The city has added street lighting and expanded municipal service districts to its to-do list. The county's big priorities are extending water mains to residents who need safe water, and getting to work on other big capital projects that are needed.
The priority-setting is an annual exercise, usually the result of a one- or two-day "retreat" that leaders of this region's two biggest local governments devote to brainstorming and blue-sky thinking. Some good things have come out of these sessions over the years, although too often they tend to be unfocused — like the annual reaffirmation of interest in "economic development." We're not about to suggest that economic development is unimportant. In truth, it's one of the key issues in Cumberland County. It's also one where government has a remarkably poor track record for the past few decades. And at least in part, that's because we've too often had separate government initiatives, rather than a coordinated approach. That's true of countless issues.
What we're suggesting here is that both the city and county are setting priorities every year without standing back and looking at the big picture, studying where our community has been, where it is now, and where we want it to go in the future — and then coming up with a unified strategy for getting it there. That's just one of many reasons why we've long pushed for "metro" government, replacing our separate governments and their services with a unified entity that by its very design will take coordinated action.
We also know that we won't be seeing that unified government anytime soon — perhaps not in our lifetimes. Turf issues are too powerful to allow it.
Still, we wish we could see the city and county spend more time creating integrated strategies for solving our problems. And in some places, there have been fruitful discussions — like the future of Shaw Heights, the impoverished, under-served, unincorporated neighborhood completely surrounded by Fayetteville. There's little question that Shaw Heights would be better served if it could be protected by city policing, zoning, housing codes and other government services that would immediately lift that little community's quality of life. But an annexation bid failed last year when former Mayor Nat Robertson pulled his support, offering the remarkable argument that residents are better off with county zoning and other protections. But now, the city and county are discussing the possibility of extending city jurisdiction to Shaw Heights, without annexing it, which would certainly offer significant improvements to the neighborhood.
We hope we will see more such cooperative efforts, and we're pleased that the county stepped forward Monday and approved its share of funding for the downtown baseball park, an issue that had created some friction between the city and the county. Commissioner Jimmy Keefe, who made the motion to approve the ballpark deal, recognized the difficult path his board had taken to reach a conclusion, but seemed optimistic about it. “I believe we are getting to where we need to be to work with the city of Fayetteville,” he said. Keefe is in a good position to see that: Like fellow commissioner Charles Evans, he served several terms on the City Council before seeking a seat on the county board.
We hope the ballpark deal sets the table for other successes in city-county cooperation. That should begin with a deal on a joint 911 call center, a long-needed project also delayed by squabbling between the two boards.
And we hope even more that these exercises lead to the city's and county's elected leaders spending more time fashioning comprehensive solutions to this region's problems that don't readily fit within one government's areas of responsibility — problems like poverty, crime, opioid addiction, public transportation and other issues that have been so resistant to solution. The answers are in unified vision and coordinated effort. We need to see much, much more of that.