Charles City supervisors adopt FY2025-26 budget, take out second RAN

Charles City County leaders adopted the FY2025-26 budget at Tuesday night’s regular board meeting.

County supervisors voted 2-1 to approve a $29,714,222 budget for operations and Capital Improvement Plans (CIP) for the upcoming fiscal year. The budget includes no tax increase, meaning the real estate rate will remain at 69 cents per $100 of assessed value. Charles City Finance Director Christina Crawley-Jones commented at the May budget public hearing that expected revenue from AES ($1.9 million), the sale of land to C5 ($1 million) and additional funds of $192,120 will provide the county more than $3 million in new funding.

Charles City County Public Schools will receive level funding in the amount of $7,201,636, while Fire and EMS is scheduled to receive $1,391,043. The only CIP projects will be allotted to the school system, which will receive $296,394 for computer upgrades and a new school bus.

But for as much as the county prepares for the new fiscal year, it will also carry a new cost. In August 2024, supervisors agreed to take out a Revenue Anticipation Note (RAN) in the amount of $5.2 million as a temporary loan. The target goal was to pay off that loan by June 30, the end of the fiscal year.

Instead, with projections falling short of what the county is looking for, the Davenport Group recommended taking a second RAN loan to pay off the first one. The second RAN comes at a 4.11 percent interest rate from a new lender, meaning while the county will have an extended period to pay off the loan, they will need to pay off $5.3 million by June 2026. Davenport Group representatives told supervisors that if they did not take out the loan, the county would not have any funds to operate in the Summer. County leaders unanimously approved the new RAN.

In one other board matter, a public hearing for the rezoning of land for a data center project by Diode has been tabled to the June meeting.