Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 11, 1990 TAG: 9003112642
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MONICA DAVEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BEDFORD LENGTH: Long
The threatening fingers belong to Lynchburg, Vinton, the City of Bedford or even some future city of Smith Mountain Lake. The residents fear that any of those localities that border Bedford County could try to annex parts of it - and its growing tax base - when a statewide moratorium on annexations is lifted.
Those county residents say they could permanently end the threat of annexation and solve some other troubles with a countermove: consolidation of the county and City of Bedford into one 770-square-mile city of 50,000 people. Cities are immune from being annexed.
Such a merger, though, would require approval not only from county residents, but from a majority of Bedford city residents, some of whom believe they have nothing to gain and a lot to lose in a merger with the county.
This situation contrasts with what is happening in Roanoke, where the City Council supports consolidation with Roanoke County and the county supervisors have gone along in writing a merger plan but sound lukewarm about it. Also, polls have shown that most Roanoke city residents support consolidation, while county residents have been opposed or at least wary.
In Bedford, a group of county residents began meeting last month to talk about consolidation and figure out what it would mean for Bedford County. At a meeting last week, only a handful of people showed up - a fact organizers attribute to a lack of publicity, not any shortage of interest.
At an earlier meeting, nearly 40 people, many from the Forest area in eastern Bedford County, showed up. Residents of that quickly developing section of the county on the edge of Lynchburg seem to be the most concerned about the threat of annexation.
"If Bedford [county and city] was made a city, Lynchburg couldn't touch it," said meeting organizer Thomas W. Graves, who lives in Forest.
But, as the chairman of the county Board of Supervisors told the group Thursday night, the possibility of annexation does not end with Lynchburg. The town of Vinton, on the western edge of the county, might just as easily try to annex, he said.
"We've got the same threat on both sides," said A.A. "Gus" Saarnijoki. "And they very well could take Stewartsville."
The Roanoke County town of Vinton does not border the Bedford County line, but it could theoretically annex Roanoke County territory to take it to the county line.
If voters approve the Roanoke consolidation plan, Vinton would be allowed to annex land all the way to the Bedford line. The proposed charter for the consolidated government forbids the new entity from annexing land from surrounding counties. But it is unclear whether the Town of Vinton, which would still exist under consolidation, could annex land in Bedford County.
Voters are to decide the Roanoke consolidation issue in November.
Some people also have raised the possibility that the City of Bedford, which consists of seven square miles in the center of the county, could try to expand into the county.
Others have hypothesized that the growing community of people who live at Smith Mountain Lake - in Bedford, Franklin and Pittsylvania counties - might band together to form a city government of their own. That, too, would take land away from Bedford County.
The residents talking about consolidation say it would solve more than annexation threats.
County Supervisor T.D. Thornton, from Forest, said a consolidated Bedford could help end sometimes expensive "squabbling" between the two governing bodies. The governments already have cooperative agreements on education, recycling, a library system and health and social services.
"I don't want to leave you with the impression that we don't get along, but as hard as you try, these problems keep popping up," Thornton said.
Recently, friction has been apparent between county and city officials over a city moratorium on the extension of water lines into the county. A county businessman then asked to be annexed into the city so he could obtain water service, a move the county says it will fight. Thornton predicted that the county and city could each end up spending $250,000 on legal fees just to solve that dispute over 28 acres.
But Fairfax consultant Thomas Muller, who recently came to Bedford to talk to City Council members about subjects such as the possible effects of consolidation, said he did not see merger as a "satisfactory answer."
Joint agreements showed the county and city may already be reaping whatever benefits there are to consolidated services. "If those are already combined, there isn't much left to consolidate," Muller said.
Muller also said that claims of money being saved through consolidation do not historically prove true. "The best case is usually if it breaks even," Muller said. "It baffles me to find any evidence that there would be any savings at all.
"Bigger government tends to be more expensive,' Muller said. He said that tax rates in consolidation agreements tend to rise to the highest rate among the former governments. By that theory, county residents would probably end up paying more because the city's real estate tax rate is 79 cents per $100 of assessed value and the county's rate is 60 cents.
Supervisor Thornton and other county residents do not agree. Thornton said that consolidated government would return more services - instead of more bureaucracy - for each taxpayer's dollar.
Under consolidation, city residents also apparently would lose the number of elected representatives they now have. The city's 6,000 residents would probably end up with one representative on the board of a merged government, down from the seven they have on City Council. There are seven supervisors for the county's 41,000 residents.
That, Muller said, could make city residents feel like they have less control over the services they receive. "People tend to be more satisfied with the quality of services in a smaller area than in a larger one," he said.
For now, it's unclear where consolidation is headed in Bedford County.
Some county supervisors have said they will not press the consolidation effort without an outpouring of support from county residents.
A petition drive to force supervisors and City Council members to form a committee to draft a consolidation agreement would require 15 percent of the registered voters from the county and city. That would mean about 3,000 of the county's 20,000 registered voters and just 430 of the city's 2,858 voters.
Four hundred signatures doesn't sound like much, but some county residents at the consolidation meeting expressed concern about finding even that many city signatures for a petition.
And City Council members seem to have made it clear that they are not interested in talking about consolidation. "The mayor is on record as saying that we're not prepared to discuss it at this time," said City Manager Jack Gross.
If the city signatures were found and a committee formed, whatever consolidation agreement it came up with still would require approval from county and city residents in a later referendum.
The consolidation group asked Ron Lovelace, head of the city-county Chamber of Commerce, to ask its board of directors to request that the governing bodies form such a committee.
Instead, the chamber has opted to bring in a representative from the Commission of Local Government in Richmond to talk about the issue March 29.
"Its a complex, sensitive subject, and we felt like it was best to try to educate the people," Lovelace said. "The assumption is that everybody in the county is for it, and everybody in the city is against it - that may not necessarily be."
by CNB