The Shadow
Before a temporary end to the over month-long federal shutdown, the Alleghany Highlands was beginning to feel an impact on area residents.
Local services — such as public transportation, Social Services benefits and the U.S. Forest Service — had already been impacted or could have been impacted in the near future if the shutdown had continued.
President Donald Trump on Friday said he would support a short-term spending bill that would reopen the government.
A representative of local transit provider RADAR issued a memo to members of the Mountain?Express Advisory Committee Thurs-day saying that if the shutdown continued through February, RADAR service would have been suspended beginning March 1.
“As the government shutdown has reached over a month, it is only a matter of time before we begin to feel the effects,” said Joseph Baker, director of Regional Transit for Mountain Ex-press, said in his memo, which was released Thurs-day before the shutdown ended. “If the shutdown continues into and through February, we will not be able to sustain service at its current levels, as we will begin to incur cost that we may not be able to recover.”
He continued, “We will continue to explore every option possible; however, we are looking at potentially having to suspend service starting March 1.
This will be due to not having access to the federal funding that currently makes up 50 percent of our budget. We are monitoring the situation as well as other systems in the commonwealth to see how they are dealing with the shutdown.”
Locally, the Mountain Express offers a deviated fixed-route service to the citizens of Alleghany County, Covington, Clifton Forge and Iron Gate.
The service operates five days a week, Monday – Friday, between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m.
Ridership for the local RADAR service was 778 riders from Nov. 26 through Dec. 25, averaging 46 riders a day.
Affected during the shutdown was the local U.S. Forest Service office, which is located in the Alleghany Highlands Chamber of Commerce and Tourism building in the former Mallow Mall, has been closed since the shutdown began Dec. 28.
Since that time, officials had been unable to issue permits allowing individuals to cut firewood on national forest lands.
In addition, according to Alleghany?County-Coving-ton Department of Social Services Executive Director Dawn Riddle, Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for February were made available to recipients on Jan. 20, but a date for March benefits to be released has not been announced.
Although Riddle said she has not received reports of it happening in the Alleghany Highlands, it has been reported in other areas of the state that some stores had refused to accept Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards due to the shutdown.
She added that the state had provided funding that will allowed Social Service agencies to keep operating the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Program until the federal government reopens.
Riddle said that local Social Services offices had been instructed to continue accepting and processing SNAP applications during the shutdown.
