INSIDE GHS students contribute to Google Earth > page 4
Volume 57, Number 9 • March 4, 2010
Tax increase considered to balance budget Proposed 2011 budget down 7.3 percent; $1.5 million shortfall By Amy Condra acondra@goochlandgazette.com
County Administrator Rebecca Dickson presented her recommended 2011 budget of $40.5 million at a workshop session of the Board of Supervisors last Tuesday. The proposed plan is down 7.3 percent from this year’s operating budget of $43.7 million, and the county is still facing a budget shortfall of nearly $1.5 million for next year. Real estate taxes, which fell 8.2 percent this year and are expected to decline an additional four percent next year, are the county’s largest source of income, said Dickson. There is little to no growth expected in the county’s other sources of income, such as personal property taxes, recordation taxes, business license taxes, building permits and investment income. Dickson offered supervisors four options to balance the budget: Further reductions, two- or –three cent tax rate increases combined with the use of fund balance, or a 4-cent tax rate increase. In addition to balancing the 2011 budget, a 4cent increase would, said Dickson, restore about $800,000 in 2010 revenue to fund balance and establish a higher revenue baseline for the 2012 see Budget> page 2
INDEX
Calendar Classifieds News Letters Education
12 13-15 5 6-7 4
Opinion Features Politics Sports TV Listings
6 3 2 9 10-12
Photo by Ken Odor
Steve Fleming and documentary film maker Jacquelyn Pogue talk at the end of Sunday’s program at Goochland Middle School. The program featured a showing of Pogue’s documentary “Locked Out: The Fall of Massive Resistance.”
New film documents Massive Resistance throughout Virginia Program discusses strategy used to stall segregation
Half a century ago, despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision which ruled “separate but equal” school sysBy Ken Odor tems unconstitutional, most of the jodor@goochlandgazette.com state’s schools were still segregated by About 50 participants came to race. Goochland High School Sunday to take Massive Resistance, a strategy part in a community dialogue about a devised by the state to interpose itself pivotal era in Virginia race relations.
SPORTS Soggy fields have dampened practice > page 9
T H E
between the federal government and the order to desegregate, was Virginia’s response. Cities and counties dragged their feet while implementing the federal order. Prince Edward County closed its public schools entirely, from 1959see Resistance > page 3
L O C A L
west SERVING EASTERN GOOCHLAND AND WESTERN HENRICO
Children learn pet care at Twin Hickory Recreation Center