The Board of Carroll County Commissioners got its first look Tuesday at a recommended operating budget for fiscal 2025, which shows a $12.4 million deficit.
The budget proposes revenues at $524 million with expenditures at $536.4 million.
“Our starting point is a negative position,” said Ted Zaleski, director of the county’s Department of Budget and Finance. “We know we’re starting in a hole, and we have to make something happen just to get to zero, before we consider anything else.”
Zaleski warned commissioners at a meeting earlier this month that the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future is a “very dark cloud hanging over” the budget.
The Blueprint for Maryland’s Future is a multibillion-dollar public school reform effort entering the second year of its decadelong rollout. It is designed to make Maryland’s schools among the highest performing in the country by redesigning the public education funding formula, providing more time for teachers to plan lessons and develop skills outside the classroom, and offering universal prekindergarten for 3-year-olds, among other initiatives.
Zaleski warned the board that less revenue was being generated in Carroll County for projects and government operating expenses at the start of the fiscal 2025 budget process.
On Tuesday, Zaleski unveiled the proposed budget numbers to commissioners, though he was concerned about presenting an operating budget that was not balanced.
But before the fiscal 2025 budget is adopted by commissioners in May, Zaleski said it needs to be balanced.
“There’s very little in our budget that we can look at and say, ‘Let’s stop doing that, or let’s do less of that,’ that won’t have arguments that people can make as to why we should continue doing it,” he said. “The question isn’t are we doing good things, the question is how many good things can we afford to do? That always leads to difficult conversations and difficult decisions.”
Zaleski said not only Blueprint, but state funding mandates such as paying for prekindergarten, body-worn cameras for the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office, and the cost of sworn law enforcement officers in schools all contribute to added expenses.
The costs of building the county’s new Department of Fire and Rescue, and of providing health care and fringe benefits for employees and software maintenance, are also contributing factors.
Zaleski offered several suggestions to save money that include changes to transit bus service, outsourcing certain county services to the private sector, and offering salaries that are competitive for its government workforce, yet not identical to those in much larger surrounding counties.
District 1 Commissioner Joe Vigliotti said these suggestions need to be considered.
“These are difficult decisions that we need to have,” he said. “It’s not to say somebody doesn’t deserve a raise or doesn’t deserve the salary increase. Times are difficult for people working for the government, or not working for the government. We are faced with a $12.4 million deficit. We have to be willing to commit to having conversations about everything, even if it means we decide to stick with something or to divest ourselves of something.”
Commissioners will next meet with county agencies requesting funding not included in the recommended budget on March 26 and 28.
Commissioners will discuss the proposed budget at a work session April 2, and the county will release the fiscal 2025 proposed budget to the public April 23.
Zaleski will hold a series of community meetings to explain the budget:
- April 24, 7 p.m., Eldersburg Library, 6400 W. Hemlock Drive, Sykesville
- April 25, 7 p.m., Mount Airy Library, 705 Ridge Ave.
- April 29, 7 p.m., Exploration Commons, 50 E. Main St., Westminster
- April 30, 7 p.m., Taneytown Library, 10 Grand Drive
- May 1, 7 p.m., North Carroll Library, 2255 Hanover Pike, Hampstead
Commissioners will hold a public hearing on the budget at 7 p.m. May 6 at the Carroll Arts Center at 91 W. Main St. in Westminster.
