Washington County Sets April Special Election on School Sales Tax Amid Holston Merger Fears

ABINGDON — Washington County supervisors voted 5-2 this week to ask a circuit court judge to order an April 6 special election on a 1 percent local sales tax for school construction, after a more than two-hour public hearing that often sounded less like a tax debate and more like a fight over the future of Holston High School.

Forty-seven other Virginia localities are already scheduled to ask voters about the same new statewide tool in November. Washington County missed the mid-August filing window for a cost-free November placement, so Elections Director Derek Lyall estimates the April special election will cost the county roughly $38,000 to $45,000. A court order must land at least 81 days before April 6.

Superintendent Keith Perrigan told supervisors time still matters. Waiting until a November 2027 general-election slot, he argued, could add about $5 million in deferred maintenance before new tax revenue arrives, while early yes votes elsewhere will tighten the contractor market and intensify competition for state school-construction grants. A July Thompson & Litton facilities study for the county’s 15 schools and Abingdon career-technical center catalogued roughly $200 million in mechanical, electrical, and plumbing needs — a figure Perrigan said a two-decade tax stream could approach in total yield.

Supervisors Randy Pennington, Lee Brannon, Charlie Hargis, Saul Hernandez, and Chairman Dwayne Ball voted yes. Pennington framed the choice as democratic fairness: seven supervisors should not permanently deny the county a chance to vote. Phillip McCall and David Matlock voted no. Matlock, whose district includes Damascus, said the board is moving too fast without a clear spending plan and noted that two-thirds of Virginia localities are not putting the tax on any near-term ballot.

Tomato-red T-shirts filled the room for Holston High. Residents fear consolidation with Patrick Henry High near Glade Spring — a pairing the facilities study mentions as a scenario, not a scheduled vote. School officials issued an early-September Q&A stating no decisions have been made about Holston, Patrick Henry, or any other individual school. That assurance has not calmed parents who see new tax dollars as the funding path for a merged campus.

Thirteen-year-old Damascus Middle student Albert Howard told supervisors that talk of new football fields at a consolidated school felt like a carrot-and-stick pitch, waving a plastic sparkly carrot for emphasis. “If we have to consolidate, you will erase another rural school,” he said. “If we lose Holston High, we lose so much more than what a large school can ever offer.” Parent Sarah Steele asked how taxpayers can approve new revenue before they see the complete picture of what they are funding, calling the special-election cost itself a tax on the chance to tax further.

The facilities math cuts both ways. Keeping both high schools open implies roughly $16 million in improvements at Patrick Henry and about $13.3 million at Holston, according to the study’s figures discussed publicly. Closing one school would rearrange those capital needs — and rearrange identity politics in rural valleys where Friday-night lights and small graduating classes define community maps as much as road signs do.

Chairman Ball stressed that Tuesday’s vote was not a vote for consolidation or even for the tax itself, only for putting a question on a ballot. Some members who approve the referendum, he noted, may still vote no as private citizens in April. That distinction matters legally and politically, but it does little to lower the temperature for families who treat the two issues as inseparable.

Perrigan said he does not typically support tax increases, yet argued the facilities backlog forces an honest conversation. That framing — reluctant superintendent, divided board, fiery gallery — is familiar across Southwest Virginia localities that watched Northern Virginia’s school bond capacity for a generation and now confront mid-century plants with thinner commercial tax bases.

April’s special election will test whether consolidation anxiety suppresses a yes vote even among parents who hate leaky roofs. It will also test whether supervisors who demanded more spending clarity in July and December can produce a project list transparent enough to answer Steele’s question before early voting opens.

All Virginia News will follow the circuit court order, the county’s published capital plan if one appears, and whether Holston and Patrick Henry remain separate lines on the facilities spreadsheet when ballots are printed. For Washington County, the 1 percent question is no longer a Richmond statute — it is a local trust referendum wearing a school-construction label.

Email the Washington County Board of Supervisors:
Phillip McCall, pmccall@washcova.com,
Randy Pennington, rpennington@washcova.com,
Charlie Hargis Jr., chargis@washcova.com,
Lee Brannon, lbrannon@washcova.com,
David Matlock, dmatlock@washcova.com,
Saul Hernandez, shernandez@washcova.com,
Dwayne Ball, dball@washcova.com,

Email the Washington County School Board:
Jenny Nichols, jnichols@wcs.k12.va.us,
Debbie Anderson, danderso@wcs.k12.va.us,
Sandra Frederick, sandyf@wcs.k12.va.us,
Sanders Henderson, shenderson@wcs.k12.va.us,
Crystal Rasnake, cdrasnake@wcs.k12.va.us,
Adam Wilson, awilson@wcs.k12.va.us,
Andy Puckett, andyp@wcs.k12.va.us,