Panel Proposes Flat Local Spending

Board's Finance Committee Wants Bowers to Prepare 4 Scenarios

By Michael Birnbaum (Contact)

Sunday, October 12, 2008

The Loudoun Board of Supervisors' finance committee has recommended that the county administrator propose a budget for next fiscal year with no increase in local funding.

The committee voted unanimously Wednesday to recommend to the full board that County Administrator Kirby M. Bowers prepare four versions of Loudoun's budget: one that anticipates the same level of local funding as this year and three that anticipate funding cuts of 5, 10 and 15 percent, respectively.

The budgets would include overall funding levels for county schools but would not direct how that money would be spent. That decision is left to the school system when it prepares its budget.

On Tuesday night, the Board of Supervisors and the School Board held a rare joint meeting to discuss the coming budget process, which they expect will be tense in this year of economic turmoil. Bowers repeated his Sept. 17 warning of a looming $176 million budget gap and said the state education funding he had factored into that projection was likely to drop even further.

One positive note in a symphony of ominous ones at the joint meeting was that estimates of school enrollment next fall have been revised downward. County school officials now expect at least 1,300 fewer students than had been factored into Bowers's projection, narrowing the budget gap by up to $17 million. But Bowers said that he suspected the drop in state funding might be close to that figure and that numbers have kept changing over the last few tumultuous weeks.

"We may have to make some pretty tough calls down the line to make ends meet," Bowers said.

Health care costs will rise more than $60 million next year for county and school employees, he said, and his budget projections include no pay increases. The property tax rate would have to rise more than 10 percent simply to maintain this year's budget levels. It would have to rise more than 18 percent to close the projected gap.

The projections do not include revenue from a proposed county meals tax that is on the Nov. 4 ballot. That tax could bring in as much as $13 million annually, "assuming we have money to eat out," supervisors Chairman Scott K. York (I) said.

Bowers stressed the difficulty of maintaining accurate projections, given how volatile the economy has been in the last month.

"We're living this one on a day-to-day basis," he said.

After Bowers concluded his presentation, schools officials presented preliminary enrollment figures for this school year, which showed 300 fewer students than they had predicted.

They also passed around results from a state-mandated triennial census, which they said indicated that increased enrollment was not likely to stop soon. Thousands of Loudoun children ages 1 to 5 are expected to join the public school system in the coming years.

Tagged: Board of Supervisors, budget, Economy

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