King George County Board of Supervisors representative David Sullins was attending a town hall regarding the proposed Gibson Solar Farm when he ran into a constituent who wanted to know if her taxes were being raised this year.
Sullins joked with the woman, who once attended the same church as him, that her taxes would double.
“She said, ‘If I didn’t love you, I’d smack you,’” Sullins recalled during Tuesday’s board of supervisors meeting. “I said, ‘No, we didn’t raise your taxes this time, but it’s getting close.’”
The supervisors voted unanimously on Tuesday to adopt the same real estate tax rate in FY2026 as last year — 68 cents per $100 of assessed value. Before the vote, however, Sullins issued a warning to county residents that the rate won’t remain flat forever.
“It’s getting harder and harder to balance the budget and take care of the people that need to be taken care of,” Sullins said. “By saying that, I’m talking about the retirees, the county staff, I’m talking about the teachers, the firemen, the sheriff’s deputies, the works. The math is not going to always balance the way it is right now, so we’re going to have to do something to upset the status quo and make a few changes.”
Sullins said county residents who are reluctant to accept a higher tax rate — but who also urge supervisors to reject every major project — need to be more realistic.
“What I do want to say is, as a county, we’ve got to stop saying ‘no’ to everything,” Sullins said.
Sullins added that if the county doesn’t offer its employees pay increases, they are going to look for work elsewhere.
Sullins and his fellow board members were elected on the premise that they would maintain a low tax rate. But he said the county will “die off” if it continues to frown upon new industries or new projects without raising taxes.
“Something’s got to give,” he said. “Over time, it’s either going to have to be raised taxes or bring in some kind of project that brings revenue … I just want the people who keep saying, ‘Don’t raise my taxes and don’t bring anything in,’ y’all need to learn some basic math and recognize we can’t get there from here.”
In other business on Tuesday, the board heard from Friends of the Rappahannock (FOR) Advocacy and Coastal Programs Director Brent Hunsinger, who gave a presentation on the river being named the sixth-most endangered in the country by American Rivers.
Hunsinger’s presentation noted that FOR worked with the Rappahannock Tribe and the Southern Environmental Law Center on the designation, which the organizations hope will serve as a proactive tool that will encourage the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, localities that the river serves and stakeholders to develop and implement a comprehensive water supply plan.
Later in the meeting, King George Director of Community Development Kelli Le Duc provided the board with recommendations from the Zoning Ordinance Text Amendment Committee regarding proposed downzoning in the county. Late last year, the board discussed changing minimal lot requirements in Agricultural-1 districts from 10 acres to 50 acres; Agricultural-2 from two acres to 20 acres; and Agricultural-3 from one acre to 10 acres.
The committee did not support that plan, instead recommending A-1 and A-3 stay the same, while suggesting the minimum lot requirement in A-2 changes from two to four acres.
Supervisor Ken Stroud of the James Monroe District said that the Fredericksburg Area Association of Realtors is the biggest critic of the supervisors’ plan. He also said anyone making an argument against the larger lot size requirements only cares about money.
“There is only one purpose for subdividing land into smaller lots, and it isn’t to plant soybeans,” Stroud said. “It isn’t to raise cattle. Cattle don’t care about smaller lots. It’s so people can sell and build houses. So, everybody’s against having a larger lot size, what are you saying? You want to sell it for the money. So, you’re selling out the county. There’s no more rural, no more agricultural. You’re selling out the county — period.”
