| Lenoir City BOE working to cut budget
“In the 2018-19 budget, they were going to amend
because they overspent by $400,000,” Aikens said. “The 400 and 800
is 1.2 (million), so city council felt like that was unacceptable —
I do, too. Look, I’ve had a good working relationship with the
school board and the school superintendent, and I want to keep that
relationship. It’s a tight budget year. The city cut their budget by
almost $500,000. We went from $586,000 to $94,000. We all have to
live within our means and the school board should learn to do the
same.”
Board members voiced concerns and frustrations to
Aikens on Thursday.
“We don’t need this,” Rick Chadwick, BOE chairman,
said. “I hope this doesn’t happen every year. I hope this is the end
of it. This has never happened before.”
“I think that we have shown good faith here in
cutting almost $400,000,” Jeanne Barker, Lenoir City Schools
director of schools, added. “Our dollars are often in pots that
have strings attached to them. Sometimes, that’s something, to
the public, they just don’t understand.”
To meet the BOE original budget, council would
need to impose a property tax increase, which is not an option,
Aikens said.
“When she (Jeanie Mowery, Lenoir City Schools
business manager) came before us, she indicated strongly that
they were going to ask for new money next year,” Aikens said. “I
just don’t see how that’s going to happen without a property tax
increase, and I can tell you right now, I’m totally opposed to
that. I’m not raising property taxes because the taxpayers voted
a sales tax down, and the sales tax is the fairest tax of all.
They told me they didn’t want a property tax increase when they
said that, so in short of laying somebody off, I’m not going to
have a property tax increase. City council may choose otherwise,
but I know them pretty good, and I don’t think they will.”
In Thursday’s meeting, the BOE developed an
updated budget but fell $35,000 short of $400,000.
The board met with all three school
principals following Thursday’s meeting to discuss line
items that could be cut.
“We suggested
cutting two positions,” Barker said. “We pared down a
repair of the high school roof, so we cut a small
portion out of that to cut down there. We were going to
try to improve substitute pay, and we ended up cutting
that out. We did look at our utilities ... we had
savings in utilities and have upgraded a lot of our
heating and air systems, so we felt like maybe we had
over budgeted for that, so we trimmed that down based on
what we experienced in savings. We went back through and
cut some travel out. Those are the kind of things we
looked at and we’ll present that back to the board. I
don’t know where else we can cut — it’s going to be
people if we cut any further. Hopefully, we’ve gotten it
over the $400,000 mark.”
The board will meet again at 11 a.m.
Thursday to finalize the revised budget. If passed, a
special called meeting will immediately follow to
approve the budget before taking it to city council.
“They were going to work on it, and I’m assuming they got that done,” Aikens said. “I haven’t talked to Dr. Barker where it stands, but I’m assuming they got it done.” |
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6/24/19