(8/2019) Frederick County is poised for the future. We
have exceptional schools, a safe community, a thriving economy, and a high
quality of life.
Our challenge is to protect what we love about
Frederick County, seize our opportunities, and embrace new ideas and
innovation. That takes planning. With the help of community partners, I have
developed a strategic plan to guide the second term of my administration. This
plan builds on our accomplishments of the past four years and introduces new
ideas to move Frederick County forward.
My four key priorities remain the same as they were
during the first term: Education, Jobs, Seniors, and Community Needs. This
term, I’ve added a fifth priority, Growth. These five topics are the areas
people talk to me about all the time.
I want to highlight a few specific initiatives within
each of the five priorities. You can reach the full list of goals online at
www.FrederickCountyMD.gov/CountyExecutive.
Education
We know great schools lift our students, their
families, and property values, and ensures our long-term economic prosperity
through a well-educated and trained workforce. The strategic plan includes
several major education initiatives. First we must ensure the best teachers are
in classrooms to deliver desired educational outcomes. I am proud to have fully
funded the four-year phase-in of a new pay scale for school system employees.
This is a huge accomplishment! But our work is not done.
We need to identify adequate funding for public
education, both for the day-to-day operating budget and for school
construction. These two initiatives have been and will be a hot topic at the
state level for the foreseeable future. The State’s Kirwan Commission is
redefining education in Maryland with recommendations to increase funding in
targeted areas, such as special education and students in poverty, while
expanding pre-K and increasing teacher pay.
Over the four years of my first term, Frederick County
increased funding per pupil by more than $700. Over the same four years, the
State of Maryland only increased per pupil spending in Frederick County by
$129. Clearly Frederick County is doing its part, while the state is falling
behind.
On the school construction side, I continue to
accelerate school construction because I believe every child deserves a seat
inside a school building. I have made a record investment in school
construction, more than double the prior two administrations. I am committed to
funding the County’s share of school construction projects, and I expect that
in the upcoming session there will be a "super-charged" school construction
bill to increase State funding. In Frederick County, we are ready to seize this
opportunity. Our shovel is ready, we have a long list of projects ready to go,
and we are waiting for State funding to advance several projects.
I support innovation in public education, including the
exciting changes to the Dual Enrollment program, which allows students to take
college courses offered at FCC while attending their own high school. Last year
nearly 1,000 students took advantage of dual enrollment, and soon students may
even be able to graduate from high school while earning their associate’s
degree at the same time.
Jobs
We know having a job is fundamental to having a high
quality of life. My vision is for Frederick County employers to provide a
diversity of jobs to ensure residents have the opportunity to work where they
live. To make this a reality, we will implement our Growth Opportunities
Strategy. We want to define who we are and how we want to be known, so
employers see that Frederick County is a great place to do business. That means
we will try to attract targeted new jobs, such as in the life sciences, where
we’ve added an economic development specialist for just that purpose.
Frederick County’s agricultural heritage is an integral
part of who we are as a community. So another goal is to help our farmers so
that agriculture remains economically viable. In the spring, we surveyed the
industry and I hosted an Agriculture Roundtable. We are now busy doing our
homework to evaluate value-added agriculture opportunities like a malt house,
or cheese production. You’ll hear more about this soon. We are also looking at
how our Agriculture Preservation Program can be enhanced to preserve our strong
ag heritage.
Seniors
By next year, there will be more people age 60 and
older living in Frederick County than school-aged children. That’s why we
launched a new Senior Services Division a year ago. The division’s goal is to
engage, empower and equip our seniors to live their best life. Our initiatives
are designed to improve access to health care, support aging in place with
grace, and connect active seniors to jobs and meaningful volunteer
opportunities. Specific programs include Meals on Wheels to provide nutritious
meals, a strong caregiver support program, and home retrofits, so seniors can
continue to live in the place they’ve called home for years. It also means
being a dementia friendly community.
Community Needs
Frederick County offers a high quality of life, as well
as safety and well-being for everyone who lives here. A key initiative is to
sustain safe communities. One way we will do this is with the implementation of
Next Generation 9-1-1. We will also continue to add public safety positions in
fire/emergency medical services, police and 9-1-1. We’ve applied for a new
federal SAFER grant to add 38 firefighter positions. And we are developing
long-term plans for staffing and competitive pay.
Improving mobility/transportation options is something
we heard over and over again. A key focus is finding options for rural
transportation, and meeting the demand for paratransit for seniors.
Housing affordability continues to be a challenge for
young families, millennials, and seniors, so providing housing options and
leveraging resources for workforce housing is an important initiative. For
example, we are dedicating part of our recordation tax for workforce housing,
identifying land for workforce housing locations, and drafting bills to allow
the building of small, affordable dwelling units with new houses so there are
more options for more people.
Healthy living is another key initiative. We want clean
air, water, and renewable energy options, such as the solar array we are
currently constructing at the landfill that will provide power for seven county
facilities. The coolest part is that this solar array will power up the
chargers for our electric buses, so they are running on 100% renewable energy!
No one else in our region is doing this. Frederick County is really leading the
way!
A real community need is aggressively addressing opioid
and substance misuse, providing hope and help, as well as prevention. By the
end of this year, we will have detox services in Emmitsburg. Additional beds
for detox are on their way to Frederick, as well.
Parks & Recreation add to our quality of life. We will
continue to expand our parks to all areas of the county. The second phase of
Utica Park will open by the end of this year. And we are looking for land in
the northern part of the county for a new regional park.
Growth
All across the county, people tell me that we need to
preserve what’s special in our communities as our population increases. My goal
is to ensure that we preserve our rich history and valuable resources while we
invest in communities and infrastructure. One initiative is to preserve the
things we value and that give Frederick County its unique sense of place. I
have already taken a step toward this initiative with the hiring of a
preservation planner within our Division of Planning and Permitting. And I want
to develop a rural historic district preservation program.
Perhaps one of the most important areas is to modify
policies, regulations and laws concerning development to ensure that our
community grows wisely. This includes updating our Adequate Public Facilities
Ordinance, keeping our mitigation and impact fees up to date, and strengthening
the Forest Resource Ordinance to ensure we stop losing forest cover.
We also need to expand broadband access. We receive
lots of requests for rural broadband or internet, and it’s important to our
rural areas. Frederick County has received a grant to study the feasibility of
expanding broadband, and we are gathering proposals from vendors right now.
There is a great deal to accomplish in the next three
and a half years! Fortunately, we have a strong group of people already hard at
work turning these ideas into reality. Frederick County is able to accomplish
amazing things because people care and are engaged. By setting our sights on
education, jobs, seniors, community needs and growth, we will ensure a high
quality of life, maintain our unique sense of place, have a thriving economy
and a healthy environment.
Frederick County is poised for a bright and prosperous
future!