After months of work, Suffolk and Chesapeake have formalized the cities’ long-uncertain boundary line.
They will now petition the Chesapeake Circuit Court to accept the new border and update the land records following an engineering survey, then submit the boundary to the U.S. Census Bureau for approval.
The uncertainty stretches back years. In 1997, the Suffolk News-Herald reported that the King of England appointed a minister to establish a boundary line between then-Nansemond and Norfolk counties in the 17th century. Inconsistencies remained across historic maps.
But Zach Sykes with the Commonwealth Institute for Civic Innovations, a non-partisan civic education organization, believes recent borderline discrepancies likely stem from Nansemond County and Suffolk’s consolidation.
Nansemond County incorporated as a city in 1973 and merged with Suffolk a year later. Sykes said the situation was unique and spurred years of administrative challenges and map-making. But he said, ultimately, “no one knows” how the line got blurred.
“Everyone that I’ve asked says that this is something that they’ve inherited,” Sykes said.
The new border mostly aligns with an unofficial boundary that the cities created over the years to solve questions about property taxes and utility services. It doesn’t affect school jurisdictions.
As part of the agreement, Suffolk will transfer a parcel of undeveloped land to Chesapeake and Chesapeake will send 11 to Suffolk. Sykes said the cities have traded properties back and forth several times since at least 1977.
The uncertain boundary created issues for residents of Pughsville, a historically Black neighborhood founded by formerly enslaved people after the Civil War that is split between Suffolk and Chesapeake.
Pamela Brandy, the Chesapeake-side president of Pughsville’s joint civic league, said her home’s deed was incorrectly listed as a Suffolk property in 2022. She eventually got a letter from the city assessor confirming her Chesapeake residency. Brandy was also among 35 Chesapeake residents who were misbilled by Dominion Energy for years with Suffolk utility taxes.
“You falsely took money from me because I was never a resident of yours and I want my money back,” she said to the Suffolk City Council at Wednesday’s public hearing.
Brandy and others from Pughsville were told in previous election years that they were supposed to vote at New Hope Baptist Church in Suffolk, not their usual precinct at the Taylor Bend YMCA. That was resolved in the 2024 and 2025 elections, but Sykes said he met at least one person who did not vote in 2023 because of the confusion.
Some of that confusion stems from the way the voting districts were cut. Virginia’s 2021 redistricting was done by the Supreme Court after the commonwealth’s redistricting commission failed to reach a consensus, which created districts that didn’t align with the cities’ boundary. Brandy questions how the maps used to draw those lines were created.
Suffolk Councilmember Ebony Wright on Wednesday said that any unresolved issues impacting Pughsville residents should be pursued, but that it’s right to finally settle the boundary issue.
“The history is complicated, but at some point we have to move forward and do what’s best for both the citizens of Chesapeake and Suffolk.”
