SUFFOLK, Va. — Residents of the historic Pughsville neighborhood have been dealing with years of confusion over which city they belong to, as the community sits directly on the Suffolk-Chesapeake border with no clear boundary line.
The problems have created real-world consequences for residents like Pamela Brandy, president of the Pughsville Civic League. She has been billed by Dominion Energy, required to pay city taxes, and even instructed to vote as a Suffolk resident despite living on the Chesapeake side.
"Looking at my utility bill, I'm now being charged for the city of Suffolk utility tax, so I called my neighbors and residents on the Chesapeake side," Brandy said.
The historic Black neighborhood has experienced drainage and flooding issues for years, but residents say they keep getting the runaround on who is responsible for fixing the problems.
Now, Suffolk and Chesapeake are working together to establish an official boundary line. The process requires engineering and surveying to identify and memorialize the border.
Suffolk says a survey company is currently creating a survey plat that will show legal boundaries, dimensions, and locations.
"Take a survey company and put pins in the ground and identify okay this working arrangement of boundaries is going to become a record and we're going to take it to the courthouse, we're going to send it to the US census this will be the line there will be no confusion moving forward," Kevin Hughes said.
The boundary changes will not impact school jurisdictions. However, 11 parcels of undeveloped land currently in Chesapeake would shift to Suffolk.
A proposed boundary line is posted on the city of Suffolk's website. Hughes says that line should look similar to what comes out of the final survey.
"This is something we do not do on a regular basis identifying and set boundaries so we wanna be very purposeful," Hughes said.
The survey will take three months to create and should be completed sometime this spring before being shared with the public.
