The second night of public hearings regarding the FY 2017 budget brought a lot of Frederick County citizens to speak on behalf of the intense need for a new library in Walkersville, which is a sentiment we are happy to agree with and wholeheartedly support.

A lovely lady came and spoke passionately about the need to take care of citizens living in poverty, and particularly the large number of students in FCPS experiencing homelessness. Bravo for being a voice for the most vulnerable in our community.

I bet you can guess who has some ideas about libraries. We’ve all been treated to his thinking on how they’re useless nowadays and whatnot. And he brought handouts, having a fondness such as he does for the visual aides. Got in a dig about the deemed unnecessary budget analyst, because what Chairman of the Republican Central Committee doesn’t love wasteful government spending? And don’t you just love it when he gets creative? I doubt he’s been in a library recently–certainly it took him years to realize when that bookstore went out of business. He’s floated the idea that they could repurpose the old Red Cross building. We’ll see if that proves to be useful thinking outside the box, but we won’t hold our breath.

Kirby had some bizarro land stuff to say about the fact that some things they need to spend money on come from lack of effort or understanding from previous boards. Things that make you go hmmmm. Yes, it is our understanding that the last BOCC bent the learning curve the wrong direction. And when you send everyone $100 and also fire a bunch of people, it screws everything up (speaking of things not turning on a dime, as he mused…turned on a Benjamin). Then the grown people who understand cause and effect have to come in and clean up your mess (thank you for your custodial service, Bud Otis). Kirby also outrageously touts some Mickey Mouse budget he proposed last year. It literally made no damn sense. Oh, also he thanked Sheriff Arpaio Jenkins for going down to D.C. and working on our immigrant issues. Because…well, who knows. Makes no sense.

Jerry Donald talked about how services and effective programs make us all wealthier because of property values, which sounded very mature and adult and realistic. Of course, this creates the enormous taxation problem that Tony Chmelik and Kirby both seem a tad obsessed with (Chmelik passed on his comment time, probably to avoid being lumped in with the goofballs, but if the shoe fits…) when your property value goes up, a static tax rate represents a tax increase. Jerry Donald highlighted that there are programs to mitigate the effects this has on people living on a fixed income. For our part we would just love to see the county maintaining a static amount of taxes collected in order to take care of all these budget needs. In this hypothetical situation lets please imagine if we capped the amount collected so that it had to use the assessed value of those properties at the time Frederick County was founded, in 1748. What sort of road would we have in 2016? Would it even be enough to maintain a horse and buggy on Old National Pike? Such visionaries, the fun trio.

Jessica Fitzwater talked of meeting and seeing what happens in the various county departments. So freaking productive and sensible!

And M.C. Keegan-Ayer took her time to highlight the number of outstanding high schools in Frederick County.

We love budget season in Frederick County! Let the tantrums commence!