FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY

I am committed to fiscal responsibility, which includes debt reduction, controlled spending, and asset-based economic development. Purcellville’s assets include a welcoming small business community, historic downtown buildings, annual community festivals, proximity to natural attractions, and thriving neighborhoods. We are well situated for long-term sustained economic growth, local return on investment, job creation and retention, and an enlarged local tax base. We do not need to surrender our small town to outsiders looking to make a quick buck by populating our landscape with high-rise office buildings, big-box stores, and data centers. There are plenty of opportunities for economic development without fundamentally altering the character and aesthetics of our town.

Our most substantial debt is that associated with our water/wastewater treatment facility, the result of a $25 million loan for facilities upgrade. The town is facing dramatic water and wastewater rate increases beginning in fiscal year 2025 when its debt services payments increase sharply. The wastewater debt service alone increases over $1.3 million in FY 2025. The town’s current utility advisor, Stantec Consulting, provided a model showing town water expenditures for the next nine years to steadily increase including from $3.53 million in FY 2024, to $3.78 million in FY 2025 and $3.9 million in FY 2026. Stantec’s model for wastewater shows even steeper increases, with expected expenditures of $4.02 million in FY 2024, $5.36 million in FY 2025, and $5.48 million in FY 2026.

Expected revenues for those years at the current utility rates fall below expenditures with water bringing in $2.72 million in FY 2024, $2.67 million in FY 2025 and $2.60 million in FY 2026 and wastewater bringing in $3.46 million in FY 2024, $3.9 million in FY 2025 and $3.62 million in FY 2026. Those figures include the offset achieved by the council’s decision in early 2023 to use $990,000 in revenue from selling nutrient credits to help hold down rate increases. In FY 2024, the town faces an $810,000 deficit in the Water Fund and a $560,000 deficit in Wastewater Fund at the current utility rates.

According to the town’s finance department, residential water usage is on the decline, while commercial water usage is increasing. Water usage declined almost 3% between 2020 and 2023 and going forward the company was planning for a 1.5% decline each year for the next three years. This trend represents the double-edged sword of homeowners trying to mitigate water usage in response to increasing utility bills, only to then see those mitigation efforts result in even higher rates to meet operations and maintenance costs.

If elected to Town Council, I will base all decisions on the following guiding principles:

The utilities fund (water and sewer) must be financially self-supporting and not use tax dollars - other than utilizing a percentage of the meals tax revenue to support the Wastewater Treatment Fund.
The utility fund should maintain adequate reserves for contingencies, emergencies, and unplanned expenses in order to maintain a safe and reliable water and sewer system, and;
Water and sewer rates should adequately cover the cost of service, system monitoring, maintenance, and infrastructure renewal and replacement to ensure regulatory compliance.

To accomplish this, I will pursue federal, state, and private-sector grant opportunities to fund capital improvements that would otherwise burden our residents. Understanding that we must get control of operations and maintenance costs in our utility department, I will consult with outside experts to explore alternatives such as energy credits and automation. Likewise, we must address the more than $1 million in chargebacks (the practice of paying staff members out of the Utility Fund for support they claim to provide to the Utility Enterprise). Residents must have confidence that their water and sewer bills reflect the actual costs of providing those services. In a broader sense, I will conduct a top-down line-by-line review of every expenditure by every department of government, make recommendations for spending increases / reductions / eliminations as appropriate, and publish those recommendations for community input.