School E-mail April 4, 1996

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Subj: School Budget
Date: 96-04-04 10:18:10 EST
From: James.C.Klagge@bev.net (James C. Klagge)
To: school issues@vt.edu

Dear Voters,

I just got some information which I will pass along. I'm not sure all of this is precisely accurate, but in the interest of speed I'll let you know what I heard. If anything turns out to be importantly different, I'll distribute corrections later. Anyway...

The supervisors met last night and voted a 1 cent tax increase for next year. Given increases in other parts of the county budget, most of the roughly $220,000 raised by this will go to other county services, with the schools getting about $70,000 in new money from the county. (So much for the sentiment that people support new taxes if they go to education!) Given that the debt service on the new Riner school investment they have approved is about $140,000 per year, they have decided not to actually fund all of that, but let the needed money come out of other parts of the school budget, or out of the state money. Fortunately the state has been generous in its support of education this year, increasing its contribution to the county by over $2.1 million. Unfortunately, much of this money is for designated purposes (e.g., half a million for new technology) so that we are not free to decide what our highest priorities are. And also unfortunately, the county has decided to let the state's increased contribution to the schools be a sort of tax relief for the county--"Since the state is helping out so much, why should we do any more?" they seem to be saying. Supervisors claimed there was simply no support for new taxes in the county. I don't know how true that is, but it illustrates the point that supporting a tax increase in your heart means nothing politically unless your supervisor hears about it.

I haven't heard details on who voted how on this issue--so my comments are not necessarily directed at all the supervisors. I'm sure we will be doing lots of thinking--about what went wrong, would it have helped to do anything differently--over the coming months. We'll also have to be thinking about how to allocate the new money that we are getting (mainly from the state). Input is welcome on all these issues. I think a main issue (but surely not the only one) is that either there really is little support for new taxes in a majority of districts in the county, or we haven't yet gotten people sufficiently involved in the political process. I'm trying to look at this as a long-term process--not something that will be changed in one or two years.

-Jim Klagge.

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