No one spoke in favor of the proposed financial plan, which calls for a 5-cent tax increase and totals $40,757,424.
(The budget is scheduled for adoption 9:30 a.m. on June 20. The meeting will be held in the boardroom at the Historic Courthouse in Halifax)
The county has said in previous meetings the tax increase is to cover the $1.5 million debt service for the new Manning Elementary School and will be retired once the school is paid off.
Still, the proposal drew criticism from the SCLC with James Mills, its political action chair, calling for the board to reject the 2016-17 plan.
“You fail to consider the more than 1,100 signatures of citizens of Halifax County who wanted the change from ad valorem to per capita method for the distribution of sales and use tax. You fail to consider that 16 out of 20 citizens at the hearing supported changing from ad valorem to per capita. Three of the 16 were the mayor of Enfield, the mayor of Scotland Neck and the mayor of Hobgood, all towns in Halifax County.”
Mills said commissioners used intimidation to force the three county school boards to make a decision to come up with an equitable funding plan on their own.
Mills said the decision made by commissioners to continue with ad valorem sales and use tax distribution continues a 43-year precedent against blacks and Native Americans, a precedent he said which could jeopardize federal funding for the county. “You fail to consider that ad valorem method of distribution of sales and use tax causes the funds to be distributed in a racially biased way.”
He explained 7 percent of Native American children are helped and 35 percent of black children are helped while 95 percent of all white children are helped. “You fail to consider that by all of the above you have for 43 years deprived the children of Halifax County an education called for by the state of North Carolina Constitution.”
Mills said the damage done to the economic lives of employees within the county school system “can only be described as robbery under law of Jim Crow. You fail to consider that you are responsible to make whole all of the destruction that you have caused over the past 43 years by your neglect.”
Bill Hodge of CEES, told the board “education funding must be Halifax County's top priority. Education is the key to an improved tomorrow for our youth and communities.”
In the last five years, Hodge said, the county's budget has grown 14 percent but education current expense funding for K-12 has only grown 1.3 percent. “Last year (County Manager) Tony Brown announced a $500 supplement for all Halifax classroom teachers which 522 teachers received last month. The supplement was absent from this year's budget and was not even discussed in numerous budget meetings.”
That means, he said, the upcoming fiscal year budget “will lower classroom teachers' compensation in all three districts. This is regrettable as these teachers are the key ingredient to improving educational outcomes and our future.”
Hodge said building the new Manning school makes no sense. “The five-year countywide school improvement plan should be reviewed by the three new superintendents. Evergreen Solutions recommended that the three school systems work together utilizing existing facilities to prioritizing capital for student needs and educational enhancement programs. Commissioners have for too long asked minority residents living outside Roanoke Rapids to support education in the RRGSD which excludes minorities with racially drawn school boundaries which perpetuates a segregated tripartite system of education in Halifax County.”
Ophelia Gould-Faison spoke on behalf of Charles McCollum of the SCLC, reading a statement the pastor wrote.
“I stand before this board in opposition to raise taxes to aid in the building of a new Manning school,” she said.
The construction of the school, she said, “places an extra burden on the backs of the poor citizens of this county to fund a school that was deliberately proscriptive to exclude minorities.”
For all practical purposes, McCollum's statement said, “every citizen in the county is being made to pay for a public private school. This board is requiring all citizens who live outside of the Manning school district to help pay for this new school yet those same citizens are barred from sending their child to Manning.”
Meanwhile, Tripp asked the board to reconsider employee raises. “I have deputy sheriff's who are on public assistance,” he said.
The sheriff said he has already lost five of his employees to surrounding agencies.
He said he believes increasing employee pay can be done without an additional tax increase.
The sheriff's office trimmed $40,000 from the jail budget and another $20,000 within the administrative line in the past. “There's nothing else to cut. I feel like I'm wasting money by training employees to go work somewhere else.”
