By Heather Michon
Correspondent
The Board of Supervisors met for a rare Tuesday meeting on Feb. 18, moving it up by one day in anticipation of a predicted winter storm.
Bad weather and luck had delayed the finalization of the county and Fluvanna County Public Schools’ budget proposals for Fiscal Year 2026 (FY26) by several weeks. With some legally mandated deadlines approaching, the supervisors could not risk another holdup.
School budget
FCPS Superintendent Peter Gretz presented the budget adopted by the School Board the previous week: a total of $57,326,467, with approximately $24.1 million requested from the county and the remaining $33.2 million from state and federal sources.
The funding package would include a three percent increase in employee compensation and a 10 percent increase in health care costs. It would also add some new executive-level positions, including a division behavioral specialist, a director of human resources, a coordinator of instruction, and a coordinator of alternative education and student services.
“We are the only school division I can think of that doesn’t have a dedicated human resources generalist, specialist, or director,” said Gretz. “And we’re the biggest employer in Fluvanna County.”
With the fate of the US Department of Education in doubt, Gretz said it was likely programs like Title I and Special Education would not disappear but instead be shifted into different departments. “It doesn’t have an impact this year, so you don’t have to plan for it,” he said.
County budget
Later in the evening, County Administrator Eric Dahl presented his proposal for the FY26 county budget.
He proposed a total budget of $115,135,516 – an increase of $4,129,217 over FY25.
To raise this additional $4 million in revenue, Dahl recommended a real estate tax rate of $0.72. Under that plan, homeowners would see their tax bills rise an average of 4.05 percent over FY25.
The personal property tax would stay at $4.10.
The FY25 real estate tax rate is $0.844, but with the recent reassessments coming in so high, the county will drop the tax rate to $0.689. This is the “equalized” rate, the amount needed to generate the same revenue under the previous assessments and tax rate.
The $4 million increase is due to many of the same factors the county faces every fiscal year: rising costs for public safety, maintaining aging infrastructure, keeping salaries and benefits competitive, paying interest on existing debt, and inflation.
Some of the biggest items in the budget are $1 million for staff cost-of-living increases and $1.4 million for the James River Water Project.
It is also likely to be a big year for capital improvement projects (CIP), where Dahl recommends $9.8 million in expenditures. This would fund critical repair projects and replace aging vehicles for the sheriff’s office, the fire departments, and the schools.
Not included in Dahl’s numbers was the additional $1.9 million in funding requested by the schools, as the numbers had not been available when he finalized his presentation. Some quick figuring showed the board would have to consider adding at least four cents to the tax rate to generate that additional revenue.
Next steps
Supervisors will be meeting for weekly work sessions to go through the budget line by line, deciding what and how much they want to spend on each item.
At its Feb. 26 meeting, they will set the maximum advertised tax rates. This creates a ceiling regarding how much revenue they will receive from taxes because they cannot go above those advertised rates to fund the budget.
On April 9, they will hold public hearings on both the equalized tax rate and the maximum tax rates and budget. They will pass the final budget and set the FY26 tax rates at their April 16 meeting.
Work sessions are open to the public and can also be viewed on the county’s YouTube channel.
