AIRLIE — Stafford County leaders pumped the brakes on a possible tax increase to fund county road improvements.
County Administrator Thomas Foley told the county Board of Supervisors on Saturday that the government would need to increase the county budget 10-fold to pay for $190 million in needed road improvements in the county.
“Per county policy, the debt payment cannot be more than 10 percent of what’s coming in,” said Foley.
Stafford leaders back off push for roads tax hike
That policy, set by the Board of Supervisors, is to maintain the county’s coveted AAA bond rating, which makes it cheaper for the county to borrow money.
The county would need to hike the tax rate by five cents on every dollar, which would generate $8.4 million a year for road improvements. That tax increase is would be predicated on voter approval during a November voter referendum, and the county selling a bond to pay for the projects, and taking on additional debt.
Getting the cash up front will be important for the contractors that will design and build the improved roads.
“Contractors are going to want to see a commitment to see that the county is going to fund something or else they won’t develop projects,” said Keith Dayton, a former deputy county administrator now working part-time to develop the county’s road improvement list.
Dayton spent the past year studying the county’s roads. Staring with a list of 2,500, he narrowed the list down to 63 roads that are in dire need of improvements, making two lists — streets with more than 1,700 cars per day and those with fewer cars than that.
Butler Road in Falmouth, between Route 1 and Castle Rock Drive topped the list with more than 1,700 cars per day. Three people have died in 45 crashes along the less-than-a-mile stretch of two-lane road since 2016.
Garrisonville Road at Interstate 95, Shelton Shop, Butler, White Oak, and Morton roads also ranked high on the list.
On the smaller road list, Woodstock Lane, which intersects with Route 1 at Taylor’s Store in Widewater, ranked at the top with five crashes with one injury since 2016 on the street which is about a tenth-of-mile long.
Falls Run Drive, Brooke and Kellogg Mill roads, and Lichfield Boulevard also ranked high on this list.
Each street that was studied was assigned a score based on the Virginia Department of Transportation traffic count and crash data. Routes 1, 3, and 17 were not examined in the study.
Most of the fixes the recommended by the study are to widen the lane width of these streets to 10-feet-wide, up from seven in some places, and to add two-feet wide shoulders on each side.
Dayton told Supervisors there is an opportunity to work with VDOT, which is working to repave many of these streets, to add the shoulders during the re-pavement process that will be underway this summer.
The Stafford County Board of Supervisors held a two-day retreat at the Airlie Conference Center near Warrenton on Friday and Saturday where it discussed development and education issues, in addition to transportation.
