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By Marc, October 26, 2011 10:10 am

George Washington Supervisor Harry Crisp has strongly endorsed Charles Latimer for the seat he will be vacating later this year, as he chose not to seek re-election. Per the Free-Lance Star:

It has been my a pleasure to serve the residents of the George Washington District on the Stafford County Board of Supervisors for the past four years. The experience has been rewarding; however, I chose not to run for re-election in order to spend more time with my family.

Charles Latimer has my full support in the election for this seat. Mr. Latimer is a retired Marine master gunnery sergeant and is currently employed as a human resources program manager.

He has been an active member of our community as a coach for youth football, as a mentor for the Big Brothers Big Sisters program, and as president of his homeowners association.

Mr. Latimer will put the well-being of residents above partisan politics. He will work hard to preserve the remaining open spaces in the George Washington District, to invest in our kids through strong support for our schools and parks and recreation programs, to fix our roads, to provide good public safety, and to protect and preserve our natural and cultural resources.

Charles Latimer is the best choice to continue the tradition that the voters of George Washington District have strongly preferred for the past 12 years.

Very well said by Harry. Enough can’t be said about the great job Harry has done representing the George Washington District over the last four years. Thank you, Harry!

Filling Harry’s shoes will be a tall order, but Charles is clearly the right person for the job! On November 8, 2011, let’s continue the “tradition that the voters of George Washington District have strongly preferred for the past 12 years” by voting for Charles Latimer.

You can learn more about Charles by visiting his website.

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By Marc, September 25, 2011 11:49 am

I don’t know about you, but here in the Fredericksburg area—during the early autumn months of odd-numbered years—I am struck by how state roads that for two years prior remained pockmarked with Buick-sized potholes suddenly are milled and expertly paved. All of this, courtesy of our munificent Speaker of the House of Delegates Bill Howell. Of course, Bill’s up for re-election…and he really wants your vote!

Nuthin’ happens around here for no reason.

In Stafford County, it is always about politics. And, the overly aggressive arrest and handcuffing of #BananaMan by Deputies of the Stafford County Sheriff’s Department was no accident. That is because this year, Sheriff Charlie Jett is up for re-election…and he really wants your vote!

If the Colonial Forge High School sophomore Bryan Thompson’s antics hadn’t been captured by a mobile device camera—and replayed on YouTube more than 66,000 times—the BananaMan episode would never have made national or international news.

And none of us would be asking the deep and troubling questions about how a funny, good-natured, high-functioning autistic kid could be punished so severely for a high school prank so benign.

But thanks to social media, Stafford County and the world have gotten a sobering view of how Sheriff Charlie Jett’s burning desire for re-election got in the way of common decency…and common sense.

A Colonial Forge parent working the food concessions told us that she wasn’t in the stands to see BananaMan’s on-the-field brouhaha. But, she witnessed—beforehand—sheriff’s deputies acting overly aggressive with some kids buying refreshments.

What is going on here? Are Sheriff Charlie’s recent visions of flash mobs looting Stafford County convenience stores affecting his policing strategy? Or, is it just politics as usual for Stafford County—where the winning strategy for re-election as sheriff is to show how tough you are on crime by having your deputies rough up a nice kid in a store-bought banana costume before a large crowd of onlookers?

Stafford Sheriff Candidate Chuck Feldbush (I) thinks it is all of these things and more. “This is the latest example of a department going bananas over harmless kid stuff while real crime – violent crime – is threatening the peace and safety of Stafford County,” said Mr. Feldbush.

“Slapping cuffs on a kid – who has a disability – for running down the sidelines at a high school football game in a banana suit is a complete overreach of the authority of the sheriff’s department.” Mr. Feldbush continued, “It’s a disturbing sign that Sheriff Jett has lost control of his deputies – and this is placing our kids at risk.”

According to the Virginia State Police, violent crime is up 66% in Stafford.

Where has the Free-Lance Star been on reporting about this brouhaha with law enforcement? The overlords of your hometown newspaper are probably too distracted by thoughts of cashing the $1.3M check they stand to collect for hosting Sheriff Charlie’s overpriced $40M public safety communication system on their broadcast towers.

After all, what are friends for?

And where does Stafford County Commonwealth’s Attorney candidate Eric Olsen figure in all of this? The overzealous “Law & Order” [intellectual property-stealing] prosecutor is probably fuming that BananaMan’s ten-day suspension has ended early and that he won’t be able to put the kid on the stand in a jury trial.

