Red Dirt Rd. Water Project Celebrated

by Scotty Wampler
News Editor  
      Twenty-five households are expected to benefit from a recently-completed "self-help" public water project at Red Dirt Road.
      Project volunteers gathered Thursday at Big Fox Community Church to celebrate the completion of the nearly $430,000 effort one state official dubbed "remarkable."
      "I'm just incredibly proud of what you've accomplished," said Jimmy Wallace, Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development project manager. "I think you guys really ought to pat yourselves on the back."
      Wallace said an extraordinary number of volunteers, 46 total, donated time and manpower for the project, which included flagging traffic, helping install waterline and cooking for the crew, among several other tasks.
      "I think that's remarkable, given how small the community is," he said of the size of the volunteer crew. "It's tremendous what you all have done."
      A total of 2,536 man hours were donated to the project by the volunteers, Wallace said, who added work began around the end of October.

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Comm. Atty. Pleads for Part-Time Salaries Money Back

by Scotty Wampler
News Editor
      Commonwealth's Attorney Tamara Neo has taken exception with a decision to remove $10,000 from her office's operating funds in the county's 2008-09 budget proposal.
      The funds were penciled into Circuit Court Clerk Beverly Tiller's part-time salaries budget recently after she and Treasurer Bill Keene questioned why their requests for part-time salary funding had been cut in a previous incarnation of the proposed budget, while Neo's request was apparently left unaltered.
      "I'm here to ask for that money back," Neo told the board Monday, claiming the removal of office paralegal Deidra Stacy, whose job would be jeopardized if the funds were removed, would "cripple" her administration.
      Two weeks ago, Keene said his original request was trimmed from $20,000 to $10,000. According to Tiller, zero funds were earmarked for part-time salaries in her department in the previous budget proposal. Keene added Commissioner of the Revenue Jay Rife's part-time salaries budget also was set at $10,000, while Commonwealth's Attorney Tamara Neo's allocation for part-time salaries remained at $20,000. He said the fairest course of action would be to give an equal amount of money for part-time salaries to each constitutional officer.
      In response on Monday, Neo said other county constitutional officers have much greater resources from within their budgets to find extra money to fund part-time positions, as compared to the commonwealth's attorney's office. She said miscellaneous line items in the budgets of the clerk's and treasurer's offices totaled over $90,000 and $130,000, respectively, while she had just over $37,000 available to tweak.

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