OUR VIEW: Costs keep going up for big projects

The chief contractor at the soon-to-be-built Yowell Elementary School told the School Board this week that the once $14.9 million project is about 10 percent over budget. That, of course, does not include any positions that school officials have proposed filling a year in advance of the school's scheduled opening.

And let's not forget about our new police station. What was a $2 million dream a couple of years ago has ballooned into an $11 million project. And that price doesn't include a 12-acre site that was given to the town as a rezoning proffer from a developer.

Individually, these cost overruns are frustrating and seem to occur all too often in the arena of large public construction projects. Collectively, such ballooning prices come back to bite taxpayers in the hind quarters.

For its part, the county Culpeper County Board of Supervisors held the line on most taxes in the fiscal 2008 budget it recently passed, but the average homeowner still can expect his or her next real-estate tax bill to be about 7.7 percent higher than the last one. Likewise, the town is facing a similar problem, and a real estate hike is being considered as a way to balance the books. 

There is no question that we need new schools and a new police station to keep up with growth, but we also encourage elected officials to find ways to hold architects and contractors responsible for meeting budget projections.

Supervisors Larry Aylor and Steve Nixon did a nice job of that last week, grilling the Yowell contractor about cost overruns and failed promises. "If you have a budget," Nixon said, "you ought to live in it."

Amen.