School E-mail May 22, 1996

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Subj: Budget, BMS, Smart Road, Taxes
Date: 96-05-22 13:52:09 EDT
From: James.C.Klagge@bev.net (James C. Klagge)
To: school issues@vt.edu

Dear Friends,

I know at least some of you have appreciated the vacation from my sometimes longish letters! But I'm back with a few different longish things.

Smart road: The supervisors are accepting opinions by e-mail this week to be sent to jkiser@nrv.net . Also if you want to get occasional e-mail info about supervisor issues, contact Jim Moore at moorej@bev.net

BMS: The school board will be making a presentation to the supervisors about the various building programs in each of the attendance strands, with a focus on BMS on Tuesday, May 28th at 7pm at the courthouse. In particular we will be trying to make the case for a new building on same site (and tearing down the old building). In the last 3 months I've gotten a large number of communications from people who were not willing to go for renovation. Although the school board voted against renovation, it seems to be a whole new ball game with the supervisors, and unless people bring as much pressure to bear on them as they did on us, I predict they will go for renovation regardless of what we recommend. I am hoping people who have strong feelings about this issue will speak at the public address portion of the meeting, which comes near the beginning. To get your name on the list of those to speak you can call the county administrator at 382-6954. Even if you don't wish to speak, we would appreciate your presence and moral support at the meeting.

I know the some people are satisfied with the option of renovation. I don't want to discourage you from expressing your support for that. But my main concern is that we found a compromise that, I believe, satisfied the broadest spectrum of people. If we sacrifice that broad support by opting for renovation, I am afraid it will be harder to pass a bond issue, and then we may be stuck with getting nothing done at BMS, as happened in Roanoke County recently. (By the way, it is not a foregone conclusion that there will even BE a bond referendum. It is also important to encourage the supervisors to set some plan for deciding about and financing these projects.)

Budget: Last night we passed a final budget for 96-97. We did accomplish some good things: we increased employee salary an average of 4%, and we added 8 new teaching positions. We also accepted $500,000 of state money that could only be used for technology. But that was about it. To continue our gradual progress toward reducing all classroom sizes to 20 students we had wanted about 2 dozen new teachers; and we had hoped to increase salaries by an average of 7%. The main difficulties we encountered were the lack of substantial additional county support (only $70,000), and a last minute judgement that our BC/BS benefits were going to cost us about $400,000 more than had been previously estimated. (That was quite a blow!)

In addition to having to make sizable cuts from our original plans concerning class size and salary, there were some controversial decisions made. The most difficult was a judgement that under these circumstances we were not ready to go ahead with the new elementary school in Riner. When the supervisors agreed to take out a loan for this project we assumed that they would make adequate financial provision for making payments on the loan. In the first year these will amount to about $147,000. Yet the supervisors only increased their contribution to our budget by $70,000. We made the decision (by a 7-2 vote) that we would allocate the $70,000 to repayment, but that we were not in a position to make cuts in other needs for the sake of funding a new school. This first year is just the tip of the iceberg--in future years the debt service will be much higher. Unless the supervisors are will to make provisions to pay the debt service completely, we can't cut into other things to make up for what they don't wish to fund. Therefore we will be going back to the supervisors to request an additional appropriation from them for $77,000 to cover this. But if they are not forthcoming, and our financial picture does not change significantly in other respects, we will need to rethink this building program. I have to say that it looks to me like the supervisors want to have a building program without having to pay for all of it. We are not willing to sacrifice other parts of the educational program to undertake a building program. If the BC/BS estimates turn out to be high, then we may be able to reconsider this--though I still feel strongly that the supervisors should AT LEAST be giving us enough additional money to cover debt service.

The other controversial decision we made was to increase our salaries by 50% (from $150 to $225/month). I am tired of this being a symbolic bogey man. The original proposal had been to increase them 100%. School board salary has been the same for 10 years. In those 10 years teachers' salaries have increased an average of 70% and staff salaries an average of 50%. I think this is a fair compromise. (It represents about a 4%/year increase on what is a nominal salary.) I will propose that from now on our salary be tied to whatever the smallest average increase is for an employee group (up to the state cap for our salary which is currently $300/month). (The supervisors pay themselves $575/month.)

Taxes: Finally, Montgomery County Mainstream Citizens held a forum last week on property taxes, with presentations from Nancy Miller and David Alexander, and responses from Dan Fleming and Annette Perkins. About 20 people attended the meeting, including Lisa Applegate from the RT. I found the following information to be quite interesting, and I'm looking forward to its being reported in the RT: Some of the supervisors have indicated a reluctance to raise property taxes because they are regressive--i.e., their burden is felt more heavily by those with lower incomes. In fact those on fixed incomes may find themselves with higher taxes without any more money to pay them with. (Sort of like the school system having increased debt service without more money to pay it with!) Because of this problem there is a provision in state law that counties can offer tax relief to retired or disabled homeowners. In our county the homeowner may not make more than $14,000, however. As you can imagine, there are not very many homeowners with so little income. In the last year 280 homeowners qualified for tax relief totally over $100,000. The surprising thing is that this income limit was set by the supervisors in 1972, and has never been raised by them since then. In fact the state allows the income limit to be as high as $30,000! So some of the supervisors use the regressive nature of the property tax as an excuse for not raising property taxes and yet they have it under their power to make it a less regressive tax--in other words they refuse to use the ability they have to fix the problem they complain about!!! (If you are interesting in hearing more about Mainstream Citizens, call Monica Appleby at 951-8031.)

Thank you for your concern about these kinds of matters. As always, if you want off my list, just let me know. Hope you are enjoying your summer.

-Jim Klagge.

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