Plan to Rebuild Stafford High School Passed in New Budget

By KEITH WALKER
For Potomac Local News

STAFFORD, Va. — Elizabeth Chase, a senior at Stafford Senior High School, took one last opportunity to ask the Stafford Board of County Supervisors to give teachers a pay raise and to build a new school, rather than renovate, Stafford Senior High School.

Chase laid out her case during citzens’ comments time at the Tuesday board meeting, just before the board was scheduled to vote on the capital improvement plan, or CIP, along with the county budget.

The proposed budget included teacher pay raises while the CIP included the rebuild.

Chase said it’s time for a new school in the southern end of the county, and cited committee studies that favored building a new school, fairness for teachers and equity for students as reasons to do both.

She went on to suggest that Stafford Senior High School students might feel shortchanged when they visited the “beautiful buildings of Mountain View and Brooke Point high schools.”

“I’ve been hearing about it since I was nine” Chase said of plans for a new school. “It’s almost like a hopeless dream at this point. Could you please share the love? What we need is a new building, not another Band-Aid renovation.”

Just before the vote, Aquia District Supervisor Paul Milde, who has consistently and loudly opposed rebuilding in favor of renovation, proposed a last minute change to the CIP.

By the end of the night however, the board granted both of Chase’s wishes by voting 5 to 2, to keep the CIP intact and approved the rebuilding project.

The county’s adopted Fiscal 2014 General Fund Budget, with a tax rate of $1.07 per $100 of assessed value, gave teachers a 2.5% increase, automatic, annual raise, or “step increase” which will go into effect on July 1, 2013. An additional 2% teacher salary increase will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2014.

Other county employees will get a 1%, across-the-board pay raise.

The adopted Fiscal 2014 Budget also eliminated the boat tax, the machinery the tools tax, the motor carrier transportation tax to save county taxpayers $500,254.

The Fiscal 2014 budget of $253.4 showed an increase of 2.17 percent over last year’s 247.9-million budget. The county will share 55.16 percent, or $136.4 million, of its adopted budget with Stafford County Public Schools.

Board Chairman Susan Stimpson said she thought the adopted budget could only help StaffordCounty residents.

“Stafford County has shown that as we walk down taxes that has helped our county flourish,” she said after the board adopted the budget.