Virginian Leader, April 8, 2020, Page 3

The Monroe County Board of Education held their regular meeting on February 18, 2020 with all members present except Keith Wickline.

During her report Su-perintendent Joetta Basile said that the vote from the MVS faculty senate meet-ing considering the name change for MVS was 19 in favor of considering a change and 24 against. Ba-sile congratulated the PMS History Bowl Teams for achieving first and second place at the Regional Histo-ry Bowl Competition. The two teams will progress to the state competition and MVS will compete in a play-in competition that could lead to their progression to the state competition as well.

Basile said that the CEFP Committee had met and finalized all doc-uments from Phase One. Phase Two will begin and include some public hear-ings and final approval of the plan. She announced that PES students col-lected stuffed animals to donate to the 911 Center and local law enforce-ment officers. The stuffed animals will be given to children in traumatic or emergency situations. More than 300 stuffed animals were donated on Valentine’s Day.

Basile noted that she had met recently with the PSD, state public service commission officials, en-gineers and the board’s ar-

Monroe County Board of Education February meeting

Chinese Egyptian Cooperation to Develop Coronavirus Vaccine

by Mohamed Elalem

China and Egypt have been working on develop-ing a vaccine in a bid to combat spread of the novel Coronavirus,” sources said.

The Egyptian Minister of health Hala Zayed’s visit to the Chinese capital Beijing on March 2th, 2020, aimed at sharing preliminary re-searchs results conducted by Egyptian scientists on

the vaccine to step up joint efforts to tackle the ongoing crisis,” sources added.

Although news stated that the purpose of the Zayed’s visit is to convey Egypt’s solidarity with Chi-na in combating the novel Covid-19, Egypt Health Minister had met high-pro-file officials in China and reviewed with them results on the vaccine done by a team of Egyptian experts.

Egypt efforts to contain the spread of the coro-navirus praised by the World Health Organization which said, in many cases, “Egypt’s strong disease sur-veillance system has proved effective in controlling and managing sporadic and clusters of cases before they can spread but further efforts are needed.”

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Stolen Camaro crashes into houseNobody at the residence of 11 Park Drive (the Blaker residence) in Narrows

was injured after a stolen Chevy Camaro crashed into the house. Cristin Lawson, the driver of the vehicle, was arrested on DUI and Grand Theft Auto. According to Narrows Chief of Police Benji Ratcliffe, a call was received from dispatch at 11:28 a.m. last Thursday in reference to a vehicle that had ran into a house. Upon arrival, Ratcliffe said he found Lawson was driving the vehicle and when he asked her what she was doing, she didn’t give a response. A short time later dispatch got a call in that a vehicle had been stolen from Charlie Buracker up Wolf Creek. Ratcliffe said that several eye witnesses said that she was driving well over 100 miles per hour. Lawson is being held at the New River Valley Regional Jail with no bond.

by Amelia WhittakerPearisburg Town Coun-

cil held a special meet-ing on March 31, 2020 to discuss several issues regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.

Council first voted to approve a resolution to es-tablish an electronic meet-ing policy. Town Manager Todd Meredith explained that this would allow for council members to partic-ipate over the phone for two council meetings per year.

They discussed the con-tinuation of services plan and continuation of oper-ations plan for the town. Meredith shared that the department heads have worked drafting these plans to prepare for the unknown future. He explained that the services plan is more of a bigger picture and the operations focuses on the roles of staff if they moved to essential staff only.

“Every one of the de-partment heads did a fan-tastic job,” Meredith said. “Last month at this time COVID-19 was barely on our radar. When we began to deal with this, we had no

continued to meet. They have been plan-

ning activities and recently delivered pizza to the stock-ing workers at several local grocery stores to recognize their dedication to keep-ing the county supplied. Nippert shared that they have been in contact with the sheriff’s office to offer assistance however needed, either to them or to the com-munity in general.

“We believe it is im-portant to keep the Giles Board of Supervisors and the community in general apprised and updated as to our activities,” Nippert said. “Not only to bolster our membership but also to bolster our legitimacy and add to our credibility in the community as a community service organization.”

He also offered the group’s assistance in any way that the board of super-visors or county will see fit if any needs arise.

County Administrator Chris McKlarney updat-ed the board on several COVID-19 related issues beginning with the opening of drive thru testing site for the NRV. He stated that it will be a huge benefit to the area in getting people tested immediately, particularly first responders and those in the medical community. The site is closed to the public and the only way to be admitted to the site is to go through the Virginia De-partment of Health hotline at 540-267-8240.

“We are pleased to be part of it,” McKlarney said. “There is no way that we could have pulled this off by ourselves we are so grateful to several commu-

chitect to discuss the water flow at the new Peterstown school. A second test was run, and it was determined that 310 gallons of water per minute can be provid-ed by the PSD and it will not affect the residential water pressure in the area. She said that the engineers would revise and use a sprinkler system that will effectively operate under these parameters.

She informed the board that needs at PES require the addition of a halftime special education teacher. Lively made the motion to approve the consent items including the corrected minutes from the February 4, 2020 meeting, payment of bills, transfers and sup-plements. The vote to ap-prove was unanimous.

Lively also made the motion to approve the new Peterstown Construction Bids. Bids will be adver-tised beginning February 26 with bid opening on April 2 and the local board to approve on April 7. The board unanimously voted to approve.

