Happy New Year

 

Happy New Year 2025

It’s time again to look back at the year fading into history and peek into the one just over the horizon.

Goochland began 2024 with a mostly new board of supervisors. Jonathan Christie, Jonathan Lyle, and Tom Winfree joined Neil Spoonhower, a supervisor since 2020 and Charlie Vaughters, since 2022, when he was appointed to fill the remainder of the term of the late Don Sharpe and elected to a full term in 2023.

At the end of January, the new board held a day long retreat to examine and discuss the county’s challenges and strengths. Among the topics was economic development, which all supervisors agree is vital going forward. Few actions, if any, seem to have resulted from this meeting.

Project Rocky, an Amazon distribution center on Ashland Road north of I-64 is back on, which will bring much needed revenue to county coffers. Opponents are furious that the project was approved in the first place.

The county budget for FY 25, which began on July 1, indicated that Goochland badly needs more economic development to pay the bills without increasing the tax rate. Inflation ballooned the cost of the new Goochland Elementary School, which opened last August, well over the amount generated by the general revenue bonds authorized in a 2021 referendum.

A new fire-rescue station in West Creek was put on “pause” while Station 8 on Whitehall Road in Sandy Hook is in its design phase. We still need to build a new courthouse and fund many other necessary capital projects. Preliminary comments by county and school officials hint that many hard choices will be made during the current budget process.

Despite contentions that Goochland’s population is exploding, a projection made at the ends of the 20^th century predicted that 30,000 people would live in the county by 2015. Ten years after that, we’re still around 28k.

There was a lot of good stuff in 2024. Here are sone highlights.

Goochland Day is back and growing better every year. The annual fire-rescue show brought the community together as our providers showed off their stuff. The new Goochland Elementary School welcomed students in August.

Two former Goochland Fire-Rescue Chiefs, Tommy Carter and Frank Wise, were honored for their lifelong commitment to community service by dedicating newly renovated fire-rescue stations, Courthouse Company 5 and Centerville Company 3 respectively to them.

In November, Goochland honored a hero of the American Revolution. Two hundred years to the day, on November 2, “General Lafayette” attended an event at Tuckahoe Plantation before dedicating a historical marker in Courthouse Village on the site of Anderson’s Tavern, where he spent the night on his way to visit Thomas Jefferson at Monticello. This followed the 5k “Run to Revolution” held at Elk Hill in September to kick off Goochland’s celebration of the 250^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Keep an eye out for more events.

May your 2025 be filled with all good things.

Happy New Year!