But Eric, have no fear. We hear that there was a Grape running amok around Stafford this week, too. (Times a waistin’ and you and the Man in the Yellow Hat need to go find him!)

What has BananaMan taught us all? It’s politics, stupid!

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By Marc, September 24, 2011 5:59 pm

Could a lack of accountability by the Stafford County School Board have led to the hiring of Dr. Karen Spillman, the Colonial Forge High School principal who we discovered—through publicly available sources—was convicted in 2007 in Prince William County, Virginia for public intoxication?

Dr. Spillman’s name is all over the internet and social media like Facebook for famously suspending Colonial Forge High School student Brian Thompson ten days following his benign Banana Man [high school football game half-time] prank.

Parents are asking administration officials and their school board members simple but serious questions, such as: what motivated Colonial Forge’s new principal and Sheriff’s Deputies to “go medieval” on the smart, funny, and high-functioning autistic kid running around the field in a store-bought banana costume? And, is [Principal Spillman] temperamentally well suited to lead Stafford County’s academics leading high school?

We believe Superintendent Randy Bridges acted properly in bringing an end to the BananaMan controversy. But does the school system Dr. Bridges runs have the necessary funding to run itself—and to assure proper administrative accountability? Budgets are stretched so far beyond tolerance—we know that because the Stafford County Board of Supervisors, led by its chair Mark Dudenhefer—took a chainsaw to the school system’s current operating budget.

Year-after-year, the chain-sawing of school operating budgets gets worse, thus year-after-year, staff members and administrators do even more with much less.

This year, Chairman Dudenhefer gleefully reduced the school system’s budgets to the point of utter absurdity. So, it is not outside the realm of possibility that decision-makers in Stafford Schools—who force themselves to do more work with less headcount—look over their shoulders and take time-saving shortcuts to complete critical hiring.

Did overwork and shortcuts [like not using Google or other search engines to query] lead Stafford Schools to avoid necessary due-diligence in regards to vetting candidates for its open assistant principal and principal assignments? Is it conceivable that an overworked senior administrator in Stafford Schools—under pressure from up on high to hire—have rushed the hiring of Dr. Karen Spillman?

We believe that it has.

Could a better-funded school board have identified the bright red flags in Dr. Spillman’s curriculum vitae?

Perhaps.

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By Marc, September 21, 2011 6:07 pm

If I were Paul Milde (R-Aquia), I’d too want to forget all about the $40 Million public safety radio communication system. I recently wrote about how bad of a deal this was for Stafford taxpayers.

At last night’s Board of Supervisors meeting, the board was presented with an updated Telecommunication Plan – which was to be voted on as an amendment to the Comprehensive Plan.

Director of Planning and Zoning, Jeff Harvey, got things started by presenting the key points of the proposed Telecommunication Plan – which is meant to address broadband communication in its various forms and the guidelines for placement of towers throughout the county. Of particular note, the plan “encourages the placement of telecommunication towers on county owned properties.”

What ensued was an unexpected discussion on tower leases and the public safety radio communication system between Anthony Romanello and Paul Milde.

Milde wondered whether it was “legal” for the county to be in the business of building towers and leasing towers to individual users.

Romanello said, “We certainly could have as part of our public radio communication system. The direction from the board, which was probably six years ago now, was no new towers. So we made a conscious decision to work with the existing infrastructure that was in the county, which is why were in most cases we are leasing.”

Milde then realizing that he had stepped in it shot back to Romanello that he wasn’t talking about the public safety radio communication system. If I were Milde, I’d try to avoid talking about this at all costs. After all, he voted for Sheriff Jett’s outrageous deal in the first place.

Romanello responded by saying that “I understand that but that would have been an opportunity to go into that business and then to have leased out that space or the existing capacity to the private sector.”

As I’ve previously noted, Supervisors including Milde and Mark Dudenhefer (R-Garrisonville) had previously directed the consultant to “only consider the existing shorter towers [(existing infrastructure)] rather than a potentially less expensive option with fewer taller towers.” Cost containment was not a requirement.

