How Much Money is in the County?
How much public funding do we really have locally, and where does it come from? The most recent City of Memphis budget, which passed in June of this year, came in just under $900 million. The Memphis Shelby County Schools system passed a budget of approximately $1.86 billion. Shelby County, with a larger tax base than Memphis, signed off on a budget of around $1.54 billion around the same time. But approximately $427 million of that budget goes into the education fund, which is proportionately divided between all school districts in the county. So, let’s say that the county budget is, instead, around $1.1 billion, so as to not duplicate funding. All told, these budgets add up to about $3.86 billion.
The municipalities surrounding Memphis are also responsible for their own, smaller budgets, as you can see below. Combined with the above figures, that brings the total amount of public funding in Shelby County to around $4.5 billion.
Now, where does this money come from? For the city and county budgets, the primary revenue sources are property taxes. Additional revenue comes from fees such as those related to vehicle registrations. There are also local portions of the sales tax, which are tacked onto the minimum mandated state level. The state also sends some funding back to localities from the pot of locally-collected sales tax that is paid to the state. The state constitution prohibits the collection of income taxes, so that is not a consideration.
The MSCS budget is much more complicated than either the city or county budgets. The school board has no taxation authority, so the district relies on funding from its charter government (Shelby County), as well as funding sources that are legally mandated from the state and federal governments. This year, MSCS expects to receive approximately $860 million from the state, primarily through the TISA (Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement) funding formula. This law provides a baseline funding level per pupil and provides additional funding for low-income students, students taking Career and Technical Education (CTE) courses, and other extra costs the district may incur related to the education of various populations. The district will also receive around $378 million from the federal government’s allocations under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).
