Radford voters, facing continuing city budget issues, elected a new mayor and two new city council members on Tuesday.
Seth Gillespie, the vice mayor since 2023, ran unopposed to replace retiring Mayor David Horton and got 93.2% of the votes, with 6.7% going to write-ins. Doug Kanipe and Jonathan Stewart will be first-time council members after leading a five-way race for two seats, ahead of Bill Kovarik (20.7%), Chad McClanahan (19.9%) and Charlie Meeks (10.2%).
Kanipe took 25.1% of the vote and Stewart landed 23.7%. They will join incumbents Guy Wohlford and Kellie Artrip on Jan. 1. Horton and councilmember Jessie Foster are leaving office at the end of their terms.
Two school board incumbents — Jane Swing and Gloria Boyd — were reelected on Tuesday, with Ed Dickenson winning the third available seat on the five-person board. Swing, the vice chairwoman, received 28% of the votes, while the chairwoman, Boyd, polled 27%. Dickenson finished at 22.3%, 109 votes better than Fallon Kreye.
Digging into the budget
Gillespie said he looks forward to working with the council and city staff to improve finances in Radford, which according to the Virginia Auditor of Public Accounts is in “fiscal distress.” The city was millions of dollars behind in back payments on wholesale electricity from Appalachian Power Co. before signing an agreement with CMS Energy Resource Management Co. Radford is paying off a $4 million loan it took on in 2023 to pay its bills.
Since then, the city has instituted a hiring freeze, has made expense cuts “across the board” and has raised real estate tax rates for three consecutive years, along with utility rates, he said. A new city manager and new chief financial officer have been instrumental as well, he said.
“I do think that a lot of the preliminary work has been done,” Gillespie said by phone before the results came in.
Gillespie works as an IRS-enrolled agent for his father’s accounting firm and owns a flower shop in the city. “I just do the books for that,” he said. “I don’t make any arrangements, because that wouldn’t go well.”
He said his first term included a lot of “hard lessons,” and the future includes infrastructure needs and largely empty city reserves.
“Getting those fund balances to a healthy place for the long term sustainability of Radford is priority number one for us,” he said. “I think we have a lot of the right players in place.”
He’ll do further work with two first-time winners.
Neither Kanipe nor Stewart had previously run for office. Kanipe has worked for 24 years at motor manufacturer and designer Kollmorgen Corp.’s Radford plant. Stewart owns a towing company and rental properties. They, like Gillespie, ran as independents.
Both councilmen-elect said they were keen for Radford to remain an independent city. Deeper financial troubles could change that status.
“In the last eight to 10 years, I’ve been very frustrated with the direction that things have been going,” Kanipe said in a Tuesday night phone call. “It seems like roads are not going well, businesses are leaving, all those things that seem to not be good.”
Kanipe wants to see the council continue to support the city’s economic development authority, which had scored big wins in the last few weeks, including a TripStop travel center and a free-standing emergency room built by LewisGale Hospital Montgomery.
“We have more opportunities with the old foundry property and a few other properties, so just continue to support them and let them do what they’re best at,” he said.
Both he and Stewart bemoaned the city’s many empty buildings and storefronts.
“We have to get more businesses,” Stewart said by phone Tuesday night. “Even small businesses matter. We have to draw businesses to this city. We have to use what we have, and use it the right way to draw people to the city of Radford.”
Bisset Park is an underutilized draw and has been for years, he said.
“It’s time that it’s used for … access to the water, so not just citizens, but people from outside the area can actually come here and float the river and not only use boats and canoes, they can walk into the water and use it the way it’s supposed to be,” Stewart said.
Kanipe and Gillespie believe that Radford residents and potential businesses may lack confidence, based on past financial decisions, including inaccurate revenue projections. Rebuilding trust could bring more investment, they said.
Gillespie foresees continuing to ask city staff “to do more with less,” while Radford tax and utility rates continue to increase.
“Surely we cannot tax our way out of this, but, for us to be able to maintain city status, we’ll have to continually look at that,” he said. “But I think before we just increase rates, we have to be able to show our citizens that we have maximized efficiencies across the board and that we’re being good judiciaries of their tax dollars. I think a lot of trust has been lost in that department. I feel very important in my role as mayor in the next council is to regain that trust, to be able to show that we are being good fiduciaries of those tax dollars and making the investment where it needs to be, for us to remain a city.”
