Williamsburg passes meals, lodging tax increases, plus new admissions tax
Good morning! Also today, James City County planners take horse owners' complaints to heart, and bus accident leads to expensive repairs at Williamsburg transportation center.
As expected, Williamsburg City Council voted unanimously Thursday to raise the city’s meals and lodging taxes, and to impose a new 10% admissions tax on most events.
The increases take effect immediately.
City Council drew considerable heat from local restaurateurs when the meals tax increase was first proposed last year during planning for the current budget. In response, city council asked staff to lower the meals tax from the planned 7% to 6.5%, and provide a 2% discount to cover restaurants’ credit card fees.
Council also voted to hold off action on the new taxes until Thursday’s meeting.
No one from the industry appeared at Thursday’s session to speak during the Open Forum part of the meeting. Resident Sabrina Kirkland said she thought the taxes would hurt local business, and encouraged the city to cut its capital spending budget.
Ron Kirkland, president of the hotel and motel association, spoke in favor of taxes that he said would come from the pockets of visitors and “not ...have a lot of impact on local folks.”
Besides the measure to increase the meals and lodging taxes, city council also voted to impose a new 10% tax on admissions to events in the city.
The tax is capped at the first $10 of admissions, and it will not be applied to public or private events at elementary and secondary schools or college-sponsored events or events by recognized student organizations.
“I don’t think this $1 really creates a barrier,” Council member Barbara L. Ramsey said.
Vice Mayor W. Pat Dent said the city would have to raise real estate taxes considerably to cover what the new tax increases would bring.
Mayor Douglas G. Pons said the taxes were “the best way to meet the needs of the city.”
James City thinks twice about horse limits
Faced with protests from horse owners that the county was “trying to solve a problem that does not exist,” James City County planners reined in a proposal to regulate the number of horses allowed on a specific property.
The James City County planning commission heard a proposal Wednesday from county staff recommending they limit the number of horses allowed in areas zoned for horses to 1.5 acre for the first horse and 1 acre for each additional horse. Staff recommended grandfathering existing operations, and said commercial operations would be treated differently from noncommercial ones.
Five different representatives of the equine community spoke up that this was a simplistic approach to what is intended to be a plan to preserve water quality and prevent soil erosion. They noted that other alternatives, from controlling how manure is spread to preventing water runoff, would work more effectively without damaging horse owners.
“The county may be trying to solve a problem that does not exist,” said Nancy Williams, executive director of Dream Catchers. The Toano-based nonprofit provides a home for horses used in a variety of therapy programs for humans.
Williams said the recommendation was based on the first part of a six-year-old assessment that was never fully completed. She said the majority of horses are fed with hay and grain and don’t need a full acre, and most of them are stabled at night.
“You will zone good people and their horses right out of the county”, Wiliams said, with “excessive, unreasonable regulation.”
Other horse owners said they feared the move would not stop with horses but would also reel in cattle, endangering the agricultural parts of the county.
Veterinarian Steve Escobar, past president of the Virginia Horse Council, said there was no hard data to back up the staff recommendation. He said horses are a $4.1 billion industry in Virginia.
“I’ve learned a lot tonight,” Commission Chair Jack Haldeman said, adding that maintaining a strong agricultural economy is important to retaining the county’s semi-rural nature.
Board members voted unanimously to send the proposal back to county staff for further research and to ensure the horse community offers its input.
In other action, the board unanimously recommended that the board of supervisors approve a long-delayed project to build 50 senior housing units in Forest Heights off Richmond Road.
The project was approved six years ago, but delayed because of the impact of Covid on construction, supplies and financing, developer Doug Harbin of Wayne Harbin Builder explained.
The 50 units, aimed at independent senior living, would be priced at 30 to 60% of the county’s average median income.
Bus accident uncovers serious rot in transit center
A bus accident that damaged a column at the Williamsburg Transportation Center led to the discovery of significant wood rot that will cost the city $263,700 to fix, city council was told Thursday.
The 5,400-square- foot station, which handles Amtrak traffic, was built in 1935 as part of the Rockefeller restoration of the Colonial Williamsburg historic area.
Last June a Williamsburg Area Transit Authority bus damaged one of the columns, which insurance will replace at a cost of $45,000, said Jack Reed, the director of public works and utilities.
But when a consultant studied the site, they found a large part of the canopy had rotted because of a leaking roof.
David Nice Builders said it would cost up to $263,700 to replace the other three columns, replace rotten boards and repair the roof and gutters to prevent more leaking.
Reed said the repair can be paid for under the city’s current capital spending budget.
He said it:
Jay Everson, Stonehouse district representative on the James City County planning commission, ties economic diversity to affordable housing at Wenesday’s commission meeting:
“If you want to have a more diverse economic community, different classes of folks, you have to have high density for the people who need to have...affordable housing..... We have a lot of regulatory conditions that these developments have to have....that all drives the costs up....what we’ve done is a whole bunch of the county now is for the economically higher classes... so people like my three kids don’t live here because they can’t afford (to buy) here”
Junior Golf tournament returns to Williamsburg
The American Junior Golf Association will return to Williamsburg this summer for the first time in six years, under a three-year partnership with Visit Williamsburg, the tourism marketing group announced.
The Visit Williamsburg Junior Championship will bring 78 top-ranked junior golfers from across the world to compete. The inaugural event will be held May 22–25, 2026, at Ford’s Colony Country Club — Marsh Hawk Course.
On Friday, May 22, members of the local community will have the opportunity to participate in the Junior-Am Fundraising Tournament, playing alongside top junior golfers to raise money for the AJGA’s charitable initiatives.
Passings
Like the County Supervisors, the City can't help itself but to vote to take more money out of taxpayers' pockets. Enough is never enough. Tax revenues already rise due to price increases, so you can't blame inflation. The problem is runaway spending. Barbara Ramsey might not think that $1 is a barrier, but who thinks this is all Ramsey intends to take? Next year, it will be another dollar. Then another, and who can argue against just one more? That's how you get to the double digit tax increases we see every cycle. Stop the madness.