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Stafford supervisors move to put referendum on November ballot Date published: 5/19/2004
Residents may decide this fall on bonds to buy tract A bond referendum to buy Crow's Nest could appear on the ballot the same day voters decide whether George Bush or John Kerry should be president, Stafford County supervisors decided yesterday. But a special election before the Nov. 2 general election will be impossible under the resolution supervisors passed 5-2 yesterday. And the board could decide later not to hold the referendum at all. Save Crow's Nest, a grass-roots preservation group that had been asking for a special bond referendum separate from the presidential election, said a November vote is too little, too late. "National issues and partisan bickering will swamp any referendum held during the general election," said Save Crow's Nest member Cecelia Kirkman. Save Crow's Nest had asked supervisors to pass a strongly worded resolution that expressed the county's support for buying all of Crow's Nest for preservation, set out the specific language to appear on the ballot, and established a bond amount of $35 million. The resolution supervisors passed yesterday expresses an interest in raising bond money to buy the entire 4,175 acres between Accokeek and Potomac creeks in eastern Stafford, but it does not mention a specific bond amount. The reason, said Supervisor Gary Pash, is because the county won't know the parcel's price until it begins negotiations with the owner of Crow's Nest, K&M Properties of McLean, and the company that has a contract to buy the peninsula, luxury home builder Toll Brothers Inc. Preservationists and some county officials want to buy the environmentally sensitive land because it is home to one of the area's last stands of virgin timber and a heron rookery. But Clark Leming, a Stafford attorney who represents both companies, said it's unlikely the two companies would even be interested in negotiating a sale to the county, bond or no. "This is something being done unilaterally on the board's part, not something the owner or the contract purchaser have been consulted about or are participating in," he said. "The likelihood Toll Brothers would agree to anything like this is extremely remote simply because this is not their business."
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