Citizens Telephone Cooperative of Floyd is pulling the plug on a costly failure to become a player in wireless broadband Internet Service. The phone company will shut down its mobile high speed service in Christiansburg, Blacksburg and Radford on April 30 after spending — and losing — a lot of money on the failed project.

"We agonized over making this decision, frankly," Citizens General Manager Greg Sapp, said in making the announcement.

The agonizing decision is the latest setback for Citizens, the cooperative that tried to be many things to many people while — some say — forgetting its roots in Floyd County. Deployment of the wireless service was expensive and the company never came close to meeting its goals for a subscriber base, signing up less than five percent of available customers.

This web site reported in May of last year that Citizens’ wireless broadband deployment in Montgomery County was in trouble. Verizon, the area’s dominant wireless carrier, offers its version of high-speed wireless service for less and even provides the service in Floyd County — which Citizens apparently never had in its plans.

In many ways, Citizens is a shining example of what a small, locally-owned telephone cooperative can — and should — be. It provides good phone service, an excellent level of high-speed wired broadband Internet service and decent wireless phone service that piggybacks on Verizon cell towers.

But the company is also victim to ambitious plans that could not always be fulfilled by reality. A promise to roll out fiber to the home service countywide four years ago is way behind schedule and its television over phone lines (IPTV) service does not deliver high definition broadcast signals and is still not available to many Floyd County residents. Perhaps the hundreds of thousands of dollars that Citizens spent in Montgomery County could have been put to better use in Floyd. Perhaps then the citizens of Floyd County would not pay more for telephone and Internet service than our neighbors in nearby counties.

Or perhaps the employees of Citizens would feel more secure in their jobs. The company currently employs 56 people, has reduced staff through attrition and avoided mandatory cutbacks that were threatened last year but some employees say the threat is still there if conditions do not improve. Also, Citizens has outsourced some services that once were local.

(Updated on March 1, 2009)

Floyd County’s state tournament-bound Lady Buffs varsity basketball squad must face a feisty Radford team again in their trip to the finals in Richmond.

Radford upset Floyd County a week ago in the district tournament final in Christiansburg and the Lady Buffs go up against the Lady Bobcats for the regional tourney final in Galax Saturday.

Both teams have qualified for the state tournament and could face each other again.

Floyd County disposed of George Wythe 69-50 in the regional semi-final Thursday night.

It’s going to be an interesting ride.

Former Floyd County Animal Control Officer Garland "Buckey" Nester reports to New River Valley Jail in Dublin Friday to begin serving a 140-day sentence after a jury of eight women and four men convicted him of reckless handling of a firearm but acquitted him of the more serious charge of involuntary manslaughter.

Nester’s conviction stems from a May 29, 2008 incident where he fired four shots at a cow that he could not coax back into his rented pasture. One of the bullets struck and killed 75-year-old Paul Belcher, a Connor Grove Road neighbor who was coming to help Nester with the cow.

My full story about the case appears in Thursday’s Floyd Press. Special prosecutor Clifford Hapgood, the Commonwealth’s Attorney of Franklin County, contended Nester fired in anger and in a reckless manner in trying to put down the cow. Three of the four bullets fired from Nester’s 357 semi-automatic pistol hit the cow, killing the animal, but a fourth struck Belcher in abdomen. He died at the scene.

Hapgood said Nester, who once taught the hunter safety course in Floyd County, should have known better than to shoot the cow in the proximity of occupied houses and a nearby road. Defense Attorney David Damico of Roanoke told the jury that no evidence existed to show Nester lost his temper or acted in a reckless manner.

The two-day trial ended shortly before 7 p.m. Wednesday.

Floyd County High School’s Lady Buffaloes varsity basketball team rebounded from a loss in the Three Rivers District Tournament final last week to decimate the Rebels of Patrick Henry, 80-45.

The Buffs controlled the game from the beginning and Senior star Britney Avancini returned to form after being held to just four points in the tourney loss to Radford. Her 13 points were backed by solid support from Carmen Bolt (12 points), Emily Thompson and Alisha Gray (10 points each).  Seven other players scored.

Roanoke attorney David Damico came to Floyd today determined to win a change of venue in the involuntary manslaughter trial of Garland "Buckey" Nester, saying this web site "poisoned" the jury pool because of our "inflammatory" reporting of the charges that grew out of the tragic death of neighbor Paul Belcher when the former county animal control officer shot his 357 semi-automatic pistol at a stubborn cow and one of the bullets went astray.

He didn’t get his change of venue. Circuit Judge Ray W. Grubbs decided to go through the jury selection process before ruling on Damico’s motion. Of the 27 potential jurors interviewed, only two said they ever read Blue Ridge Muse and one of those said she didn’t remember reading anything about the case on our web site. One other potential juror said he knew about Muse but didn’t read us because we’re "just a gossip site." Kinda hard to poison anything when only 3 out of 27 even know we exist. Grubbs denied the motion.

Damico, who filed an earlier motion requesting a change of venue based on print and broadcast coverage of the case, said he only became aware of the coverage on Muse when he did a Google search the weekend before the trial.

His arguments, filled with usual lawyer hyperbole, tried to make us appear reckless but he was reckless in failing to mention that, on Nov. 6, 2008,  I cautioned readers to avoid misinformation, saying: "let’s not pass on unfounded rumors and speculation." He also failed to mention that, at a Nester family member’s request, I cut back on the pre-trial coverage and modified some earlier stories.

Our policy is to always correct any errors when we discover them. Testimony today revealed we did make a mistake about the gun used in the shooting. That mistake was based on information passed on by a source we will not trust in the future. It has been corrected and we apologize to Buckey Nester and our readers.

Nester’s jury trial was scheduled to last one day but at 5:10 p.m. today, with Special Prosecutor Cliff Hapgood still presenting his case, Grubbs recessed the court until 9 a.m. Wednesday.