St. Mary's County, MD Commissioners' Time, 27 Apr 2021

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From YouTube: Commissioners Time 4/27/21 - Hewitt

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Well to all the people who are writing us emails and communicating with us over the.

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Funding for the sheriff's department and the board of education. Thank you, especially the.

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Ones that are writing a little bit additional above and beyond the uh form letter which we.

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Can probably just about memorize or repeat back, but it's important that you're reaching out now.

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I want to go back to that meeting. That was on the 14th of the board of education, where the.

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Superintendent again put out the only thing that they can do is cut 49 teachers or cancel.

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Some very near and dear programs to the hearts of many parents and educators, community members.

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Or close the school, this commissioner supports none of those ideas. What I do support is that.

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The superintendent and the board of education go back and take another look at what their budgets.

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Is currently, commissioner morgan and I met the other day with the leaders of the fop and the.

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Teachers union east bank- and we pointed out that over 10 years that commissioner morgan's been here.

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We've contributed over 42 million dollars over moe, that's over and above maintenance of effort.

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Now it's kind of interesting that leader of the e's mix said that's not really very much well,.

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I've got to tell you for the people paying it it's a lot, but it does show the commitment of.

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This board and the previous board, and probably the board before that to funding education.

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We never ever ever funded it maintenance of effort a year ago this month. Commissioner, I'm sorry.

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Superintendent smith came in and said he was going to use six million dollars of his projected.

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Fund balance to go into fy 2021. now someone who's been following board of education budgets.

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Since the early 90s, that's the first time I had ever seen, anyone say they were going to use monies.

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That weren't audited, yet the audit doesn't come out until probably around november, but in april.

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They knew that they were going to have six million dollars available in their fund.

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Balance, this is their audit, and here it says that they had a fund balance of 16 million.

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Six hundred thousand dollars, they turned around you, six million of it for fy 2021 expenses.

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Don't know what they were, they don't have to tell us. They want to do it, they can do it.

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But they did raise their health care call from four million, which has been the case for about.

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Five years now to 6.6 million thinking, more people will get procedures done. The other.

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Point is: is that the metrics that were in place last year to produce a 16.6 million dollar budget.

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Fund balance for them are the same. Metrics aren't in place now the school buses just started running.

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The last quarter of this year, the facilities have mainly been closed. They're very underutilized.

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They've saved a lot of money, but they don't want to talk about that now. Let's talk about people.

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Getting their their raises, we told last year we gave the sheriff's department almost a 23 percent.

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Raise and we're this year proposing two and a half percent. Now, if that's not enough, I understand.

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You should ask for what you think you need, I'm not telling you we can give you what you think you.

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Need this commission will give you what I think we can afford and what we, if we get it, you will.

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Get it, but I would say to you: 25 increase over two years is pretty good. Now these teachers do demand.

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And they do should have a raise. I am in favor of funding the teachers raise. I am not in favor.

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Of funding the administrator's raise scott smith signed a contract, that's online in 2019.. He makes.

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225 thousand dollars a year in that contract and he gets any kind of raise that the school.

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System negotiates, as do all the other six-figure people who sit over there at the moakley street.

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It would be nice if they would consider taking their portion of it and giving it to the teachers.

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Because a teacher making fifty thousand dollars a year which is raised will get about twenty one.

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Twenty two hundred dollars a year, superintendent smith, will get almost ten thousand dollars.

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The money you got he's gonna get in the race could do five teachers, but no he wants to install all.

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This drama my daughter, called me this week. I have a third. I have a granddaughter's in the.

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Third grade- and she got a letter from the principal saying please reach out to the.

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Commissioners, they are not funding us, we may have to cancel stem. We may have to cancel gis.

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Arts and and entertainment or music or whatever these important programs are, and it doesn't.

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Do us any good, it separates us and I I wish that the superintendent would lower the drama.

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And figure out a way to work through this thing until we find out if the covid revenues.

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Are going to be impacted or the effects of covet on our revenues are going to be impacted, we'll.

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Know that in about another year, so hopefully we have a public hearing tonight, 6 30.. Please call.

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Please tune in. We do want to hear from you. Our public hearings have not been very well attended.

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Now something else dr smith said on that day on the 14th of april. He said we moved it.

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From chaptercon high school to this facility, well, let's think about that if we have it at chaptercon.

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High school, we don't have the ability to have the virtual or let me just say, I'm not sure that I'm.

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I'm confident that they can help us have the virtual part kick in the last time. Last year we.

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Didn't have a public hearing because of covet, but the year before we did at leonardtown high school.

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And when it came time for the hearing to come on channel 95, it went blank. There was nobody there to.

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Help us they left a sophomore in charge of, or I'm not really sure who the people were. I don't want.

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To blame but the point is we couldn't even listen to it: people at home. I was home sick with the flu.

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I couldn't listen to it because there was no video and what makes us think we can have the same.

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Success if we have it at chaptercon, we're having it here. Please come we'll get you in. If we have to.

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This, commissioner, hopefully all of us, will stay as late as it takes to hear everybody.

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But it's important that we hear everybody in all the issues. Thank you.