Our thanks this week to Alamance County’s commissioners who held the line against increased spending demands made by the Alamance-Burlington school board.
State law has a unique process when commissioners who allocate money are at loggerheads with school boards who want to spend it. Its rarely used in most counties; in fact, it’s only been used 41 times since the authority was enacted 28 years ago. Yet here it becomes the second year in a row when ABSS has employed it against Alamance County’s commissioners.
This time, the dispute resolution, or mediation, process began – and may have ended – Monday with a daylong series of separate closed-door meetings that the two boards held at the Historic Court House.
A state-approved mediator, former superior court judge Greg McGuire, shuttled back and forth between the two boards’ closed-door huddles, only to conclude at the end of 7½ hours that the two boards were at an impasse over current expenses, or the ABSS operating budget.
ABSS had asked for almost $62 million toward these operations; the county allocated $58.7 million, or $3.2 million less than requested.
County officials are confident they would prevail on any additional legal challenge from the school system, especially on that issue. Its leaders had been very careful to make sure that the county’s operating expenses allocation conforms to the very detailed formula contained in the state statute for determining the minimum necessary increase over last year’s funding.
Last year, commissioners told McGuire not to bother coming to their first mediation session, apparently knowing in advance that they were going to have to increase their allocation to comply with that same statutory requirement’s formula.
Hence, commissioners were in no mood to capitulate on that score in the back-and-forth negotiations on Monday. If the commissioners gave in again this year, there’d be no limit to what ABSS might ask for in future years – while holding the threat of more mediation over the county’s head.
While McGuire said at the end of Monday’s mediation that the two sides could continue to discuss the school system’s capital needs (ABSS had asked for $25.3 million and the county designated $14.2 million), there has been no movement by either side since Monday to set another joint meeting to resume those discussions.
It seemed to us rather obvious from the outset when the school board made its requests earlier this spring that the school board was not being realistic – neither about the overall economic climate, much less the county’s ability to afford such an exorbitant increase, nor about the school system’s place among the host of other priorities in overall county funding (law enforcement, EMS, health, social services, etc.).
The school system’s requested increase represented a 22 percent increase over last year’s overall funding level – $87.2 million compared to $71.5 million.
No reasonable person would think that any agency is going to get an increase that’s essentially ten times the rate of inflation.
Instead, county manager Heidi York designated an additional $1.4 million for the school system’s operating funds, or about a 2 percent increase.
The school system was actually lucky. York’s proposed budget cut many other areas of county spending – overall by about 1.2 percent. So the school board got far more than most other areas of county spending.
If the school system had been more reasonable with its request from the outset, maybe county government would have been more sympathetic to some above-average increase.
But with all the extraneous and expensive items listed by school officials, it’s no wonder the commissioners are intent to hold the line.
