The Art of Budgeting

Budgets can feel like distant paperwork until you realize they decide how much support children get in the classroom, whether families can keep food on the table, and whether first responders have the staffing and tools to do their jobs safely. On the latest episode of the Pittman and Friends Podcast, County Executive Pittman hands the mic to Vincent Moulden, the Director of the Office of Community Engagement and Constituent Services, and we go straight into an Office Hours conversation about what a county budget actually says about values, strategy, and trust in local government. 

We talk about why we push the idea of return on investment, why conservative revenue projections matter, and what it means to “leave a house in good order” for the next administration. Vincent brings questions shaped by what residents raised at budget town halls and online, including the tension that comes with real public feedback: it can be demanding, emotional, and sometimes accusatory, but it’s also how the government earns credibility. 

From public safety to the food bank to education funding, we walk through the tradeoffs behind the headlines. We cover hiring realities for police and firefighters, investments like a real-time information center, and why funding hunger relief can stabilize families when costs rise faster than paychecks. We also dig into the strain in schools, especially special education needs, and why we made major education investments even under tax cap constraints. 

If you want an inside look at county budgeting, community engagement, and how to advocate effectively with the next county executive, subscribe, share this with a neighbor, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

The FY27 Approved Budget was passed unanimously by the County Council on June 11, 2026. Visit www.aacounty.org/budget/fy27-approved-budget to learn more.

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Transcript

Office Hours Role Reversal

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Welcome back everybody to Pittman and Friends Podcast. I'm here today with my friend Vincent Molden, the director of the Anorondo County Office of Community Engagement and Constituent Services. And if you're a regular, you might know I already interviewed Vincent. But this is different. This is office hours. I get interviewed by Vincent. So take it away, Vincent Molden.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Yeah, thank you so much. I'm very happy to do it differently this time for office hours, because last time, like you said, you got to interview me, but we're switching it up. Do you like it that way better?

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Because I was thinking about it before I came down here and I was thinking, you know what? I feel more relaxed being interviewed than doing the interview. Because you got to be on top of things and timing and all of that when you're interviewing. The interviewer just gets to spew whatever pops into your head when you ask questions. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

No, I much prefer being the interviewer. Aaron Ross Powell Do you? Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

So we're both in the right place then.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Yeah, I started doing this on the side for fun, and I've come to enjoy it. So let's see how we play in this one if we we're in our natural preferred roles. Okay. Yeah. When I heard that we were going to be focusing on the budget for this one, I said, I would love to represent the people because you know the uh constituent services. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

Okay, because yes, that is your job. And when we have our CECS meetings, you're basically bringing to us what people said what the concerns are. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

Okay. Okay. That works. So yeah, so for uh the months of January and February, we heard all the feedback from the residents during our budget town halls and through emails and even on social media, we heard even more feedback. So these questions were generated from that feedback. Okay. So I'm looking forward to. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Okay. So throughout the entire process where we solicited feedback from the residents, we CCS helps to capture that, pull it together, and make sure that they're at the table when you're making your decisions. Right. And so the questions I'll ask in today will be based on that.

Budgets As Values And ROI

SPEAKER_00 2:07

So on May 1st, in the county council chambers, you open your budget address by saying that budgets are a statement of values and strategies, something we heard you say a lot. This is also your final budget as county executive. When you look at this proposal, what do you believe it says about the values of your administration?

