HoodaThunk?

Loudoun County’s budget process is in full swing with the Board of Supervisors slated to vote on the adoption of a budget at their next meeting on April 7. In my last post on the matter I wrote about the need to hold the County’s school system (LCPS) to the same budgetary cuts as all of the other critical government functions. Thanks to the yeoman’s work of The Loudoun Scoop on 25 March we are directed to a story that shows the BoS is intending to do just that.

The Loudoun County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to slash the proposed schools budget for next fiscal year by almost $27 million over objections from School Board members who said the cuts would severely affect the quality of students’ education.

“Everybody is getting impacted by the circumstances of our moment, and I’m afraid that’s going to have to include the schools,” said Supervisor Stevens Miller (D-Dulles), who voted for the cuts.

The School Board approved a $747 million budget in late January and forwarded it to the Board of Supervisors, cutting cost-of-living and seniority raises for employees to avoid eliminating staff positions or increasing average class size. The spending plan called for $12 million less in county funding than the current schools budget.

The School Board, at the BoS’s direction, came back with budgets representing a 5%, a 10%, and a 15% cut from the full budget originally floated. They provided a set of measures they’d take to find those cuts with each “Tier” which has lead to the “Tier 1, Tier 2…” nomeclature they’ve been using in the press these days. The BoS’s vote as refered to in the story represents the 5% option calling on the LCPS to make those Tier 1 cuts. (I’ll go into this in more detail in another post.)

When Loudoun County – which has seen over a decade of rising school budgets – makes the decision to actually apply cuts to the proposed budget you know we’re facing some serious money issues. That’s hardly a surprise to any of us paying any attention these days. However, it should now be obvious to everyone that if we’re in the process of cutting the budget for things like the Sheriff’s office and the school system, then we certainly don’t have money to be spending on anything new. From my last post:

To the Board of Supervisors, I’d say this: immediately halt any discussion of new services or departments in the Loudoun government until this economy recovers; do not implement new projects to upgrade systems we already have in place without a truly significant, near-term increase of capability or decrease in operating costs; require that all departments that fall within the scope of the core government responsibilities I’ve mentioned above cut their budgets by the same percentage figure. This year’s going to be tough, we all know that. Let’s see our government act like they know that, too.

It would appear the Board is taking the suggestion that all of the critical function areas of government be held to the same percentage of budget cut. I would imagine there’s little support for system upgrades that aren’t providing that significant capability improvement I mentioned. Putting a moratorium on new departments and positions, however…

The current Board of Supervisors is more “bike friendly” than an earlier board was, Turner said. Still, she said, she was worried that during an economic downturn the county would not allocate money for a bike coordinator.

County Supervisor Andrea McGimsey (D-Potomac), who serves on the board’s Transportation/Land Use Committee, was more optimistic.

“I think it’s a critical piece of going forward in Loudoun County,” she said. Noting that there had been two pedestrian fatalities in the same spot on Algonkian Parkway, she said, “We’ve grown quickly, and these are some hot spots that are being addressed.”

I have already said that we could probably use a bike and pedestrian coordinator, although I feel that the planning and zoning folks in the government could probably provide that level of oversight in new construction, too. The issue isn’t whether we could use one or if one is truly needed. We can’t pay for it. We haven’t the funds. This is a fine idea to keep in mind for the future but to even be considering it now, after telling our schools, our police, and our emergency teams that they have to make do with less because times are tight, is just irresponsible.

I’ll also call foul on Supervisor McGimsey’s use of the fatalities on Algonkian Parkway. She’s clearly referring to the 2 deaths at the intersection of Algonkian and Countryside Parkway, incidents I’ve written about before. Tragic though they were, in both of those situations the pedestrian was walking out into the street outside of the existing crosswalk and against the light. Having a pedestrian coordinator in place at the time would have done precisely nothing to avert the accidents because the 2 people in question weren’t following the rules or using the facilities that were already in place. Just because there would have been a guy in an office in Leesburg coordinating pedestrian pathways around the County doesn’t mean anything would have changed. The reference is a moot point and a non-sequitur in this debate.

This decision should be tabled until our economy recovers. We can reconsider it at that time.