This week’s Haywood County Commission meeting featured over a dozen speakers decrying the board’s decision to not grant the full funding requested by school officials ahead of the budget vote.
The meeting began with County Manager Bryant Morehead presenting the budget, as he’d done during an earlier meeting. The budget looked almost the exact same as the prior presentation with one exception, an additional $1 million fund balance appropriation to bolster school funding, leaving the county $700,000 short of meeting the $3 million funding increase request.
When the preliminary budget was released to the public in March, it was clear that due to a slow, now dormant, federal response to Hurricane Helene, the county will have to continue to shoulder an increasing financial burden to maintain continuity of services and keep capital improvement projects on track.
“It’s putting all of us kind of in a corner of making decisions on what programs we can and can’t fund at the local level while we’re waiting on reimbursements,” Morehead said at that time.
The proposed budget includes a property tax increase of 7 cents per $100. Of that, 3.8 cents would go toward paying off debt incurred for the construction of a new detention center and 1.5 cents would go toward the schools.
Following Morehead’s presentation, a public hearing on the budget was held, during which 14 of 15 speakers asked commissioners to fully fund the school system’s request. Many pitted the money to pay down the jail debt directly against the school system. Speakers, many dressed in red for solidarity, included parents, teachers and administrators.
Chelsea White-Hoglen, a parent and social worker, noted that cutting school funding could result in the loss of treasured academic and extracurricular programs, such as band, art, advanced placement classes and even the early college. Like many speakers, Hoglen noted that lower education rates directly correlate with higher incarceration rates.
“By funding cages instead of classrooms, you are laying down a self-fulfilling prophecy and showing us the vision you have for our children’s future,” she said.
Carly Pugh, who will appear on the November ballot for a Haywood County Commission seat as a Democrat, handed a potential resolution to commissioners, which she also read aloud into the record. The resolution called out the state’s “persistent underfunding” of schools driven by corporate tax breaks and the private school voucher program.
Central Haywood High School Principal Wendy Rogers said that the funding gap commissioners are considering would amount to “real consequences” for staff and students across the district in a county that has for years boasted a school system that is in the top 10% of the state.
“We cannot continue to maintain that level of excellence if we are forced to do more and more with less and less,” she said.
“The long-term cost of not investing in education is far greater than the short-term discomfort of making difficult financial decisions today,” she added.
Haywood County School Board Chair Chuck Francis and Superintendent Trevor Putnam also spoke, both requesting that the board fully fund the system’s request. Putnam spoke about a school funding model that has been in place in the county for about two decades, one that used to work, but he said is now failing.
“That formula produces only small, incremental increases yearly, and that’s provided that enrollment stays steady or is increasing,” Putnam said. “It does not account for inflation. It does not account for increasing utility expenses or major economic shifts.”
“The time has come where the funding formula no longer works and we really need your support,” he added. “We need the full $3 million request so we can make meaningful pay increases for our support staff, so that we can maintain the teaching positions that we have and so that we can preserve previous opportunities for our students.”
During the public comment period, it was noted that one commissioner voted against the jail construction contract when that came up for a vote. While that comment was incorrect, Commissioner Terry Ramey remarked that he had voted against it. However, as reported by The Smoky Mountain News at the time, the vote to approve the jail construction contract was 3-0 with Commissioners Ramey, Kevin Ensley and Tommy Long voting in favor; Commissioners Brandon Rodgers and Jennifer Best were absent for the vote. Ensley corrected Ramey, reminding him that he did, in fact, vote in favor of the jail construction. Despite Ramey’s doubling down, Ensley dropped the issue and the discussion moved forward.
Commissioners Ensley, Long, Rodgers and Best discussed the situation the county is in and why they felt it’s necessary to use part of the revenue generated from the tax increase to go toward the jail construction debt service.
Ensley spoke first regarding school funding, saying that a confluence of circumstances has led to the difficult decision to fall short of the school system’s $3 million funding increase request. He discussed the funding model referenced by Francis and Putnam during the public hearing.
“What’s happened is the students have gone down, so the school system, instead of having 8,000 students like it did in 2009 is around 6,400,” he said, adding that while there is less funding due to fewer students, the costs to maintain buildings and keep the lights on have only risen.
Long took a good deal of time to talk details. Several people who spoke during the hearing lamented the county’s purchase of an armored vehicle for the sheriff’s office; however, Long noted that most of that funding came from private donations and asset seizures tied to drug investigations. Mostly, Long spoke about the decision to build the new jail, noting that the ball was rolling on that project before he even became a commissioner over seven years ago. Requests were made by previous Sheriff Greg Chrstopher and current Sheriff Bill Wilke to get more space for an increasing number of inmates.
“We had public hearing after public hearing after public hearing,” he said. “This has been a long process.”
After the jail construction vote passed, the debt service had been paid out of the fund balance, but that isn’t sustainable, Long argued.
“The commissioners had said they’d kicked that can down the road long enough,” he said. “It’s time to do something.”
Best said that commissioners were doing everything they could to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars. Had they granted every request from every department, property taxes would have risen 17 cents, and 30 cents if the board decided not to allocate money from the county’s fund balance. She condemned the notion that school funding and jail funding were at odds, adding that since the jail is nearing completion, money had to be provided to ensure it would be operational.
“For me, to obligate millions of dollars for that facility and then not turn the lights on and staff it and not protect the current detention officers we have in the old facility seems to me to be a bit ridiculous,” she said.
The board is set to vote on the final budget June 1.