Lynchburg city staff are evaluating what was lost, what was gained and what questions remain unanswered from a chaotic budget season now that the 2026 fiscal year is just shy of two months underway.
On June 30, the Lynchburg City Council approved a reduced real estate tax rate and adopted a budget for the 2026 fiscal year. The changes went into effect July 1, leaving affected department heads little time to adjust their operations to match reduced budgets.
“The dust is still there, but at least it’s settling,” said Wyatt Woody, director of the city’s parks and recreation department. Cuts meant Woody’s team lost three naturalists and a gardener, and the dozens of events they ran for the department every year.
In total, budget cuts led to the elimination of 14.53 staff positions, representing a combination of full- and part-time staff. Six of those positions were vacant at the time of the cuts.
Other areas of the budget saw boosts, establishing a cost of living salary adjustment for general city employees and teachers, a pay progression plan for police and fire staff, and capital improvement investments for city schools, the main library and the Miller Park Pool.
The budget is set to appear on Lynchburg’s agenda again on Tuesday when Donna Witt, the city’s chief financial officer, presents an update to the city council at a work session. Here’s what we know so far about how the 2026 fiscal year budget is impacting city services.
‘A budget is a plan and a prayer’
The city manager’s proposed 2026 fiscal year budget, presented on March 11, included projected revenues calculated with the then-current real estate tax rate: 89 cents per $100 of assessed value. Projected revenues and expenditures were each set at $252.8 million.
The budget adopted on June 30 had an 84-cent real estate tax rate and $250.5 million in revenues and expenditures.
The rate reduction came after city council members wrestled with the reality of an uncharacteristically high real estate assessment and what effect it would have on tax revenue. The 84-cent rate represents a decrease in the tax rate from 2025 but an increase in tax payments for most residents due to the reassessment that upped the value of real estate by about 15.5%.
The burden of budget reductions fell on the city’s department heads, who had to determine what services and programs in their purview could be sacrificed.
“We all take great pride in the services that we provide to the city,” Witt said. “But that’s the difference between 89 cents and 84 cents. At 84 cents, we had to start cutting.”
Department heads had submitted their initial budget proposals in December, guided by Witt’s team to keep expenditures flat from 2025 to 2026, Woody said.
In late May, as directed by the city council, city budgeting staff asked department heads to reduce their proposed budgets by about 10%, said Anna Bentson, the city’s director of communications and public engagement. Some departments were asked to reduce more, and others less, “depending on the services the department provides,” she wrote in an email.
“City Council’s direction that reductions in public safety would not be supported required potentially deeper cuts in other areas,” she added.
In the end, Witt’s team presented enough cuts to balance the budget at the 84-cent rate.
The budget didn’t stay balanced for long. At the second reading of the budget on June 30, the city council voted to protect about $480,000 worth of services from the chopping block. The protected funds included those for the downtown branch of the library, the Templeton Center for seniors and the Art Studio at Jackson Heights.
At that point, Deputy City Manager Greg Patrick advised city council members to pass the budget with the assumption that the $480,000 would be included in the $250.5 million total, even if there was no clear answer on where that money would come from. He said city staff would come to the Aug. 26 city council meeting ready “with recommendations to either lower expenditures at that point or, depending on how revenue is trending, look at revenue increases to fit them within the budget,” according to a recording of the June 30 meeting.
The advice led some residents and council members to question if the adopted budget was balanced — as it’s required to be by state code — and if more cuts were on the horizon.
Witt said there will be no more cuts for the 2026 fiscal year. She also said the budget is balanced, and has been since June 30.
“Otherwise, we would have had to shut down the government,” she said. “We would not have had appropriation to pay payroll, to turn the lights on, to do anything.”
Her solution rests in one budget line: In the published 2026 fiscal year budget, “Planned Budget Savings” accounts for $538,118 on the balancing sheet. The line was added in on June 30, shortly after the city council voted to restore funding to the programs, Witt said.
The line represents savings that Witt is confident the city will accumulate by the end of the fiscal year. The budget always overestimates expenditures and underestimates revenues, she said. She can allocate those savings to cover the restored programs.
“A budget is a plan and a prayer,” as Witt likes to say.
Witt said she won’t know what specific areas of savings will cover the restored programs until the end of the 2026 fiscal year, when she can report the actual numbers of “here’s where we found that money.”
