BY DAN TELVOCK
Spotsylvania County supervisors are one step closer to having their first vote on whether to join Virginia Railway Express.
A public hearing is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Aug. 18.
Supervisor Gary Skinner, a VRE supporter, asked for the special meeting to be held at Courtland High School, expecting a large crowd for the first public hearing on VRE membership in nearly 20 years.
But Supervisor Gary Jackson is calling for an overhaul of VRE operations before he votes to have the county join the regional mass transit system.
VRE runs from Fredericksburg and Manassas to Union Station in Washington.
Stafford County and Fredericksburg help subsidize VRE, but for almost two decades the Spotsylvania Board of Supervisors has avoided joining.
VRE estimates that there are almost 1,000 riders who live in Spotsylvania, and neighboring localities have complained that they are subsidizing those riders.
Supervisor Jerry Logan, who is the swing vote on the seven-member Spotsylvania board, recently held a VRE Summit at which numerous questions were asked about the service.
On Tuesday night, Logan, along with three other board members, supported sending the VRE issue to a public hearing.
Supervisors Emmitt Marshall and T.C. Waddy voted against having a hearing. Jackson was absent.
Jackson said he left the meeting early for personal reasons. He said he plans to vote on VRE, and he's 98 percent sure he'll vote against it.
"The public hearing is important to me, but we've been debating this for years so I am not sure what new revelations will come out of the public hearing," he said.
The Board of Supervisors has had numerous closed-door meetings recently to discuss the VRE master agreement.
Jackson said he is not confident that changes can be made to the contract that will satisfy his concerns.
He said the way VRE is set up pits locality against locality and leads to arguments.
"It is public transportation, and the state should manage it like they manage the roads and let VRE compete with alternative modes of transportation like everything else does," Jackson said. "The real key here is whether the other jurisdictions want to seriously entertain reforming the way VRE is organized and how it operates. That would attract other localities."
Matt Kelly, a Fredericksburg city councilman and VRE Operations Board member, said the rail service is not a perfect system but he doesn't think it needs a complete overhaul.
He said there is not a lot of infighting with Spotsylvania leaders over VRE.
"To take the attitude 'We will sit here and wait for the state to take over,' I don't think that is a realistic view," Kelly said. "I think people are looking at this the wrong way and ignoring the dynamics of this region."
Kelly said the population in this region will double in two decades. The area will always have work ties to the north, he said.
Nearly 70 percent of Stafford County's workers leave the county for employment, and in Spotsylvania it's about 68 percent, according to a Census Bureau survey released last year. Workers in the two counties report spending nearly as much time getting to work as people who live in Queens and the Bronx, boroughs of New York City.
Dan Telvock: 540/374-5438
Email: dtelvock@freelancestar.com
WHAT: The Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors will receive public comment on joining the regional commuter rail service. WHEN: Tuesday, Aug. 18, 6:30 p.m. WHERE: Courtland High School auditorium |