By Taylor Boyd
Members of the Patrick County Board of Supervisors and the Patrick County School Board discussed sharing vehicle maintenance at a Feb. 3 liaison committee meeting.
Schools Superintendent Dean Gilbert said the school system has a transportation area for its buses that includes a three-bay garage and four mechanics.
“We probably need some more people in our technology and maintenance department to service what we need to do because they’re constantly running behind. This is no fault of anybody’s other than the fact that at one time, we had 10 or 11 people in maintenance, now we have seven,” he said.
“I’m wondering if we could get them to do maintenance for the county vehicles. It wouldn’t include” vehicles at the Patrick County Sheriff’s Office, Dr. Clyde DeLoach, Blue Ridge District supervisor, said.
DeLoach said the proposal would include oil changes and help both boards out financially.
“We could fund you another position to help with it. It would help us to save us money” too, he added.
Walter Scott, vice chairman of the school board, said the proposal also could include the heating, ventilation, and air conditions (HVAC) systems.
“I don’t know what you pay for your HVAC systems, but these guys have got HVAC people, and if you paid for one of those salaries, you would come out better than you would than paying for one by yourself,” he said.
School board chairman Brandon Simmons said, “it’s one of those things that if you could work out the same kind of situation like the maintenance” with HVAC or other areas, “it kind of says, ‘we can help you out and you can help us.’ I know sometimes you all have pieces of machinery and stuff that we might need access to.”
“I think it would be really cool about the boards and the systems working together,” Scott said, and added that looking for cost-sharing opportunities “could help each other.”
Gilbert said legal ramifications could interfere with moving forward with the proposal.
“I would actually have to check on the legal liabilities of this” because while some school employees are not classified as state employees, a portion of their salary is paid by the state, he said.
Gilbert said the school division also inspects its own buses and vehicles.
There are “four guys down there, and there are certain times a year they are running hot trying to stay on top of things,” he said, and added the division also must buy two buses each of the next three or four years to stay on schedule, at an estimated cost between 80,000 to $90,000 each.
“We have some older buses, which do tend to break down more. So, it’s not unusual to go down there and find every bay taken with a bus, and vehicles waiting,” Gilbert said. “I don’t know with the capacity of the space we have and with the vehicles they have to work on, how efficient it would be to do that.
“If you’re just talking about oil changes,” things such as which entity will pay for parts and labor, and “how do you keep it stored separately” would need to be determined, Gilbert said.
“We don’t want county property getting used on school system property and vice versa. We had a situation like that last year and it was not good,” Gilbert said, adding the proposal could also lead to personnel issues.
He said it may be summer before he could really start looking into the legalities, the insurance coverages, and consulting with the division’s attorney.
Gilbert said he also was sure supervisors would want to consult with the county attorney to “see if there’s anything there. It would have to be a written memorandum of understanding and an agreement” that both boards could agree to, and “it would also have to be filed and updated on a constant basis.”
Deloach said the board has received a lot of criticism about how it balances its budget.
“The truth is, a huge amount goes to schools, and then another huge chunk goes to public safety,” he said, adding that debt service also must be figured into the bottom line.
After those large expenses, “when you take in the amount we have to spread around all the other categories, it’s not much,” DeLoach said.
Noting that the county gives the school board the minimum amount required each year, DeLoach said he “would like to see that go up.”
Gilbert said the school budget for the previous year was $28 million. Grants received put the budget at more than $29 million.
“If you go strictly by our total budget of what the county provides in our total budget, it’s about 18 percent,” Gilbert said.
Members of the school board are reviewing budget requests from the schools and department heads, Gilbert said, and added some of the requests include support for a summer remediation program, paving, restroom updates, and an English teacher and special education teacher for the high school.
The school board also has prioritized pay raises to school employees, he said, adding work on the division’s budget proposal is ongoing.
