Charles County government is bracing itself for the final word on Maryland State’s budget deficit. With reports of the State’s budget deficit climbing, many counties are scrambling not only to balance their budgets, but also to secure other sources of funding. This situation is a far cry from Maryland’s reported financial health less than one year ago.
In conversation with The Bay Net, Board of Commissioners President, Wayne Cooper recalled the process of decline. “A year ago, former Comptroller Donald Schaefer said ‘the State is in better financial shape than ever. It doesn’t matter who comes into office, they couldn’t possibly spend it all.”
Last fall at the Maryland Association of Counties meeting, Cooper heard that the State’s finances weren’t looking so good and we could expect about a $600 million deficit. For January, Cooper remembers the figure at $1.6 billion and climbing.
What this means for the county, he explained, is not only decreased availability of state funding on a variety of levels, but also the possibility of the State turning to the counties for money. School construction, which is heavily funded by the State, may be particularly hard hit; and that’s an area where Cooper feels the State’s already lagging.
Charles County may not be as badly off as other counties, however. Cooper explained that we have an account funded by developers for just this sort of occasion. Developers pay a ‘school allocation’ fee for each house built in their projects. Current statistics give this area an average of 1.6 children per household. And, at last calculation, if one divided the cost of building a school by the number of children attending it, the cost per child came to $12,000. Therefore, the County charges developers a fee of $15,000 per house when developments are built and the money is placed in the DRRA (Developers Rights & Responsibilities Account). That money is a failsafe if the County needs to forward fund the Board of Education’s building projects while waiting for the State to contribute its share.
President Cooper told The Bay Net that we have $20 million in signed contracts from developers in the account now. Nearly $40 million should be signed with two to three weeks. Over the next few months, a total of nearly $80 million is possible.
“We had hoped to use that money for other projects,” Cooper told the Bay Net. “When you’re scheduling projects, you have to look at the finances for the next ten years and beyond.” By deferring county projects, the commissioners can balance the budget from the general account and use the DRRA account to fund important things the State can’t fund. However, Cooper pointed out that deferring projects for too long means they can become more costly as they become more urgent.
At last week’s Commissioners’ meeting, Cooper requested that David Eicholtz, acting Fiscal Director, look into the current school building costs and re-evaluate the School Allocation fee. Cooper felt like the current cost is around $15 – 17,000/child; in which case the fee needs to raise to make the DRRA adequate.
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