For Immediate Release: Thursday, May 16, 2019
ROCKVILLE, Md., May 16, 2019—Montgomery County Council Vice President Sidney Katz 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 Council Vice President Katz’s remarks:
Webster’s defines budget as an estimate of income and expenditure for a set period of time.
Our FY20 budget is much more than an estimate for the next fiscal year – it provides the financial parameters by which we will try to accomplish almost everything that we do.
How we provide for our students, how we outfit our first responders so that they can protect our residents, how we meet our transportation needs, where we spend our leisure time – all depend upon the annual budget decisions made by the Council.
This budget was, in many ways, similar to past budgets – we heard from the public, from our employees, we heard from each of our departments, and we weighed many, many competing priorities before making our decisions. These were not easy decisions, but I am confident that the expenditures in this budget accomplish many good things while also continuing to allow us to address long term fiscal responsibility through fiscal restraint.
Not all of my priorities were funded - but budgets are made up of collective compromise.
A few years ago, as I was working through one of my first budgets as a County Councilmember, I stated that it was important to me to avoid “kicking the can down the road”. We need to take ownership of the issues, especially the difficult ones, and we need to address them now. As I reflect, I am pleased that we continued to honor this commitment.
My role as the Chair of the Public Safety Committee has allowed me to gain an even better understanding of our public safety agencies and their priorities. We depend on them at our most challenging times and it is so very important that we ensure that every first responder has the training and equipment they need to serve the public. We were able to fund two additional school resource officers who will be so beneficial to the students with whom they will interact. This budget also has funding for two sheriffs. These positions are necessary to ensure safety in our courtrooms. I am disappointed that there are no additional police officer positions funded – but I will be sure to have the Public Safety Committee continue to examine the needs of our police department.
As we all know, one half of our budget funds Montgomery County Public Schools and we have a world class school system because of this! It took some real negotiating, but we were able to fully fund the school system’s requested budget and for this we should all be proud. Additional funds were also allocated to expand the Excel Beyond the Bell programming which will benefit some of our neediest students.
Montgomery College, our stellar community college, deserved to be fully funded, and I am more than pleased that the Council was able to restore funds to make them whole. MC is a vital part of our community and we need to fully support them.
Our youth will also benefit from the resources we were able to direct to broaden the reach of our Rec-Xtra programs, which provide after school activities in some of our most underserved communities. And, after hearing loudly and clearly from students that the Kids Ride Free program is of vital importance to them (and, is, environmentally friendly) we added back funding for this program so that students can access public transportation without having to worry about the cost.
I am glad that the Board of Elections will be receiving some additional dollars so that they can purchase enough voting equipment to reduce what can be significant wait times on Election Day.
Our focus on meeting the affordable housing needs of our seniors will be bolstered by the innovative senior home sharing pilot program that will help to provide secure, affordable housing to seniors while helping to prevent social isolation.
Finally, we could not accomplish nor provide all that we do as a County without the support of our non-profit partners. Montgomery County is so fortunate to be home to so many amazing nonprofit organizations. It is incumbent upon us to support these groups to the best of our ability because they give back exponentially. We helped to fund as many of our fantastic non-profits as we could, given our finite dollars. Similarly, that is why it is so important to me to be able to assist the many groups who provide direct services to those with developmental differences.
It is gratifying to work alongside such capable colleagues as well as with our amazing staff who were always ready to answer questions, research options and provide us with the most thorough analysis of each and every issue.
On a personal note, budgets are a team effort and I want to thank my team Lisa, Mary, Yi, Jackie and Laurie for their hard work.
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Release ID: 19-173