Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Message
Read at the Public Business Meeting held on 5/30/24. Watch here.
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Dear Allegany County Residents:
The Fiscal Year 2025 budget was prepared by facing some new financial challenges head-on, ensuring that we have a sustainable budget and financial position for years to come.
This budget contains no property tax increases for our residents. We continue to maintain the income tax rate that was reduced two years ago during the budget process. We have only increased our 911 fee and trash stickers so as to allow those operations to keep pace with rising costs.
We have had to make difficult decisions during this budget cycle due to decreasing income tax revenue and, recordation and transfer tax revenues. We wanted to thank our outside agencies; Allegany College of Maryland, Allegany County Public Schools, Allegany County Health Department, and the Allegany County Library System and many others for their willingness to find a way to do more with less this coming year.
Allegany County has also made some difficult staffing decisions by reducing our workforce, freezing open positions, reducing our health insurance program, and trimming operating budgets to keep up with rising costs. We have also taken steps to reduce the budget of our EMS operation which has seen rising costs over the last several years that are no longer sustainable for us. We do not take these decisions lightly and have worked hard to limit the impact that this has on our citizens.
While these decisions are difficult, they are necessary to keep our finances in order and to ensure that our citizens do not feel extra tax burdens during this current inflationary period.
Allegany County Government’s FY 2025 Operating Budget and the FY 2025 – FY 2029 Capital Improvement Program can be found on the Budget & Financial Reports page on the County’s website (https://alleganygov.org/191/Budget-Financial-Reports).
Sincerely,
The Board of County Commissioners
David J. Caporale, President
Creade V. Brodie, Jr., Commissioner
William R. Atkinson, Commissioner