For Immediate Release: Thursday, May 16, 2019
ROCKVILLE, Md., May 16, 2019—Montgomery County Councilmember Hans Riemer 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 Riemer’s remarks:
Let me start by saying thank you to Council President Navarro. I know it is a consuming job to be Council President during the budget process and I really appreciate your work, as well as the work of all the Council staff and my staff and all of the Councilmembers. This is always one of the most intense and exciting times of year for the Council.
I am pleased with many elements of this budget. This is now the fourth year in a row that we have been able to fully fund MCPS. That is terrific news and we are continuing to make a lot of progress with our schools. I am also pleased that we were able to fully fund Montgomery College. I am grateful to the state. The increase of revenue flowing from the state is what allowed us to fund these efforts this year, and I am grateful that the legislature has made education such a high priority. I share the view that the Council’s work in pushing was essential to getting this money from state.
I am also very pleased with our step forward on early education. This is the third year in a row of a sizable investment in early education. We have added millions of dollars to expand pre-K and make child care more affordable. I think we’re continuing a strategy of step-by-step working towards a more expansive and eventually universal program. I hope that the new structure that has been established will help build consensus about how those investments can be made and, we will be following that closely over the coming year.
I’m very happy about Excel Beyond the Bell (EBB). Once again we’ve added significant new Excel Beyond the Bell after school programs. The four EBB programs we’ve added this year, plus the two programs we’ve added in each of the last two years means the Council has added a total of eight new EBB programs to our most challenged schools, serving high-poverty communities. I think that expansion is really going to make a big difference. We’ve also added three Rec-Extra programs targeting middle schools. There’s a big gap in our out-of-school-time programs at the middle school age, and I’m hopeful that we are starting to address that in a big way.
I really want to thank my colleagues for their support of the Skills for the Future Fund. I think that is a terrific initiative, championed by several Councilmembers to leverage funding for our nonprofits that provide STEM education and help get this County’s workforce prepared from a young age and contribute to making us the economic powerhouse that we need to be.
On the transportation side, I’m pleased we were able to restore at least four of the seven routes that were cut in the Executive’s recommended budget. I am disappointed that we could not find the funding to restore all seven of those routes. Cutting service from every fifteen minutes to every twenty minutes is sure to lose riders on some of our busiest routes, so we have work to do there. I am also thrilled by the new investment in Kids Ride Free - that’s going to create a whole new generation of transit riders.
Thank you to my colleagues for supporting the Bicycle Pedestrian Priority Areas (BPPA) program. That program was designated for cuts in the County Executive’s budget, and we restored them. There will be some terrific projects moving ahead in Wheaton, Long Branch, along the Purple Line corridor, in the Viers Mill and Randolph area. These are areas that were designed as suburban but have become more urban and need new treatments to be safe for all users. We also restored funding for two new Metro entrances, which is really moving in the right direction.
I want to thank my colleagues for supporting $400,000 to begin a comprehensive climate change planning initiative. We had originally sought $800,000 for this initiative and were told by the Executive branch that they had secured $400,000, but it turned out that was not the case. Unfortunately, we could not find the funding for the full amount, but I do think we will get a great start with $400,000.
I want to thank Councilmember Friedson for his relentless leadership for funding for our parks. Today we are fully funding their budget.
I conclusion, I am concerned that we need to address an underlying problem - we have a structural deficit in our budget. This is not a new phenomenon, but it has gone on too long and we need to tackle it head on. Council has expressed that this year, we are going to make some changes. For example, the Council President just mentioned the need to tackle right-sizing the County’s workforce. We do have a problem when we are funding FY20’s expenditures with reserves from FY19. We need to work together as a County to tackle that and make some big changes to get on a better path.
Thank you again to all my colleagues.
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Release ID: 19-180