The King George School Board members this week agreed that they needed a lot more information about current-year finances before they can make decisions regarding a proposed budget request for 2012-13.

At the meeting on Jan. 23 they said they needed lots of details about the current year’s budget as a starting point for next year’s request. (See related article elsewhere in this issue about

The Westmoreland County School Board and Board of Supervisors will conduct a joint work session at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 7 to explore financial considerations associated with development of the upcoming fiscal year’s county school division budget. The meeting will be held at the Gerald B. Roane Center for Excellence at 171 Opal Lane in Montross.

The Westmoreland School Board met this Monday and reviewed draft budget considerations associated with the 12-month fiscal period that begins this July 1. The preferred proposal could

You can call them Learning Cottages or Modular Learning Centers, but if you call the new Middle School Mod Pod “trailers,” Superintendent Donna Power said jokingly, she will kick you out!

Power, beaming with pride, addressed a large crowd of teachers, parents, school board members and a few students at the dedication ceremony held on Monday.

Middle schools students walked into the new school on Jan. 3 with open, trusting arms according to Power, who has fielded questions from middle school students asking if the 100 year old building that was shut down due to damage will still be their school. Power tells them, “It will always be your school!” Power warns parents that the future is uncertain for the old building but assures them the school board and staff are doing everything they can to see if it can be restored to its former glory by working with FEMA and historical experts.

Power said building mandates and time constraints were challenging, but the teachers worked during their Christmas vacation to ready the building for students returning from break, adding that the Town of Colonial Beach including the Mayor, Council and Town Manager Val Foulds, have

Coyotes are converging on Virginia and the Westmoreland Supervisors are eager to enact new measures they hope will control the local population of predators.

The coyote population is on the rise throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia. When the Westmoreland Supervisors met last Monday, the Board directed County Attorney Tom Bondurant to draft an ordinance amendment that would allow the 35-to-40 pound mammals to be shot with rifles. The county’s current regulations only allow shotguns to be used to kill the unwanted predators.

Coyote sightings were officially acknowledged during Board of Supervisors proceedings in January 2011,

The Colonial Beach School Board learned at the January meeting, when Superintendent Donna Power presented the first draft budget of the upcoming 2012–2013 school year, that the school may be facing a possible $292,823 budget shortfall due to stimulus money ending or declining.

Total projected revenue for the next school year is estimated at $6,963,122 and expenditures are projected at $7,255,945.

Revenues have dropped due to federal grant and stimulus American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds either reaching their end date or phasing out. Because many programs funded by these moneys are

Higher budget proposal despite fewer students

The King George School Board is faced with a proposed budget for 2012-13 that asks for nearly $3,000,000 more from the county despite fewer students.

The state is projecting an average daily membership (ADM) of 116 fewer students than the division will likely end up with in the current year.

Interim superintendent Stanley Jones released a line item budget proposal a couple of days after he provided highlights in his presentation last week at a meeting on Jan. 9.


NO ACTUAL EXPENDITURE FIGURES PROVIDED     
Jones’s budget book does not provide any actual expenditure figures for the current year nor for any previous years.

That makes it a nearly impossible task for the newly reconstituted School Board to determine a base line. The School Board has three new members - Kristin Tolliver, John Davis and Ken Novell - who took office less than three weeks ago, and two members - Rick Randall and Mike Rose - who were not provided a finance report at a meeting for at least the last year.

But Jones is new, too. He’s working with what was left him by former superintendent Candace Brown when she left in December.

A second difficulty in examining the 2012-13 budget proposal is that it is based on the current year’s budgeted revenues, which must be adjusted downward due to the lower enrollment issue.

The proposed 2012-13 budget might be compared to the current unadjusted adopted budget, which is posted online at the division’s website. It might be more easily compared, if portions of it were not in a

A decision made by the United States Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on Jan. 9 gives hope that Rick Perry and other Republican presidential candidates will be able to have their names on the Virginia Republican primary ballot.

The court held a conference call in advance of the hearing date set for January 13 on the question of whether the candidates should be allowed to add their names to the ballot, even though the date for the signing of the required petitions has passed.  The suit was brought against the Virginia State Board of Elections by Rick Perry, who wants to be included as a candidate for the presidential nomination in Virginia’s Republican primary.  He was joined by Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, and Rick Santorum.  If they lose, Virginians will not be able to vote for them in the primary.

Perry and the other candidates claim that it is an unconstitutional violation of free speech for the people who circulate the petitions to put names on the ballot to be Virginia residents.

The court ordered the State Board of Elections to direct the local boards of elections to refrain from sending out absentee ballots until the hearing of January 13 is held, so that, if Perry and the others are added to the ballot, their names can appear on the absentee ballots.  

 One of the considerations in granting Perry and the other petitioners relief, the court noted that they are likely to succeed on the merits of the case, which gives some indication of how the court may decide regarding the issue at the January 13th hearing when a final decision will be made regarding the constitutional matter.

Meanwhile, the State Board of Elections intends to appeal the interim order.

Peggy Garland

The King George Board of Supervisors unanimously voted on Jan. 3 to implement 2 percent raises effective with the first pay period this month. The last time county employees received a pay hike was four years ago, in January 2008.  
That’s because raises that had been budgeted for 2008-09 to go into effect in January 2009 were cancelled in December 2008 in the face of budget deficits being experienced due to the beginnings of the sliding economy.
Like most other localities across the state at that time, King George had made cuts and postponed expenditures due