Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, September 2, 1993 TAG: 9311240269
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A14 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
By last week, not only had the gas-takeover talk been abandoned, but the valley's oft-bickering governments had reached an accord on another important public service: sewage treatment. Agreement in principle was announced on a cost-sharing plan for expansion of the regional treatment plant.
What's more, the announcement about the plant came the day after Roanoke Mayor David Bowers said he supported Roanoke County Supervisor Bob Johnson's call for a city-county meeting of council members and supervisors. Arrangements for a meeting are under way.
These are positive developments. In the case of the sewage-treatment plant, it is a major positive development, albeit long overdue. Even so, the progress they reflect should not be exaggerated.
Use of the plant - owned by the city, which in turn contracts with Roanoke and Botetourt counties, the city of Salem and the town of Vinton - now approaches capacity routinely, and occasionally exceeds it.
With that has come increasing pressure from federal and state authorities for plant upgrading and expansion. In the background has lurked the threat of a moratorium on sewer hookups, which would do considerable damage to the valley's prospects for economic growth.
With the $41.5-million cost-sharing agreement, plant expansion is now on track. Construction could begin as early as 1995.
Nevertheless, be forewarned: Local government in the Roanoke Valley is hardly entering some sort of Edenic state of grace. Its creaky and conflicted structure remains antiquated, cumbersome and unnecessarily expensive.
Much as the sewer-plant agreement is to be hailed, for example, consider that it took seven years - seven years! - from the day negotiations began just to get this far. (Consider also that this is one public service that, by virtue of its nature and the valley's bowl-shaped geography, leaves virtually no alternative but a regional approach.)
Difficulty reaching a sewer agreement was not so much the fault of personalities or politics. It was almost inevitable, given the system under which the negotiations were conducted.
That's because the valley's fragmentation drives local-government leaders to think parochially. Much as some might like to adopt a broader view as to what's best for the area's economy and people as a whole, the system makes them duty-bound to think first of their own little patch.
Thus, the fact that new sewer linkups occur more in the county than in the city, while more leakage occurs in city pipes, complicated and made adversarial the sewer talks in ways that would be irrelevant if the service were provided by a consolidated regional authority.
As for meetings between Roanoke City Council and Roanoke County supervisors, the real question is: Why haven't they been occurring all along?
Part of the answer is council's petulance after county voters' overwhelming rejection of a 1990 city-county merger plan. More recently, Bowers and other city officials took a public-relations beating for even considering a takeover of gas operations, and Johnson's verbal shots at the city hadn't helped. The mayor deserves credit for his quick rebound, and for accepting a good idea regardless of its source.
But, again, valley residents ought not to overestimate the role of personality in these difficulties, or underestimate the systemic barriers to cooperation.
It is telling, for example, that the first order of cooperative business for the council and supervisors is to be a plea to the General Assembly for more money for Virginia's center cities.
There is some justice in that, since the fiscal squeeze on the cities stems in no small measure from the independent-city concept and anti-annexation laws that are both General Assembly creations. The state needs to do much more to encourage local arrangements to bypass or replace the old redundant and wasteful systems.
But this doesn't change the fact that local governments themselves remain a major obstacle to reform.
Before sympathizing very much with a plea for more money by the valley's local governments, legislators from other parts of Virginia might wonder why the valley itself does so little to make its governments more cost-effective.
by CNB