Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 10, 1994 TAG: 9403100166
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Medium
To that end, the seven-member board is looking at how to avoid the 14-cent real-estate tax rate increase that would be necessary to pay for the $71.6 million budget proposed by County Administrator Betty Thomas last month. The board, after all, hasn't raised that tax rate in three years.
Yet in the more than 12 hours of budget review since Feb. 21, the board has trimmed just $160,000 from the spending plan, mostly by revising certain revenue estimates and lopping off budgetary small fry: $24,000 for a new sheriff's deputy, $1,100 more for the Women's Resource Center of the New River Valley.
The budget year begins July 1. County tax bills usually go out May 5 and are due June 5; a second billing goes out in December.
Because of illness and work conflicts, the Board of Supervisors had all its members present at only one of the four meetings, and that one was perhaps the most important: the Feb. 23 review of the school budget, which accounts for 69 percent of total spending.
The voluminous detail in the budget, combined with last week's ice storm and power outages that twice forced cancellation of meetings, have left Supervisor Joe Gorman and others wondering if there is any way to delay the advertising of a proposed tax rate, the legally required public hearing and the final adoption of the budget, which usually occurs by April 1.
Montgomery is one of the first counties in Virginia to adopt its budget, a fact that frustrates Gorman and others on the board because it means they adopt a budget based on a state revenue projections that may change because of last-minute General Assembly action.
Tuesday night, Gorman proposed delaying budget adoption to give the board more time to get a handle on the bigger picture. The board was to consider his proposal - the absolute latest it could wait is May 13 - on Wednesday evening.
"I really feel we spend a lot of time stumbling over the little pieces when we should address the forest," Gorman said.
The board's main deficit-fighting tool is cuts in spending of local tax money, according to an analysis distributed Tuesday by Jeff Lundsford, county fiscal management director.
Local taxes account for $30.7 million of Thomas' budget proposal, which is a $4.1 million spending increase; general property taxes make up $21.3 million of the local revenue figure. The remainder of the $71.6 million total budget comes from state and federal tax money and self-supporting government programs, such as the landfill enterprise fund.
To balance the budget, the board will need to cut some of the $4.1 million increase. Each additional $200,000 of local spending is equivalent to another penny added to the real estate tax rate.
The spending increase, according to Lundsford, is centered in six major areas: increased school spending, increased debt service because of the library and health building bond projects, resumption of the county's capital improvements program, increased school debt service due to opening the new Blacksburg elementary school, increased human services spending and a slight jump in public facilities spending.
by CNB