Dorchester County officials searching for other funding sources to avoid pulling the tax deferential

DORCHESTER CO., Md. – The Dorchester County Council is signaling a shift away from removing the municipal tax differential for residents of Cambridge and Hurlock.

County leaders suggested the move in an effort to address a $6.2 million deficit.

Councilman Ricky Travers suggested at the end last night’s council meeting that he would like to see the council look for a different method to find funding, rather than pulling the differential.

“After two weeks of hearing from the citizens, I feel like I put some information out there last night that I would like to see us look to a different method to try and find our funding and see what we can come up with and not pull the differential,” said Travers.

Council members recently considered removing the city tax differentials, or lower property tax rates for Cambridge and Hurlock residents.

The proposal was one of multiple tax increases suggested in order to address the budge deficit.

“When we started doing budget, you set up with a certain amount of revenue and certain amount what your estimated amount of revenues, income tax and property taxes are going to be, so we’re going to go back and look at those numbers and see how close they are and try to pick up and cut some corners to make this thing come together,” said Travers.

At Tuesday night’s meeting, members of the Cambridge community spoke out against the removal of the tax differential.

“The tax differential is basically a way for us to give credit to the residents of the larger municipalities for some of the services that they’re also paying the towns for in addition to what we provide them,” said Lenny Pfeffer, Dorchester County Council President.

Currently, the submitted tax bill would still remove the tax differential, but we’re told work is being done to change that.

“We’re working on efforts right now to verify possible income sources that would allow us to modify the original plan that was in the original budget bill,” said Pfeffer.

We’re told County leaders have cut the budgets down to at or below last fiscal year’s operating levels.

They’ve also reduced the amount of capital projects that they’ll be doing this year.

County leaders will need to have a balanced budget by next Tuesday night.