Durham to discuss city/county merger

Members of the Durham City Council and Durham County Board of Commissioners have agreed to start talking about merging the two governments.

"This is not something that's going to happen overnight," said commissioners Chairman Michael Page. "We're just beginning dialogue."

City Councilman Howard Clement raised the idea this morning, following a discussion of city and county budgets at a joint council-commissioners committee meeting.

"I throw that out for consideration," he said.

"I think we need to take his comment seriously," Page said. "How can we begin this process?"

Committee members agreed to put the item on their March 10 agenda, and requested city or county staff to prepare a summary of a merger "template" devised when the subject last came up, in 2000.

Merging Durham's city and council governments has been formally proposed numerous times since the mid-1920s, but each proposal has either been abandoned or defeated in public referenda in 1960 and 1974.

Clement said in November that he planned to raise the issue again, because the current recession's effects on local-government budgets require cutting government costs.

Today, he said he mentioned merger "just to get it in the record," and was "pleasantly surprised" that others were receptive.

"We're going to have to merge government in Durham, in my opinion, to save Durham," Clement said.

Commissioner Brenda Howerton said she heard merger mentioned several times when she was campaigning for election last year.

"The citizens are interested," she said.

Given merger's history of defeats, Clement said he reminded himself of the Biblical prophet John the Baptist "crying in the wilderness."

Councilman Mike Woodard reminded Clement that John the Baptist was beheaded.

"If I'm going to be beheaded, so be it," said Clement, who is up for re-election this year.