The Waynesboro School Board approved a $30-million budget Friday, slashing 20 positions but reducing the number of anticipated layoffs.

Waynesboro City Council candidate Mike Harris today announced his intention for the city to rethink its budgeting process.

Breaking extended silence on the budget and a pesky $4.2-billion spending deficit, Gov. Robert F. McDonnell has spoken, demonstrating to his detractors the value of sealed lips.

VERONA – Augusta County School Board members were told Thursday they are looking at a $5.3-million gap in expenditures and revenues in the 2010-11 budget — and that is prior to the latest proposed state cuts.

Area schools superintendents were digesting news Wednesday of Gov. Robert F. McDonnell’s proposed $731 million in additional cuts to K-12 education for the next two years, but said the news from McDonnell can’t be positive.

VERONA – Augusta County Schools officials are bracing for an projected $8-million cut in state money in the next budget year, possibly triggering furloughs, salary reductions and support staff layoffs.

RICHMOND — Public schools may not look the same next fall, two months after Virginia begins a new budget year.

Class sizes could grow as large as state law allows. Music, art, and physical education could shrink to the minimum. Teaching assistants and other support staff could disappear.

“I believe it would reflect a level of quality that would shock virtually every community in Virginia,” said Hanover County Superintendent Stewart W. Roberson in an interview on Friday.

RICHMOND — Virginians are taking home less pay, spending less in stores and are still getting hit on their investments, new state tax collection statistics show.

Business profits are up sharply, according to the statistics, but with retail sales lagging, when that will translate into new hiring and investment is still unclear, economists say.

VERONA – Augusta County supervisors voted to cut $836,000 from the current fiscal year budget Wednesday night to offset state and local shortfalls, but not without strong dissent from one member.

Blue Ridge copes with rising demand, cuts

All 690 workers at the state mental hospital in Staunton have been warned of potential layoffs as a result of Virginia’s budget squeeze.

Employees at Western State Hospital received a memo from the facility’s director, Dr. Jack Barber, advising that during previous rounds of state cuts, administrators had slashed spending “without laying off anyone who did not apply to go. This is our aim with this rounds’ [cuts] as well.”

Having been hit with $1 million in state funding cuts over the last two years, Blue Ridge Community College is bracing for another round of reductions.

Heritage Museum funds restored, 1 furlough day eliminated

The Virginia Department of Transportation is eliminating two Augusta County rest stops, the Verona residency office and is making across the board service reductions in cuts approved Thursday by the Commonwealth Transportation Board.

The Waynesboro City Council agreed during a Wednesday work session to eliminate one of the two furlough days that city employees were to receive in City Manager Mike Hamp’s proposed fiscal year 2010 budget.