Mayor Bertaut begins his article with something almost everyone can agree with: water rates should never be political.

Correct. Reliable water and sewer service is not a partisan issue. It is not a luxury. It is one of the most basic obligations of local government. That is precisely why this conversation must be grounded in public records, adopted budgets, audited financial statements, engineering studies, credit ratings, and math—not political storytelling.

The problem with the Mayor’s article is not that every word is false. The problem is that it is selectively true. Selective truth can be more dangerous than an obvious falsehood because it gives the appearance of honesty while withholding the facts residents need in order to make sound judgments.

The Mayor points to ARPA funds, nutrient credits, refinancing, grants, operational efficiencies, regional partnerships, General Fund transfers, and rightsizing capital projects. Those are real tools. No serious person should dismiss them. But tools are not a plan. A list of possible options is not structural balance. A theory is not governance. Hope is not a budget.

For nearly two years, residents have repeatedly heard that “operational efficiencies” would reduce or eliminate the need for significant utility rate increases. If that is true, then the evidence should be straightforward and readily available. Which departments became more efficient? Which programs were consolidated? Which positions were eliminated or restructured? Which contracts were renegotiated? Which operating expenses were permanently reduced? Most importantly, how much recurring annual savings has each of those changes produced?

The same principle applies to every alternative the Mayor identifies. If grants are expected to offset future utility costs, residents deserve to know which grants, how much funding has been secured, what restrictions apply to those funds, and whether they provide recurring or one-time revenue. If refinancing is expected to improve the Town’s long-term financial position, residents deserve to understand precisely how much interest will be saved, how repayment schedules will change, and whether refinancing addresses the underlying structural imbalance or merely postpones difficult financial decisions.

The Town’s own published utility-rate materials have acknowledged that adopted water and wastewater increases “consistently fell below recommendations,” contributing to a lack of structural balance between revenues and service costs. That is not campaign rhetoric. That is the Town’s own explanation of the problem.

And then there is the fact the Mayor’s article conveniently leaves out: S&P Global Ratings downgraded Purcellville’s general obligation credit rating from AAA to AA+ and assigned the Town a negative outlook. S&P specifically cited ongoing operating imbalance in the water and sewer funds, significant utility capital needs, and the absence of corresponding revenue increases.

That matters. Not because AA+ is a bad rating. It is not. It matters because the direction changed. The Town did not improve from AA+ to AAA. It fell from AAA to AA+. And the outlook is negative.

The bond market does not care about campaign slogans. Credit agencies do not care who wins a local election. Debt does not respond to speeches. Infrastructure does not care about political narratives. Reality simply waits, and eventually, it sends the bill.

The strangest part of the Mayor’s article is that it argues as though significant utility rate increases are merely one option among many, when his own most recent adopted budget does the opposite. The FY2027 adopted budget increases water rates by 16.5% and wastewater rates by 14.5% beginning July 1, 2026. The Town’s own budget release says those adjustments were necessary to address aging infrastructure and system needs.

Even more importantly, the multi-year utility-rate discussion has shown additional future increases, not decreases. Earlier FY2027 budget materials even stated that the proposed budget included a 24% water-rate increase and a 16% wastewater-rate increase, while recent utility-rate modeling recommended even more aggressive FY2027 increases of 30% for water and 22% for wastewater.

That is not a minor inconsistency. That is the central contradiction.

If operational efficiencies solve the problem, why are rates increasing? If refinancing solves the problem, why are rates increasing? If grants solve the problem, why are rates increasing? If the Town can avoid significant utility rate increases through the alternatives he describes, why has his administration adopted a budget that depends on increasing them?

So residents are entitled to ask: did the original promise fail because the math was wrong, because the assumptions were wrong, or because the Town’s financial reality was more serious than residents were told?

There is also another cost here that rarely gets explained plainly. A credit downgrade does not merely wound civic pride. It can increase borrowing costs. If Purcellville is looking at tens of millions of dollars in future Capital Improvement Program borrowing, even a modest increase in interest rates caused by weaker credit can mean hundreds of thousands, and potentially more than a million dollars, in additional long-term interest expense. That means today’s financial theory can become tomorrow’s tax and rate burden.

The Mayor also presents the Basham Simms Wastewater Treatment Plant expansion largely as a mistake caused by planning for future growth. But that is incomplete. The Town’s own documentation has described the project as being initiated in response to Commonwealth of Virginia regulations, with the facility upgraded for advanced nutrient removal and increased capacity. Reasonable people can debate whether the project was oversized. But it is not reasonable to frame the issue as though regulatory compliance, nutrient reduction, and Chesapeake Bay wastewater obligations were irrelevant.

The Mayor says leaders must balance affordability and sustainability. Of course they must. But balance is not achieved by declaring yourself balanced. Balance must be demonstrated with numbers, budgets, recurring revenues, measurable savings, capital plans that survive scrutiny, and utility funds that can stand on their own without quietly leaning on the General Fund.

If grants are the answer, show the grants. If efficiencies are the answer, show the savings. If refinancing is the answer, show how it eliminates the structural imbalance rather than merely rearranging repayment timing. If regional cost-sharing is the answer, name the partner, the agreement, and the amount. If rightsizing capital projects is the answer, show the original cost, the revised cost, and the impact on future rates.

Otherwise, residents are not being offered a plan. They are being offered a story. And stories are not enough when the Town’s credit rating has already been downgraded.

That is not prudence. That is avoidance dressed up as compassion.

But leadership is not the art of avoiding discomfort. Leadership is the discipline of accepting responsibility before reality forces responsibility upon everyone else.

They also deserve to know why the Mayor’s article spends so much time discussing the failures of prior administrations and so little time citing measurable successes from his own current term. If the current financial strategy is producing results, where are those results? If the Town is stronger, where is the evidence? If the utility funds are healthier, where are the numbers? If the credit outlook is improving, why did S&P move in the opposite direction?

Water rates should never be political.

Agreed.

But neither should financial reality.

Neither should credit downgrades.

Neither should structural imbalance.

Neither should adopted budgets.

Neither should the consequences of postponing difficult decisions.

The truth is this: a government cannot indefinitely substitute optimism for discipline, transfers for structural balance, slogans for arithmetic, or selective history for accountability. Eventually, every theory collides with reality.

And reality always wins.

The real question is not whether the Mayor can produce another theory. The real question is whether Purcellville can afford another term of theoretical financial hope.

Hope, untethered from measurable results, is not a governing philosophy. It is a gamble. And when governments gamble with financial reality, it is never government that ultimately pays the price. It is the people they were elected to serve.