County kicks off budget talks

County Budget Director Donna Dean used a wilted plant as a graphic in her presentation on this year’s budget at the Orange County Board of Commissioners’ planning retreat Saturday.

The metaphor was not lost on the commissioners.

“This is gonna be interesting,” Chairman Moses Carey Jr. said after Dean’s presentation detailed the county’s budget outlook for the 2005-06 fiscal year.

Among the principal issues for the commissioners are increased student membership in both school districts, an increase in county Medicaid expenses, debt service related to voter-approved bonds from 2001 and planning for the long list of capital projects the county hopes to undertake.

Where the county assigns funds for capital projects has become a recent touchstone for debate, as the commissioners have proposed a big change in capital funding expenditures for the next 10 fiscal years.

Since 1988, the county has dedicated about 77 percent of its capital expenditures for schools, leaving the remainder to county capital needs.

But in October, because of the large backlog of needed county construction, the commissioners decided to change the targeted ratio to 60 percent for schools, 40 percent for the county.

“The county has deferred many of its needs for 15 years,” said Commissioner Barry Jacobs. “It’s not about not doing things. It’s about trying to organize it a little bit better.”

And with plans for two separate senior centers, an Orange County campus for Durham Technical Community College and many parks, the commissioners agreed that the county will need to guarantee a source of funding.

“Because we have a way to predict what we’ll need, we know what facilities we need,” Jacobs said.

The commissioners cited the ability to predict needs — facilitated mostly through the adopted Schools Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance — as a reason they could suggest a decrease in targeted spending on schools’ capital projects.

Some have since questioned the predictability of funding needs.

In a Jan. 4 letter to the commissioners, Lisa Stuckey, chairwoman of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Board of Education, stated concern about the necessity of the target.

“Of specific concern is how future conditions which are not present or anticipated today will be addressed using the target,” the letter states.

Carey, in discussing Stuckey’s concerns with the commissioners, said the county should better clarify the need for the target.

The commissioners agreed that they need to prioritize their needs so both school systems understand spending decisions.

“If we want to build trust, we need to take the first step and prove that when there is a need, we have a process,” said Commissioner Valerie Foushee, who served on the city schools’ board for seven years.

Carey said tracking student enrollment projections for both systems is one way to monitor funding needs.

Commissioner Stephen H. Halkiotis said he supports discussion about tracking enrollment, but not about reasons for the changed target.

“We’ve had a vote on this. We debated on this,” Halkiotis said. “I have to say very clearly, we’re not going to fail anybody. We haven’t failed anybody.

“If there is a change in enrollment, we’ve always responded.”

Although the commissioners will use enrollment projections in future capital spending decisions, a few of its projects will need to proceed before that.

City schools’ 10th elementary school, the last schools project to be included in funding plans from the 2001 bonds, will come before the commissioners tonight.

Jacobs said the commissioners could decide to delay the project and instead use the funding for budget overruns on city schools’ third high school and county schools’ third middle school.

Carey said the next step for the commissioners is to ensure that they communicate with both school systems on issues related to capital funding.

But while Halkiotis said that he supports openness, he emphasized that the commissioners have to make the spending decisions.

“I’m speaking as a county commissioner. (Stuckey’s) speaking as a school board member. That’s two different things.”

Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.