Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the open session on Thursday, May twenty first, two thousand twenty-six for the Board of Carroll County Commissioners, as we always do, we'll begin with the Pledge of Allegiance and a moment of silent reflection.

I pledge to the flag of the United States of America.

And to the Republic for which you stand indivisible with liberty and justice for all the I hope everybody is doing well today, and our agenda is a little bit uh out of typical order because a couple of us have a few uh previous obligations we have to take care of.

But so uh first up on today's agenda is the FY27 budget adoption, and Ted, I'll kick it right over to you and Heidi.

Okay, so we've been through a process that included your deliberations, releasing a proposed budget, public hearing, another meeting to consider any other changes you wanted to make.

Today we're here to take the formal vote to put all that into place.

There are three separate actions for you today.

One is to set uh water and sewer rates for uh our utilities enterprise fund.

The second is to set tax rates.

There are no changes in tax rates.

And the third is to adopt the FY twenty-seven budget.

Um nothing more I need to say.

We just need to move to those three actions then.

Any actions or direction from the board.

This says what water and sewer rates for uh the next uh budget year as as noted.

All right, we have a motion to read a second.

We have a motion, we have a second.

Is there any discussion?

Yes, sir.

Yes, I mean when we talked about these a few weeks ago and asked for some time to look at them because um hopefully you've studied the chart that was sent to us a month or two ago.

They're very different throughout the county.

They're very high in certain areas, and they're very low in certain areas.

And there it's a it's a challenge for all of our towns and everybody to keep up with the wastewater treatment plan and for some of the stuff we're now doing with PFAS.

And there's a lot of money available to offset those costs.

And myself and the delegation has spent a lot of time trying to help the towns.

And I applaud that my father delegation for going after that money for Manchester, because Manchester communicated the need, and uh our delegation, Senator Reedy and all of them went to bat for them and got the money to offset their costs for this upgrade because they're a small town.

We we're trying to do the same for Union Bridge.

We've done this we've tried for New Windsor.

They've still have high rates, but for years we've been working to get money from the state to help with those areas.

But the areas in Carroll County are controlled, the county, unincorporated areas and Hampstead are served by Maryland Environmental Services.

And it's the county.

The county takes care of the wastewater part of that.

And in my years, I've never seen a request or an out advocacy, I'm not sure, for money to offset those costs as well.

And I don't know how it works with Maryland Environmental Services.

And I want to understand it better because the costs just keep going up, and everybody says, oh, it's enterprise, it's got to cover itself.

Well, maybe with some of those, we've got to make sure those funds are being requested for the county's service areas, and there's others as well.

But anybody only county service, I think there's 26,000 of them, if I'm correct.

Um, and I know in my district they've gone up tremendously, and it just look, we've got to do this.

And I just wanted some time to figure some of it out.

And if we're asking for the right grants for the unincorporated areas, which is again, we do Maryland Environmental Services does Hampstead and it does the whole freedom area and it does some others.

It just it just does the freedom one.

It does.

Well, well, they have the same they they have the same similar rates.

But I want to understand how we come up with the rates.

And I visited the wastewater treatment plant and and saw what they do, and that's all fine, but I would like to understand how they're so different.

I mean, they're they're very, and I know that Westminster has done a phenomenal job on on theirs, their town.

They've we've gotten lots of grants because they've got uh a very good system, very forward-thinking system in place.

But the areas that we control, I would like to make sure there is that we, the Board of Commissioners, and our staff are going after all the resources that are available for it, because our rates are very, very high.

And um whether the county is running it and setting the rates or Mare Environmental Services is is uh running it and setting the rates, I would like to see what goes into that.

And so I voted against moving it forward before, and I'm gonna voted against it again for that reason is because I want the scrutiny of this board on the rates for the part they control, just like the towns are doing a really good job of scrutinizing theirs and and reaching out for those resources that are available.

And I'm not sure I'm not I've not seen it in my years of looking at the money that comes into the county um for this.

I haven't seen it in the book that we get a list of every year of all the money that the state sends us, and I would just like to make sure we're tapping into everything.

So that's why I'd ask for a couple of months to have a chance to look at it.

Haven't had a time.

I don't have so I didn't know the rates were going up so much because I'm not on um that plan, and so I wasn't aware of it.

I just read it in the paper and figure hey.

But now that I'm looking at it, I just think there needs to be some more attention, and it is my district that's mostly affected.

I know Hampstead is affected by the county run piece of it.

But um I so I'm gonna be voting against it for that reason.

I'm gonna still pursue it and try to dig into it.