SPEAKER_01 2:25

Well, I would say it's nothing new compared to the last seven. I will also say that I'm always a little bit terrified going into budget because I worry about whether about revenues and about whether we're going to be able to meet the needs of the people of the county and deliver what I think needs to be delivered. I will also say that this budget and all of them reflect a philosophy that government actually can be a force for good and improve people's lives, but that we have to prove it to people. You know, there's a lot of distrust in government. And in fact, there are elected leaders around the country, and there have been in this county, whose focus at budget time is to cut, cut, cut as much as possible to cut taxes. That is the goal. And a belief that these bureaucracies in government and all these programs, it's just too much. Just let us be our, you know, be on our own. Libertarians are are the ultimate in that. Just no government, please. And I'm a, you know, I'm a country boy from South County. And we got a little bit of that. You know, I got a little bit of that in me. It's like, come on, man, do we need more government for maybe we need less in some areas. But so this isn't it's not about growing government. It is about investing in the things that we know will have an impact, a return on investment. And I say that over and over again in the budget. The ROI has to be there. And so that's why we keep track of data. That's why the school board in particular is very good about keeping track of data, and we talk about that. So it's the same old things, though. You know, it's education, it's it's health and human services, it's public safety, and it is responding to the moment we're in, which is a moment where the federal government is saying, we, you know, the president has said we can't be funding things like child care and social services. What we need to do is spend our money fighting wars. And so uh that has been the direction, and we have to be responsive to that.

Trust In Government And Connection

SPEAKER_00 4:17

Absolutely. Um I heard you touch on a little bit trust in government, and understand that was a Pittman pillar, right? Restoring trust in government. Yeah, we had those pillars at the beginning, didn't we? At the beginning. You had to have at least two of them to start any initiative. That was the rule. But I also heard you talk about when you first came into government, you didn't have a lot of trust for government. How has that evolved for you as county executives?

unknown 4:40

Good point.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

Coming from the outside. Yeah, yeah. And been a bit of a rebel through much of my my life and career, and maybe I think I still am. But just because I didn't trust government doesn't mean I didn't want to trust government. I wanted to believe that government was really in it for all the right reasons, that government was the institutions, and there are multiple institutions within government the way I see it. You can think of them as departments or whatever you want, but that uh if they're working well, then people trust them, just like in all relationships with people. And and so, yeah, to me, somebody asked me what would be the definition of success for me before I was even counting executive, and I thought really hard about it, and you know, my answer was impacting the attitude of the people in such a way that they trusted government more, that they actually believed we were doing good things and they were willing to invest in us.

SPEAKER_00 5:34

Trevor Burrus, Jr. Absolutely. And I love to think of CCS as the tip of the spear for that initiative, right? Because we're out in the community. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Communicating, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:43

And and I'll say that that you can't you can't build the trust. First of all, to build trust, I learned this training horses, you have to meet people or horses where they are. Right? Absolutely. You know, you can't just jump on a horse's back who's never been ridden and say, kick them and say go. They don't trust you. They're gonna throw you in the dirt and stomp on you. And same with people. You've got you've got to meet them where they are, and you've got to uh understand where they're coming from in order to have any kind of a connection that then you you can move forward. But yeah, I'm I'm divulging all my my political strategies here.

SPEAKER_00 6:14

So let's get back there. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Well, and people may not believe this, but you actually don't make as many horse analogies as people might think.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

Yeah. I was told not to by my first campaign manager by yeah, Pete Barron, way back in the day. He said, people don't want to be compared to horses. Come on, stay away.

SPEAKER_00 6:31

Stay away from horses.

SPEAKER_01 6:32

I learned a lot from horses. They're hurt animals too, you know? Trevor Burrus, Jr. Absolutely.

Leaving A House In Good Order

SPEAKER_00 6:35

A house in good order. Okay. That's the theme for this year's budget, right? What does it mean to leave a house in good order for the Knicks administration?

