BEDFORD -- The Bedford County Board of Supervisors stuck to its guns Monday evening and did not allocate any additional funding for the county's school board.

The supervisors voted 7-0 to approve an $83 million budget for the upcoming year -- more than half of which will fund the county's public schools. The supervisors also voted unanimously to keep the real estate tax rate at 50 cents per $100 assessed value.

Earlier this year, county officials advised the school board to anticipate $1.5 million less in local funding because revenues are declining for the first time in decades. Despite the supervisors' directive, the school board submitted a budget requesting about $277,000 more than the county proposed to allocate. Those funds would have been used to preserve training stipends for teachers aides and to lease nine new school buses.

County Administrator Kathleen Guzi said the county expects to receive about $3 million less in the upcoming fiscal year, mostly because of decreasing personal property values. In recent years, the county and the school board have had a gentlemen's agreement to split new revenue. Guzi and several board members have said if the county shares the proceeds in good times, it should share the cuts in leaner times.

In an eleventh-hour move, the supervisors identified $116,400 in additional savings that could be had by increasing efficiency in the solid waste department and handling more legal services internally.

Chairman John Sharp suggested giving some of those funds to the school division, but other board members said the excess should go into the contingency fund as agreed at a previous budget work session, when Sharp was absent.

The discussion at Monday's work session before the meeting diverted quickly from the budget and onto another financial matter: audits.

Big Island District Supervisor Steve Arrington and Montvale District Supervisor Annie Pollard recommended requiring an audit of any organization that receives county funds. Pollard said she would like to provide $2,000 to the county's volunteer fire and rescue departments to cover the expense.

The push toward auditing comes after last month's arrest of Jeffrey Shifflett, the former volunteer chief at the Hardy Volunteer Fire Company, who is accused of mismanaging the department's funds. Shifflett has been charged with felony forgery and is accused of using the fire department's credit cards and checking account for his own benefit.

Huddleston District Supervisor Roger Cheek and Stewartsville Supervisor Dale Wheeler said they were opposed to auditing the county's volunteer fire and rescue departments.

"We don't own these fire and rescue squads. They are community-based," Cheek said.

The other five board members said they were in favor of auditing or implementing some other form of standardized accounting, but did not concur Monday evening on which route to pursue.

"Any accountability is going to be better than what we have now because we don't have any," Arrington said.

Bedford County Director of Fiscal Management Susan Crawford will prepare a recommendation regarding how the audits should be executed and bring it to the supervisors at a future meeting.