Changes for Historic Signs

Stafford County, Va. –– As Stafford builds its brand a historical destination, some changes are coming to a $700,000 plan to erect special signs depicting the county as George Washington’s boyhood home.

Tourism officials and the Virginia Department of Transportation entered into an agreement that would allow the county to place several blue signs, large signs on major roads and small ones on by ways, featuring the county’s logo and a depiction of a young George Washington.

Of the large, or monument, signs that will be placed at major gateways into the county such as Interstate 95 and at the Fredericksburg line, they will now stand on two large posts and not stone bases as was originally planned. The changes were requested by VDOT in fears the stone bases could be hazardous to motorists in the event of a crash.

Those stone bases were supposed to be reflective of the stone taken from what is now Government Island Park to build the U.S. Capitol and other buildings in Washington. On the highway, the monument signs will replace green road signs currently welcome drivers into the county, with the signs also noting the county as a “certified business location.”

And though Williamsburg also has similar special blue signs along their highways that were grandfathered into VDOT’s historic signage program, federal transportation officials ruled Stafford’s new pilot agreement that signs are not to be placed in pubic right-of-ways along the interstate. With an installation timeframe of Fall 2012, that has prompted county officials to knock on the doors of private land owners who own parcels along the highway and ask if they can put signs there.

“The elimination of monument signs in the Interstate right-of-way, while significant, they would be a safety hazard and would not be allowed…this is a Federal Highway Administration requirement, this is not VDOT,” said Acting Stafford County Deputy Administrator Keith Dayton. “They wanted us to identify very specific locations for the signs. Originally we were going to try for very general locations, hire a contractor and let them work out the details but we couldn’t get the program approved that way.”

The signs will be paid for with revenues generated by the county’s five-percent hotels tax. The overall price tag of the program, however, raised questions.

“You said the project cost was estimated at $700,000, but phase one [of the project] is [$250,000] and that’s only 15 signs, that works out to about $17,000 per sign. You have about 90 signs coming,” said Stafford Hartwood District Supervisor Gary Snellings to Dayton.

In his response, Dayton assured Snellings that initial larger cost would be for the monument signs and all subsequent signs would be small and less expensive to install. He also said county staff would to try to reduce the cost of the overall project.