The Shadow
CLIFTON FORGE – After 16 meetings, a citizens’ committee is finally starting to piece together a plan that could consolidate the governments of Alleghany County and Covington.
The first piece of the puzzle came Tuesday night at Dabney S. Lancaster Community College when the Citizens Committee to Perfect a Consolidation Agreement decided that the plan should include a provision for limited service districts, more commonly known as utility districts.
The plan would create a Covington utility district, covering territories served by the current city, and an Alleghany County utility district, covering the current county. No decision has been made on whether the new consolidated government will be a county or a city. That issue is on tap to be discussed by the committee in two weeks, along with schools.
Under the utility districts, which would remain in effect for 10 years if consolidation is approved by voters, water and wastewater treatment services received by residents of the current city and county would essentially remain the same.
Consolidation attorney Ca-rter Glass IV of Richmond, said Clifton Forge, which is not part of the consolidation talks, would actually constitute a third limited service district within the consolidated jurisdiction. Clifton Forge would continue to operate its own utilities and sell water to the consolidated jurisdiction under terms of a new contract.
Clifton Forge currently sells water to Alleghany County. The town’s contract with the county will become void if the county becomes part of a consolidated government, Glass said.
“The merged entity would become a new partner with Clifton Forge in water sales,” he said.
Covington’s contract to sell water to areas of the county would also become void.
“There would have to be an agreement between the two service districts to provide water to the county service district,” Glass said. “That would be an issue that the new city council or the new board of supervisors would have to deal with.”
Water would continue to be metered in areas of the current county. Customers in the current city would not have metered water.
“We are making a district that has water meters and a district that will be unmetered. I think that is a wise move because the way the public looks at [water meters] may defeat this thing,” said Covington committee representative John Stone.
The committee spent a good deal of time Tuesday night hearing testimony from John Rowe, who served as city and town manager in Clifton Forge.
Rowe was city manager when Clifton Forge reverted to a township in 2001. Most recently, Rowe served as interim town manager in Windsor. He left that position March 31.
Tuesday night, Rowe mostly talked about Virginia’s last successful governmental consolidation between Suffolk and Nansemond County and 1974. Rowe became assistant city manager in the consolidated city of Suffolk in 1975. He served as Suffolk’s city manager in the 1980s.
“I can tell you that consolidation works,” Rowe said.
He said Suffolk has made changes to the original consolidation agreement over the years to adapt to its needs. The original consolidation plan called for a seven-member city council comprised a five representatives from the former county and two from the former city. The agreement was later changed to expand the council to eight members with the mayor elected at-large by voters.
“Even though you have a consolidation agreement, it doesn’t bind you forever,” Rowe said.
Another big change in Suffolk came with road maintenance. Under the original consolidation agreement, approximately 2 square miles in the former city of Suffolk was maintained by local public works crews, utilizing funding from the Virginia Department of Transportation based on lane miles.
VDOT retained maintenance duties in the former county.
After Suffolk reviewed costs and funding aspects five years ago, it found that VDOT was spending approximately $5 million annually to maintain roads in the former county area.
“What they learned is that if the city would take over the former county area, it would qualify for $16 million in funding from VDOT for the lane miles,” Rowe said. “It was a money thing and a political thing when they took road maintenance over in 2005.”
Suffolk has three tax districts, Suffolk, Nansemond and a general fund district that covers the entire city. The Suffolk District covers the former city and the Nansemond District applies to the former county area. The differing tax rates are based on the level of services and debt.
Rowe commended the current consolidation effort in the Highlands. He said economic conditions are redefining how governments function on the federal, state and local levels. Governments that survive the economic downturn, he said, will be the ones that adapt through efficiencies.
“This is the worst economic times I’ve ever experienced,” said Rowe, in noting that 48 of 50 states are “structurally bankrupt.”
The Virginia General Assembly recently dealt with a $4 billion shortfall in revenues by making deep spending cuts in several areas, including funding to local governments, which receive 36 percent of the state’s financial resources, Rowe said.
Next week, the consolidation committee will tackle issues pertaining to debt, ordinances, road and zoning, as it continues to work toward meeting a court-imposed June 1 deadline for putting together a plan to consolidate the two governments.
On April 27, the committee will discuss two of the hottest topics it will face: Schools and whether to purse a city or county form of consolidated government.
Glass said the process to pursue a city form of government would prove more time consuming and costly because it would include reviews of the proposal by a Virginia Supreme Court-appointed three-judge panel and the Virginia Commission on Local Government.
But Rowe warned the committee not to focus on short-term costs while developing the plan. He said the plan must be tailored to ensure the long-term viability of the Highlands and provide services on an efficient level. He said a plan for a consolidated city would provide the new government with more taxing authority and flexibility, under Virginia law.
Any consolidation plan the committee puts forward must be approved by voters in Alleghany County and Covington.
The consolidation process started in 2008 when registered voters in both jurisdictions filed petitions in Alleghany County Circuit Court demanding that a plan be developed for consolidating the two governments.
The citizens’ committee was handed the task of developing a plan after the Alleghany County Board of Supervisors and Covington City Council failed to meet a one-year deadline for putting a proposal together.
