Washington County, Va., Supervisors Move Along Projects

ABINGDON, Va. – The Washington County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously at its regular meeting Tuesday to pursue two facilities projects: a new branch library in the Benhams community and possible use of the Johnston Memorial Hospital building for county office space.

The board voted to have a professional assessment done of the hospital complex, which will be vacated when the hospital moves to a new building.

Phase I of the building assessment would be an overall look at the “suitability, viability and economy” of the building for adaptive re-use of office space, according to meeting documents.

If the building is found to be suitable, then more specific study and cost estimation would follow; the next step would be preparation of a preliminary architectural and engineering report.

“We have discussed this at length in our facility meetings, and we don’t know if this is going to be a workable solution until we look at it,” said Supervisor Dulcie Mumpower.

“With the location of the hospital and the fact that it would be centrally located, it would be close to the courthouse with plenty of parking and ample space for the citizens to come and be convenient for them to be able to access that facility.”

For the library, the board voted to authorize negotiations to purchase a piece of property near the Goodson-Kinderhook Volunteer Fire Department if it would be a suitable new site for the branch library that now occupies part of the community center in Mendota.

“We’ve had real problems with acquiring property for the library,” said Supervisor Odell Owens. “We’ve had problems in Glade Spring, we’ve had problems in Damascus, we had problems with the main library, and I’d just like to avoid that problem with Mendota.”

Owens said under the current lease agreement, the library can stay in the community center until 2011 – but since the Head Start program left the center, the library has lost much of its use.

He said the population in that part of the county is centered more around the Benhams area.

Also at Tuesday’s meeting, the board voted to let the county school system keep the $1.3 million leftover from last year’s budget.

Of this money, $140,000 will be to provide new lighting at Backer Park, $50,000 will be to purchase land near John Battle High School and the remainder will be placed into a capital improvement fund.

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