Virginia College-City Fiscal Comparison: Charlottesville, Harrisonburg, Williamsburg, Radford

This report presents a fiscal peer analysis comparing the City of Radford, Virginia against a defined cohort of three other Virginia independent cities, each anchored by a public four-year higher-education institution: Charlottesville (University of Virginia), Harrisonburg (James Madison University), Williamsburg (College of William & Mary), and Radford (Radford University). The peer cohort is constructed on three structural similarities: the presence of a public four-year higher-education institution as a significant local employer and population driver; comparable population scale; and comparable position in the Virginia local-government taxonomy. Where peer localities differ on revenue-side structure — particularly whether the locality operates a municipal electric utility — those differences are surfaced explicitly rather than averaged out. The analysis covers fiscal years 2015 through 2025 and is built from publicly available primary sources: audited Annual Comprehensive Financial Reports, adopted operating budgets, Virginia Auditor of Public Accounts correspondence, U.S. Census population estimates, and applicable charter and special-act records. The report functions as the peer-cohort substrate for Fiscal Crossroads: An Options Analysis of the City of Radford, Virginia (Zenodo DOI 10.5281/zenodo.20535657), and stands independently as a reference for any reader, council member, or state agency examining the structural fiscal position of a small college-anchored locality in Virginia. The methodological convention used across the Turner research portfolio is preserved throughout: description (sourced fact) is held distinct from analyst read (interpretation). Every figure is traceable to its source.