Hey, Arlington County Board, Where’s the Fire Station?
Sixteen years after the Arlington County Board convinced voters to support a 1990 bond referendum (requires Adobe), and again in 1994, for a new Cherrydale fire station, the county is still dithering. What about the $4 million bond referendum in 1998 for a Westover Library? These are just two examples cited in a resolution approved 31-19 by the Arlington County Civic Federation urging both the County and School boards to not “put construction projects on bond referenda until reasonably complete designs and sound budgets for the projects are available.”
In this week’s Arlington Connection, Seth Rosen writes, “Next month residents will be asked to accept an additional $8 million bond for the library project, which is still in its infancy nearly a decade after it was originally conceived. ‘Eight years later the old library building is still standing there,’ said Beth Wolffe, head of the Civic Federation’s Schools Committee.”
Rosen also noted that “School Board Vice Chair Libby Garvey said it would be harder to get school bonds passed in odd-numbered years when voter turnout was lower. She added that the school system "is not interested in running a political campaign every year" to secure the support of the community.” In fact, the only argument that school advocates could make at the Federation meeting was that if bond referenda were presented to voters in odd-numbered years, there was a greater risk of their being defeated. As always, taxpayers get to foot the bill for fiscal irresponsibility. See our October 4 Growls for news about next month's bond referenda from the October 4 Civic Federation meeting.