Lenoir City BOE working to cut budget
 
“In the 2018-19 budget, they were going to amend because they overspent by $400,000,” Aikens said. “The 400 and 800 is 1.2 (million), so city council felt like that was unacceptable — I do, too. Look, I’ve had a good working relationship with the school board and the school superintendent, and I want to keep that relationship. It’s a tight budget year. The city cut their budget by almost $500,000. We went from $586,000 to $94,000. We all have to live within our means and the school board should learn to do the same.”
 
Board members voiced concerns and frustrations to Aikens on Thursday.
 
“We don’t need this,” Rick Chadwick, BOE chairman, said. “I hope this doesn’t happen every year. I hope this is the end of it. This has never happened before.”
 
“I think that we have shown good faith here in cutting almost $400,000,” Jeanne Barker, Lenoir City Schools director of schools, added. “Our dollars are often in pots that have strings attached to them. Sometimes, that’s something, to the public, they just don’t understand.”
 
To meet the BOE original budget, council would need to impose a property tax increase, which is not an option, Aikens said.
“When she (Jeanie Mowery, Lenoir City Schools business manager) came before us, she indicated strongly that they were going to ask for new money next year,” Aikens said. “I just don’t see how that’s going to happen without a property tax increase, and I can tell you right now, I’m totally opposed to that. I’m not raising property taxes because the taxpayers voted a sales tax down, and the sales tax is the fairest tax of all. They told me they didn’t want a property tax increase when they said that, so in short of laying somebody off, I’m not going to have a property tax increase. City council may choose otherwise, but I know them pretty good, and I don’t think they will.”
 
In Thursday’s meeting, the BOE developed an updated budget but fell $35,000 short of $400,000.
 
The board met with all three school principals following Thursday’s meeting to discuss line items that could be cut.
 
“We suggested cutting two positions,” Barker said. “We pared down a repair of the high school roof, so we cut a small portion out of that to cut down there. We were going to try to improve substitute pay, and we ended up cutting that out. We did look at our utilities ... we had savings in utilities and have upgraded a lot of our heating and air systems, so we felt like maybe we had over budgeted for that, so we trimmed that down based on what we experienced in savings. We went back through and cut some travel out. Those are the kind of things we looked at and we’ll present that back to the board. I don’t know where else we can cut — it’s going to be people if we cut any further. Hopefully, we’ve gotten it over the $400,000 mark.”
 
The board will meet again at 11 a.m. Thursday to finalize the revised budget. If passed, a special called meeting will immediately follow to approve the budget before taking it to city council.

“They were going to work on it, and I’m assuming they got that done,” Aikens said. “I haven’t talked to Dr. Barker where it stands, but I’m assuming they got it done.”

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6/24/19