For years in Fairfax County, the job of making sure developers held up their end of the bargain on public improvements came down to a single staff worker. And while scores of builders reshaped the county, promising roads, sidewalks, sewers, playgrounds and other amenities, the government struggled to enforce the completion of those projects.
Now, there are more than 600 projects in “default,” which means developers failed to complete the improvements by an agreed-upon time, according to a recent report by Fairfax County auditors.
The failures, in some cases, are as minor as completing paperwork, but others are serious enough to require litigation against a company, said Craig A. Carinci, director of the environmental and facilities inspections division of Fairfax County’s Department of Public Workers and Environmental Services.
Charlie Hall, chairman of the county’s Providence District Council, compares the recent state of affairs to “an EPA without enforcement staff.”
“On its face, it’s been understaffed across the board,” he said. “You get the feeling that a lot of developers take that in as a reality.”
The backlog has sparked Fairfax County to re-examine how it enforces public improvements, and has brought about plans for not only bolstering of staff, but implementing new policies that will put pressure on builders who fail to complete the work.
As one of the measures, county staff is moving its focus from “critical default,” when a project languishes four years after the deadline, to projects that are only two years in default, said Carinci. Getting to projects sooner, he said, will lessen the costs if the county has to step in.
The county will also work to streamline the process of a builder’s roads being taken into the state’s secondary system, according to Carinci. Many of the defaults are a result of difficulty with that process, he said.
Existing staff will be moved to enforcement responsibilities, he said, and the county plans to hire four new staff positions with funds carried over from last year.
