Montgomery residents would wait longer for some improvements under a proposal floated Tuesday by their council president that delays some school renovations and park construction in an effort to reconcile a ballooning capital budget with scarce funds.
Council President Mike Knapp’s suggestions were nonbinding, but were intended to get the County Council and the public to realize that the commitments made by council members for capital projects are $363 million over spending guidelines recommended to keep the county’s AAA bond rating.
County Executive Ike Leggett proposed a $3.2 billion capital spending budget in January that raised spending by only 1.1 percent over the last budget — saying it was necessary tokeep spending in check given difficult financial times. Some council members, however, had criticized Leggett’s lean proposal as unrealistic, because it allocated money for the planning and design of many projects but often did not include funds for actual construction. Since then, council members have tacked on $363 million more in funds saying they wanted the budget to reflect the entire cost of a project.
Knapp’s suggestions Tuesday, however, were somewhat similar to Leggett’s proposal, often recommending axing the construction funds allocated for projects but spending money on design.
Council member Marc Elrich, a proponent of funding the entire cost of a project up front, said he still worried about the process.
“Every year you delay a project is also money,” Elrich said. “If you bump it back you may hit a cycle of 15 percent annual inflation in construction. … We’re just making it more expensive to get to things.”
The council will vote on a final capital improvements budget in May, when it usually reconvenes to work through differences between what it has funded and what the county executive has recommended. This year, though, Knapp said the amount of funds at issue was too large to wait until May.
“… The Council should [act] now, so that the public is not led on for several months thinking that certain projects are ‘safe’ only to see the rug cut out from under them at the last minute — and largely in private,” Knapp’s memo said.
