The Prince Edward County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to adopt the Fiscal Year 2020 (FY20) county budget, FY20 school budget and 2019 tax levies with a few amendments to the budgets but no changes to tax rates, which remain the same as FY 2019.

County Administrator Wade Bartlett said the new FY20 county budget total is $57,657,743.

He noted that Prince Edward County Public Schools (PECPS) Superintendent Dr. Barbara Johnson attended the Tuesday meeting to answer some questions from the board.

“There were questions over two positions she requested additional money for — one was an IT (Information Technology) technician and the other was an assistant principal at the middle school,” he said. “… She talked about the need for both of those positions.”

The board had been considering the possibility of approving a $596,687 increase in county funding for PECPS. Supervisors opted to decrease that amount slightly with the adopted budget.

“While the county board of supervisors cannot tell the schools, ‘You cannot hire an assistant principal,’ what they control is the funding,” Bartlett said. “So they reduced the transfer from the general fund — the local dollars to go to the schools — by that $125,000. That had been in the original budget.”

The adopted budgets ended up reflecting a $471,687 increase in county funding allocated to the school budget.

“It’s still a considerable increase from local dollars, and of course, they received an increase from the state,” Bartlett said. Adding in the state funding, he noted, “The increase of the school budget, year to year, even after reducing that $125,000 is almost $1 million — $995,127.”

Including federal, state and county funding along with other sources, the FY20 school budget total revenues come to $25,955,279. Of that total, $8,912,671 is county funding.

The increased county funding will help the school system in a variety of ways, some of which Bartlett listed.

“They received funds to hire an early childhood special education teacher, a sixth-grade history teacher, a sixth-grade science teacher, a special education teacher … and the technology assistant,” he said, “and of course, the additional funding to provide a 5 percent salary increase for every employee …”

In terms of salary increases, Bartlett confirmed county employees and constitutional officers will be receiving 3 percent increases with the FY20 county budget.

He indicated that the discussion of the school budget Tuesday was followed up by “a discussion with Sharon Harrup, the president of STEPS, because a couple of the board members had questions about an increase that she was requesting from the county.”

He later said that for STEPS, “what was originally in the budget was approved, which was based on additional services being provided to the residents of Prince Edward County.”

The two line items in the budget for STEPS total $42,171.

In the economic development fund, supervisors approved another $23,368 to allow the county to stay in Virginia Growth Alliance for one more year, Bartlett said.

Smaller amendments to the FY20 county budget came out of discussions over the course of the board’s budget work sessions, but the board could not vote on them until they voted to adopt the budget.

One of those amendments included donating $8,000 to the Robert Russa Moton Museum.

“There was no funding in the original budget for Moton Museum,” Bartlett said.

Additionally, the board “increased the budget by $2,000 to provide some funding for the Longwood Small Business Development Center,” Bartlett said. “The original budget did not have any funds for that organization, so they put $2,000 in. And then they created a new line for county recreation, and they agreed to place $10,000 in it. So that was $8,000, $10,000, $2,000, which is a grand total of $20,000. To balance that, we increased the revenue from local sales tax by $20,000.”

This does not denote a change to tax rates, which again, remain unchanged from FY 2019.

Further amendments to the FY20 county budget may come as the Hampden-Sydney Volunteer Fire Department and Meherrin Volunteer Fire and Rescue have requested funding increases, and the Prince Edward Volunteer Rescue Squad remains in need.