The "Hooey" of Transylvania's Tier 3 Ranking and How It May Impact a Schools' Grant
The state calls Transylvania a Tier 3 county -- or one of the 20 most prosperous in North Carolina -- a designation that unfairly hampers county efforts to secure state funding, leaders say.
BREVARD — The County Commission voted Monday to back Transylvania County Schools’ application for a $50 million grant that could serve as a lifeline to the stalled $68 million effort to renovate Brevard High School and Rosman high and middle schools
It could, that is, if the application can overcome what local leaders say is the state’s flawed classification of Transylvania as a Tier 3 county, which lumps it in with Mecklenburg and Wake counties as among the 20 least “economically distressed” in the state.
“As you know, we’re a Tier 3 county, which is a bunch of hooey,” Commission Vice Chair Jake Dalton said to School Superintendent Jeff McDaris at the meeting. “How do you think that might impact our chances?”
The designation doesn’t rule out an award for Transylvania, according to the state Department of Public Instruction (DPI), but it certainly won’t help. And because the rankings are factored into awards for a range of state funding programs, the discussion highlighted broader disadvantages the tier designation creates for Transylvania.
The source of the grant program discussed Monday — the Needs-Based Public School Capital Fund — is typically available only to Tier 1 and Tier 2 counties, which the state considers more “economically distressed.” Transylvania is only eligible this year because a boom in lottery proceeds bumped the total amount available in the fund to $395 million — more than three times as much as last year.
But even this year, Tier 1 counties — the 40 that the state Department of Commerce considers the most distressed — will get the first crack at these grants, Nathan Maune, chief of DPI’s School Planning Section, wrote in an emailed response to questions: The “criteria prioritize applications from Tier 1 counties ahead of those received from Tier 2 and Tier 3 counties.”
The Transylvania County School Board voted last week to seek the grant, which also needed the backing of commissioners, whose unanimous approval came one day before Tuesday’s application deadline. The Board and county are expected to hear next month whether the request was granted.
Its chances may be improved, McDaris told the Board at its March 7 meeting, by the dire need for upgrades that the application documents.
Rosman Middle School, for example, was built in 1949, the application says, and suffers from a range of concerns including flooding and “evidence of foundation shifting;” at Brevard, the support beams of the 63-year-old cafeteria and auxiliary gym are “showing evidence of rotting and eventual failure.”
The Career and Technical Education wing at Brevard, meanwhile, is not only outdated, according to the application, “but has serious infrastructure problems.”
The application includes issues, such as those at the gym and cafeteria, that would be addressed in a pared-down renovation plan the Board recommended after bids for the renovations came in $18.2 million higher than expected last summer. A proposed replacement of the CTE building, meanwhile, was among the cuts.
At a Jan. 31 joint meeting with the Commission, the Board urged fast action to approve the revised plan in an effort to avoid the need for further cutbacks in the face of still-rising construction costs. The Commission, which asked for additional information about the amended approach, has not yet renewed this discussion.
That means Schools does not know the full range of work that will be paid for by the $68 million bond issue voters approved in 2018, McDaris said, answering a question from Commissioner Teresa McCall about what work would be funded by the grant and what would be covered by the bond funds.
Instead, the grant application represents Schools’ efforts to secure any means of funding available, McDaris said. “It’s sort of a case where we’re trying to find any money we can, and if we don’t ask we don’t receive.”
Along with the 40 Tier 1 counties, 40 more are in the mid-range Tier 2, while the 20 remaining counties are classified as Tier 1 counties. The rankings are based on measures including unemployment rate, median household income and per capita property tax base.
When the Transylvania learned, late in 2020, that it would be soon be classified as one of the state’s most prosperous counties, its leaders began arguing the ranking was skewed by a familiar dynamic — a large numbers of wealthy retirees and second-home owners who mask the struggles of working county residents.
For example, County Manager Jaime Laughter wrote in an email to a state lawmaker, the rankings do not include average wages; in 2019, these were the 20th lowest in the state, which put Transylvania squarely in the realm of Tier 1 counties. Nor does it account for child poverty rates, Laughter wrote. That was 24 percent in Transylvania, compared to 18 percent in much larger Buncombe County.
“I don’t think any reasonable person could look at the map of (Western North Carolina) and think the tier formula is reflecting county economic realities and challenges accurately,” she wrote.
These sentiments were echoed by the Land of Sky Regional Council, the Transylvania Economic Alliance and the Brevard/Transylvania Chamber of Commerce.
“We believe that the tier designation system used by the North Carolina Department of Commerce to rank the state’s counties based on economic well-being is outdated, inaccurate, and unfairly evaluates rural counties in need,” the Alliance and Chamber wrote in a joint letter to state Sen. Chuck Edwards last year.
Before the Commission considered a resolution to challenge the ranking system in December of 2020, staffers prepared a document listing a dozen state funding programs impacted by the county’s impending Tier 3 designation, including the needs-based grants for capital improvements at schools, a program providing spay and neuter funding and several forms of economic development aid.
Transylvania’s designation may not render it ineligible for those development funds, said Burton Hodges, executive director of the Transylvania Economic Alliance, but it can limit award amounts.
Both he and Laughter said they have not given up fighting for a chance in the system.
“I think that making sure Transylvania County is in the best position to succeed is always top of mind and we will continue to have that discussion with our public partners,” Hodges said.
But Laughter also said this is a difficult task because of potential pushback from representatives of counties benefiting from the current system.
“There does not seem to be a sense of interest in the legislature as a whole to make changes to the formula because it currently has this disproportionate effect on a few counties and changing it could have a similar effect on other counties,” she wrote in an email.
Thanks Dan. Great story. "The rankings do not include average wages; in 2019, these were the 20th lowest in the state, which put Transylvania squarely in the realm of Tier 1 counties. Nor does it account for child poverty rates, Laughter wrote. That was 24 percent in Transylvania, compared to 18 percent in much larger Buncombe County." Completely unacceptable.We need to ask why these rates are so low and what to do to reverse them.