News-Record.com

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• * The polar bears get $2.7 million. The zoo also gets $600,000 to plan the replacement of its African Pavilion.

• * A $500,000 grant is set aside for Sit In Movement Inc, the group working on the Civil Rights museum in Greensboro.

• * The legislature has been working on several sales tax issues, places in the revenue code where small businesses have complained they are being unfairly treated. For example, bakers have complained that stores can sell a loaf of bread at a 2 percent tax rate but if they sell the same loaf in a bakery store they have to tax at 7 percent. Interior designers had a related issue, which was particularly important to those who make their living around the High Point Furniture Market. A provision in the budget fixes the problem for the designers going forward.

• * Also related to furniture market, there was a to-do over market funding when the House originally trimmed funding. The final budget plan provides a total of $1.46 million for promoting the market to buyers, a number much closer to what the market was seeking.

• * Rockingham County is one of three school districts in a pilot program experimenting with paying more to new math and science teachers in order to recruit the hard to find instructors. Guilford County had started a similar program on its own and the state program is modeled on it.

  A line in the state budget expands the pilot. "The pilot program providing for salary supplements for newly hired mathematics or science teachers is modified to permit both highly qualified and newly hired teachers in the pilot units to qualify to receive salary supplements."

  As explained by one legislative staffer familiar with the new language, "it allows the salary supplements to be used to retain good math and science teachers, not just hire new ones."

• * Speaking of Rockingham remember the horse complex that Rockingham County has been trying to put together and is now going in with NCA&T to complete? The budget approves $2.4 million in borrowing to execute that project.

• * Guilford County's school lunch program was among those running a deficit when their leaders came to the General Assembly in May to ask for help providing more nutritious lunches to children. They did two things. First, they delayed the implementation of the new school nutrition standards until next year, the second or third such delay since they were originally written into law.

  The honorables also put in a $500,00 budget line "to implement pilot programs to address child obesity. The State Board of Education shall establish guidelines for designing and implementing the programs."

• * NCA&T's College of Engineering gets $2 million for "for additional faculty, equipment replacement and maintenance, and support of academic programs."

• * NCA&T gets $1.5 million recurring and another $1.5 million non-recurring to get its new nanoscience program off the ground.

• * The honorables would authorize a total of $20.49 million for a new classroom building at NCA&T, no more than $7 million of which would be authorized before July 1, 2009.

• * The honorables would authorize $42.7 million in borrowing for a new classroom building at UNCG.

• * UNCG and NCA&T are working on a joint data center. There is $1.8 million to plan the project, which will cost an estimated $46.3 million. There appears to be another $10 million in borrowing authorized for the joint campus, but I'm not sure if it's related to this or another project.

• * A $100,000 line-item reads "Provides funds to expand the number of public schools participating in NR the A+ Schools program affiliated with UNC-Greensboro. The program assists schools in implementing school reform by integrating arts into the curriculum."

• * $75,000 for the John Coltrane Music Hall, a project of the High Point Area Arts Council. These are matching funds, so the council would have to raise a like amount to draw down the money.

• * $3 million for capital improvements at the N.C. Farmers Market.

• * Guilford County gets one new assistant district attorney, bringing its total positions to 32. Rockingham County gets one more ADA, for a total of seven.

I'm sure there could be a few others out there, and I'll add them to the list when I run across them.