Councilmember Marilyn Balcombe’s Statement on the FY25 Operating Budget and FY25-30 Capital Improvements Program

For Immediate Release: Thursday, May 16, 2024

From the Office of Councilmember Marilyn Balcombe

Montgomery County Councilmember Marilyn Balcombe made the following statement about the Fiscal Year 2025 Operating Budget and the Fiscal Year 2025-2030 Capital Improvements Program. The Council’s final vote on the capital and operating budgets for Montgomery County is scheduled for May 23.

Below is Councilmember Balcombe’s full statement:

I want to thank our Council central staff for their tremendous work, your dedication and accuracy. Thank you to my office staff and departmental staff involved in preparing this budget. I also want to thank the community for engaging and advocating for what you believe in. There are two major components to any budget – how much money do I have and how much money do I need. If there is a gap, we must decide whether to raise more money or cut spending. As a body, we decided very early on that we were not going to raise taxes this year, so that left us to make some very difficult decisions. While it is impossible to fund all the requests for new and enhanced programming that we’ve received from the County Executive, the community and our Council committees, we were able to fund a substantial number of requests and present a balanced budget – not only balanced in the fiscal sense, but also balanced across the various aspects and needs of our residents.

As our school system represents half of the entire budget, I am glad to report that we were able to fund 99.2 percent of the MCPS total request. As many people know, by law, the Council does not have control over the allocation of the funds we provide to MCPS. While that continues to be frustrating, it is my hope that the school system will continue to assess the needs of the students and the staff to ensure the very best use of each dollar.

I’m also very pleased to say that we were able to fund many critical programs for our most vulnerable residents - including food, shelter and health care - through our many health and human services programs. In addition to education and safety net services, some specific funding includes:

• Health services for our rural areas which have some of the worst health outcomes in the County.
• Expansion of the “Drone as First Responder” program to include a drone to cover the Gaithersburg, Germantown, and Montgomery Village area, and another for the Bethesda area.
• We were able to give our nonprofit partners an inflationary adjustment. Just as the County Government grapples with recruitment and retention of staff, we need to make sure our valuable community partners can cover increasing costs.
• We invested in additional staffing for mental health, our mobile crisis outreach staff, mental health staff, team, our planning department, and parks. We have tremendously successful programs that we want to offer to many more residents who need and deserve additional services.
• The Great Seneca Transit Network will move forward with a brand-new bus route service the Upcounty, which so desperately needs transit.

I’m also very excited about several capital projects in District 2 that will move forward:

• The Clarksburg Library will finally be built for a community that has waited far too long.
• The Western Montgomery Community Center in Poolesville will also include medical clinic space, which may be the first of its kind. Both the community center and the clinic space are desperately needed and having them in the same facility is really a dream come true for the community.
• Montgomery College Germantown Campus will be getting a much-needed Student Services Center.
• We will also be adding a new bus depot and route in Boyds to service the Boyds Marc Station.
• And finally, the new organic waste facility to begin the process of pulling food waste from the waste stream. This is a critical step for meeting our climate goals and really tackling a significant environmental concern.

With all the great news, it is important to put things into perspective and remember that not all staff and programs received funding. We came together and funded as much as we possibly could, given our resources; all the while keeping in mind a structural deficit that has not yet been adequately addressed and will present an even bigger challenge next year. We have a lot of work ahead of us to ensure that we provide our all residents with the services they need and deserve.

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Release ID: 24-191
Media Contact: Lisa Mandel-Trupp 240-777-7970
Categories: Marilyn Balcombe