Published: June 12, 2008 06:29 pm         

School board approves 2008-'09 budget

The Cumberland County Board of Education approved its 2008-'09 budget Monday night, though four members were not present. The budget will now be sent to the county commission for review.

According to Director of Schools Aarona VanWinkle, the proposed budget is close to where it was last year, with $47.5 million estimated for expenditures. That is slightly higher than the $46.1 million set for the current budget.

"We tried to be conservative with this budget, holding on tight to the programs we have now," she told the Chronicle.

The BOE also had to take into consideration the rising costs of certain items, such as fuel. Last year only $290,700 was budgeted for fuel. Now, the line item stands at $550,000.

"The only thing we changed here since our last discussion is that we put in $460,000 for fuel, but folks, I don't think that will come close to it," said VanWinkle, who explained the reasoning behind the $90,000 increase. "I've pointed out there is no funding coming from the state to alleviate the increase in fuel, but hopefully the county will understand."

To offset $89,000 currently overspent on fuel, the BOE approved a budget amendment to reallocate funds in other line items within the transportation budget during the June 9 special called meeting. This included removing $60,000 for medical insurance, as well as $29,000 for equipment.

Another area of concern was the maintenance of plant proposed budget. Its total came to $1.3 million, which is slightly higher than last year's $1 million.

VanWinkle explained, "Maintenance of plant, once again, is very tight. We are at 77.03 percent. Remember we have our flooring and painting, which is $110,000....and lots and lots of stuff coming out of this in the next month so this is going to be a close budget, too.

"We've been worried about this budget since about November, especially with the maintenance part of it. I'm worried about all of it, transportation too, but we're really getting worried about our operation and maintenance," she added.

VanWinkle had little to say about the revenues in the new budget, which only came to nearly $36 million due to the exclusion of property taxes. Although she did not want to speculate on what the amount will be this year, she guessed it will be roughly the same, about $5 million.

"We've collected…about two percent more than what we anticipated on property tax. However, local option sales tax, as you can see, is below what we anticipated," she stated.

The budget includes $7 million in local option sales taxes for the 2008-'09 fiscal year, but the DOS expressed uncertainty that the amount will be reached since it is currently at $1.7 million below last year's budget. In addition, funding from the state will remain little more than $28 million due to the county's ability to pay compared to its effort to do so.

"They didn't remove any funds from us, but they certainly didn't give us any additional," said VanWinkle.

Although she will not know the final status of the fund balance until July, the DOS expects more than $2 million of it to be used for projects.

"We have large projects going on now, some of which will probably carry over into the new budget year," she said.

The motion to approve the budget was made by 9th District representative Dan Schlafer and supported by Chair Shirley Parris. It passed with Schlafer, Parris and Robert Safdie, 2nd District representative, voting in favor of it, while 1st District representative Brian Houston and 6th District Victor Randolph voted against it. Rick Smith, 4th District representative; Gordon Davis, 5th District representative; Mary Smith, 7th District representative; and Orville Hale, 8th District representative were not present for the meeting.

A public reading of the 2008-'09 school budget will be held at a later date.