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Stafford schools deserve responsible budgets--and prudence, too

April 6, 2006 12:50 am

AS AN ELECTED official, I believe it is my job to ensure that tax- payers' money is used wisely and that public organizations live within their means.

At a recent Stafford School Board meeting, several speakers argued that the board should simply rubber-stamp the school superintendent's financial request without question--whether or not every requested item was truly needed, and without regard to the impact on local taxpayers.

One speaker even called for drastic cuts in fire/rescue, police, and other essential county departments to provide even more than the 69 percent in local revenues the county has proposed for 2007.

It is the School Board's fiduciary responsibility to develop and approve a budget that meets the needs of the school system and its students, and provides a quality education, all while working within the county's revenue projections in any given year.

A lot of hard-working citizens, the people whom I work for, asked me not to approve a budget that would cause a huge tax increase on them. It is sadly ironic that the majority of families who received a 100 percent or more increase in the value of their homes recently are the ones who can least afford a tax increase of any kind.

People on fixed incomes have raised legitimate concerns over questionable school spending on plasma TVs, wide-screen monitors, and leather chairs, or how taxpayer money was used to send school staff on a river rafting trip.

They want to know where all the funding for "growth" went when Stafford schools has been over-projecting student population increases for several years, by as much as 100 percent.

Since we do not have an unlimited amount of resources to work with, we must work within our means--and the means of those paying the bill by making spending choices.

Every extra dollar taken out of your pocket in the form of higher real-estate taxes is a dollar less you have for your family's needs.

The county administrator's proposed budget for 2007 provides $125.5 million in local transfer funds. This figure provides $8 million more in local funds than in our 2006 budget. While the local transfer is less than the massive growth in spending proposed by the superintendent, it is still 7 percent higher than the amount provided this year.

Overall, the county administrator's budget proposes $21.5 million more federal, state, and local dollars--a 10 percent increase in funds over the amount Stafford schools are getting this year--for a 540-student increase in the student population in 2007.

That's 10 percent more money for a 2 percent increase in students.

To fund the budget proposed by the county administrator, the average resident will have to pay almost $400 more in real-estate taxes next year. To meet the superintendent's request, $16.5 million more than the county has proposed in local funding, would require tax increases of almost $800 on average.

That's not pocket change.

Perhaps the teachers, administrators, and PTA officials who spoke at the board's special meeting didn't realize that the operating budget for our school system has been growing far in excess of inflation and population increases.

While the Gibson Efficiency Review found that Stafford schools were efficient in 2002, per-student spending has gone from $6,937 in fiscal 2002 to a proposed amount of $9,559 in fiscal 2007--an increase of $2,622 per child.

The actual budget for our school system was $178 million in 2002, compared with the superintendent's recommended funding in 2007 of $288 million.

That's a $110 million, 62 percent increase in just five years.

Our student population has grown by only 3,000 students during this five-year period. For people who think the school system is underfunded, do the math.

This year, the School Board has been working hard to improve the salaries of our employees. In fact, that remains my No. 1 budgetary priority.

With the help of our state delegates, cost of competing has finally come to Stafford--so we can help level the playing field of the salaries provided by our neighbors to the north.

While we have not gotten all that we need from Richmond, we are working toward that. At the end of the day, if we are to give our employees the raises they deserve, then the School Board needs to find funding reductions elsewhere.

Let us not forget that every year at budget time, some folks declare that the superintendent's request is "bare bones." And every year, the supervisors approve a budget that was less than requested--yet our schools, through the hard work of our teachers, continue to receive accreditation and meet Annual Yearly Progress goals, and we still had a year-end surplus, as we always do.

In fact, we ended last year with $5.7 million in extra taxpayer money we didn't need.

I will not fight a battle with the Board of Supervisors, just to be fighting. I will not ask them to raise taxes to fund a budget request that has grown five times more than our student growth is projected for this year.

It is counterproductive to simply pass the problem on to our supervisors and ask them to raise taxes to fund a budget that in some cases would put a school employee who owns a home in Stafford at a net loss for the year due to excessive tax increases.

As long as Stafford stays off the list of fastest-growing counties in the nation, as was recently reported, we may have some breathing room in the school's financial and construction plans.

Even so, it is the job of the School Board and its staff to continue to be more efficient--and to improve the budget process and financial management of the school division.

This money is yours, the taxpayers'--not the schools'.

ROBERT BELMAN represents the Falmouth District on the Stafford County School Board.