County budget process continues amidst unknown COVID-19 variables

Tuesday morning’s county budget work session gets underway with the long-awaited presentation from the Shenandoah Area Agency on Aging. Photos by Roger Bianchini. Video by Mark Williams, Royal Examiner.

The sometimes painstakingly detailed Fiscal Year Budget process continued for the Warren County Board of Supervisors Tuesday morning, March 17. Heard from at a 9 a.m. work session was the twice-delayed outside agency presentation of the Shenandoah Area Agency on Aging (SAAA), as well as Warren County Public Schools presentation of their budget request for FY 2021.

It was noted during the school budget discussion that during the school system’s current pandemic shutdown, free lunches are being made available to all students under the age of 18 – more on that below. In fact, the specter of national, state and local reactions to the COVID-19 Coronavirus outbreak hung over all aspects of Tuesday’s budget discussion.

To open the work session SAAA Executive Director Linda Holtzapple traced the agency’s work on behalf of the community’s elderly. That work is designed to help allow the community’s aging citizens to maintain their independent residence “for as long as safely possible”, avoiding the necessity of a costly relocation into elder care facilities for those seniors and their families.

SAAA programs include operation of the Senior Center geared to socializing, outside the home events, as well as the Meals on Wheels program of prepared food delivery to senior’s homes, and in-home care services for those who need some additional around-the-house physical assistance.

Holtzapple, who was accompanied by SAAA Director of Care Management Jimmy Roberts and SAAA Board member Christy McMillin, noted that due to the current COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic response, to which the elderly have been identified as particularly susceptible to potentially fatal health risks, the Senior Center’s in-house activities were currently suspended. However, she noted that the facility’s kitchen was still in use for Meals on Wheels deliveries, done with precautions to avoid potential passing of the COVID-19 virus.

SAAA Executive Director Linda Holtzapple explains her agency’s services, including adjustments made during the Coronavirus outbreak’s threat to our older population.

Holtzapple said that extra Meals on Wheels deliveries were being made to stock clients up “in case there is a gap (in deliveries) due to Coronavirus issues”.

The SAAA request is for $54,000 from the County, reflecting no increase from the FY 2020 County funding of the agency. Holtzapple noted that the SAAA generates about $200,000 in annual fundraising activities for its regional efforts.

Following their presentation, Board Chairman Walter Mabe and Vice-Chair Cheryl Cullers thanked the SAAA contingent for their work in support of the community’s elderly.

School Budget
Interim Schools Superintendent Melody Sheppard led a five-person Warren County Public Schools contingent in presenting and explaining their recently (March 11) School Board-approved budget to the supervisors and county staff. Included in the work session agenda packet was a March 12 letter from Sheppard to the county administrator citing the School Board’s previous day approval of a $62,247,344 operating budget, requiring local County funding of $26,956,323.

That $26.9 million figure represents a 1% increase over the current fiscal year county funding of its public schools.

After a brief explanation of the State Composite Index ranking of Virginia counties’ ability to fund public education in response to an earlier question from the supervisors, Sheppard continued to trace additions, reasons for those additions, and their budget impacts to County officials.

As Schools Finance Director Rob Ballentine and Doug Stanley listen, Interim Schools Superintendent Melody Sheppard leads a presentation on the ins and outs of the public schools’ budget request.

Highlights included $2.85 million to implement a 1% COLA and/or STEP salary increase tied to the County’s Employee Compensation Study conducted in recent years. The study was designed to help the County and its public-school system stem a tide of staff turnovers due to a lack of competitive salaries with surrounding communities.

Other items included $120,000 for 19 new school buses reaching 15 years of service over the past three years; $150,000 for textbooks ranging from six-year-old Science books – science curriculums are on a faster informational update cycle than most; eight-year-old Math and Social Studies books; and 15-year-old Foreign Language books Sheppard noted had references to “tape recorders”, a reference that baffles many students.

Some discussion was devoted to new staff positions, particularly $231,833 earmarked for one clinician and four support coaches for a Behavioral Support Specialist Program designed to help correct disruptive students’ behavior inside the classroom. A PILOT program in two schools, E. Wilson Morrison Elementary and Skyline Middle School, was acknowledged as having a “positive impact” on students and the classroom environment.

When Board Chairman Walter Mabe questioned whether such a program included enough “accountability” for bad behavior, Director of Secondary Instruction Alan Fox replied from his early background in detention and disciplinary oversight in the system.

Director of Secondary Instruction Alan Fox weighs in on proactive behavioral counseling versus suspensions for unruly classroom students.

