Caroline County Administrator Charles Culley will introduce a fiscal year 2014-2015 budget proposal at the Caroline County Board of Supervisors’ March 11 meeting at 6 p.m.
“Overall, the budget picture, while not bright and rosy, is better than it has been because of the policies put in place by the Board of Supervisors over the last three or four years,” Culley said in an interview.
Like most local governments, Caroline County has struggled through the economic recession since 2008. A combination of tax increases and spending cuts has kept the budget balanced.
Before the recession, one penny on the real estate tax rate was worth about $327,000 in revenue, Culley said. Now it’s down to roughly $250,000. Yet the real estate tax remains the largest single generator of revenue for the county.
“When the housing market went down and the house prices tumbled, that put immense pressure on local government to balance its budget,” said Culley, who came to Caroline from Middlesex County in 2012.
The real estate tax rate held steady going into fiscal year 2013-2014, which started July 1, 2013, but it had jumped 4 cents the year before. The current rate is 72 cents per $100 in assessed valuation.
Most departments have lost personnel over the course of the recession. The Caroline County Planning Department, in particular, lost about half of its workforce, reflecting the reduction in new home construction.
Salaries were reduced and then restored in 2012. The current year’s budget gave staff a 3 percent raise.
“From a budget perspective, this year is better than last, and last year was better than the year before, as far as revenues and expenses,” Culley said.
He said the hope with every budget is to spend less than budgeted and to receive more revenue than anticipated. That allows the county to build a fund balance, and this reserve helps pay bills that come due before tax collections are received.
“We’re moving in the right direction,” Culley said.
The current fiscal year’s budget totals about $81.9 million.
“The only thing changing much in that is the debt. We’ve tried to make cuts where we could. We have some increases,” Culley said.
The county’s updated radio system will require the leasing of tower sites. “So that’s an increase in our budget of about $101,000 for basically rent and payments to these,” Culley said.
Building new towers, however, would have cost about $1 million apiece. “It’s a cost-savings there over time,” he said.
Last fall, the majority of voters supported a $26.3 million bond referendum for school renovations, which will affect how the new budget shapes up.
Caroline County has $139,556,784 in total outstanding debt, including the most recent bond referendum. Of that figure, approximately $63 million was borrowed for schools, $43 million for utilities, and $34 million for general government.
Caroline’s per capita debt is $4,327.09, according to a report available on the county website under “financial information.”
For comparison, the City of Fredericksburg’s per capita debt is $4,692.95, Spotsylvania County’s is $4,371.17, King George County’s is $4,180.68, and Hanover County’s is $2,093.02.
Fiscal year 2013-2014 debt service payments were budgeted at $11.1 million.
The largest single portion of Caroline’s budget goes to the public school system. The county budgeted $11.6 million for schools for the current fiscal year. Public safety departments typically receive the next biggest chunk.
An expenditure the county can’t control is the Comprehensive Services Act, which funds state-mandated programs for special needs children. The state and county share the funding responsibilities.
After the budget is presented March 11, the Board of Supervisors will hold a public hearing, likely on March 25.
Culley anticipates the board adopting a budget in April, which would allow the Commissioner of the Revenue’s office to mail out tax bills by May 1.
Through Superintendent Greg Killough, the Caroline School Board has presented an overall school budget for the new fiscal year and it stands at $40.3 million. That is a $3.5 million increase over last year’s budget. Most of the $40 million will come from the state and federal governments.
Roughly $14.6 million would come from county taxpayers, and the Board of Supervisors must approve of that. It would be a $2.6 million increase over the budget adopted nearly a year ago.
Major categories of the proposed school budget are: $1.5 million for salary increases, $648,437 for new positions and benefits, $538,454 for retirement rate increases, $505,200 for health insurance increase, $147,870 for material and supplies, $152,100 for equipment and fixtures and $50,000 for professional development.
School board members want to adjust the teacher pay scale so that it’s more logical and better balanced. They want the pay grades among teachers to be in increments of $900. In one case, there is only $180 difference between two pay grades. In another case, the difference is over $3,000.
By making this change in the teacher pay scale, the starting salary for a new teacher in Caroline would be $38,600, compared to the current starting salary of $38,166. After 32 years of teaching experience, a teacher would receive a salary of $66,500, rather than the current $65,892.
School board members have noted that some teachers stay in Caroline schools long enough to get good experience and then move on to adjacent counties that pay thousands of dollars more.
The meeting will be in the auditorium at the Caroline Community Services Center along Route 301 south of Bowling Green.