BOS Offers Look at Budget

LUNENBURG – The Lunenburg County Board of Supervisors held their May monthly meeting at Central High School last Thursday morning and offered additional insight into the upcoming budget year.

Among the biggest announcements were that Lunenburg continues to not have any tax increases despite being at the bottom of the tax rates among counties in the state.

The group also indicated that they would look to offer $250,384 to the local schools for the upcoming fiscal year.

LCPS officials had noted that an increase of approximately $795,000 would be needed to offset items such as maintenance to outdated HVAC systems, the purchase of items such as a school bus, and increases to state required items such as VRS as well as rising insurance costs.

They also indicated that the amount would include a salary increase for teachers in order to help retain staff and be competitive with neighboring counties in that regard. Supervisor Wayne Hoover said that the hope was for the increase in funding to help give school staff a 2-percent raise. He noted that the finance committee and board did not feel that they could fully fund the request by the schools “based on what we have.”

The Supervisors had said at previous meetings that they felt the top priority was to allocate enough funds to help with the staff raises. If this proposed increase and overall county budget is finalized, school officials will have to decide where the additional money would be used with issues such as the additional VRS and insurance costs being a factor.

The county budget presentation also noted that there would likely be some increases to budget items in the upcoming fiscal year. Such items include a $10,000 increase in real estate tax collections, and projected increases of $15,000 in personal property tax revenue and $45,000 in public service tax collections.

There will be a public hearing on Thursday, June 1 at 6 p.m. in the General District Courtroom at the Lunenburg Courts Building on the proposed budget.