THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, April 7, 1995 TAG: 9504070002
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
City Manager Jim Spore has presented Virginia Beach City Council with a budget that's long on basics and short on extras. It emphasizes maintaining existing services that citizens want and, according to citizen surveys, think the city does well. So this budget fits the mood, except for two little words: tax hike.
City staff recommends a 4.8 cent (per $100 of assessed value) increase in the real-estate tax rate. That's less than the 5.2 cents previously anticipated. And the new $1.189 rate would still be lowest among Hampton Roads' localities.
A local tax hike should produce ample debate whatever its purpose. This hike has two purposes: To raise some $11.5 million more than last year for schools and to start up the Agriculture Reserve Program. Both school spending and the ARP should provoke probing questions.
Superintendent Faucette maintains that the real question is why the city won't spend what schools say they need to have the best system they can. City staff sees the issue not so much the amount budgeted for schools - $429,893,457 - as how it's spent. In keeping with this budget's theme, City Manager Spore suggests that school spending tend to ``basic classroom needs'' both in the building of new schools and in promised renovation of older schools.
For example, there's money for a new Corporate Landing Middle School - but skip the atrium, the flagpole, the whatnot that have raised costs and hackles in the recent past. Mr. Spore suggests instead bringing older schools nearer to parity, a suggestion parents citywide will applaud as an alternative to some school rezoning. He suggests schools get moving, with the $2.9 million City Council provided last year, plus another $2 million this year, to cure eight schools ``sick'' for years with air-quality problems.
Mr. Spore recommends against schools' request for a $106 million bond referendum to buy computer equipment. It was a curious and dubious request, given council members' reasonable, vocal opposition to funding short-lived purchases with long-lived bonds.
What city schools buy with what funds is a subject council should raise. Approving the school budget lump-sum doesn't help. Approval by broad categories, a permitted alternative, would help. So would a School Board that scrutinizes the budgets proposed and the funds disbursed, all year long. It's public money. Public officials, if not the public, should be able to track it.
Of the 4.8 cent hike in the property tax, 3.3 cents would go to schools, the other 1.5 cents to the Agriculture Reserve Program. The ARP would encourage landowners in the city's southern half to preserve farmland by selling the city their de-vel-op-ment rights - and saving the city the infrastructure costs of residential development. ``The annual debt service and operating costs of one new high school,'' Mr. Spore notes, ``exceed the annual cost of the ARP.''
It sounds good. But proponents have yet to provide details to allay serious concerns: Why are current zoning regulations not sufficient to prevent the overdevelopment of this section of the city? If future City Councils are not bound by current zoning regulations, are they bound by ARP provisions this council may pass? The program is voluntary; how many landowners must participate, and at what cost to taxpayers, for the program to be an effective constraint on development? If a landowner wants to develop his land under current zoning regulations, presumably he may; some do, so we'll soon find out. But if zoning changes make the ARP his only option, is participation really voluntary?
Seven council workshops and hearings are scheduled between now and council's vote. Citizens can attend. Wise citizens will. by CNB