Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 18, 1993 TAG: 9309030396
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: C2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Not even Roanoke's hard-charging mayor, David Bowers.
Bowers, it must be said, was right when he observed last week, in his first state of the city speech, that a valley divided against itself restrains its own potential for progress and prosperity.
He was right that fragmented local jurisdictions would be better off consolidated, that voters' failure to approve merger in 1990 exacts continuing penalties for the region.
What is hard to accept is Bowers' suggestion that such a merger might pass if put to Roanoke County voters today.
If there is a means to change county residents' minds, it has yet to be discovered. What we do know, from consolidation's sorry history, is that pronouncements do not persuade.
To be sure, the short time since the referendum was beaten and broken in the county has not been uneventful. Shifts in the economy, including the takeover of Dominion Bank, have heightened uncertainty about jobs and nudged attention toward the region's economic future.
The successful campaign for a renovated Hotel Roanoke and a regional conference center may have bolstered public faith in city leaders.
Meanwhile, though, the past three years also have witnessed City Council members enacting sweetheart pension deals for themselves and for top administrators, one of whom was forced to resign over unpaid telephone bills.
They have seen the county's failure to support the Hotel Roanoke project - and county voters' defeat of Dick Robers, the only supervisor who supported consolidation.
They also have witnessed, in the city, the mayoral election and enlarged visibility of Bowers himself, not the likeliest figure, as he put it in his speech last week, ``to overcome the fear that separates and divides us.''
Bowers' remarks have drawn considerable notice; his ability to attract attention has never been in doubt.
Less in evidence, thus far, has been any groundswell of regret for the 1990 vote or any rush in the county to pile on the mayor's bandwagon.
There is no enthusiasm in pointing this out. After all, the mayor is right on the merits of the issue.
Consolidation (the ``c'' word, as he calls it) would institutionalize cooperation where acrimony now prevails. It would reduce unnecessary duplication of facilities and services. It would allow pooling of resources to meet regional challenges, to compete with other regions instead of among ourselves.
It is possible, moreover, that Bowers' agitating could yet prove helpful.
State legislators need to get the message that Virginia's system of independent cities stymies effective government. If enough ruckus is raised here, in Richmond and elsewhere, perhaps lawmakers will take down from their shelves any number of blue-ribbon studies that make the point.
It is even possible that the issue's revival might scare or shame county officials into accepting a greater regional role in various activities: provision of low-cost housing, for instance.
Perhaps direful scenarios invoked by Bowers, such as the city dissolving its charter, could serve the purpose that annexation threats once did. Or maybe the county will wish to undercut accusations that it doesn't share enough responsibility for helping the valley's poor and contributing to its economic-development assets.
All this is possible. At least as likely, though, is the prospect that thrashing around the head will again prove an ineffective means of wooing county support.
Governmental marriage remains, right now, a rather remote possibility. So the challenge still is to find ways for localities to cooperate short of consolidation - while building a consensus and constituency for regionalism.
This task already is complicated, and its difficulty compounded, not only by legal and jurisdictional obstacles, but by a lack of trust.
If beating a failed horse produces glue to bind the valley, more power to Mayor Bowers. Others, perhaps with less stomach to endure this spectacle so soon after 1990, will invest their efforts in trying quietly, persistently, to persuade and to work together.
by CNB