NEWS: Former City Planning Director Questions Wisdom of Proposed Budget
Also, Williamsburg considers moving $5M from affordable housing & ‘Research Village’ initiatives
At their meeting earlier this week, Williamsburg City Council members received a budget presentation from City Manager Andrew Trivette. A description of the budget released in advance of the meeting described how the City administration “wisely” made some of their recommendations. Yet, before the City Manager’s presentation, a former City Planning Director, Carolyn Murphy, stood up to voice concern over several aspects of the proposed Fiscal Year 2026 budget, including a downtown children’s park and the new library.
“I want to express my opposition to the proposed park on Peacock Hill,” Murphy said. “The proposed property is located in the CW historic district, which does not allow the park. The statement of intent for that district says ‘this district is established to preserve, protect and maintain the unique character and historic importance of the Colonial Williamsburg historic area,” Murphy noted. “So how does this project meet that statement?” she asked the Council. Murphy also mentioned the City’s Comprehensive Plan, pointing out that the document states “This district encompasses the Colonial Williamsburg historic area and is established to preserve, protect and maintain the restored area's distinctive character and historic importance.” She also questioned whether the proposed park should be built with borrowed money.
As reported by Digby Solomon in Williamsburg Watch, members of the Council voiced skepticism regarding the children’s park later in the meeting, and asked the City Manager to remove the item from the budget and further consideration at this time. Whether the park will be proposed for an alternate location in the future is unknown.
According to reporting by the Virginia-Pilot, Murphy joined the City in 1991 and was appointed as head of the City’s planning department in 2016. She has also served as a Zoning Officer, Zoning Administrator and Deputy Planning Director during her years of service. She received the leadership and excellence awards from the City in 2004, 2006 and 2013. Murphy retired in 2021, the same year she was honored by the Virginia Chapter of the American Planning Association with the “Outstanding Service Award.”
While addressing the Council, Murphy also questioned whether the City needs to invest so much money in a new downtown library projected to cost $39M to build. She pointed to recent decisions by James City County and York County to consider building new libraries of their own. The two counties are Williamsburg’s partners in a regional library system, and under their current agreement, they also would need to contribute funds to build the new Williamsburg library. According to Murphy, the recent budget proposals from James City and York do not include funds for the new Williamsburg library, noting that the James City budget actually indicates the desire to build a new library as part of a new County administration complex. “If a new library is constructed at this location, then a downtown library needs to be considerably smaller,” she said, pointing out that the new James City County library would be just outside Williamsburg city limits.
“It’s time for the City staff and the Council to do some real budgeting by making a sincere effort to separate needs from wants,” Murphy stated, adding, “As a citizen, I am not willing to pay for wants when so much is being proposed for schools, new buildings, millions of dollars to upgrade our water and sewer and stormwater facilities. You need to be fiscally responsible and not strap the City with so much debt.” Murphy’s critique of the City’s priorities came after a former Williamsburg Mayor also recently questioned similar aspects of the proposed budget.
Spending currently under consideration “would put the City’s outstanding debt total at $79 million as of June 30, 2026. The current and proposed debt meets or exceeds all of the City’s debt policies to ensure the wise and limited use of debt,” according to the proposed budget. As reported by Solomon, in order to fund growing needs, Williamsburg is considering raising meals and hotel taxes, as well as creating a new admissions tax for attractions and events in the City. The admission tax would not apply to activities of the College of William and Mary due to State regulations.
At the meeting earlier this week, Vice Mayor Pat Dent spoke about the need to fund the capital improvement budget, which he noted was more than just building infrastructure. “There's a lot of projects in there that are replacing police department radios or MDTs or equipment for all the departments … If you really look at that and we start putting those kinds of things off, we're going to end up where we ended up with the utility rate. We're going to be trying to play catch-up all at one time.” The Vice Mayor was referring to the City’s plan to raise the water rate by $1.59 per 1000 gallons, making the total rate $6.89 per 1000 gallons.
