(6/2024) Last month, after several weeks and a few amendments, the Frederick County Council voted to pass the FY2025 budget that was submitted to us by County Executive Fitzwater. This budget makes important investments in Education, Public Safety, and Economic Development, while preserving Frederick County?s AAA bond rating through responsible financial management.
Prior to passing the budget, the County Council passed amendments that resulted in $442,242 being cut from the original proposed budget. The Charter gives the County Council the ability to assign funds that are cut from the budget to the school system budget that is overseen by the Board of Education. The Council passed an amendment, introduced by Council President Young, to provide Frederick County Public Schools with this additional funding. I voted to approve this transfer.
As part of the FY2025 budget, the Council also voted for a $0.05 increase to the property tax rate. This action will generate approximately $21.5 million annually, and these funds will be dedicated exclusively for school construction projects that don?t address growing school capacity. Frederick County has 33 school facilities that are over 30 years old. Projects to update, replace, and refurbish our aging educational infrastructure have continually been delayed, accommodating the fast growth in newer areas of development.
Families with children attending older schools should not have to keep waiting for years for buildings and technology that are comparable to those in other areas in the county. Before this funding was approved, there was no source of dedicated funding for these types of projects, and they would have to compete with projects addressing capacity. At the same time, the State has not increased the pool of school construction and renovation funding in over a decade. As the fastest growing county in Maryland, this hits Frederick County especially hard.
Previously, the property tax rate had been unchanged since 2014 when the property tax rate was combined with the Urban Fire Tax rate to establish one real property tax rate. Before this, the real property tax rate had not been raised since 2001, and although we have experienced significant population growth, we are one of only five counties that has not increased our property tax rate during that time.
Moving forward, Frederick County will have to increase its commercial tax base. Otherwise, residential taxpayers will have to keep shouldering most of the bill for our school system, county services, and necessary infrastructure. Many residents who have lived here for decades don?t want any new residential and/or commercial development at all. However, in Frederick County, we have a purposefully constrained housing supply in a highly desirable area that is close to a desirable and expanding job market. That has resulted in large increases in home values and assessments resulting in an increasing tax burden on residents that will become unstainable for many and cause some to have to move elsewhere.
The County Council has responsibility to look at questions of growth and zoning with a focus on how our choices affect property tax assessments and the commercial to residential tax base ratio. If we stay on the same course, Frederick County will continue backing into the future instead of planning for successful growth, and we risk becoming a place where fewer people can afford to live.
This is a special county to live in and I don?t want to see that happen to anyone. Although it?s not always a popular position to take, I will continue to look for ways to support sensible growth for businesses and industries who want to locate in Frederick County, and for ways to close the housing supply gap at the middle to lower points on the affordability spectrum.
Please feel free to share your thoughts on this topic or anything else by emailing me at rknapp@frederickcountymd.gov.
