
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, December 9, 1994                   TAG: 9502070002
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A22   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ANITA AND H.F. GARNER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

PROTECTING BEDFORD FROM LYNCHBURG

FROM October 1993 until January 1994, this newspaper started off giving good, evenhanded coverage on the Bedford merger. This was followed by a virtual blackout for several months, and now by limited treatment in which crucial facts are either omitted or ignored. Your Nov. 26 editorial (``The morphing of Bedford'') is a glaring example.

Its heading coins a cutesy non-word, "morphing," that's as distorted as the paragraphs that follow. Ignoring information, including that printed in your own newspaper, you claim consolidation "may offer reassurance of sorts to a few residents of the Forest section of Bedford County." These ``few'' are 25,000 people who represent more than half of Bedford County's population!

After that, the editorial makes the imperious suggestion that "annexation shouldn't be viewed as necessarily a terrible prospect anyway." Tell that to those annexed by Lynchburg in 1956 and in 1976, who still haven't received services promised, but who did receive huge property tax increases - for example, from $250 per year to $1,100 per year.

Bedford's residents are beginning to understand that any annexation from outside county limits would be felt throughout the entire county and Bedford city, that Stewartsville is as vulnerable now as Forest, and that the result would be economic hardship for those annexed and for those who remain to pay ongoing bills. Why can't you see that?

Consolidation and city status will insulate all Bedfordites from outside annexation. It will create, for the first time, a stable climate within which long-range planning can finally occur. This will be vastly more attractive to industry. Given these facts, we wonder how this newspaper can have the nerve to ask "What's the point?" when referring to consolidation.

Your editorial goes on to state that in Bedford "most of consolidation's potential has already been realized" (because of cooperation in certain services) - the implication being: Therefore, why press for finalizing a merger? Perhaps your writer doesn't realize that one can no more be a little bit consolidated than one can be a little bit pregnant! The present moratorium on annexation ends in July 1997. So long as annexation is a political fact, it remains a threat. Once it occurs, all the king's horses and all the king's men can't put the annexed county together again.

Officials of the Bedfords are busy carving out a new plan of government that will protect and serve its citizens. They don't deserve to be sniped at out of ignorance or jealousy.

Anita and H.F. Garner of Forest spearheaded the petition drive that led to Bedford city-county merger talks.

by CNB