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DRAFT <br />4. The County's intention is to leave open any doors for the future, while balancing the needs of schools, <br />affordable housing, recreation, open space, and other competing priorities. <br />5. There will likely be a need to go back to voters soon for bond funds for school needs, justice facilities, <br />open space, and senior centers. <br />6. The School Boards have concerns about not only the increased cost of providing for more students, <br />but also more programs being mandated for more students. <br />7. Commissioners hear from people who come to public hearings asking for tax increases to pay for <br />schools, but also hear from people who don't come to public hearings. There are many citizens on <br />fixed incomes in Orange County, more than there are students in school. <br />8. The County is not looking at a hard cap, but thinking in terms of "targets" rather than "open- ended" <br />school funding requests that leave us increasingly Linable to address other needs. The County might <br />set a target and ask schools to meet it, but this is an evolving process and no limits are intractable. <br />9. School representatives noted that allocating 48% of County general funds to education might not <br />necessarily refle overmvestmen in schools, but underinvestment in other areas of County services. <br />There was also discussion that funding needed for education may or may not be affected by the same <br />economic forces that affect funding needed for other County services. <br />10. CHCCS presented a memorandum (Attachment 2) articulating certain concerns, including: <br />a) the belief that operating budgets should be separated from capital and debt budgeting, which have <br />discrete revenue streams associated with them; <br />b) about 85% of funding increases in recent years have gone to meet legal, moral, or ethical <br />mandates; <br />c) the formulaic approach to budgeting as a percentage of the County budget could lead to <br />underfunding or overftmding of education in any given year. <br />11. The CHCCS memorandum addresses 3 alternative models: <br />a) Model 6 — per pupil County appropriation would increase 11 % annually; <br />b) Model 7 —noting Governor Hunt's call for North Carolina to become #1 in education by 2010, this <br />model would provide a 20% annual increase in per pupil funding for current expense; <br />c) Model 8 —forego any formulaic approach and "simply use sound reasoning and good judgment ", <br />suggesting that this approach that has worked in the past and should not be abandoned. <br />12. County representatives cited the 1988, 1992 and 1997 school bond referenda as evidence that we are <br />not moving away from sound reasoning and are not relying just on historical patterns. Nothing the <br />County proposes would preclude using "sound reasoning and good judgment ". Funding for schools <br />must be part of the equation and everything must be on the table in evaluating needs. <br />13. OCS representatives provided a review of their 5 -year history of mandates or "non- negotiables ". The <br />two school systems share concerns that with a formula covering all major school fielding categories, <br />