“We are space poor,” noted the executive director of

“We are space poor,” noted the executive director of the Rappahannock-Rapidan Community Services Board, as she asked for — and received — approval from Rappahannock’s supervisors last week for her agency’s proposed purchase of the old Culpeper armory to use as a day care center for retarded adults.

Jo Gorman proposes to spend $40,000 in newly appropriated state initiative funds as a down payment on the 1.15-acre lot and 14,000square foot, 10-room building which was formerly the Army Reserve Center. According to Ms. Gorman, the structure would not only accommodate a new day care program for retarded adults but also the two vocational training programs now housed in rented quarters in Orange and Warrenton.

The savings in rent coupled with a savings in transportation costs realized by having a consolidated job training center for retarded clients would cover monthly payments on the remainder of the purchase price, she told the county’s supervisors.

Decrying the “abysmal dearth in services statewide” for the mentally retarded, Ms. Gorman said the population of 102,690 in the five-county planning district which her agency covers includes “many, many retarded citizens” who do not have “a grandmother’s^rm,” the traditional care-taker arrangement in rural areas.

Federal law requires the public schools to provide services to the retarded until the age of 21. “Something needs to happen for these people after that,” she said. For the educable retarded, the Community Services Board provides opportunities for learning independent living skills at its eight-bed Goldsborough House in Culpeper, supervised apartments, job training and job placement.

But the openings in no way meet the demand; for Goldsborough House, which constitutes the first critical step towards self-sufficiency, the waiting period is about five years. And for retarded adults with lower IQs and less potential, the programs are fewer, Ms. Gorman noted, adding it is these people, in