Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 12, 1995 TAG: 9507120053
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Medium
Montgomery County Board of Supervisors members vented frustrations Monday against School Superintendent Herman Bartlett and his staff for supposedly not providing timely responses to their questions related to a massive school-building program.
Bartlett, who usually attends supervisors' meetings, was out of town Monday and Tuesday and unavailable to defend himself. But one of his top deputies, Larry Schoff, apologized for at least one delay - in a study comparing state and county education and school-building standards.
"That's 'to-do' as of tomorrow," Schoff promised.
The county School Board is seeking Board of Supervisors support and financing for a five-year, four-school building program that could cost $34 million or more. Bartlett is the School Board's top employee and often functions as a de facto salesman for the cause.
"Before I act I need the answers," said Board of Supervisors Chairman Larry Linkous. "Herman was sitting right there and nodded 'Yes, I'll get it.'"
Linkous laughed sardonically when Supervisor Henry Jablonski suggested he and Supervisor Jim Moore, who served on a joint school-building committee with School Board members Roy Vickers and Barry Worth, could obtain the comparative data. "Good luck, good luck," he said.
Supervisors Nick Rush and Joe Gorman echoed Linkous. "If someone's asking for $34 million, you need all the information you can [get] to make that very important decision," Rush said.
"To me, you ask a question, you expect an answer," Gorman said. "You pay people $80,000 and $100,000 a year ... you expect them to be able to do something within their domain."
Bartlett, hired in July 1993 from Colonial Heights, is paid $83,359 a year. He has made improving relations with the supervisors a priority, after five often-stormy years earlier between the board and Harold Dodge, Bartlett's predecessor.
Besides the comparison of the state and local standards, the supervisors also want cost estimates for implementing suggested improvements in the number of guidance counselors and teachers and reports on school employees' travel expenses.
Despite the friction, the supervisors still agreed to pay another $5,000 for engineering studies of one aspect of the school-building proposal. The board wants engineers to estimate the feasibility of expanding 800-student Blacksburg Middle School to handle up to 1,200 students. This option wasn't included in an earlier, $60,000 facilities study that proposed building new middle schools for the Blacksburg and Christiansburg areas.
The supervisors want the Blacksburg alternative considered because one of the reasons for supporting the ongoing renovation and expansion of the Blacksburg branch library was its proximity to the current middle school.
The joint committee that's picked up on the facilities study considers the Riner area to be the top priority for a new school, and Blacksburg middle second, Moore reported. But there's disagreement on the third and fourth priorities.
Carol Edmonds, the county's finance director, meanwhile, reported the impact of the school-building proposal on the county's debt load and tax rates. She estimated that to pay for the program with voter-approved general obligation bonds the county would need four bond sales by 1999, beginning this fiscal year. Those bond sales would more than double the county's debt load, from approximately $20 million today to $49 million by 1998-99.
Concurrently, the county real-estate tax rate would have to soar to pay for the debt service on such borrowing: the rate would have to jump from the current 69 cents to 88 cents per $100 of assessed value by 1999. That doesn't take into account the 1998 reassessment.
That figure also doesn't take into account possible funding alternatives, such as using the Virginia Public School Authority's bond pool, as was done for two elementary schools this decade, or the state Literary Fund.
Board of Supervisors members seemed skeptical of any attempt to push a bond referendum, or even the first stage of a funding package, before voters as early as this November.
"Something this important to the county, I'm not going to push to the fast [lane]," Linkous said. "I'm going to study it. If it means not putting it on the referendum this year, so be it."
by CNB