Dean Minnich: Do you know what’s in the Carroll County budget? | COMMENTARY

News headline — School building projects won’t receive funding: Detention center, libraries and senior center also left off the budget for FY 2025.

It’s not an echo, but little has changed since I started covering county budgets begining in 1964 as a reporter. From 2002 to 2010, I was one of the commissioners getting the analysis of the budget director at the beginning of the annual budgeting process.

We heard the same things then from Ted Zaleski, director of management and budget, who told the board of commissioners recently, “This is the first public step in the process for the fiscal year ’25 budget. … What we call the preliminary recommended CIP (capital improvements budget).”

Every year, there’s a discussion of some projects that get pushed back another year. Every so often there’s a need to insert a project that has to move up on the priority list. This constant reshuffling is guaranteed to win applause from some and condemnation from others.

It isn’t only a matter of money. As with the family budget, it’s a matter of setting priorities to blend wishes and wants, and fill changing needs. And like family dynamics, the process wades through harsh financial realities, deep emotions, political maneuvers and communication failures.

You’ve heard the punchline, “You can’t get there from here.” That would apply to budget nirvana.

Of course there are conflicting priorities. You’d think everyone is in favor of good school facilities. I learned some people think we pamper today’s students and cave in to parent pressure. Sometimes both are true. More often, it’s just common sense and the courage to change course when the facts demand it.

It’s mostly about keeping up with growth and changes in things that are not under county government control. There’s general agreement among citizens that we should provide good school facilities.

But not too good. The conservative approach to funding at both the state and local levels contribute to falling behind. Defying good sense, we’re prohibited from building schools big enough to cover future needs.

Adequate facilities guidelines are often a battlefield between low-tax advocates and parent associations and progressive groups. Developers can buy land, build houses and fill them with families with school-age children in half the time schools can be planned, permitted and funded. Money interests are at the same time advocating for holding the line on the costs of permits and real estate taxes.

New residents seeking lower tax rates tend to look past the effect of new housing on the costs of school construction. Plus there are police and emergency services, water and sewerage facilities and road building and maintenance, and compliance with state and federal environmental regulations.

Bike riders and hikers want trails, everyone wants more athletic facilities — as long as they are not increasing traffic to and from their neighborhoods.

It’s supposed to begin with a master plan that gets updated every so many years. Budget projections are updated and a shopping list is put together by staff and work groups. Then the master plan has to be considered.

Master plans were invented with the advent of the suburban housing boom and the marketing of home sites for commuters.

County staff and commissioners will take a road show to the public, which will have plenty of opinions to share, and more challenges than questions.

If this year’s road show is like those of past years, the commissioners will hear complaints about what will be left out — again.

The budget is a plan, but all the targets tend to move as funding is lost or found over a five-year period.

So, aging William Winchester Elementary School will miss out again, as will the addition to old Freedom Elementary School. That problem could possibly be addressed with redistricting, but that’s a third rail issue.

Sykesville MiddleSchool is not funded in this proposal, and as has so often been the case, the Department of Recreation and Parks will have to do without something — this time it’s more lights at parks in Hampstead and Sykesville.

If they need a soundtrack for the show, I suggest the old song that goes something like, “It seems— that I’ve heard this song before …”

Dean Minnich writes from Westminster.