Sales tax increase to create well over $1M for schools
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Estimations have the windfall equaling around 29 cents of property tax, based on last year’s figures. And according to County Mayor Kenneth Rogers, with sales tax revenues up and the addition of Lowe’s, this figure could be much higher.
At a joint meeting of Education Committee and Budget and Finance Committee Tuesday night, the county mayor and commissioners debated several ideas on how the funds should be allocated.
“There have been several suggestions made, public and private, concerning what percentage ought to be allocated for debt service, and what percentage, what number of cents, might go to the school system and other uses, and I think we need to get that out in the open and talk about that,” said Budget and Finance Committee chairman George Smartt.
The school system’s share of the funds are expected to amount to a considerable sum, with estimates running well over $1 million.
“We’re projecting the additional three-quarters of a cent to bring in, for the school’s part next year, $1,253,000,” Smartt said.
By state law, the school system gets one-half of the additional funds while the other half is distributed between the county and the local municipalities where it was collected. However, since this money would bring the school system’s budget well above what is required to preserve maintenance of effort, officials believe the county should be able to institute a corresponding reduction, or reallocation, of the property tax currently allotted to the school system.
“That equates to about 29 cents on the property tax,” said Smartt.
Commissioner David Vandagriff was quick to point out where a significant portion of that money should go.
“Last year when we were discussing it we were talking about it taking at least 5 cents to bring up the retirement plan,” Vandagriff said, referring to the situation that resulted when the county voted to take care of the retirement contributions of county employees as a substitute for an across-the-board raise, only to find out later they would have to provide the same service to non-teaching personnel, such as custodians and bus drivers, which increased the cost of this move substantially. And since retirement funding has gone up slightly this year, this could amount to around 7 cents of property tax.
“Well, there’s one expense that you know you have,” said Education Committee chairman Bill Zechman, who noted there were at least two other programs that might have to be funded.
The first of those being a proposed statewide salary increase for teachers as part of the Basic Education Program, of which the county’s share could amount to some $90,000 or around 2.5 cents of property tax, though there was some question whether this was going to be implemented this year. The second is the governor’s teacher pay equity program, which could end up being even more costly to the county.
On top of this, Zechman suggested a local pay raise for teachers.
“We’re about 10 percent below the state median,” Zechman said.
But Rogers was quick to point out that county employees should be considered as well.
“I just want you to keep in mind we have people who work for us that didn’t get a pay raise last year,” Rogers said.
Rogers felt if the commission allocated a large portion of the tax increase to funding all the proposed education programs and raises it would leave little to fund a raise for other county employees and to cover debt service.