Stafford’s compassion overruled fiscal sensibility, higher taxes needed

By Cindy Shelton
Stafford County Aquia District Supervisor

Did you know that since 2006, Stafford County’s growth provided the county an opportunity to invest in itself? But it chose differently.

When you look at the congested roads and a lack of places to shop and dine, do you wonder why?

The Stafford County Board of Supervisors has voted year after year to delay the investments in roads, new buildings, and maintenance in the interest of lowering taxes at the very time when we should have been slowly raising them to fund the future.

Stafford County provides a budget to actual data to the Board during the annual budget meetings. Analyzing that data, coupled with our financial reports, clearly show a capacity to fund such improvements as well as a reluctance to do so.

For example, if the Board had adopted the needed tax rate since 2006 based upon the Board’s priorities, we would have collected enough revenue to fund the items in the current Capital Improvement plan without the need to resort to credit.

In 2016, the Board decreased the tax rate from $1.07 to $1.01, fully aware of the future capital needs and the mounting debt service. Just since 2016, had we maintained the rate at $1.01, we would have gained $20 million in additional revenue.

This needed agility would have allowed us to take on other transportation projects, decrease our dependence on debt, or even tackle other projects proactively instead of waiting until the situation was critical.

Just as recently as last year, when other counties voted to stay the course with their budgets to fund a response to the pandemic, Stafford County voted for tax relief for its citizens knowing full well the long-term impact it would have on the county.

Our staff was apparent in their budget reports that if we didn’t increase taxes in 2021, we would need to cut services by $25 million.

For years, we underfunded maintenance projects, and our water treatment facilities were in horrible shape. We had only one maintenance person between the two water plants. Equipment was in disrepair in the county and the schools.

I’ll never forget the day I visited Smith Lake Reservior in North Stafford and stood in shock at the condition of one of our critical water sources. Simultaneously, the schools were screaming for funding, and the attrition rate for our first responders was abysmal. Meeting after meeting, we were begged to increase salaries.

People left Stafford for much higher wages, from county staff, teachers, to firemen, deputies, and even the Rappahannock Area Community Services Board. We wasted money training new people to start over again when they left for higher-paying jobs in other counties. The churn from this well-meaning but miserly approach to funding is well documented.

We also underfunded big-ticket items such as a courthouse or school. As Stafford grew, we gained more capacity to fund these large items. Let’s analyze the Board’s actions since 2006. One perspective is that we didn’t maximize our debt capacity by taking on more debt to invest in the future. Another view is that we should have been paying off that “credit card” to pay cash for our needed assets in the future. Both are valid points of view, but sadly the Board did neither of these and instead lowered taxes.

In plain terms, we voluntarily lowered our “paycheck” (tax revenue) because our employer (residents) would not have to pay us as much. If we delayed building roads and schools, we didn’t need the money immediately, so we agreed to work for less. Who thinks that way?

Stafford still needed schools, roads, and a courthouse, and delaying it will lead to higher costs in the future. It’s like knowing you have a leaking roof but putting off the repair. Any homeowner knows that the cost to repair can cause catastrophic damage if you don’t fix it immediately.

As we delayed needed Stafford County projects, the costs of those projects continued to increase naturally.
A $65 million high school that we needed to plan for years ago now costs $154 million. Even worse, the delay in building it pushes up against the need to build another high school, the county’s seventh and the county’s 18th elementary school. Enrollment projections also indicate a need for another middle school.

The Early Childhood Education program is projected to expand beyond its classroom capacity within the next few years, requiring these students to be put back in elementary schools – creating more capacity pressures in elementary schools.

Good planning would have had these projects due at different times, not all at the same time.

I get that it is easy to criticize the past, and hindsight is 2020. But I submit it isn’t hindsight but the value or fresh eyes. Hindsight, or retrospectives, as I like to think of them, are only valuable if you use them to change behaviors by learning from them.

I suggest we draw a line in the sand as we can’t do anything about the past. A sunk cost is a sunk cost. Our compassion and tunnel vision to keep taxes low put us where we are now: a wealthy county that spends its money elsewhere and doesn’t invest at home.

There is good news. In 2018, 2019, and 2020, we changed our course, and the Board increased its investments in schools and infrastructure.

Smith Lake Water Treatment facility looks completely different and reflects the new heart the county has. We have invested in employees, including public safety, to ensure they are paid living wages. We have protected our retirees from ensuring they have health plans.

But we still haven’t built our needed schools, paid teachers what they deserve, provided a safe place for disabled individuals in our courtrooms, or rebuilt our crumbling roads and fire stations. All of those projects were pushed out into the future because we simply did not have the money to do them.

We made up a lot of ground in the past three years. Now, in its fear of raising taxes, the Board is backing down yet again on investing in Stafford. In our last budget meeting, a set of slides showed how much we would need to cut out of our budget and the impact on future taxes if we did.

The need to raise taxes to $1.09 soon to make up for not raising taxes in the past is sobering. Our citizens deserve a correction. We need to invest in our future.

We need to correct the underfunding of the past, close the gap needed to build our infrastructure, maintain what we have as efficiently as possible, and provide amenities that keep residents and workers here in Stafford. In other words, we need to invest in building our community.

For an average increase of $130 a year to Stafford property owners, we can stay the course and make up for bad but well-meaning decisions.

Most board members don’t like where we are, but the facts speak for themselves, and I promised to not sugarcoat the truth, no matter how distasteful. Keeping the tax rates at the recommended amounts is fiscally and socially responsible. Ironically, increasing taxes can decrease the rate of growth in Stafford County, a priority set by the Board.