Lively motioned to approve the School Build-ing Authority Major Im-provement Project which includes a roof and gutter replacement at JMHS. The vote to approve was unanimous. Member Sab-ol motioned to approve all personnel items and the vote to approve was unan-imous. Personnel items included the hires of Lesa Brookman as a substitute

teacher, Larry Mustain as assistant track coach for MVS, Teresa Fisher as a substitute cook, Jeffrey Goff as drama club spon-sor for JMHS and Lisa Arthur as SAT site coordi-nator of MVS. Leaves of absence were granted for Sarah Worth and Christina Allen.

Under public comments Stoney Wilson spoke about sports at MVS. He quoted studies regarding athletics and physical activities in the county. He spoke about the recreation leagues and has been told funding is the issue. He said that MVS volleyball asked parents to pay for volleyball uniforms and the school eventually took care of it.

He said that girls’ bas-ketball played in the boys’ uniforms. Softball team uniforms are tied together but are recreation league and not school league. He said that football uniforms are ten years old and said that recreation leagues take care of the football field. He noted that the Bank of Monroe funded the score board for recre-ation league softball and said the recreation leagues are the only people clean-ing up trash.

He believes recreation leagues take more pride in the facility than the school does. He acknowledged that Monroe is a small county and does not have a commission or boards to help like bigger counties. He feels the school has become too reliant on the recreation leagues’ taking care of things.

He does not believe parents should have to buy uniforms and thinks the school needs to step up and do more for athletic teams. He asked that the board look into the school doing their part to help maintain the programs.

With no other busi-ness the meeting was ad-journed.

Pearisburg declares local emergency at special meeting

plans. I think this is a good plan and something we need to guide our actions.”

He informed council that almost all the town employees are considered essential. He said that they have discussed staggering the shifts of employees to help avoid the possibility of quarantining everyone. Keeping shifts separated and having some employ-ees that can work from home will hopefully help combat the potential spread and keep the town in op-eration. Both the contin-uation of services and of operations plans passed unanimously.

Council also voted to approve the state of emer-gency pay and benefits pol-icy which authorizes Mer-edith to make changes to employee schedules while maintaining regular pay and benefits. He explained that staggering the employees would make it challenging for them to reach a full 40-hour work week. He stated that they will try to get as close to regular hours as possible and he does not think it would be beneficial

to cut their pay.Meredith was appointed

the director of emergency management for the town at the meeting and council passed a resolution declaring a local emergency. Meredith explained that having some-one in the position of director of emergency management for Pearisburg will help pro-vide a faster reaction time during critical times.

Meredith presented the continuity of government ordinance to council which stated that they had con-firmed the declaration of emergency. He said adopt-ing this would allow the town council or any sub-committees to convene by electronic meetings. This would be permitted for 60 days and council can amend the ordinance to extend the time if needed.

After some discussion council voted to adopt the ordinance unanimously deciding that they would begin meeting electronical-ly right away.

The regular Pearisburg Town Council meeting will be held electronically on April 14, 2020 at 6:30 p.m.

(Continued from Page 1)*COVID-19

nities in the New River Val-ley that have gone together to do this.”

He informed the board that with the shortage of available personal protec-tive equipment, there have been ways found to sanitize and reuse masks. The coun-ty is working on ways to be able to do this so that they can recycle masks.

McKlarney also said that the county gift card and senior check programs have been successful and the support from and for the community has been extraordinary.

“We have been over-whelmed with the number of people and agencies of-fering services and wanting to help and willing to do things,” McKlarney said. “Our departments have been outstanding; every-one is coming to work and we are fully operational in every building and intend to stay that way. The gov-ernment is the last thing that should be closing, and we don’t have any intent of doing otherwise. We will continue to provide the best

services we can while keep-ing our employees safe.”

The next Giles Coun-ty Board of Supervisors meeting will tentatively be held on April 16, 2020 at 6:30 p.m. at the county administration office.

The next regular sched-uled meeting of the Rich Creek Town Council for the Town of Rich Creek, Va. will be held via Zoom. The Zoom meeting is scheduled for Monday, April 13, 2020 at 6 p.m.

Anyone may join by us-ing a PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android at the following link: https://radford.zoom.us/j/415373292. Those in-terested may also join the meeting via telephone by dialing 1-408-638-0968 and entering the following meeting ID 415373292.

To download the zoom client, go to https://zoom.us/download.

Rich Creek Town Council to meet via Zoom

To help maintain so-cial distancing, thereby protecting customers and employees, the Virginian Leader will be adjusting office hours until further notice. The office will be open to accept phone calls and emails; however, doors will be closed to walk-in customers during this time.

Temporary office hours for phone calls will be: Monday 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m., Tuesday 7:30 a.m.-12 p.m. and Thursday 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m.

Emails and Facebook will be monitored continu-ously so customers may feel free to send a message at any time. Email addresses can be found on the website, www.virginianleader.com.

Also, this is a good time

to check out the website online edition which is cur-rently offered at no charge. Readers can view the Vir-ginian Leader from the comfort of their own home.

Subscriptions may be renewed by mail, on the website or by phone; how-ever, those due to expire this month will be extended for one month. Unfortunately, copy and fax service will be suspended temporarily.

For anyone who needs to visit in person, please call ahead at (540) 921-3434 so that necessary ar-rangements can be made.

Managing Editor Amy Burdette said, “Thank you for your patience as we at-tempt to do our part in help-ing to control the spread of COVID-19.”

Virginian Leader adjusts office hours to help maintain social distancing