School ready to start building

By Bob Wachs

It may not be the ideal situation but Chatham County’s board of education is willing, even pleased, to subscribe the old notion that “half a loaf is better than none.”

Obviously disappointed, even shocked as board chairman Allan Zimmerman recently said, that the system’s carefully planned and revised list of building needs was pared even more when the county learned it couldn’t handle the debt, board members got some good news at their meeting Monday night.

Superintendent Larry Mabe told the five-member group that county commissioners earlier in the day had given the go-ahead for four projects that head the list of absolute priorities. They include a new elementary school in Siler City, renovation of the seriously overcrowded lunchroom and kitchen at Jordan-Mattthews High School in Siler city, a new middle school for the northeastern portion of the county and renovation of the existing fifth- and sixth-grade wing at Horton Middle School.

Those projects will be paid for through certificates of participation, commonly known as COPS, a procedure which allows local governments to incur debt without a bond referendum.

Additionally, another school need project – lights on softball fields and tennis courts at the county’s high schools will be done and paid for through fees the county is currently receiving.

Mabe told the board “it looks like we can get some projects underway right away.” He said he would be in touch with the system’s architects this week to learn how much planning money would be necessary and that he would forward that information to county manager Charlie Horne.

more- See Thursday, April 7 paper: Vol 85, No.19

Impact fees up, tax hike likely

By Randall Rigsbee

To help pay for the construction of two new public schools and an expansion of Jordan-Matthews High School’s cafeteria, the Chatham County Board of Commissioners on Monday nearly doubled the countywide impact fee on new residential construction.

The increased fee, effective April 15, is $2,900.

It’s the first time the countywide fee has been raised since county commissioners enacted a $1,500 impact fee in 1999.

In addition, commissioners may fund other capital needs – including a new Department of Social Services building, infrastructure for the county’s business park, campus improvements for Central Carolina Community College, a new Pittsboro library, and a county judicial center – by raising the county tax rate by 4 cents per $100 valuation.

Including school construction, the county is facing capital needs totaling approximately $73 million.

Commissioners on Monday discussed the potential 4-cent tax hike, but took no action on it.

more- See Thursday, April 7 paper: Vol 85, No.19

State: children's group hasn't monitored funds

By Cara Rotondaro

The Chatham County Partnership for Children has not sufficiently monitored its finances, according to a state audit released last week.

The non-profit administers child care and other state and federal child-development programs.

This is the second year the agency has been faulted in an audit for insufficient fiscal monitoring.

The audit’s only finding, “inadequate contract fiscal monitoring,” is an issue which arose from funding and therefore, staff, cutbacks, said the agency’s Executive Director Genevieve Megginson.

 “It takes an awful lot of staff effort to meet those standards,” she said.

The non-profit is audited at the highest level of audit standards because it receives over $500,000 a year in public funds.

In the fiscal year ending of June of 2004, the group had received $1.1 million from the state and $675,000 from the federal government.

However, funding for Smart Start, a program that aims to make child care more affordable, has been cut 22 percent in the last two years, Megginson said, and staff cutbacks at the partnership were necessary.

“Now I’m the finance director and the executive director,” she said.

Megginson said that she failed to complete fiscal monitoring for five of the 29 programs the agency provides through partnerships with subcontractors because she simply didn’t have the time.

“Most of we did get done and I feel really good about that,” said Megginson

more- See Thursday, April 7 paper: Vol 85, No.19