Reassignment of $5M COVID funding
Williamsburg City Manager Andrew Trivette recently sent a letter to residents in which he outlined a plan to help fund the City’s Capital Improvement Plan (CIP), by reassigning “$5.5 million in COVID relief funds – previously designated for affordable housing, public housing, and economic development projects…”
Affordable housing
The proposed Fiscal Year 2026 budget provides more detail about the relief money, though the planned amount of spending for each project originally designated to receive a portion of the $5.5M was not provided. Initiatives put on hold in the proposed FY26 budget include preliminary steps to redevelop the 38-unit City-owned Blayton Building, located at 613 Scotland Street, which is currently dedicated housing for elderly residents. Though the City has expressed a desire to take care of the building’s current residents in the case of redevelopment, it has not yet disclosed any specific plans regarding temporary housing or a guarantee of re-housing within any new development.
The City Manager’s proposed FY26 budget also identifies some of the housing initiatives that will go unfunded next year. These include $721K to fund a merger of the Williamsburg Redevelopment Housing Authority (WHRA) with the City government. Also left out of the budget was $83K for a full-time “Neighborhood Revitalization Coordinator.”
Research Village
Some portion of the COVID relief funding also would have gone towards “initial infrastructure for a research village for data science businesses.” As reported back in 2022 by David Macaulay in the Daily Press, the collaboration with the College of William and Mary could cost $50M and cover 150 acres of land owned by Colonial Williamsburg. The Council budgeted $2M towards the project in FY23, with a carry forward in FY24 and FY25. A $900K carryover for the Research Village is still listed in the FY26 budget.
A frequent contributor to the Williamsburg Independent, Dr. Robert Wilson, addressed the City Council about his concerns with moving the money to fund the capital improvement budget. “Almost every meeting we go to we hear the drum beat of affordable housing. $5.5 million reprogrammed into improvement projects without any direction of exactly where it's going, I find that somewhat disingenuous in the budget,” Wilson told Council.
In 2021, Trivette formed a work group made up of local government officials and community stakeholders that studied the City’s affordable housing issue. The report they published noted that the demand for affordable housing at the time was 1,247 units, a figure expected to rise to 1,481 units by 2030. Among specific recommendations of the committee that issued the report were converting underutilized hotels into housing, develop City-owned parking lots (P1, P3, P6) near Merchant’s Square, create workforce housing near Waller Mill Reservoir, and establishing block grants to help low to moderate income families maintain their homes. The City’s summary of their 2025-2026 Goals, Initiatives & Outcomes claims, “The culture of our city will promote a variety of housing and employment options that welcome a diversity of backgrounds and opinions.” Among the goals listed are “diverse housing and employment options,” as well as “expansion of the City’s workforce housing program.”
Despite proposing to reassign the one-time COVID relief funds, the City still expects to have significant expenditures for housing programs in FY26 in order to fund both operations and capital improvements. Expenditures from the operating budget include $150K for what the City labels Housing Program, $66K for Workforce Housing, $4K to a Housing Partnership that provides home repairs for those in need. The City also allocates over $300K towards capital improvement projects, including renovations to current Work Force Housing, Roof & Gutters replacement and Sewer Line Replacement. The previous year, in FY25, the City budgeted $410K on the WRHA Laundromat, $230K for the Blayton Building Elevator, and $100K to renovate existing workforce housing, which the City says currently totals 14 units. The FY26 budget also includes a $950K carryover from FY25 for capital projects identified in the Affordable Housing Work Plan.
In their planning documents, the City notes their desire to create a “responsive housing model” for transitional and emergency housing. According to the City Manager’s proposed budget, the requests for emergency housing will likely increase over 40% from 2023 to 2026 (485 requests annually to 700 requests annually).
Public input in budget process
The budget timeline provides for residents’ comments on the budget and capital projects during a City Council meeting on Thursday, April 10th. Residents are also encouraged to provide input either during the public comment period during the City Council meetings or by emailing your City Council members council@williamsburgva.com. A vote on the budget by the City Council is slated for May 8th.
Editor’s Note: A Google AI tool called NotebookLM was used to research, compile and calculate data presented in this article.
George Arbogust is Founder and Editor of the Williamsburg Independent. He gets up early, so please consider buying him a cup of coffee.