 January 2000 |
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continued from page 1 Ira Long has done some hard work, and he knows a lot, they agreed. He’s come full circle from the mines—a last project was to obtain abandoned-mine grant funding to extend the county water system to Brush Mountain residents. "They’ve had bad water for years," he says. In 62 years of working, Long has done much to better the county in which he was born. He began public office when he was elected to the county board of supervisors in 1984, the year before he retired as a supervisor of water and sewer operations at the Radford Army Ammunition Plant. Long was soon appointed to the PSA and has been serving on both ever since. "Water and sewer have been my life," Long says. Very instrumental in developing specific water and wastewater agreements and getting funding, Long has also had his hand in much more—the construction of new schools, libraries, and a health department building, to name a few. He’s gotten to know key people in state, federal, and private agencies, and in the Virginia Association of Counties, which didn’t hurt when he went looking for funding. "I heard that Montgomery County receives more loan and grant awards than any other county in Virginia," he says. "He’s sharp," says Chip Worley, vice president of operations at Anderson & Associates. "He’s also practical and cost aware, and we will miss his influence and leadership on the PSA." Long’s retirement gift to himself, a red 2000 Explorer, will allow him to catch the Virginia Tech women’s softball games around the region. He has a special affinity for these Hokies, having gone to Canada with his coach grandson, Scot Thomas, on a recruiting trip last summer. And then he’s planning to do some well-deserved relaxing with his wife, Louise Price Long, and the next three generations of his family on the Prices Fork property that has been in his family since 1746. Realtors Spur Internet Access to Records
A unique partnership between the
county administrative staff and the Board of Realtors in Burke County, North Carolina now brings improved
public access to tax and land records through the internet. Thanks to an internet Parcel Look Up System (iPLUS), developed and
hosted by Anderson & Associates, citizens can now find information about 54,000
parcels of land simply by getting online. As a result, locating survey boundaries or land
values no longer requires visiting the county office. A&A has developed similar
systems for several other counties and municipalities, but this is the first to be
sponsored by the local Realtors’ association. Better to Speed Up Than
Stop Short When you design highways
for a living, you develop an understanding of how they are meant to work. Every element of
a highway is there for a reason—and the engineers who designed them can only hope
that people will drive on them the way they were meant to. Acceleration and deceleration
lanes are examples of this. They are there to give drivers plenty of room in which to make
the transition from ramp speeds to highway speeds, and vise versa. Not all such lanes are
created equal—the length of an acceleration or deceleration lane depends on several
factors—the steepness of the roadway grade, the amount of traffic, and the design
speed of the highway all play a role. THERE’S A RIGHT WAY …AND A WRONG WAY.
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