Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 5, 1994 TAG: 9404050147
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Medium
The board meets at 6:30 p.m. on the third floor of the Montgomery County Courthouse.
Board Chairman Larry Linkous said Monday he wasn't sure how the board would resolve its budget difficulties. He said calls to his home and work have been running 60-40 against a tax increase.
Two of the seven board members, Jim Moore and Joe Gorman of Blacksburg, committed to a 4-cent real estate tax rate increase in an informal straw poll last week.
Supervisor Ira Long of Prices Fork committed to that increase but only without the 25-cent increase in the personal property tax rate, which is also on the table.
Supervisor Henry Jablonski, on the other hand, wasn't ready to commit to any real-estate rate increase last week. He wanted the county staff to bring back more information on potential spending cuts.
And board member Joe Stewart of Elliston repeated his opposition last week to any tax increase. He'd rather see across-the-board spending cuts.
That leaves Linkous and Supervisor Nick Rush, who represents a portion of Christiansburg and the Ellett Valley, as the tax-increase question marks. Both made arguments last week against putting most of the burden on land- and homeowners.
The board, which must balance its budget, is facing a $2.6 million gap between revenues and planned spending of $71.7 million.
To balance the budget without major cuts, the board would have to raise the real-estate tax rate from 70 cents per $100 of assessed value to 78 cents. The personal property rate would have to climb 25 cents to $2.55 per $100 of value.
That would mean an 11 percent jump on the tax bills of most car- and homeowners in Christiansburg, Blacksburg and the unincorporated areas of the county. But there never was much support for those rates among board members. Since advertising those proposals on March 14 and holding a sparsely attended public hearing on March 21, there's been even less.
The board will consider several cost-saving ideas tonight, including a salary-increase cap of 2.5 percent and delays until the fall of the Blacksburg library and Christiansburg health and human services building bond sales.
At least one measure designed to make up for a $793,000 shortfall in the school budget might not work. A disputed estimate of the number of students in the school system, used to plan this year's budget, created the shortfall.
The county staff proposed using $300,000 from last year's bond sale for the new Blacksburg elementary school to pay off a portion of the school debt, and in the long run save nearly $800,000 in debt service. School officials had planned to use that $300,000 for repairs.
The proposal would work, county officials said, only if the total cost of the new elementary school came in under $6 million.
Linkous said Monday he "wasn't quite right" when he said last week that Superintendent Herman Bartlett had promised the supervisors last fall that the project would cost $5.7 million. A check of the tape-recording of a board meeting last fall showed that Bartlett didn't make that promise.
by CNB