Decision 2026: Nat Marshall 09/30/2026

You mentioned education, and I'm looking at your webpage now, lynchburgbettertogether.org, and some of the priorities, expanding access to early childhood education, school readiness programs, going to improve affordable housing, child care, transportation.

A number of other things are improving roads, water systems, public infrastructure.

Those are all things that seem like things you want cities to do, but it's hard for me to see that you're going to do them at the real estate tax rate where it is now.

Is it reasonable for me to expect that if the three of you win, that along with Starling Wilder, you'd have four votes and you would raise the real estate tax to pay for what you want to do?

Well, that would be a reasonable assumption, but we realize that that's pretty unpopular.

So you certainly aren't hearing from me now, and certainly you haven't heard from us all in regards to increasing the rate.

That is not on our agenda.

We will go forward and try to figure out how we can fix this thing.

And my thought is, again, that glass half full I was telling you about, get with the economic developers and so on and so forth, and come up with some creative ideas as to how we can bring more money into the city.

Some of those things are how can we bring more visitors into Lynchburg and have them spend their money and get the proceeds from that.

Make sure that the hotels are full.

Make sure the restaurants are regularly packed.

And, you know, One of the things is working with a couple of groups, my lazy group, we're trying to bring a hundred plus team tournament, you know, and so tournaments are great where you've, you know, you bring say a hundred teams that's multiply that by eight, uh, and then multiply that by about three or four when they bring the families, and suddenly you've got a huge, huge contingency of folks coming in.

So that's basketball, then soccer and lacrosse and softball and baseball.

So I would love to have Lynchburg as the mecca of tournaments.

And in that sense, you've got to think outside the box and be creative.

Certainly our go-to and our easiest to raise those taxes that you talked about, but I think that we have to really be – think outside the box and creative in regards to how else we can bring it in you know and certainly if you drive down main street there are four or five or six or ten different places that are empty you know and haven't been um refurbished so i think that we have to put a little more emphasis on that you go i'm knocking on a lot of doors now and you know that's one of the things that people keep on telling me all right you gotta be out there and introduce yourself to people and i've been in all kinds of neighborhoods and there are a lot of houses that are empty and have no one in it so we we should be able to try to upgrade those areas and those people and their circumstance one of the problems of course is as you go in and find a house and you go and put a hundred thousand dollars in it now suddenly you know what you need to get to make that worthwhile is going to be more than a lot of folks can afford so the the low-cost housing that is necessary for so many people is becoming less and less Because, yeah, you go into an obligated area and start refurbishing, and suddenly the folks who were living there could afford it, and now they can't.

So that's sort of a catch-22.

So we've got to, once again, just be really creative in our thoughts and ideas as to how we go forward.

And, of course, if we can fix this thing, we'll suddenly become really popular across the country for good things and not what's happening right now.

You mentioned education, and I'm looking at your webpage now, lynchburgbettertogether.org, and some of the priorities, expanding access to early childhood education, school readiness programs, going to improve affordable housing, child care, transportation.

A number of other things are improving roads, water systems, public infrastructure.

Those are all things that seem like things you want cities to do, but it's hard for me to see that you're going to do them at the real estate tax rate where it is now.

Is it reasonable for me to expect that if the three of you win, that along with Starling Wilder, you'd have four votes and you would raise the real estate tax to pay for what you want to do?

Well, that would be a reasonable assumption, but we realize that that's pretty unpopular.

So you certainly aren't hearing from me now, and certainly you haven't heard from us all in regards to increasing the rate.

That is not on our agenda.

We will go forward and try to figure out how we can fix this thing.

And my thought is, again, that glass half full I was telling you about, get with the economic developers and so on and so forth, and come up with some creative ideas as to how we can bring more money into the city.

Some of those things are how can we bring more visitors into Lynchburg and have them spend their money and get the proceeds from that.

Make sure that the hotels are full.

Make sure the restaurants are regularly packed.

And, you know, One of the things is working with a couple of groups, my lazy group, we're trying to bring a hundred plus team tournament, you know, and so tournaments are great where you've, you know, you bring say a hundred teams that's multiply that by eight, uh, and then multiply that by about three or four when they bring the families, and suddenly you've got a huge, huge contingency of folks coming in.

So that's basketball, then soccer and lacrosse and softball and baseball.

So I would love to have Lynchburg as the mecca of tournaments.

And in that sense, you've got to think outside the box and be creative.

Certainly our go-to and our easiest to raise those taxes that you talked about, but I think that we have to really be – think outside the box and creative in regards to how else we can bring it in you know and certainly if you drive down main street there are four or five or six or ten different places that are empty you know and haven't been um refurbished so i think that we have to put a little more emphasis on that you go i'm knocking on a lot of doors now and you know that's one of the things that people keep on telling me all right you gotta be out there and introduce yourself to people and i've been in all kinds of neighborhoods and there are a lot of houses that are empty and have no one in it so we we should be able to try to upgrade those areas and those people and their circumstance one of the problems of course is as you go in and find a house and you go and put a hundred thousand dollars in it now suddenly you know what you need to get to make that worthwhile is going to be more than a lot of folks can afford so the the low-cost housing that is necessary for so many people is becoming less and less Because, yeah, you go into an obligated area and start refurbishing, and suddenly the folks who were living there could afford it, and now they can't.

So that's sort of a catch-22.

So we've got to, once again, just be really creative in our thoughts and ideas as to how we go forward.

And, of course, if we can fix this thing, we'll suddenly become really popular across the country for good things and not what's happening right now.