Staunton City Council adopted a resolution Thursday requesting Gov. Glenn Youngkin to legislation that would allow Augusta County to conduct a referendum asking voters to move the county courthouse from Downtown Staunton.
The veto would require that special legislation be enacted next year in order to conduct the referendum in 2023.
“We appreciate Gov. Younkin’s actions taken on the legislation so far,” said Staunton Mayor Andrea Oakes. “We hope that backing continues.”
The governor amended the bills earlier in the month, sending them back to the General Assembly. Both houses rejected the governor’s amendments, sending the bills back to the governor in their original form.
The amendments would have changed the date of a referendum from 2022 to 2023 and would require two architects provide cost estimates for the options, one for moving the courthouse and one for the courthouse to remain in Staunton.
Voters in 2016 voted overwhelmingly to block a courthouse move, but since, the county has spent more than a million dollars on plans to upgrade at the existing courthouse location in Downtown Staunton, without support for any of those plans from the city.
Without support from the city, the courthouse is still where it was six years ago, in desperate need of repair, unsafe, and the county is now under court order to do something about it.
Story by Chris Graham
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