I’m not suggesting that we should have built the towers on county-owned land, but no consideration was given to cheaper options. Romanello’s quote suggests that had we built the towers and leased out any remaining capacity to the private sector that we could have generated revenue for the county. Instead, we negotiated many “sweetheart” long-term leases with outrageous annual escalation rates. What an outstanding job by Sheriff Jett, Milde and Dudenhefer.

I had previously noted my opposition to the way that the radio system was financed – through more expensive Lease Revenue Bonds versus cheaper General Obligation Bonds. Lease Revenue Bonds guarantee repayment from the revenues generated by a specific revenue-generating entity associated with the purpose of the bonds. In Romanello’s example, leasing out excess capacity on the towers would have generated revenue; thus, a case could have been made for these more expensive bonds, if the revenue generated was enough to justify them. However, I still believe voters should have had a say on a procurement of this size.

Where was Milde’s curiosity when he was voting in favor of the public safety radio communication system in the first place? Milde “doesn’t know what the tower owners are charging per spot”? Obviously he has a short-term memory. Let’s review a few examples of what he voted for.

The Thorny Point tower site is costing us $57,000/year with a 15% escalation rate every five years and the Powell tower site is costing us $51,000/year with the same escalation rate as Thorny Point, as a few examples. Let’s not forget that the Free-Lane Star is earning $1.3M from us for one of the towers over the next 30 years (hmm, I wonder). I’ve also been told that the Free-Lance Star had been approached for many years by many parties to lease this tower and those parties were repeatedly turned aside. I guess Jett and company offered them a deal that they couldn’t refuse.

I never cease to be amazed. Thank goodness voters have other options this year: Chuck Feldbush (I-Stafford) for Sheriff, Tim Barbrow (I-Stafford) for Commonwealth’s Attorney and Dean Fetterolf (I-Rock Hill), Charles Latimer (D-George Washington) and Fred Sweat (D-Griffis-Widewater) for Supervisors.

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By Marc, September 1, 2011 10:36 pm

On August 30, 2011, the Stafford County Registrar certified those candidates, in Stafford, who qualified to be on the ballot in the November 8, 2011 general election.

For those interested, here’s a quick rundown of the results.

The Commonwealth’s Attorney race will see Timothy W. Barbrow (I-Stafford) taking on Eric L. Olsen (R-Stafford). To me, this is the race to watch this year. This is the first time in 72 years that a Chichester isn’t on the ballot for this office and it should be very competitive, especially after Olsen’s missteps and controversies (see “Law & Order-gate“, the Switz donation and swirling residency questions). Not to mention the huge amount of buzz around Tim’s candidacy and the fact that he is garnering, from talking to folks in the legal community, a pretty wide swath of early bi-partisan support.

The Sheriff’s race will see retired Prince William County police detective Chuck Feldbush (I-Stafford) taking on incumbent Charles E. Jett (R-Stafford).

The other constitutional offices up for election are all one-horse races:

Soil and Water Conservation Director Tri-County/City District: Mike Lovitt (I-Stafford)
Treasurer: Laura M. Rudy (R-Stafford)
Commissioner of Revenue: Scott A. Mayausky (R-Stafford)

It’s amazing that after all of the county’s accounting problems that Rudy went unchallenged for treasurer. Here’s hoping for a write-in campaign against her.

In a bit of a surprise, Jack R. Cavalier (I-Griffis-Widewater) will look to re-capture the Griffis-Widewater supervisor seat that he lost 4 years ago to Bob Woodson (D-Griffis-Widewater) – who has chosen not to seek re election. Although, he’ll first have to get past O. Keith Angle II (R-Griffis-Widewater) and Fred C. Sweat (D-Griffis-Widewater) to win. This should be an interesting race.

The school board race in Rock Hill district is quite intriguing in that Heather H. Stefl (I-Stafford) is challenging incumbent Patricia A. Healy (I-Stafford). Both are Republicans; however, Patricia Healy has been an ardent supporter of our schools and is deeply respected by Democrats, Republicans and Independents – including me.

Stefl on the other hand represents the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party and serves as the treasurer of the Stafford County Republican Committee.

Stefl actually started out this campaign cycle serving as Jason Pelt’s (R-Stafford) campaign manager, as he sought the republican nomination for Commonwealth’s Attorney against Eric Olsen. Pelt understood that family came first, despite his political ambitions – which was something that Stefl couldn’t understand. So, Pelt parted ways with her.

