Lynchburg welcomes schools funds for city budget

City Councilman Jeff Helgeson said Wednesday he finds it “ironic” that the schools are offering to take a budget cut on the heels of his own, failed proposal to reduce local education spending.

As recently as last week, Helgeson argued that money should be taken from the schools and funneled into city salaries, which are slated to be cut this summer.

His motion died due to lack of a second from other council members.

“Evidently the schools decided to second my motion and give the money back,” he said Wednesday, one day after the Lynchburg School Board volunteered to return $500,000 to the city in the new budget year beginning July 1.

Helgeson said he did welcome the opportunity to put money back into city coffers, a feeling expressed by other local leaders.

Mayor Joan Foster said the unexpected offer was the “first bright point” in what has otherwise been a grim and painful year.

“This was the first time I’ve smiled in this whole, three-month budget process,” she said.

The school board voted Tuesday to amend its budget request after learning that an early retirement program established earlier this year was creating significant savings for the division.

Shrinking revenues led educators to cut about 68 positions in their budget, but around 50 people are taking advantage of the early retirement incentive. Those and other vacancies are allowing administrators to reassign other employees and minimize layoffs.

The division’s personnel figures are still in flux, but a report presented Tuesday said seven employees are slated to be let go at this point. Six of those are part-time.

The reduced number of layoffs is in turn reducing the division’s expected costs for employee severance. The school board is proposing to return part of those savings to the city, which many city officials described as a gracious gesture. The obvious use for these unexpected funds is to restore part of a 3 percent across-the-board pay cut built into the new city budget.

City Council has repeatedly expressed its commitment to restoring part or all of those lost wages should additional money become available.

The money in the school proposal is enough to restore one-third of the pay cut. Restoring the full cut would cost about $1.6 million.

Helgeson has regularly expressed concern the local schools are overfunded. He said he found it interesting that just last week his proposal to reduce school funding sparked a heated reaction at council, an exchange he described as people “wagging their fingers at me.”

“I raised the point. I brought up a specific proposal,” he said of his motion, which would have restored full pay for police officers only. “… This is what I’ve done my last five years on City Council, looked at things with a critical eye.”

Councilman Ceasor Johnson, who has clashed with Helgeson in recent debates about school funding, said he hoped this latest development would not be used to support further arguments the division is overfunded.

“I really hope people will not try to twist this into something it’s not,” he said. “I hope they will see this as a genuine act of good faith from the schools to help the city.”