From skate parks to affordable housing, Howard residents pitched dozens of priorities deserving of county funding ? despite warnings of lean budget times to come.
“These are tighter times,” County Executive Ken Ulman told residents Thursday night at his first fiscal 2009 budget public hearing.
“There will be precious little money for new initiatives.”
Although Howard is projecting a budget surplus of $13.7 million for fiscal 2008, revenues from real estate taxes, exacted when property changes ownership, are down and more state cuts are inevitable, Ulman said.
“I and the County Council will have difficult decisions to make,” Ulman said.
But the dismal budget picture didn?t keep about two dozen residents from rallying behind their priorities.
Wilde Lake High School student Dan Lesko made a case for a new skate park at Centennial Park in Ellicott City, after skaters were banned from using the Dorsey Search pool parking lot this spring.
“Skate boarders should have a destination park,” he said.
Teens also need a public, 50-meter, indoor pool, said Diane Goodridge, of Ellicott City.
The pool at Howard Community College in Columbia is inadequate, and high school swim teams need a proper pool for practice, she said.
Affordable housing advocates urged the county to fund a housing trust fund for county projects. The money, advocates said, could come from corporation transfer taxes, enacted when corporate property is sold, after lawmakers narrowed a loophole that allowed some corporations to avoid these taxes.
“There is a serious need for affordable housing,” said Sherman Howell, of the African American Coalition of Howard County.
However, that funding stream might not materialize, Ulman said, as legislators “watered down” the measure that closed the corporate tax loophole by limiting its application to some corporations.
Rene Buckmon, vice president of the board for Association of Community Services, warned of the effect of state funding cuts on the human services organizations, and asked Ulman to fund more work force training programs, adult education classes and the purchase of new buses to transport older and disabled residents.
A few residents lobbied for more library funding, including library director Valerie Gross.
Nearly half of library employees make $39,000 or less, and the county must adjust these wages to bring it in line with surrounding jurisdictions, Gross said.
