Pittman and Friends Podcast

2024 State of the County Address

• County Executive Steuart Pittman • Season 1 • Episode 9

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Each year I report directly to our residents on what I perceive the state of our county to be. 

Are we managing our finances responsibly, facilitating future economic prosperity for all, managing growth and development in accordance with Plan2040? Are we contributing positively to the social determinants of good health, things like housing, transportation, parks, public safety, and education?

These are important questions, and I’ll answer them. Tune in this week to hear my answers and about the work we are doing to make Anne Arundel County The Best Place - For All.

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County Executive Steuart Pittman:

Each year I report directly to our residents on what I perceive the state of our county to be.

County Executive Steuart Pittman:

Are we managing our finances responsibly, facilitating future economic prosperity for all, managing growth and development in accordance with Plan 2040? Are we contributing positively to the social determinants of good health, things like housing, transportation, parks, public safety and education?

County Executive Steuart Pittman:

These are important questions, and I'll answer them.

County Executive Steuart Pittman:

But the bigger question we must ask ourselves in these post-pandemic years is are we recovering? Are we healing from the wounds left by the deaths of 1.2 million Americans and 1,147 of our county residents? Are we healing from the pandemic isolation, school children's loss of social connection, supply chain-driven inflation, trauma at the low end of the economic scale as wealth moved to the top, and elevation of conspiracy theories into mainstream politics?

County Executive Steuart Pittman:

I often quote disaster recovery expert Dr. George Everly's words from one of our early pandemic virtual town halls. "Division delays recovery. He warned, and he was right.

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The world and our country have yet to heal from the impacts of the pandemic, largely because we remain victims of division. Victims, I say, because wedges were driven between us by forces outside of our communities.

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But the daily work of delivering local government services, as mundane as it may seem, can and will heal us. It will heal us and it will build the trust that we need - both between one another and between our residents and their government institutions.

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So that - healing wounds and building trust - is the ultimate goal of the work I will now review.

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Let's start with the money your money that supports county services.

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The government of Anne Arundel County is in better financial condition than the state of Maryland and than most counties. We can thank our increasing property values, our residents' increasing income, and the fiscal discipline that county government practiced before, during, and since the pandemic for that condition.

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But when you come to one of our eight budget town halls in January and February, you'll be presented with revenue and expense projections that leave little room for new spending, and then you'll hear passionate pleas for greater investment in very worthy initiatives. That's the reality of governing everywhere.

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This year's budget proposal to the County Council will be made after updating revenue projections, listening to residents at town halls, hearing from department heads and agencies, and consulting individually with all seven members of the Council. It's a collaborative process led by our brilliant team in the budget office and it's driven

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triple .

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When I meet each year with the bond rating agencies, they look beyond current finances and project future economic growth. All three of fire, agencies awarded us triple-A

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ratings again this economic year development because agency that picture looks strong. Businesses are expanding, visitors and residents are spending. Our economy is growing. Economic growth is a good thing if it delivers higher wages to support

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our families and more revenue to invest in schools, police, fire year, an infrastructure. That's why our Economic Development Agency is tasked not only with growing our economy, but in doing it in ways that deliver public benefit and, as Governor Moore often says, leave no one benefit. behind.

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The Inclusive Ventures Program is now graduating three business owner cohorts each year. An effort is in the works to grow new childcare businesses in

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coordination with our Childcare Task Force, and a new Economic Development Strategic Plan is underway to better align the agency's economic growth efforts with public benefit. .