I respect Pelt for putting family first. The fact that Stefl couldn’t balance family with politics tells me that she is incapable of balancing the well being of our children with her own political ambitions. It’s that simple. Healy is clearly the better choice on so many levels.

Here’s a summary of who else qualified for the remaining races:

George Washington Supervisor: Charles Latimer (D), Robert M. “Bob” Thomas Jr (R)
George Washington School Board: Byron K. Hinton (I), Dewayne McOsker Jr (I)
Rock Hill Supervisor: Dean D. Fetterolf (I), Cord A. Sterling (R)
Griffis-Widewater School Board: Dana H. Reinbolt (I)

In the coming weeks, I’ll try and cover all of these races in some detail.

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By Marc, April 28, 2010 9:32 pm

At a recent meeting of the Stafford County Board of Supervisors, Chairman Mark Dudenhefer (R-Garrisonville) made a stunning statement. He suggested that Republicans could look to make further cuts in the adopted FY’11 by withholding a percentage of county funds (a.k.a. holdback funds).

With the 7 percent holdback, they will have an opportunity to actually affect that budget by impacting that holdback of funds.

He made this statement in reference to Supervisor Susan Stimpson’s (R-Falmouth) statement that she was going to vote against the budget, since she wanted even deeper cuts. He suggested that this was still possible, even after passage, by not appropriating a portion of the holdback funds.

This is in sharp contrast to prior board precedent with regards to the purpose of holdback funds. The intent of holding back a percentage of funds appropriated to the county government and schools has been to avoid the situation where expected revenue is revised downward at the mid-year and it no longer supports the same level of budget expenditures. To me, it certainly makes good fiscal sense to hold back a certain percentage of funds, pending a mid-year review, although I would have required more justification on why 7 percent; however, I am deeply opposed to using this holdback as a way to affect adopted budgets outside of the normal budget process. This smells of politics at its worse.

This also presents significant problems for county government and the school system. They are essentially operating, based on their adopted budgets. If funds are cut surreptitiously, this will create a huge budget nightmare. If Stafford Republicans wanted to address specific budget items, they should have done it within the constraints of the normal budget process. Dude, say it isn’t so?!

If all of that wasn’t bad enough, Stafford Republicans, in approving the FY’11 budget, also voted to withhold the reappropriation of educational federal stimulus funds – pending accounting reports verifying the exact amount of unspent funds in FY’10. The fact is that Stafford Republicans were already provided this information by the school system. You see the information they were already provided doesn’t fit within their preconceived notions. They want to claim that this money was local money and not federal stimulus money, so that they can further cut the school budget by arguing that if they didn’t spend this money last year than they don’t need it this year.

As I previously mentioned, the school system froze expending federal stimulus funds in FY’10, during the FY’11 budget formulation process, to protect against a looming budget cliff that they identified due to significant declines in state and local revenues. The local decline in revenues were not only because of the struggling economy, but was actually exacerbated by Stafford Republicans fiscal irresponsibility.

By withholding these federal stimulus dollars from the school system, Stafford Republicans are potentially jeopardizing continuing a recent step increase given to teachers and other school employees into the next school year. Why you ask? The federal stimulus dollars were included as part of the instructional budget for next year. This instructional budget includes the large majority of employee salaries. If Stafford Republicans were not to reappropriate the $11 million or so of federal stimulus, not only would this raise be in jeopardy, but also significant teacher layoffs would be necessary.

It’s past time that Stafford Republicans stop playing political games with our teachers and children as their pawns! Enough is enough already.

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By Marc, April 23, 2010 10:29 pm

The Republican majority on the Stafford County Board of Supervisors sent a clear message on Tuesday evening to county residents and potential new businesses, “They do not value education and would prefer to play politics with our children’s future.”

They voted to underfund Stafford Schools to the tune of $5.6 million, providing a total of $100,693.774 in local money. The original request by the School Board was $106,371,217. This is approximately a 5.5 percent decrease from what was requested; and, it is approximately 3 percent less than the amount of county funds transferred to the schools in FY’10.

When adding in other revenue (state and federal), the Board of Supervisors adopted a total school operating budget for FY’11 of $237,261,940.  This is also a nearly 5 percent decrease in the total operating school budget compared to FY’10. The total budgeted amount in FY’10 was $248,480,087.

