RappVoice signs off–thanks for listening
The Rappahannock Voice was started as an experiment in local online journalism in the fall of 2006. It has served the community with local news and commentary for nearly four years.
Thanks for tuning in here.
At the time I launched RappVoice, I did not believe that the community was adequately served by the local weekly newspaper. Important stories were going unreported and important topics were not explored and discussed. RappVoice tried to fill some of that gap while providing a more timely reporting of news events than a weekly newspaper can provide.
As a journalistic experiment, I believe it has been a success. As a business venture, not so much. As a hobby or avocation, it is a more demanding mistress than I care to live with at this stage of my life. So RappVoice will go quiet now.
Under its new local ownership and editor, The Rappahannock News can serve the news needs of the county quite well, I believe, and it is my hope and expectation that the newspaper will find new ways to serve readers on the web as well as in print. So I am content to turn the task over to them now.
I have been a writer since I was in high school and I don’t expect to quit writing now. But it will be in other forums and perhaps on many topics that have little to do with Rappahannock County. RappVoice doesn’t seem to be the place for all that, so I have created a new online venue to serve as an outlet for my reporting and observations.
You will find my new outlet at www.gannonblog.com. I hope some of you will stay in touch with me there. Thanks to all you loyal RappVoice readers.
–James P. Gannon
‘What’s it like to live in Rappahannock?’ she asked; we respond
By James P. Gannon
More than a dozen years ago, when I was fairly new to living full-time in Rappahannock County, it was my habit to stop in Woodville at Burke’s Store to buy a morning newspaper and perhaps a breakfast treat.
This is Rappahannock. We like it this way.
One day as I warily eyed the Hostess Twinkies and Holsum powdered doughnuts, I found the courage to suggest that it would be nice if the store offered something home-made and fresh, perhaps a fresh-baked muffin or pastry.
The proprietor, Mabel Burke–a no-nonsense woman–gave me a penetrating look and then told me in no uncertain terms what she thought of my idea.
Her exact words are lost to memory but boiled down to this: “You people come out here from the city and pretty soon you’re telling us how we ought to change things to suit you. This is the way we do it here, buster, and don’t tell us how we ought to change it.”
I was chastised, and more than a bit annoyed, leaving the store with a feeling that I would not go back. But I did, and over time I came to believe that Mabel was justified in her irritation with me and other newcomers who breeze into the county and start agitating to make it more like the urban area from whence we came. Read more…
School Board shuffles funds to provide for building improvements; teacher position left vacant
The Rappahannock County School Board approved a transfer of $150,000 within its approved budget to provide money for expected repairs and improvements to buildings, eliminating a teacher position in the process.
School Superintendent Robert Chappell said Wednesday that the board approved the funds-shuffling at its Tuesday meeting, acting in line with a previous proposal made by two of its members comprising its Finance Committee.
The $150,000 was taken from instruction and transportation categories of the budget and transferred to the debt service category, in anticipation of the debt expected to be incurred by pending repairs and replacements of failing heating, cooling and other systems at the school buildings.
The largest savings, $78,916, will come from not replacing a teacher retiring after 42 years of service. That will eliminate a salary of $59,790, and additional employee costs of $19,126 for health insurance, retirement benefits and Federal payroll taxes. Another $46,084 in savings will result from a less-than-expected increase in health insurance premiums for covering school employees, and $25,000 shaved from a new bus purchase.
The budget changes approved by the School Board are the same outlined in a May 3 letter signed by Wes Mills, chairman, and Aline Johnson, vice-chairman, that was distributed on that date to members of the Board of Supervisors as they were meeting to consider whether to approve the budget by its bottom-line number of $11.6 million, or by category–which would have allowed the supervisors to shuffle funds among the categories.
The letter was an effort to head off approval by category, which would have given the Board of Supervisors more control over how school funds are spent. The effort to approve the budget by category failed on a 2-2 vote of the supervisors with Stonewall-Hawthorne District supervisor Chris Parrish abstaining from the vote.
Parrish then joined in supporting approval of the school budget by bottom line, providing the decisive vote.
