Councilmember Friedson’s statement on the County’s operating and capital budget agreement

For Immediate Release: Thursday, May 16, 2019

ROCKVILLE, Md., May 16, 2019—Montgomery County Councilmember Andrew Friedson made the following remarks today after the Council reached agreement on the County’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2020 Operating Budget, the FY20 Capital Budget and amendments to the FY19-24 Capital Improvements Program. The budgets will be formally adopted by the Council on May 23.

The complete text of Councilmember Friedson’s remarks:

There’s a lot to be proud of about the Fiscal Year 2020 budget the Council preliminarily approved this morning. We will make real progress in core priorities including education, transportation, affordable housing, protecting the most vulnerable, and maintaining our parks.

This budget doubles down on our investment in education. Council President Navarro, Education and Culture Committee Chair Rice, our school system leaders and County Executive Elrich led us to an agreement on fully funding MCPS. We also:

• Fully funded Montgomery College’s budget so it can continue to be such a positive force in the lives and for the future careers of so many in our County;
• Restored funding for Ag in the Classroom, a popular program that teaches MCPS students about the importance of agriculture in our daily lives;
• And retained capital funding for the KID Museum for a total investment of $6.89 million while adding $250,000 for the Fund for the Future program to support coding and technology education.

We’re helping to build a more sustainable future for our County with transportation and housing investments by:

• Restoring $5 million in the County’s Housing Initiative Fund (HIF) to help public and nonprofit partners keep pace with our needs and maintain the progress we have made in recent years;
• Rejecting proposed Ride On service cuts and adding funding to expand Kids Ride Free on Ride On to all service hours;
• Providing $500,000 for FareShare, continuing a program which provides matching funds to employers that subsidize the transit fares of their employees;
• Keeping the design and planning of Summit Avenue Extended in Kensington on-schedule to provide a shared street for residents to get through Kensington and a safer pedestrian and bicyclist experience;
• Maintaining funding for the White Flint Metro Station Northern Entrance and signaling our commitment to infrastructure investment in the Pike District, one of our County’s most important growth areas, so we can move forward once we have a Concept Study later this year;
• And by adding funding for additional pedestrian safety audits so we can make the engineering changes necessary that will make our roads safer for all users.

We’re fortunate to have 37,000 acres of local parkland in Montgomery County and 421 parks. As the Council Lead on Parks, I worked alongside my colleagues to ensure our Parks department has enough funding to maintain the open spaces that are so vital to our community’s quality of life.

We’re protecting the most vulnerable in our community by supporting the vital work that our nonprofit partners do, including:

• Bolstering security and improving mental health services to keep our kids safe and secure;
• Expanding mental health services for youth in crisis at times when they are most isolated and alone;
• Restoring funding for those who do the necessary and sometimes difficult work of assisting those in our developmentally disabled community;
• And supporting the expansion and programming of the Manna Food Center and Nourish Now so more residents in-need have access to food.

While I am proud of what we’ve accomplished together in this budget and progress we’re making on our core priorities, I think it’s also important to recognize the continued discussions we must have on how to achieve true fiscal sustainability. I continue to be concerned about balancing budgets by deferring funding of our obligations, and by using one-time savings to fund ongoing costs.

I’m optimistic that we can work together to tackle these structural challenges, ensure a fiscally sustainable budget process and a thriving private-sector economy so we can maintain the high quality of life and high level of public services our residents expect and deserve, and keep up with our growing needs as we always have in Montgomery County.

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Release ID: 19-176
Media Contact: Cindy Gibson 240-777-7828