Steuart Pittman’s $2.3 billion Anne Arundel budget plan includes tax increases, police pay bump

Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman proposed a $2.3 billion budget for fiscal 2025 Wednesday morning to the County Council.

The cost, a notable increase from last year’s $2.14 billion and the previous year’s $2.16 billion price tag, will help fund three new schools and a pay hike for police officers. It will also increase income taxes as well as permit and 911 fees, Pittman told The Capital Monday ahead of the budget’s release.

Income taxes will rise from 2.81% to 2.94% on any income between $50,000 and $400,000 for single residents and between $75,000 and $480,000 for joint filers. Taxes up to the first $50,000 for single filers and $75,000 for joint will remain at the lower 2.7% rate while any income beyond $400,000 for a single person and $480,000 for a couple will stay at the higher 3.2% rate. It’s a progressive tax structure the county established last budget season.

“That doesn’t change our standing compared to the other counties at all,” said budget officer Chris Trumbauer Monday. “We would still be, on average, the fifth lowest in the state.”

Meanwhile, permitting fees will be raised by varying amounts depending on the project, and the 911 fee will go from 75 cents a month to a dollar a month.

Permits seemed an appropriate target to acquire the funds as the county’s rates haven’t gone up in 21 years, Pittman said, despite the cost of the work increasing. This was leading to the average taxpayer having to supplement the costs of doing the permitting work requested by individuals.

“We’re fixing that, taking the burden off the taxpayers and putting it back on the people asking for the permits,” Pittman said Monday.

Those three additional revenue streams will generate another $13.6 million for the budget, enabling the county to raise police officer salaries, open three new schools — Severn Run High School, Two Rivers Elementary School and New Village Academy — and maintain health and human services related programs previously funded by American Rescue Plan money that the federal government has stopped providing.

This year’s main personnel focus is police officers. During budget town hall meetings, union representatives for the department spoke about the difficulty of hiring.

“We are 30% understaffed to adequately serve the public safety needs of our county and it is getting worse,” Mike Shier, representing Anne Arundel County’s Fraternal Order of Police, told Pittman at a budget town hall meeting in January. “Our agency projects that we’ll continue to lose officers faster than we can hire them.”

As Pittman heard their concerns he set a goal for Anne Arundel to offer the highest starting salary in the state this budget. If his proposal is passed by the council, he will deliver on that. The starting salary currently sits at around $62,000 and will increase to $70,000 with this budget.

“That’s higher than any other county today,” Pittman said.

As of this budget cycle Baltimore City offers a roughly $61,000 starting salary, Prince George’s is at nearly $63,000 and Howard starts officers at $64,000. Baltimore County has the highest rate in the area at $66,000. All of them offer a $10,000 first year bonus while Anne Arundel offers $20,000.

To keep the trajectory of officer salaries in line with the new starting salary, police will also get a roughly 5% cost of living increase while most of the rest of the county’s workforce will see about a 3% increase.

The budget proposal also includes a $48 million increase in education funding. The county executive plans to fully fund the superintendent’s compensation request which will result in a 3% cost of living increase for school staff.

School employee salaries were a primary focus in last year’s budget which included a 6 to 8% cost of living pay bump for them. A major budget priority this year was paying for staff at the three new schools. Severn Run High School, for some students who previously would have gone to Old Mill High School and others, is in Severn. Two Rivers Elementary School is in the Odenton/Gambrills area and New Village Academy is a charter high school in the Westfield Annapolis Mall.

The schools were created, in part, to combat overcrowding that saw schools being at up to 140% capacity, Pittman said. The new facilities are expected to allow students to receive more one on one attention from teachers.

Though revenues for the county were relatively close to what was forecast, Trumbauer said, the falloff of federal COVID relief funding required the county to raise more money, in part, to continue COVID-era programs the community had come to rely upon. Those include funding to maintain the county’s violence interruption and health ambassador programs as well as expanded hours at community health clinics and $1.5 million for the Anne Arundel County Food Bank .

The County Council will spend the upcoming meetings deliberating on the budget before voting on it.

This story will be updated.