Evaluating the failure of the consolidation effort
Brookshire assesses the failure of the effort to consolidate Charlotte's and Mecklenburg County's public services. The lack of conflict and crisis, along with the promise of a restructured local government, hampered the consolidation effort.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Stanford Raynold Brookshire, August 18, 1975. Interview B-0067. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- BILL MOYE:
-
Was there a particular crisis? Seems that, perhaps, the watersewer
between the city-county might have had something to do with it?
- STANFORD RAYNOLD BROOKSHIRE:
-
No, really I don't think there was any such crisis.
I'll add that if there had been it might have provided a
better background for a successful effort.
- BILL MOYE:
-
You think that one problem in getting the consolidation was that you
didn't have some particular problem that you could point to
and say, "This is really a crisis for us, and we need
to..."
- STANFORD RAYNOLD BROOKSHIRE:
-
I would say that the absence of any crisis, any real problem, or any
great dissatisfaction on the part of the citizens toward local
government...The absence of those things was largely
responsible, or at least partially responsible for
the failure of it. The second important factor that contributed to
failure, in my opinion, was the fact that the Charter Commission, while
they worked assiduously, worked hard, came up with a program that was
just over-programed. It was too much too much of a change, too much
modernization, too different from what we had in the way of local
government for people to buy. It was not a plain merger. It was a
reorganization.