Parrish plays deciding role as Supervisors approve school budget by bottom line
By James P. Gannon
The Rappahannock County Board of Supervisors, in a tense at at times stormy meeting, approved the School Board’s $11.6 million budget Monday after narrowly defeating an effort supported by two supervisors to get better control of how the money is spent.
The big issue before the supervisors was not the total amount of money sought in the 2011 school budget, but whether or not to approve the amount as a lump sum or by spending categories, which would have limited the School Board’s ability to shift funds from one purpose to another.
The Board of Supervisors was closely divided on that issue, and the outcome hinged on the decisions of one supervisor, Chris Parrish of Stonewall-Hawthorne District, who joined the board in January. Parrish played the decisive role on two separate motions, first abstaining on a motion to approve the budget by category, then voting in favor of approving the School Board’s bottom-line total of $11.6 million.
The question of how to manage the school budget emerged strongly this year on evidence of widespread failure of the school buildings’ heating, cooling and lighting systems, leading to charges that money approved for maintenance and repairs in past budgets had not been spent on those purposes. The issue was spearheaded by Jackson District Supervisor Ron Frazier and supporting citizens.
The drama played out at Monday afternoon’s supervisors meeting, at which members of the School Board tried to present fresh ideas on how to cut some spending that they previously had proposed and approved, with Frazier objecting that it was too late for them to add anything to the Board of Supervisors’ agenda for the meeting. Read more…
Night fire destroys Lom-Bar-Dy Restaurant in Amissville
By James P. Gannon
Rappahannock County lost a piece of its history Friday as the oldest, continuously-operated restaurant in the county was destroyed by fire.
The Lom-Bar-Dy Restaurant on Route 211 in Amissville was ruined by an overnight blaze in its kitchen early Friday. The fire call came in about 12:30 a.m. Friday morning and units from the Amissville, Flint Hill, Little Fork (Culpeper County) and Warrenton fire companies responded to the scene.
John Peare of the Amissville fire company, who was on the scene of the blaze, told RappVoice that the fire started showing first from the kitchen area at the back of the small, wood-frame diner. It is not clear how the fire started, he said, but he said there was no indication that the fire was of suspicious origin.
Kitchen area at rear shows damage.
The building was heavily damaged and appeared to be a total loss. The interior was charred and took heavy smoke damage and the back walls of the kitchen area were burned out. Much of the kitchen equipment lay charred and damaged behind the building, which was surrounded by yellow police tape.
J.B. Carter, chief of the Amissville Volunteer Fire & Rescue company said it appeared the fire started in the kitchen due to an electrical problem or a malfunctioning appliance. All the kitchen appliances were destroyed and the roof over the kitchen burned. “It’s going to be a total loss,” he said. If the building had just one sprinkler in the kitchen, the restaurant probably would have been saved, he said.
Carter also said there was no indication of suspicious origin. There was no forced entry to the building. The fire did not extend far into the customer service area, he said, and normally in an arson, a fire accelerant would have been spread throughout the building.
The owner of the restaurant property, Ronnie Lee Poe, who lives next door to the Lom-Bar-Dy, said he was awakened early Saturday by the arrival of fire trucks. “The back of the restaurant was engulfed in flame,” he said. “It looks like it was a kitchen fire, but any number of things could have caused it.”
Poe said the building has been in his family since 1945, when his aunt Irva Poe bought it as a going restaurant business at that time. She ran the restaurant for more than 30 years until the mid- to late-1970s, Poe said. He believes that the restaurant operation dates back to the 1920s or 1930s, which would make it one of the oldest businesses in Rappahannock and its longest-running restaurant.
For the past 17 years, Poe said, the restaurant has been leased and operated by George Pullen of Amissville and his family, including daughter Angie.
Poe is uncertain about the future of the property. “At the stage it is now, it is probably unsalvageable,” he said of the building. He said he is reluctant to demolish the building because of its long family connection, but there is little to save. The cost of constructing a new restaurant building to meet all of today’s more stringent building and health codes may be prohibitively high, he said.
“I hate to see it go down,” he said. “I spent a lot of time there as a child” when his aunt Irva ran the Lom-Bar-Dy. “If I restored it now it would be more of a sentimental thing than a business proposition. I don’t know what I will do. Right now I am still in shock. We’ll just wait and see.”