For Immediate Release: Thursday, May 18, 2023
Montgomery County Councilmember Marilyn Balcombe made the following statement about the Fiscal Year 2024 Operating Budget and the Amended Fiscal Year 2023-2028 Capital Improvements Program. The Council’s final vote on the capital and operating budgets for Montgomery County is scheduled for May 25.
Below is Councilmember Balcombe's full statement:
I first want to thank the Council’s central staff, my office staff and the Executive Staff who were all involved in preparing this budget. It is a major undertaking that required many hours, nights and weekends. Thank you all for your service.
As an organizational psychologist, I believe in process. There are two important components to any budget. It basically comes down to how much money do I have and how much money do I need. If there is a delta, one has to decide how to either raise more money or cut spending. Very often it’s both.
The Council started the budget process, back in February, in a very thoughtful, rational way in order to determine our Spending Affordability Guidelines. We looked at many factors including revenue projections, debt capacity, the adequacy of our reserves, various economic forecasts, and projected revenue from the state.
Given all those factors, the Council agreed – unanimously and publicly – as to how much the County could realistically spend going into the FY24 budget. We do this very important step at the beginning of the process to help guide our decisions as we move forward.
Unfortunately, the County Executive ignored any reference to the agreed upon Spending Affordability Guidelines and recommended an outrageous, fiscally irresponsible budget totaling $6.8 billion, which is $500 million or 7.7 percent more than last year’s budget. Not only was there an assumption of a 10 percent property tax increase this year, the recommended budget created a structural deficit that would equate to another seven percent tax increase next year.
As this is my first budget, I can’t really compare it to prior years. What I can say is that receiving a proposed budget with a 10 percent property tax increase was a non-starter from the very beginning – for all of us. As you might imagine with an 11 member body, we didn’t necessarily agree on what programs should be cut or what the final tax rate should be, but we all began the very difficult work of getting the number down.
My primary goals were to ensure our teachers were adequately compensated and that we could provide the necessary public safety resources we need to make our community safe.
After a thorough review of the $3.2 billion MCPS budget, the full Council has conveyed our unanimous intent to fully fund the teachers’ contract. Even though, by law, the Council does not have control over the allocation of the funds we provide to MCPS, I have every faith that this will happen. We have also fully funded the contracts for our police and firefighters.
I’m very pleased to say that we were also able to fund many critical programs for our community including libraries, parks, and additional medical services for our rural areas. We managed to also get funding put back in the budget for critical projects in District 2, including Observation Drive and the student services center of the Germantown campus of Montgomery College.
All that said, this has been a very emotional discussion for our community. I know we have disappointed people on both sides of this issue. Many people want more funding for schools. While we also have a large number of residents who want no new taxes.
In the end I voted for the compromise - both the tax rate and the budget. As an active participant in getting the tax increase as low as possible, I felt it would be disingenuous for me to not vote for the end result. I appreciate and respect the votes my colleagues took today and I agree with much of what has been said. Thank you all for your honesty and passion for our community. So now we look to the future.
There is a general thought amongst many of our residents that the County has enough money to do everything we need to do. The reality is, I don’t know if that is true or not. The Council’s review of the budget was primarily limited to the proposed FY24 departmental increases versus taking a deep dive into the base budget. That’s not good enough.
As difficult as this budget has been, we are going to be in the exact same spot one year from now. I have long been proponent of zero-based budgeting to determine how much it costs – or should cost – to run the government. The only way out of this downward spiral is to take a very close look at every dime we spend and determine how to more effectively use taxpayer dollars.
I am ready to roll up my sleeves to help make that happen.
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Release ID: 23-184