3-cent real estate tax proposed to fund new middle school operations

At its sixth and final budget work session scheduled before advertising a proposed Fiscal Year 2018 budget and tax rates, Warren County Administrator Doug Stanley summarized staff efforts to plug a $3.5-million revenue deficit.

What was presented at the March 21 work session was a combination of departmental cuts, usage of General Fund reserves and contingencies, AND creation of $just over $1.2-million of additional revenue from a 3-cent Real Estate Tax increase.

All of the new Real Estate Tax revenue of $1,214,550 created by the 3-cent increase (each penny of county real estate tax creates just over $404,000) will go to cover operation at the new middle school under construction off Happy Creek Road, near its intersection with Leach’s Run Parkway.  Both projects appear on schedule to facilitate the school and road openings by late summer, Stanley reported during his administrator’s report at the regular board meeting that followed the March 21 work session.

‘A lot of work went into this plan – and if you add this, and subtract this, and factor in this – Oh, NEVER MIND, could you just say OK?!?’ Alright, I made that quote up, but it might have been what the county administrator was thinking during his balance-the-budget presentation. Photos/Roger Bianchini

At the end of a two-page summary presented at the work session, the County Finance Department and administrative staff had balanced the proposed $74,658,062 FY 2018 budget with cuts ($250,735), reserve and contingency fund usage ($1,133,300) and revenue generation from the Real Estate Tax increase ($1,468,984).  An estimated $254,032 of the increased tax revenue total comes from a fee paid by Dominion Power that is based on the Real Estate Tax rate, Stanley explained.  There was also a minimal $402 increase projected from an increase to the mobile home tax.

Miscellaneous saving of over $500,000 from various sources, including Health Care savings ($245,191), VDOT revenue related to the Morgan’s Ford Bridge project ($251,448), as well as the $7,500 fee the County will get for acting as the fiscal agent for the new Skyline Regional Criminal Justice Academy helped close that $3,456,151 revenue gap staff had been working on for the past several weeks.

Stanley sought approval from the board to present all county departments with the instruction to cut their budget requests by a half-percent (.05%).  That consensus was given, and will cut just under $160,000 out of the budget.

Asked about the impact on the General Fund reserves that the County’s bond rating is based on, Stanley said the million-dollars-plus used would reduce reserves to 13.1 percent, about 2 percent under the recommended level of 15 percent of the total county budget to retain a very favorable bond rating.  That rating helps lenders establish interest rates on loans taken on to pay for major capital improvement projects.

Interested observers included Public Schools Superintendent Greg Drescher, standing in doorway, and Samuels Library Director Nicki Lynch, seated in background with worried look. It’s OK, kids – no more cuts … probably.

North River Supervisor Dan Murray observed that staff had cut hard “internally” and wondered at the alternative of going flat on funding of outside agencies.  Stanley responded that cuts to most of those funding requests that had increases had been made earlier in the process.  Interested observers at the March 21 work session were Samuels Public Library administrators, whose request had been pared back from 6 percent to 3 percent.  The Board decided to let those outside agency cuts stay at the previously set rates.

The supervisors have a special meeting scheduled for March 28 at 9 a.m. to authorized advertisement of the public hearing on the budget.  The budget public hearing is slated for an April 11 special meeting at 7 p.m., with the vote on final approval of the FY 2018 budget scheduled for the regular meeting of April 18, also at 7 p.m.