By PAUL MILDE
Stafford Aquia District Supervisor
Last fall, the Board of Supervisors narrowly voted to tear down the current 285,000 square foot Stafford High School and replace it with a new 275,000 square foot Stafford High School. The estimated cost to Stafford’s taxpayers for this proposal: $66 million.
At the time the Board of Supervisors was considering this venture, two of my Board colleagues and I argued for a different approach. We promoted renovating Stafford High School instead of tearing it down and rebuilding. To us, this made sound economic sense. Why tie up $66 million in County borrowing capacity to build a new school when renovating the existing facility would fulfill our needs for about a third of that?
Believing and trusting in the wisdom and sound judgment of the people of Stafford County, I even proposed putting the question to the people in a referendum. The reaction to my proposal – as voiced in letters and a lead editorial in The Free Lance-Star – was negative. I responded by submitting an opinion piece detailing my reasons for supporting renovating over demolishing and building a new Stafford High.
Now, just a few months after the decision was made to build a brand new Stafford High School, we are seeing one of the downsides of that choice.
As Stafford County has been working through the process of preparing its budget for Fiscal Year 2014, there have been calls for teacher pay raises. In some cases, school system employees have submitted letters to the editor in The Free Lance-Star calling for pay increases. Their arguments for higher pay are substantive and persuasive. But, the decision to build a new Stafford High School clearly demonstrated that teacher pay was not the school system’s top priority.
The teacher pay debate – and the scarcity of resources to fund it – is the first real consequence of the costly decision to rebuild instead of renovate. Stafford County has effectively prioritized having a brand new facility over strengthening the compensation for the people charged with the responsibility of delivering a quality education for our children inside that facility.
In my view, those priorities are entirely backward.
Although Stafford has one of the best economic environments in Virginia, we still are in the midst of a tenuous and struggling recovery. And with many of our residents directly affected by the consequences of the federal sequester, County government must tread cautiously when it comes to setting tax rates. Now is not the time to raise taxes. We should instead be looking for ways to make our tax code more effective in aiding the growth of our local economy, as the Board is doing.
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