Wow! We know public budgets require a lot of work, but really.
The county's calendar is showing the Board of Supervisors will meet Monday, Jan. 5th and again Jan. 26th. But their calendar shows the meeting on the 26th is scheduled for 7 pm until 10 am.
It is budget time and everyone should be taking an especially critical look at all spending and funding sources, be this state or local revenues. County residents -- and this means all townies, too -- will be buying a new parking garage along with a new courthouse. The garage adds about 65 spaces above what is available there today, and will add how much to the project's cost? During this fiscal cycle, all county citizens paid for additional, unscheduled, noncritical properties. This included "possible future parking" for the courthouse and another 5 acres to allow the supervisors to move garage and storage facilities from the mid-county park into central Christiansburg. When you look at those sales contracts, the sellers received amounts far in excess of assessed values -- try that when selling a residential property in today's market!
During this budget cycle, we'll hear how our highly educated and licensed teachers are still underpaid when compared to state and national peers, and that the supervisors are still "aligning" their pay scales to competitive standards. We'll hear that health care, retirement and energy costs have skyrocketed. They have more debt and need to make timely payments.
But here's the rub -- citizens know that. Our own incomes have been flat and have less buying power than 30 years ago. Our costs have been climbing faster than ever before, too. And most households are cutting back, or doing without, even as we attempt to reduce personal debt.
For the first time in 80 years, most of us are experiencing a financial crisis deeper than we've faced before. Now is the time for the supervisors, school board and town councils to scour their current operations. Review all expenses, look for efficiencies, make cuts, evaluate services. Revenues (income) will be down, that's a given. What has yet to be determined is how these elected bodies will define core services and essentials, yet they should be assuming there will be 20% less coming from state and federal sources as they begin playing with their numbers.
There should be plenty of public hearings scheduled for budget comment and review for state, county and town budgets. Proposed budgets should be made available to the public, generally via the internet. NRV citizens should plan on attending as many as they can -- reading about this process (or listening to recordings) does not provide the same level of detail or understanding as simply being there. These new budgets will go into effect July 1 -- once they have been adopted, individuals can sit down and revise personal and business budgets as tax rates and fees will be known.