Photo via council meeting livestream
In a straw vote last week, County Councilmembers unanimously approved a $7.1 billion operating budget. The council will take a final vote on Thursday. County Executive Marc Elrich proposed his Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 operating budget in March.
In a statement following the vote, Elrich claimed the council “made significant decisions in private to reverse some of their decisions, without public conversation, transparency, or accountability.”
Elrich acknowledged the council appears to have approved 99.5% of his proposed budget.
According to a council press release, the budget is a 5% increase over the FY24 budget. About half — $3.3 billion — would go to Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS). Further the budget adds $157.3 million to MCPS compared to last year. In a statement Council President Andrew Friedson pointed out the preliminary budget “adds $26.3 million more funding for public schools than what the County Executive proposed in his recommended budget.”
In his statement, Councilmember Will Jawando said the $26.3 million actually represents a net loss to MCPS — “I must express my deep concern with this level of funding for the MCPS budget, which will be borne by a majority-female workforce who again are being asked to do more with less.” Jawando, chair of the council’s Education and Culture committee, urged the council to fully fund the committee’s recommendation for the MCPS budget.
Unions representing MCPS employees also expressed concerns about the budget for the school system. Following the straw vote, the Montgomery County Education Association (MCEA) and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 500 stated members “are deeply concerned” about the budget.
“On the one hand, the cuts won’t be as severe as they would have been under Marc Elrich’s proposal,” the unions stated. “Unfortunately, today’s decision by the County Council still leaves the school system approximately $30 million under what is necessary to maintain current services. It’s dismaying to see that painful cuts to programs and positions will now be unavoidable in the coming year.”
Council Vice President Kate Stewart’s statement noted the budget funds the Community Food Assistance Competitive Grant Program and provides more resources for food staples, but councilmembers did not fully fund the programs — “We need to continue to evaluate these needs and how to address them in the months ahead.”
Elrich expressed concerns with some funding cuts made by the Council, including cuts for food resources, recruitment of more young women into public safety, and climate change proposals. He said the Council rejected efforts to bill insurance companies in a “confusing decision.”
In his statement, Councilmember Evan Glass, chair of the council’s Transportation and Environment committee, acknowledged “Sadly, this funding falls short on where we need to be in order to address the climate emergency. Our planet cannot wait.”
The budget provides funding to continue transitioning buses to be zero-emission, Glass stated, but “Unfortunately, funding was not approved to assist under-resourced building owners comply with Building Energy Performance Standards, nor was there funding included to help low-income residents access tax credits to help green their homes.”
The budget includes expansion of the police department’s Drone as a First Responder program to cover Gaithersburg, Germantown, Montgomery Village and Bethesda.
Councilmember Marilyn Balcombe weighed in, “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.”
Councilmembers also approved a $5.84 billion FY25-30 Capital Improvements Program.