SPEAKER_01 6:43

Yeah, I I thought of that and I came up with that as a as a concept because I had been frustrated at a lot of people say that part of the reason government is often dysfunctional is that the politicians think short-term and not long-term. That unlike a business person who plans or a person managing family finance, you think about what you're gonna leave for the next generation, you think you think long-term. And so when you invest in that business, you are thinking about not just what's gonna happen next year or even in five years, but maybe 10 and 20 years. And we don't do that because we're not gonna be in office that long. I'm not gonna be in office, there's term limits here. And and so and we're worried about the next election. So we have to make it look good now, look good or in, you know, or in a year or two or three. And so often there are gimmicks, there are budget gimmicks that one can play to cover things up and uh to make things look better than they are, like overspend, there's a spending affordability formula for the capital improvements program, and most county executives, and certainly the one before me, overspent in the last year when there was an election coming up to make it look like you were doing a lot getting a lot done. And we have not done that. We have not ever done that actually. We have not exceeded affordability on the capital budget. And we have a really strong budget team led by Chris Trombauer, who is fiscally very disciplined and disciplines me if I get out of line, and so I'm reminded. But we're given options. There are ways to spend money that just by making projections different, projecting future revenues differently. If you're really optimistic and you say we're gonna have a ton of revenues coming, then you start spending money, you know, in recurring expenses to go along with it. But if you budget conservatively and you project conservatively, then you don't overspend and it puts you in a better position for the future. So that's to me what leaving a house in good order in a budget is. I also think that government is something that has to be nurtured and that leaving it in better condition than you found it is the goal. So I don't think that's it.

SPEAKER_00 8:52

Does it mean something beyond financially to you?

SPEAKER_01 8:55

It sort of does. Yes, yes. And when you say a house in good order, you really mean the whole institution, the whole place. And for me, even though it's not part of the budget, knowing that county employees are really excellent at their jobs and have been trained well and have achieved success, or that infrastructure has been built so that, for instance, our police department has a real-time information center and good equipment and good cars so that and our fire department have apparatus that are up-to-date and modern and our buildings are not falling apart, which means that in future budgets, you're not gonna have to be spending your time on that. You can be making progress.

SPEAKER_00 9:35

Right. Got it, got it. All right.

Why Community Engagement Is Worth It

SPEAKER_00 9:38

Sometimes I feel as though our departments are not as enthusiastic about our level of community engagement that we would prefer. And even the level of uh budget town halls that we do for each one of these budgets, we do eight of them now. And by charter, you're only required to do two. That's correct, right? Right. Yep. Yep. Do you think that level of engagement and the engagement that you have kind of required as part of the process uh for government in your administration, do you think that level of engagement is required to do good governing?

SPEAKER_01 10:13

You can get away without doing it for a while, but I think it catches up with you. And if you want to build trust in government, you you have to engage because you have to meet people. And I would say that, yeah, if you work uh in the bureaucracy, in a department, it is tiring to do town halls and hear from residents, I've written about this in my weekly letter, actually, I think, who don't know your job telling you how to do it, or people coming to budget town halls and demanding things as though it's a crisis and the sky is going to fall if it doesn't happen, that maybe aren't that critical, or that the money's not there to do, or that maybe it can be done over a five or ten year period. So the sense of urgency people bring can be uncomfortable. Definitely uncomfortable for me, sitting in the front of that room and having people pointing their finger at me and saying, if you know the next person who dies in a fire, it's on you because you have not hired enough firefighters or you have not funded the fire department. Or, you know, you can say that about policing, you can say it about education, you can say it about a lot of things. It's all you. And so yeah, it makes me uncomfortable and it makes department heads uncomfortable when people say, you know, in really sometimes accusatory terms that something hasn't been done and it should have been done. But then you mean that's what meeting them where they are are is. And I will tell you that the department heads are not required to come to our budget town halls, but a lot of them show up, especially Public Works, literally texting their staff. Um, Karen Henry often they're texting her staff about, you know, with the pothole or the sidewalk, whatever it is, getting information. Breck and Parks is often there. A lot of our health our human all of our forward-facing community-based, you know, community-facing uh departments are there. And it's not because they have to be, it's because they want to it's they I think so. I don't think that they completely dislike it. I think that it's hard, hard work. Yeah. And it pays off maybe it pays off more for the elected officials because then they get the the support. But I know Wreckin Parks, when they started doing even more community engagement than they were doing before on projects and doing it earlier, it was a lot, and they were getting screamed and yelled at. But I think you ask them now, and they're really proud of it, and they feel like it does make the process a bit easier down the road when you've already been talking to people. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:41

I would definitely agree that Wrex and Parks is the example for that. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Public Safety Staffing And Tradeoffs

SPEAKER_00 12:45

Um you talked about it, public safety. Uh-huh. Um that was a huge theme for this year's budget uh town halls. Uh how do you respond to that demand of wanting more officers, wanting more firefighters, and what does it take in order to get that demand met?

