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There was no Weekly Letter last week. I think that was the second I’ve missed since I started them at the beginning of my second term.
I had written about a crisis in real time, and I was learning more about the nature of it every hour, so I held back.
Here’s the basics.
Last Monday, Anne Arundel County issued a moratorium on wastewater allocations for future development in what we call the Baltimore City Sewer Service Area - north, west, and a little south of BWI Airport. Future transit-oriented housing, jobs, two child care centers, and needed tax base growth that is supported in our community-driven Region Plan, depend on these allocations to move forward.
Neither I nor our team at Public Works wanted to do this, or even thought it was necessary to protect the system from overflows. We did it because an audit discovered that an agreement we had signed with Baltimore County in 1976 had been amended in 1981 with a change to how we should calculate what we can pump through their pipes on the way to the Patapsco Wastewater Treatment Facility in Baltimore City. That change cuts our future capacity by more than half, and is inconsistent with how these limits are set for all other wastewater systems in our county and across the state. That is probably why it was not implemented until the recent audit.
The moratorium was the only legally justifiable way to inform developers and their investors about the status of their projects, but I have no intention of letting it stand a single day longer than is necessary. I have been in contact with Governor Moore and three of his cabinet secretaries, my peers in our neighboring jurisdictions, members of our County Council, and people who are working on planned projects in the area. I am confident that our regional partners will work with us on solutions so that we can lift the moratorium and work in partnership to improve the region’s system.
Most of us don’t think much about what happens to the stuff that goes down our drains and toilets, but fortunately, there are some who devote their careers to the topic. They design, build, maintain, and monitor the pipes and pump stations that take it to treatment facilities, and they do the same for the seven wastewater facilities that operate in our county.
Karen Henry is one of those people. She was the behind-the-scenes deputy for many years before stepping up to the public-facing role of Director of our Department of Public Works. She demonstrated very decisively on Tuesday morning before the County Council that, while she is small in stature, she was built for this big job. You can watch her presentation on wastewater allocations at this link, and our website with her slide presentation here. It tells you what you need to know about the moratorium on future allocations in the northwestern part of our county.
Later in the week, I met with Karen and her team to hear their DPW budget request. Within it were positions needed to implement what they call their Capital Program Optimization Initiative. The Schuh administration had identified billions in deferred public infrastructure needs - schools, parks, public safety buildings, libraries, roads, water, and wastewater - and expanded the capital program by extending the terms of our borrowing from twenty to thirty years. We accelerated that growth with our permanent public improvements fund and federal pandemic recovery dollars. The same DPW team that was working on 450 projects in 2016 is responsible for 650 projects today.
That workload increase slowed things down. Delays were commonplace and costs per project rose. Community meetings sometimes didn’t go well. I complained, councilmembers complained, residents complained, and contractors either complained or took advantage of the system. The situation created the kind of stress that can push people out of public service, but what I saw in our budget meeting was the opposite. Somehow, the DPW team had found the time to figure out how to reorganize, create efficiencies, cut costs, and speed up processes, and their enthusiasm for putting their plan to work was moving. It created for me one of those moments when, as a leader, you really just want to bow down and show admiration and respect for the people who devote their lives to the work.
I actually felt that a number of times this week in budget meetings. Besides Public Works, we had Detention, Recreation and Parks, Fire, Police, Office of Emergency Management, Community College, and Schools. Each one has a story about how far we’ve come over the last seven years, has an extraordinary leader and a dedicated team, and has a plan for how to deliver improved services to communities that rely on them.
We don’t make final funding decisions in these meetings, but we do hear all sides of the case on each request and prioritize things for a final reckoning that comes in a few weeks. It’s a whirlwind of decision-making that considers public input from town halls, facts presented by agencies, other facts from the budget team, my leadership team, and sometimes deferment until additional facts can be collected.
We usually have a theme for each year’s budget proposal to the Council, and we don’t usually settle on it until we have a final product. But when Dr. Bedell began his presentation with a spreadsheet showing the results we had gotten for our AACPS investments in recent years, it hit me. “You get what you pay for.”
Is that the wrong tone for a budget theme, or is it a reminder that our taxpayers need to hear? Last year was Protecting Our People. Previous years were Staying Strong (FY25), Funding Our Future (FY24), The Best Budget For All (FY23), and Back on Track (FY22).
Let me know if you have ideas for a theme. Or maybe, you want to see what we come up with first?
Until next week…