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(Continued from Page 1) visors, the expansion project was approved by the State Board of Education and Rappahannock went on the waiting list for a low interest Literary Fund Loan.
The wait was almost two years. In the interim, people and positions shifted.
Drafting the county budget last spring, the supervisors balked at including the anticipated $1.5 million as revenue. The decision meant another round of public hearings this past December, when the money became available, to accept the Literary Loan and amend the budget to show $1.5 for capital outlay as income and expenditure. With a new supervisor voting in favor just minutes after taking a seat on the board and a former School Board member casting the lone opposing vote, the $1.5 million was accepted and the 1986-87 budget corrected.
Then the project was advertised for bids - almost two years after architects arrived at the price estimates which determined the amount sought through the literary loan. The envelopes were opened at the School Board office last month and the low bid was $168,000 over the literary loan.
In the next 30 days, Superintendent Robert Estabrook and assistant superintendent Tom Campbell sandwiched capital outlay negotiations between a series of drawn-out work sessions on a 1987-88 school budget that calls for a staggering 22 percent increase over this year’s local share.
(The School Board brought budget-cutting scissors to three special meetings but managed to trim just $96,000 from the superintendent’s original proposal. The budget forwarded to the supervisors last week totals $3,621,026 with $1,874,715 as the county’s share. To provide that amount with local dollars will take a tax increase of almost 16 cents, assuming that one cent on the real estate rate generates $22,000.)
Time was to run out March 28, the final date for which low bidding contractor Peyton Baughn guaranteed his offer. And at the deadline, the School Board was still over by $40,000. The board had only gotten that far by deleting key components of the expansion project,' including all but the shell of the audtorium and the plumbing work which would make it possible to convert a new science lecture room to a third laboratory at some future point.
But progress came at the 11th hour. Mr. Baughn agreed to a twoweek extension. A close look at the project’s components uncovered $122,000 for a sewage disposal system adequate for a capacity of 546. “Where in the world they (the State Health Department) got that figure from, we’re just not sure ... Maybe they used the maximum number of students who could be served in the
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