LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Branner Station isn't paying enough
Dear Editor,

As a resident of the Walthall area, I read your "Moving Forward: Transportation Department signs off on Branner Station" front page article in the Mar. 14 edition with great interest. In addition, as a citizen of Chesterfield County, I was also appalled that the county leadership would allow such a large development to proceed without making sure that first the developers, and ultimately those that purchase homes in Branner Station, pay the full cost of the development.

Here is how things stand if the figures in your article are correct: (Developer) HHHunt is paying $10.1 million more than the county's maximum proffer of $15,600 per home as a development fee for Branner Station. The article also states that there will be 4,688 homes in the development. If my math is correct, this comes to 4,688 x $15,600 = $73,132,800 plus the additional $10.1 million for a total fee of about $82.2 million. The article also states that $70 million of this is already earmarked for offsite road improvements designed to offset the increase in traffic.

This leaves just $12.2 million to offset the additional costs the county will face to provide services to the new residents of Branner Station. This is no where near enough! The article states that the developers have set aside land for a new elementary school and a new high school. That is nice, but it is likely we will also need a new middle school.

If we assume that each of the 4,688 families in the proposed development have an average of 2.1 children (like the rest of America), then there will be an average of 4,688 x 2.1 = 9,845 children under 18 living in Branner Station at any given time once it is built out. Of these, two-thirds (those between 6 and 18) will be in school. This comes to an additional 6,498 students in Chesterfield schools. Almost half of these students - just over 2,700 - will be elementary school age, while an additional 2,144 will be in high school. This leaves about 1,654 in middle school. So, if the county must build three large new schools to support this development, then we are in for a big bill.

Let's assume the new high school costs the same as the planned replacement for Clover High School - $92 million. Let's also assume that the elementary school costs about the same - it will have more students, but will not need as many special facilities like football fields and physics labs. Finally, let's scale the cost of the middle school to that of the high school. It has about 77 percent of the students, so let's say it will cost about $71 million. Adding the cost of the three schools we get $92 million + $92 million + $71 million = $255 million. When we subtract the $12 million left over after the offsite road improvements are constructed this leaves the taxpayers of Chesterfield County subsidizing the cost of this development to the tune of $243 million. To put this in perspective, the per home proffer needed to cover this cost would be over $51,800. This is in addition to the $15,600 county maximum proffer and the $10 million HHHunt is adding to the proffer. There are other county costs I have not considered here - increased fire and police services come to mind - so the true cost of this development to the taxpayers of Chesterfield County is even higher than I have estimated.

One could argue that adding an average of almost $52,000 to the cost of each home in Branner Station would add so much to the price that demand for the homes would fall to the point that the entire project would no longer make economic sense, or that fewer homes would be built, resulting in a reduced need for county services. That is market capitalism. The whole idea behind our economic system is that prices should represent the full cost of producing any good or service so that people can make wise choices about how to respond. In other words, prices contain information about the real value of a good or service. If we subsidize the construction of large housing developments as the current plan does, we will send people a false signal - and we will get more housing, more people, more traffic and higher taxes than we would have if we set a fair price and let the market work.
John Stillion, Ph.D. 
Chesterfield
The Chesterfield Board of Supervisors has established the maximum proffer for all services at $15,600 per household. Last year, according to a county survey, there were .63 students in the typical home in the 15 fastest-growing communities in Chesterfield. Currently, about 60 percent of the homes in the county do not have children in the public school system. Editor