Commissioners well on way to passing budget
The Warren County Schools budget brought on some fancy footwork as the Budget and Finance Committee finished up the county’s 2004-2005 budget talks.
Commissioners found themselves dancing around a couple of hot-button issues that have had county residents and commissioners buzzing during recent months. Chief among these was the delicate task of dividing the money generated from the county’s recently increased local option sales tax with the school system.
The goal was preserving the state-required maintenance of effort, while avoiding diverting too much of the new revenue the school system’s way, thus increasing the county’s maintenance of effort burden next year, and into the future.
One of the things affecting this aspect of the budget is the sales tax looks as if it is going to generate more revenue than estimated.
“If you call it $200,000,” said Budget and Finance Committee chairman George Smartt of the possible windfall, “that takes nearly 7 cents off the money we gave initially.”
“There’s still going to be more sales tax in there,” said David Hill. “I think we need to look at it again next year when all this 3/4 cents has come through the proper channels and you know what it’s going to be. Lowe’s will be in there next year. We don’t know what Lowe’s is going to do.”
Smartt pointed out the important thing was to keep the property tax and sales tax mix at an even keel, noting if the committee went too far in reducing the property tax share to the schools, it could easily be made up by transfers from debt service to bring the school budget back up to maintenance of effort requirements.
As it stands now, the sales tax revenue, which by law must go to the school system, has allowed the commission to decrease the amount of the property tax share that goes to the schools by around 24 cents, money which will go directly into the debt service fund.
Reportedly, part of this will be used to pay off some county debt early, and some will be stockpiled in preparation for building a new school at Centertown, the other issue that had commissioners treading carefully during the final budget talks. As has been reported earlier, this is a project proponents hope to have in the works by the end of next year, with the Education Committee even preparing to present a letter of intent to that effect to the full commission at its next meeting.
Once the school budget had been put to bed, the committee moved on to the last two budgets left to be covered in this year’s talks, the general fund and debt service, both of which passed with minimal discussion, and after setting the certified property tax rate at $2.31, due to this year’s reappraisal of property, leaving the budget ready for presentation with no property tax increase.
When all was said and done, though, not everyone got everything they wanted. Both commissioners and the county executive, however, said they were impressed with how smoothly the deliberations went.
“I think the budget process went very well,” said Smartt. “A budget is supposed to be a compromise. I don’t think anybody got everything they wanted, but I believe everybody got something.”
“I think it went really well,” said County Executive Kenneth Rogers. “And my thanks goes out to the Budget and Finance Committee. They actually took it line item by line item and looked at it. They have worked in there where they can give the county employees a raise, and this longevity bonus I think is a great idea. But what really pleases me is they actually went along and we’re going to pay off some debt. Without raising taxes. The commission has done a super job.”