MONTGOMERY BUDGET MAY NEED NEW TAXES

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, February 9, 1993                   TAG: 9302090260
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B2   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: Greg Edwards
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
MONTGOMERY BUDGET MAY NEED NEW TAXES
The Montgomery County Board of Supervisors night got their first look Monday at a proposed $72.2 million 1993-'94 budget, which may require a 35-cent increase in the county's 70-cent real-estate tax rate.
The proposal is $10.9 million higher tha the current $61.3 million budget, but that is misleading.
When comparing the proposed budget with the $68 million that County Finance Director Jeff Lunsford actually estimates the county will spend this year, next year's increase comes to roughly $4.2 million, or a 6 percent increase.
Lunsford is predicting an increase in county tax revenues from economic growth next year of $115,978. Without raising taxes, the county anticipates total revenues of $65.5 million next year. Of that, $26.2 million would be from county taxes.
That leaves the supervisors with the chore of cutting the budget or raising taxes - or both - to come up with the $6.7 million to make up the difference between the proposed spending and anticipated income. It would take a 35-cent increase in the real-estate tax rate to make up the difference.
The bulk of the increase is in proposed county school budget, which would require $6.5 million in additional county tax funds, or 34.5 percent more than county taxpayers currently pay to support their schools.
The general government side of the proposed budget is $302,966 more than this year's budget, most of it going to the sheriff's office.
County Administrator Betty Thomas told the supervisors that county departments other than schools originally had requested $2.5 million more in spending next year, but after cuts all departments except the sheriff's office and library have proposed budgets that are less than this year's.
But Thomas warned that another year of level funding for general county government, after several years of the same, will make it more difficult to offer quality services.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB