For Immediate Release: Friday, May 18, 2018
ROCKVILLE, Md., May 17, 2018—Montgomery County Councilmember Sidney Katz made the following remarks today after the Council reached agreement on the County’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 Operating Budget, the FY19 Capital Budget and FY19-24 Capital Improvements Program. The budgets will be formally adopted by the Council on May 24.
The complete text of Councilmember Katz’s remarks:
This was a particularly difficult budget year. The Council was presented with many worthy competing priorities. The Council was able to pass a budget that was built upon the framework that the County Executive proposed. We worked with MCPS to ensure that all our students continue to have the kind of learning environment most conducive to their needs as well as excellent teachers and support staff. The public safety needs of our residents are of utmost importance to me. Our Fire and Rescue Service will receive much needed funding to continue to properly serve all our residents, increase staff, training, and the acquisition of apparatus. Both the Fire and Rescue Service and the Police Department will have recruit classes that will provide new personnel and officers to respond to the needs of our residents and keep them safe. We will be implementing Next Generation 911 that will allow the Emergency Communications Center to receive emergency communications in new ways including texts and pictures.
As the lead for Behavioral Health in the Justice System on the Public Safety Committee, I am pleased that the budget reflects the needs of our most vulnerable residents and the continued commitment of the Council to serve them. We were able to continue to fund our very successful mental health courts, and we supported those who serve our developmentally disabled residents with some much-needed additional funding.
This budget reflects many extremely difficult decisions – There are items that are not funded in this budget that I feel should have been, but we were able to accomplish many things for our residents.
Though this budget is not perfect, let’s not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
# # # Release ID: 18-151