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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 14, 1990                   TAG: 9003143031
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

BAD SYMPTOMS OF CONSOLIDATION FEVER

THERE IS NO doubt that I have caught the Roanoke Valley's version of the flu called Consolidation Fever. As I read the related articles and editorials in your paper, my palms sweat, I become light-headed, and feel slightly nauseated.

I'm as well-versed on this issue as any ordinary citizen can be. I guess; but much of this process still baffles me. I thought that the Roanoke Valley was part of the democracy that Thomas Jefferson wrote about more than 200 years ago. He said that government should address the needs of the people being governed. Not the needs (or wants) of the politicians or the businessmen, but the people who reside there.

I don't wear any special or supersensitive hearing devices, but I can hear the people who reside in Roanoke County speaking out; they have concerns, reservations, fears. However, a majority of the men who have been elected to represent them have turned a deaf ear to them and continue spending the people's money and time on new angles to get what the people obviously don't want. And though they've lost their hearing, their sight has improved, they say, and they accuse me of being blind - too blind to see the benefits of consolidation.

I want to remind them that justice is also blind, so I'm in good company. All of this may boil down to muscle - the mighty businessmen and politicians versus the people. And though I may be outshouted in the media, I have the clout of a vote. Ordinary citizens like me will be heard.\ D.L. GRAHAM\ ROANOKE

by CNB