CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – Following Monday night’s long explanation by City Manager Sam Sanders of the need for a two-cent real estate tax hike to help balance 2027 budget priorities, brand new City Councilor Jen Fleisher told WINA Morning News she’s leaning toward supporting it.

The proposal comes as she considers her first city budget.

“It is really a hazing to just throw a new councilor into budget, it’s true,” Fleisher said. “You’ve really got to get up to speed quickly on some things maybe you haven’t paid attention to before. You know, you can definitely have been engaged in City Council and have missed, oh, like line item 7,045 of the budget, so it’s a gentle learning curve at the moment.”

She said the group discussed Councilor Lloyd Snook’s proposal to use some of the $10-million 2026 surplus to fill the $2.5-million revenue gap in the City Manager’s $279-million 2027 budget proposal.

“Though it may seem like an easy silver bullet”, it has become clear to her it’s not the way to go for three reasons,” Fleisher said. “Our surplus is for one-time use projects, and our Triple-A bond rating is reliant on us sustaining that quality of use and not using one-time use funds for repeated expenditures like the ones that we’re considering to push to raise the tax rate like schools, transit, etc.”

For those struggling with rents and mortgages, Fleisher said, “We have also included as a recommendation in the budget more staff for our Commissioner of the Revenue which means we can spend more time on helping out folks who need assistance with rent and mortgages through our other programs.”

She said she’s not among them and is able to afford helping fund priorities.

“Honestly I looked on our calculator, which fortunately our budget team has put up on the site, and recognize that that increase for the year for example on my house is $76,” Fleisher said. “So that if I applied that to houses of more value, it’s not that it’s not impact but is one that was maybe manageable for some people,” she said. “Then, again, if not, then we can lean on these assistance programs that we have to help with payments and things.”

She said she thinks they will need to raise the tax rate to $1-per-$100 assessed “if we want to fund schools and push transit to the places we want them to go where our priorities are.”

“If we want to walk the walk, right now that is our only mechanism to do it.”