|
|
|
|
|
Schools to get $258,000 from lottery
by Mark Gabriel
The Wilkes County school system will receive its $258,000 share of the revenue from the North Carolina Education Lottery that was delayed earlier this year.
"That's our third-quarter installment," said Wilkes County Schools Superintendent Dr. Stephen C. Laws. "It affected all of us in the schools statewide. We were all still trying to pay our bills, and we just didn't get that money."
Gov. Beverly Perdue ordered state officials to withhold those lottery revenues six months ago, at the height of the financial crisis that plagued state governments nationwide. At the time, the governor cited the need to use the revenue during the emergency to help prevent the state from going bankrupt.
The crisis has since eased, and the governor this week ordered the state to release those revenues to schools, which totaled nearly $38 million statewide.
The lottery revenue, earmarked by law for brick-and-mortar projects in schools, helps offset losses in sales tax revenue, caused by people purchasing fewer goods during the current recession, he said.
However, changes made in state law will still affect the schools' ability to pay for ongoing school construction projects, Laws said.
"We are losing the public school capital fund," he said. "It came from the old corporate tax revenue. We got a piece of it every year.
"We are losing $615,000, which we directed always to debt service for construction projects at our high and middle schools.
"That's a bigger blow to us than the sales tax. This corporate tax is never coming back."
Wilkes County expects to receive $1.15 million from lottery proceeds every year, now that Wilkes has been moved into the top tier for lottery revenues.
The upgrade nearly doubles the share of lottery revenues Wilkes will receive this year and in subsequent fiscal years, Laws said. The previous share totaled some $600,000 annually, he said.
"The lottery by law is for brick-and-mortar construction, either the purchase of land or construction of buildings," Laws said. "We have been using it for debt service. Now that we have that lottery money this year, we can place it into the flow of debt service and projects we're in the midst of completing.
"I think the main thing is we got paid back a portion of the lottery money that was, in essence, borrowed by the governor. That enables us to better handle this year the projects we have going. That's the good news, and we're very thankful." |
|
|
|
|
