The Howard County Council voted to approve an operating budget for the upcoming fiscal year that provides more funding for the school system through emergency legislation.

Still, efforts to secure additional funding for schools on top of the emergency bill were rejected.

“I think we will see the consequences of this quickly and for a long time hereafter. It is a sadness to me that we are at this point,” Council Chair Liz Walsh said in her closing budget remarks.

Walsh introduced a motion to reconsider the vote on the budget bill, but it was rejected. Had the council reconsidered, she said she would have voted no because “it is untenable” to her that the budget will be celebrated as passing unanimously when it is a “grave disservice” to the school system.

The council unanimously approved a $2.35 billion budget, which includes $1.6 billion in general funds, and a $365 million capital budget. The next fiscal year begins July 1.

In April, Howard County Executive Calvin Ball unveiled a $2.3 billion budget proposal, striving to maintain necessary services and balance costs with economic turmoil due to federal changes. Of that proposal, $800 million was allotted to the Howard County Public School System, with an investment of $39 million in recurring revenues above the required Maintenance of Effort funding.

However, even with that funding, the school system faced a nearly $30 million gap to provide for existing commitments such as rising costs due to inflation, Blueprint for Maryland’s Future mandates, and employee compensation and benefits, Superintendent Bill Barnes said. That gap would expand to more than $54 million if the board had sought to fund additional priorities included in its $1.257 billion budget request passed in March. To help close the funding gap, Ball proposed emergency legislation to provide an additional $14.5 million in one-time funding from the county’s revenue surplus. With the passage of the budget Wednesday, the school system will receive a total of $816 million in county funding, according to budget officials.

District 4 council member Deb Jung proposed an amendment to the emergency bill that would have provided more than $1 million in additional one-time funding to the school system, but the amendment failed.

The council also voted to reject another amendment to the budget bill that would have worked to find $8 million more in funding for the school system so the system wouldn’t have to dip into its health fund as Ball had proposed in a May 8 letter to the Board of Education.

In that letter, Ball outlined three strategies the school system could pursue to realize at least $15 million in savings or additional revenue.

Those strategies included adjusting investment income projections to generate more dollars, using the fund balance in the HCPSS general fund, and adjusting the school system’s contribution to the health fund to save upwards of $8 million.

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