Wor-Wic tuition scholarship not completely out of question

Despite the Wicomico County Council’s vote against approving outright a tuition scholarship for county students attending Wor-Wic Community College, the program is not completely dead.

At a meeting Tuesday night, the council approved the county’s 135 million dollar budget for 2017 plus a recommendation to move funds for the proposed tuition scholarship into a contingency account.

Council president John Cannon says if the council moves forward with the program in the future, then this move will allow them to already have the funding in place. According to Cannon, the hope would be to pass it as a resolution which would specify parameters on how the money is spent.

“Putting it in contingency keeps the horse in front of the cart,” he explains. “You don’t want to approve the budgeting of a program if you don’t have the program in place yet, so the council wants to get the program in place first and then we’ll transfer the money from contingency to the program if we have a majority.”

Cannon also tells us he hopes the council will decide how to move forward with program within a month.

Also on Tuesday, Worcester County adopted its 2017 budget as well. While county officials did approach talks of a similar program through Wor-Wic for Worcester County students, it was not included in the latest budget passed.

County commissioner Joe Mitrecic says this was due to a lack of funding; however, he says the idea may be revisited next year.