Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 22, 1995 TAG: 9506230033
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Released last month by an independent consultant, the report leaves little doubt about what the Roanoke Valley's five municipalities could do next in using regionalism to make themselves more efficient.
Less clear is how, and at whose initiative, those next steps can best be taken. And so, predictably, the valley's governments are defaulting to their past pattern and worst option: dithering, while pointing fingers.
The Towers-Perrin study - contracted at the behest of House Majority Leader Richard Cranwell of Vinton, and paid for by the valley's governments and business community - notes already successful collaborative efforts, such as the Economic Development Partnership. It also recommends several modest new ventures, such as a shared emergency-services dispatch center, regionalized refuse collection, joint purchasing (including of health insurance for employees), and expanded bus service. None of these is particularly difficult or controversial. Or, at least, they shouldn't be.
They barely touch on the need for regional strategic planning. Indeed, the report's most important proposal, for the long term, is to create a valleywide council of governments. There's been no rush to accomplish that.
Not that movement on the regional-cooperation front has been entirely absent. Roanoke County supervisors and Roanoke City Council are to meet next month - at which time, says Roanoke Mayor David Bowers, some Towers-Perrin items will be addressed.
The problem is that such conversations ought to take place routinely. If they did, maybe a joint city-county gymnasium and ice rink, for example, would now be in the works near the county's Northside High School.
In any event, informal talks be-
tween two localities are a far cry from the kind of conversation among all valley localities - including Botetourt County, Salem and Vinton - that must occur if ad hoc regionalism is to develop into a more systematic, vigorous and valleywide arrangement.
Calls for cooperation still come too often in the context of putdowns, especially by city officials, and with excuses for inaction. In the latter category, Roanoke County Supervisor Harry Nickens suggests a new forum isn't needed because the Fifth Planning District Commission already exists. But it has been around for decades, and we still lack regional leadership. Nickens also laments a dearth of new information in the Towers-Perrin study. But if these are old ideas for saving money and improving services, why haven't they been acted on yet?
The disgrace is shared, of course. City officials have been equally an obstacle to regionalism. To their credit, Roanoke County supervisors agreed last week to join the Urban Partnership, thus becoming one of the few counties to enlist in the statewide effort to address metropolitan areas' long-range problems. The move bespeaks a willingness to look farther than five minutes into the future. As County Administrator Elmer Hodge notes, inner cities' fiscal stress is going to affect suburbs.
So the Urban Partnership will issue proposals. Towers-Perrin's have been around more than a month. The New Century Council will unveil its report in July - calling, among other things, for a regionalism encompassing both Roanoke and New River valleys.
And all these initiatives confront the Roanoke Valley's failure to get its local-government act together. They leave citizens waiting to see, from the studies and reports and plans, what actions will emerge.
by CNB