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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 14, 1994                   TAG: 9409140088
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

REST IN PEACE, CITY WARDS?

ONLY FOUR people showed up at a public hearing Monday night to speak against Roanoke's moving to a ward system for electing most City Council members. On the other hand, only three showed up to speak in favor of it.

The ward-system idea, in short, hasn't exactly sparked a prairie fire among the Roanoke public. Reservations expressed by former ward-system supporters on council contribute further to the impression that it's an idea whose time has come and gone, if it ever came at all.

If so, good riddance.

One of council's two black members, Delvis "Mac" McCadden, says he's offended by the suggestion that he needs a specially tailored ward to get elected. His comment is a reminder that race has not for two decades proved a deterrent to at-large council election. Voting in Roanoke remains sometimes racially divided. But there hasn't been the kind of racially polarized voting that in some cities has led to legitimate Justice Department insistence on replacing at-large systems with wards.

Both sides grant as much. Too seldom recognized, though, is how the at-large system as it currently works in Roanoke plays a positive race-relations role, and tends to unify rather than divide the city. Indeed, a ward system could resegregate municipal politics.

Mayor David Bowers, one of the erstwhile ward-system champions now having second thoughts, says recent council elections under the at-large system already have produced a broader-based council in terms of neighborhood representation. Bowers' comment implies a warning against the distraction, deception and demagoguery lurking in the American penchant these days for procedural fiddling in preference to direct action.

The crusade is on for a balanced-budget amendment and a line-item veto - but where's the support for the specific spending cuts and tax increases that would actually balance the federal budget? The crusade is on for term limits - but where's the willingness to use the ballot box to oust incumbents who've been in office too long?

In Roanoke, the crusade was on for a ward system for electing council - only in this case, by the mayor's analysis, the perceived malady has been treated without resort to major surgery. In our second opinion, the proposed surgery would harm the body politic. But, in either case, why run up the hospital bill? Why bother with a referendum on the ward-system idea?

by CNB