Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 26, 1994 TAG: 9401260188
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long
State Sen. Brandon Bell, R-Roanoke County, gave up Tuesday on his efforts to arrange a merger between the Martinsville-based Virginia Museum of Natural History and the Explore Park - at least for now.
Bell's decision came only hours after the museum's board of trustees - recoiling from a firestorm of opposition in Martinsville - voted not to endorse Bell's call for a state study on whether to have the museum take over the land-rich but cash-poor park in Roanoke County.
Bell said he was "acting to a large degree at [the museum's] request" when he first took up his call for a merger, so when the board decided not to back his proposal, he had little choice but to drop his push for a legislative study.
Instead, he said he would pass on the idea to Gov. George Allen's "strike force" that is examining ways to streamline government.
Bell said his decision not to introduce his resolution calling for a study "has nothing to do with the merits. I still believe, and a lot of other people think, it's a good idea."
Indeed, some museum board members said they might raise the subject again once emotions have subsided in Martinsville, where talk of a merger unleashed a fury of protest.
"Some of us think that it's still a great idea," said Peter Boisseau, a Richmond advertising agency executive who sits on the museum's board of trustees. "I think we came very close to aggregating support within the Martinsville area and the Roanoke area for a proposal that was good for both areas."
But he and other board members conceded that the public outcry in Martinsville - where many civic leaders saw merger as a first step toward moving the cramped museum to the spacious 1,300-acre Explore site along the Blue Ridge Parkway - made the current merger talk politically impossible.
Two of the three legislators who represent Martinsville - state Sen. Virgil Goode, D-Rocky Mount, and Del. Ward Armstrong, D-Martinsville - appeared before the museum's board of trustees Tuesday to reiterate their opposition to the museum's taking over the living-history park.
One board member, Smithsonian Institution curator Clayton Ray of Stafford County, called Martinsville's response "a volcanic eruption of Krakatoa proportions" and blamed the museum's executive committee for a "tactical error" in not recognizing how the community would react.
In a sometimes-contentious three-hour board meeting in Richmond - the museum's first since word of the merger proposal leaked in early January - the trustees voted to take no position on Bell's proposed study.
Afterward, several board members said they did so because they figured Goode - who sits on the Senate Rules Committee, which would have to approve the study - would see to it that the study was killed in committee.
"The handwriting may be on the wall," said Danville Mayor Seward Anderson, chairman of the museum board and promoter of the no-position vote.
The situation was complicated by the fact that museum leaders are simultaneously counting on Goode - who also sits on the Senate Finance Committee - to try to increase the museum's funding.
"It was a ticklish situation that was getting somewhat emotionally charged," said board member Ray. "The collective wisdom of the board was that the resolution was probably dead in the water. By our taking a position, we probably could not affect anything, but we could alienate some people."
Or as Boisseau, one of the most outspoken proponents of the merger, put it, "You don't want to antagonize the people who will get your money in the budget."
Ray also said the museum board's decision to duck any position on the proposed merger study "reflects the very deep divisions within the board" on whether the museum should take over Explore - perhaps with an eye on directing expansion of its exhibit facilities to the Roanoke Valley.
Those divisions were evident Tuesday, when the 25-member board wrangled over whether its 10-member executive committee acted properly over the last few months in discussing a merger without telling the rest of the board.
At the urging of board member Bob Crouch - the Roanoke-based U.S. Attorney for Western Virginia and a former Martinsville resident - the board voted 15-7 to require greater disclosure in the future from its executive committee.
But while there was sometimes heated discussion of the way the executive committee has conducted itself - with some board members saying they felt "blindsided" and "embarrassed," while some executive committee members defended their actions - there was little talk about the substance of the proposal:
Should the museum try to establish a branch in Roanoke by taking over Explore, which has plenty of land but, so far, no state funding to operate its park re-enacting life on the Appalachian frontier?
Ray said there was a deliberate decision by many members to avoid such a discussion Tuesday. "The best thing you can do is back off and let tempers cool."
Indeed, board member John Rocovich, a Roanoke lawyer, suggested that the board devote part of its next meeting, on April 30, to a "philosophical discussion" about the museum's future.
What does Bell's decision not to push for a legislative study mean for Explore, whose leaders had welcomed a takeover by the museum as a way to guarantee funding?
For one thing, it concentrates their attention anew on their search for state funding.
Even if Bell's resolution had sailed through the legislature, the study would have taken a year - a year in which Explore would still be without state funding.
So for now, Explore planners have focused on trying to get $2 million in operating funds in the state's two-year budget. Park Director Rupert Cutler has spent much of the past week in Richmond prowling the halls of the state Capitol lobbying legislators.
But some museum board members said they expect the talk of a merger to resurface.
Even if the museum gets all the funding it has asked for in this General Assembly, "it's still an endangered species," Boisseau said.
He believes the museum's financial struggles will compel it to look again at taking over Explore to establish a presence in a place where more tourists might generate more revenue. "Oh, we'll get there again, but not within 30 days," he said.
Staff writer Rob Eure contributed to this story.
by CNB