(12/2022) As the holiday season approaches, we reflect and give thanks for our many blessings. Like many of you, I am grateful for the love and support of my family and for the gift of good health. I am also thankful for the trust this community has placed in me over the past 8 years. It has been my great honor to serve as Frederick County’s first County Executive. Together, we have made life better for the people who call Frederick County home.

Frederick County is a caring community. I have had the great privilege to witness it every day. During the pandemic, I saw the very best that people have to offer to each other. Our community worked together in truly amazing ways to keep our community safe, to protect public health, and to assist our businesses and families who felt the brunt of the economic impacts of the pandemic.

I particularly want to thank county employees who stayed on the job and those who shifted to new jobs to make sure we could continue to provide county services and accomplish many new tasks, like successfully standing up mass vaccination clinics and supporting food distribution, including delivering groceries to hundreds of seniors and others who could not get food any other way. The pandemic was without a doubt the greatest single professional and personal challenge of my lifetime. I am grateful to our healthcare providers, our essential workers, our non-profit human service agencies, community funders, and to the many individuals who stepped to the plate to meet the needs in our community.

I am proud of our collective accomplishments. These include a record investment in public education and school construction, the advancement of the Livable Frederick master plan which will serve us well into the future, and the support for our seniors through our Seniors First initiative and the retention of Citizens and Montevue. I am proud that we now have a more robust continuum of care to address substance misuse, addiction, and mental health with our mobile crisis unit, a detox center, and soon a crisis stabilization center.

I am leaving the county in excellent financial shape. After inheriting a structural deficit, we now have robust reserve funds, fully funded long-term pension and retiree health liabilities, and have earned a coveted AAA bond rating from all three rating agencies. The AAA bond rating has saved millions of dollars to taxpayers as we invest in new infrastructure like schools, road, libraries, and parks.

The most lasting legacy my administration will leave is protecting our agricultural heritage, our historic and cultural resources, and the scenic vistas that our residents cherish. We have doubled our investment in agriculture preservation to accelerate the preservation of our best farmland for future generations and supported agriculture economic vitality with agriculture innovation grants. Rural historic preservation grants are helping owners to maintain and restore important rural cultural and historic assets.

And, we are blessed with a diverse and thriving economy with main street communities bustling with activity. We have added new jobs and new businesses, large and small, even during the pandemic. Frederick County can be proud to have welcomed some new major employers like Kite Pharma, Ellume, Kroger/Ocado, and Quantum Loophole.

My thanks and gratitude to the Frederick County community. Frederick County is a great place to live, work, raise a family, and retire.

Join me in committing our support to the next administration to continue the good work and the good life we have come to enjoy and to ensure that everyone can share in our community’s prosperity.