St. Mary’s County Board of Health approves updated environmental health fees, removes planned automatic inflation adjustment

The St. Mary’s County Board of Health on June 3 approved an updated environmental health fee schedule to take effect July 1, 2025, and directed staff to remove a separate resolution that would have implemented automatic biannual inflation adjustments.

The vote came during the Board’s regular quarterly session when Dr. Brewster presented the health department’s request to adopt the new fee schedule after earlier public hearings connected to the county budget process. "The fees that you approved were the county fees, the rec and parks fees, the land use fees. This as board of health, it's a separate 1," a commissioner said during discussion, underscoring why the board needed to approve its own schedule. The board recorded approval of the schedule and then declined to adopt the accompanying resolution that would have authorized biannual automatic inflation increases.

Board members who questioned the automatic adjustment said they were reluctant to delegate future rate decisions to an inflation formula without board review. In discussion, a commissioner said automatic increases should not be "just gonna be automatic," and asked that increases return to the board every two years for review. Health staff responded that the automated approach was modeled on other Maryland counties, and that the intent was to spread increases into smaller, more frequent adjustments to reduce the immediate impact on fee payers. Dr. Brewster noted the automated adjustment would have been tied to inflation and designed to "decrease the impact to the person paying the fees."

After debate, commissioners voted to approve the fee schedule itself and instructed the county attorney to remove the biannual adjustment section from the resolution the county will sign. The county administrator clarified the fee schedule approved by the Board of Health is distinct from other fees (for rec and parks, land use, etc.) the commissioners approved earlier in the budget process.

What changed and what happens next: the updated fee schedule will be effective July 1, 2025, as the board directed. The separate resolution provision authorizing automatic, biannual inflation adjustments was removed before signature; the county attorney will prepare the final resolution that includes the approved fee schedule but omits the automatic adjustment language. Staff told commissioners they can return to the board to request fee changes in the future; several commissioners said they preferred formal board consideration and public hearing on fee increases rather than an automatic indexing mechanism.

Background: Dr. Brewster and the health department previously presented proposed fee changes to the board and included them in the budget public hearing earlier this year. The department said the last time environmental health fees were adjusted was several years ago and that more frequent, smaller adjustments were proposed to limit larger, infrequent jumps in costs for consumers and businesses. The board did not adopt that mechanism.