ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, January 2, 1996 TAG: 9601020122
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KIMBERLY N. MARTIN STAFF WRITER
Roanoke County resident John Jennings has seen the 10-page list that documents the Roanoke Valley's cooperative efforts.
He wants to see more.
"Even though there's a lot going on, it only scratches the surface of the cooperation that could be going on," said Jennings, who was part of the government-relations focus group in the county's visioning process. "Every department should look for areas of cooperation. It should be a matter of policy, a matter of course."
He points to water service, law enforcement and purchasing as areas where taxpayers could benefit from local governments working together.
Jennings' message has a familiar ring in the Roanoke Valley. Local governments have heard that call for cooperation countless times - especially this past year.
In the spring it was from Towers-Perrin, a Northern Virginia consulting firm hired by Roanoke, Roanoke County, Vinton, Salem and Botetourt County, at the suggestion of Del. Richard Cranwell, D-Roanoke County, to identify beneficial areas of cooperation.
In the summer it was from the county's visioning process. And this fall it was from the Urban Partnership, a group of business leaders and elected officials who are searching for answers to the problems plaguing the state's cities. Their answer: encourage regional cooperation by offering incentives to make it more palatable.
The result of those efforts? Much talk, but little tangible evidence of change.
That doesn't mean the attitude toward cooperation is lukewarm, said Roanoke County Board of Supervisors Chairman Fuzzy Minnix.
The attitude "is better than those things indicate," he said.
But Roanoke City Councilman Mac McCadden has a different take on city-county relations.
"Cooperation between the two is lip service," McCadden said. "We're not willing, as far as I'm concerned, to compromise enough to do anything."
Seven months ago, the Towers-Perrin report suggested ways valley localities could improve services and cut costs by working together.
In July, Minnix invited local leaders to sit down and talk about the suggestions.
Only two localities replied. Roanoke said it was willing to talk, while Botetourt County criticized the report for doing nothing but compiling old information.
Roanoke County Supervisor Harry Nickens said, "Towers-Perrin is one of those that's on the shelf."
And that's where he thinks it will stay.
Roanoke County Administrator Elmer Hodge, however, remains hopeful. He points to three initiatives that were lifted from the pages of that document - bidding for health insurance jointly, upgrading emergency communication systems together, and combining refuse collection - that the county and Roanoke are working on.
Tom Brock, chairman of Roanoke Regional Chamber of Commerce, said county and city staff have met a couple of dozen times to begin working in those areas.
"There are a lot of discussions that are going on. This isn't something that is lip service. At some point it will be ready to show off to people," said Brock, who has been in on those discussions. "Some of these things will take years to accomplish. I don't think the people should be critical because something major hasn't happened. Homework has to be done first."
Staff members aren't the ones the county's visioners wanted to do the talking, Jennings said. He said he'd like to see supervisors and other elected officials look for ways to work together.
McCadden agreed. "Administrations can talk all they want, but who's going to make the decision? They have to bring it to elected officials."
And politics, he said, often get in the way. Internal squabbling stalls discussions before talks can become regional. The solution he proposes is removing party affiliations from local politics.
However, Roanoke Mayor David Bowers has another answer in mind. It's tied to the Urban Partnership's recommendation for structural changes in Virginia's governments.
One of its recommendations would have allowed cities with populations of less than 125,000 - like Roanoke - to become "class A cities" and part of the neighboring county.
The change would give such cities all the powers of a town, including the power to annex land from the neighboring county. The current moratorium on annexation applies only to cities.
In Virginia, unlike any other state, cities are independent of their neighboring counties. So if a city annexes land, the county loses the tax revenue. But if a town annexes, the loss isn't as great, because counties still collect real estate and personal property taxes from town residents.
Roanoke County supervisors, however, believe such a change would threaten the county's identity.
In November, the county's continued objections got the report gutted of the offensive suggestions - much to the disdain of Bowers, a longtime advocate of a city-county merger.
"This is not the way to get things done - two separate entities. I continue to be in the minority on this issue," Bowers said, no doubt recalling that county residents soundly defeated a consolidation proposal in 1990. "So these cooperative efforts are the only way to accomplish things."
But removing those recommendations didn't win the support the Urban Partnership was hoping for.
The board of the Virginia Association of Counties voiced its opposition to the plan last month.
Flippo Hicks, counsel for counties' association, said the root of the organization's opposition was simple: money.
At the heart of the Urban Partnership's recommendations is an incentive fund designed to entice localities to work together on schools, human services, land use, water and sewer, and law enforcement - many of the same areas Towers-Perrin suggested.
Fairfax County, however, questioned where the state would get the money for the $200 million incentive fund.
It was a question the partnership's project director, Neal Barber, said was left unanswered intentionally.
"We specifically didn't offer any suggestions," Barber said. "We said the money should not come from any existing support of localities."
County Board Chairman Minnix, who supports the partnership's report, agrees that cooperation for dollars had an inviting ring. But he, too, has questions about where the money would come from in an environment where state funds to localities are shrinking.
In the early 1990s, the General Assembly's Grayson Commission suffered the same fate.
It, too, asked for state funding to encourage cooperation and offered similar suggestions for structural changes in government. But its proposals were passed over, year after year, because of a lack of funds, Hicks said.
Supervisor Nickens, however, argues that such provisions aren't necessary. He disagrees with the notion that cooperation has to be bought.
"My own bias is, why do we need incentives from Richmond?'' Nickens said. "To increase efficiency ought to be enough motivation to cooperate."
He cites Roanoke Regional Airport and Smith Gap Landfill as examples that cooperation can work without financial carrots.
County Administrator Hodge agrees; but with a monetary reward for collaborating, he said, cooperation is "going to be much more likely to happen on more significant projects."
Even with incentives, Minnix warned that significant change takes time - maybe 10 to 15 years.
"We'll get to a point where almost all of the service will be under one hat or umbrella or organization," Minnix said. "It's going to be a thing that gets better and moves more quickly by virtue of the successes we've had in the past."
This is Kimberly N. Martin's last story for The Roanoke Times. She has taken a reporting job at The Herald-Leader in Lexington, Ky.
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