By BILL WALSH

By BILL WALSH

Rappahannock New* Staff Writer

Resolution Trust Corp. managing agent Donald Pace said that no, he hadn’t expected to be in Warrenton this long, and yes, he may be here a good bit longer.

“We had anticipated by this time ... that this bank would be marketed and bid on and we would have a resolution and a new institution here,” the Tennessee native said on Tuesday.

The RTC sent Pace here late last summer to oversee the affairs of Liberty Savings Bank, an institution that the federal agency had just taken over and renamed Liberty Federal Savings Bank. It was one of nearly 800 shaky savings and loans that eventually came under federal jurisdiction during the crash of the savings and loan industry.

“It looks like we have slowed down by three months, maybe six months, maybe even nine months,” Pace said. “Where we anticipated, let’s say September, as a point in time to get this institution resolved, we’re now looking at December at the minimum, possibly as late as March of ’94,” he said.

Though the resolution of Liberty has been slower than originally expected, and is expected to linger a bit yet, Pace said that he can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

“We have had a lot of institutions, both locally and from the area around us, contact me. The procedure is, I just refer these people directly to our resolution specialists in Atlanta. She provides the form for these people to register their interest now. Then, when the bid packages go out to these people, they are already registered,” Pace said.

“We’ve had a lot of interest [in the thrift],” Pace said on Tuesday, “but we really can’t do anything about resolution until some money is appropriated by Congress, and this has not been a front-burner item with the administration.

“It takes money to close these banks. There are 37 institutions, like this one, sitting out here, that have