Published: July 30, 2009 08:22 pm         

School board keeps property tax rate the same

CHATSWORTH — In a less than five-minute meeting, Murray County Board of Education members on Thursday voted to keep the same property tax rate despite news that they’ll have to cut another $1.7 million from an already tight budget.

With board members Kay McCurdy, Greg Shoemaker and Becky Whaley absent, the board approved keeping the rate at 15.5 mills. A mill is $1 of tax for every $1,000 of property value.

Expected school tax collections dropped from $14.7 million in 2008-2009 to $13.3 million for the fiscal year that began July 1.

Superintendent Vickie Reed said she’ll recommend more places to cut the budget at a school board work session on Thursday at 6 p.m. at Gladden Middle School. Reed said she met with principals and directors on Wednesday to come up with a plan, but she declined to discuss it before the work session.

Finance director Steve Loughridge said state Board of Education members recently relaxed rules that used to prevent school districts from furloughing teachers or otherwise reducing their pay during the school year. The ruling came after Gov. Sonny Perdue said last week he was cutting education funding by 3 percent and would withhold three days of pay from teachers.

Murray County officials said they’ll furlough teachers two days before the start of school and another day in October to make up the expected loss of $522,000 in educators’ pay. They also cut the local salary supplement from 9 percent of teachers’ state salaries to 7 percent. The state school board’s ruling makes it possible to cut even more.

“Pretty much, they’re telling you (to) do whatever you’ve got to do because (the state) won’t send you the money,” Loughridge said.

The $1.7 million includes state cuts of about $7,000 to nursing programs, $43,000 to transportation, $142,000 to a program designed to equalize funding for poorer districts, $996,000 to a funding formula based on the number of students enrolled, and the $522,000 because of furloughs.

Board member Josh Young said that while budget cuts have been inevitable, he knew the board needed to avoid raising the property tax rate.

“You start messing with people’s money, and they come out of the woodwork and start talking to you,” he said.

Member Rickey Mallett said he hadn’t received any calls or complaints about the $55.1 million budget the board approved last week or about the property tax rate.

“We’re just thankful it stayed the same,” he said.

     

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