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the residents of our county will not process, support, however, is environmentally destructive or poorly planned regulations, we in the name of economic growth. We are to be a place that businesses, including real estate developers,

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want to operate. That fact allows us 2040's enforce environmental protections, adequate public facilities, laws, fair housing initiatives and smart growth principles without losing the investors. We need to move forward by engaging the public in the planning process and all stakeholders in the establishment

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Plan

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2040, our award-winning smarter, greener, more public equitable opinion development survey plan. I highly recommend that you read over Plan 2040's annual implementation reports, but residents, I want to take a moment to focus on both the affordable housing and the conservation aspects of that work. Some people believe those things aren't compatible, but we're proving

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that they are. Some people believe those things aren't we,

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1. but we're proving that they are bonus,

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2. reopened residents, our elected officials and county government have come a overcrowding, long

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3. since 2015, when a county council majority rolled back legislation that allowed workforce housing in neighborhoods of opportunity. The most recent Anne$1 Community million College

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Public Opinion Survey says that housing affordability has risen to become the second

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1. ranking concern of our residents and while most of our pro-housing legislation has been passed along partisan lines,

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2. the success of the work and demand units, for it

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3. by local businesses is broadening its appeal.

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We

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have

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quadrupled our pace of affordable housing production because we brought back the workforce housing density bonus. We reopened school feeder areas with redistricting and new legislation to prevent overcrowding and, most importantly, we created an affordable housing trust fund paid for with

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real estate transfer taxes MUST on properties that sell for over a

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million dollars. And we're not done. We have legislation passed or in the pipeline to require a percentage

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of.

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The units and subdivisions of 10 Riva more homes to be moderately priced, to allow homeowners to build accessory dwelling units and to remove restrictions on building new housing in high-density commercial areas. .

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But our greatest housing challenge is to preserve the affordable units that exist today and protect the families living in them. We're working with the Housing Authority of the City of half, on a recovery plan to improve and protect its subsidized units

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and with our Department of Public Works on a wastewater treatment plan for the mobile home Park parks along Ride the Patuxent River in . South County so that they can continue housing hundreds of our essential workers and seniors for years to come. I don't buy the

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argument that we'll solve our housing problems by increasing the supply of luxury homes. Those will be purchased by wealthy people from all across the Mid-Atlantic region who don't do the essential County, jobs that make our County thrive. Our next housing initiatives must

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be targeted to our essential workers. Planning for those efforts is underway and you can share your ideas by participating in our

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five-year

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consolidated housing plan.

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concerns Memorial, the Severn large multifamily developments on Tanyard Reaver Road have Bacon a additions of Saltworks Monticello, because Elktonia Carr's Annapolis High School and the county Jug and school expansion, system offices is already Retreat a

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struggle at peak hours, but our Department of Public Works Traffic Engineering team made that a whole lot easier in recent months. The new signal optimization system has cut 4 pm traffic time nearly in half and a forthcoming left turn restriction will reduce

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I will note here that the Resilience Authority has become a powerful partner further. We're also adding wider sidewalks for bike and pedestrian traffic and a transit center at the park and ride lot on

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Harry S years, Truman Parkway county's With the addition of more frequent transit and more lowest- paying, vehicle traffic counts from the apartments will decrease. A lot of Blueprint traffic is on state roads, but we've pitched our transportation

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improvements to the state so effectively that five of the six top-ranked state projects are in Anne Blueprint, County and we're winning federal grants to help pay

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for them. Throughout the county we're moving away from sprawl development and toward multimodal transportation that starts in town centers. That's how we accommodate growth responsibly.

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It wasn't until 2021 that we created, and the next year that vacancies, the County Council approved our first green infrastructure master plan.

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We needed to recognize the long-term economic and public health value of nature in our county peers, and establish goals not only for conservation of contiguous and Community ecologically Schools essential land but also for the greening of our gray urban spaces. We've accelerated that work and made that land accessible to our residents through

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the expanded capital budget at Recreation and Parks and Career Counseling with non-profit land conservation organizations. Creation of parks and in partnership with nonprofit land conservation organizations. Crownsville Hospital, - memorial Park, severn Danza Park rescue,, teaching, tanyard Springs Park, bacon Ridge addition, saltworks, monticello properties, elktonia, cars Beach, the McNew property, jug science, Bay expansion and Quiet Waters retreat. These are just a sampling of the larger and better-known acquisitions we've

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added to the green inventory or have contracts in place for. We trust, laser focused on other large parcels as well, some of which are being aggressively pursued for sprawl development.

