Harford County Executive Barry Glassman is proposing a conservative budget for fiscal year 2016, one that supports modest raises for county employees and teachers, but also places some responsibility on school officials to make the latter happen.
In his preparing his first budget since becoming county executive in December, Glassman is proposing a $642.3 million operating budget for the next fiscal year, about $14.8 million more than this fiscal year's operating budget, a 2.4 percent increase.
No tax increases in property tax or local income tax rates are proposed, and Glassman is planning $1,000 merit-based pay increases for 890 employees under direct supervision of the county executive. Eligible employees will have to complete a satisfactory performance review to receive the raise. Department heads and their deputies won't be eligible.
The county executive said he also provided enough funding for $500 merit based raises in the sheriff's office, state's attorney, circuit court and public library budgets and is urging the leaders of those agencies to match that amount by finding savings elsewhere in their budgets.
As previously promised, Glassman is introducing what he said will be "the lowest level of capital spending in 10 years," with a capital budget of $89.6 million, down from the $107.3 million approved for the current fiscal year, a drop of more than 16 percent.
"We talked about restoring balance between our operating and capital budgets and also doing something to help our employees at the same time," Glassman said during a briefing for the media Monday.
The planned merit raises, he said, are being funded from savings, mainly through a net reduction of 67 positions that was accomplished by an early retirement incentive program and some outsourcing.
More than half of the county's new projected operating revenue of $8 million would be directed to the public school system, offering a "record level" of funding of $228 million, Glassman said. The $4.5 million in additional county funding for the school system, however, still will be far less than the $29 million increase requested by school officials.
Glassman is supporting $3.1 million of increased funding for teacher salaries, but is urging the Board of Education to make that work by matching part of the amount and by also finding money elsewhere in its budget to give at least $500 merit raises to nearly 2,000 employees whose pay is not funded though the school budget's instructional salaries category.
"The teachers' salaries are a priority and I wanted to protect that," he explained.
"What we've tried doing is begin the process to restore some relevancy to their salaries and begin to turn the ship, and it's going to take some time," Glassman said about any raise in teacher salaries, which parents, school staff and the Harford County Education Association have been pushing forward for more than a year.
"Things are not going to turn on a dime and it's kind of like turning a cargo ship," he said. "It's going to be very slow turning it. It's not something we're going to do in a one-shot increase."
"The challenge, I think, to the Board of Education going forward within this new environment is they are going to have to look within, like the county government has done, to reduce expenses in the way they do business and find the money to reinvest in their employees," Glassman said, noting his administration is not proposing using any new money or raising taxes to support the raise proposal in its budget.
"That's what's important, I think, on the general government side," he said.
Other new education spending would include $250,000 in classroom technology upgrades and the restoration of $300,000 in operating funds for Harford Community College that had been cut by the previous administration, Glassman said.
On the community services side, Glassman said he will continue his focus on what he and state leaders have called a heroin epidemic by providing the county's first burst of funding to treat heroin addiction. The $100,000 expenditure will be used mainly to help people meet insurance co-pays for treatment programs, he said.
Also proposed is a $50,000 expenditure to fund scholarships through the Fire and EMS Foundation for advanced EMT training at HCC and $150,000 to the foundation for its operations. The foundation provides a paid ambulance service that backs up local volunteer fire companies services.
Glassman's limited capital budget includes a focus on stormwater remediation, which he said must still meet state and federal requirements despite his elimination of the controversial stormwater fee, or rain tax.
He proposes putting $6 million toward remediation projects, which he said is more than the county has spent in the past eight years combined.
Another $5.64 million would be allocated toward road and bridge repairs, while $1.94 million would go toward parks and recreation facility repairs and construction.
The county will also spend $3.1 million to begin upgrading the county's severely "antiquated" computer software and hardware, which he said is liable to crash at any time.
In the face of what he called a "new normal" of relatively slow revenue growth of just 1.5 to 1.8 percent overall, Glassman said he has also been able to reduce the county's six-year capital improvement program to what he believes is a more affordable level of about $45 million annually.
He said he did not strike the $70 million proposed replacement building for the Havre de Grace high and middle schools from the CIP, but he still doubts the county can afford the project under existing revenue growth conditions.
But he also said he looking at ways to boost revenue by boosting new business recruitment on the commercial side through his economic development programs, growing tourism through the recently enacted lodging tax and easing some of the financial burdens on the home-building industry by collecting water and sewer hook-up charges and other fees later in the construction process.
The proposed new capital and operating budgets are expected to be introduced to the Harford County Council Tuesday night. The council will have until June 15 to review and enact the budget.