Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 20, 1990 TAG: 9005200064
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK LAYMAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
But they wish city and county residents had been given a bigger role in shaping the plan.
The politicians who negotiated for the city and the county "brought into it a lot of egos and public images," said Brandon Bell, who works for Hewlett-Packard Co. in Roanoke County.
"I'm surprised they didn't come back and say, `You started this and we want you involved.' . . . Instead, it was sort of a closed-door process."
After all, said Roanoke lawyer Chris Orndorff, it was "the people, not the politicians," who got consolidation on the ballot for the first time since 1969.
Lee Brooks, a financial planner for IDS Financial Services Inc., said it would have been better if negotiators had had the time to survey Roanoke Valley residents and listen to their ideas about consolidation. But under the law, they had only a year to come up with a plan.
Bell, Orndorff and Brooks led the petition drive launched by the Roanoke Jaycees in the summer of 1988. The Cave Spring Jaycees, the Northwest Revitalization Corporation and the Roanoke Valley Board of Realtors quickly signed on.
Within months, they had collected the required number of signatures in both the city and the county. Consolidation negotiations began early last year.
"It looked like at the beginning they were just going through the motions," Bell said. He was disappointed by the choice of Supervisor Harry Nickens - who made little secret of his opposition to consolidation - as one of the county's original negotiators.
Nickens later dropped off the county's negotiating team but was put back on after Supervisor Lee Garrett lost his bid for re-election.
As the negotiations continued, "I was pleasantly surprised sometimes and irritated and frustrated other times," Bell said. He wondered if the plan would have been better if the county's negotiators had been more open-minded. "But overall, I was real pleased."
Changes made this spring have improved the plan, he said. He's glad that negotiators agreed to give the county a majority of seats on the proposed Roanoke Metropolitan Government's school board and to give most of the residents of the county's Catawba Magisterial District the option to become part of Salem if consolidation is approved.
He hopes negotiators also will give residents of east Roanoke County the chance to vote on whether to become part of the town of Vinton if consolidation is approved. As it stands now, Vinton would be allowed to expand its boundary without a vote by those residents.
Brooks, on the other hand, does not think Catawba residents should get the chance to become part of Salem. "It's not trimming the fat off the meat; it's making two separate steaks."
The plan, Brooks said, "may not be perfect. . . . It's a good start." But like Bell, he wonders if the negotiators brought their prejudices to the table. "How can you negotiate a plan that's supposed to be in the best interests of your constituents and then turn around and say you're against it?"
Orndorff, too, said the plan "has its flaws." But the negotiators "came up with the best plan they could" - or at least one that's good enough to win his support. "I don't think I would have been a supporter of just any consolidated government."
The three Jaycees see the potential benefits of consolidation from different points of view.
The impact of consolidation on economic development is a key issue for Bell, who was born in Charlottesville, grew up in Mississippi and came to the Roanoke Valley seven years ago. He has had first-hand experience with the problems caused by the region's slow growth; that was one of the reasons his former job as district sales manager at Hewlett-Packard was eliminated last year.
He could have transferred to a bigger city, but he wanted to stay in Roanoke. "I enjoy living here. I have lots of friends here. Most of my working life has been spent here."
But he's paying a price for that decision. Now he works with dealers who sell Hewlett-Packard products, and he has to spend a lot of time on the road.
Orndorff, a Roanoke Valley native who grew up in Richmond and majored in political science at Roanoke College, makes a more academic argument: Consolidation would ease the financial pressures that Roanoke and Roanoke County are feeling as a result of federal and state funding cuts.
Brooks, who has lived in the Roanoke Valley most of his life, said consolidation would spur the growth that is needed "to keep this place the way we like it. . . . We need to be looking over the mountain." Without that growth, "we're going to be even farther behind the eight ball."
All three say they will do what they can to help consolidation supporters between now and November. But they do not expect to be as visible as they were during the petition drive.
Supporting consolidation has its risks. "It's easy to be against the plan," Bell said. "It's easy to play it safe. There's a potential benefit and a potential risk. Anytime you change, you have both."
It could be particularly risky for Bell, who is chairman of the county Republican Party. Some of the leading opponents of consolidation in the county - such as Don Terp and Hugh Key of Citizens Against Merger - are Republicans. Still, he said, "I don't think this is a partisan issue. . . . You have Democrats on both sides, too." County Republicans decided at their mass meeting in March not to take a stand on consolidation.
It looks to Orndorff as if both sides in the consolidation fight are dragging their feet. "Both sides have got to get out there and make their arguments. . . . One thing I've realized in the past few weeks is that November is going to be here before we know it."
by CNB