County OKs $275K for duplicated services

Task force will examine reimbursement formula for a long-term solution

‘‘We got it through this year,” said Takoma Park City Manager Barbara Burns Matthews. ‘‘Hopefully, the work of the [Montgomery County Tax Duplication] Task Force will come up with a more long-term solution to satisfy both sides.”

The tax rebate is the amount the municipalities will receive from the county for providing services — policing and recreation, for example — the county also provides to those municipalities.

Councilman Roger Berliner (D-Dist. 1) of Potomac initially voted against the motion in a meeting of the Management and Fiscal Policy Committee April 23, but was absent Friday. Council President Marilyn Praisner (D-Dist. 4) of Calverton was the dissenting vote Friday.

‘‘The non-municipal resident is picking up this extra cost, while possibly seeing a reduction in their services,” Praisner said Friday. Praisner said because the County Council did not have a new formula to calculate new rebate amounts, it was important to go by current standards. The county’s task force is expected to come up with a more fair and accurate rebate formula.

‘‘The reality is municipalities do have taxing authority ... bonding authority. ... If there was a crisis, one could deal with it in a variety of ways,” Praisner said Friday of her reasoning to vote against the motion.

In City Council meetings leading up to the county’s decision, Takoma Park officials worried that a loss in funding would essentially void Matthews’ attempts to lower the city property tax rate in the next budget cycle. Currently, the budget includes a tax rate cut of 2 cents per $100 of assessment, from 63 cents in fiscal year 2007 to 61 cents in Matthews’ proposed fiscal 2008 budget.

‘‘This amount is certainly very important to us. We’ve already begun the budgeting process with the assumption that there would be this amount from this particular source,” Mayor Kathy Porter told the County Council Friday. ‘‘It would be difficult for us to reverse course at this late date.”

Former Takoma Park Councilman and County Councilman Marc Elrich (D-At large) was one of the main supporters of the motion, telling the County Council it was important to pass the motion now, and work on the issue again extensively next year.

‘‘I can say that for many years, as a municipal official, I worked very hard to try to renegotiate the formulas with the [County] Council,” Elrich said Friday.

In 2005, the 21-member Takoma Park Committee on Tax and Service Duplication Issues (TASDI) released a study of all duplicated services. The study found that the rebates the city had been receiving were at least $1.1 million less than they should be, according to the report. The report attributed the large gap to the lack of administrative and capital costs in the county’s current formula.

The findings of the committee eventually led to a task force assigned by Leggett this year of county and municipal officials, including Matthews, who would look at rebate formulas and come up with fair solutions. Bruce Moyer, co-chair of TASDI, said he hoped the discussions came up with a formula that would ‘‘accurately capture the cost that municipalities avoid the county from having to pay.”

In the meantime, Leggett recommended keeping the rebate at fiscal 2007 levels — the source of the $273,000 in Takoma Park’s fiscal 2008 budget — until an agreement could be reached.

‘‘It’s partly a matter of education to make sure the [County] Council’s educated. ... It’s partly a process of being persistent, and finding whatever speaks to state and county officials to having an equitable solution,” said Dan Robinson, co-chair of TASDI.

By the numbers

Municipalities benefiting most from fiscal ’08 reimbursements

Takoma Park: $273,000

Gaithersburg: $130,000

Rockville: $129,000

Poolesville: $29,000

Town of Chevy Chase: $16,000

Source: Montgomery County Office of Public Information