in recent years. The only glitch in that record has been recent misgivings by some Dublin officials over a proposed agreement to add Montgomery County, Blacksburg, Christiansburg and Virginia Tech to the New River Resource Authority.
The NRRA currently handles solid waste disposal for the city of Radford, Pulaski County, and the towns of Dublin and Pulaski, although the town of Pulaski is not a member and is represented by the county. The next NRRA landfill will be located in Pulaski County.
Several Dublin officials were upset about not being involved in the agreement negotiations, in which the NRRA was represented by White and Radford Mayor Thomas Starnes. They also thought that the county should have more than three members (the agreement calls for three members each from the Montgomery County group, Radford, and Pulaski County with one of the county's members being from Dublin).
The agreement would have to be approved by all three participating governments. Radford and Pulaski County have given preliminary approval, subject to public hearings. The Board of Supervisors and Dublin Town Council are likely to have discussed the matter in a closed session that followed the dinner meeting.
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