Fredericksburg Taxpayers Are About to Feel the Effects of an Economic El Niño | Also in this issue: Stafford Candidate Lorena Bruner fined for failing to file campaign finance reports

by Rick Pullen
GUEST COLUMNIST

There are two reasons Kerry Devine has no opposition in her campaign for Fredericksburg mayor next week.

The first, and this should not be understated, she’s extremely popular among voters. She’s never lost a city election since she first ran for School Board back in 1996. In most of her races when there were more than two at-large seats open, she out-polled everyone. In most of her election campaigns, she simply didn’t bother to run one. Putting up a few yard signs and going through the motions is all she did.

But there’s another reason she’s running unopposed. No one else wants the job.

That’s understandable when you realize during her upcoming four-year term as mayor, the city will be hit with an economic tsunami the likes of which it hasn’t experienced since 1980.

Back then, the Spotsylvania Mall opened and all of the large department stores in downtown Fredericksburg fled to the county along with a huge portion of the city’s commercial tax revenue.

The city’s finances were so bleak back then that City Councilman Samuel E. Perry suggested the four police officers who patrolled the city streets at night, should park their cruisers in strategic locations and turn off their engines to save fuel.

The crisis facing the city today is two-fold: reckless spending and City Council’s misdirected attempts at economic development. The reckless spending is everywhere. $5,000 picnic tables and $5,000 trash cans at the new $5 million riverfront park—a park that should never have cost more than $2 million for what taxpayers got out of it. Even the contractor who built it was amazed at the prices Council was willing to pay.

Then there’s $77 million for a new middle school—one Devine questioned when it was estimated to cost $40 million, but she and Council voted for it anyway. Just two years before the city manager said Fredericksburg couldn’t afford the school, but a small group of parents rallied for it and Council caved.

An upcoming state-mandated upgrade to the city’s sewage treatment plant, which will cost an estimated $150 million, is going to add to the tsunami. The city’s current bonded indebtedness is around $80 million. These two projects will likely more than triple it to around $300 million during Devine’s term. It’s so bad that Council has given up plans to build a new fire station, which has been on the drawing board for more than a decade. This is Council’s only public acknowledgement it simply can’t afford to continue spending.

Building a new school will not only help triple the city’s annual debt service but will add another $2 million to the city’s annual operating budget because of the cost of new administrators and teachers. It could have avoided a lot of this expense had it simply added on to its existing schools, something they were originally built to allow. But cost accounting is not Council’s forte and saving taxpayers money hasn’t been on its radar in recent years.

Most city residents can’t afford Council’s failure to look at the revenue side of the picture. If you’ve driven down William Street lately and seen all of the construction and new buildings, then you’re staring at one of Council’s failings—well, really two. Two blocks of new construction cost city taxpayers nearly $6 million in tax breaks for two different developers. One was more than $3 million for a parking garage the developer never built, but instead sold the garage property to the other developer. The other tax break was for $2 million for the other developer who actually built the parking garage. The funds will not be used for the garage but for future construction. Originally, the garage was supposed to provide free public parking. It’s now a paid lot. So, what did taxpayers get out of these projects? Some nice restaurants, office space, a hotel, high-end apartments, and a $6 million loss in commercial tax revenues they’ll have to cover themselves with higher real estate taxes on their homes.

Travel a little farther down William Street and you’ll see blocks of multi-million-dollar townhouses. See any affordable housing in there? Anywhere? Gentrification has been Council’s priority and could easily become its political downfall. Go down to the waterfront across from the $5 million Riverfront Park or over near the city train station and you will see other residential developments for the upper class. No new affordable housing anywhere. In fact, no affordable housing has been built in the city this century. I’m not talking subsidized housing. That’s a whole other kettle of fish and one of the reasons the city is in such a financial distress. It has 40% of the subsidized housing in the region while making up only about 8% of its population.

Then there’s the Royal Farms convenience store that a developer wanted to build at the corner of Lafayette Blvd. and the Blue Gray Parkway. It would have brought in an estimated $350,000 annually in new tax revenue. Council turned it down saying it wants no more gas stations in Fredericksburg because it wants to go green.

What? Council is now the ruler of the economy and the environment? Well, capitalism be damned. Gasoline-fueled cars will not go away in my lifetime and when they do, private enterprise will cope and change with the times. It always has.

No silly vote by City Council will change that.

Now, we come to one of the worst examples of illogical thinking about economic development among our elected officials. Larry Silver of the Silver companies wants to build in Celebrate Virginia a new development called NEON, which has everything the city wants.

First, it doesn’t have many school-age children—a major expense for most residential developments. It is specifically designed to avoid costing the city money because it demands so little in city services. It is meant to appeal to young workers, not families. NEON will actually net Fredericksburg about $1 million annually in new tax revenues.

