It’s been more than 20 years since a bond referendum failed in Arlington, an indication of how popular the spending items are with voters in the county. From paving streets and adding traffic calming devices to building aquatics centers and bridge maintenance, Arlington voters will be confronted with about $153 million in general obligation bonds. If the recent past is political prologue, all four of the general obligation bonds on the ballot will pass.

“They are overwhelmingly successful,” said Arlington Registrar Linda Lindbergh. “

Since Arlington leaders moved the general obligation bond initiatives to the more popular federal-year cycle in 1984, all of them have been successful. That’s 14 consecutive election cycles in which voters have approved the bond initiatives, usually by substantial margins. Many people say that the success of bonds at the polls is an indication that voters are eager to make investments in their community.

“They’ll be thinking in the back of their minds, more likely than not, is this something that will make my home more valuable?” said Frank Shafroth, professor at George Mason University. “They’ll also be thinking about what it means for the future of their community, and they should be thinking about the economics.”

BACK IN 1979, voters were presented with a bond initiative for regional parks. A flagging economy and wariness of government may have contributed to the failure at the polls. About 16,000 people voted against it while only 9,000 people voted for it. Whatever the reason, county leaders decided to move voting on bond issues to the even-year election cycles, which tend to have higher rates of participation among registered voters, especially in presidential years.

“The powers that be believe they are going to get greater participation,” said Lindberg. “There is some dropoff, but it’s not really significant, amazingly enough.”

One of the quirks of Virginia law is that city voters never consider bond issues, which can be passed by local elected leaders without the consent of voters. The original thinking behind that logic was that county voters tend to live in more rural areas without much infrastructure. City leaders, on the other hand, were given more power to raise and spend money.

“The reason these are on the ballot is because of the unlimited taxability of the locality,” said Jason Friess, analyst with the Arlington Department of Management and Finance. “These bonds will be backed by local taxes, and if there’s ever a funding crunch, we would have to raise taxes to meet the obligation of the bonds.”

EVEN THOUGH THEY receive relatively little publicity compared to the top of the ticket, participation is typically high. About 90 percent of the voters in 2008 engaged in the election for general obligation bonds, and participation rate was even higher 2010. That means that the items are popular with voters, even if they don’t get all the buzz that surround the presidential race. Even so, they tend to remain largely hidden from the public debate.

“Part of that is that they are called a ‘bond,’ and second they are called ‘municipal,’” said Shafroth. “In my experience, if something is called municipal, it’s below contempt.”