This story was updated with a correction.

Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich said Monday he wants to remove 29 positions from the police department and put additional funds toward mental health and other social services.

Elrich made the announcement as part of his $6.6 billion budget proposal for the 2022 fiscal year, which starts in July.

Most of the 29 positions in the police department are currently vacant, and at least 23 of them are for school resource officers (SROs) — which the county council voted to remove from schools last year.

“I’m a believer that we need to put more social service support into the school[s],” Elrich told reporters at a budget briefing on Monday. “This is to make sure that non-police responses are provided or supported by non-police resources.”

Elrich’s budget also makes reductions to units in the 1,300-officer department, including patrol units, collision reconstruction, traffic complaints, SWAT, K9, and emergency services. Officers and staff that were assigned to vacant positions with these units will be reassigned.

The reductions come after a summer of nationwide protests demanding local governments cut their police budgets and reallocate funding to mental health and other social services. But Elrich’s proposal seems to fall short of the defunding that many activists have been calling for.

The police department’s budget will actually increase by $1.6 million, to $284.7 million, to provide pay increases to officers. Additionally, Torrie Cooke, president of the county’s police union, tells WAMU/DCist that it’s most likely SROs whose positions are being eliminated will be reassigned to patrol communities around schools.

“This is essentially doubling the work of an SRO and causing a delayed response of an officer in the event the school needs the police,” Cooke wrote.

He called the removal of sworn police positions “totally irresponsible.”

“The morale in this department is at an all-time low and defunding the police will push the many that are already contemplating resignation/retirement to their breaking point,” Cooke wrote. “This reorganizational plan, which was recommended by the police chief and supported by the county executive is not in the best interest of the safety for all Montgomery County residents.”

At least two positions were added to the police budget for the Internal Affairs Division due to a backlog in complaint investigations, which were taking almost a year to complete.

The county’s Department of Health and Human Services is expected to receive $358.8 million, an additional $19.9 million over last year’s budget. Elrich is also proposing $521,000 for three new mobile mental health crisis units in addition to the three that were created this year, $550,000 for mental health services at schools with high concentrations of poverty, $3 million for a new homeless shelter, and $100,000 to establish a homeless court.

“It’s time for us to decriminalize homelessness,” Elrich said. “We need to deal with homelessness as a social problem as it is… and move from tickets to citations and from to services rather than jail.”

County Council President Tom Hucker tells WAMU/DCist that he’s happy with the additional funds being put toward mental health services.

“I think our residents want more health and human services resources,” Hucker said. “We’re in the middle of a pandemic people are struggling with the challenges of responding to the greatest health crisis since the Spanish Flu of 1918.”

To pay for these new programs, the county, like many others in the country, is relying on $205 million in aid from the federal government’s American Rescue Plan, $82 million in unallocated funds from other federal COVID relief stimulus programs, and a $129.9 million reimbursement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Hucker says if the reimbursement from FEMA does not come through, the council will have to reassess the budget to protect taxpayers. But overall, he says the budget is “a sigh of relief” after a year of unanticipated challenges due to the pandemic and its effect on the economy.

“We’re relieved the American Rescue Plan has provided a lot of relief for this budget that we don’t have to raise any local taxes and we continue with our AAA-bond rating,” Hucker said.

Elrich characterized the county’s budget as a “recovery budget moving Montgomery County forward, not treading water.” The proposed budget will need to be reviewed over the next three months and approved by the county council.

This story was corrected to show that the new mobile mental health units are $521,000 not $521 million and the mental health services at schools is $550,000 not $550 million. We regret the error.