Regional Government Gets New Life

With localities worried about diminishing revenues from the state, it’s no wonder they are taking a closer look at regional services.

The subject of regional services has been brewing for years at the Region 2000 Regional Council, but some localities have resisted the potential to deliver services at less cost out of fear they may lose some authority in the process. Sharing services, it seems, is easier said than done. Get the Amherst County Board of Supervisors from a couple of years ago to explain why they rejected the regional landfill proposal that has been adopted by other localities.

But the current budget woes could push localities that have resisted regional services in the past to take a new look at participating.

That would be a welcome new approach to the delivery of government services that could save taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars or more per year.

The folks at Region 2000 are working toward finding new ways to combine government services to save money. Representatives from area localities met recently to discuss a number of partnership ideas. They came up with a list of services that could be delivered on a regional basis, some of which are currently being done. That includes a regional approach to landfills and jails.

But other areas that have not been discussed publicly before include combining area libraries and government office needs such as processing payrolls and computer maintenance.

Campbell County supervisors discussed those new options at a meeting last week and asked County Administrator David Laurrell to continue looking at ideas presented by Region 2000’s Regional Council.

Laurrell put his finger on the importance of pursuing regional cooperation when he put Region 2000 in the context of an area with as many as 260,000 people. “It doesn’t really make sense to have some of these services that we provide,” he said, duplicated by five or six individual groups or offices.

Possibly, he said by way of offering a good example, “instead of having five different (library) systems, maybe we could have one that services the entire population.”

Other ideas put on the table include combining erosion and sediment control management, animal shelters, broadband authorities, public utilities and emergency medical services.

Laurrell added that not every locality would have to participate in each approach toward regional services. But there would need to be enough localities joining in each effort to “be on a large enough scale to work,” he said.

All efforts are in the early planning stages, but the focus is on which would provide the largest savings and efficiency for the localities involved, Laurrell said.

Rustburg District Supervisor Hugh Pendleton pointed out that the need for regional services is beginning to outweigh individual interests that once opposed joining such an effort. Looking down the road, he said, “we’re going to have to compromise on things we did not want to do in order to make ends meet.”

He’s right. Regional approaches to the delivery of vital government services have worked in the past. And there’s no reason they won’t continue to work. A key ingredient to making them work is cooperation in which local government leaders sit down with one another to agree on ways to deliver services in a more efficient manner.

In these times of dwindling public revenues, that makes more sense than ever.