07/25/2026
Facts matter.
The Mayor of Farmville doesn’t approve budgets.
Doesn’t approve contracts.
Doesn’t vote on spending.
Doesn’t vote on taxes.
Except to break an exceedingly rare tie.
So if someone promises that electing them mayor will allow them to cut spending, they are promising authority the office simply doesn’t possess.
Questions have recently been raised about the town budget. Good. I love this stuff.
Here are answers, and then a proposal.
First, the hard part. In FY26 ( budget year before this past one) Council raised the real estate rate from 13 cents to 22 cents per $100, and a reassessment landed the same year. Virginia law required a separate, specially advertised public hearing before the town could exceed the equalized rate. We held it. Anyone could come. All were welcome to voice concerns.
Here’s the context I’d ask you to hold alongside that. Farmville charged 22 cents in the late 1980s. Then previous Councils cut it to a dime and it stayed near there for roughly three decades while asphalt, health insurance, and fire apparatus got two to three times more expensive. Everything is more expensive now, but that’s a nuanced discussion about federal, state and local policies. Adjusted for inflation, 22 cents back in the late 80’s would be about 60 cents today. We are at roughly a third of what this town once charged back in the day.
A town that refuses to adjust for thirty years doesn’t avoid the increase. It defers it. When people ask why the real estate tax rate wasn’t raised incrementally, I have the same question about those 3 decades.
This year’s budget holds that real estate rate flat. The only revenue changes are a lodging tax paid mostly by visitors and a sanitation fee on business units.
Now, related to some recent questions.
The fire station renovation and expansion is being paid with a municipal bond. That bond payment does run about a million a year. We’ve been paying that amount my entire time in Council because of previous debt service. What is left out of the question is that our 2012 bond payment fell from $1.07 million to $133,000 in the same year as the new municipal bond was taken. We timed new debt to the retirement of old debt that was paid off. Ask me what we got for that old debt that was double digit millions $ of dollars from before my time…
This municipal bond funds a new firehouse for the town’s first full time fire department. We have a 24/7 - 7 days a week fire department at a time when most rural areas are struggling to keep a volunteer department upright. That should impact ISO fire rating and lower citizen’s home insurance rates.
The airport subsidy is $260,839, not $400,000. Over two years it drew more than $2 million in state and federal construction dollars into Farmville. Is the airport a drag? Yes, citizens subsidize it. We’d like to sell it but because of federal restrictions around improvements, we have to maintain a 20 year commitment on improvement dollars spent from the federal government. It’s a complicated situation.
The $350,000 to FIDA left our books in 2024. It sits with the Industrial Development Authority, invested, earning interest, and ready to deploy for development. That is the opposite of idle. The town has no authority to claw it back, and clawing it back would gut the IDA’s ability to function. Even if we could, $350,000 is a one-time sum, not $350,000 a year. It cannot be part of anyone’s annual savings plan.
Recreation is $341,562, youth football, summer camp, adult basketball, softball, volleyball, pickleball, fitness classes, running races, town parks, and three community events, with about $58,000 coming back in program fees.
Every one of those figures is in the adopted budget on the town website.
The municipal bond - fire house deal is done. None of the other “cuts” equal $1-2 million. That’s just political math.
And now the proposal.
My current mayoral election opponent promises to cut these lines. Let me reiterate my original point, the Mayor of Farmville does not vote. Not on the budget, not on contracts, not on anything, except to break a tie among seven council members, which with an odd number has never happened in my 8 years in local government. The office he is running for cannot do what he is promising to do.
I don’t offer that as a reason to re-elect me. I offer it as a reason to change the charter.
A couple of years ago I told Councilmembers Pairet and Dwyer that when they decided not to seek another term, I would advocate dropping an at-large seat and giving the mayor a vote. Councilmember Pairet is not running this year. So I am keeping that promise now, in public, in the middle of my own reelection campaign.
The proposal: reduce the body from eight members to seven, with the mayor voting on every question. One fewer elected official. An odd number, so no deadlock. And a mayor whose position on every single vote sits in the public record where you can find it.
It takes an advertised public hearing and an act of the General Assembly. That’s the process. It’s a longer process than this election cycle, but one to think about. I’ll walk anyone through it who wants to know.
If you want to hold a mayor accountable, give the mayor something to be accountable for.
Facts matter. Accountability matters. Farmville deserves honest conversations about taxes, honest conversations about spending, and honest conversations about how our government works. That is what I’ve always done. Misinformation, trolling and “just asking questions” when the information is available to answer your questions is disingenuous at best.
I’m the first Mayor with dedicated social media pages, a town email address, regular radio appearances, and my cell phone on the town website. If you have questions, there are lots of ways to ask. While I certainly dislike the climate around politics today, all the performative posturing and misinformation, I enjoy talking about policy and about Farmville. Being the ambassador to this wonderful town and trying to keep our governing body decent, respectful and mindful of community, all while representing you at the state and national level, has been an absolute honor.
correction : Here's something most "politicians" won't do, and as someone who's new to this arena I hasten to call myself such, but a commenter below has a fair point about the tax rate and inflation.
my reply,
correction, you're right that a rate is a proportion, so the reassessment, not the rate, is what tracks property values. I could put the point differently, a dime funded this town's obligations for thirty years, and those obligations, payroll, insurance, a fire engine, etc didn't hold still. They roughly tripled. The rate can sit flat; the bills it has to cover won't. Appreciate you weighing in and sharpening that point.