Better yet, it will attract young professionals in the city—something City Council also pays lip service to. NEON residents will not have to commute north daily because Silver is building a virtual office facility right on its residential campus.

And it will provide something City Council has also paid lip service to—affordable housing.

Neon will include 50 affordable housing units in its development at absolutely no cost to taxpayers. No developer has ever offered to do that before. The two developers who received nearly $6 million in tax subsidies offered none. Yet it’s Silver who Council is giving grief to about his project. (Shades of Royal Farms?)

Silver had to take the city to court when the city attorney tried to change the zoning under his project after it had already filed its paperwork for the new development. The lawsuit was withdrawn after the city got more reasonable (and realized it couldn’t win). Now it’s complaining because Silver wants to put a gate at the entrance to be closed at night. It is, after all, surrounded by commercial development and Silver doesn’t want outsiders cruising through the development late at night.

Some on Council don’t like the gate idea and that threatens the entire project. Silver won’t build it without the gate. Yet Council has already granted gates to two other developments in Celebrate Virginia and there’s a gated community just two blocks from City Hall. Are they crazy enough to lose a multi-million-dollar development over a gate when the city is desperate for new tax revenue? (Don’t forget Royal Farms.)

Voting this project down would be the equivalent of giving the finger to city taxpayers.

It seems the only way a project gets approved in Fredericksburg these days is to ask City Council for a tax break. That’s what Council understands, and every developer knows it. Council has a hard time coping with economic development that actually brings money into city coffers without a taxpayer handout.

So, what does all this mean for Devine over her first term as mayor? Let’s just say Mayor Mary Katherine Greenlaw is smart to retire now.

More than 50% of city residents have been identified as financially at-risk and can barely afford to live in Fredericksburg. Taxes on city residents will rise rapidly during Devine’s term, and more than half of the citizens will face financial pressure to move out. Many of them will.

Given Council’s record on gentrification already, it’s easy to see why.

Real estate taxes and utility bills have already begun to surge in anticipation of the major expenditures ahead. Taxes were even raised this year—an election year!

When a developer proposes a project where new teachers and first responders could afford to live within the city limits, Council eyes it skeptically. Why? Larry Silver is not only handing Council a financial gift, but political cover, and they can’t see it.

The NEON project is scheduled to come up for a vote before Council sometime after next week’s election. If Council fails to approve it over a set of gates that will close only at night, not only will it fail the people who need affordable housing most, but it will further fuel the city’s financial demise.

Devine will be under a lot of pressure to do something, or her legacy will be as the mayor who oversaw continued gentrification that forced the exodus of its most financially vulnerable residents and did nothing to keep young professionals from leaving the area. She is savvy and pragmatic and faces the unenviable task of exerting her influence to turn City Council around and save it from itself. She must persuade it to put economic development at the top of its agenda and keep it there for the next several years. Given Council’s recklessness in this area, this will be no easy task.

Under Fredericksburg’s form of government, Devine is just one more vote on the panel. Her power comes in exerting her influence by moral suasion, her conduct in running meetings and her voice in representing Fredericksburg to the world. She has a long history of persuading city voters to get behind her. Let’s hope she can be just as successful influencing enough on Council to turn things around. What she does—more so than anyone else on Council—will determine the economic viability of the city in the near-term and the futures of so many of its struggling residents forever.

And you wonder why she’s the only person running for mayor.

City resident Rick Pullen is a best-selling novelist and journalist who once worked for The Free Lance-Star. He has observed City Council since 1980. 

Stafford Candidate for Commissioner of the Revenue Fined

by Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT

Lorena Bruner, a candidate for Commissioner of the Revenue in Stafford County, has been fined $2,100 for failing to file campaign finance reports for August, September and October.

Stafford’s registrar, Anna Hash, informed Bruner of the fines in letters dated Oct. 5, Oct. 30 and Oct. 31. 

According to the letters, Bruner’s campaign, Friends of Lorena Bruner, incurred a $100 fine for not filing its August finance report by the Sep. 15 due date. 

“Any subsequent reports that are not filed on time in this cycle will result in a $1,000 fine,” the letter states. 

Bruner’s campaign then incurred a $1,000 fine for not filing September’s finance report by Oct. 16 and another $1,000 fine for not filing the final finance report, for expenses incurred and donations received through Oct. 26, by the Oct. 30 deadline. 

The Virginia Public Access Project does not show any contributions to Bruner’s campaign since 2019. According to VPAP, her campaign had a balance of $1,869 on Sept. 30, and only three expenses – total of $230 for rack cards and business cards.

Bruner’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment. 

Bruner is running for Commissioner of the Revenue against incumbent Scott Mayausky.

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