City Council met Saturday morning, April 4th for a special meeting on the City and School budgets for the upcoming year. Overall it was a positive, collegial meeting at the end of which we voted to provide the schools an additional $1.5 million with a $500,000 contingency should some state revenue we expect to go to the schools not make it.
By working to provide this additional money, 31 teachers will not lose their jobs and three school nurses will remain in RCPS to provide health services to students, many of whom rely upon school nurses for their only source of healthcare. Given where we were financially only a month ago I'm proud that Council made this decision.
Truth be told I would have liked to have seen more resources go to our schools to avoid cuts in programs such as summer school, swimming classes for elementary students, pre-kindergarten and others. I believe we have a responsibility to make sure that kids in the City of Roanoke have access to an excellent educational system that prepares them for life. Our economic, social and cultural future as a city relies on it. And I do believe our current School Board and RCPS administration has made significant progress to this end.
The reality is that we have more than $19 million in a "rainy day" fund that we could use if the Council decides to. Using this money will certainly make it more expensive for us to borrow money (due to bond ratings, which are inherently flawed and likely to be changed at the national level), but if this is not a rainy day in the present economic recession then I'm not sure what we could consider an emergency. That fund is taxpayer money, so as we are forced to tell our citizens and employees that we have no money for X program or Y program, the fact is that we do have the money.
I totally understand why some in the city administration do not want to use this money, but again, I believe this is the rainy day that that fund is intended to offset. I do think this will be addressed again over the coming weeks. Taxpayers should expect it.
Finally, I do want to point out, and wish that it had been covered in the newspaper today, that the City Council restored 5% (half) of the previously decided reduction in funding to the Roanoke Regional Partnership. To me, this was very important because cutting economic development activities during times like these I believe to be an enormous mistake. Now is the time we should be ramping up activities. And I think this additional funding to the RRP signals Council's desire to focus on economic development, the efforts of which we must be successful at in order to create more and better jobs and to retain existing jobs.
More to come soon...
Game ANDROID UPDATE Yang Seru
3 months ago
5 comments:
We appreciate how hard you've worked on the rainy day fund to help secure jobs for the city school system. However you need attention to your writing:
"many of whom rely upon school nurses for their only source of healthcare."
The school system has data on this? And by many you must mean more than 50%?
I'm sorry, I'm unclear as to the point you are trying to make?
There are many children in the City of Roanoke that do not receive regular physicals or other healthcare check-ups. School nurses serve as one of, if not the only, healthcare provider for these kids.
You don't need to justify the importance of nurses in the school system, everyone knows how important they are. Since you did feel the need, you should get the data from the school system and use it to support your comments especially with statements like "many of whom".
Use the data to support your arguments, especially since some of your fellow council members were less inclined to dip into the rainy day fund. The data may help you convince other members to join your future causes.
Dear Anonymous,
I understand the need to support arguments with facts, and I wish all of our public officials would so regularly. However, your statement that "everyone knows how important they are" is no better documented than Mr. Rosen's statement that you criticized.
If money is being restored to the partnership does that mean less that 20% will be deducted from the Convention Bureau. Last check they returned over $3 to the city in taxes for every dollar given to them. Is that not better than the partnership?
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