At Seneca Precinct, #329 in Great Falls, some voters were mad, but not so mad that they couldn’t laugh at themselves.
As they exited Forestville Elementary School, the polling place for one of the most conservative constituencies in largely Republican Dranesville District, several were in a surly mood about taxes.
“Is there a ‘Hell No’?” answered one voter who was asked how he voted on the half-cent sales tax referendum for transportation.
“Don’t quote me, because I am very soft-spoken, normally,” he said, “[but] all this campaigning is at the behest of the developers.”
The voter, a longtime resident who is known in Great Falls as a church-goer, do-gooder, and community-builder, said he did not want his name in the newspaper. “Just say my name is Hironymous Baxter,” he said.
“I’m totally against it,” said another man who did not want to be identified because “I am a Paul Wellstone liberal.”
“It’s a developers’ thing. Are you kidding? Let them raise the cigarette tax,” he said.
“This affects the middle class person. There are better ways to do this, even though we need better roads,” he said.
Their mood was reflected by the signs posted outside the polls. A dark blue poster that read “No Sales Tax” had acquired a bright yellow sticker that said “No Techway.”
The same signs were posted in the median of Route 7 in Great Falls, even though a techway was not among $73.5 million in proposed road projects that would be funded by the new sales tax. None of them are in Great Falls.
The closest new project to receive sales tax money would be new lanes to allow right-hand turns from Balls Hill Road onto Old Dominion Drive in McLean, where the wait for a green traffic light can seem interminable.
OUTSIDE FORESTVILLE SCHOOL on Election Day, Jack Dice was a little surly, too, but he allowed his name to be used in the newspaper.
Asked to name the one issue that brought him to the polls, he had an immediate answer: “Frugal government,” he said.
“The sales tax. I vote no.”
Why?
“I think it’s not going to solve the problem. We haven’t seen a comprehensive plan,” he said. “The government always throws money at things, but seldom solves them.
Dice, who was one of the first people in Great Falls to support an effort to make The Turner Farm a public park in 1996, even voted against the park bond referendum this year. “I did support education, though,” he said.
Rosa McGonigal said the issue that brought her to the polls was “the one about the sales tax.”
“I voted ‘yes,’” she said. “I live with that traffic every day.
“I don’t even commute. It’s a big concern for me,” she said.
Voting Results:
Voting Results were not available
by press time. McLean and Great Falls voters decided among five state and two local referendums and three Congressional seats.