I know, I know, Republicans will tell you that the school system only estimates that they will spend $233,434,297 for FY’10, so they will claim to have provided a overall year-over-year increase for FY’11. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

Here’s the truth. In formulating the FY’11 budget, the school system projected a severe decline in total expected revenues. This was partly due to FY’10 non-recurring revenue sources (e.g. carryover funds from FY’09 being expended) and declining state and local revenues. The reasons for declining state revenues were mostly due to economic conditions; however, it was Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA) and Speaker Bill Howell (R-28^th) who chose to cover the majority of the state budget shortfall by slashing education spending.

Local revenue was declining too, but it wasn’t only because of economic conditions. You see, Stafford Republicans decided to exacerbate the county’s budget shortfall by repealing the business tax. This is the same tax that was estimated to generate $3.7 million in FY’10 and projected to generate $120 million over the next 20 years. In order to pay to repeal this tax, they used a portion of a school surplus that was discovered last year – due to a county accounting error. Add in the lost revenue from this tax in FY’11 and you’re staring down a self-inflicted $11.1 million problem created by Stafford Republicans. These funds could have been used to fully fund our schools.

Stafford Schools were dealing with a projected $25 million plus revenue shortfall for FY’11, due to these fiscal realities, so they took aggressive measures to avoid a potentially catastrophic budget situation. These measures included freezing expenditures of FY’10 federal stimulus funds, closely monitoring discretionary spending and instituting a hiring freeze. That is the reason why FY’10 spending is less than what was actually budgeted. This doesn’t mean that the school system doesn’t need these additional funds. They just needed them more in FY’11 to avoid a looming budget cliff, which would have resulted in significant teacher layoffs.

You see the school system did the responsible thing. This is more than what I can say for the county whose expenditures have regularly exceeded revenues in recent years. Due to this fiscal irresponsibility, the school system has had to bail out the county on numerous occasions. These bailouts have come at the expense of our teachers and children.

Also, can anyone remember the last time the county had a “clean” audit? In recent years, they have been repeatedly cited for significant deficiencies in their internal controls that resulted in reconciliations between the Treasurer’s Office and Finance Department not being performed in a timely and consistent manner throughout the year; and, just last year, they were cited for a material weakness in their internal controls that resulted in the discovery of a school surplus.

Here’s how their auditor defines the various deficiencies:

A control deficiency in an entity’s internal control over compliance exists when the design or operation of a control does not allow management or employees, in the normal course of performing their assigned functions, to prevent or detect noncompliance with a type of compliance requirement of a federal program on a timely basis. A significant deficiency is a control deficiency, or combination of control deficiencies, that adversely affects the entity’s ability to administer a federal program such that there is more than a remote likelihood that noncompliance with a type of compliance requirement of a federal program that is more than inconsequential will not be prevented or detected by the entity’s internal control.

A material weakness is a significant deficiency, or combination of significant deficiencies, that results in more than a remote likelihood that material noncompliance with a type of compliance requirement of a federal program will not be prevented or detected by the entity’s internal control.

If this doesn’t provide a moment of pause for folks, the fact that the Republican majority on the Board of Supervisors decided to take some financial authority away from the School Board by categorically funding the school operating budget this year should. I would think that they would focus on getting their house in order versus micro-managing the School Board.

This same majority on the board claims that by categorically funding the schools that the School Board will be forced to provide step increases for teachers, while denying administrators any raises. This shows how little they understand the school budget and budgets in general. The administrative category doesn’t ONLY contain administrators, but also critical “instructional” support personnel. It contains school nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists, psychologists, speech therapists, social workers, and many other critical positions.

Let’s also not forget the other line items in the budget. Without bus drivers to get our children to school, how many of us would have to significantly adjust our work schedules to drop our children off? What about custodians who help maintain a clean environment or school security guards who help provide a safe environment for our children to be able to learn? What about technology teachers or computer technicians?

Clearly all of these employees play a critical role in educating our children. The fact is that the Republican majority on the board has neither “fully funded” the instruction line in the budget or any other lines for that matter. This is how they define working with the School Board. At least Supervisor Cord Sterling (R-Rock Hill) was being honest when he called for folks to fire the School Board. You see the Republican majority has no interest in working with the School Board; they simply want to get rid of them.

It’s also easy for them to say that teachers should get a step increase, but any step increase has a recurring annual cost. Part of the money for a step increase approved late last year by the School Board is currently being held in abeyance. Is the Board of Supervisors willing to provide the $3.8 million necessary to fund this step increase annually? I think not. It’s just more lip service for politicians more interested in the next election versus educating our children and providing fair compensation to our educators.

