THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, August 23, 1994 TAG: 9408230424
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KAREN WEINTRAUB, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 51 lines
What do you think of when you think of Virginia Beach?
Sand, sunburns, suburbs, soybeans? How about license plates?
The City Council will be asked tonight to approve the creation of a special license plate to honor the city and make money for the Virginia Marine Science Museum's marine stranding program.
Think of it as a moving advertisement for the city, suggests state Del. Robert Tata, R-Virginia Beach, who championed the legislation allowing municipal license plates.
The tag, which would cost $25 annually, would compete with 238 other plate designs available to Virginia motorists.
In an unscientific poll Monday, about half the city residents interviewed said they would spring for the new license plate. The other half - many of whom had just come from the city treasurer's office - said they give enough of their earnings to City Hall.
If owners of about 5 percent of the city's 270,000 registered vehicles opt for the new plate, the museum stands to make $187,000 a year, Assistant City Manager Robert Matthias wrote in a memo to the City Council.
That money would help the museum rescue more whales, dolphins, seals, sea turtles and birds, and also would help fund research, said C. Mac Rawles, director of museums for the city.
The plate - which features leaping blue dolphins - also will help bring publicity to animals that often are forgotten because they are unseen, Rawles said.
The dolphins, bright sun and lapping waves in the design - created by Judy Doyle's advertising design class at the Virginia Beach Vocational Technical Education Center - are meant to evoke the city's best assets. Absent, though, is the lighthouse that appears in the city's seal.
Most of the people who were shown the design Monday thought it was pretty, but many said it was incomplete without a picture of the Cape Henry lighthouse.
Mayor Meyera E. Oberndorf, despite acknowledging some reservations about the lack of a lighthouse, said she liked the logo - ``salty water is the one resource that definitely says Virginia Beach . . . and dolphins play offshore.''
If you disagree, the mayor will be the one in the Lincoln Mark VIII with the Virginia Beach plate ``MYRMEO'' (for Mayor Meyera Ellenson Oberndorf) - that is, if her husband doesn't veto the idea. by CNB