The Rockbridge County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 Monday to move forward with building a community recreation center.
The center, at an estimated cost of $12.7 million, would be located across Greenhouse Road from Rockbridge County High School. It would serve both RCHS and the Rockbridge Area Recreation Organization, which would have offices in the facility.
The motion adopted by the supervisors also calls for moving forward with another capital project – installing artificial turf on the main playing field at RCHS’s Prasnicki-Ross Field at Veterans Stadium. The turf would cost an estimated $1.25 million, bringing to just over $14 million the capital projects being pursued.
The funding option the supervisors are to pursue, recom- mended by the county’s financial adviser, Davenport and Company, is to borrow $14.5 million and use $4 million in reserves to create a debt service fund for future payments.
In the staff report, it was noted that the community recreation center would effectively remove four previously planned projects in the school division’s FY27 CIP that total $9,665,400. These deleted planned expenditures are $3.2 million for a fieldhouse/locker rooms/ weight room, $5.7 million for an auxiliary gym, $530,000 for concessions/ restrooms and $235,000 for junior lot paving.
The center is to go where the RCHS tennis courts are presently located so their removal would necessitate adding $1.5 million to the schools’ CIP for new tennis courts at a site yet to be determined.
The motion that was adopted Monday was made by David McDaniel and seconded by Dan Lyons. The lone dissenter to the 4-1 vote was Bob Day.
Day questioned the elimination of parking and the tennis courts. He faulted past boards for not planning for the future by acquiring land for future projects. He said he has a problem with the schools sharing the center with RARO, which he felt would create inevitable conflicts.
During the citizens’ comments portion of Monday’s meeting, Kerrs Creek Supervisor-elect Steve Hart spoke against the county taking on new debt, as did three other citizens who addressed the supervisors. A couple of people suggested that the county hold a referendum before incurring debt on the project.
The county already has $87 million in debt, Hart said, noting that he’d campaigned against the county taking on more debt. “Every dollar that we collect in taxes is allocated for something,” he said. “I don’t know where we get more money when all of our money is currently allocated. This was a big thing in my campaign. It was something I spoke to everyone about, and it was something that folks spoke very loudly about – that we don’t need more debt. … If we get more debt when tax revenues go down the only thing we can do is reach out that property tax and crank it up, and I don’t want us to do that.”
Lyons, the current Kerrs Creek supervisor, defended the Board’s handling of the county’s finances. He said people want to pay for things that they can use during their own lifetimes. “We are financially sound,” he declared. “We’ve always gotten good ratings by the people that rate us. We’re not foolish with our funds.”
