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what position I should take” on the closing of the Thorton River bridge.
“To set the record straight, it’s been going around that I closed the bridge. It was the highway department’s decision to close that bridge,” Luke noted. “I wish the supervisors had that kind of power,” he added with a laugh.
Responding to charges that the supervisors have taken no action to relieve overcrowding in the schools, Luke maintained that the board sent capital outlay proposals back to the school board to solve “practical problems—what we’re going to buy and how much it will cost.”
“We’ve got to have facts,” he said, specifically projections on the growth rate of the school-aged population. “I’m for enlarging the schools. I think they need improving but we need figures,” Luke maintained, adding that a committee was now working informally to complete a cost analysis and develop alternatives on school expansion.
“The problem is with the school board,” Luke concluded, adding that the supervisors had questioned the school board on capital improvement plans for the past several years.
In regard to quality of education, Luke noted that Rappahannock public schools produced both dropouts and Phi Beta Kappas and Rhodes Scholars with the same teachers, books and classrooms. “A lot of it is motivation and a lot of that starts at home,” he said.
“The trash problem is something I hear about every day,” Luke said in response to a question on litter control. “We’re getting very little public cooperation. No one wants a dumpster near their property,” he said.
Finding highway department right-of-way on which to place dumpsters isn’t that easy since most of the rightof-way located at any distance from a residence has reverted back to private ownership, according to Luke.
“If there’s no private land and no public land, it puts the board in the position of having to condemn (land for dumpster sites),” he said. “That’s not an action we want to take.”
He noted that the sheriffs
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