Waynesboro City Council approves budget without much fanfare. What we learned on Monday night

Akhil Ganesh, Staunton News Leader
Updated ·6 min read

WAYNESBORO — Budget season in the area is finally coming to a close as Waynesboro City Council voted Monday night to unanimously adopt its fiscal year 2024 budget.

The budget includes a 77 cent property tax rate per $100 of assessed value, and maintains the current level of services in Waynesboro. The budget does include rate changes to water, sewage, stormwater utility, and refuse fees, and does not fund positions in the registrar’s office, sheriff’s department, or other city positions. It does include a five percent raise for city employees although it won’t kick in until December, and funds two positions in the police department that will be unfrozen.

While the budget ordinance signifies the end of the usual budget cycle, council’s work with it is not done. Over time, council will deal with multiple potential amendments as projected figures turn into actual ones.

Outside of the budget, the city had plenty of important information to get through and made decisions related to their pending industrial parks projects. Let’s take it from the top.

How does Waynesboro choose streets that should get repaved?

Warmer months means it is paving season, and public works director Trafford McRae gave a presentation walking city council through the department’s plan for paving this year and in the years to come.

Waynesboro has about 125 miles of roads that are eligible for Virginia Department of Transportation funding, but not every road is paved every year. In order to figure out which roads will be addressed, McRae said the department uses an asset management software called Cartegraph.

The software provides the city with a preliminary list of roads to be paved, based on three major factors:

  • VDOT Road classification: Every road that is eligible for VDOT funding is classified into four categories - principal arterials, minor arterials, collectors, and local roads. Those classifications come from the state and federal level, and the city can do little to change those. This plays into what McRae called a “criticality factor,” which is based on how vital the road is to moving traffic through the city.

  • Overall Condition Index (OCI): This is a score on a range from 0-100 that is weighted based on the distress on the roads like cracks and the bumpiness of the ride on that road. Pavement evaluations are done every four years, and the city brings in an outside engineering consultant with specialized equipment.

  • Budget: Most of the paving done in Waynesboro is conducted with VDOT funding, and the public works department usually sets aside $1 million every year for paving.

From that preliminary list, the department coordinates with VDOT and local utility companies about pending projects, as well as check for potential compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The department conducts field surveys to confirm road conditions and for paving list accuracy.

McRae spoke about how for three-quarters of a road’s lifespan, it suffers about a 40% drop in quality in terms of OCI score. In the ensuing 12% of the road’s life, the quality drops another 40 percent. The goal with the paving maintenance program is to keep the OCI at a high level through routine maintenance.

He presented the council with the public works department’s plan for the future when it comes to paving. They hope to begin utilizing a new technology for the area, micro-surfacing, in addition to their current work to increase the percentage of Waynesboro’s roads they can repave for a lesser cost.

Thinking about the future when it comes to Nature’s Crossing Technology Center (and other industrial parks)

“As we’ve discussed before, it’s important for us to set standards for our industrial parks,” said Greg Hitchen, the director of economic development in Waynesboro.

According to Hitchen, the planned completion of Southern Corridor Road in spring 2025 means the city will soon have to consider marketing its industrial parks soon. To get ahead of that, city council passed a resolution with a set of covenants that would restrict some of the development that could occur at Nature’s Crossing Technology Center or at the Waynesboro Commerce and Industry Park.

The covenants on development include:

  • Underground utilities

  • Increased setbacks from Southern Corridor Road

  • Additional screening/locations of outdoor screening

  • Type of use (the focus would mainly be on manufacturing)

To go along with that, council authorized city manager Mike Hamp to enter into a performance agreement for utilities to finish water and wastewater service to Nature’s Crossing. In December 2022, Virginia announced that Waynesboro would be receiving $3.9 million through the Virginia Economic Development Partnership Business Ready Sites program. The city initially applied for $7.9 million in grant funding.

The funding will be used to complete a water tank project for an estimated $3.8 million and to increase capacity of the city’s water and wastewater systems at an estimated cost of $11 million. While the city will continue to apply for grants and other funding, city staff did present a “worst-case scenario” in which annual debt service is estimated to be around $1.2 million.

The city has currently set aside $520,000 per year for the NCTC debt service, or approximately two cents worth of real estate tax revenue. Depending on whether Waynesboro chooses to include debt service in the school funding formula, that scenario will require an additional three to six cents of real estate tax revenue.

Quick hitters

  • Fire chief Andrew Holloway provided an update on the staffing levels and the status of the fleet for the Waynesboro Fire Department. The staffing update was part of an update requested by council after authorizing an application for a grant to provide for nine additional firefighters. The additional staffing gets the department closer to National Fire Protection Association standards, though not quite all the way there. Holloway also laid out a potential plan to update the city’s fire/rescue fleet, primarily with a 20-year plan starting in 2029.

  • The city received a quarterly financial update from director of finance Cameron McCormick. As part of the update, McCormick informed council he would be bringing two budget amendments in the coming months.

  • One speaker during the citizen comment period asked the city to consider allowing council and city staff to answer resident questions during the four minutes they are allotted to speak during citizen comment.

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—Akhil Ganesh is the Government Reporter at The News Leader. You can contact him at aganesh@newsleader.com and follow him on Twitter @akhildoesthings.

This article originally appeared on Staunton News Leader: Waynesboro City Council approves budget without much fanfare. What we learned Monday night