Pittsylvania supervisors not happy with VDOT situation

CHATHAM — When old-fashioned potholes meet new-fangled call centers, the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors doesn’t like it.

At the monthly meeting of the Board of Supervisors in Chatham on Tuesday night, the supervisors commended Joe Barkley III, the VDOT residency maintenance manager, on the job he was doing, but asked him to tell his superiors they weren’t happy with the new situation.

In July, Chatham’s repair office was closed as part of VDOT’s plan to reduce staff and costs statewide. Since that time, Pittsylvania County road repairs have been handled out of the Halifax County office. Calls are routed first to a call center in Salem and then distributed to the appropriate location electronically.

“We lost the administrative offices in Chatham, but all the maintenance people are still here,” Barkley said. “My purpose tonight is to allay fears about not having good maintenance; the employees will keep up the good work.”

The supervisors, however, expressed displeasure about the situation and their inability now to drop into a local office and tell VDOT employees about the problems their constituents are having.

“I think our VDOT has gone downhill,” said Coy Harville, the Westover supervisor. “It’s now the biggest mess I’ve ever seen. VDOT has dropped the ball. We thought the governor was going to make this better, but we’re rural people and country people, and we just want to talk to someone.”

Fred Ingram, the Callands-Gretna supervisor, said he had called the Salem office and talked to a “nice lady who didn’t even know where Gretna was.”

Several supervisors agreed they missed the helpfulness of Randy Hamilton, who used to manage the Chatham office. He is now the VDOT local government liaison for Pittsylvania County.

Barkley said the change was hard for him also since he has worked with VDOT for nearly 50 years.

In more road complaints, several residents from Hurt took to the public podium to complain about the truck traffic along Blue Ridge Road and Prospect Road that is tearing up the road and scaring citizens.

“The citizens of Hurt are faced with the trucking situation 24 hours a day,” Judy Walker said. “It’s an accident waiting to happen. The holes are patched, but in a week or two, they are back the same.”

The supervisors were sympathetic to their concerns and asked Hamilton to speak with them out in the hallway.

Hamilton said that the truck situation is being considered. It is now in the public comment phase and after an engineering study is done, a decision will be made about the truck traffic.

In other business, the supervisors were presented with a rural long range transportation plan by Robert Dowd, director of the West Piedmont Planning District Commission, and asked to provide comments in the upcoming weeks.

The study is identifying existing deficiencies in the roadway system in Pittsylvania County.

The supervisors also approved establishing a $25 fee for the recordation of a list of heirs in the Clerk’s Office and approved an amendment to the County Code to establish a tax-exempt status for the Northern Pittsylvania County Food Center, concerning a parcel of land with a tax levy of $109.20 and a truck with a levy of $119.00.