Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 4, 1993 TAG: 9306040102
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DANIEL HOWES STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Roanoke Mayor David Bowers is all for valley cooperation, all for business leaders crafting a regional economic "vision," but he wants to make one thing perfectly clear:
"I don't want someone to send for me after they've already made the decision," he said Thursday, aiming his salvo at Carilion Health System President Thomas Robertson and the Roanoke Valley Business Council effort that Robertson is spearheading.
"I'm not exactly from the chamber of commerce," Bowers told a Roanoke Regional Chamber of Commerce audience. "I come to the chamber, I come to the business community.
"I'm not the kind of person who's going to be asked to the table and come to the table and be told the decision's already been made. That's happened too often in Roanoke."
It's a customary response for Bowers, who sought office last year as a self-proclaimed clarion for "the people of Roanoke," one who said he believed in building coalitions with Roanoke business leaders - not doing their bidding.
Bowers - flanked by Vinton Mayor Charles Hill and Roanoke County Board of Supervisors Chairman Fuzzy Minnix - said widespread calls for valley cooperation must be accompanied by claims of responsibility.
Selecting tourism to make his point, he recited a laundry list: the city provides 85 percent of the funding for the Roanoke Valley Convention and Visitors Bureau; the city is shouldering more than half of the $42 million needed to renovate Hotel Roanoke; the city is campaigning for expansion of the Virginia Transportation Museum.
Much as "you might want us to be regional in our view - the regional chamber, the press, the business community - please try to understand there's a legal responsibility we must meet," the mayor said. "And that's not a regional responsibility.
"I'm the first person to say that cooperation is a nice word and I want to cooperate. Cooperation is a friendly word. But I have to come to the conclusion . . . that the truth of the matter is we haven't cooperated over the years.
"We don't cooperate on a daily basis," Bowers continued. "The current form of government we have in this valley is an impediment to future growth."
Minnix responded.
"Well, since the mayor got honest, let's get there real quick:
"The county citizens feel cooperation might mean consolidation all over again. That's what I hear from the people I represent," Minnix said, adding that county residents grow weary of being cast as the valley's "country bumpkin who doesn't want any shoes."
County residents don't want to be "part of a situation where the tail is wagging the dog," he said, describing his constituents as "a little bit tentative, a little bit suspicious" of continued exhortations for cooperation and regionalism.
But what about leadership, asked moderator Dick Robers, a former county supervisor who paid the price for championing consolidation.
Bowers talked of a new class of political leadership - identifying himself among them - and suggested formation of an alliance between political and business leaders.
Minnix bridled, apparently sensing an implicit attack from Robers, whom he defeated in 1991. Then, a moment of public soul-searching: "I'm not sure we want to do more things together, or we want to be one person. I'm struggling with that."
It's political discourse, Roanoke Valley style.
"No one wants to take that first step of giving out the olive branch and saying, `Here's where we need to cooperate,' " state Sen. Brandon Bell said after the hourlong discussion. The Roanoke County Republican first gained political prominence as a supporter of valley consolidation.
"I think they underestimate what their constituents are willing to do" - be it supporting a city decision to back the Explore Park or a county decision to become part of the Hotel Roanoke renovation, Bell said. "That's what leadership is all about."
Robers agreed.
"In order to be a leader, you have to be willing to step out on the edge," said Robers, the only county supervisor to support the 1990 consolidation effort. "Nobody's got guts enough to say, `Hey, we need to do this for the betterment of the Roanoke Valley.' "
by CNB