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

DATE: TUESDAY, June 7, 1994                   TAG: 9406070056
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By ANITA and H.F. GARNER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

A NEW `RURBIN' CITY IS IN THE WORKS

THE MAY 20 editorial (``Bedford considers consolidation'') in the Roanoke Times & World-News cries for cleaning the mess Virginia's local governments are in at the state level. But local governments faced with annexation situations don't have the luxury of waiting for the state to act. There is for them neither time nor recourse.

The trend toward consolidation should make it evident to the General Assembly that the old ``right of cities to grow'' by annexation is offensive to Virginians who are being gobbled up. Chesapeake, Virginia Beach and Suffolk are consolidated cities that originally faced annexations, and they reorganized by themselves.

This Bedford merger effort is fired by aversion to annexation, and the loss of land and tax base. Perhaps worse is the loss of control by the annexed over their own destinies. Even Lynchburg's citizens had to pay higher taxes to foot the bill of annexing them. Those who were ravaged by Lynchburg annexation in 1956 and 1976 received tax hikes of 300 percent, and are still without most services that Lynchburg promised. (Those annexations were the ninth and 10th in Lynchburg's history - and still it is a city in trouble.) Yet your editorial stated: ``Lynchburg officials say they have no plans to grow in Bedford if a moratorium against annexing county land is lifted.''

On Jan. 3, then-Mayor Julian Adams of Lynchburg declared before state legislators: ``Lynchburg could not exist as it does today without annexation.'' Should the moratorium expire before consolidation, Bedfordites can be sure annexation will again occur.

Big? Hell, yes! A new Bedford would be big, but better-managed. The character of such a new type of city would be ``rurbin:'' dominantly rural, with some urban areas such as Bedford city and Forest, and some necessary industry to offset the excessive cost to taxpayers of strictly residential development.

This is a mix compatible with the life Bedford citizens now treasure - but better, in that the future can always be planned by its citizens. Bedford's Thomas Jefferson would have understood this great desire for responsible self-government, protection of rural beauty, some commercial ventures, and for the value of the small core-city from which this new government would operate.

If Virginia's General Assembly has ``made a mess of local government,'' as the editorial says, perhaps Bedford's citizens are showing the way toward improvement in their struggle for independence - as have those other consolidated Virginia cities. Old cities just may be forced to look within for solutions to their problems - just as consolidation advocates of Bedford city and county are doing.

Anita and H.F. Garner of Forest spearheaded the petition drive that led to Bedford city-county merger talks.

by CNB