Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 10, 1992 TAG: 9203100359
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: DAVID M. POOLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ROCKY MOUNT LENGTH: Medium
Lester often has been unprepared for monthly meetings of the Board of Supervisors during his six-month tenure as county administrator.
Consider the Jan. 21 meeting:
Lester updated the board on planning for a new public landfill, but when questioned could not say how much the county spent on engineering fees.
The meeting room fell silent for several minutes as Lester leafed through a thick stack of papers in front of him. He finally gave up, apologizing that his landfill presentation was not as "concise" as it should have been.
Later, he was unable to explain two other items before the board.
Lester - who last week told a reporter he would resign and then changed his mind - acknowledged that it has taken him longer than he had expected to bring himself up to speed on major issues.
"I don't pass myself off as having a 180 or 200 IQ," he said. "But that's not to say I'm stupid."
Lester's job performance is apparently the subject of a behind-the-scenes debate among members of the Board of Supervisors.
Lester predicted that he would silence his critics on March 17, the day he is scheduled to release a copy of the county's 1992-93 spending plan.
Lester threatened to resign when told that the Roanoke Times & World-News was going ahead with plans to publish a story Friday about personnel squabbles within the county, particularly a feud between Lester and Public Safety Director David Laurrell.
He later changed his mind, but the story apparently led the Board of Supervisors to meet behind closed doors Monday night to discuss unspecified "personnel issues." The board and Lester met for nearly three hours.
Fifteen volunteer firefighters and rescue squad members attended Monday's meeting to show their support for Lester, but they were not allowed to speak.
The volunteers said they supported Lester's decision to start a criminal inquiry into $1,500 per year that Laurrell had been paid in overtime from 1989 to late last year. To the volunteers, the overtime payments symbolized Laurrell's emergency service policies, which they see as favoring paid professionals over volunteer paramedics and firefighters.
Laurrell, who appeared briefly at the meeting, said the disgruntled volunteers did not represent the views of the majority of the county's emergency service volunteers. Laurrell noted that the number of volunteers has increased since he took the job four years ago.
by CNB