Two of Williamson County’s most valuable attractions are its property tax rates and its stellar school system. The way things are shaping up as the county prepares its 2017-2018 budget, the county might not be big enough for the both of them as currently envisioned.
The county Budget Committee shot down the Williamson County Schools proposed budget for next year last week.
The WCS Board passed a budget last month of $343 million, an increase of $14 million over this current year’s budget, and a number that makes up nearly three-quarters of the entire county budget when counting debt service. Amid a larger conversation and anxiety about how to fund a projected half-billion dollars in new schools over the next decade, the Budget Committee knocked $5 million off and passed a $338 million budget instead.
The cut, according to WCS, could impact the quality immediately of schools. But without the cut, the $5 million would have meant a property tax rate increase.
Last week the Budget Committee also voted to fund the expansion of Page and Brentwood High and Middle Schools.
That still must be passed by the entire commission next Monday, and an all-out battle could be coming as the school funding issue continues without a long-term funding solution, and the county prepares to pass the budget it is now working on in July. While fighting to keep any tax increase out of it for now, in the county leadership a clear consensus on a path to funding the schools that WCS projects needing has not yet emerged.
The most obvious method, a property tax increase, has not seemed politically viable given the makeup of the commission. Despite having one of the lowest property tax rates in a state with the 43rd lowest property tax rate in the country, an absolute increase of 15 percent in property taxes paid in last year’s county budget passed after hours of debate and by a vote of 13-8.
Budget committee members last week said that if they did not cut the $5 million that it would cause a tax increase of 8 cents. (The current rate is $2.15. Last year it was $2.31, but because of a 2016 reassessment and attendant increase in property values, the current rate created an absolute increase of 15 percent over 2015-2016.)
Superintendent of Williamson County Schools, Dr. Mike Looney told the committee members he does not know from where to cut the funding. An additional 2,000 students are added each year, and he said the only place the district could even possibly cut the $5 million would be from additional teachers that would have gone to handling the increased enrollment.
All this is happening in the context that WCS is a quickly over-crowding system. More than half of the districts 44 schools are at or over capacity, and in the next decade the district projects it will gain 20,000 students. Currently, there are just more than 39,000 students. Those added students mean the need for up to 21 new schools at a cost of roughly $600 million, according to WCS numbers.
After deferring the vote, the Budget Committee approved $15 million in March to fund the design and construction of a K-5 school in Brentwood, the first in the line of needed new schools, was a knock-down drag out fight. Originally, WCS wanted $30 million to build a combination elementary and middle school but halved it to focus on the elementary school, which is most immediately needed to alleviate over crowding.
So, the question is how to fund new schools at a price tag many times more than the cost of funding just one school, which in itself was a near battle. So far, things have gone forward in piecemeal fashion.
The county, which is the funding body for all of this, wants to be sure it knows how to pay for the new schools before it starts approving the funds for them.
“Under the current model of funding, as early as next year we would need a new source of revenue,” County Mayor Rogers Anderson said. “If we approve the funding we would need to raise taxes or find another source, under the current way of funding.”
But solutions, other than property tax hikes, seem so far wanting. Ideas put forth so far include a wheel tax, sales tax increase, and education impact fees. Enacted for the first time in March, impact fees which tax new residential construction could raise potentially about $180 million in net budget money in the next six years. But, as they do not even take full effect until September, so far they have raised about $500,000 in anticipated funds.
Commissioners like Todd Kaestner say that WCS has not been creative or transparent enough in their projections and budgetary calculations.
“Everybody wants to fund and is proud of our schools,” he said. “But we should be thoroughly examining all options and thinking outside the box.”
He said he would like to see the numbers given greater scrutiny by the commissioners and all potential methods of cost-reduction and fund-creation exhausted before any discussion of increased taxes.
Rezoning has offered one such attempt. Despite overcapacity at many schools, in the district at large there are several thousand open seats each year. A A rezoning plan will be voted on by the WCS Board in May that could affect up to 3,000 students.
Meanwhile, parents and Dr. Looney have begun beating the drum of public opinion.
He took to twitter to express his feelings about the $5 million budget shave.
In a stunning development, the WIllCo Commission Budget Commitee proposes a 5M cut to the WCS proposed budget. Wow!
— Dr. Mike Looney (@wcsDirofSchools) April 27, 2017
And more recently has warned that:
This won’t countinue if we don’t fund our schools properly! https://t.co/rIFgWz6Pro
— Dr. Mike Looney (@wcsDirofSchools) April 27, 2017
And on Facebook, a group of parents has started “Fund Our Schools,” which after a month has more than 2,400 members and is closely keeping public tabs on which commissioners have voted in favor of funding schools– and who hasn’t.
The group said that it calls for “no more Band-Aid solutions” to school funding.
