Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 19, 1990 TAG: 9003222335
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Council ought to say yes.
Without the changes, the supervisors say, the plan stands virtually no chance of approval by county voters in the November referendum. It's doubtful the odds would improve with the changes. If county residents are as resistant as many now seem, it's hard to see what they'd like better about the plan with the proposed alterations.
Who, though, knows for sure? Who knows for sure, when the exact reasons for the resistance from some county residents remain so elusive?
If the reason is race - the city has a black minority of significant size, which the county does not have - few in the county are willing to say so aloud. Yet the reasons usually expressed seem awfully superficial, especially in light of the difficulties the county may well face if there is no consolidation.
It is argued, for example, that consolidation would be expensive. And so it would . . . if you count merely the up-front, one-time-only cost. Many of those costs, however, likely would be paid by the state. In any event, such expenses are minor compared to the prospective savings over the years, as needlessly duplicate services are phased out and construction of needlessly duplicate facilities is averted.
It also is argued that consolidation proponents can't guarantee continuation ad infinitum of the exact configurations of current school-attendance zones in the county. And so they can't . . . nor can anyone else, whether there is consolidation or not. Indeed, changes may be likelier without consolidation than with it. Failure to consolidate would perpetuate the county's peculiar doughnut shape and block county access to the city's broader non-residential tax base. That could make the consequences of internal population shifts and overall enrollment declines harder rather than easier for the county to grapple with.
Besides, it is argued, cooperation is as good as consolidation. And so it is . . . if you reckon that human nature has entered a new era. In this new era, the city would graciously accede to bailing out the county whenever the county asks, and vice versa, without the time-consuming negotiations and contract-drawing that traditionally attend valley "cooperation."
The proposed changes are the sorts of things that only a professional mediator could love.
One is to change the composition of the school board of the proposed Roanoke Metropolitan Government from five city and four county representatives to an equal number of each, plus a court-appointed designated tiebreaker.
The 5-4 breakdown in the current plan roughly reflects the current ratio of the city's to the county's population; the proposed change, of course, would not. But if the purpose of the plan is to move toward a single city-county government, what difference does it make? (Granted, having an equal-numbered board and a court-appointed tiebreaker is a terrible idea.)
Another proposed change is to expand the area of west county to be given a chance to secede and become part of Salem if the consolidation agreement is approved. In east county, the provision allowing Vinton to annex certain territory would be changed to require approval of the affected residents before the annexation could take place. (Vinton, unlike Salem, would be part of the metropolitan government, just as today it is part of the county.)
Somehow, it's hard to get worked up over either of those changes.
A third change would use something other than current city-county boundaries to set boundary lines between the new government's "urban" service district, with a higher tax rate, and its "suburban" district, with a lower rate.
In the abstract, that's an excellent idea: The tax-rate differential should be based on level of services, not a vanished city-county boundary. What's odd is that it's the supervisors who are proposing the change, since using the current boundary was a major concession won by county negotiators from the city.
So let the city go along with the changes. Even if it doesn't improve the odds for consolidation, it might smoke out the real reasons for resistance to consolidation.
by CNB