SPEAKER_01 13:05

So public safety agencies are ex-police and fire in particular, very expensive to run and very important and necessary, and very popular politically in this county, both police and fire people, people want government investment in those things. What's a little different there, and this is some some people think it's wrong to allow the labor unions, the public employee unions, to be testifying at the public town halls. You know, they were designed for the residents to speak about their priorities. And when it's the county employees speaking about their priorities, some people say it's inappropriate. I thought about whether or not to to change things so that they they did not do that. And I thought, you know, I think it's positive for the residents to come to a meeting and hear not just from their neighbors. Neighbors go first. If you live in the community, you go first. So you can leave if you want at the end of the day. But also from the from the cops and the firefighters and the public servants and the librarians and the, you know, teachers and all, because they're there not just to talk to me, they get a chance to talk to me anyway. In fact, they get to negotiate their contracts with our with our administration, but they're there to talk to the neighbors and to build build support. I I wrote a letter recently to the Salisbury City Council because they had a resolution to change their charter to remove the right to collective bargaining for all unions in the city. And it was a mayor who had come in and said, to save money, we're going to do that. So I pointed out that you don't actually save money by people taking people's rights away. But one of the things you do is you take away one of the greatest advocates for the departments that the the labor unions are advocating for government to be funded adequately so that they can have a living wage and all those things. So in the long run, I think it's I think it's good and it's healthy, but it can be it can be painful to hear sometimes what they say.

SPEAKER_00 15:12

Well, one request you said yes to was the food bank. It was one of the clearest asks we heard.

SPEAKER_01 15:18

I said yes to the I didn't actually say it in the meetings, but I said yes to the police had fired too by putting a bunch of positions in the I mean we got when I put in 21 new firefighters, which is a huge number, we had already increased by uh 95 since we came in. Yes. And and I a little birdie is telling me that the negotiations suggest that there might be five more added to that. So that would be 26. Okay. And then uh on the police side, we've increased the actual sworn number, you know, by I think it's 70 or 80. It was I think it was just under 700 when I came in, and we're at 780 now. So no not not above where we want to be, but it's it is it is progress, and you can't we have vacancies on the on the police side. It's really harder to hire police officers these days than it is firefighters and a lot of other positions. And so rather than creating a bunch of new positions, um, you do things like we did in last year's budget, which is make our police the highest paid in the state, or like we did this year, which is to make them safer and more effective by having the real-time information center funded 24-7. And that was, you know, took us six positions in that, nine total new positions. So we did say yes. Yes. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 16:24

My apologies. At least a partial yes. Yeah. Absolutely. And that real-time information center is fantastic. It's one of the coolest things I've probably seen in government, and they took us on tour even before you. I don't know if I'm supposed to tell you that.

SPEAKER_01 16:39

Uh but again, one of the things Well, it's crazy not to use the technology that we all have on our phones, right? Like cameras and text messages and all these things and and then to be able to communicate to officers who are on the scene whose lives are are at risk. Yeah. And saying, okay, the bad guy's over there, or you know, whatever information they need to be able to make the community safer. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:58

They demonstrated to us uh uh an actual case that they uh used, right? And we were able to follow the suspect from where the incident happened all the way through to the arrest and the camera footage you were able to follow, right? It was it was amazing. So yes, absolutely. But again, try

Funding The Food Bank

SPEAKER_00 17:17

this again.

SPEAKER_01 17:17

Okay, uh no, we're gonna we're going off topic left, right, and center. But it was all. Okay, good.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

One of the things you said yes to was the food bank request for $2 million, right? What what made you say yes to that?

SPEAKER_01 17:30

I knew we were gonna say yes to that, like from day one. And I've often said that when times get tough, we've got to make sure people are fed. And we also need to should make sure that they have houses or or roofs over their heads, which we've not been successful at, but try to make progress at that. But even if some people say, well, are they really hungry? I mean, come on, can't they find food somewhere? Even if if they're not about to die of hunger, right? It's not it's not a famine situation necessarily. If you can provide food to people in a time where they can't pay their rent, they can't pay health insurance, they can't pay for a lot of things because the math just doesn't work every month, then you're making it possible for them to pay for other things. So it's like you could put cash in people's pockets, but if you there's ways to get the food at reduced rates and some of it donated, and then get it into people's homes so that they can eat it, obviously, and and avoid paying the high cost of food at the grocery store, then you're really making an impact. So it's a very wise investment that we had done a $1.5 million last year, and then we did a little bit more during the year from our emergency Federal Disaster Preparedness and Recovery Funds when they uh remember the the whole snap you know cuts and and the government shut shut down and the all the things that that were increasing the lines at our food distribution system. So we put some more in. But then they asked us to go from 1.5 to 2 million, and it seemed like a very reasonable request that we could afford to do. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

Yeah. Yeah. One of our more effective advocates, right, the food bank.

SPEAKER_01 19:05

Well, yeah, they show up at all the budget town halls um and both board members and staff and and and actually some of the pantries show up as well where so they distribute to the pantries that then distribute directly to people. So yeah, the whole network was really strengthened during COVID and uh put online so people could, you know, find out where the low s look closest pantry was, and and it's unfortunate that we need to do it. But I'm really you know, when people put their heart and soul into doing that work, the last thing you want to do is say no, we're not gonna give you the money to buy the food to distribute.

SPEAKER_00 19:38

Yeah. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: And to do the work. Um this kind of leads me to the next question, because uh obviously there's a lot of vulnerable folks in our county, and with the federal government not being the partner that they used to be.

Protecting Vulnerable Residents Amid Federal Cuts

SPEAKER_00 19:49

Uh the focus of the last year's budget was protecting our people. Um so how is has that work continued through this budget?

SPEAKER_01 19:56

Well, that was yeah, that was the theme. And we always have a theme for the budget. Right. Uh House in Good Order is this one. And when we said that last year, it was the beginning of the new administration that was threatening major, major impacts and cuts. We set aside, we we didn't spend $10 million and had it set aside for federal disaster preparedness and recovery. We did a few other things, like we knew that ICE was going to be coming after immigrant families and there would be folks left without their breadwinner. And we needed to create a system to respond to that with social services. And also make sure people had access where we could to legal assistance when they were going for their hearings for deportation, to the extent they actually had hearings, which fewer and fewer do. But so we've continued that work. Fortunately, the you know, bless the lawyers. I've never been a big fan of lawyers. My dad was a lawyer, and you know I loved my dad, but you know, it's like, come on, man, you guys we got enough lawyers, don't we? They just complicate life, right? And running a nonprofit, the lawyers were always telling us what we could and couldn't do. Well, now I, you know, I kneel down and praise those lawyers because they're the ones who are preventing some of the worst things from happening to local government and to local people with lawsuits. And so a lot of those lawsuits are winning. Most of them are winning. And and so a lot of the cuts, the original doge cuts, the Elon Musk stuff, uh they didn't get away with. So we have had major pain, major losses of employment for people. So we didn't use that to that whole 10 million. So we've got five million this year that's set aside. We know, however, that deportations are likely to increase because ICE has been hiring. They've been hiring fast and their budget is, you know, increased, what, tenfold or something like that. And so we have to be prepared for more ICE activity in our in our communities. So we've increased the fund for the family assistance network that that was created through faith organizations and just people who want to help their neighbors. So we grew that. And then the other was that, you know. So the they call it the big beautiful bill that basically is going to s after the general, after the election in November, is going to kick in where the new requirements to stay on Medicaid and get on Medicaid are going to kick in. And it's going to a lot of people are going to get thrown off. But in order to stay on, you have to jump through all these bureaucratic hoops. It's basically trying to kill the program through paperwork burden and regulation. And so we've got new positions in the Department of Health to help people navigate staying on their health insurance. And then we've got new positions for the REACH program, which is folks who have lost their health insurance to help the with low-cost and volunteer medical care. So that's the world we live in, and we're continuing the work.

