Q&A
With Abingdon Senior Center Director Dexter Peltzer

Damascus Town Council decided Monday that $15,000 was too much to help the fire department fill in a parking lot behind the bingo hall.

The panel had agreed last meeting to begin the process of handing over the land to the department. Wade Farmer said the proposed agreement would split the cost of making the parking lot and allow the town to use the lot during Trail Days. The three acres the town agreed to donate appraised at $300,000. A public hearing on that transfer is set for next month’s regular meeting.

County native cruises in to new job

Twins turn military into a career

A dozen bird species found at least part of the year in Southwest Virginia are among the 178 birds species two conservation groups called the “most imperiled” on the North American continent.
In a joint teleconference Wednesday, officials with the National Audubon Society and the American Bird Conservancy released their cooperatively compiled WatchList 2007 that includes birds in most immediate need of conservation efforts to slow and halt their flight into extinction.

Smyth County Community Hospital took its first public step toward relocating Thursday as it gained the county planning commission’s unanimous support for rezoning its proposed site from Agricultural/Rural to Commercial. The commission and the county supervisors held a joint public hearing on the requested rezoning in which speakers voiced no opposition to the hospital’s proposed location.

Bill Dennison uses two sentences to sum up the duties of a job that makes him the second-highest-paid public employee in Bristol, Va.

Tamara Neo will earn $109,385 per year and become Buchanan County’s highest-paid public employee when she takes over as commonwealth’s attorney Jan. 2.

Convicted of molesting a 4-year-old girl and possessing child pornography, a 34-year-old Wytheville man will spend 10 years in prison for his crimes.
Richard Louis Mobley must also register as a sex offender and will be on probation the rest of his life after being convicted Monday of three felony charges stemming from a Wytheville Police Department investigation.

More than 80,000 lights will greet visitors to the New River Trail State Park this month as the grounds transform into a festive holiday heaven.
For the fourth consecutive year, the park will host the Foster Falls Festival of Lights, and for the first time this December the festival will actually be festivals.