Darlington County School Board passes $82 million budget
By Melissa Rollins, Editor, editor@newsandpress.net
The Darlington County School District voted unanimously during their June 12 meeting to pass the 2017-2018 budget, which includes a 7.5 millage increase.
In previous meetings, Chief Finance Officer Ashley Smith said that the board had the option of keeping millage the same or increasing it by some amount up to the 7.5. mills. Smith said that not everyone would be affected by the increase the same.
“When you are looking at millage you have to remember that homeowners are exempt from our operating millage, which is what we increased, so their tax will not go up,” Smith said. “On cars and things of that nature, it will go up.”
Smith said that the board had made no millage increase for several years.
“We haven’t done it for a number of years,” Smith said. “A lot of districts raise millage every year. We have a cap on how much we can raise but we were able to go back three years and add up what we could and include it.”
The Consumer Price Index determines the cap on millage increases. The cap is based on the population, which has actually decreased in Darlington County.
“The board determined by the needs of our district that we would need to raise it 7.5,” Smith said. “That is for operating expenses. A lot of people, not just school districts, are dealing with the two percent retirement increase that employers are having to pick up. That is over a million dollars just for us. We received a little bit of funding to help us cover that but we also want to compensate our employees; we would like to stick with the two percent raise. We want to continue to compensate them so we had to raise millage to pay our employees.”
Smith cautioned anyone from thinking that the district is raising millage to pad their bank account. The district is legally required to keep a base of at least 30 days of operating expenses in the bank so that if some catastrophic event takes places, the district is not scrambling to take care of their monetary responsibilities.
The 2017-2018 budget, with pay increases for all employees and increases in retirement costs coming in at over a million dollars each, is $82 million dollars.
The estimated expenditure increase from last year’s budget is $4.5 million.
In other businesses, the board took a vote on the property requests from The City of Darlington. The property was separated into four pieces, each requiring an individual vote. In the end, two got affirmative votes and two got a nay.
Virgil Wells Park will be given to the city contingent on a survey, paid for by the city, getting approval from the school board. They also transferred ownership of 100 feet on the Brunson-Dargan side of Swift Creek. The board voted not to give the city the baseball fields on Blue Street and the amphitheater on the property of St. John’s Elementary School.
Darlington County Recreation Director Lee Andrews, who presented the property requests to the board of behalf of the city, said that he understood the board’s decision as far as liability issues and the need for possible expansions in the future.
“After the work session the other night, I thought that was the way that they were going to go,” Andrews said. “I’m not really upset about it just because they are protecting their interests and I can understand that totally. The amphitheater would have been a good acquisition for us because we could have done some concerts and stuff in there but I still think we can work with the school district enough where we can put some things in there.”
Andrews said that the city has been playing ball at the fields on Blue Street for 30 years and he doesn’t see the school district making any abrupt changes to their agreement.
“I don’t think they are going to run us off of there until we have somewhere we can put kids,” Andrews said. “They do need a baseball field on campus that is a no-brainer, they need all of their facilities on campus, and I understand that. If we can help them any way as far as that is concerned, we will.”
Andrews said that where the city goes from this point is up to the members of city council.
“I am going to leave any decisions up to city council because ultimately it is going to be up to them,” Andrews said. “Me personally, and professionally too, I would love to have it all on one piece of property but there is not a big enough tract of land in Darlington that someone wants to get rid of to do that on. If there is a big tract of land and we have been able to see it on the satellite map, we’ve talked to people. It has either been in the family forever or they don’t want people encroaching on them and there again, I completely understand. We are not done. There are a couple more things I think will be coming down the pipe shortly.”