Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 31, 1994 TAG: 9410120018
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The Board of Supervisors should look again, though, at Chairman Lee Eddy's suggestion that the county borrow a smaller amount to take care of its schools' most pressing needs.
About $20 million of the larger bond proposal would have gone to build a new Cave Spring High School, which will be needed eventually. The remaining $10 million would have paid for a new gym at Northside High School and major renovations at a number of schools, which are needed now.
Eddy says the county can finance the smaller amount with Virginia Public School Authority or state Literary Fund loans - without having to get voter approval through a referendum.
Such a prospect might reassure supervisors who doubt their ability to convince citizens, in effect, to raise their own taxes, even though tax increases are often needed in an urbanizing county with a dominantly residential tax base and a surging demand for services.
In any case, by one means or the other - with or without a referendum - the county ought to provide schools with the financing for needed renovations.
No referendum, to be sure, would not mean no tax increase. The county's finance staff estimates that $10 million worth of improvements (without the new high school) would still add as much as 2 cents on the real-estate tax rate. That's much less than the 8-cent increase they estimated would be needed to pay off a $30 million bond issue - but a rare increase in the county's real-estate tax rate, nevertheless.
County voters, though, would still have their say about that, even if not directly as with a referendum. They can always turn out representatives next time their names come around on the ballot. There may even be reasons for doing so - but this issue shouldn't be one of them.
Leaving aside leaky roofs that schoolchildren and teachers had to put up with for years, Roanoke County has long prided itself on its school system. The problem is that, with growing demand for urban services such as fire and rescue protection and more police, the competition for local tax dollars is rising. Residents will have to renew their commitment to good schools, and decide they are willing to pay the price for them, if the county is to maintain quality in education.
Why does the school system need more money if enrollment projections are basically flat for the next decade? Well, there's growth in parts of the county, and that can be expected to continue. But the larger reason is that the schools must continue to improve.
They will need money to keep up with new technologies. And they will need space - for computers, for special-education classrooms, for advanced classes, for smaller classes with lower student-teacher ratios. Yesterday's standards won't be high enough to meet tomorrow's basic needs.
If Cave Spring needs a new high school, delay only drives up costs. But if delay is this board's preference, as it seems to be, then the mandate to separate out and fund renovations that are needed now becomes all the more compelling.
Eddy - who voted against the $30 million bond proposal not because he thought it might fail on the ballot, but because he opposes spending the money - says "good programs and personnel are more important than bricks and mortars." He's right. The former should always be pre-eminent. But good teachers and good programs need space in which to do their good work.
by CNB