WASHINGTON — A plan to boost Prince George’s County property tax rates by 15 percent has been the source for tense exchanges at town hall meetings as well as the topic of a news conference Tuesday where many parents expressed their support for the increase.
On Tuesday, Maryland Working Families — a political organization that supports the property tax increase — held a news conference outside Cool Spring Elementary School in Adelphi, Maryland. With about a dozen people in attendance, several parents spoke in favor of the tax increase.
One of them, Christine Rome, is a homeowner who would be directly affected by the increase.
Rome explained she and her husband live in Mitchellville and decided to pull their two sons out of private schools years ago “because with two kids’ tuition was a daunting expense.” Rome says the couple’s monthly tuition bill was more than their monthly mortgage payment.
“We decided enough was enough,” she says.
It was then, Rome says, she became involved in her sons’ schools and is now a self-described cheerleader for the public schools. She’s convinced the increase in the property tax rate pushed by County Executive Rushern Baker will help boost the performance of Prince George’s County Schools, frequently listed near the bottom of statewide rankings.
Jamila Ball, who is not a homeowner but would like to buy a home in Prince George’s County one day, says she also supports the tax increase. She has a child going into second grade in August.
“I want quality public education and I want to buy in Prince George’s County, but I won’t do that if the schools are not up to par,” Ball says.
She says she understands that homeowners may find paying higher taxes hard to swallow, but says that the taxes are an investment in a system that badly needs additional funds to improve.
Organizers of the news conference, Maryland Working Families say they have thousands of parents who support the tax increase and have urged them to lobby their council members to vote “yes” on what they call the “Maxwell Plan,” named for the Prince George’s County Chief Executive Officer of the Prince George’s County Public Schools Kevin Maxwell.
Charly Carter, executive director of Maryland Working Families, says the parents her group represents are a mix of renters and property owners, but couldn’t break down the numbers to say how many would be directly affected by the tax increase.
Baker has been lobbying hard for the tax plan, insisting that property values would rise with more investment in schools and the improvements he says that investment would bring.
There have been tense exchanges at Prince George’s County town hall meetings over a plan to boost property tax rates — including a testy back-and-forth between County Executive Rushern Baker and council members Mary Lehman and Andrea Harrison.
At a town hall meeting in April, Lehman objected to the way Baker promoted the plan, saying he failed to get a consensus first. Harrison questioned whether the school system was adequately monitoring the funds it currently has and a number of speakers at the same meeting complained that the property tax increase would land them at the top of the state’s most highly taxed residents.
An upcoming council vote on the Fiscal Year 2016 budget and the tax proposal is still generating lots of vigorous lobbying.
The county council is scheduled to vote on the Fiscal Year 2016 budget — and the controversial tax plan — on Thursday.
WTOP’s Kate Ryan contributed to this report.
