Last night, the Board of Aldermen unanimously adopted Mayor Michael O’Connor’s proposed Fiscal Year 2022 budget culminating a public process that began in December. The FY22 budget includes a general fund budget of $112.3 Million. It is based on maintaining the current municipal property tax rate of $0.7305 per $100 of assessed value for the ninth year. It also further continues the 10-year phase-out of the business personal property tax. The general fund budget plus the budgets for water and sewer, stormwater, parking, the Weinberg Center for the Arts, airport, golf course, and reserves total $170.1 Million.
The budget was designed to grow the City’s commitment to being leaders in equity, diversity, inclusion, and justice, remaining proactive in pursuing social, economic, and environmental sustainability, enhancing housing and human services delivery by investing in further restructuring of the Department of Housing and Human Services, and continuing the progress made in addressing broad mobility issues in the City, responding to the needs of motorists, bicyclists, and pedestrians.
To achieve these goals, the budget specifically includes funding for:
- Hiring an Equity Program Administrator to evaluate, administer, and track programs, deficiencies, and impact across the organization.
- Implementing recommendations to ensure more women and minority-owned businesses have access to City contracts while addressing disparities in our procurement process.
- Funding the recommendations from the Army Corps of Engineers for stormwater improvements and surface flooding mitigation.
- Enhancing constituent engagement and services by increasing multi-lingual and ASL translation capabilities.
- Instituting a Mayor's Fellowship Program to create a City-wide student internship program.
- Initiating a residential composting/food waste recovery pilot program.
- Supporting the creation of a Downtown Ambassador Program to extend resident, business, and visitor support in one of the most dense and active areas of our City.
- Reviewing our zoning code to support new types of development opportunities that align with comprehensive visions for areas within our city.
- Assisting our local non-profit community in responding to needs in the areas of arts, culture, youth, and senior initiatives; and
- Installing new traffic signals
- Completing street resurfacing and sidewalk development and retrofitting; and
- ADA intersection improvements.
The City thanks the community for its feedback and comments during the past several months. In addition to the FY22 budget, staff are also working to ensure all recovery funding allocations coming to Frederick support our residents and businesses in Frederick as the City continues to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
For information about the budget process, visit cityoffrederickmd.gov/budget.