Slippery slope

Slippery slope

The bright lights are coming. The night gomes

will Uvllow soon. The glow of the contest and the

roar of the crowd will become part of the Rappahannock evening scene.

And so Rappahannock will become a little more like everyplace else—with school spurts under the lights— and you can be proud about that or sad about that, depending on whether you want Rappahannock to keep pace with the modem world.

The Board of Supervisors' decision this week to approve the proposal to install lights on the athletic fields at county schools tend to extend the taxpayers' guarantee of payment for this $396,000 system settles the debate on the issue. But it raises questions that went unexamined in the prtKess and the possibility of unintended consequences in the years ahead.

We tear the supervisors have set a precedent they might come to regret, and have complicated their own job of trying to manage tight county budgets in the fiiture.

The Rappahannock County School Spurts Association put on a success fill toll-court press to win the county's agreement to underwrite the 10-year lease-purchase agreement—with a guarantee that tax monies will bock up the RCSSA if they fail to raise $38,182 in donations, year after year, from now through 2018. That's a lot of money, and a long time to be passing the tin cup and holding fund-raisers.

RCSSA has put itself on the line for a decade, promising they*11 raise the tonds—and we hope they do. But the supervisors have put the taxpayers on the line also, and the taxpayers will get the bill if hard times or waning enthusiasm befall the private fundraisers.

In the flush of victory, it may not be hard for the sports boosters to raise the money this year or next. But it may be harder in year four, or six. or eight— when the current officers have moved on and their successors know that if they foil short, the county will have to pay the bill anyway.

We wonder about the precedent set in this decision. Having built a standby pipeline into the public treasury for sports lights, won't it be harder for the supervisors to sny “no" to other worthy spending proposals? Won't it encourage other groups to seek county underwriting for their pnyects or dreams?

Watch out for next year's school budget. After putting taxpayers tin the line for sports lights, can the supervisors say "no" to demands for higher teacher salaries, or new academic programs? Are those less important than night games? You can expect to hear such arguments now.

If Headwaters, the educational foundation, decides that every school child shmtld have a personal computer—a worthy goal in this Information Age—and asks for county backing of a 10-year laptop tease-purchase agreement, can the supervisors say “no?*

Next up before the supervisors is the proposed deal with Virginia Broadband to install transmitters on tall poles at seven Iwations in the county to provide wider access for homes and businesses to high-speed Internet service. The proposal calls for the county to provide the funding up-front, through a $460,000 interest-free loon to the company for five years—with the loan to be paid back from the revenues Virginia Broadband collects from its new Rappahannock customers.

It’s a worthy prtyect in that broadband will allow more residents to work from home and more businesses and professionals to locate in Rappahannock. But it's another calculated risk that the deal will pay off. After guaranteeing the lights funding, can the county say 'no' to those dnmoring for high-speed Internet?

So it goes. Welcome to the new back dtxir to the public treasury. The line forms on the right.