Cape Charles Resident Urges Town Council to Remember Year-Round Community Before Expanding Budget

CAPE CHARLES, Va. — A Cape Charles resident used her time at the podium during the Town Council’s Regular Meeting to deliver a pointed message to elected officials: the people who live, volunteer, and invest in this small Eastern Shore town are its most valuable — and most vulnerable — asset.

Claudette Lajoie, speaking during the public comment period, drew a direct line between the town’s resident community and its economic engine, arguing that the two are inseparable — and that careless budget decisions could erode both.

“We Are the Small Town Character”

Lajoie began by grounding her remarks in something Cape Charles has long marketed as its defining quality: charm.

“We as the community are really the small town character and charm that we base our strategic plan on,” she told the Council. “People come here for that small town charm — so our events, our people, our volunteers make that small town character happen.”

That’s not an abstract claim. Cape Charles, a historic railroad town of roughly 1,000 year-round residents on the Northampton County portion of Virginia’s Eastern Shore, has experienced significant growth in tourism and outside investment over the past decade. The town’s Victorian architecture, walkable downtown, and proximity to the Chesapeake Bay have attracted visitors, second-home buyers, and new businesses — a transformation that has brought both opportunity and tension.

What often goes unacknowledged in that narrative, Lajoie suggested, is who sustains the atmosphere that draws people in. “Through our personal investment — financial, physical, and emotional — we really are the town’s appeal that fuels the economy,” she said.

Sweat Equity and Financial Investment

Lajoie pointed to the layers of contribution residents make that don’t appear in any municipal budget line: volunteerism, civic participation, property upkeep, and donations to local nonprofits.

“We continue to show up with our sweat equity,” she said, adding that residents also use their “financial equities to keep up our properties to a high standard, as well as donating to our many non-profits that we have in town.”

This is a meaningful point in a town where nonprofits and volunteer organizations quietly power much of what makes Cape Charles function. Community organizations and volunteer-driven events fill gaps that a small municipal government — with limited staff and resources — simply cannot. When residents donate time and money to keep those organizations running, they are, in effect, subsidizing the town’s quality of life.

A Call for a Real Service-Level Audit

The sharper edge of Lajoie’s remarks came when she turned to the budget process directly. She called on the Council to conduct a genuine accounting of town operations — not simply approve spending increases.

“I expect that you continue to review the budget, evaluate costs, and clearly demonstrate how the town has done their part to complete a truly service-level audit to see if the town is actually becoming more efficient or just getting more expensive,” she said.

The term service-level audit is significant. Such a review goes beyond simply looking at revenues and expenditures — it asks whether residents are receiving commensurate value for what the town spends. In municipalities where administrative costs, staffing, or bureaucratic processes have grown faster than the services they produce, residents often bear the burden through higher taxes and fees without experiencing any improvement in day-to-day life.

Lajoie’s concern appears rooted in that dynamic. She questioned whether additional staff hiring is warranted before existing operations are fully scrutinized: “Before more staff is hired, really looking…to be sure everything is running effectively…times change, and so workloads and priorities inside departments might shift so I’m asking that you look at some of those things.”

The Morale Factor

Perhaps the most nuanced part of Lajoie’s remarks was her warning about community morale — and how budget and policy decisions ripple into something harder to measure than a tax rate.

“As the morale of the town over time has been challenged, having an additional burdened cost, taxes, unnecessary processes and wasted efforts, that small town character, based in volunteerism and community efforts which fuel our town economy, could also potentially falter,” she said.

This is a real risk in small towns undergoing rapid change. When longtime residents feel that local government is not responsive to their concerns — or that costs are rising while their quality of life stagnates or declines — civic participation can erode. Volunteers burn out. Nonprofits struggle. The very texture of a town that visitors and newcomers find appealing begins to fray at the edges.

For Cape Charles, where the gap between year-round residents and seasonal visitors or second-home owners can feel pronounced, that dynamic carries particular weight.

“We’re Here All Year”

Lajoie closed with a reminder that may seem simple, but carries real policy weight.

“Anything that you institute is not going to have a negative effect on us as we’re here all year,” she said, asking the Council to keep businesses and permanent residents front of mind as budget deliberations continue.

“Considering if there’s an additional meal tax increase, who is that really going to affect all year? With winter, when things get slow, it’s us full-time residents, we can only eat out so much, adding another tax, would lessen the amount that we can eat out”.

It’s a distinction that matters in tourism-dependent communities, where policy can sometimes tilt toward attracting visitors and new investment at the expense of those who make the town work day in and day out — paying taxes, cleaning sidewalks, staffing the food pantry, and showing up to Council meetings to ask hard questions.

The Cape Charles Town Council continues its budget review process. Residents are encouraged to attend upcoming work sessions and submit public comments.

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Wayne Creed

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