Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 16, 1990                   TAG: 9005160398
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B1   EDITION: BEDFORD/FRANKLIN 
SOURCE: MONICA DAVEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BEDFORD                                LENGTH: Medium

SHARING OF FUNDS STUDIED

Details of any such agreement are far from complete, though, a meeting of council members and the supervisors showed.

Suggested by the supervisors last week, the proposal generally would mean that the city would supply water and sewer services to properties just outside the city in Bedford County in exchange for some revenues from those properties.

City Council members Tuesday had a long list of questions about such an agreement and most of those questions came back to one issue: money.

Mayor Michael Shelton asked the supervisors:

Whether the county would be willing to help pay for an engineering study of the city's existing facilities and a study of the city's capacity for providing future water and sewer services.

What specific revenues would be shared and how much money could be expected.

How capital improvements on the city's water and sewer system would be paid for.

Whether the city would be required to make water and sewer connections to county properties without regard for its ability to handle the demand.

Supervisor Chairman A.A. "Gus" Saarnijoki said the supervisors will take the questions and start working on answers to them. After that, the two bodies agreed, a joint committee will be formed to work out the concepts behind a possible agreement.

Talk of an agreement on revenue sharing, though, did not mean an end to legal fighting between the county and city.

Shelton asked the supervisors whether talk of cooperation on utilities also would indicate that they will drop their suit - also connected to water and sewer extensions - against the city.

"At this point, I don't feel that we want to settle that issue right now," Saarnijoki said. The possibility of settling the suit filed in Bedford County Circuit Court, though, could come as talks progress, he said.

The county filed suit against the city and a county nursing home when owners of the nursing home requested that their property be annexed into the city so they could receive the city's water and sewer.

The county suit claims that the city already had a responsibility to serve Carriage Hill without annexation and that the city encouraged the nursing home owners to file the annexation request.

The suit and the annexation request followed the city's decision to place a moratorium on all utility extension requests into the county.

County supervisors and City Council members also considered joint agreements on several other issues.

Bedford Area Chamber of Commerce officials asked that the bodies consider what a small airport could do for Bedford. Chamber president Ron Lovelace asked that each board put up $1,000 for a preliminary study of a $4 million airport with a 4,000-foot runway for small planes.

On another issue, the city agreed to study how much and what kind of trash it gets in its landfill - to consider the possibility of a county-city landfill in the future. The county is in the final stages of picking a new landfill site.