• Budget instructions are sent to state agencies in June of the year preceding the start of the new fiscal year.
• State agencies submit their budget requests to the governor in late August.
• Agency hearings are held from October through November.
• Public hearings are held from January through March.
• The governor submits his or her proposed budget to the state legislature on the third Wednesday in January.
• The legislature typically adopts a budget in April. A simple majority is required to pass a budget. The fiscal year begins July 1.

The County fiscal year coincides with the State, so as of July 1, we are into our new fiscal year. The interesting point Councilman Shreve and I have brought up repeatedly is that as a council that represents Frederick County we are losing out on millions of state tax dollars due to the fact we are not represented in Annapolis. We have requested for the second year in a row that the council hire a lobbying firm to represent us in Annapolis.

Now, you may say, hey Delauter, why would you send my tax dollars to a lobbyist in Annapolis, I thought you were a fiscal conservative? You would be correct in asking that question. Here’s my answer, if you don’t know the inner workings of Annapolis you are getting passed by for (your own) tax dollars. The lobbyist we requested to hire would charge $25,000 annually. When I spoke to his firm last year, after we missed the boat, he stated that there was $70 million in untapped funds that went unappropriated. I wonder how much funding Frederick County could have tapped into for that $25,000 fee?

Everybody that knows me knows I like to gamble, I gamble every day in the construction business, I love to gamble on the craps table, and I will bet anyone, that if we should hire a lobbyist, we would not only recover the $25,000 fee, we would bring back multi millions for Frederick County that is simply our money to begin with. Instead, we are no shows in Annapolis, we pay no attention to the timeline as shown above, and when the money is doled out, they pass by Frederick County simply because we have no one representing our interests and we show up late to the party year after year.

On to the reactionary issue of the week, impact fees. The County Executive is requesting the council propose a bill on her behalf to raise impact fees. Just a short note, the council is the branch of this government that proposes legislation but what is happening with this piece is that the Executive Gardner has written the legislation and is using the council and an extension of her office to propose legislation from the back door. The council is supposed to be a check and balance to the executive, in our case, we are simply an extension of the county executive.

These fees are not going to solve the issue of school funding. We need two elementary schools at a proposed cost of $45 Million each. Here’s some info as to why this won’t work and why it’s Deja-vu all over again. If you go to the Frederick News Post (FNP) archives you’ll find an article for September 2000 that is very interesting. It’s an article about what else but, school impact fees and funding.

The then County Commissioners (which included our current Executive Jan Gardner) passed a 300% increase in school impact fees on builders and developers. The County Manager is quoted as saying at the time that the plan "calls for 1,200 homes per year and with these new fee increases, this will solve all of our school funding problems."

Now I don’t know about you, but I have never seen a 300% increase in any of my annual income, yet the county back in 2000 passed this "solution" that would cure our school funding needs. It’s funny how we had the same players back 17 years ago, proposing the same tired ideas of blaming builders and developers yet today we have the same problem we had back then, and to make things worse these same people are proposing the same solution today as they proposed 17 years ago and somehow they seem to think they’re going to get a different result? Wouldn’t a sane person ask this question: If we raised fees 17 years ago by 300%, (and they’ve been raised since) and we still have school funding issues, isn’t raising fees a solution that doesn’t work?

The fact is, from 2000 – 2008 we exceeded the 1,200 homes per year and to boot, when the county in 2006 updated the Comp plan, their synopsis stated that their debt affordability models needed 1500 homes annually on average to maintain the bond to revenue ratios for debt affordability.

So, from 2008 – 2015 we have only averaged 800 homes annually so we are 50% of what the models predicted and this is evidenced by the fact we have in 2015, 57 fewer FCPS student enrolled than predicted.

Now I’m not a mathematics major, but the numbers would tell me that fees are not the issue along with builders and developers are not the issue. Heck, we should be relaxing standards on builders or having a blue light special on building permits so we increase revenue for impact fees. If we use the County Executive’s model and increase impact fees themselves, this will not increase revenues; it will actually decrease revenues and stifle an already fragile construction market.

Some other interesting facts are that in the last ten years over $80 million in fees have been paid by developers for an added student population of 1000, or $80,000 per student. The current Tischer/Bise study for impact fees requested by County Executive clearly states that a new (per) student costs the county taxpayer $35,000 each. So, if we’ve taken in $80,000 per student in fees, and a student costs $35,000 each (in today’s dollars) where the hell is all the money? Why are we proposing to raise fees?

I have a theory that explains this gap in revenue. I have proposed to issue a request for proposal to do design/build contracts for the two new elementary schools. I also propose to include a private lease agreement for the school and the maintenance and custodial contracts as well. My bet (remember I like to gamble) is that the schools can get built for far less than $45M and by including all maintenance and custodial, we could systematically eliminate FCPS maintenance and custodial employees through attrition thus reducing these costs by making them fixed costs within the long-term contract.

My theory is this, this is where we lose the $50M gap between fees collected and student costs. We lose it in all of the miscellaneous employees and benefits. My theory also includes the reason this will never come to fruition until we’re flat broke, is because all of these miscellaneous employees are a huge voting bloc. Who will they vote for, a businessman like me that wants to control costs, or a FCPS employee that was elected to the Council like CM Fitzwater or Donald who will provide them with higher pay and benefits … with your money? None of this is rocket science, just follow the money and you’ll find the answers.

Hopefully I can continue to help expose this while still finding ways to educate our children without breaking the banks of ordinary citizens that call Frederick County home.