Stafford County’s Board of Supervisors and School Board met about the budget for the next fiscal year Wednesday evening, but how much local funding will go to education and whether the real-estate tax rate will increase is still unclear.
The two boards met for more than two hours and talked a lot about money the locality gets from the state and federal governments. But, near the end of the meeting, School Board Chairwoman Maureen Siegmund reminded everyone that local dollars make up the only money in the budget that is focused on county priorities.
“The only way we can fund Stafford priorities for Stafford children and Stafford citizens is with Stafford dollars,” said Siegmund, who represents the Garrisonville District.
County Administrator Bill Ashton last week presented a $1 billion budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1 that would raise the real-estate tax rate by 5 cents, from $0.8936 per $100 of assessed value to $0.9436 per $100.
And Ashton said that would be necessary even though he proposes cutting $4 million from the current budget’s base amount.
A rise in mandatory expenses means Stafford would have had to increase the real-estate tax rate by an even larger amount — 8 cents — even if county staff proposed no other spending increases.
Meanwhile, the School Board recently approved a $503.1 million education budget for the next fiscal year that projects only $484.8 million in revenue. That leaves a funding gap of $18.3 million that would have to be filled somehow.
Ashton’s spending plan includes roughly $175 million for school operating costs, about $5 million more than this year’s funding level. But it’s unlikely that supervisors, who have the final say on the county budget, will devote the full additional $18.3 million to pass on to the schools.
That’s because a lot of conjecture around the next budget involves a desire not to raise taxes, as supervisors Chairman Deuntay Diggs said after Wednesday’s meeting.
“So no tax increase means that’s an additional 14 million [dollars] that you would have to cut out of the budget,” said Diggs, who represents the George Washington District.
And having to eliminate that much money from the spending plan wouldn’t jibe with also trying to find more funding for the schools.
Despite what will be hard work, though, Diggs said the supervisors will continue to see what they can do financially.
“So we really have to roll up our sleeves and start talking about how we’re going to get there,” he said.
Stafford might have been able to count on more state funding for education for the next fiscal year had legislation succeeded in this year’s Virginia General Assembly session.
A bill that would have granted the county more money for teacher salaries didn’t make it out of committee, however, and the supervisors and School Board members on Wednesday said they were upset with Del. Candi Mundon King for voting against it.
King, a Prince William County Democrat, represents part of Stafford, and the supervisors and School Board members discussed sending her a letter asking why she did so.
No vote about sending a letter was held, though, and attempts to reach King were unsuccessful.
Aquia District Supervisor Monica Gary said she wouldn’t agree to send a letter to the delegate unless the county also contacted Gov. Glenn Youngkin and President Donald Trump about other funding matters.
“I’m not going to be OK with it unless we’re also sending a letter to the White House saying, ‘Don’t take $33.3 million,’” Gary said.
That figure is the amount of federal funding the Stafford schools expect to receive in the next fiscal year, and the elected officials gathered Wednesday brought up concern that Trump’s desire to shutter the U.S. Department of Education would mean losing that money.
Though no one knows yet what will happen with federal education funding in the Trump administration, Stafford Superintendent Daniel Smith said school administrators have convened a work group to examine the topic.
“We’re trying to build out as many scenarios as we can,” Smith said. “It’s really hard to predict what might happen.”
The supervisors will discuss the county budget again Tuesday, and there will be public hearings about it March 25 and April 15.
