Supporters of extending Metro to Washington Dulles International Airport have turned their attention to Herndon’s Town Council, a panel that must approve part of the 23-mile rail’s funding.
The nod from Herndon, until now, has been a little-discussed piece of a broader financial puzzle for the Metrorail extension.
Project officials, local leaders and other rail boosters are seeking to persuade western Fairfax County landowners to create a special tax district to fund three of the rail’s 11 planned stations. Funding for one of the stations — Herndon-Monroe — also needs approval from the town.
Herndon and the Dulles Rail project have had a rocky history. A previous Herndon council tripped up the Metrorail extension in 2003 by shooting down a similar tax district. The council at the time feared bankrolling an uncertain rail line that might never reach the western Fairfax County town.
Officials do not expect to see serious opposition from the council this time, despite its misgivings over the lack of a kiss-and-ride section in the current station designs.
“We’re open, and we’re going to see what the landowners — what the people really affected by it — want to do,” Mayor Steve DeBenedittis said.
When the Herndon council would vote is not clear, because landowners haven’t decided whether to opt into the tax district. Without that district, officials say the rail would bypass western Fairfax and head directly from Reston to the airport.
Scuttling the tax district would turn the town into a “pariah of Northern Virginia,” Councilman William B. Tirrell said. Assuming the required 51 percent of affected landowners volunteer to create the district, “we’ll probably say yes,” he said.
Still, rail supporters want a gesture of support for Dulles Rail from the town to soothe nerves among landowners.
“There seems to be mixed feelings about where the council stands, and I think that they need to make their position clear,” said Bill Lauer, who heads the Dulles Regional Chamber of Commerce’s economic development committee.
