The Sun editorial, "The McDonald's trap" (April 19), asked whether Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz is providing the services that county residents desire. The editorial opens the door to investigating what Baltimore County residents don't get because county revenue has not kept pace with a rising population, aging infrastructure and suburban poverty.
Baltimore County Public Schools have the second oldest infrastructure in the state with a substantial number of schools still lacking air conditioning and adequate heat. Desperate parents spend months and years of their time begging for basic maintenance and relief from overcrowding and have to fight for these basic amenities instead of the county providing them as part of public service. Most recently, Dulaney High School parents have pointed out neglected maintenance resulting in termite-infested drawers in classrooms and brown drinking water.
The county executive has tried to sell county land assets to raise money for the most basic repairs and maintenance of schools. Volunteer fire companies stagger under the huge amounts they must raise for equipment and firehouses because the county provides only a small part of their budgets.
Baltimore County is far behind on meeting its requirements for open space. The County is about 9,000 acres short of the open recreational space it should have for county residents, a particularly acute problem around Towson where decades of mindless development have packed people into spaces and traffic patterns that don't work. Land preservation has slowed to a trickle. At the current rate, it will take about 15 more years to reach the minimum goal of 80,000 acres, and by then much of the land that should have been preserved will be gone.
Baltimore County has over 53,000 children in public schools in poverty. The county has over 31,000 children who are food-insecure, more than Baltimore City and the second highest number in the state. In 2014, over 3,100 children attending public schools were homeless, 682 more than the previous year. The waiting list for assisted housing in Baltimore County is over 25,000. The county administration is running a surplus of over $200 million, which, given the problems listed above, is morally untenable. But even this amount, when compared with the huge costs that have piled up from deferring and/or ignoring legitimate expenses, will not fix the problems in Baltimore County.
We desperately need courageous leadership from Mr. Kamenetz to find the resources for adequate services. Unfortunately, he has made it clear that he is not interested in adequately funding county government and giving us the services we deserve. It is time for Baltimore County residents to take a hard look at the consequences of not having enough financial resources to address our basic needs and not planning for the future.
Laurie Taylor-Mitchell, Towson