Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Editorial: Easements for Mill Mountain
A surprise announcement is a terrible way to make public policy. Roanoke council will only now seek public input on a done deal.
From the RoundTable blog
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Gov. Tim Kaine announced last week that Roanoke City Council unanimously agreed to place conservation easements on Mill Mountain -- by year's end. The news was a stunner, even to those who will be tasked with making it happen.
Surprise could kill, or at least delay, the deal.
We can't help but wonder if members of council don't scout for ways to stir controversy. Council has not talked about Mill Mountain since the ill-fated 2007 plan to build a restaurant in the mountaintop park met a public relations' demise. Yet, there was Kaine proclaiming that all had agreed to add a protective covenant to the mountain and thereby help to meet his goal of adding conservation easements to 400,000 acres during his term.
We have long supported the governor's plan, applauding additional acreage, most recently Carvins Cove, being protected from development. And we have long supported a plan to protect the slopes of Mill Mountain.
But we have supported even longer the requirement that government be open to the people. Here is where city council has failed.
Members settled on this course through e-mail. No public conversation was held. The city's recreation director was not consulted. The Western Virginia Land Trust was not informed, though, it most likely will be the agency entrusted with seeing that the land indeed is protected.
Nor is it clear what council has already agreed to do. Kaine said council has agreed to support plans to establish two perpetual conservation easements on Mill Mountain and the surrounding 600 acre park.
Which sounds like the whole mountain. Yet at least one councilman said he thought they agreed to exclude the top 20 acres that are home to the neon star, zoo, Discovery Center and picnic shelters.
Most curious is the call for robust public input now. Councilman Rupert Cutler, a conservationist who is leading the charge, said, "I think you have to have public meetings. This is so important to so many people."
That it is, and the people would have appreciated being asked before council committed.
Now council must listen to what people have to say about which parts of Mill Mountain to protect and how broad those protections should be.
Once granted, the easements cannot easily be undone -- a concept that may be lost on a governing body known for its vacillation.
