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Tax Increase Proposed In BV
Buena Vista’s real estate tax is to go up by 14 cents, a cigarette tax of 25 cents-a-pack is to be established and various fees for city services are to be raised under a proposed budget that is being advertised in today’s newspaper.
City Council’s budget and finance committee made these recommendations last week, closing a gap between planned expenditures and projected revenues that had stood at $951,000, after having been trimmed earlier from $1.7 million at the beginning of the budget planning process.
A public hearing on the proposed budget for fiscal year 2026 will be held next Thursday, May 15, at 6 p.m. A special meeting to adopt the budget is scheduled for Thursday, May 29, at 6 p.m.
The budget-planning work sessions have been particularly arduous this year, noted Steve Bolster, the city’s finance director. “We’re experiencing a perfect storm of bad luck,” remarked Bolster, alluding to several factors that have stretched the city’s finances.
Health care premiums are rising by 12 percent, or $143,000. The city is losing lease payments of $150,000 annually due to Mountain Gateway Community College vacating the city-owned Rockbridge Center on Vista Links Drive. A grant for two of the schools’ four resource officers is expiring, leading to a loss of $159,658 in state funding. The positions are slated to be retained, with the schools picking up the tab for 80 percent of the costs and the city paying the other 20 percent.
A one-year grant of $202,160 that funds two community resource officers in the schools this fiscal year won’t be available for next year. Police Chief Wayne Handley is reducing funding elsewhere in his department by a like amount so these two positions can be retained. The department’s reductions include not having training and employee development that had been planned as well as holding off on filling an opening for an officer.
The real estate tax rate would be raised from 91 cents per $100 assessed value to $1.05. It’s estimated that a penny on this tax brings in $42,715, so raising the rate by 14 cents would generate $598,010. Instituting a 25 cents-apack cigarette tax on Jan. 1 would raise an estimated $55,000 during the second half of the fiscal year.
The monthly fee for residential trash collections would be raised from $21 to $23, with rates for commercial trash collections also being increased. Sewer rates would go up by $1 per 1,000 gallons of water used, from $9.04 to $10.04. Various other fee hikes for city services are also proposed. They include cemetery plot prices and grave opening fees, land disturbance permit fees, curb and gutter fees, Glen Maury Park camping rates, swimming pool admission fees and water and sewer connection fees.
(The specific fee and rate increases can be found in the advertisement for the city budget in today’s newspaper on page A2) The proposed budget calls for city employees to be given 1.5 percent raises. Committee members discussed the idea of giving higher raises to employees at the lower end of the scale but, because the ramifications of doing this hadn’t been considered previously, it was decided to go with the smaller, across-the-board raises.
General fund planned expenditures and projected revenues for fiscal year 2026 stand at $17,033,743 in the proposed budget. The planned transfer to the schools would be $2,295,238 and the planned transfer to parks and recreation would be $423,620.
