STAFFORD — Residents must wait another two weeks before they find out if Stafford leaders will fund the construction of a new courthouse.
The Stafford County Board of Supervisors unanimously voted to kick the can down the road when it comes to approving its annual capital improvement budget on Tuesday. The Board will now take up the 10-year, $458 million proposed plan at its next meeting on Tuesday, June 19.
A new courthouse, at $55 million, is the second-largest expense on the plan behind a $141 million sixth county high school. Also on the list, a new $50 million elementary school, a $3 million rebuild of Hartwood Elementary School, and $11 million in renovations to Ferry Farm Elementary School.
Garrisonville District Supervisor Mark Dudenhefer wants to pull the courthouse off of this year’s CIP, moving it back five or six years in order to fund needed school improvements.
“We have front-loaded a courthouse for $55 million and we’re still talking about schools that won’t be ready when we’re over capacity,” said Dudenhefer.
The school division will run out of space for new students by 2022 due to overcrowding as the county’s population continues to grow. Afterward, it will bring in trailers, dubbed “learning cottages,” if it has to.
“We’re not overcrowding their courthouse. The new courthouse has room for six circuit court judges, right now we only have three circuit court judges. We have time,” added Dudenhefer.
Hartwood District Supervisor Gary Snellings despises the idea of trailers at elementary schools and pushed for approval of the CIP.
“The most important thing in this CIP is ‘P.’ It is a plan that we can change anytime,” he said.
Leaders also aren’t so hot on a plan to purchase the old Fredericksburg Christian School in North Stafford to house pre-kindergarten students. If purchased for $10.6 million, the 14-year-old building near the intersection of Route 610 and Shelton Shop Road will need renovations that would be completed in 2020.
Leaders are also concerned about the relatively low amount available of transportation funds in the plan — $12 million over the next 10 years. That amount of money is not enough to fund any major traffic improvements, said Dudenhefer.
“I don’t want to have the kids or commuters wait [for improvements],” he added.
A county-wide study of roads and traffic patterns is now underway. The results of that study will be used to not only update the 2004 Youth Driver Taskforce study identifying dangerous roads, but also be used to identify needed improvements throughout the county. Once the data is compiled, the projects will be ranked from most to least important, similar to the SmartScale process, the method state officials use to rank their transportation projects.
County Administrator Thomas Foley said the process to prioritize the projects in this year’s CIP went better than last year, however, there is little room for improvement to the current plan.
“I think what you have in front of you is the best thing that you are going to have in front of you,” said Foley, urging the Board to vote on the plan prior to the vote to defer it.