SPEAKER_00 22:47

Absolutely. Important work.

Education Strain And The Tax Cap

SPEAKER_00 22:50

So education probably was the one of the most emotional things that came out during the town halls, right? We heard from teachers, special educators, social school workers, TSAs, speech language pathologists, parents, and students. Many in the system seem stretched, right? What stayed with you through those testimonies?

SPEAKER_01 23:10

You know, I think it's the both the testimony, and then I had a meeting that I talked about in my budget speech with the teachers union TAC. But I thought that they were in that meeting going to talk mostly about the cost of living adjustment. And, you know, we did that consistent with other county employees. Ended up at two and a quarter. Of course, they wanted 3%. We weren't able to pull that off and two and a quarter. But they ended up talking mostly about how what it's like having uh kids with special needs and how many more kids have special needs than have in the past, and teachers being bitten and chairs thrown at them and you know, real chaos. And that therefore they need more assistance and therefore they need more special ed teachers. And that was one where the the initial draft of the budget that we were able to put together with the revenues that we had, it didn't include any of those positions. And I thought back on those stories that those teachers told and said to the budget office, we're gonna have to go above the tax cap, which is something that was implemented by voters like 20-some years ago. And it it's not good policy. Democrat and Republican County executives have told me it's it it prevents you from making decisions based on what the what the cost of actual government. And you know, you should trust the local leaders at the time to make these decisions about taxes and spending. But it limits what you can what you can tax, and it actually was pushing our tax rate down. So we went through the tax cap. We're still having a tax reduction on our property taxes. We're talking about property tax here. So it is going down a little bit, but it was going to go down even further, and we kept we we went through the cap to fund those new positions.

SPEAKER_00 24:56

Amazing. And it still isn't enough, right? I mean, Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:03

Yeah. And when I presented the budget to the the council, I said, look, if y'all want to do more on education, I'll support you.

SPEAKER_00 25:12

Right.

SPEAKER_01 25:12

It's going to mean an adjustment in the property tax rate, though. And so, you know, I'm not on the ballot, y'all are, or not all of them, or whatever. I I I said, here's what we did, but we'll work with you if you want to do more.

SPEAKER_00 25:24

All right. However,

Historic School Funding Increase Explained

SPEAKER_00 25:26

you did make a historic investment in education this year. Why did you decide to make that investment in the school system?

SPEAKER_01 25:35

Well, yeah, I mean you can put that question two ways. One is why didn't you do more, and one is why did you do so much? I mean, yeah, the I think folks were pleased for the most part. I know there because, you know, back in the last administration, the annual increases were, you know, maybe in the teens, like $13, $14 million over the previous year. We bumped things up. And our biggest increase to date was $50 million last year, over the year before that. We did $72 million this year over last year. So the increase grew. And part of that was making up for loss of state funding. And the loss of state funding had to do with formulas. It wasn't decisions that, you know, the General Assembly made. It was formulas that existed based on enrollment and things. But we didn't want to be in a position like a lot of other districts laying off teachers because that just increases class sizes and adds to the stress. So no layoffs, new special ed teachers, got a cola that was consistent with what the rest of you know the two and a quarter could have been higher for everybody, I would have liked, but that's what we that's what we were able to do. And uh yeah, put us at $72 million over last year, which is it's a lot of money. Yeah. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 26:50

So

How Capital Projects Get Chosen

SPEAKER_00 26:51

capital projects are where residents often feel whether their community is being prioritized. We heard about field houses and schools and senior centers and libraries and sidewalks and animal services and trails, water access, uh, historic preservation. How do you decide what moves forward? Like how do you make those decisions?

