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Testimony to the Montgomery County Council on the Capital Budget for Schools

Thank you for providing the opportunity to speak tonight. My comments are primarily in regard to the school portion of the Capital Budget having been asked if by Ms Hairston if I could attend tonight rather than tomorrow night. So you'll have to excuse me if I'm out of sync with the other testimony.

My comments are informed by two perspectives. First, I'm a council member in Takoma Park where children attend the Blair cluster. We have some of the most impacted schools in terms of educational load, and continued over-crowding only aggravates the situation. As a teacher, I have seen first hand the impact of class size. Smaller class sizes make a profound difference in the ability to deliver effective instruction, particularly inside class rooms where students bring a wide range of abilities to the tasks. While we get some additional help in the form of aides, I've talked with teachers in schools with high poverty rates, but not high enough to qualify for additional classroom aides, and the impact of large class sizes is even more detrimental.

I want to urge the Council to find the means to keep school construction on track. The school system has for a long time lagged behind in both renovations and new projects, and this budget does not improve the situation. It is simply not possible to achieve the smaller class sizes that are routinely proclaimed as our goal, as long as we are unable to build the necessary classroom space. This budget, with its additional delays, makes the achievement of educational equity a still more distant prospect. Reducing class-size is a critical step in providing an appropriate and effective learning environment.

The Council needs to find the funding to adequately support the capital needs of the school budget, as well as other critical capital projects. This Council has been told for a long time that development fees collected are not paying the cost of the infrastructure needed to support it. The impact fees currently imposed collect a fraction of that cost, while the decision to eliminate Policy Area Review and to eliminate the requirement that developers pay for the wider impacts of their projects has resulted in a net decrease in revenue contributed by development to pay for the infrastructure needs it generates.

Replacing the Policy Area Review with Impact Taxes is a revenue loser‚ a point made by the Planning Board and by Council Staff. This puts the Council in the position of shifting the funding from developers to home owners, there is no other way. Every dollar not collected from development has to be collected somewhere else, and somewhere else is usually in the form of taxes or fees imposed on county residents. When the Executive or the Council perceives that concern about taxes is getting too high, the fall back position has been to delay necessary capital projects. Neither choice is a good one. Passing the costs for infrastructure from developers to tax payers is wrong. Delaying capital projects that we need because of an unwillingness to collect adequate impact fees from development is also wrong.

The choice we are presented with, higher residential taxes and fees or deferring needed projects, is a false dichotomy. It's a box of our own creation that does not truly reflect the range of policy options available. I urge this Council to fund the capital projects at the level needed to prevent more delays in school construction and to look at funding them from sources other than taxes that fall primarily on County residents.

--Marc Elrich, Council member from Takoma Park, MD