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Scottie Scheffler speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Open golf tournament on Tuesday in Pinehurst.
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Scottie Scheffler speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Open golf tournament on Tuesday in Pinehurst.
Scottie Scheffler speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Open golf tournament on Tuesday in Pinehurst.
Scottie Scheffler speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Open golf tournament on Tuesday in Pinehurst.
The Alamance-Burlington School System’s funding request took center stage once again at the second of the Alamance County Board of Commissioners’ budget work sessions on June 10.
County Manager Heidi York presented a printout of the school administrators’ written answers to questions that the commissioners at the first work session on May 30.
Interim Superintendent Bill Harrison has requested an ABSS budget of $59.17 million for coming fiscal year — an increase of 27%, or $10.43 million, in county funding even while cutting nearly $7.6 million worth of spending due to the expiration of federal COVID-19 pandemic relief funding. Harrison has said that many of the budget cuts will lead to the elimination of teaching and instructional support positions in the schools.
Commissioners’ questions covered a range of topics, including the ABSS request for an additional $1.4 million for technical support and equipment replacement, an operational increase of $1.4 million and an additional $500,000 for Alamance Virtual School.
ABSS Chief Operations Officer Greg Hook said that $415,000 of the technical support and equipment funding is earmarked for the replacement of 25% of the Google Chromebooks in the school system.
“Our current view is once we use a Chromebook for four years, it needs to go out of the schools,” Hook said.
Hook said that $700,000 of the requested $1.4 million increase in operational costs was earmarked for preventative maintenance: $550,000 for HVAC systems and $150,000 for roofs.
A complicating factor is that ABSS is currently struggling to recruit and retain qualified HVAC technicians due to competition with the private sector, Hook said.
“We have seven total HVAC positions with three vacancies,” Hook said. “If we could find qualified applicants, what we would do is preventative maintenance. … So the problem is, in this market with state salaries, we’re not able to match the private industry.”
Hook also said the school system is projecting energy costs to increase 112% due in part to running HVAC units in school buildings during the summer months to prevent a repeat problem of toxic mold like the school system had to address last summer.
Also Monday, County Finance Officer Susan Evans made a presentation on the county’s fund balance.
“We have not actually had to dip into any of that fund balance savings,” Evans said.
Evans said the county is projecting revenues for the coming fiscal year to be around $211.2 million and expenditures to be $207 million.
Evans added the revenue projection does not take into account the $10 million provided by the American Rescue Plan Act.
“We have to have those funds spent by the end of December, so we want to go ahead and get those moved over to the general fund,” Evans said.
The commissioners are expected to adopt their FY 2024-25 budget during their regular meeting on June 17.
Alamance County Commissioners Craig Turner (left) and Steven Carter listen to a presentation by ABSS Interim Superintendent Bill Harrision during the second of three budget work sessions on June 10.
Alamance County Commissioners Craig Turner (left) and Steven Carter listen to a presentation by ABSS Interim Superintendent Bill Harrision during the second of three budget work sessions on June 10.
BURLINGTON — U.S. Army Environmental Command officials will hold a public open house on June 27 about the ongoing environmental work at the former Tarheel Army Missile Plant in Burlington.
The 22-acre plant at 204 Graham-Hopedale Road, also known as the former Western Electric site, has been unused for years, but contamination includes solvents, benzene and two types of PFAS chemicals. Since the mid-1990s, the military has spent upward of $2 million remediating the contamination, but a full cleanup never happened.
The open house will be 2-4 p.m. and 6-8 p.m. June 27 at the Fairchild Community Center, 827 S. Graham-Hopedale Road.
The open house will provide an opportunity to gain additional information about the current remedial investigations at the site, according to an Army press release. This includes the current and planned activities for the chlorinated solvent investigations at the site.
There will also be information provided on the site investigation that was conducted for PFAS in 2023.
An area of the open house will be set up to engage community interest for participating in a remediation advisory board that is intended to help communicate with the local community and partner to inform future restoration decisions at the site, the press release said.
A metals recycling business associated with Toyota announced this week it will build a plant in Liberty to process battery material for off-site recycling and handle other waste streams, including cardboard and plastic, produced by the Toyota Battery Manufacturing North Carolina plant.
Green Metals Inc. will invest $19.8 million over five years to open the plant, which is expected to create 47 new jobs, the Randolph County Economic Development Corp. said.
Established in 1999, GMI is a Toyota Tsusho group company that provides customized industrial scrap and waste handling and recycling services. The company currently operates eight plants in the U.S.
The company has been awarded a $60,000 Recycling Business Development Grant by the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality to assist with the purchase of recycling equipment, the EDC said.
Randolph Community College will develop workforce training to help support GMI, the EDC said.
GMI launched its first resources recycling site in Georgetown, Kentucky, in 2000, according to information on the company’s website. Growing in tandem with Toyota Motor Corp.’s acceleration of manufacturing operations outside Japan, it eventually rapidly built up a recycling network with new sites in Europe, China and South Africa.