Higher Ground: $5 Billion ‘People’s Budget’ Approved
County Executive, County Council Team To Approve Historic Prince George’s County Budget
By Raoul Dennis
The Prince George’s County Council approved a $5 billion budget for FY23 on June 1.
Hailed as “The People’s Budget,” the new funding highlights include focus on public safety, education, retuning citizens, housing and aging in place and mental health.
Additional and more specific highlights of the new budget can be viewed here.
The spending plan takes effect with the new Fiscal Year, which begins July 1, 2022.
County Executive Angela Alsobrooks is expected to make extensive remarks on the new operating budget at the Prince George’s State of the Economy Address on June 7.
County Council Chair Calvin S. Hawkins II shared remarks moments after approving the measure.
“It’s been a tough couple of years. Despite our extraordinary challenges, this new spending plan, which I continue to call ‘The People’s Budget’ gives Prince Georgians more hope for our future than at any time since March 2020. By all indications, this fiscal year will be better,” adding, “I want to thank the stout-hearted people of Prince George’s County for your extraordinary resilience and partnership with us to keep our communities safe and well. You are making our progress possible.”
Hawkins continued:
“Last year, my remarks announced and adopted a county budget that would casually begin the process of creating a path forward from the impacts of the devastating historic and unprecedented global pandemic. Over the last year, we as a council have begun to focus on the many opportunities for Prince George's County notwithstanding the challenges. I applaud County Executive Angela Alsobrooks and her executive and budget teams, as well as our council administrator, Robert Williams, and his budget team, along with the legislative branch for our collective achievement with this budget. We need this kind of solidarity now more than ever.”
The chair reported that the new budget also recognizes the work of county employees.
“Among the wisest investments we can make is in our county employees who will see a measurable appreciation in this budget,” Hawkins said.
Exiting county councilmember Todd Turner lauded the growth of the county’s operating budget under his watch.
“Congratulations on a successful budget,” Turner began. “I was talking to my colleague[s], Mr. Burroughs, and Ms. Glaros. [When Ms. Glaros and I were] elected in 2014, our first budget in 2015 and Fiscal Year 2016 was just over $3 billion. We've increased our budget close to $2 billion over the last eight years. Although I dare say none of us will say we're satisfied necessarily with all the services that we provide to our residents, the fact that we've been able to do that over that course of time I think is a testament to the work that each of our councils have done.”
Dannielle Glaros, who has also term-limited out of her office, expressed her satisfaction with the growth of the county budget and the direction the county leaders have been able to take the county in as a result.
“I would agree that this is definitely very much the people's budget, and most importantly, it sets us on a path that's a very different path than we were on in March 2020,” Glaros said. “As my colleague has mentioned, we came in at a very interesting time in the county back in 2014. I at times joke that we all have Twitter memories nowadays. But in 2014, we were in a very different place in this county economically.
“Our ability to invest in the types of things that we wanted to do on behalf of our residents was in a not-so-easy place. We had to make some really tough decisions to get to the transformation you're hearing about today to make sure that we were doing wise budget investments to set us on this path of opportunity. [The path has] now enabled us to fund things that frankly, eight years ago, we would've never been able to fund because the dollars were just not there.
Yes, it involved all of us here in Prince George's. But it also involved our state and federal partners in making all of that come true. We have a long way to go with our growth and our commercial tax base, but for the first time, we are growing our commercial tax base, and that's part of where we have gone for this 2023 budget,” Glaros said.
