The Mathews County Board of Supervisors held its second FY24 budget work session on Tuesday.
The stated purpose of the meeting was to discuss budget options, and County Administrator Ramona Wilson provided the board with a 12-page outline of her proposals for addressing some of the issues supervisors raised during the first budget work session, as well as other budget-related issues.
Wilson’s comments were brief and to the point. The meeting lasted two hours as chairman Dave Jones and supervisor Mike Walls provided opinions regarding such topics as public education, the local school system, the prior board of supervisors, religion, the commissioner of the revenue, the social and fiscal policies of the Democratic Party and the federal government, and other topics.
Real estate assessment
One of the primary points of discussion was the 37 percent increase in the value of real estate over the past two years, which would result in higher taxes on people’s homes and businesses if the board were to leave the tax rate at its current 64 cents per $100 of assessed value.
Board members made it clear that they have no intention of doing that. Wilson said that in order to equalize the tax rate, the board would have to decrease it to 45 cents per $100 of assessed value, or 19 cents less than the current rate. She suggested instead decreasing it to 47 cents per $100 of assessed value, which would effectively be a 2-cent increase. This would yield a total of $11.3 million in revenue, or an additional $749,000 to help fund the new fire station, public access needs, local matching funds for dredging projects, additional space that’s needed for the Human Services building, and building maintenance and repairs on county properties. Since car prices have been leveling off, she said, she didn’t suggest a change in the personal property tax rate.
Walls said that he was absolutely against any increase in taxes and that he would only vote for a 45-cent tax rate. Jones concurred, saying that the federal budget “keeps going up and up, driven by social issues,” that inflation and interest rates are up, and that he’s “not going to supplement what the federal government wants to do.”
“We must be solvent, be good stewards of the budget, and tax as least as possible,” he said. “You won’t get a vote out of me other than revenue-neutral.”
Supervisor Paul Hudgins asked whether anyone knew “where we are in car values,” and Wilson said the commissioner of the revenue couldn’t give an overall value because he assesses cars throughout the year.
Jones then launched into a critique of the commissioner, saying that the board had to make rash last-minute decisions last year because the commissioner had told him the projected values “shouldn’t be too much different” than the year before. He also accused the commissioner of not assessing all new or improved properties during the six-year period since the previous assessment, resulting in a loss of revenue for the county. Because of this shortage, Jones said, the people completing the recent assessment had to be given extra time for the job.
“Hopefully we can get it corrected,” said Hudgins, with Walls adding, “It’s been an ongoing problem, but we’re gonna get to the bottom of it.”
Schools budget
Wilson suggested keeping funding for the schools level or reducing it by 5 percent. She said that level funding would provide the school system with $8,738,860 from the general fund and $217,900 from other local revenue sources, for a total of $8,956,760. A 5-percent reduction would bring the total amount provided the schools in local funding down to $8,508,922, she said.
Walls said that if the schools were provided the funding requested, the tuition cost would be $22,000 per year per student. “Throwing money at the school system isn’t going to fix kids exiting the county,” he said.
Jones and Hudgins agreed, with Jones pointing out that people’s incomes aren’t increasing fast enough for annual increases of $1 million or more in the school budget. In addition, he said, there are other issues in the county that need addressing.
“Nobody’s proven to me that small class size makes a difference,” he said.
Walls read the state’s class size requirements to the board, most of which allow a maximum of 25 to 30 students per classroom. Supervisor Melissa Mason explained that Mathews receives additional funding for keeping class sizes at a maximum of 21 or fewer students per classroom, and Superintendent of Schools Nancy Welch said if class size exceeds 30 students, the school is in violation.
With the total school population in Mathews at just 850 students this year, Walls asked Welch at what point the county could cut back to just two schools instead of three. Welch projected that such a reduction could be possible within two years, with eighth grade students moving up to high school level and fifth and sixth grade students moving down to elementary school level.
Walls said he didn’t want people to think the board was against public schools.
“I’m not an advocate for throwing more money at a school system that isn’t getting any better,” he said. “It’s not working. We can’t keep making excuses for it.”
Jones spoke at length about “social problems being pushed down from the federal government.” He said schools should be dealing with reading, writing and arithmetic, and that children should not be “indoctrinated into social policies I don’t agree with.” People have taken their children out of public schools because of the social and gender policies, he said, adding that “the social narrative has to leave our school system.”
“God’s been completely kicked out, so you’ll never get my support on that,” he said. “Schools used to focus on core values. Now it’s a political issue of socialism.”
Hudgins questioned whether special needs children are getting the assistance they need, and Welch said she’s actually thinking about reducing the number of special education staff next year because of the number of students.
Walls suggested the school board consider eliminating school board member Linda Hodges’ program for three-year-olds from the budget as a way to cut 5 percent. He said children that age need to be home with their parents or in a private Pre-K program.
“I challenge the school board to go back and sharpen their pencils and show this board they can be conservative and come back with some other figures,” Hudgins said.
Discussion continued about the federal government, with Jones criticizing “that man sitting up there in the White House, sending billions to Ukraine,” saying the Democratic Party “has run like a tornado through our country,” and projecting that “God will fix it one way or the other.”
Fund balance
Jones said he wants to look into using some of the money in the fund balance to help pay for capital improvement projects. Financial advisors have suggested that the board retain at least 20 percent in the fund balance as a hedge against catastrophic events, and the county currently has about a 26 percent fund balance. Jones said that carrying over an additional 6 percent in the fund balance would not be fair to citizens, and he would be in favor of spending even up to 8 percent of the fund balance on capital improvements.
“If we have to go outside of 18 percent in reserves, we’re in trouble,” he said.
Administration budget
Wilson outlined some of the requests she had for administration, including a 5 percent salary increase for employees to match the state budget, increasing funding for witness protection to match surrounding localities, making a part-time administrative assistant in her office full time, reclassifying the animal control officer’s position, making reclassification changes to certain positions in facility maintenance and grounds, and adding seasonal grounds employees. All of the changes would increase the budget by $56,393, with $25,403 of that offset by salary savings already realized in IT and administration, for a total of $30,990. She also pointed out the need for a future HVAC tech and ditch-cleaning crew and equipment.
Walls said he had a problem with a 5 percent increase in administrative salaries after those employees received a substantial increase last year and said, “I’m just not going to do it.”
Wilson explained further about how staff increases would reduce the need for outside contractual labor, and supervisors appeared to come to a consensus that hiring some additional hourly employees in buildings and maintenance would be beneficial.
Future reassessments
After some discussion of the arc expected in housing prices, supervisors concurred that having a reassessment in two years, and again two years after that would help stabilize tax rates.
The board decided to hold another budget work session next week, this one to be held at 6 p.m. on Thursday, March 23. Walls said he wants to scrutinize every aspect of the budget to determine “if stuff is still needed and, if not, where we can cut.” Outside agencies will be invited to attend and give presentations.
NOTE: Edited to clarify that Supervisor Mike Walls said he was against an increase in salaries for administrative employees, not for all county employees.