TEACHERS GIVE SUPERVISORS NEW WORD: R-A-I-S-E

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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 29, 1992                   TAG: 9201290265
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By MARK LAYMAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short
TEACHERS GIVE SUPERVISORS NEW WORD: R-A-I-S-E
The Roanoke County Board of Supervisors heard pleas from teachers and youth athletic boosters at a public hearing on the 1992-1993 budget Tuesday.
"Your employees need your help," Kitty Boitnott of the Roanoke County Education Association told the supervisors. County teachers didn't get a pay raise this year, and the possibility of going another year without a raise is "unpalatable," she said.
And, she said, "We cannot tolerate layoffs" of teachers or aides.
Patricia Hammond, a retired teacher, urged the supervisors to give her former colleagues "a much-deserved raise. . . . I realize funds are limited, but we must not take from public education."
Carmon Woodby read a letter from another county teacher who had to take a part-time job to pay for her two children's college education.
Other speakers told the supervisors of the need for lighted baseball fields at county parks.
Because of lower-than-expected local tax revenues and further state cuts, the county had to make up a budget shortfall of $1.2 million this year. The supervisors did that by leaving 17 job vacancies unfilled, asking departments to cut 5 percent from their operating budgets for the remaining five months of the 1991-92 fiscal year and appropriating most of last year's budget surplus.
County Administrator Elmer Hodge has warned that the 1992-1993 budget, which he is putting together now, might start out $3 million in the red.
The county has asked the General Assembly for authority to raise its motel tax and to start taxing tobacco products to help close that gap.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB