C-500 endorses Benjamin Pitts, Gary Skinner

We’ve been down this same road too many times.

If the C500 has a copy of the current VRE Master Agreement that the current BOS signed on to, and unanimously approved by all contributing and participating members of VRE/Commissions, I suggest they make this contract document available for the public to make up their own mind on whether the C500 and their endorsements of Benjamin Pitts and Gary Skinner serves only special interest or the welfare of an entire community (Spotsylvania County).

Seems only fair.

I’ve already asked the Spotsylvania County BOS and a FAMPO Transportation Advisery Group for this information and have yet to receive a response or had the lastest VRE Master Agreement posted on any appropriate website for download.

Why have so many people consigned their thinking to only one part of the deal? The anticipated benefits of a gas tax will soon be found out to be nothing more than an unsustainable funding source for any kind of transportation model currently being weighed by the Fed, State and local denominations.

No one will find any mention of a gas tax in the VRE Master Agreement. The Master Agreement is the other part of the deal no one apparently wants to talk about, or deal with.

I’m reminded that Stafford County and the City of Fredericksburg never made this other part of joining VRE available to its constituents and citizens. Joining VRE was a unilateral decision made by the Stafford County BOS and Fredericksburg City Counsil.

Have any questions about this, you have only to rewind Supv. Logan’s VRE Summit Meeting where Matt Kelly and Paul Milde, III made that their response when asked by the citizen’s in attendance.

Simply said, no other member of VRE ever offered this VRE Master Agreement into the public domain for interpretation or understanding, other than through each members elected officials, where it was voted on without public knowledge or accountability by its citizens.

Hence, if you were to look, you would see and better understand how joining VRE works itself to diminished return on investment.

Look at the language Spotsylvania County put into this VRE Master Agreement /Contract to avoid the consequences of what other members have been confronted with over the years, and leading to members “General Funds” for want of a contract that says VRE has all the cards, and if you don’t like what the VRE / Railway Commissions come up with, by way of yearly budgets, although they claim they will try their best to keep cost down, is something no member can readily challenge. WHY? Read the contract; ALL of it.

Got any questions, ask to meet with your district or county elected official and ask them to explain how this other part of joining VRE should be read and the consequences it brings to every County Budget, when the day of reckoning comes due.

Spotsylvania County citizens, in 2005, voted a TRANSPORTATION referendum for $144 million dollars. What is the County BOS and their Capital Improvement agendas spending this money on, and who is reaping the benefits of that voter decision from then until now?

If Ben Pitts is going to “change his mind” about joining VRE, because the state funding for construction and maintenace of secondary roads has gone belly up, why would he be looking for new transportation funding, using VRE as his leverage, when the County decided the issue of funding transportation four years ago.

Just how many new train engines and locomotives does anyone think Spotsylvania County’s share will be when the cost gets divided up between its members.

Don’t forget. We also will be paying our share of VRE’s Capital Investments agendas, cost of insurance, running their risk management departments, payments of liability settlements any “member” might be caused to make, in any other member jurisdictions, the cost of operating VRE whose business model continues to run out of money and raising fares. CSX can do anything they want, and VRE gets to underwrite their agenda as well as their own, at “participating member’s” piece of the pie.

Supv. Gary Skinner has but a single agenda and it doesn’t have anything to do with smart growth principles. His allegiance is confined to special interest development and the public record will support this conclusion if anyone is really interested, beyond the rhetoric being afforded to him by the C500 and his best effort to fill in the same blanks the C500 have been hosting for years.

Has the C500 grown with their proposed mission over the years? The invitation is still the same. They pull up the same documents, over and over again, say the same thing, with the only difference being whose name they insert as THEIR choices of leadership, confined to a Forum Meeting, where only 30 people and 8 members of the C500 showed up to ask scripted questions, many of which were about VRE, but no mention of the VRE Master Agreement.

If you don’t get it, it’s only because you changed channels.

Just thought I would ask now instead of later.

Before the Spotsylvania County BOS meeting of 09-22-09 gets started, is there anyone out there who would like to put a spin on Germanna’s expansion proposal and presentation to the Board and the policy provisions being set in place by staff, Planning Commission and our BOS on the issues of Urban Development Areas and how we are not in a position to fend off any by-right construction agendas being developed by our development leaders and Spotsylvania County over the next 10 years?

While the answers are sitting right in front of us, I thought to ask before the other shoe drops. 2011 just isn’t that far away.

Doing your homework is one thing, but getting your questions out there for some kind of realistic response is going to be quite another.

Don’t ask and you’ll never know the difference between quality of life and just another bull dozer.

Don’t call me, call your elected officials, their staff, or anyone else who conducts your business behind closed doors. And, luck is not going to have anything to do with the result, so spin away all you like on what “mixed-use” really is and what it is definitly not.

We started with Mallard Landing, then the Hicks Farm and soon Urban Developmnent Areas F (Hospital and Germanna College); H-Tricord’s Summit Crossing project and 5,900 additional living/land lots, plus the population build out from this project; I-Tricord’s “New Post” project that has a history of its own. Just how close is your home to Rt 17, Rt 2 and Benchmark Road?
What kind of traffic flow are we going to have on Rt 17 when Cosner and Silver complete their improvements; bridge across I-95, infrastructure around Cosner’s Hospital and now the expansion cost of Germanna College, all on the County’s dime, not theirs.

What about the interchange being designed just south of the Massaponax exit? Anyone have an idea what kind of traffic will impact Rt1 and Rt 17 with the construction of this interchange, plus the one Stafford County and Fredericksburg are contemplating?

This is not a fictional translation of what the County and the development community have in mind. It has been drawn up and ready to be put into place, whether we can afford it or not. If you can’t find anything worth noting on the County Website, try the FAMPO website. It has all kinds of transportation and land-use agendas for an entire REGION, including Spotsylvania County.

Am I the soothsayer or second guesser? NO. I’m just a messenger with more time on his hands than most. After everything is said and done, it’s really your County and you can do anything you want to with its future, unless of course you gave your vote away by proxy or defaulted to the wisdom of your elected officials.

Doesn’t anyone tune into the government channels anymore, or at least take a look at the BOS meeting agendas?

I’m not challenging education and what it brings to this County or any other.

Maybe I read it wrong on what Germanna is bringing to tonight’s BOS meeting, but I distinctly remember seeing Germanna asking the County, to in some way, underwrite their expansion with County tax dollars.

I suppose it’s not enough we can’t support after hours busing for our County students, but now, we’re being asked to support the expansion of education in the County, as the Commonwealth of Virginia withdraws from their traditional obligations to fund appropriate educational cost.

I’m not talking education, I’m talking about money and where we spend it, in light of current fiscal constraints.

If the Fed and state can’t afford our educational needs, how long before we start down the same road? If “development interest” can’t afford the price of a good education, why are they passing the cost burden over to the County tax payer?

There’s only so much 3.3 interest Go Bonds to go around. If the money is there, why haven’t our elected officials said so? Let’s ask them.

Education is not on trial here, or the debate on what education brings to us, if allowed to.

Let’s talk UDA’s, landuse, zoning, comp plan and what’s currently in the mix. If education was on the table, where are the proffers and/or impact fees to mitigate such expansions of real property, not the future of education?

Where’s the money?

Do we really care about how 8 community activists feel. They do not even follow the issues that are being voted on at the BOS meetings. If they did they would remember how each one of their boys voted to keep meetings hidden from the public, expand the number of buildable lots in the rural areas and take proffer monies away from the school system. Committee of “who cares!”,

They were intelligent and probing. On the down side, they did not comment on the specific
answers and how they played into their decisions.

Instead they just used general categories.

But the questions were pretty good IMHO.

here’s an example:

” What method do you think is most appropriate for determining funding levels for our
schools (such as a set percentage of County expenditures, target expense level per
student, other)?”

or this one:

” 3. Transportation and other infrastructure improvements are expensive. Please be
specific about how you will fund these improvements.”

Like I said – they really didn’t help their cause by just giving endorsements without explaining the
key reasons that they felt their endorsed would be better than the challengers.

In reading through the questionnaires, I determined that DJ’s position was less than satisfying
for me.

” What is required is spending discipline. If we had held the rate of spending growth in
Spotsylvania government to population growth and inflation, we would be spending over
$30 million less than we do now. If Virginia’s future is to come with decentralized road
financing (and budgetary realities in Richmond make this a near certainty) we need to
put transportation along side the other government services in the county, and make
appropriate decisions accordingly. Relying on the antiquated gasoline tax (several
major cities are already looking at congestion pricing or per-mile fees), debt-ridden
Washington, or politically hamstrung Richmond is a sure formula for failure.”

In my view – his opponent, Mr. Skinner got on to the essential answers:

3. Transportation and other infrastructure improvements are expensive. Please be specific about
how you will fund these improvements.
a.) By preserving the county’s membership in VRE and accepting the projected $3+ million dollars
it will
generate for county-wide transportation needs each year.
b.) Through
increased contributions from developers through proffers or impact fees.
c.) Through
public/private partnership initiatives (PPTA and PPEA).
d.) Through establishment of Community Development Authorities (CDAs), special service or tax
districts and
Tax Incremental Financing (TIF) districts.

DJ, because of his no tax and property rights stance had a less satisfying answer in my book.

“Congestion Pricing” as a solution to Spotsylvania’s Road needs is not on the radar right now.

At any rate – I thought most of the questions were very good questions and it’s a shame they are
not actually published or provided at the very front of their web page as many folks won’t know to
click on the candidates names…

I thought the questions asked were spot on and if you read the answers from
all 4 candidates – you’ll know a lot more about their views that before you
read.

I’m not going to defend C500 but who else has done questions that
comprehensive and provided the answers for folks to read?

Could they do better? Yes. Specifically they could have been more specific
about what things helped them make up their mind who to support.

That would have said something about C500 and what it stands for (or not)
also and allowed folks to make up their own minds about whether C500 was
representative of their own views.

but at the end of the day.. so far.. I’ve not seen a better list of questions and
answers so give credit where credit is due.

I can tell you .. that the questions asked took some time and effort to
formulate… a tough job to write a question that is fair and at the same time
specific enough so that the answer cannot be hand-waving… or if it is hand-
waving you know it.. DJ did that on a couple IMHO.

As far as Germanna and School Activity buses. First note, that Spotsylvania for
the last 5 years has funded schools higher than the state average and higher
than it’s peers save Stafford and at the end of the day – no school system and
no county (and none of us) have all the money we’d like to have and it then
becomes about priorities.

Priorities are things that “we” seldom agree on and are always subject to
questioning.

Your neighbor wonders why you were so stupid as to put good money on the
brand car you bought while you think the same about his choices.. and so it
goes.

Spotsylvania will decide if they can afford the Germanna deal and in the
process maybe.. will make Germanna a higher priority than something else.

My bet is in they put it on a referenda – it would win by a landslide. Just about
everyone in the county would be willing to pay a one-time $10 higher tax bill
to get a Germanna expansion because they know it’s good for the county and
good for them.

Putting money into Germanna is an investment in my view.. we’ll get every
penny back… in benefits to the citizens.