before last, $1,260 last year,

before last, $1,260 last year, and this year you owe $1,400.

What caused these increases? The short answer is spending increases. But what sort of spending increases, and why? The short answer: we are spending more to get and keep qualified teachers in the public school system. The long answer is more complicated.

Pay increases

led spending

The county's spending was $15,759,950 in fiscal year 2004, $17,057,033 in fiscal 2005 and is expected to be $18,531,500 in the current, 2006 fiscal year. (The fiscal calendar runs July to July, and is dated for the year in which it ends.) About half that money comes from local taxes, and half from state and federal sources. For each of the last two years, spendingand as a result, taxing- has increased by a little over eight percent- somewhat less than a $1.5 million each year.

The reasons for the increases are different for each of the two years. County Administrator John McCarthy says those increases were due "mostly (to) school salaries, county employee salaries and the sheriffs office".

Budget figures bear this out. Ignoring the school system for a moment; moderate pay increases for county employees, increases in insurance costs and retirement plan costs for the jail, court, sheriffs office and county government mounted up to several hundred thousand dollars of increased spending, almost entirely in the budget two years ago.

Spending to keep

teachers

The school system is by far the biggest beast in the county corral, consuming more than 60 percent of all county spending. As a result it had the biggest impact on budget increases. In 2004, the school budget was $9,627,572, in fiscal 2005, $10,185,241 and in the current 2006 fiscal calendar spending is projected t< ■ be $11,207,832. Of that amount, nearly three quarters goes in the category of "instruction"