Public hearing on County’s 2018 budget, tax hike set for April 11

The Warren County Board of Supervisors will hold the public hearing on its proposed Fiscal Year 2018 budget at a special meeting on April 11, at 7 p.m.  A vote to approve the $73.95-million ($73,955,107 to be precise) budget is scheduled for the board’s regular meeting of April 18.  The vote authorizing advertisement of the budget proposal, which includes a 3-cent Real Estate tax hike, came at a special meeting the morning of March 28.

As explained in our story on the final budget work session of March 21, all of the $1.2 million in revenue from the real estate tax hike – from 62 cents to 65 cents per $100 of value – will go to pay for operations of the new middle school scheduled to open for the 2018-19 school year.

click here to read the previous story

The county’s second middle school is beginning to peak its way to completion on schedule this June. The $1.2 million of new County revenue from a 3-cent tax in-crease will go entirely toward operating expenses of the school beginning in the 2018-19 school year. Photos/Roger Bianchini

The only adjusted numbers presented on March 28 from the previous week’s discussion were the final departmental budgets in the wake of the across-the-board half-percent (.05%) cut to them suggested the previous week to help make up a $3.5-million revenue shortfall.  For smaller departments or county contributions to largely self-supporting operations like courts, the cuts were minimal: as low as $30 to the Magistrate’s Office (from a total $6,000 budget) and $99, $132 and $162, to Juvenile and Domestic Relations, General District and Circuit Courts respectively.

For bigger departments like the sheriff’s office (-$21,025), social services (-$19,944), or fire & rescue (-$14,639) the cuts were more significant numerically.  In fact, when county funding of volunteer fire & rescue departments is factored in, another $4,763 in cuts is added, raising that combined emergency services cut to $19,402.

Combined, the across-the-board half-percent departmental cut saved the County $159,186.  The public school budget was not impacted by the half-percent departmental cut.  The supervisors dealt separately with public schools on cuts and revenues to balance the school system’s $55.09-million FY 2018 budget.

STEADY before you choke on that number – only $23.4 million of the public school budget required local funding.  The nearly $32-million balance was comprised of federal and state funding, along with some self-generated revenues and carryover funds.

Numbers, more numbers…

To review briefly, the County had been looking at a proposed FY 2018 budget in the $74.6-million range with anticipated revenues of just $71.2 million.  Finance and administrative department staffs came up with a combination of cuts, General and Contingency Fund assets, and the tax hike to balance that budget.

The County’s finance and administrative staffs proposed a combination of cuts ($250,735), reserve and contingency fund usage ($1,133,300) and new revenue generation from Real Estate and Mobile Home tax increases ($1,214,952) to help close the revenue gap.

‘Didn’t I tell you last week a lot of hard work went into this budget, so you should pass it, pretty please with cherries on top, and thank you.’ – OK, I made this quote up too but Doug, I mean I’m on a roll.

Also at play were 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.

And if I write another number down, if you don’t kill me, I’ll kill myself …