To the Editor:
The British call credit card charges the “Never Never.” That is the attitude of the Fairfax Board of Supervisors (the BOS) with the current $100 million bond issue on the ballot. Buy anything you want that sounds good and put it on the Never Never. Let future BOS figure how to pay for it.
Certainly don’t even disclose to voters what is to be financed. Instead call it a “Transportation Bond Referendum.”
In one sentence the BOS could have disclosed on the ballot the purpose of the bond issue. The proposed expenditures are: Various sidewalks and signs, $77.5 million; six spot road improvements, $16 million; 14 bike trail improvements, $6.5 million.
This referendum will not affect traffic jams one iota. There are no measures of congestion relief, U.S. Transportation Department cost-benefit analysis or even studies showing the obvious lack of existing bicycle trail use.
The Fairfax County Taxpayers’ Alliance urges voters to oppose the bond issue as unjustified, obligating taxes for wasteful projects in the future. The BOS has been raising taxes at a rate twice the rate of inflation. As a result, the BOS has driven over $6 billion of income out of Fairfax to nearby counties as shown in www.howmoneywalks.com.