Special Board Meeting, Feb. 25, 2021
Chair Miller: this is a special meeting to discuss the 2022
operating budget and March expenditures.
Goldson introduces
the March 2021 expenditure requirements, which Ahmed moves and Adams-Stafford
seconds. Motion passes unanimously.
Goldson introduces
FY2022 operating budget, which is more than $2 billion. Annotated code of
Maryland requires it to be transmitted by or before Monday, March 1 to county
executive. Williams makes motion to approve budget.
Burroughs
offers substitute motion, which he offers from “belief that there is more that
unites this board than divides this board.” Although these are difficult times,
he believes board will come together, as they have in past, to pass consensus
budget along with other items. He moves to table budget until Monday and have
special executive session on Monday at 5pm and a public meeting at 7pm and
outlines the agenda items to be included, including the FY22 operating budget.
Boozer-Strother seconds.
Miller states
she already has several meetings scheduled with county council members and the
county executive on Monday. This is not to deny having special meeting but is
asking for some consideration to have items split and have a Tuesday meeting or
some on March 11 agenda. Burroughs responds that public meeting is not until
7pm. She states that proposed agenda has 11-12 items on it, and if discussion
goes on for 1 item like it did tonight, it would be “a bit much.” She is asking
for professional courtesy to split items or change date to Tuesday and then
place what can’t be covered on Tuesday on the March 11th meeting.
She notes that when board asked for emergency meeting for Monday, she told them
that requested agenda items would be placed on the March 11 agenda. She notes
that Burroughs prefaced his motion with statements he wants to be collegial and
collaborative, and she is just asking that you reconsider or amend motion.
Burroughs responds
that he is unwilling to do it, commenting most of the items are proclamations
or first readers. This agenda is the Feb. 11th agenda that was
abruptly cancelled. He believes that board will get through items in a
collaborative fashion.
Williams
asks Dr. Goldson about work required to make amendments to budget and asks what
will happen if board waits until Monday, the due date, to make changes. Goldson
responds that budget is due to County Executive on March 1, so if the meeting
is held on the due date, it will be several days late in transmittal. After
hearing that, Williams asks Burroughs for friendly amendment to his motion to
have board vote on budget today.
Burroughs notes that he has been on board a long time and
knows how budget process works. This is just a first budget. Williams clarifies that she is
not speaking about reconciliation process, she is concerned with amount of work
staff will need to do on budget amendments prior to submitting budget. She
doesn’t want to hold budget hostage because they’ve been working on budget
since December. If the board waits until Monday to make budget amendments, “I would
question what we have been doing the last few months.”
Burroughs
responds he is going to do his best to be positive so can work together, but typically
the budget committee has more than 72 hours to know when budget meeting will be
held. Operations, Budget & Fiscal Affairs Committee will meet tomorrow and
go through amendments. They know they are under gun and don’t need to add any wild/crazy
amendments, but unfortunately staff will have to work on this. This is not the way
anyone wants to do it, but “this is where we are” and it is important board
comes together.
Williams asks
for clarification because OBFA committee did not meet on prior scheduled
meeting dates, so she does not think the short notice of this meeting had any
impact on the committee’s ability to do their work on the workplan, which is
published.
Joshua Thomas, Boozer-Strother, and Queen speak to their
support of postponing budget discussion to Monday.
Murray calls for question on Burroughs’ substitute motion. Miller asks how many items were on
proposed agenda, so Burroughs starts counting—there are 23 items for March 1
agenda.
Everyone votes yes except for Williams (votes no) and Miller
(abstains).
Meeting adjourns.