LTE: Metro Tax District Will Fail

Dear Editor, 

A week prior to the Board of Supervisors' Metro vote, I called Supervisor Ken Reid to ask him where he stood. While not verbatim, I think I am really close.  

Ken Reid's response: "John, I know this project has always been a piece of crap, and it still is, but the tax district has legs".  

In other words, he knew something was a major waste of tax dollars, but he was going to vote for it anyways. I was dumbstruck. How does that work? 

I asked how he could possibly say that the tax district had "legs", as most landowners couldn't possibly know about it yet (Supervisor Williams only had devised it two weeks prior). Ken then regaled me with a story Joe May once shared with him, on how one day he opened the mail and found out he was in the Rt 28 tax district. How funny!!!! Yep, those politicians bulldoze us when we don't expect it - what a laugh riot, those politicians! So I asked him whether that was the right way to treat taxpayers. No response. 

I said to him that he sounded schizoid. One one hand, he described the project as a piece of ____, but then said "the funding has legs". Why fund a piece of ___?

He chuckled at my statement. A lengthy throaty chuckle. The sort of chuckle that brought to mind a mental picture of Ken, reclining in a leather chair, his feet on the desk, cigar in one hand and drink in the other. Life is good now.  

I told him he was chuckling because he knew it was true. He didn't argue with that. More chuckles... 

He claimed that the Government Reform Commission would have some great cost-saving ideas when I asked him where the money would come from to pay for the road infrastructure to support Metro. Plus they could shake more loose from Hatrick. But again, why spend that money on Metro? Just more chuckles... 

Since then I have emailed him, asking what happens when the attempt to create the tax district fails, as it is likely to do. As I explained to him (and he already knows), more than 50 percent of the land in that district is owned by large developers with no interest in a $0.20 tax, especially because they already got what they want; Ken Reid and friends have already voted to commit us to Metro. One of those big developers has already told another anti-Metro activist that it's time for the public to pay for its infrastructure. No response from Ken. 

So we, the common taxpayers, living in the highest tax county in Virginia, will be footing the bill. Why am I not chuckling, Ken?

John Grigsby
Hillsboro, VA