Board Evades Feedback On Toll Road Increase
We are about to be hit with an excessive toll increase on the Dulles Toll Road by a timid state board that is running from the ratepayers, leaving us no way to protest. The Commonwealth Transportation Board, a group of appointees charged with giving the public the right to comment on this proposed toll increase, decided not to face the users of the Dulles Toll Road and is hiding out in Richmond, holding hearings safely away from angry commuters. I guess if turnout is low, they can always claim we don't care. [The board is scheduled to vote today on the proposed toll increase.]
After encountering public outrage over this blatant disregard of community rights, some local officials scheduled opportunities to allow us to comment. But to whom? Is it before the full Commonwealth Transportation Board?
I want to look all the members of the CTB in the face and tell them why I object. I want this board to come to Northern Virginia and tell me why it's in my best interest for them to double the tolls at the ramps and sharply increase them at the main plaza.
Obviously, our elected representatives do not support us. As evidence, I was in Richmond on Feb. 7, where I spoke with Sen. Janet D. Howell (D-Fairfax) and Del. Kenneth R. Plum (D-Fairfax) about this issue. Both expressed an unwillingness to speak with Gov. Mark R. Warner, who is a member of their party, about asking his appointed board to hold the hearings in Northern Virginia. This stunning disregard by our elected officials, and the CTB, of the public's right to comment demonstrates that the fix is in.
For years, the Dulles Toll Road has been the state's cash cow, and officials intend to milk it, and us, until we stand up and say, "Enough!"
Since it's an election year, the word "enough" should become a mantra to remind our elected officials that in a democracy, leaders serve only with the consent of the governed.
Vera Hannigan
Reston
Fee-Hike Plan Should Have Senior Golfers Teed Off
The Fairfax County Park Authority has looked into the future and completely misread it ["Plan Would Raise Parks Fees for Seniors," Fairfax Extra, Jan. 27]. Instead of seeing the need for more open space that might be used by its citizens for recreation, it has determined that the best course of action is to identify one of the groups most in need of such facilities, and the one most likely to use them in off-peak hours -- seniors -- and price out the poorest among them. Naturally, it expects these same seniors -- the fastest-growing group of taxpayers in the county, by the authority's own reckoning -- to support Park Authority bonds.
The proposed increase in fees for seniors on county golf courses makes no sense. I'm in my seventies and play golf at Pinecrest, Burke Lake, Greendale, the two courses at Twin Lakes and semi-public facilities throughout the region about once a week during the fair-weather months, so I'm subsidized to the tune of about $100 a year under present policy.
The Park Authority is correct in its assumption that seniors will grow both in number and as a percentage of the county's residents, but for it to work backward from that to the solution that poorer seniors must be driven from these courses by draconian price increases defies logic, especially since -- at least as it relates to Pinecrest, Greendale and Burke Lake, the facilities most often cited in the media -- the authority has its facts wrong. The idea that seniors are overwhelming these courses is simply not true.
No serious affluent golfer of any age would play these courses on a regular basis. Anyone with means and serious intent is a member of a country club or plays the rapidly proliferating semi-private courses throughout the region that compete aggressively for off-peak affluent players. Most of the golfers playing Burke Lake, Pinecrest and Greendale are far from wealthy, and I invite the members of the Park Authority to check these parking lots for BMWs and Mercedes.
That senior charges should increase while junior golfers retain their present rates is rank age discrimination and defies logic. The increase for seniors is designed to head off an avalanche in golfers, while junior fees are set to encourage growth of play to develop the customers of tomorrow. In view of the new holes coming on line in Lorton, are there really going to be too many off-peak players?
Taxes on senior-owned property increase far faster than seniors' retirement incomes, and they are under great cost pressures. Yet they are called upon -- begged -- to support school and park bonds. While the Park Authority judges seniors to be daft, if the proposed rate increase for seniors stands, older members of the community would be foolish to support any future park bond issues.