SPEAKER_01 27:11

So fortunately, you know, our county charter created a community engagement, some community engagement. They created a planning advisory board. A lot of the budget requests come out of processes that involve the community, like Reckon Parks has the LPPRP, the Land Preservation, Parks and Recreation, they're doing it now, you get citizen input on what's needed. And a lot of the departments have things like that. Public Works has got their they review roads with a formula that tells them the condition of the roads, and then they prioritize those. So by the time it gets to me, it's gone through the planning advisory board, the budget office has, you know, has figured out what's affordable, they've cut out a lot of things. Um they ask me when they're doing the cutting part, you know, what I think, and I let them know what I think. But towards the end, a few things get sprinkled in there, like the kids who testified at the budget town halls over and over again on the Chesapeake and the Arundel field houses, they moved that baby up. I mean, that got hurt, right? So that got put in there. So every once in a while you get something that gets put in that wasn't part of a plan and didn't necessarily get studied. It's just the right thing to do in that moment. And then sometimes you have things like the West County Swim Center that, well, the original location that had been identified got rejected basically by community opposition. And then moving it to another location and time and increased costs, that thing got so expensive we can't afford to do it right now. So that got kind of slow-walked. It's still in. It is, we doubt, now do have a site that the county has purchased where it can be, but we haven't figured out a way to pay for it yet, and the next administration is gonna have to have to make the decisions about that. So sometimes so sometimes it's money and availability, and if something's too expensive, you can't move forward, until you have all the money, so you you wait. And sometimes it's it's community engagement, sometimes it's it's studies that say we have to do it, this building is gonna fall down, or we need this new service. So and there is there is an analysis that's done geographically. Okay. There's an equity analysis to make sure that historically underserved communities do have the same kinds of facilities that wealthier communities have, and so that might affect our park spending. It certainly can affect our education capital budget as well. But lots and lots of factors go into it. But advocacy is definitely one of them.

SPEAKER_00 29:33

Yeah, absolutely.

When Advocacy Changes Policy

SPEAKER_00 29:35

Do you feel as though through all the budget town halls and what you've heard from residents, has that changed the way you governed at all? Changed the way I governed. Well, I guess we know it's impacted policy, right?

SPEAKER_01 29:50

Yeah. I mean, I had a philosophy coming in as a former community organizer, a decade of knocking on doors, building neighborhood groups, that I was somebody who truly believed, and and I think I believe this even more than I did before I was county executive, that the real power is with the people. They don't always use it, but it is the power. I mean, you really can change history quickly with enough people mobilized. I mean, look at Hungary in their election. I mean, country look at our country's history. I mean, things change in like little one and two-year periods because people mobilize. And there are a lot of historians who who look at our history through the mechanism of community engagement or uprisings or whatever you want to call it. So, and it happens at the micro level in communities and neighborhoods. And and so I knew that in order to govern well, we would have to have strong engagement from communities. And in order to win the hard stuff, like forced conservation, there wasn't a lot of interest on on the council when that first came up. And there was polling that was done, there was that showed the overwhelmingly bipartisan support for it, and there was advocacy by a lot of organizations who showed up at council meetings, and at the end of the day, that was a 7-0 vote. It did get watered down because you had the the real estate developers out there doing their lobby thing and everything. So it wasn't quite as what we had tried to do, but it was it was a it's a big improvement. And I recently looked at our forest loss numbers, and we were losing like 200 and some acres a year, and now it's down in the it's like under 20 acres a year.

SPEAKER_00 31:27

Community organizer turned county executive.

SPEAKER_01 31:30

Yeah, well. Yeah, but I but I I've I believe it at my core. Yeah. That you roll your eyes at all the political shenanigans, especially during an election season like we're in right now, and this I can say this because I'm leaving, you know, stupid stuff that gets done, right? Just to win an election. It's like, oh well, I want that group and I want that group and that and without looking at the big picture. But that's democracy and and it can be that way. But it works when enough people speak up. Because I think there is a lot of common sense in the public. But if only the small groups of the public, like the people with the most money or the corporations that have lobbyists, if they're the only ones engaging, then they're the only ones benefiting. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 32:16

Absolutely. Yeah.

