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Commissioner Carey asked how splitting off with Wake County has affected them and Robert Dowling said that the income limits are established by HUD, and the old Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) was Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill. After the 2QQQ census data came in 2QQ2, they split off Wake County from Durham and Orange Counties. They are now in the Durham MSA. The median income of Durham and Orange Counties is 15-18°~ lower than Wake County. So HUD has reduced the incomes by 15-18%. For four years now, the median income they have worked with has remained the same, but the price of housing is going up. Carol Orringer said that she has been teaching in the CHCCS for the past 27 years and she appreciates the time to be able to speak on the budget. She knows that the Board does not determine how the district spends its money. She spoke about the elementary world language program and said that this may be cut if the CHCCS is not fully funded. She said that even small cuts change what the program is, and if you cut back, it changes the academic aspects of the program. She asked the County Commissioners to fully fund the CHCCS budget request. Lisa Stuckey is Chair of the CHCCS Board of Education. She said that she believes that this is a year of both unique opportunity and unique challenge for education in CHCCS. The opportunity arises that State government is working to raise teacher salaries. Educators in North Carolina have been among the lowest paid in the nation for decades. This year's proposed state budget provides a major step forward for education by raising teacher salaries 8°~, administrator salaries 7°~, and staff salaries by 5%. These increases will allow them to better recruit and retain excellent public school personnel. They must match the state pay raises far those persons paid through local money. For CHCCS, this amounts to $2.4 million, which is nearly one half of their requested 11 °~ budget increase. This is the challenge - to match the pay raises without undermining the educational programming. If the County Commissioners accept the Manager's recommendation, the CHCCS will have a bit less than $7QQ,000 to meet their budget needs above and beyond matching pay raises. She said that these budget needs include costs that cannot be avoided such as $85Q,QQQ for continuation costs and inflation; $35Q,000 for projected growth and student population; $4QQ,QQQ in salary costs associated with opening Carrboro High School; and $565,QQQ in additional teacher and textbook costs related to high school reform. She said that if these needs are not met, it would be necessary to cut existing programs and personnel. She made reference to high school reform and said that without this, their students will have difficulty meeting new state graduation requirements. Based on last year's tests, some would not graduate. She said that she is heartened by the ongoing support each County Commissioner has shown to education over the years and further heartened by the efforts of the Manager to take some health and safety expenses out of the per pupil allocations. She looks forward to the recommendations of the fair funding work group. She urged the County Commissioners to fully fund the CHCCS budget request. Melissa Radcliff is Executive Directive of Family Violence Prevention Center of Orange County. She thanked the County Commissioners for their ongoing support. She has learned that many agencies she has contact with do not have financial support of local municipalities. She said that as a community they were reminded in April that domestic violence does exist in Orange County because there was an incident of domestic homicide in Chapel Hill. She said that starting last July they have served almost 6QQ clients. She said that they have a large volunteer pool. They will be celebrating their 5t" anniversary in July and they are fortunate to have so many community partners to offer help. She asked the County Commissioners to support the recommendations of the County Manager for funding. Mark Peters spoke on behalf of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro PTA Council. The PTAs in the district recently passed a position in favor of fully funding the budget request of the CHCCS Board of Education. He asked the County Commissioners to honor this PTA Council position and the school board's budget. He said that the County Manager's proposed funding for next year does not cover the ongoing expenses of the current programming and high school reform