Amherst County’s proposed 2018-19 budget is slated for a May 1 vote from the board of supervisors after drawing only a single resident’s comments at last Thursday’s public hearing on the fiscal plan.
The $43.7 million budget proposes an increase of $2.6 million, or 6.6 percent, from the current fiscal year. It keeps tax rates level and would give employees a 2 percent cost of living increase. The increase is based on debt service and investing in a $1.3 million capital improvement plan.
The county is funding the Amherst County school system at $13.9 million, down from $14.1 million. County Administrator Dean Rodgers said despite the decrease, the county has assumed the division’s debt and spent $200,000 to purchase a pair of school buses, which frees up spending elsewhere in the schools’ recently adopted $47 million budget.
The school system, which last year closed its smallest elementary school, Pleasant View Elementary School, continues to face declining enrollment.
“The schools are being well taken care of, despite the fact that they have fewer facilities to care for and they have fewer children to teach,” Rodgers said.
County resident Bill Peters, the lone speaker during last Thursday’s hearing, addressed funding public education and said he took issue with a statement in Rodgers’ written budget proposal that said “more challenges by the School Board are not being met with adequate increases from the federal government.”
Pointing to the state’s refusal in previous years to not seek federal funding sources such as the Race to the Top grant, he contended the state is to blame for missing out on millions of dollars for education.
“That’s where the problem is,” Peters said. “It’s in the General Assembly, not the federal government.”
Public education funding makes up 33 percent of the proposed general fund expenditures.
Rodgers’ written proposal states the county has seen a decline in unemployment in the past several years, dropping from 6.7 percent in 2012 to 4.2 percent in January. Economic development is a major focus for officials as the county has seen a steady decline in new businesses starting up, going from 41 in 2015 to 27 last year, the proposal states. Meanwhile, the county has seen a 62 percent increase in building permits from 2016 to 2017.
Rodgers also referenced a letter Amherst County Schools Superintendent Steven Nichols sent to Sheriff E.W. Viar asking for consideration of funding more school resource officers, a topic that has gained regional and statewide attention in the wake of recent school shootings.
Amherst County currently has three school resource officers across nine schools. Nichols has asked the county to consider adding two more, which would ensure officers in the high school and two middle schools while bringing on board new officers for elementary schools in the southern and northern ends of the county.
Rodgers told supervisors last week funding additional resource officers is $50,000 per officer, not including equipment or vehicles. Ensuring an
officer in each county school would mean an additional $300,000 annually, he said.
Rodgers recommended not funding any additional SRO positions until the county knows what the state will do and pointed out the state recently ordered a study into the topic.
“That should be very interesting to see what comes out of that,” Chairwoman Claudia Tucker said.