Money Matters Discussed at BOS Meeting: Charlotte Co. School Board Seeks Funds To Fix R-H High Roof

The Charlotte County Board of Supervisors convened the May meeting in normal fashion on Tuesday afternoon. The first business to be heard came from the Charlotte County Volunteer Fire Department. The Department has requested, as is increasingly becoming the norm among smaller volunteer emergency response departments, that the Board allow them to adopt a soft billing policy for emergency response calls. The general line of reasoning behind the request is that the cost of maintaining a volunteer department is becoming more expensive and evermore difficult on charitable donations alone. Additionally, many, if not most, insurance policies in fact already have some type of rider written into them to cover just such emergency response expense to a varying degree, depending on the insurance company. The billing would be designated as “soft billing” because the department would not pursue reimbursement from residents, but from their insurance companies, as the cases arise and would not pursue recovery beyond the insurance company should the rider not be in place. The Board continues to review the process.

     Perhaps the biggest piece of business heard at the meeting, however, was a request made by the Charlotte County School Board for additional funding. It seems that the roof on the Randolph-Henry High School auditorium is leaking. According to some estimates it has been leaking for some 15 months now. The major concern is that the leaking roof will cause damage to the newly renovated Randolph-Henry auditorium. Superintendent Nancy Leonard addressed the Board at the meeting on Tuesday, requesting that they allow the School Board to make use of funds that are in the local government invest pool. The estimated allocation would be approximately $134,000. The new roof will be the same material as the roof that is currently installed. The installation process is what caused the roof to fail, according to sources and a new, more reliable process will be employed.

    Another area of concern for Superintendent Leonard was the possibility of losing funds that are allocated to the School Board budget but not used by the end of the fiscal year. In the past, the most widely accepted method of making sure the annual budget was not cut due to leftover funds was to “spend down” any surplus funding. She pointed out to the Board that this method was a risky way for the School Board to do business, resulting in poor purchasing, which amounted to wasteful spending.  Her specific request was that the Board of Supervisors assured her and the School Board that leftover funding be put aside by the county for situations just like the roof leak, “…because we can’t see the future,” Superintendent Leonard reasoned.