BOTETOURT COUNTY (WSLS 10) - Botetourt County Supervisors approved an increase in funding for schools Monday night.
The county will dedicate $1.35 million dollars more in its 2016 - 2017 fiscal year budget.
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The schools were originally requesting a little more than $1.8 million dollars for an increase, so this comes in about $500 thousand dollars short of that, but the school system has said with that money, one of the priorities is increases of 2% in wages for school system staff.
The County has proposed raising taxes on real estate by nine cents in part to cover the increase in school funding.
That would bring the county's 72 cent rate up to 81 cents.
That number isn't set in stone, but people who will be paying for
the increase in their tax dollars have mixed reactions.
"If it's going towards paying our teachers more and paying them what they deserve. If it's a matter of facilities and things like Fire and EMS, those are all things that we're committed to and we want to be strong in our community, and we would be more than happy to pay our share to achieve that," said Cassie Hunt, who owns a home in Botetourt County.
"The county workers, the government workers make up 3 percent of Botetourt County, and they're willing to lower the standard of living for 97 percent of non-government workers in order to give teachers and county workers yet another pay raise," Don Assaid, a former County Supervisor.
The school board says teachers in the county have not received a pay raise other than cost of living increases since 2008.
The Board of Supervisors will vote on May 24th to approve the official County Budget.
Any new tax raises would go into affect July first.