Letter to the Editor

A writer challenges Stafford's Board of Supervisors to "choose your hard."

Choose Your Hard

The saying “choose your hard” aptly frames life as a series of hard choices and equally hard consequences. You wouldn’t know it from the current stir of popular political rage in Stafford, but “Choose your hard” also frames our current tax rate dilemma quite well.

Let me explain. Some politicians claim if we hold the line against increased taxes, we will avoid Armageddon-scale consequences. Don’t get me wrong – I too have bills that seem to grow faster than my salary. However, we need to acknowledge that when we choose higher tax bills, we are paying more for services that are also typically better. When we pay less, we pay for the resulting diminished services in tradeoffs – the hard choices which include:

• More thorough facility maintenance now, or more expensive repairs later

• Faster response from more seasoned deputies, or slower response from fewer deputies who eventually leave Stafford for better pay elsewhere

• Fully developed emergency services, or cheaper but riskier fire and EMT capabilities

• More and better-educated teachers who bring critical skills to the classroom, or more substitutes with less education in bigger classes, with predictable effects on student outcomes

• School bus systems that serve all residents, or atrophied transportation departments that require large “no service” areas and staggered school bell schedules

• Libraries that provide full services to our student and adult community, or ones that are often closed and offer less to the county even when they are open

• Parks that provide well-tended recreation areas and ample sports facilities, or fewer, more crowded and austere facilities

Stafford already trends toward the austere, but a bill has nonetheless come due; in 2021 the Board of Supervisors voted to use federal grants from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) to pay for sheriff deputies’ raises. ARPA funds expired on December 31, 2024, requiring Stafford to begin paying for the raises from the general fund. All other things being equal, the cost to taxpayers should be embedded in a two-cent increase in the real estate tax rate.

However, hard-liners of the Stafford Republican Committee have resolved that Republican supervisors Bohmke and English must join Crystal Vanuch in refusing any residential real estate tax increase until a review of Stafford and SCPS budgets is conducted. Apparently, the local GOP intelligentsia are unaware that the supervisors already review both budgets annually at public meetings and work sessions. Also, they seem unaware the School Board and Supervisors already hold annual joint meetings to discuss SCPS budgets in detail. In their defense, GOP elites might not know of the joint meetings because Republican supervisors have a habit of canceling the meetings and missing the meetings they don’t cancel. Vanuch’s manufactured crises are even more noteworthy in that the 2021 effort to use ARPA funds for the deputies’ pay raises was her brainchild. If she is successful, Stafford will face the GOP-made dilemma of funding the deputies’ pay raises by cutting existing programs, or cutting deputies’ pay. Trust me, they’ll try to cut the school budget.

To make matters worse, this policy stand was voted in at last week’s GOP committee meeting by 70 mostly unelected die-hards who plainly felt their little group was more worthy of influencing supervisors than the 54,000 voters from their districts who were cut out of the discussion. This is today’s Stafford GOP in a nutshell – alarming citizens and then promising them salvation for the price of their votes, sidelining the same voters, and hiding the real price of GOP policies while party elites serve themselves in undisclosed ways.

Don’t be fooled – all decisions come with costs. Know the costs to you, your family, and your community. Choose your hard, or it will choose you.

Michael Parkyn
Stafford County

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