More than $65 million of the $69 million budgeted annually to keep up Montgomery County’s 33,000 acres of parks comes directly from taxes paid by residents.
The problem, from the Maryland-Capital Parks and Planning Commission’s point of view, is that all county residents can use the facilities, but not all are paying a county tax to support them.
Now, if the legislature adopts a bill introduced in the Montgomery County Delegation, all residents living in the municipalities of Rockville and Gaithersburg would be exempted from the metropolitan district tax.
According to planning spokeswoman Nancy Lineman, households in the county’s municipalities, as dictated by boundary lines drawn in 1965, have been exempted from the fee because they pay a similar recreation fee to their respective city governments.
Those families situated in the parts of Rockville or Gaithersburg annexed by the county have not been included in this exemption. However, Lineman said, they haven’t paid the tax, either.
So, the other jurisdictions in Montgomery have had to pick up the slack.
“If the municipalities were included, these residents would pay about $20 less in taxes each,” she said.
Lineman could not provide an average for the amount that the county charges residents for the tax.
But the formula in place has been for a charge of 5.7 cents per $100 of assessed value on one’s home. That equates to $228, for example, on a $400,000 home.
According to Lineman, her agency strongly opposes the bill and would prefer if all residents were treated equally and, hence, had to pay the county tax.
“The people who support the bill are saying this is an endorsement of the status quo — since those in the annexed area haven’t had to pay,” she said Monday. “But our point is that everyone should have to pay their fair share to enjoy our world-class park system.”
Based on parks and planning staff analysis, Rockville and Gaithersburg residents use the county recreational facilities as much or even more than those residents outside the municipalities.
But, she cautioned, those figures come from facilities in which the user must provide an address or ID.
