ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, May 31, 1996 TAG: 9605310022
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
AN ELECTED school board without taxing authority invites the kind of muddled accountability now on view in Roanoke County.
That doesn't mean, however, that the county's Board of Supervisors, which holds the pursestrings, can avoid ultimate responsibility for the facility problems that county schools are facing.
The recent defeat of a bond referendum that would have addressed those problems has brought into sharp focus strains inherent in a system in which two sets of elected officials make promises to constituents, but only one has the money to make good on its promises.
School Board members, believing they are empowered by a voters' mandate, find they are stymied by their need to rely on the Board of Supervisors for funds. Supervisors, obligated to their own constituency, feel burdened by demands to honor commitments they did not make.
Hardly an ideal scenario for responsive government. But that is what county voters have chosen. And it leaves final responsibility for school spending where it always has been - with the supervisors.
Which in turn renders especially annoying the verbal sniper fire that some supervisors have directed toward the School Board, presumably to distract from the fact that the Board of Supervisors has failed to show anything close to adequate leadership in meeting school-facility needs.
County voters chose this spring to reject the bond issue that would have paid for a new high school in Southwest County. It was a heady victory for bond opponents, but the morning after, the county woke up still needing the new school - if not the one planned, then some combination of construction and reorganization that will reduce overcrowding and bring the educational program in Southwest County in line with that of other parts of the county.
The need won't go away, and will only get more expensive to address.
That leaves both boards - not to mention county residents - in a fix. But supervisors shouldn't be pointing fingers.
After all, the board delayed the bond referendum for a year (in fact, the need for a new high school has been apparent for several years) - and yet was still unprepared to promote the project as part of a long-term countywide strategy or to campaign effectively for the referendum.
For that matter, supervisors could have issued Virginia Public School Authority bonds to pay for a new high school without voter approval - an option the School Board recommended.
Taking on that amount of new debt with VPSA bonds, which are structured differently from the general obligation bonds put before voters in April, would have required a tax increase. Perhaps some supervisors might have been ousted, in part because of their failure to explain the need for the spending.
And yet, as members of the elected governing body, they're supposed to make tough decisions in the whole county's long-range interests. Toward that end, they need to show more leadership and take fewer cheap shots.
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