Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 28, 1995 TAG: 9503280036
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: BRIAN KELLEY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Just look, he said, at the 6 percent increase in support he obtained from the Board of Supervisors, double the amount gained by former Superintendent Harold Dodge in 1993-94.
The comment only led some critics to contend they were right in viewing Bartlett as a good old boy who played buddy-buddy with the money-wielding Board of Supervisors, instead of fighting for the county schools.
Nevertheless, Bartlett weathered that storm and others in his rocky first year on the job.
A year later, with the controversy over job performance now dormant, Bartlett's message has changed.
Just look, he says now, at how the Board of Supervisors has continually shifted tax revenue away from schools over the past five years, putting the pinch on any efforts at new and innovative programming.
In fact, Bartlett now says the board only increased school funding by 2 percent this year. That's because the School Board ended last year with a surplus, which it counted toward this year's budget when figuring the 6 percent increase.
"If you look at the money in terms of that surplus, then it was like we had got a 6 percent increase," Bartlett said Thursday. "We did it through manipulation of that surplus."
At least one School Board member will expand on Bartlett's school-funding argument before the Board of Supervisors at the Wednesday night public hearing on the 1995-96 budget and tax rates at Christiansburg High School. The budget portion begins at 7 p.m.; a separate hearing on the proposed 5-cent tax increase begins at 7:30 p.m. The board then will set the tax rate at a special meeting sometime before April 15.
Though the planned county budget totals $69 million and the school budget $48.3 million of that, the real issue is how the board divides the $30 million that fills county coffers from local taxes, primarily the real estate tax.
To make his point, Bartlett presented six pages of bar graphs before the Board of Supervisors Feb. 27. He accompanied the charts with not-so-subtle sentences, all capitalized: "GOALS AND GROWTH ISSUES ARE NOT ADDRESSED WHEN SCHOOLS ARE ABLE TO FUND ONLY INFLATIONARY INCREASES," or "CONTINUED TRENDS CAN LEAD TO AN INABILITY TO DELIVER SERVICES AT THE CURRENT LEVEL AND PRECLUDE PROGRESS ENTIRELY."
The gist of Bartlett's argument is twofold: first, the Board of Supervisors has been shifting newly available local tax money away from schools since 1991-92; second, the percentage of the school budget as part of the total county budget has dropped consistently since 1989-90, from 73 percent of total spending to 64 percent in the current school year.
"From 1990-91 on, we've had to wring out any fat in the budget," Bartlett said. "We don't have any place to wring it any more. I think that is really important."
So far, while school advocates have picked up on his tune, the Board of Supervisors seems to hear only flat notes. Despite a lobbying effort involving parents and schoolchildren, the Montgomery supervisors have, in effect, already made up their minds.
They did so March 15, with a 4-3 vote to advertise a 5-cent real estate tax increase, which would produce $1.12 million in new local tax money, on top of slight increases from last year's reassessment. The supervisors can adopt that tax increase or a lower one, but they cannot go higher.
The problem is the School Board, in a unanimous vote Jan. 24, had asked for a 17 percent increase in local tax support (that was before the General Assembly made state budget changes that cut the increase needed to around 13 percent). That would have required $2.5 million in new local tax money.
Larry Linkous, chairman of the Board of Supervisors, said last week Bartlett's charts ignore the fact that total school spending has increased every year. They also don't take into account the number of nonschool state and federal programs being shifted to the county's responsibility.
Moreover, Linkous said, the School Board's percentage of the total county budget will rise dramatically after July 1, when the county lops $5.6 million in landfill and recycling expenses off its budget to reflect the creation of the independent Montgomery Regional Solid Waste Authority.
"It always comes out that we're going to cut school spending," Linkous said. "It never comes out that, 'Hey, we're still going to increase over last year.'"
In other words, the "cut" is a reduction in the proposed increase in spending, not a cut of the existing base budget.
"I know the requested budget by the schools, there's no way it can be funded," Linkous said.
Bartlett stands by his charts to explain why the spending request is realistic. "Certainly it's not a budget that could be looked at as a wish list, but a pure-needs budget."
Already, under the 1995-96 spending plan advertised last week, the school operating budget would drop to $48.3 million from the $49.3 million proposed by the School Board, a $1 million or 2 percent cut from the schools' proposed 8 percent overall spending increase.
From budget discussions two weeks ago, it was clear that a four-vote Board of Supervisors majority for a 5-cent tax increase is unlikely. Two cents sounds more like it (last year the board settled on 21/2 cents after advertising 8 cents). That would mean lopping another $675,000 off increases in county and school budgets.
Granted it's an election year and Supervisors Joe Gorman, Ira Long and Nick Rush will be feeling heat from both sides of the tax-increase issue. But if recent history is any guide, more of the school budget will be left on the cutting-room floor before the final film rolls.
by CNB