This story was produced by El Tiempo Latino. La puedes leer en español aquí.

County Executive Marc Elrich plans to maintain programs approved during the COVID-19 pandemic to support the most vulnerable communities in Montgomery County – even with the end of the national emergency. This was established in his operating budget proposal for the 2024 fiscal year.

However, to date, the Montgomery County Council is still discussing the Elrich administration’s proposal, which amounts to $6.8 billion and represents a total increase of 7.7% compared to the 2023 fiscal year; although the only tax increase in the proposed budget is a 10-cent increase — 10% — to the county’s property tax rate.

That increase would be used exclusively to fully fund the request to expand the Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) budget.

“There is less money for the tests, although we hope to be able to conduct some testing and, with any luck, COVID doesn’t run rampant. We will have money for vaccines if they have to be purchased. So we will make sure that we can provide health support to people,” Elrich told El Tiempo Latino. “We have increased funding for all ethnic health initiatives. The Latino Health Initiative, the African American and Asian American health programs, all initiatives that work with minority communities in the county, also an increase in funding to make sure they can expand.”

County council members expect to hold the final vote by May 25, 2023. If no final decision is reached by then, the deadline for the legislative body would be June 1, one month before the beginning of the next fiscal year.

“The recommended budget presents a second year of significant growth after two years of constrained budgets,” reads the latest update published on the council ‘s website.

Vision for a decentralized social approach

If anything positive came from the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of resource distribution, according to Elrich, it was learning how best to reach the most underserved population groups.

“We realized that there is a better and more efficient use of our resources if we do more work with community groups, rather than having everything coming out of [Department of Health and Human Services]. So that is one of the reasons why we continue to fund community groups and occupy these spaces,” Elrich said.

Regarding support for businesses, Elrich emphasized that there are now fewer federal resources for companies. But he made it clear that Montgomery County is increasing support for economic development.

“We’ve got teams now that actually are, so to speak, on the ground,” Elrich said. “They work with people, they’re getting the shopping centers, they go to small businesses, they’re asking people what they need, what kind of help can we give them. So we’re getting much more aggressive in terms of our outreach with small businesses in the community.”

Other support that would continue to be available is rental assistance.

“We have nearly $40 million in this budget to support rent and rental assistance,” he said. “And, you know, we spent probably close to $100 million during the pandemic and only served a fraction of the people who needed it. We were limited to what the federal government was willing to give us.”

An educator who understands the situation 

The majority of the budget is dedicated to education, which, if approved, would raise teachers’ salaries to a more competitive level, according to Elrich. He believes educators in the county are paid below other jurisdictions and not enough to keep up with the high cost of living.

“We know that in a couple of years the Blueprint for Maryland requires that all teachers in the state start at $60,000. Our teachers are starting about $53,000. This doesn’t even take ‘em to 60. So we’ve got a ways to go there,” said Elrich, who worked as an educator in his past years. “If you want to attract teachers here — and they weren’t able to fill all of the teacher needs they had this year — you can’t be in a position where salaries are lagging behind other jurisdictions where it’s cheaper to live.”

The school system alone requested an increase of $300 million in their budget, which he said is unprecedented.

“It’s about salaries, but it’s teachers, particularly teachers dealing with students with disabilities, they’re dealing with English language learners, which is, you know, a theme that I know everybody’s concerned about,” Elrich said. “So they’re not just trying to have increased teacher pay, but they’re trying to increase the staff in areas where they need additional staff.”

He stressed that if the county council does not approve his budget proposal, its members would have to find where to make the cuts.

When asked about this increase, Montgomery County Board of Education President Karla Silvestre said the county council only needs six councilmembers to vote in favor for the proposal to be approved. That’s true for education matters, but not in other cases.

“We want to give teachers and employees a good salary increase because we are also suffering, like any other agency, from lack of personnel,” she told El Tiempo Latino.

Broadly speaking, Elrich’s budget proposal is split between education (52% of spending), county government (38.9%), debt service (6.9%) and parks and planning (2.8%). The amount set aside for county government includes areas such as public safety (10.4%), health and human services (7.2%), general government (5.1%) and transportation (4%), among others.