The Stafford Board of Supervisors examined the county’s funding needs over the next five years at a work session Tuesday night.
A walk through the county’s five-year plan kicks off this season’s budget planning process, said Andrea Light, the county’s director of financial services.
The plan, which focuses only on the general fund revenue and expenditures, estimates an incremental increase in revenue of $163.3 million. According to Light, real estate taxes continue to be the major driving source of revenue for the county — making up 57% of total revenue, while schools continue to be the largest expenditure.
The adopted FY2025 operating budget totals $427 million, with the school operating budget set at just over $170 million. That total does not include money for the school division’s 3R or capital projects, nor its debt services.
With just $19.9 million of new revenue, the FY2026 budget figures to be a challenge, said Light. On the revenue side, Light explained the county’s “very robust” development cycle.
“We start with department qualitative/quantitative review of revenues… those subject matter experts,” she said.
That step is followed by stress testing assumptions, an economic forum with state and regional experts, a mid-year check-in, and then the development of a proposed adopted budget followed by monitoring and reporting to the board.
The breakdown of the five-year plan revenue assumes data centers will provide 45% over the next five years.
The real estate tax, currently set at $0.8936 without the fire levy, is anticipated to increase in years one through three, but not in years four and five, thanks to data center revenues.
“Our assumptions do include increases on reassessments of 10%, and those happen in the even calendar years, so ‘26, ‘28, and ‘30,” Light explained. “And we anticipate other tax relief, for the elderly and disabled, we anticipate that’s going to continue to grow by 2%.”
Speculation on the impact of anticipated data center revenue sparked a discussion among the supervisors. Pam Yeung, Garrisonville District supervisor, asked why the real estate rates weren’t shown in negative terms in years four and five.
“That’s really a board decision,” replied Light. “A strategy on how you want to implement the use of those data center funds. Do you want to use those to reduce the tax rate? Or do you want to use those to change services? As we go through the expenditures, you’ll see there’s options. There’s a hundred lines in here where you have options.”
All revenue from data centers is speculative at this point, said Light.
“They are determined by when those data centers get built, when they put that personal property in, and so we are making some assumptions to provide an idea of what it might look like,” she said.
“How many data centers are you basing this on? Just the ones that we’ve approved?” asked Darrell English, Hartwood District supervisor.
Light said staff looked at data centers currently operating in Prince William and Loudoun counties as examples. Data center revenue from the two approved for FY2026 is estimated to be about $6.2 million, increasing to $18 million in 2027 and 2028, $12 million in 2029 and $20 million in 2030.
Staff did not consider the recently board-approved data centers totaling 8.8 million square feet of data center space, just the completion of one building by the end of 2025 by Amazon on the Potomac Church campus.
“We have not captured all of that within this five-year plan,” Light said. “I think this (projection) is slightly conservative. My concern with looking at this overall is what is in FY26. It assumes that growth — that we have half a data center’s worth of revenue in total… We’re going from a piece of property that was in land use to a piece of property now that… has significant real estate value.”
She added that more precision and additional work needs to be done to know what the effect will be on county revenue for 2026. The five-year plan assumes additional data centers will come online each year.
Bohmke reminded the board that for further buildings to be added to Amazon’s Potomac Church data center campus, they will have to build the necessary water and sewer infrastructure from the pump station to its second building.
“I think this is way too aggressive,” Bohmke said. “Have you driven over there and looked at the data center on Old Potomac Church? I thought the walls were going to be up when I drove by there about a week and a half ago… there’s a lot that has to happen down there.”
County Administrator Bill Ashton said having a building in place in 14 months isn’t unreasonable.
“We’re continuing to monitor and have conversations with (developers) moving forward,” he said.
Light emphasized that her staff would update the numbers as needed.
“As we continue through the five-year plan, the board’s retreat, the budget process, we’re going to continue to hone in on what this looks like and bring more precision to this,” she said.
