Future of Pope School project discussed at Madison Co. budget meeting

MADISON COUNTY, Tenn. — The Madison County Budget Committee met to discuss some important topics Tuesday morning, one being the Pope School project.

“[Trying to determine] how much money we’re actually going to borrow,” said budget committee chairman Doug Stephenson. “We have about $17.1 million left of ARPA money, that’s money that was given to us by the federal government that we can use to build Pope School.”

The committee plans on presenting to Financial Management to borrow $32 million to cover the school, along with $16 million from the ARPA fund.

“What it’s doing with the $32 million, it’s putting our borrowing at about $104 to $106 million dollars, what that’s doing [is] we’ve got an agreement with the city where we had the property tax increase,” Stephenson said.

Another point of concern was the amount of students Pope will have. Originally, the goal was 1,000 students. Now that number has change to 1,250.

“One of my concerns was when they said 1,250 students, are we going to make it expandable to put, let’s say 1,500 students?” said Stephenson. “But then the other thing that’s a good thing for our community would be, we have enough land to say ‘Okay, we’re going to eventually add another early college high out there.'”

There are many possibilities for the future of Pope Elementary School, however, many are finally glad to be making some progress.

“I think we’re moving in the right direction, we’ve done real well on our fund balance to try to keep that up, what we’re trying to do in our situation as commissioner, we try to make sure we cover an emergency.”

The next budget meeting will take place on Tuesday, February 22 at 8:30 a.m.

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