School board requests an increase in spending | Eastern North Carolina Now

    At a time when most families and businesses in Beaufort County are having to cut back, Congress and the State Legislature struggle with huge budget deficits and the County has exhausted its fund balance, (reserve account) the Beaufort County School Board wants to spend more, not less. If the requests are approved, it is reported that there will be a property tax increase for next year on top of the increase this year. Indications are that some county commissioners will seek to raise the local sales tax as well.

    The Beaufort County Commissioners and the Board of Education held a joint meeting Monday (5-2-11) to review the school system's budget requests for next year. No action was taken in a meeting that was generally amicable. We will have video of the meeting posted later. Much of the meeting was consumed by a project by project review of the Capital Outlay proposal. The School Board is asking for the same $1.5 million that it has received for the last five years under the "Chickengate Agreement."

    You can review the Capital Outlay budget being proposed in this earlier article.

    The board also reviewed the local Current Expense request. The School Board is seeking a $233,704 increase in the county appropriations, money that comes mostly from county property taxes and sales tax receipts in the county. If granted, that increase would bring the total county appropriations to $12,668,854 within a total current expense budget of $13,446,983. The difference coming from other sources of revenue, mainly court fines and bond forfeitures.

    The proposed current expense budget would appropriate $25,000 of fund balance (reserve account). School Superintendent Don Phipps summarized the proposed budget as "keeping what we've got" with no major increases in discretionary spending but increasing the total to match what he called "fixed costs."

    Check back for additional details on the budget development process.

    It is expected that the County Manager will recommend his proposed county budget, which would include appropriations to the school system at a meeting on May 9.