In city departments, losing people means losing programs
Many departments made small sacrifices to balance the budget, Witt said. Residents likely won’t feel the effects of budget cuts until they reach out for something that’s always been there, and it’s no longer there, she added.
For the Lynchburg Visitor Center and Museum, that looks like reduced operating hours. For cleanup efforts, it looks like a reduction in the number of times a year residents can drop off hazardous waste items like old electronics and household chemicals. For parks and recreation, it looks like traditions such as the Great Cardboard Boat Race that won’t be on the calendar anymore, Woody said.
Budget cuts led to the elimination of 8.53 filled staff positions, which represents a combination of full- and part-time workers. The cuts came from five departments: assessor, city attorney, communications, economic development and tourism, and parks and recreation, Bentson said.
Six vacant positions were also eliminated, Bentson said: three in juvenile services, two in financial services and one in information technology.
“We are very people-heavy, and so when you’re reducing budgets, it’s really tough to try and not impact filled positions. But that’s always my goal,” Witt said.
The staff cuts represent about 1% of the city’s workforce, which was calculated at 1,465.41 full-time equivalents in 2026 budget documents.
Staff who were laid off received severance pay and benefits based on their years of service to the city, Witt said. They had less than a week’s notice before needing to leave their roles.
Parks and recreation, which saw the most staff cuts of any department, is still adjusting to the change, Woody said.
The three naturalists who were laid off ran about 100 events a year, Woody said, ranging from archery classes to kayaking trips to outdoor survival skill workshops. Those events often required special certifications, hours of planning and niche expertise to be executed, so they likely won’t be absorbed into other staff members’ workload.
“Once people go to sign up for one of the events that they’ve come to know and love and be a part of every year, and it’s not there, I think that’s when we’ll really start to feel the effects,” he said.
The three naturalists also ran the environmental learning center called Nature Zone. It is now permanently closed, Woody said.
Part-time parks and recreation staff are pitching in to ensure that the animals at the Nature Zone receive the attention they need while a plan for their long-term care is established, Woody said. Relocating native and protected species like box turtles and black rat snakes is a complicated process due to the state’s permitting requirements, he said.
The parks and recreation department also lost its gardener, who managed the city’s pollinator gardens and accompanying educational programs, to budget cuts.
Investments promise growth for some city services
Some department heads experienced the anxiety of potential cuts but were spared from the chopping block.
Beverly Blair, director of the Lynchburg Public Library, said she prepared for the worst when the downtown branch of the library made its way onto the proposed list of cut services.
“My job is to make sure that the library continues through good times and bad,” Blair said. “So I kept staying positive, focusing on solutions if the cut were to happen.”
On June 30, city council members voted to protect the downtown library, removing it from the list of at-risk programs. But confusion about the fate of the library had already spread around town, Blair said.
“I am still going to places now and having people ask me if the downtown branch closed. I think the fear really got to everybody,” she said.
But there’s no need for fear, Blair said. In fact, there’s more of a need for celebration. The library not only preserved its downtown branch but also secured $12.5 million in the city’s capital improvement fund to renovate the main branch of the library.
Blair is already crafting her wishlist to revamp the library — which was retrofitted into an abandoned Sears department store about 40 years ago — to meet the needs of 21st-century library users. She hopes to incorporate new technology hubs and meeting and collaboration spaces to enhance the library experience for all users. There’s also a laundry list of deferred maintenance on the building’s roof, sewer and lighting system that could use some attention, she said.
The budget made other investments in city initiatives, according to the city’s budget brief, including:
- A 2.5% cost of living adjustment for general city employees;
- A local match for a 3% cost of living adjustment adopted by the General Assembly for Lynchburg City Schools staff;
- A continued pay progression plan for sworn police and fire personnel;
- A more than $80 million contribution to the capital improvement program, which includes $60 million to maintain aging school infrastructure, $12.5 million to renovate the library and $10.4 million to improve Miller Park Pool.
Seeing beloved city programs saved from the chopping block reminded people how important city funding is, said Lynchburg resident Rebecca Bruce. She’s been attending pottery workshops at the Art Studio at Jackson Heights for the past two years, but feared she’d lose her arts community when the program was considered for cuts. When it was saved on June 30, Bruce said she walked away with a new perspective on how budgets are more than numbers.
“This program is the city to me. This is why I pay taxes,” she said.
_____________
Correction 11:35 a.m. Aug. 25: The Lynchburg budget include a 2.5% cost of living adjustment for city employees. The amount was incorrect in an earlier version of this story.
