Earl Ray Tomblin signed a bill this week that, according to state School Building Authority officials, will cut by $4 million the SBA’s grants to counties for school construction and renovation projects. Because the amount of funding school systems request in each annual grant cycle usually far exceeds the SBA’s available dollars, counties compete to persuade the SBA staff and board which projects are the most needed.
SBA Executive Director David Sneed said SB 400 will cut $1 million from the agency’s “major improvement program” grant fund next fiscal year, which begins July 1.
The agency can approve awards of up to $1 million from the fund, which typically has about $5 million to distribute each year.
Sneed said the bill will cut $3 million from the SBA’s “needs” fund, which bankrolls larger projects and typically has about, in Sneed’s “conservative” estimate, $50 million a year. That cut took $2 million out of the major improvement program fund and $6 million out of the needs fund, and the decreases aren’t cumulative from this fiscal year to the next, so next fiscal year’s cut is actually lower.
Sneed said major improvement program funds were previously distributed in December, but the SBA board is delaying its vote until June this year to combine the undistributed, $3 million in funding from this fiscal year with next fiscal year’s $4 million in order to give out $7 million all at once.