Life After Office And Advocacy Advice

SPEAKER_00 32:18

So in your weekly letter, right before you did your budget address, and for the record, I don't know if this has been said on your podcast, you write your own weekly letters. People always ask me that question.

SPEAKER_01 32:27

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: I do share them. And there's this funny process where I um I know what you guys are going to be uncomfortable with. And sometimes I put it in there anyway, just torture you. Yeah. Yeah. And then at the end I say, okay, okay, I'll change that. But yeah, it goes through a sort of don't upset too many people prison.

SPEAKER_00 32:49

A review process. A review.

SPEAKER_01 32:52

But no. And then even the suggestions I generally like. Okay, tell me what you think I should change, and I'll I'll write that in my words as opposed to letting people just change the rhythm and change the tone.

unknown 33:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:06

What am I going to do when I'm done with all this? I'm going to write a tell all books. Watch what you say.

SPEAKER_00 33:10

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: I just want to say for the record, because people thought I wrote them at some point. I don't want credit for these. It's all accounting executive pivot. And yeah, we often compete about who gets the most clicks. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Yeah, the best open rate. But in your weekly letter before your budget address, you said that next year you'll be back on the resident side as an engaged resident demanding a better future after all these budget town halls. How do you think you'll uh advocate for residents having been county executive?

SPEAKER_01 33:39

Wow. I don't think that so I don't want to be like the angry old man showing his town halls. Beating his fist.

SPEAKER_00 33:52

I did it like this. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:54

Yeah. I've been told that that's what I'm going to be. And uh I might do a little of that, but I love to write, and I feel like I express myself in writing it better than any other way. And I love to organize. So if I can do anything to facilitate the mobilization of groups of people as a voice, that's where I see myself being comfortable.

SPEAKER_00 34:17

Trevor Burrus, Jr. Okay. All right. Final question. What advice would you give residents who want to be effective advocates in the next administration with the new county executive? What advice would you give them?

SPEAKER_01 34:29

Same advice I would give to the county executive. The meet people where they are thing applies both ways. So you've got a new leader and you want them to move in your direction, but try to at least in a civil way, obviously, you know, connect and understand where they're coming from. And they will work more closely and be more responsive to those who they see as basically friends than enemies, I guess you could say. So there's a there's a i there's absolutely a place for militant mobilization and marching and protesting and screaming and yelling and speaking your truth. But there's also a place for and I don't mean kiss their butt. I mean I mean just in the advocacy, have some grace and try to understand where they're coming from. And don't always assume the worst. Yeah. We're not that bad. No. We're all human.

SPEAKER_00 35:32

Not us anyway. Good. Well, this has been fun. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:37

I'm glad you didn't just like stick with written questions and you had a conversation. Yeah. Vincent hasn't actually been looking down. He's been looking straight at me, you know, looking for the truth. Yeah. Yeah. But um this this is fun. And uh yeah, we went over, but it's important, I think, for people to understand, and this is something with my weekly letters too, that that I really feel like people want to and should want to know what it's like on the inside. And so the more people like I'm trying to help people meet me where I am in making decisions, that's what you're trying to do too, meet all of us where we are and figure out how to get to a good place.

SPEAKER_00 36:14

Yeah. Absolutely. Just really quickly, that was the intention with the community association summit, right? And we had you come out and teach an entire session on community organizing.

SPEAKER_01 36:24

Yes, yes, yes. We do great work. You do, you do. You have a great team. Yep. So we'll end on that note. All right. Well, thank you. Thank you for doing this and making it easy to talk about this stuff in a fun way. Absolutely. And you get the last word because I want your endorsement for the for the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 36:42

You're listening to the Pittman and Friends podcast. If you like what you heard, please hit the subscribe button, share with a friend, and join us for the next episode.

SPEAKER_01 36:51

All right, thanks. All right.