For Immediate Release: Thursday, April 20, 2017
Montgomery Council committees
to discuss affordable housing
Also on Thursday, April 20: recreation budget,
compensation and benefits for County employees
ROCKVILLE, Md., April 19, 2017—The Montgomery County Council’s Planning, Housing and Economic Development (PHED) Committee and its Health and Human Services (HHS) Committee at 2 p.m. on Thursday, April 20, will review the Fiscal Year 2018 operating budget request of the County’s Housing Initiative Fund that seeks to provide affordable housing for residents who are challenged to find it. The worksession is part of the Council’s review of County Executive Ike Leggett’s recommended budget.
The Council and its committees will review the recommended budget over the next five weeks as they work toward adopting a budget for the new fiscal year. The Council is scheduled to reach tentative agreement on the budget on May 18 and to formally adopt the budget on May 25. The new budget will go into effect on July 1.
The PHED Committee, which is chaired by Councilmember Nancy Floreen and includes Councilmembers George Leventhal and Hans Riemer, and the HHS Committee, which is chaired by Councilmember Leventhal and includes Councilmembers Roger Berliner and Craig Rice, will meet in the Seventh Floor Hearing Room of the Council Office Building at 100 Maryland Ave. in Rockville. The meeting will be televised live by County Cable Montgomery (CCM). The channel can be viewed on Cable Channels 996 (high definition) and 6 (standard definition) on Comcast; Channels 1056 (HD) and 6 (SD) on RCN; and Channel 30 on Verizon.
The session also will be available live via streaming through the Council web site at http://tinyurl.com/z9982v8 .
For FY18, the County Executive recommended $59.02 million as the “total investment in affordable housing.” This is estimated to be $8.1 million less than is needed to fund the program. Funding for the Housing Initiative Fund programs would be $7.7 million, an increase of 15 percent from the FY17 approved budget.
The County remains committed to try and find housing for homeless veterans.
At 2:30 p.m., the PHED Committee will address the budget request of the Department of Recreation. For FY18, the County Executive recommended total expenditures of $36.0 million for the department, an increase of 7.5 percent from the FY17 approved budget.
At 9:30 a.m. in the Third Floor Council Hearing Room, the Government Operations and Fiscal Policy Committee, which is chaired by Councilmember Nancy Navarro and includes Councilmembers Sidney Katz and Hans Riemer, will hold a worksession on the recommended compensation and benefits for employees of all County agencies.
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Release ID: 17-134