“I’ve probably suspended more kids than anybody in this room, and my experience is they come back “angry,” he observed. Fox said the option presented by the Behavioral Support Program of repeated interaction with students in teaching and re-teaching “behavioral expectations”, perhaps unlearned in the home environment, was a preferable option to simply removing the students from the school as a punishment reaction.

During accreditation and preparing students for the post-graduation employment world discussion, Mabe also raised interesting points on student sub-categories related to accreditation and the long-term national trend toward teaching toward memorization test results versus teaching children to think critically.

After it was noted that those standards and categorizations came down to localities from the State, which in turn saw those mandates handed down from the federal level, Mabe observed that “Maybe it’s time to start pushing back” against what many educators feel are counterproductive governmental mandates originating in the political sphere, rather than from educators.

The current closing of the school system, along with all Virginia public schools, due to the COVID-19 Coronavirus situation was also discussed.

“This is uncharted territory,” North River Supervisor Delores Oates observed.

As noted above, Sheppard told County officials that the school system in making lunches and backpack meals programs available to students during the statewide school shutdown. The possibility of utilizing languishing school buses as a distribution means was broached. Currently, the meal is available at E. Wilson Morrison Elementary School and is available free to all students under the age of 18 in the system.

Number Crunching & the EDA
Following those presentations, County Administrator Doug Stanley guided the board through the latest numbers on departmental funding requests, as well as those from all outside agencies, concluding with staff recommendations on those funding requests.

Facing an $865,222 shortfall with a mandate not to raise county taxes, Stanley reviewed suggested cuts of $866,951 to balance a projected total FY 2021 budget of $113,133,873. The county administrator’s balancing act reduced the required local revenue needed to balance the full budget to $80,944,559.

County Administrator Doug Stanley crunches the numbers in presenting over $866,000 in cuts to balance the FY 2021 budget proposal without a tax increase.

Among the suggested cuts were $147,445 to the Front Royal-Warren County Economic Development Authority’s operational budget. Stanley explained that he had worked with EDA Executive Director Doug Parsons and EDA Finance Committee Chair Jorie Martin to adjust the EDA’s budget request downward, factoring in potential property sales and rentals, as well as the likelihood of the EDA being moved into the County departmental network in the coming fiscal year.

That move would relieve the EDA of a significant amount of projected legal expenses cited at $97,000, as they would have access to the County-funded EDA-related civil legal counsel of Sands-Anderson. There were no cuts to the EDA’s current two-person staff, Parsons and Administrative Assistant Gretchen Henderson, Stanley noted.

Overall, it appeared the county administrator was able to pair back the EDA’s original funding request of $452,220 to $253,000. Of course, that does not factor in expenses, like Sands Anderson that the County is already absorbing, as it did with the Cherry Bekaert forensic audit that uncovered the alleged misdirection of $21.3 million of EDA assets involving Town and County projects.

Stanley also observed that he did not include the EDA’s current $266,000 annual debt service payments on the Front Royal Police Station that the Town of Front Royal has chosen not to pay as it steps up its hostile civil litigation with the EDA.

“I don’t feel it is the County’s responsibility to pay a Town debt – unless directed otherwise,” Stanley observed of the current impasse over what has been described as “an undisputed $8.4 million debt on principal payments” the Town owes the EDA for its financing construction of the FRPD headquarters.

Well, you never have to raise taxes if you cut departments, staff and get stuff for free – do you? The new FRPD headquarters may be ground zero in answering at least part of that question, come FY 2021.

The town council and its interim town manager have apparently decided to include a dispute over covering the 3% interest rate the EDA is paying on the FRPD debt service in its escalating hostile civil litigation against the EDA and its former executive director.

Town officials have ignored the EDA’s offer of a compromise on the interest rate and a non-litigious attempt to come to a mutual agreement on what the EDA actually owes the Town in any debt service overpayments or misdirected Town assets related to the EDA financial scandal. Town officials continue to insist they have no legal obligation to pay more than the 1.5% interest rate they claim council was verbally promised by former EDA Executive Director Jennifer McDonald. And they have claimed over $20 million in damages against the EDA and McDonald.

“What happens on July 1 when nobody is paying it?” Oates asked of the FRPD debt service. While the county administrator had no immediate answer to that question, the supervisors did not instruct him to amend his budget proposal to fund the EDA continuing to cover those payments for the Town of Front Royal.

See this far-ranging budget discussion, as well as a meeting-ending 10-minute discussion of the County Board’s role in a potential Emergency Management response if the COVID-19 Coronavirus situation continues escalating at the State and regional levels, in this exclusive Royal Examiner video: