school board

At the Radford City Council meeting, the main focus was on the upcoming fiscal year's budget. There was a proposed five-cent tax increase, which looks like it will be implemented. However, the meeting also highlighted the relationship between Radford City and the Radford City Public Schools, which has become strained in recent years. The council and the school board need to work together as a team instead of being adversarial. Suggestions were made to improve communication and have more council members involved in discussions. Some issues discussed included the carryover funds that the school division has, which they did not have figures readily available for, and the need for better preparation during budget presentations. Overall, the meeting emphasized the importance of a better relationship between the city and the public schools. Welcome to One More Round Podcast, your voice of sanity in a city gone absolutely crazy. Let's get in the ring. Hey, welcome to One More Round Podcast. I'm your host as always, Keith Marshall. Welcome to the ring. Today we're going to talk about the latest Radford City Council meeting which took place on Tuesday, the 16th of April. This meeting, I just finished listening to it, and I have to say that it was very interesting. I really enjoyed listening to the dynamics of what was going on and following along, and I am very conflicted. It's not often that I'm conflicted about which way to go, who to agree with, who not to agree with. I'm generally on the conservative side of the aisle and those that represent the conservative cause, and I've not changed my direction, but sometimes there's issues that transcend or cross aisles that you cannot put into a category. I put it more into a common sense category, and I'm happy to say after listening to this meeting, I've proved myself a little bit wrong to say that even those that are not conservative can display a little bit of common sense, and that is something that I noticed in the meeting last night from quite a few or several of the members or participants in the meeting. Now at stake and what I'm going to focus on is the Radford City budget for the upcoming fiscal year. We've talked a lot about, and here comes the tax man, about the tax increase or proposed tax increase that was going to be proposed last night, and it was proposed, and it looks like we are going to get that five-cent tax increase, but there was an interesting dynamic within the meeting last night that I really want to focus on, and that would be Radford City Public Schools. Now, as part of the city's budget, many may not understand this, but the city has to look at both the school budget and their own budget combined together and pass it as a whole in order to move forward. The school presents their budget to the city. The city must approve that along with their budget to move forward. One doesn't go without the other. The city does have some discretion about the amount of money that they give the schools. There are some requirements, state mandated requirements, based on your locality, based on how much money you have, what you can afford to give, of how much that you should fund your public schools. Radford City, to my knowledge, is just above the mark of where they need to be when you include the funding that they give for the payments for the new schools. I believe their pass surpassed the amount. They're close to the line, but I believe they're above that line in the amount that they should fund their schools. Radford City has always, always taken great pride in their public schools. But here in recent years, we've kind of seen a fall away from excellence, or at least as far as the ratings go and the numbers and the scores and other things, that it's kind of dipped the city of Radford Public Schools below where we would like to see them at. Now, I know we have a fairly new school board in there right now, and they have not escaped controversy since they were elected to office. Most of it wasn't fair, in my opinion. Some of it might have been, but most of it wasn't. But there was quite an uproar that went on in the city about some issues over the former superintendent. But setting those aside, I'm not going to dig into that subject because that's a patch of the pages that I really don't want to dig up right now. I want to talk about the new superintendent and the new budget that they proposed to Radford City last night. There were some heartburn, I'll have to say, from the council meeting at that meeting last night, which is kind of unusual, I'll have to say. Now, I was on city council for eight years, and I guess I sat through eight of these such sessions, and we never really had any issues. Now, I will say last night, it was cordial. Everybody handled themselves in a very professional way. I'd like to compliment Radford City Council and the school board superintendent and those working with him on the way they handled it, the way the discussions went back and forth. I will say this, these discussions that happened last night should not have happened last night. They should have happened weeks, if not months, before last night. And I think what that demonstrates to us is a degraded relationship between Radford City and the Radford City Public Schools. I think in the years past, their relationship has become extremely heated, almost adversarial, I think would probably be the word. Instead of working as a team, as a joint effort for a fine city, I think they've drawn themselves apart over the last five or six years for whatever reason. They've pulled themselves apart, and they kind of pitted each other one against the other, a very unfortunate thing. Now, there were some comments last night, in particular from our vice mayor, about stopping that and getting back together and having these discussions well before crunch time. And taking care of any problems or any issues or any disagreements before they got there. And I think that was an excellent suggestion. I'm surprised, quite frankly, that's not happening already, because I believe the previous council ran on just that sort of thing. And it was under their leadership that not only did the city run out of money, but the relationship with our public schools deteriorated, where we factioned ourselves one against the other, which is never good, never good inside the city. Now, I noticed, I'll just point this out, in the meeting, that they mentioned that they were going to start to have some meetings between the mayor and the chairman of the school board and the city manager and the superintendent. I would suggest, however, to bring in an additional council member into that, so you get a complete picture of exactly what's going on, and the information is not controlled. So you have more than one council member involved in that process, and the council should pick who that member should be, besides the mayor. The mayor certainly should be a part of it, but there should be another member from council on there, just to apply some fairness and some perspective to that process that you need from multiple members on council. Now, there were two main issues that were up for debate last night between the members of city council and the superintendent. By the way, that new superintendent, his name is Dr. Adam Joyce, and I've heard excellent things about him so far. I've spoken to a few that are involved in administration staff and in other areas that found him to be doing a pretty good job, highly recommended, doing a fine job. The interim superintendent that we had, Dr. Collins, that filled in for a while, also just did an outstanding job. We were lucky to have him, and I think we're lucky to have Dr. Joyce as well. One thing that I noticed last night, though, is maybe a little bit a lack of preparation as far as the details that they brought to the table last night. Maybe they didn't expect to be asked a lot of additional questions, but there were a couple areas that I was kind of surprised they did not have figures for readily available. But, you know, not a big deal, and things like that happen, but, you know, just kind of gave me a little bit of pause in that process. But there were two main issues that were kind of at the forefront last night. The first, and there are more than that, but the first that I want to talk about is carryover funds that the school division has. Now, this kind of goes back in the past to when I was first elected council. When I come on to Rafford City Council, any leftover funding that the schools had, we would pull that back into the city's funds, which means, you know, if we gave them X amount of dollars and they did not use all of that money, that comes back in to the city's funds. We stopped that process when I was elected. We stopped that process for a couple reasons. My personal feeling was that if someone realizes they're about to lose money that they have, they're more likely to make themselves spend it so they don't lose it. You know, use it or lose it. And sometimes if you're looking at, you know, you have $300,000 or $400,000 left over, and you're thinking, if I don't use this, the city's going to take it back, and I may not get it back. I better go buy this, or I better go buy that. And I'm not necessarily saying that that happened, but human nature and tendency is to do that. You know, if you're in business, a lot of times, you know, when you have a budget and you don't use all that budget, what happens? Your budget gets cut. So there is a tendency to use that. So in my opinion, I thought, hey, let's let them keep that funding. Let's let them hold on to it. Let's let them manage it. And if they need it at the end of the year, they'll use it. If not, they'll carry it over, and they probably can save money for larger projects that they do not have to come to the city for funding for. And I think that has borne out over the years. They have done that. But one dynamic that is so different right now between Radford City Public Schools and Radford City is it appears that the school division has a fairly decent reserve fund built up. They have quite a bit of carryover money left over from previous years. They have built that fund up. Now, when they were asked by several council members, I believe it was Councilman Artrip and also Councilman Foster that asked about that, they did not have the number, the amount of money that they had in those funds, which honestly, that surprises me. I would think that if you showed up for a budget presentation to give your budget to the city for approval, you would have that information with you. They did not have that information, and as we speak right now, we were waiting on them to supply that for council. So that is one major issue that was up front last night that was out and talked about. The second issue, which I think probably got the most heartburn throughout a few of the members on council, was the raises that was given to the school staff, school administration, school staff, teachers, everything it sounds like. Now, we're going to have to look at that raise in two different parts. So let me start from the base of this, just so you remember, we went over this. But Radford City, because they're out of money, they're having to raise taxes to build up reserves or for whatever else, they've had to borrow money in order to make payroll, in order to cover their bills. They're in a bad financial shape. They were not able to give raises this year, and we talked about that, how much burden that's been placed on our Radford City employees across the board. Because, yeah, inflation's through the roof, everybody knows what the cost of living is right now. We can all use a few extra dollars on our paycheck just to buy our groceries and pay our bills. But our city employees this year, our Radford City employees, will not be getting a raise. That's the way it looks right now, unless something has changed at the last hour and final approval for the budget. They will have a second reading coming up soon, where they can possibly make some changes, but it's pretty much looking like there's not going to be a raise for employees. Now contrast that over to Radford City Public Schools. Their employees not only got a raise, they got a 7% raise. Now, we need to look at that raise in two parts. They received additional funding from the state of Virginia. 3% was designed specifically for a raise for school employees. 3%. So that money was given for that reason, and they have to spend it for that reason. So we can all understand, absolutely, you should give that 3% raise to your employees of the schools. I think that makes just common sense. If you don't use it, you have to give it back, and I promise you, some other localities are going to take that money, and they're going to give a raise. That was mentioned by Dr. Joyce last night. You know, you're given it, you've got to take it. That makes sense. But it's the other 4% that I have a question with, and I think many on council had the same question. I'll have to say this. I'm pretty hard on the previous council. Ms. Councilman Foster, a member of that previous council. I'm pretty hard on some of the decisions that they've made. I'll have to say, I agreed with her in her comments and her concerns 100% last night. I appreciate the tough questions that she was asking. And I also appreciate some of the tough questions that come from Councilman Artrip along the same lines. And I'm going to paraphrase it a little bit. I don't want to attribute words or add or take away, but I'll give you the gist of the way I understood it. They were both having heartburn, especially Councilman Foster. She's like, hey, we've got city employees. We're all buying groceries. Excellent comment. All buying groceries at the same grocery store. But yet we're wanting everybody to be on a team and to take cuts and to have to just do without on some things. So we're not giving raises to our employees, but yet you're able to give 70%. How can we justify, how can I go back to our employees and say, hey, you get nothing. You're going to suffer. Pull her right across the aisle to a school division that we're giving funding to. They can afford those raises. Now, I think it's an excellent question. It's something that concerns me, too. Now, I'll say this about the city employees, about school employees. Do they all deserve a raise? They absolutely do. They deserve a raise. And in the school's case, they were going to get 3%, the teachers were either way. They were going to get that 3% because that was given and mandated by the state. So they would be getting a raise. But that extra 4% kind of grates on me as someone who looks as, hey, you know, when we're in a tough situation, we all need to come together, we all need to work together, we need to save the city. I think it grates on me knowing how much extra funding that the schools received, and they received quite a bit of extra funding from the state. They did quite well as far as funding compared to last year. They did really well. They're in a totally different situation than the city is right now. Even though they're part of the city, they are fairly well funded. Now, the schools made a good argument. Dr. Joyce made an argument that, hey, you know, we're struggling to keep good teachers. And if we don't pay and we don't keep up with Montgomery County or wherever it is, we're going to lose them. To which Foster, Councilman Foster, come right back with the same argument. We have police and we have firefighters, we have employees of the city. We're trying to keep them too. We're facing the same headwinds that you are as far as employees. And I think if we're in the same boat, we all need to be rolling at the same time. That's essentially what she was trying to say. And I agree 100%. And I did not hear a good answer from Dr. Joyce about that other than to say we're trying to keep, you know, good teachers. And we all want to do that. But we also want to keep good policemen. We want to see our guys that are working and putting garbage up on the trucks and doing those tough jobs for us, getting leaves and working at the electric department and, you know, water and sanitation department, we want to see them have competitive wages also. We want to keep them too. We don't want to pay people so low that they can go anywhere else and make the same money. We want to be advantageous with a decent salary and the pension that they receive. We want them to stay here. It's harder to train new employees than it is to, you know, continue to work with the ones you have and who are already trained. That makes sense in any business. It makes sense in the city government. You know, there's an old saying that teamwork makes the dream work, right? You've all heard that saying before. And I believe in this particular case, we have a situation where I don't feel like the schools are working in concert with the city in order to solve some of these problems. Now, I've told you how I feel out front about that. But I do have some conflicting feelings within myself about that. And I think probably if I was almost in school, and I haven't spoken to anyone about their feelings. No one has told me this. This is just how I think I would feel if I switched myself over and put myself in the position of people that are running and administrating Rafford City Public Schools. I would have to look at the malfeasance that has happened on city council over the last four or five years. And I'd have to say, you know, we've run a pretty taut ship here. We've managed our money well. We've been tight. We've bought what we could, didn't buy what we couldn't. We haven't overspent our budgets. We've stayed within the lines. We've kept it in the black. We've set a little money back. Why in this world would we want to be lectured about what we do with our money by the city of Rafford when they have blown the bank on theirs? When they are borrowing money just to make payroll? I think that's an excellent point. I think that if you're a member of the school division, you would have to ask that question. And you would have to personally resent, my words, not theirs, personally resent the city meddling in their affairs when they can't manage their own. I think that's a fair question. Now, if you're a new council member, you haven't been on there that long, you aren't part of that malfeasance. You didn't cause that. So you have to ask questions based on the situation that the city's in now. You have to say, we're in a mess. We're stuck. I'm trying to save this city. I need all hands on deck. So I think you ask legitimate questions when you question those raises. And question they did. Quite a few questions, as a matter of fact. So normally, when I show up to you each week, I have a fairly clear set of ideas and a fairly strong set of beliefs that I'm positive about. In this particular case, as I mentioned before, I'm conflicted. I would love to know what you think about it. You know, I've had four kids go through Rafford City Public Schools. I love Rafford City Public Schools. But I will say this, I was fairly tickled when my kids graduated and I was done with it. I could kind of feel the deterioration. I could kind of feel the negativity that was kind of building within the schools. I'm hoping to see that change. So I'm not 100% excited about the direction of Rafford City Public Schools. I have not been for some time. Now, I want to give our new superintendent plenty of leeway, plenty of latitude. He deserves that as he's starting over new and it's a brand new situation for him. Our newest school board that's been there a while, like I mentioned, they went through some fairly rough patches. I've been pretty pleased with some of the things they've done. I like the finishing of the high school. By the way, you should get by and check out the stadium when you can. Take a look at the new seating and the metal seating. It looks really nice. It absolutely, it absolutely kicks up a notch. Our Norman G. Lederberg Stadium there, I'm sure our ladies and men are proud to play soccer and football and run track. I think they're doing some work to repair the track surface too coming up in the upcoming year and some other areas. But, you know, I think they've done a decent job so far. But I have to really ask questions about this 4% raise. I have to understand how that makes sense in the present economy that we have in Rafford City under the financial restraints that we have now. Which makes me think about that other point. Remember what I told you we changed in 2018 when I come on to council. If the school division is going to be able to use their money to give raises where the city can't, should the city revisit the idea of bringing back those leftover funds when they're not used? Which would cause the schools, of course, to have to come to the city for requests of repairs and other things that come up. They wouldn't be completely running their own budget. They would be, you know, only partially doing it within the limits of the money that they had. And money left over, of course, would go back to the city. Should the city look and say, hey, if you can give these unbelievable raises. Now, in the school's defense, they can look back and say, no, wait a second. You guys weren't watching the store. And last year, in 2023, you gave an 8% raise that was 100% funded by tax dollars within the city, not by the state. You did this last year. That was malfeasance. That was not a good idea. What in the world were you doing? And I think they would have an excellent point. I think that they would definitely be making the case for, hey, we have the money here to give these raises. You did not have the money to give raises. And you've hamstrung the city forever with that 8% raise by jumping way out there. I mean, you've given like 15% in the last few years. You're not one to talk. We actually can fund our raises for now and in the future with what we have. So those are my conflicts. You know, as I look at both of them, I'm struggling with them. You know, and I understand the position that city council's in. And they are going to be taking a hard look. There is a chance. There is a chance that there could be a cut to the Rafford City Public Schools budget if they don't work something out between now and that meeting coming up. And I believe they've set it for the 25th. They have to have everything buttoned up and taken care of by the end of April by state law. Their budget's set. Their tax rates are set. All that has to be done and ready by the end of April. So they are under a time crunch. There's also some, when you change something, you have to allow several days to advertise for the next meeting. You know, and you have a whole council worth of schedules and peoples and families and things to work out. So they're not in the best of positions as far as getting this done and moving forward. They've waited too long as usual. You do not make good decisions under a crunch. You need to start this process much earlier. It needs to be much more transparent and much more out on the table. Across the board with the city. Now there's one other fine point I want to slide in here as you take a look at the information I've provided you. Maybe you're asking the same kind of questions about, you know, should they get a raise? Shouldn't they get a raise? We all kind of have a soft place in our hearts for teachers. We know how hard a job that is. And not just teachers, though. Any school administrators or any school employees, secretaries, whatever they are, that's a tough job in today's public schools. It's not the public schools we grew up in. A lot of things have changed, and I'm frankly worried about the future of public schools in America. And it's probably why you're seeing so many find alternate ways to educate their children, whether it's homeschool or private schools or something along, some kind of co-op, something along that line. I know when I think and I look at that and I think about my grandkids, I'm very fearful of them going to public schools now. But anyway, taking a look at that raise, there was a question asked, how much is each percent raise worth in schools? And they come up with a number. The total raises of the 7%, the cost of that is about $1.2 million, $1.2 million. But let's just focus on that 4%, because 3%, you know, that comes from the state. They needed to do that. It's free money. You have to do it. You know, if you can give them a raise with someone else's money, it is our tax dollars, but you get my drift. If you can give them that 3% raise, you should. But that other 4%, what is that worth? Well, if you take $1.2 million and you divide that by, you know, 7, that will tell you how much each, you know, each percent or each percent is worth. And they gave those figures. Each percent is worth about $171,428, $171,428. So that 4%, that's worth over $685,000, $685,000 worth of funding. It's actually $685,714, truthfully. Now, we just had a, they just voted on a tax increase. What was that tax increase worth? I believe they said that each cent is worth $119,000. And if I got that right, that's worth $595,000, just a tick under $600,000. So basically, that tax increase is paying for those raises. Now, I know it's put in different pots and given in different segments, but if you're just looking at dollars and cents, one to the other, that additional raise to the Rapid City Public Schools, that additional 4% above the 3% is worth a little bit more than what our tax increase was. It would have covered it completely, and then some, and then some. Now, I don't know about you, where you work. Everybody's different. But the idea of giving 7% and 8% raises, who is getting those? I've never got a 7% or 8% raise in my life, and I don't think most people working get those kind of raises. 3% and 4%, sometimes less, but 3% and 4% are pretty much the standard cost of living raises that are going across the board to working families. I think we need to be in line with that. I really do. When you're raising taxes on citizens who are struggling through a tough economic time with high inflation because of just, you know, just ridiculous garbage that's went on under the federal level, when families are dealing with that, you have to be cognizant of that. And if you're going to raise taxes on them, you better be able to justify it. And you certainly should not be taking the pocket out of one set of employees while you're funding the pockets of others. You have to use some balance there. That's just what my gut tells me to think. Now, I'm curious what you think. I'd love to hear what you think, and I think your council members and school board members and others should hear what you think. Now, I want to say this. They are doing a tough job. It is not easy making these decisions on city council or school board. And I believe that in most cases, most cases, not all, most cases, they're staying up at night. They're worrying about these decisions. They're trying to do the best thing for everybody. And here's what they're learning. You can't do what's best for everybody all at the same time. And you cannot please everyone, because every decision you make is going to leave out a certain percentage of people, and they're not going to be happy with you. Just like this podcast, to be honest. You know, I hit some tough topics. I'm very conservative. But I try to be honest no matter what side of the aisle you're on. And I'm going to tell you how I feel about things. And this was a tough one for me to talk about, because I have a lot of respect for the people, a lot of the people that are involved. I just do not agree personally with this decision for this increase. And I'm conflicted about, you know, the malfeasance of council and the fact that, you know, they're running a good ship and a taunt ship and they should be able to pay their employees. But I'm also cognizant of where their funding comes from. And in order to provide funding there, we cannot provide funding somewhere else. So I'm very, you know, I see the full picture there. And I'm curious what you think. They're coming up here and they're going to make a decision on that. They may need to hear from you about how you feel. You may agree with the raise. You may be one of the ones getting it. You want that raise. And I get it. I like more money, too. But I like the overall picture of having a safe and sound city. I like for us to have money in reserves. I like for us to be able to build for the future. I'm working on another podcast about the Foundry property. And, you know, I've been talking to a reporter online or, excuse me, on the phone the other night about some different things going on in the city. And there's a lot of things bouncing around about Radford's future out there. And I'm really concerned about that. I want to see Radford do well. But I think in order to do that, we have to make good financial decisions. We really need to start now. And if we don't start now, when are we going to start? Make decisions. I won't forget my interview with Mayor Starnes and one of the last things he said. You have to make decisions that are in the best interest of Radford City, even if it keeps you from getting reelected. That's why you sound up. That's what you have to do. Make good decisions. Everybody will agree with you, including me sometimes. I may not agree with you either. But you can lay your head down at night and say, you know what? I think I made a good decision. I did the best I could. Hey, I'm curious to hear what you think about this. Kind of ingest that a little bit. Think about it. I encourage you. Go back and listen to that meeting. It's on the Radford City YouTube. If you just Google Radford City, Virginia YouTube, usually you can pull up a whole list of those. This meeting was on the 16th. It's very long. But it's interesting. There are several citizens' comments and other things about the reassessments and other things that I found really interesting. And I think you should check it out. Now, I'm going to end this podcast as I always do with our theme verse, which is found in Ecclesiastes 12, verses 13 and 14. And God's word says this. Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Fear God and keep his commandments. For this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil. Hey, thanks for joining me here in the ring. I hope you have a wonderful weekend and that God richly blesses your family. Until then, I look forward to having you back with me here on One More Round Podcast. Thanks.