The Gloucester County School Board voted Tuesday to contact Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring’s office to review the legality of the use of sales tax proceeds as proposed in the county budget that County Administrator Brent Fedors unveiled earlier this month.
At issue is the use of the 1 percent sales tax increase that voters approved by referendum last November. In the proposed budget, Fedors suggested a portion of the income from the sales tax be used to pay off debt for eligible completed and current projects, as well as future sales tax eligible debt.
School board members indicated they were under the belief that voters of Gloucester County approved a referendum to pay for future school projects. Multiple members of the school board including chair Robin Rice questioned the legality of this proposed use of the sales tax.
“Our concerns are around the legality of this move,” said Rice, “and we would like to see an official legal opinion on this matter around the ethics of this move. This is not what we told voters what was going to be done when we put this referendum on the ballot in November.”
Proposing that the sales tax increase instead be used to pay for past projects caused several school board members to express their disappointment. School board member Troy Andersen said that it is an unethical use of the funds.
Supervisors’ chairman Dr. Robert Orth spoke for the board stating that, as a majority, members were in support of the budget that Fedors had presented and that it was indeed legal despite the comments made by the school board. Fedors said that the sales tax was never advertised by the county to be used strictly for future projects nor did it contain that wording in the referendum.
Andersen pointed out that state legislation that allows counties to raise the sales tax to fund school related projects does say that the sales tax is to be used on “new construction and major renovations.”
In response, Fedors said that the term “new construction” was not defined in the legislation. He interprets that the legislation allows for the sales tax to be used to pay off existing school debt. He and Orth stated that they believe it to be ethical, legal and defendable.
The comments were made during a joint school board/supervisors’ budget work session held Tuesday night at Gloucester High School.
Supervisors’ vice chair Christopher Hutson was the only member to state that he did not agree with this use of the sales tax proceeds, but that the board as a whole did support it.
The differing opinions and interpretations between the two boards led to the school board holding a vote to request legal counsel from the Attorney General. All but school board member Darren Post voted in favor of that motion.
The disagreement between the boards came after the school board presented its proposed budget for FY 2022. The total budget amount, including the Capital Improvement Plan, was $126,947,984. The total broke down as $66 million as the operating budget, $2.8 million as central food services, $3.8 million for debt services, and $54 million for the CIP.