Everyone in the county can benefit if Charleston and Kanawha County merge their governments, Mayor Danny Jones said Wednesday.

Just don't call it metro government or expect him to lead the charge for its passage, he said during a meeting with Gazette editors.

Jones, metro government advocate Sen. Brooks McCabe, D-Kanawha, and a couple of city employees visited the Gazette on Wednesday to answer questions and clarify their positions after two recent editorials on the issue.

Both Jones and McCabe suggested following the Louisville, Ky., model, which has a combined city/county government led by a mayor and a 27-member council representing all parts of the county. Under that plan, about 90 cities and towns continued to exist within the merged government, all with their own local governments and town employees, they said.

"Charleston would lose their 27 members of council," Jones said. "They would be spread out over the county."

Council members would be elected by new geographic districts, determined by population, McCabe said.

"That's terribly important. When I was up in Clendenin they said they get ignored by the County Commission. I asked them, 'When is the last time you had someone on the County Commission?' This, rather than taking people away, is a way of bringing them in and giving them representation.

"If you take the 27 [council seats] and spread it all around the county, all of a sudden you have all kinds of people running for these positions. You get the 30-somethings at the table."

McCabe and Jones hope to establish a merged government before the 2010 Census so that the new city/county would have a population of about 200,000. Otherwise, the population of Charleston could dip below 50,000.

Everyone in the county can benefit if Charleston and Kanawha County merge their governments, Mayor Danny Jones said Wednesday.

Just don't call it metro government or expect him to lead the charge for its passage, he said during a meeting with Gazette editors.

Jones, metro government advocate Sen. Brooks McCabe, D-Kanawha, and a couple of city employees visited the Gazette on Wednesday to answer questions and clarify their positions after two recent editorials on the issue.

Both Jones and McCabe suggested following the Louisville, Ky., model, which has a combined city/county government led by a mayor and a 27-member council representing all parts of the county. Under that plan, about 90 cities and towns continued to exist within the merged government, all with their own local governments and town employees, they said.

"Charleston would lose their 27 members of council," Jones said. "They would be spread out over the county."

Council members would be elected by new geographic districts, determined by population, McCabe said.

"That's terribly important. When I was up in Clendenin they said they get ignored by the County Commission. I asked them, 'When is the last time you had someone on the County Commission?' This, rather than taking people away, is a way of bringing them in and giving them representation.

"If you take the 27 [council seats] and spread it all around the county, all of a sudden you have all kinds of people running for these positions. You get the 30-somethings at the table."

McCabe and Jones hope to establish a merged government before the 2010 Census so that the new city/county would have a population of about 200,000. Otherwise, the population of Charleston could dip below 50,000.

That would require a favorable public vote by December 2009, McCabe said. He outlined the steps before the vote: The city and county would form steering committees that would hold public meetings and draft a charter for the merger. City Council and the County Commission would then have to approve the charter and send it to a public vote.

Jones said the fear that Charleston would lose its federal Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding if its population falls below 50,000 is no more than an urban legend.

"The city of Parkersburg has a population of 33,000 and receives $1 million a year of CDBG funds," he said.

Brian King, director of the Mayor's Office of Economic and Community Development, said the city's HUD representative recently reassured him the city's annual $1.8 million in CDBG funds would not decrease if the population dips below 50,000. Cities can also qualify for CDBG funds if they, like Charleston, are the principal city in a Metropolitan Statistical Area.

Should county voters adopt a merged government, smaller cities and even unincorporated areas of the county might be eligible for block grant funds, Jones said, because they would all be part of the larger city/county.

"The merger has to be sold, but not by me," Jones said. Too many enemies, especially after the recent dog track vote, he said.

And don't sell it as "metro government," Jones said, which has a bad connotation in many places. Some local politicians ran specifically against metro government, he said. "It needs to be sold as a change in county government."

Reach Jim Balow at ba...@wvgazette.com or 348-5102.