Building trust

The long way back

On Monday October 19 members of the Tuckahoe Creek Service District Advisory Committee (TCSDAC)had their quarterly meeting with county officials. Comprised of major landowners in the district and appointed by the board of supervisors, the TCSDAC has been a long suffering entity.

At the start of the project in 2003, meetings were held almost monthly at a local restaurant. Engineers and other experts involved in construction and finance would put on a dog and pony show, often complete with charts and graphs that illustrated construction time lines and debt service schedules.

Since January, the meetings have been held in the county administration building and the tentative cordiality expressed by the TCSDAC members toward the county has been replaced with justified wariness.

New county engineer Gary Duval was introduced before county administrator Rebecca T. Dickson began the day’s dialog.

There was not much to report since the last meeting on August 3, Dickson said. She and staff have been working diligently to get their arms around all of the details of the TCSD.

Dickson reported that sheets of butcher paper, about 31 running feet, had been hung on the walls and used to document details, and questions about the project.

Until that task is completed, it will be impossible to diagnose the health of the patient and prescribe treatment.

She said that staff is still trying to figure out if some parcels that are in West Creek, but not part of the TCSD were treated as part of the TCSD for utility billing purposes.

This seems to indicate that the county did not establish an orderly record keeping process for public utilities that could be easily expanded as the system grew.

A larger and more important issue, one most definitely not of Dickson’s making, is the absence of trust between the county and TCSD landowners.

The county, due to attitudes and polices established by employees now gone and some members of the board of supervisors, acted in the past as though TCSD landowners were trying to steal something from Goochland.

Landowners, who agreed to have an extra tax placed on their property to fund the utilities needed for profitable development, often found attempts to develop their land foiled by unrealistic county policies. Sometimes, those policies were changed in mid-stream.

When the TCSD was created, landowners agreed to have pay an additional tax to fund the public utilities that would, in theory, there are no guarantees in the development game, make their property more marketable.

Although assessed valuations rose like a rocket until last year, landowners rarely realized more than a larger tax bill from their investment in Goochland.

Now, as the smoke from the personnel shake up at the county clears, it is time for the county and landowners to come together to address the problems of the TCSD and work going forward to make it a success.

This will require complete transparency on the part of the county. No more carefully massaged numbers to paint a rosy but false scenario of the balance sheet. The true numbers, which may not yet be known, must be shared with the landowners to craft accurate forecasts for rates and debt service schedules.

Dickson and county staff are working very hard to sort out the mess and offer workable solutions. The supervisors need to come together to support her recommendations.

Every taxpayer in Goochland will benefit from the success of the TCSD and we will all suffer if it fails.