At budget time last year - six months before

At budget time last year - six months before they would have to answer to the voters in a general election - the Rappahannock supervisors whittled away at funding requests that, if approved as submitted, would have meant a tax rate of 58 cents per $100 of assessed value for 1983-84, an 81 percent increase over the 1982-83 rate.

They cut away $233,000, $116,830 coming from proposed school expenditures. Included in that figure was $21,000, that was to be used to begin the long delayed building program at Rappahannock County High School.

Under consideration in the capital out lay project are construction of a pre-engineered metal gymnasium, renovation of the old gym into classrooms and remodeling of existing space to provide for an expanded cafeteria, library, storage and bathrooms. The $21,000 in the proposed budget would have carried the project to the stage of generating specifications for bids from contractors. In addition, it would have enabled the School Board to apply for low interest literary loan funds to finance the building program.

Repeatedly last year, superintendent Robert Estabrook warned the School Board that the interest rate on literary loans wouldn’t stay at three percent forever. Certainly, that piece of news played a part in the board’s decision to ask the supervisors for an appropriation to begin the capital outlay project. $ v

Estabrook repeated the same warning to the supervisors. Still, they elected to cut $21,000 for architectural studies, leaving just $2,000 to cover more detailed estimates than Estabrook’s ballpark figure of $500,000 to $750,000 for the building project’s cost.

In trying to keep the 1983-84 levy to what they considered acceptable to the taxpayers, the supervisors ended up throwing the baby out with the bath water.

The $21,000 for architectural studies that would have enabled the