Henrico losing finance director Coates to UR

Henrico Finance Director Meghan Coates, who has earned frequent praise during her brief tenure with the county, is leaving next month for a position with the University of Richmond.

Coates helped usher the county through its most recent two budgets, leading an 11th-hour effort to slash $99 million from the proposed 2020-21 fiscal year plan in March 2020 – immediately after the pandemic began and just as the county’s board of supervisors was preparing to weigh the original plan.

At UR, Coates will become associate vice president for financial planning and budget.

Under her guidance, the county last year shifted from an annual to a quarterly budget allocation process, as a way to more accurately account for potential month-to-month changes in revenue in light of uncertainty brought about by the pandemic. It has continued that approach this year, and thanks to a combination of better-than-expected tax revenues, significant federal pandemic-relief funding and Henrico's continuation of its historically conservative approach to budgeting, the county now is in rarefied air financially.

Henrico County Manager John Vithoulkas has praised Coates’s efforts publicly on numerous occasions during her two-year tenure with the county, including earlier this month. She came to Henrico in 2019, following nearly 12 years with Chesterfield County, including six months as its budget and management director.

“As the former finance director of this county, [and] former budget director, I can tell you that this county’s finances have never been so capably managed,” Vithoulkas told supervisors during a Sept. 14 work session. “This young lady has done a remarkable job for this county, and I just want to publicly acknowledge her efforts and successes. We are in a place where we’re ending this year with the strongest financial position that we have ever had, and much of that is due to the stewardship of Ms. Coates.”

The county’s fund balance – the difference between its financial assets and liabilities – was nearly $275 million as of June 2020, with $135 million of that amount unassigned to any future projects. Once an ongoing financial audit is completed and presented to the board of supervisors in November, that total will grow. The unassigned “rainy day fund” amount is a key component in helping Henrico maintain its AAA bond-rating status from all three major bond issuers, which in turn keeps its interest rates low and saves it millions of dollars when it sells bonds to pay for infrastructure projects, such as building schools or roads.

Henrico also has saved millions by refinancing outstanding bonds during the past two years.

Coates was viewed as a quickly-rising star in the county’s government. Hired as deputy finance director, she took over as acting director in November 2019 and was named to the role on a permanent basis in August 2020.

She compared her approach to finance as being similar to that of a chess match, in which it’s always necessary to think several moves ahead and evaluate all potential choices and outcomes. That mindset, she said, helped prepare her for the unexpected challenges created by the pandemic.

“That’s the game in finance, you’re playing chess every day,” she said. “For me, what I learned was that that type of strategic thinking and that type of work ethic where you’re making sure you always have choices and options really proved to be valuable [during the pandemic.]”

Coates made it a priority to help finance department employees better understand their roles and better interact with citizens, she said, helping to empower them to be creative and develop new approaches on their own at the same time.

“I feel pretty good about the progress that was made and the leadership I’ve been able to provide,” Coates told the Citizen. “I take comfort in knowing that I’m leaving the county better off than I found it. We did a lot of great work, but Henrico was already in a really great position when I came here.”

Her decision to leave Henrico was partially the result of the pandemic and the perspective it provided about what was most important to her personally, she said. A recent trip back to Roanoke College, her alma mater, reminded her of how invigorated she felt during that time in her life and prompted her, on a whim, to examine job offerings at the UR, which happened to have an opening.

In her new role, she will lead financial planning and budgeting for the university, including strategic planning and long-term financial goal-setting, she said.

Though she’s excited to begin at UR, she said she’ll miss being able to witness the impact some of her decisions have made on the county.

“It’s always been rewarding to feel like I was contributing to the community, that I could see the road that I helped finance or that I could see kids going into the school that I helped sell bonds for,” she said.