Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 31, 1990 TAG: 9003310235
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A5 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER SOUTHWEST BUREAU
DATELINE: MARION LENGTH: Medium
All the other five counties and two cities in the district have agreed to join the Mount Rogers Development Partnership and support it on a $1 per capita basis. A drive to raise additional money from private sources is about to get under way.
Representatives of the cities and counties gathered at planning district headquarters to discuss funding and other matters involving the partnership.
Wythe County Administrator Billy Branson and Board of Supervisors Chairman Bobby Williams expressed doubt that the rest of the board would go along with joining on the basis of paying $1 per county resident. Wythe County recently launched its own countywide industrial development authority and hired an executive director for that.
"We've put money into industrial development," Branson said. "It's just how much can we put in?"
Branson also expressed concern about how partnership representatives would be appointed by participating localities. Representatives from each locality would include one named by the governing body, another by the local chamber of commerce and the third by the partnership itself.
Branson suggested that local industrial development authorities name that third representative. Assistant Carroll County Administrator Billy Mitchell, who has been working with the partnership, agreed to take that suggestion back to the board for further discussion.
Mitchell said that reducing the funding level to 50 cents per capita would finance "a telephone and an office, basically." He said participating localities would be asked to fund the partnership at $1 per capita for three years, the minimum time for which it could expect to attract competent applicants for the job of executive director.
He said the partnership would be competing for industry with other marketing organizations funded at the $1 per capita level or higher, and "we don't want to drive a Model T when the others are driving Cadillacs."
"You don't want to drive a Cadillac if you can't put gas in it, either," Branson said.
Mitchell said Wythe County is needed for the partnership. He said it would be hard to solicit private financial support there if the governing body was not supporting the agency.
Smyth County Administrator Marvin Perry said the $1 per capita was not an unreasonable figure to give the partnership a fair chance of succeeding in attracting industry. After three years, he said, the local governments could evaluate it to see if they felt they were getting their money's worth.
Tom Taylor, executive director of the Mount Rogers Planning District Commission, said a way to market the region has been needed and it would be to the partnership's benefit to do whatever is necessary to get all the localities to buy in.
It would not only hurt fund-raising, he said, but it would affect the image being presented outside the region. "If we aren't all participating, we've sown the seeds for our own destruction."
by CNB