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Partner in this work, both in making the case for conservation and in securing outside funding to serve, burden on our taxpayers. In recent years our County school system has accidents, from being one of the

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lowest paying in the state to becoming one of the first to reach Maryland's blueprint mandate that all teachers start at Police no less than Fire. We're seen as Emergency one Management of the few that is moving forward on all five pillars of compensation, that blueprint our data is showing that it's working. But the real

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credit goes to the taxpayers who have today, been willing to pay more for what we- the new get, and to Superintendent Bedell and the Board of Education for doing the hard things, facilities, ending overcrowding through Real Time, Information improving Center efficiency- are throughout the state,. and

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to Superintendent Bedell and the Board of Education for doing the hard things like ending overcrowding through redistricting, improving efficiency throughout the Road, system with best practices in management and teaching, and recognizing that teachers Agency, be allowed to innovate. I especially want to note that we now have zero. bus

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driver vacancies and are well below our pre-pandemic teacher vacancy numbers. Our recent test scores show that our recovery from the pandemic is surpassing most of our peers and that our clearest progress has been in our community schools, the ones with the Village, rates of poverty. Those schools now Harbour have staff engaging directly with whole families and neighbors, and it's working. But the part I'm most excited about is the career counseling in partnership with violence, Arundel Workforce Development. Students as early as middle school are learning

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about

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paths to careers, cool stuff like fire and rescue teaching and technology. I know that my dream of being a veterinarian is what carried me through math and science and that almost every truly engaged student that I meet has a vision for their future as well. A good measure of whether our school system is healing wounds and building trust is results from the recent Board of Education races. Candidates who ran on changing course mostly lost. Candidates who expressed support for the current direction mostly won. So our progress will continue.

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As Draft Master Plan have existed, they have had a fundamental obligation to - protect the people they serve from those who refuse to abide by their education, laws, from fires and accidents and from natural disasters. To deliver on that obligation, this administration has done more than talk the talk. We have increased our investment in police by 87%, fire by 71% and emergency management by 76%. Those dollars have been spent on additional personnel, compensation and and equipment and technology that make our life-saving work more effective. The quality of our public safety workforce today and the tools they are working with the new fire stations, new engines and fireboats, new radio systems, new police training and operations facilities and our new real-time information center are actually saving lives, and so is the innovative work we are doing both inside and outside of our detention centers. Our re-entry hub at Ordinance Road and the full menu of re-entry services being coordinated at Community Action Agency are turning former offenders into productive members of our community. That's a smart investment, but what might be the most cost effective of our new public safety initiatives is our violence interrupters. Our Department of Health-led gun violence intervention team has partnered with neighborhood organizations to hire and train locally respected residents in the Severn area around Meade Village and in Annapolis in and around Harbor House and Eastport Terrace. These brave men and women have directly engaged with residents who are most likely to be both victims and perpetrators of gun violence and mediated conflicts that we know would otherwise have resulted in bloodshed.

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This work is healing wounds and building trust in places where it's needed most.

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Any discussion of healing wounds in our county must start and end with- between the magic we are making at Crownsville Hospital Memorial Park.

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The draft master plan captures the spirit of healing that our residents called for the deliberations, telling of history, nature, active and passive recreation, agriculture, education and direct services.

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As we face the fiscal challenges that this project will present in the coming felt,, we must not lose sight of its power to heal us. I will close with the question of trust. Are we building it between groups

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that have been divided and between government and the people it serves? I believe that we are the performance of our agencies, the transparency of our deliberations and the stakeholder engagement that we invite in

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our decision-making is getting noticed. People know where we stand and they know how to engage, and those things invite trust in government. Our work to push back against the wedges that divide us is also being felt and being welcomed. Our Office of Equity and Human Rights is carefully navigating this work, seeking always to connect us and never to divide us. The coming years will bring disruptions to our lives and to the work of county government, but the state of our county is strong and by healing wounds and building trust, we will become even stronger.

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