Council updated on Ratcliff Museum and Onward NRV; Police win National Night Out bookbag contest

By WILLIAM PAINE

Patriot Publishing

Tuesday’s meeting of the Pulaski Town Council began shortly after several members of the administration and the council members themselves returned from the National Night Out event held in Jackson Park earlier that evening.

National Night Out is an annual event promoting partnerships between the police and the community they serve. This year’s event featured face painting, a foam throwing machine, water balloon fights and a book bag give away, which was facilitated by volunteers from the T.G. Howard Community Center.

More than 400 bookbags filled with school supplies were given away at the National Night Out and this large number was largely due to a competition between town employees and the police department. On the suggestion of councilman Steve Erikson, the town council formed a team to enter the competition to collect school supplies and bookbags. In all, four teams were formed and though the competition was fierce, the police department came away the winner with the most school supplies collected.

As a reward for their efforts, Town Manager Todd Day was scheduled to serve a spaghetti lunch to the police department on Friday between 11 and 1.

During the meeting, Jeff Worrell, President of the Friends of the Raymond F. Ratcliffe Memorial Transportation Museum, brought museum Curator April Danner Martin with him to update council on the museum activities and ask for continued funding.

Worrell gave a brief history of the museum, noting that it was first established in 1988 in the basement of the town hall before moving to the Pulaski train depot in 1994. In 2013, the transportation museum moved into its current location at the east end of the Maple Shade Plaza.

Worrell noted the museum recently acquired a grand piano that used to be housed in the old Maple Shade Inn, but added that the meticulously produced train set built by Dr. Brockmeyer was still the “mainstay of the museum.”

Brockmeyer worked on building this scale model of the Town of Pulaski, complete with a working model train set, for most of his adult life. Brockmeyer constructed this model of Pulaski in the mid 20^th century in his basement but it is now on display at the museum.

The Ratcliffe museum recently hosted the Norfolk Southern Historical Society for its annual meeting, which brought unexpected dividends.

“They came to us and fell in love,” said Martin of the historical society. “They offered to work on our train set and then asked us to be a part of their conference. They are going to continue to work with us on many things.”

“This is the great thing about studying history because you discover things that were right in front of you all along,” said Worrell. “Now, when Dr Brockmeyer started building his train set, he was able to acquire architectural drawings of a steam locomotive from Norfolk Southern. We had them upstairs in the museum. The Norfolk Southern Historical Association finds out we have these and they’re ecstatic because didn’t know they even existed. Then we made arrangements for them to take them to Roanoke so that they could be electronically scanned and copies can be made of them.”

“This is where it gets really cool,” Worrell continued. “On the back of that drawing is a hand drawn set of plans for Dr. Brockmeyer’s train set. When doc started building his train set in his basement, he drew the plans.”

The drawings have been framed and will be displayed in the museum so that visitors can see both sides of the paper, one showing the architectural drawings of a steam locomotive and the other showing Brockmeyer’s plans for the elaborate train set.

Also Tuesday, Kate Boswell, Executive Director for Onward New River Valley, gave council an update on the economic development organization’s activities. As Boswell explained, Onward New River Valley was formed in 1990 by Pulaski, Montgomery, Floyd and Giles counties, the city of Radford and 10 towns including Pulaski. Onward NRV is financed by these localities and Virginia Tech, Radford U, NRCC and 104 private sector businesses. Onward NRV has 31 board members and five full time staffers.

“Our mission is to attract and retain world class jobs, investment and talent in the region,” said Boswell. “We do this by marketing the region as a premier destination to live, work and do business, as well as by building collaborative partnerships that support the economic vitality of the region.”

Boswell went on to say that the New River Valley has experienced some economic successes over the past two years with nearly $38 million of capital investment pouring into the county resulting in 152 new jobs.

Boswell explained how Onward NRV employed a five-year strategy for economic growth and listed a series of goals meant to aid in this endeavor.  First and foremost, Onward NRV wants to attract new talent and retain the talent that already lives here. Much of this promotion focuses on driving people to their website where they’ve posted the NRV Job Board to show where jobs are available. There is also a Cost of Living Calculator on their website, which shows how much cheaper it is to live well in the NRV compared to other places like Northern Virginia.

Onward NRV also aims to grow existing businesses while stimulating new investment in the area, especially in manufacturing, IT, agriculture and un-crewed systems (drones).

Also Tuesday, a public hearing concerning carry-forward accounts from the last fiscal year took place at Tuesday’s meeting. The first set of funds are carry over grant funds that were not spent in the last fiscal year.
“Those grants are EPA Brown Field grants, the pedestrian Improvement grant, VDH lead service line, VDH water treatment backwash system … the Commerce Street bridge project and the Virginia outdoor Foundation grant,” said Town Manager Todd Day. “All of those put together, total $5,107,394.67.”

Other funds were also rolled over into the next fiscal year are slated for various town management responsibilities including the cemetery account, police checking accounts, EDA accounts and nuisance abatement totaling $5,523,565.

No one spoke against carrying over these accounts at the public hearing.