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

DATE: TUESDAY, May 11, 1993                   TAG: 9305110361
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C1   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: LON WAGNER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ROCKY MOUNT                                LENGTH: Medium

IT'S A TAXING QUESTION

The county government has to find $1.5 million in "new money" - meaning higher taxes - somewhere. That much has already been promised to the school system.

If the money is to come from property owners, it will mean a 10-cent increase to the county's 50 cents per $100 of assessed value real estate rate.

But Wayne Angell, chairman of the Board of Supervisors, said this year's increase is only the beginning. Angell predicted that real estate taxes - not the rate, but the amount people pay - will double in Franklin County by the end of the decade.

Among other expenses the county may face in the next several years are a new family court building that could cost up to $1 million, and the $500,000 to $1 million it will take to build and run a new landfill.

Having raised taxes on just about everything else - car decals, meals, utilities - over the past several years, the board has little choice but to increase the real estate rate by 20 percent.

"We consciously made the effort to spread the tax burden around," Angell said.

The county's car decal fee has been $20 for years; a utility tax brings in $100,000 per month, the equivalent of 8 cents on the real estate rate; and a 4-cent meals tax enacted last year is the equivalent of about 2 cents on the real estate rate.

But Franklin County may have run out of alternatives to raising property taxes.

In fact, with the various county departments now presenting their budget requests, there is no guarantee that 10 cents added to the tax rate will completely fund the budget. "I'm hoping we'll get by with 10 cents," said Blue Ridge Supervisor Hubert Quinn.

Quinn opposed giving the schools the additional $1.5 million. "I'll raise taxes in a flat minute if it puts something in the classroom," he said. "This was for salaries."

The increase will fund a 4 percent payroll increase for the schools; the addition of three teachers, at Henry, Snow Creek and Dudley elementary schools; the addition of a psychologist at Benjamin Franklin Middle School; and the hiring of a person to run a computerized bus routing system, among other things.

School officials, teachers and some parents are downright gleeful that the supervisors provided money for much of what the school system wanted.

But Quinn, Angell and others are upset about the tax increase because they see it as funding the basic upkeep of the school system instead of funding new programs.

"I know of no new educational initiative in this budget," Angell said. "We're expanding the same things again.

"It concerns me we're not addressing some of the pressing needs of the future."

Those pressing needs, many think, should include the needs for a new high school and new middle school in the next 10 years.

County Administrator Macon Sammons sees no alternative to a 20 percent increase in the tax rate. Economic growth - or lack of it - did little for Franklin County last year. Sammons said new construction in 1992-93 added about $44,000 in revenue to the county's $42 million budget.

That means that while the schools got $1.5 million more than last year, most other county departments won't be as fortunate.

"For the rest of the budget, I see a rather austere picture," Sammons said. "The economy still is pretty flat."