By Susan Dickson
Staff Writer
With another budget season in full swing, the Board of County Commissioners, school officials and parents alike are calling for a better way to negotiate the annual school budgets.
At two recent public hearings, more than 100 county residents spoke in support of raising taxes to fully fund the school budgets.
Then, at the Tuesday night county commissioners’ meeting, Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Superintendent Neil Pedersen and Orange County Schools Superintendent Shirley Carraway outlined potential cuts the school systems would have to make with the proposed level of funding. Both superintendents have warned that the school systems will not be able to continue the same level of service with the funding recommended in this year’s proposed budget.
While some parents at the public hearings spoke in favor of simply raising taxes to fully fund the schools, others emphasized a need to revise the budget process in order to alleviate the stress created by the annually recurring fear that the schools will be underfunded.
“It seems to me a basic principal of good government is you don’t send people into a panic every year,†said David Weinberg, a parent of a student in Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools. “Why not draft new legislation to protect the poor.â€
“You have one group that wants to pay more, and another that might not be able to afford it,†he added. “Why punish either group when, with a little imagination, you might be able to accommodate both?â€
The commissioners have said they hope to limit this year’s tax increase to equal debt-service payment increases. The county has increased the tax rate about six cents in each of the last two years, and commissioners have said they would like to offer tax relief to county residents.
County Manager Laura Blackmon’s recommended budget would increase the property tax rate by 3.7 cents, bringing the countywide tax rate to 94 cents per $100 of assessed valuation. For a $200,000 home, the tax would increase $74. The special district tax for the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school district would remain at 18.85 cents.
The Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board has requested $54.8 million in funding, an increase of $6.8 million. The recommended budget includes $48.7 million in funding for Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools.
The Orange County school board requested an increase of $3.7 million in funding to $24.4 million. The manager’s budget recommends $21.1 million.
Board of County Commissioners Chair Moses Carey said he was concerned about the level of panic among parents, teachers and school officials who believe the schools will be underfunded.
“The anxieties were raised beyond anything that I’ve seen,†he said. “I do think that the nature of the language could be different because our history just doesn’t indicate the kind of catastrophe that many of the parents thought, and still believe, might occur.â€
Commissioner Barry Jacobs said he would like to see the budget process changed in order to foster the “least anxiety-producing, the most honest†conversation between school and county officials.
“I hate seeing people who care so much about education and about their community thrown into such a panic,†he added.
In response to the superintendents’ budget presentations, Commissioner Alice Gordon indicated that she would like to look for ways to provide more funding to the schools than what was recommended in the proposed budget.
Tapping enthusiasm
While nearly all of those who spoke at the public hearings did so in favor of raising taxes to fully fund the schools, a few longtime county residents drew attention to the rural population in the county.
Vern Miller, a resident of a rural section of Hillsborough and a county resident for 54 years, said many of his neighbors would not be able to afford a tax increase.
“Those folks out there in the county … they’re not downtrodden people,†he said. “They’re just regular folks that don’t make a lot of money. And there’s a lot of them out there.â€
“They farm. They’re mechanics,†he added. “They’ve been paying taxes for years.â€
Miller suggested creating a mechanism by which those who wanted to fully fund the schools could pay more.
“Let them donate their money, put it in the school system, and everybody will be happy,†he said.
Jacobs cited Miller’s suggestion in his comments to school officials Tuesday night.
“Since we all know that it is unlikely that we will fully fund both school budgets … I would like to at least ask the two school boards to consider setting up some mechanism†by which parents could donate money to fund the schools.
“I think if we’re going to be doing this for multiple years, we’ve got to think about some way to tap into that enthusiasm,†he added.
Many parents and teachers were critical of the commissioners’ desire to limit tax increases and instead requested more taxes to fund the schools.
“No one likes tax increases, but cutting money for schools in Orange County I believe is far less desirable,†said Lorenzo Mejia, a parent of two children in Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools. “If the cost of education has to go up because of state-mandated increases, then our taxes should go up to pay for them.â€
Teachers emphasized a need for more resources in the schools, and said a cut in personnel would further restrict their ability to reach all of the children.
“I am not enough,†said Kimberley Holzer, an eighth-grade language arts teacher at Culbreth Middle School. “Please do not take away the resources so that I continue to be less and less and less.â€
Representatives from other organizations — including the county Board of Health, the Partnership for Young Children, the Child Care Services Organization, the Chapel Hill Library, the Orange Community Housing and Land Trust — also requested more funding for their organizations.
I was at the Monday forum. I heard about sixty parents and teachers pleading, often eloquently, to make full funding of our schools our community’s top priority. And you give three paragraphs to the one gentlemen who put his own concerns above our childrens’? Tell me, is Carrboro Citizen a subsidiary of Fox News, with its known tendency to distort stories to the point of absurdity?