Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Editorial: An advisory committee gets good advice
The Mill Mountain Advisory Committee should adopt a set of bylaws because it will be around for a long time to come.
From the RoundTable blog
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Roanoke City Council is on target in recommending that the supposedly ad hoc Mill Mountain Advisory Committee adopt bylaws and operate like one of the city's standing committees -- because that's what it is.
Like any long-established body, it needs rules that stir up membership from time to time so that it can continually refresh itself.
That it does not have bylaws is mere accident, a product of the optimistic notion when the committee was appointed in 1969 that it could deliver simple guidelines for developing the mountain and the city would accept and implement, or not. End of committee.
Things have not worked out quite that way.
The late Junius Fishburn's gift of the mountain to the people of Roanoke has become a glorious park, the home of the Mill Mountain Zoo -- and a source of intermittent friction over various ideas for further development.
The controversy kicked up by Valley Forward, which wants a restaurant atop the mountain, is only the latest.
Now the terms of all eight members of the council-appointed advisory committee have expired. Instead of offering reappointments all around, as usual, council wisely has suggested the panel adopt bylaws that would produce periodic changes in its makeup.
Mill Mountain occupies a special place in the hearts of most Roanokers. That goes doubly for advisory committee members willing to serve year after year -- more than half for at least a decade.
This long-running committee is no different than any other, though, in needing the varied talents and fresh perspectives of new members, as well as the acquired knowledge and the long view that comes only over time to its veterans. Luckily, that mix can be easily achieved with staggered terms and term limits -- if not a lifetime limit, at least a mandated break of a year or so after one or two terms.
Council also suggests an odd number of members, a sensible idea given the mountain's history of attracting controversy and thus the committee's occasional need for a tie-breaker.
Council members say their request has nothing to do with Valley Forward's idea, and we take them at their word. Allowing the advisory committee to write its own bylaws, as council has asked, would be a poor way of trying to load members on either side of an ongoing preservation/development tug of war.
It's time the ad hoc committee reflected the reality that even a mountain park is an organic thing that needs tending over time.