For Republicans, it’s easier to point fingers at the School Board then at themselves. The 12^th richest county in the nation should at least be able to provide fair pay to teachers. Currently, teachers in Stafford County make 10 percent below the national average.

I’d also like to remind folks that even if Republicans provided the same amount of funding to our schools as they did last year, this would still be an overall decrease in funding year-over-year. There are many fixed costs that rise annually, which must be funded. Just this year, health care premiums have risen for employees by 8.2 percent. The school system’s share of this increase equates to $1,807,039. What about mandatory increases for the Virginia Retirement System and retiree health insurance to the tune of $2,600,000.

It’s also not like operational and maintenance costs are decreasing. School buses are a good example. As part of Gov. McDonnell’s school budget cuts, he chose to extend the life of school buses from 12 to 15 years. The cost to maintain these buses past 12 years will be significant.

So simply providing the same amount of funding to the school system year-over-year would actually constitute a funding decrease. As I mentioned above, the Republican majority actually provided 3 percent less local funds than they provided last year.

Our schools are simply not a priority for this Republican majority. You need look no further then Stafford’s new 10-point Economic Development Plan where there is no mention of education.

In fairness, this hasn’t been a priority of any board for many years. Over the years, the Board of Supervisors have whittled away their local contribution to our schools. In the 10 years preceding 2006, based on past county budgets, 69 percent of county expenditures went towards our schools. In the recently approved budget, we are now down to around 54 percent.

Based on the latest data from the Virginia Department of Education, Stafford County now ranks 117 out of 132 districts in per pupil spending.  The local per pupil spending in Stafford County was $4,050. This is 36 percent below the state average of $5,504. Based on the amount of local funds provided to the school system this year, local per pupil spending will equate to $3,766.08. This is 46 percent below the aforementioned state average.

For those of you thinking that we are spending too much locally on education, I’ve got some news for you. Based on the projected number of students in FY’10-11 (26,737) and the number of required instructional days each academic year (180), Stafford County is ONLY paying $21 per day (or $3 per hour – based on current 7hr High School day) to educate our children. This hardly seems like a huge local burden.

Let’s put what Stafford County pays into better context. Last year, Stafford contributed $5,246,158 to the Rappahannock Regional Jail. They essentially share the costs to run the jail with the state, Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania and King George, based on the percentage of inmates they have currently in the jail. On average, the daily inmate count is somewhere around 950. Based on what we pay, let’s say for arguments sake that one-quarter of the inmates are from Stafford. That means we are paying approximately $60 per day to house our inmates. So are housing our inmates more important than educating our children? I say we ask Stafford County Supervisor Paul Milde (R-Aquia).  After all, he is on the Rappahannock Regional Jail Authority and is a former inmate himself (sorry, I couldn’t resist).

This sustained underfunding of our schools is having an effect and will have a bigger effect in the years to come. Currently, 53 percent of our schools have failed to meet Annual Yearly Progress; we now have the third highest K-7 pupil/teacher ratio in the state; and 80 percent of our Standards of Learning scores are at or below our neighbors or the state average, according to the Chairman of the School Board’s Finance and Budget Advisory Committee. If you seriously think that things are going to get better, based on these very troubling educational measures, you’ve got another thing coming.

The problem is that the funding problems will be even worse next year; and, the funding cliff that was avoided in FY’11 will be even higher in FY’12. The Board of Supervisors will not be able to rely on federal stimulus funds to supplant what should be a greater contribution to our schools by the county. This is because these funds will expire in FY’11.

What’s worse is that the Republican majority on the Board of Supervisors strongly believes that our schools are overfunded, not underfunded. If Supervisors Paul Milde (R-Aquia) and Susan Stimpson (R-Falmouth) had their way, they would have even slashed more from the school budget this year.

Stafford Republicans need to get their priorities straight and fully fund our schools. They constantly talk about bringing businesses to Stafford. I can assure you that businesses are taking notice of the complete lack of support the county is providing to its schools, when making decisions on whether to relocate.

Also ask yourself, what is the first thing someone asks a real estate agent when deciding on whether to relocate to a specific area? They want to know how strong the school system is there.

It’s time for Stafford Republicans to make education a priority again!