County’s 2018 budget proposal gets mixed reviews

Those of us covering the Warren County budget process may have gotten off easy – well, perhaps not as easily as those actually proposing and poised to vote on an FY 2018 County budget of $73,955,107.  For while it will take a 3-cent hike to the Real Estate tax rate to balance that budget, which is $3.31-million above last year’s budget, only nine citizens addressed the board during Tuesday evening’s (April 11) budget public hearing.

Eyeballing someone he may know to be number-impaired, Doug Stanley tries to ‘splain the inter-connectivity of budget variables totaling $73.9 million in FY 2018. Photos/Roger Bianchini

AND, only three of those speakers expressed outright opposition to the proposed tax hike.  And one of those three, Shenandoah Farms resident Lynda McDonough, qualified her opposition as a consequence of what she called an ongoing and “overboard” capital improvements program – “I’m for fire and rescue and the police, but some of these capital improvements are overboard,” she said.

And if the other opponents of any tax increase, Dennis Willingham and Larry Diehm, concentrated their criticism on the overall budget process, most specifically on administrative, departmental and personnel costs, McDonough quickly segued to her long-voiced criticism of how the County manages the Shenandoah Farms Sanitary District.

Spit it out, Lynda – “Our road __ (fill in the blank)!”

“The Shenandoah Farms budget is unbelievable … Where did all the (unused) snow removal money go?” she asked.  Then re-raising an issue she has brought before the board for years, McDonough hesitated briefly before letting it go – “Our road s*cks!” she said of High Top Road (which came by that name for a reason).  She said while the County classifies High Top as a gravel road, she stated it is really a poorly-maintained dirt road.  And having received no satisfactory response to her years of complaints about the condition of High Top Road, she closed her remarks by expressing opposition to the County’s take over of the Farms as a Sanitary District, as well as any increase in Sanitary District fees or taxes.

The proposed budget includes a $10 increase on both improved and unimproved lots in the Shenandoah Farms Sanitary District, from $275 to $285 and $240 to $250, respectively.  The proposed budget for the sprawling Farms Sanitary District is by far the largest of the County’s state-leading 11 sanitary districts.  At $636,430 it is nearly $250,000 above second-place High Knob’s proposed $387,225 FY 2018 budget.

But physics teaches us that every action in the universe has a reaction.  And the reaction to McDonough’s opposition was a letter read into the record by Deputy County Administrator Bob Childress for the Farms property owners association president Ralph Rinaldi.  “Please convey to the BOS that we are in support of the increase in the Sanitary District tax.  Remind them that this tax is the most effective tax as 96-percent of this revenue comes back to the community.  It goes without saying that the improvements in the Farms could not have happened without this funding,” Rinaldi wrote.

Fire & Rescue

The public hearing’s most emotional comments came following North Warren Volunteer Company 10’s Sean Graber’s plea for increases that will allow county fire & rescue departments to upgrade equipment and staffing needs where necessary.  Four uniformed fire & rescue staff were also present, two of whom accompanied Graber to the podium with some examples of equipment in need of replacement.  Graber recounted recent life-saving calls, one he said happening that day at the Lowe’s parking lot, and one cardiac call the previous week.

North Warren Volunteer Co. 10’s Sean Graber lobbies for the life-saving apparatus and personnel necessary to provide 24×7 countywide fire & rescue coverage.

After Mary Ann Biggs thanked the board for a proposed increase, not the increase originally sought but a portion of it, for Samuels Public Library, Laura Sluss addressed the board.  She said she was the person Graber referenced in the life-saving cardiac call of the previous week.  Choking back emotion, Sluss told the board, “I would not be here tonight” except for the efforts of county volunteer fire & rescue, and Sean Graber in particular.

Laura Sluss chokes back emotion as a recipient just a week earlier of the very life-saving services Graber referenced.

She said that when transported to Winchester Medical Center initial tests did not reveal the severity of her situation, leading to an initial reaction to release her.  However, she told the board that Graber had stayed at the hospital to push for additional testing, which she said revealed 100-percent blockage in some of her arteries.

“He was my advocate; he pushed until they took my situation seriously,” she said of Graber.

Following adjournment of the meeting, South Warren Company 3 Chief Alan Brockman told us that the partial additional staffing (2 of 4 requested) the county had authorized had reduced the no response percentage for his department from 70% to 22%.  While buoyed by the improvement, Brockman noted that his station still had an unmanned third shift, accounting for the bulk of the remaining no response calls at Company 3.

Other comments

Other speakers included Happy Creek School Board member Jim Wells and Lake Front Royal resident Charles Gornowich.  Wells thanked the board for funding construction of the county’s second middle school, which will be completed for the coming school year.  Completion of that school, accompanying construction of Skyline High School and renovations to both the new and old Warren County High Schools over the past decade is estimated to accommodate the public school system’s secondary educational needs for the next 20 years, Wells said.

Speaking for a 40% voting minority of Lake Front Royal property owners or residents, Gornowich lauded the County’s adding Lake Front Royal to its list of Sanitary Districts.  Gornowich credited the County for repairs to the entrance to the mountain subdivision

A vote on the county budget, details of which we have reviewed in two previous stories, will occur at the board’s April 18 meeting.

click here to read the previous story

One detail that bears re-mentioning is the fact that all of the $1.2-million in revenue created by the 3-cent real estate tax hike will go to fund operations at the new middle school, beginning this fiscal year.

Numbers

Finance and administrative staffs came up with a combination of cuts, use of General and Contingency Fund assets, and additional fees and savings to make up the remainder of a total $3.5-million revenue gap the county had faced.

Included in that final solution were $250,735 in cuts; reserve and contingency fund usage of $1,133,300; an estimated $254,032 in new fees paid by Dominion Power that is based on the Real Estate tax rate; 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.