ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, April 4, 1997 TAG: 9704040029
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: RADFORD
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER THE ROANOKE TIMES
Expansion of the New River Resource Authority to include Montgomery County may be a step closer.
The New River Resource Authority will send revisions to an expansion agreement requested by two of its three members to the Montgomery Regional Solid Waste Authority.
But first, authority attorney John Spiers will write up the changes sought by Pulaski County and the town of Dublin and run them by the NRRA members to make sure all three agree with them.
The NRRA board went over the requested changes Wednesday night during a meeting at the Radford Municipal Building.
The third NRRA member, Radford, had already approved the original proposed expansion agreement. So had the NRRA itself and the Montgomery Regional Solid Waste Authority, which includes Montgomery County, the towns of Blacksburg and Christiansburg, and Virginia Tech.
Spiers said the proposed changes may be major enough to require readvertising of the proposed agreement to add the Montgomery localities. But he will consult with Pulaski County Attorney Tom McCarthy and Dublin Town Attorney Tommy Baker before issuing a formal opinion.
There was also a question of whether the NRRA should rescind the earlier agreement before considering the revised one. But its members decided to wait and make sure the revised terms were acceptable to the Montgomery authority before doing anything.
One change sought by Dublin and Pulaski County would keep a separate seat on the NRRA for a Dublin representative. The original agreement had three representatives from the Montgomery group, three from Radford, and three from Pulaski County, one of whom would be from Dublin.
The effect would be to add one member to the nine originally proposed for the expansion. Currently, Radford has two members, Dublin has one and Pulaski County has three.
Pulaski County and Dublin wanted to keep majority representation because the new landfill, due to open in about a month, will be located in Pulaski County. It will replace the one in Radford used previously by the NRRA and now reaching capacity.
The proposed changes announced after a closed meeting March 26 between the Pulaski County Board of Supervisors and Dublin Town Council would also require a unanimous vote of the NRRA board for hiring an executive director, legal counsel and in all future negotiations involving any further expansion of the NRRA.
Some Dublin council members were upset that nobody from Dublin was included in the NRRA negotiating group, which spent about a year working out the original agreement with the Montgomery authority. Pulaski Supervisor Jerry White and Radford Mayor Tom Starnes represented the NRRA. "This was a stumbling block, whether you agree with it or you disagree with it," White said.
But county and town representatives said they interpreted unanimous vote to mean unanimous among the participating jurisdictions, not necessarily unanimous by all representatives from each jurisdiction. That would mean one member from any of the three-member jurisdictions could block any NRRA action.
They also thought that a simple majority vote should be all that is required to approve an interim director.
Finally, a new condition would keep the NRRA from collecting solid waste from any location without the consent of all jurisdictions, a safeguard against importing solid waste from outside the region.
"The intent of all this is to provide a smooth-running organization with confidence across the membership," said Pulaski County Administrator Joe Morgan.
"This is a compromise, a counter-offer if you will," said Dublin Councilman Dave Farmer. "If the city of Radford and Montgomery County would sign off on this, we've got a deal."
Just in case no agreement is reached, the Montgomery authority decided last month to hire Olver Inc., a Blacksburg-based engineering firm, to design a transfer station for use when the authority's landfill is used up in mid-1998. Bids will also be sought on hauling waste from the transfer station to a private landfill.
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