The Carroll County Board of Commissioners held a work session on May 12, 2026, to deliberate on the FY27 adopted budget. Commissioners discussed and voted on several proposed additions to the budget, including funds for fighting the MPRP power line project, a loan for Union Bridge wastewater treatment expansion, agricultural preservation, and park restoration. Other topics included water/sewer rates, transit service, a new sheriff's office space, and prior appropriation reporting.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Tuesday, May 12th adopted budget work session for the Board of Carroll County Commissioners, as we always do. We'll begin with the Pledge of Allegiance and a moment of silence. Well, I hope everybody is doing well, and uh for anybody who's interested, this these are the last couple of work sessions, uh possibly the last one today, uh, regarding any additions or uh uh alterations we may make to the FY27 budget. Uh Heidi, did you and Ted want to say anything to start with, or should we just go straight into it? Well, Ted's not here, so I'll start. Um so you do have in front of you an agenda for this morning. Uh the first thing on there is the summary of the public hearing comments. So we had 17 speakers, and you can see the list of what kind of comments they had. Um so that is in front of you. In addition, we do have a couple of changes from the proposed budget. Do you want to go through those? Okay. So the first one, um, the corrections operating budget is going to be increasing. Um this is due to an anticipated inmate medical renewal cost. So we have included that in the budget. We are also this one's a little more complicated. We are separating the courthouse annex roof replacement project. Previously this was included in the county building systemics renovation project, which is one of our CIP projects. However, we've gotten some grant funding, so we're separating that project out, so that project will appear as a new project, even though it is not technically new, and we'll have a mixture of grant funding, new bonds, and we are reappropriating bonds from the existing county systemic project. Now would you like to take over? And I believe what I said was right. Um we had a couple changes in state funding for school capital projects. Uh one was a good one at Carroll Springs. Uh the bid came in higher than anticipated, but the state agreed to increase their funding. Uh the other is there's a special pot of capital money. The enrollment growth and relocatable classroom funding. We were concerned that we weren't gonna be eligible for this anymore, and as it turned out, at the last minute, uh we found out that we lost three point six million dollars of state funding we were anticipating. Uh that changes nothing in the short term for you. But it what it does is move uh a project that was in twenty-eight. Um Carroll Town was in twenty-seven, so it goes back to twenty-eight. Piney Ridge goes back from twenty-eight to twenty-nine, and then Winter Smill goes out of the plan. Ted, what was the rationale for that? What was the reasoning? Uh it's based on our enrollment, uh loss of enrollment. Even HVAC stuff. Well, it's not so much that it is about the HVAC. Okay, I'm sorry. What what's your question again? It's the HVAC replacement, Carrollton. What was their rationale for not that wouldn't be based on enrollment? Okay. It's not really about the project. It's about our eligibility for funding for any project out of that pot of money. And which pot was that the enrollment growth and relocatable classroom. And this was not a total surprise. We um we had had some rumblings that this might be what was going to happen. Uh but it wasn't until just in the last few days that we actually found out. And then we are looking to move funding from existing school capital projects to other projects now. And um that's they're all five are uh pre-K editions where we have some money remaining.