The Prince William Board of County Supervisors approved its fiscal year 2026 budget and tax rates on Tuesday night, often along party lines.
Supervisor Bob Weir, a Republican, was among the most vocal at Tuesday’s meeting, stating his opposition to nearly everything on the docket from the real estate tax rate, the fire levy and the amount going to Prince William County Schools (PWCS).
“The fire levy has been bastardized to the point that it no longer serves the purpose it was supposed to. We’re using it as a slush fund to fund many things that it’s not intended to fund,” Weir said. “… This was our opportunity to address that issue. And once again, we failed.”
Weir, Democrat Supervisor Victor Angry and Republican Supervisor Yesli Vega voted against the fire levy.
Brentsville District Supervisor Tom Gordy, another Republican, voted mostly in line with Weir and was especially vocal about the real estate tax rate, which was set at $0.906 per $100 of assessed value in the Board’s April 15 meeting. The original rate proposed by the county executive was 92 cents.
“Our small businesses are struggling. … They are the ones who hire people. They are the larger employers. The data centers don’t employ people anywhere near the level that our small businesses are employing. And now we see entire swaths of the Hornbaker area going under contract and being sold. We’re losing these businesses because there’s nowhere to go in the county,” Gordy said. “I did some calculations and just thinking about the $20 million that we’re giving the schools that will sit idle in their checking account, that equates to almost $219 per household in this county. … That’s a two weeks worth of groceries for many of these families. That’s a lot of money that could be injected into our economy to create more jobs that would then give us a greater tax base. But instead, the money will sit, it will do nothing.”
He continued, stating he wished the Board could’ve done better for its residents.
“It will only serve to hurt our families in Prince William County. I wish we would have done better by our citizens, by our businesses, with our property tax. But I cannot support it at the level that it is,” Gordy said shortly before voting with Weir and Vega against the real estate tax rate.
Weir also voted against the PWCS transfer, calling the entire budget an “abomination.”
“To me, this budget is an abomination. An abomination filled with bloat and spending, unsupervised spending, unaccountable spending to the tune of several hundreds of millions of dollars,” Weir said. “Millions of dollars that our residents are going to pay and our businesses, even the data centers, are going to pay. … We cannot sustain this.”
Weir blamed the possibility of PWCS losing federal funding — expected to be around $48 million of its $1.7 billion operating budget — on School Board Chair Dr. Babur Lateef, who is also a candidate for lieutenant governor.
“Predictably, this has turned into a political issue, and it’s not. It shouldn’t be. This is an accountability issue, a fiduciary responsibility issue. Fiduciary responsibility that we, as a Board, collectively have,” Weir said. “[Is PWCS] underfunded by the state? Probably. But we’re not the school division’s only source of funding. They’re funded by us, they’re funded by the state and they’re funded by the feds.
“… If there’s any threat to the federal funding, I would suggest it’s coming from the School Board chair making political statements in his run for lieutenant governor. Maybe if he kept his mouth shut, maybe we’d have a better chance of keeping those federal funds. But we can’t continue down this road,” Weir continued.
Weir, Gordy and Vega voted against the PWCS transfer, but the motion passed 5-3. The only unanimous votes from the meeting were in approving a hiring incentives plan for hard-to-fill positions and a contribution of the FY2026 operating surplus to maintain required fund balances.
