Board Eyes County Budget
Caudill Cautions Figures Are Preliminary

by Scotty Wampler
Staff Reporter
  Preliminary details about Buchanan County's 2007-08 budget were discussed Monday as the Board of Supervisors convened to get its first look at the proposal.
  Monday's meeting, the first of many budget work sessions the supervisors will conduct to fine tune the upcoming budget, was held in the conference room of the county E-911 office on Slate Creek.
  County Administrator W.J. Caudill, who prepared the budget's early draft, reminded members of the board a number of funding requests still had not been received by the county, making it impossible to define several dollar amounts throughout the proposal.
  "This is a very preliminary budget," Caudill said. "Some of these numbers will change."
  Caudill added it isn't unusual for certain entities not to have already submitted their budget requests. When North Grundy Board Chairman Carroll Branham asked how many requests had not been received, Caudill said three or four had yet to report, including the School Board.
  Raises for county workers also have yet to be worked into the preliminary budget, Caudill said, adding he will figure an average raise amount for non-constitutional county employees at a later date.
  Virginia constitutional officers will receive a 4 percent pay increase, a budget item mandated by the state.
  South Grundy Board Member Roger Rife estimated the budget will increase by more than $1 million after raises are reflected in the proposal.
  The board will be searching for ways to make ends meet in the absence of several identified shortfalls.
  Last year's budget included funds from the sale of the former Vansant Elementary School property, as well as federal grant money that won't be available to the county this year. The county also will lose some tax revenue due to coal prices having gone down over the past year.
  "We're not going to get $500,000 of coal severance taxes," Caudill said.
  It also isn't clear whether county reassessment dollars will help close that gap.
  "You're not talking about a huge amount of money," Caudill said, referring to the impact property reassessment will have on the finalized budget.
  "Mine wasn't significant," Branham said, adding most residents he's talked to say their reassessment notices amount to only a few extra dollars on their tax bills. He did admit, however, he's sure some tax bills rose more significantly.
  The county's capital outlay construction fund was addressed Monday as Caudill crossed out the preliminary figure of $850,000 and penciled in $1.3 million. By his experience, Caudill said, that figure needs to be approximately $1 million annually.
  Though Monday's preliminary county budget figure totaled $39,715,676, the final amount for 2008 should be closer to the $42,328,085 budgeted for the 2006-07 fiscal year after the remaining funding requests are reflected.

For more of the story, see the print edition of the Mountaineer, on sale at newsstands now.  For more information on how to subscribe to the Mountaineer, call 276-935-2123 today.

No One Shows to Back Letter Allegations
Mail Fraud Investigation Suggested

by Cathy St. Clair
News Editor
  No one showed up last Wednesday when School Superintendent Tommy P. Justus School Board Attorney Tom Scott and State Police Special Agent Marcus McClanahan made themselves available to meet with anyone who had factual information in support of any or all of the allegations contained in a recent anonymous letter being circulated in the Hurley community.
  Scott said Justus, McClanahan and he had waited 40 minutes last week and no one showed up to report anything in the letter as fact.
  "It was just as I expected," Scott said. "No one showed up which leads me to conclude there is no basis in fact to the letter."
  As a result, Scott told school board members Monday that he would forward a copy of the letter to Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Bondurant for possible mail fraud prosecution since the letter was sent via U.S. mail. The mail was used at minimum to forward the letter to at least some school board members and the Virginia Department of Education.
  Justus noted that prior to the meeting, it had been agreed if there was any substance to the allegations, the school system wanted to know specifics to enable them to investigate whether they were true.
  The anonymous letter contained numerous serious unsubstantiated allegations and attacks made on the schools, students and administrators at the Hurley schools, according to Justus and Knox School Board Member Clarence Brown.
  "People have got to stop these unsigned letters," Scott said. "It is an act of cowardice."
  He noted after the meeting that the author(s) of the letter needed to learn they cannot publish anonymous letters containing "bald-faced allegations with no factual basis whatsoever defaming the good reputation of others."

For more of the story, see the print edition of the Mountaineer, on sale at newsstands now.  For more information on how to subscribe to the Mountaineer, call 276-935-2123 today.