The Shadow
LOW MOOR – Alleghany County is ready to kick an aggressive tourism initiative into full swing.
Meeting Tuesday evening in the County Administration Building in Low Moor, members of the Alleghany County Board of Supervisors got the ball rolling on setting up a tourism initiative for the Alleghany Highlands.
Alleghany Highlands Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Teresa Hammond appeared at Tuesday’s meeting and asked the board to approve appropriating 3 percent of the county’s lodging tax toward a tourism program that will help draw visitors to the area and assist visitors when they arrive here.
“Over the last year in particular, the chamber has worked diligently to develop a strategy to better market the area to potential visitors,” Hammond said. “Our Needs Assessment and Market Plan identified specific areas for improvement and opportunities to better position the Alleghany Highlands to attract additional visitors to the area.”
Hammond presented a program outline that showed a budget of $125,000 – $62,500 is allocated toward marketing, $50,000 for administrative services and $12,500 for tourism initiatives and special projects.
About $105,000 would be raised with the 3-percent appropriation.
The rest of the money will be coming from the city of Covington and the town of Clifton Forge.
Hammond told the board the chamber has filed several grant applications with additional funding sources to help with the project.
A working agreement between the chamber and the county was presented to the board, which is set up to be renewed every two years.
“We want to be proactive with planning for future events,” Hammond said. “This two-year period will allow us to be more proactive with our marketing. This will give us an operating budget on a year-to-year basis.”
The agreement sets up an advisory board comprised of three representatives each from Alleghany County, Covington and Clifton Forge, three representatives from the local motel and housing sector and two representatives from the chamber of commerce.
Since, according to several supervisors, most of the money will be coming from Alleghany County, it was suggested that the county be given additional representation on the advisory board.
County attorney Jim Guynn also suggested the county put the project out through a Request For Proposal (RFP) process in order to prevent any individual or organization from causing legal issues in the future due to not having an opportunity to provide the area’s marketing needs.
“I would suggest the RFP process be done in this situation,” Guynn said. “You’re still only going to have one group to negotiate with, but this will save a lot of headaches down the road.”
Alleghany County Administrator John Struttner agreed, “Let’s do it right and go through the process and keep from having any legal problems in the future.”
The board instructed Struttner to design an RFP to advertise the project around the suggestions and proposals presented by the chamber and report back to the board when requests are received.
According to Struttner, the process will probably take about a month to a month and a half.
“We’re behind the 8-ball when it comes to tourism,” Supervisor David Price said. “We have to start thinking outside of the box.”
Also Tuesday, board members approved the purchase of two new HVAC units for the Department of Social Services in the Rosedale office building.
According to Alleghany County Public Safety Director Ryan Muterspaugh, the units that are currently in place “have failed and cannot be effectively or efficiently repaired. Mechanical problems, due to the age of the machines, are the primary reason. We have been nursing these two units along for some time now, knowing that eventual, catastrophic failure would occur.”
The low bid for replacement was submitted by Alleghany Highlands Mechanical, with a bid of $13,477.
It will take one or two weeks to get the units in and another two or three days for the units to be installed.
The board approved a request from the Selma Volunteer Fire Department for a building permit fee waiver for upcoming electrical and HVAC upgrades to its fire station.
The department has decided to go with Delta Electric to take care of the electrical upgrades, at a cost of $7,200.
Alleghany Highlands Mechanical will do the HVAC work at a cost of $12,985.
The department is taking on this project in order to cut down on the high cost of heating oil, especially after the recent excessively cold winter.
The board also gave Struttner the go-ahead to follow through with a request from Total Action Against Poverty (TAP) to partner with TAP and the city of Covington in a joint Community Development Block Grant for business loan funds.
The application will include $200,000 for business loan funds and $100,000 for support staff to be located in the Alleghany Highlands.
According to Curtis Thompson, director of Financial Services for TAP, there will be no risk for Alleghany County or Covington.
All of the risk will be absorbed by TAP.
Struttner will work with Thompson to draft a letter of support, which will be approved at a later supervisor meeting.
Later, Price also spoke on the Alleghany County Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program.
He said he recently attended a DARE graduation at Boiling Spring Elementary School and said that, even through, nationally, statistics show the program has a less-than-average success rate, the DARE program in Alleghany County is a successful program due to the diligence of the Alleghany County Sheriff’s Office and, in particular, program Coordinator Cpl. Chris Fisher.
“I have spoken with a lot of parents in our schools and everyone has nothing but great things to say about what Cpl. Fisher has done to excite these kids,” Price said. “We’re very blessed to have that program and we’re very fortunate to have Cpl. Fisher. It’s hard to say what the state is going to do as far as funding goes in the future, but I think we’re going to be good for next year and I can go for supporting it.”
