By Barry Jacobs

The deed is done. The fun is over. The Orange County budget has been adopted for the fiscal year that started on July 1.

OK, I’m exaggerating — the budget process is not fun. Balancing competing interests and demands within perpetual financial constraints is challenging and bracing, but not most folks’ idea of a good time.

Funding choices reveal our county’s concerns, priorities, beliefs, needs and aspirations. And, unlike the state Legislature’s budget process, the county commissioners make their judgments in the full light of day, our every deliberation a public session, with ample opportunities for residents to speak their minds and to make their cases.

A fractious process may be inevitable. But a sense of alarm is needlessly stoked when events are recounted without historical context, yesterday’s truths all but forgotten today.

Take the assertion that caring parents are compelled annually to demand more funding for schools. Recent experience shows otherwise. Just a few years ago, Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools advocates were apparently so pleased with the proposed budget they were notable by their absence from our hearings. This eluded public comment, but certainly was obvious to county commissioners.

Even when there is cause for concern, the record is incontrovertible — the Orange County Board of Commissioners routinely supports education, and well. Every year since 1997, the Public School Forum of North Carolina, an educational organization, has ranked Orange County first in the state in total effort when accounting for per-pupil funding, capital expenses related to schools and debt payment for school facilities.

This unwavering commitment is the primary reason the county has experienced property tax increases for at least 19 consecutive years. We stay abreast of constructing quality, environmentally sound facilities and strive to provide the teachers, programs, administrators and materials necessary to assure the best possible education in both growing school systems. We do so while remaining acutely mindful that the county has other, equally compelling service imperatives, and that the rising burden of property taxation tears at the richly varied fabric of our community.

This year we very nearly covered $7 million in new school needs, maintained county services and kept a tax increase to a minimum.

Please remember that record, and these lingering concerns, as we approach next budget season:

• State spending on public education in North Carolina has been in decline as a total percentage of the budget since the early 1970s. That means local governments bear an increasing burden to support schools, a situation sure to stress property taxes and to disadvantage poorer counties. We need more revenue options at the local level. Orange County also is working assiduously to broaden the non-residential tax base without sacrificing our quality of life.
• Noble initiatives at the state level such as reducing class size and raising teacher salaries have unacknowledged financial consequences for county governments. While state politicians strut, local dollars must be marshaled to build more classrooms to accommodate smaller classes and to match higher salary levels for numerous locally funded teaching positions.
• Nothing is gained by insisting that support for seniors, animal services or parks is a form of pandering to special interests at the expense of education. Any interest taken in isolation is selfish, a special interest, including education.
• School budgets are not sacrosanct. The idea that we should simply cut county spending while adding each year to school operating budgets is silly. If we teach children to fashion buggy whips, must we continue to do so even as circumstances change? Perpetual review of programs is imperative, both for the schools and the county.
• Large school-fund balances — pots of public money — are a luxury, especially in tough times. Since the county is the ultimate guarantor of financial obligations incurred by its educators, school reserves may be superfluous. Moreover, an agreement reached in the mid-1980s set fund balance levels for each school system; this year, both retained more than the agreed percentage, even as taxpayers were implored to spend more.

Commissioners, school board members and citizens generally agree the budget process needs improvement and the issue of fund balances should be revisited. But officials’ public comments on these matters go largely unreported, leaving an impression of inertia.

We are fortunate that relations between the school boards and commissioners are the best in recent memory. That makes it possible to craft a mutually advantageous budget process and fiscal goals that minimize costs, surprises, misunderstanding and gamesmanship. Conflict may be entertaining, but harmony has its own charms.