By Lorraine Yuriar

On March 19, Councilman Charles Parr said, “I’d love to see a line-item budget from the schools.” We agree, and would like to challenge the councilman to take it a step further and also request a line item budget from the city.

Mayor Linda Johnson has said repeatedly the budget is not due until the end of June. There is plenty of time for both the School Board and the City Council to put together and release line item budgets. We would like to see these line-item budgets available to the public 30 days ahead of a public hearing, to allow the citizens of this city to give the City Council and the School Board ideas and direction for ways to trim both budgets.

It was disingenuous of the City Council to hold a public hearing asking citizens to give them “specific ideas of where to cut city spending” without giving the citizens any sort of documentation ahead of time detailing city spending habits.

It also appears that either the School Board or the Suffolk Education Association has misled teachers. Teachers need to know that the School Board gets a lump sum from the city. It is the School Board’s responsibility to distribute that money in a manner it sees fit. The city has very little to do with the teachers’ pay raise.

At the end of the public hearing, several councilmen, especially Parr and Mike Duman, commented that they had heard two messages: NO more taxes and fund the schools. But they said they were disappointed the citizens had not given them specific areas to cut in order to fulfill those two messages.

Parr had his own idea to save some money during the council meeting March 6. He said he did not want to hear people telling him to cut the council members’ salaries, and Johnson said with a chuckle, “That would be wonderful if it would balance the budget, but it won’t work.” Parr responded, “If $20,000 or $15,000 will do it, they can have it.” We would challenge the councilman, the mayor, the rest of the Council and even the School Board to follow through with that suggestion.

Despite the councilmen’s assertions, there were several options mentioned, including cutting back on city vehicles and not funding 100 percent of the city manager’s healthcare costs. It was otherwise impossible for citizens to give the council what it wanted due to a lack of information about the city’s spending habits.

So we in the Suffolk Chapter of the Hampton Roads Tea Party hereby challenge the City Council and the School Board to:

• Release line-item budgets
• Post the budgets online and allow 30 days for citizens to peruse the documents
• Hold a public meeting, town-hall style to allow for true interaction between the City Council and School Board and the public. Anyone who has something to say beyond “Fund the schools” should be allowed to share genuine ideas about spending reform.

Lorraine Yuriar is a homeschooling mom of three, and social media contact for the Suffolk Chapter of the Hampton Roads Tea Party, which meets every first and third Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. in the Constantia House behind Baker Funeral Home at 509 West Washington St. Email her at thekytikat@yuriar.com.