Budget

Budget

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proved in June.

A draft budget that shows proposed tax rates won’t be ready until after the School Board public hearing next month. As the schools make up about 75 percent of the budget, Mr. McCarthy said he wants to see what that figure will be as well as see if Richmond changes its funding levels during the General Assembly veto session.

More good news came from reading the the budget packets: several county agencies took Mr. McCarthy’s plea for fiscal restraint seriously and, like the schools, submitted budgets for next year that are lower than the current year’s.

However, some of the constitutional officers submitted their budgets before the state government announced a $23,000 cut in Rappahannock’s funding for those offices, so the supervisors will have to decide if they will make up the difference.

Commonwealth’s Attorney Peter Luke cut $792 from his $54,000 budget, Sheriff John Henry Woodward cut his $20,000 and other departments also found budget categories to reduce.

The School Board’s first public hearing on the budget will be held at 7:30 p.m. April 24 in the high school auditorium.

Other budget meetings: 7:30 p.m. May 1 at the courthouse for the supervisors to adopt the school budget and hear from other agencies requesting funds, 7:30 p.m. May 29 in the courthouse for a general work session on the budget, 7 p.m. June 3 in the courthouse to hold a public hearing on the draft budget and 7:30 p.m. June 24 to vote on the budget.

In other business, the supervisors:

• Heard a report from Mr. McCarthy on redistricting. After a public hearing at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 25 in the courthouse, the board will select one of its three final plans.

The preferred plan and related documents will be sent to the U.S. Department of Justice, which has 60 days to examine it. The supervisors will advertise the hearing for the next two weeks.

The assessments will be made public in October.

• Voted to increase the pay for those on the Board of Assessors from $20 to $30 per day. Board members, who are volunteers, spend hundreds of hours on the project.

Mr. McCarthy said that threefifths of the approximately 5,700 lots in the county have been assessed. Supervisors Mike Massie and Ellis Bingham voted against the pay raise.

• Were updated by County Attorney Peter Luke regarding the pending cable TV agreement between Rappahannock, Washington and Adelphia Cable Co. of Pennsylvania.

Mr. Luke said “the ball is in their court,” the contract having been sent to Adelphia and forwarded to the company’s corporate attorney.

One of the terms of the proposed contract Mr. Luke outlined was that Adelphia must offer services to those areas with more than 15 homes per mile, and when new areas obtain that density the company must expand service to them.

Other conditions of the proposed contract: Adelphia must bury lines where utilties are buried, it can’t