What's the real cost of the cross-county connector?

Friday, June 5, 2009

These costs pale in comparison to the elephant in the room: the cross-county connector that the commissioners want to build between Middletown Road and Bryans Road. Newspaper reports have put the cost at $70 million footed entirely by county taxpayers, but the full amount would surely be much higher. How much higher?

We need to have an economic evaluation, using today's prices, of the real taxpayer cost of this proposed unpopular and un-needed highway.

Then there are the costs of losing the services provided by the natural resources that would be destroyed by the highway and the growth it would enable. Think of the cost of losing cool and clean air and filtered clean water that is provided for free by wooded lands. As a result, the health of the Mattawoman Creek would decline and we would have to pay more to try to restore it (billions have been spent to restore the Chesapeake Bay, yet it is not restored).

A number of people testified against this highway proposal and its cost to taxpayers at the hearing. We taxpayers should have a mass revolt and condemn it. Otherwise, we will lose twice. Once by the loss of natural resources, and again by bearing the cost of the highway and the sprawl development it would enable, which is known to cost more in the demand for additional services than is generated by the property tax revenue sprawl generates.

We need to stop business as usual and switch to Smart Growth viable alternatives.

Sherry Hession, La Plata