staff reports
Published: May 1, 2008

I am very concerned about the performance of Widewater Planning Commissioner Cecilia Kirkman based on her recent letter to the Stafford County Sun: “Safety Concerns Go Beyond Hope Road”.  It took Ms. Kirkman, who heads up the commission’s transportation committee, five paragraphs to finally get to the issue of Hope Road. The majority of her letter was a list of excuses that ranged from her rant that she never got an e-mail, that she isn’t the planning commission chairman, and that the communication was lost because of the dissolution of the original transportation committee by the Democrat-controlled board of supervisors. Her defensive letter conveys that she is more concerned with public perception than she is about critical transportation needs such as improvements to Hope Road.

While she claims that her committee is concerned about transportation safety, she seems to suggest that Hope Road is a “political pet project.” Since she lives in the Aquia District, I would expect her to know that this road is not only dangerous but deadly. 
Guess what, Ms. Kirkman? People have died on this road because of the narrow winding nature of the road, lack of sight lines, boat traffic, troughs and massive trees abutting the roadside. If she doesn’t know about traffic issues in her own back yard, how can she possibly represent the interests of Griffis-Widewater residents, much less the well-being of all county residents as the head of the very important transportation committee? 

Ms. Kirkman also needs to get her priorities straight. When there is hardly enough money to go around for the county’s secondary roads, like Hope Road and Andrew Chapel Road, she prefers that these limited funds go toward the Fredericksburg region’s primary roads like the Falmouth intersection instead of Stafford’s local roads. Primary roads are funded by and improved exclusively at the discretion of the Commonwealth Transportation Board. 

Can’t Supervisor Woodson do better than appointing his campaign manager to this key post?  He promised us he would be different. Does he not have a single person who actually lives in and understands his district that he could appoint to represent the real interests of the 20,000 people who call the Griffis-Widewater area home? This is a bad choice for our district.

James Bracco
Stafford