If they glimpsed him talking with a small group in the General Francis Marion Hotel Saturday morning, people unfamiliar with Millard Fuller may have thought a presidential candidate was stumping in Marion. 

Marion officials rezoned a tract of land as Medical Arts Tuesday, completing the site rezoning for a new Smyth County Community Hospital that the county supervisors began by turning its Agricultural portion to Commercial.

Ken Heath had good luck getting an ordinance passed this winter banning skateboarders from Marion sidewalks. Now the town ordinance committee will consider his proposal to end graffiti downtown.

Twelve days after a gunman opened fire in a Kirkwood, Mo., city council meeting, killing three officials and two police officers, Marion Town Council’s building committee is revisiting security in its own town hall.

A fish hatchery superintendent with the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries’ was charged Feb. 1 with two counts of killing a mallard duck, according to Smyth County General District Court documents.

It’s too early in the state budgeting process to know what will come of Gov. Tim Kaine’s proposal to cut $1.3 million from the Smyth County portion of the commonwealth’s pie, according to School Superintendent Dr. Mike Robinson.

Groseclose residents will receive visitors this week as surveyors go door-to-door gathering information to support a grant to help pay for a new sewer line in the area. The household survey begins tomorrow and will continue through Feb. 29 between the Merillat plant and Exit 54 at Groseclose, said Sally Morgan, Smyth County’s economic development planner.
The survey will gauge the community’s eligibility for a state grant for part of the estimated $4 million installation of public sewer line in the area. The project would extend the Atkins sewer line that currently ends where U.S. 11 passes beneath Interstate 18 near the Merillat plant.

While officials remain mum on exact plans for a new $40 million commercial development on the south side of Interstate 81 at Exit 47, a Web site promoting permanent lease agreements gave a name for the development and identified one of the anchor stores as Wal-Mart, which had long been mentioned in the local rumor mill.

Smyth County Community Hospital can scratch another item off the long list of things to accomplish before it can build a proposed new hospital.

Millard Fuller, the founder and former president of Habitat for Humanity who in 2005 started the similar charitable home-building Fuller Center for Housing, will visit Marion Feb. 22-24.