County officials present preliminary $9 million 2024 surplus, coroner and public health offices report key findings

Montgomery County’s finance director presented preliminary fiscal results for 2024, showing an estimated excess of revenue over expenditures of about $9 million and a projected general fund balance near $153 million if those figures hold through the audit process.

Dean Brotone, the county’s finance director, cautioned that the numbers are preliminary and subject to audit adjustments but said investment income and favorable departmental earnings helped produce outperformance on revenue while some grant-funded program spending ran below budget. Brotone summarized key figures: general-fund revenue of roughly $568 million, with real-estate taxes and federal/state grants forming the bulk of revenues; investment income outperformed budget by several million dollars; and grant revenue was roughly $14 million lower than budgeted (with offsetting lower provider expenditures).

Brotone said the county’s assessment growth for 2024 was essentially flat after several years of modest organic growth and noted that housing-market indicators later in the presentation showed some improvement in home sales and median sale prices compared with 2023. He also walked commissioners through budget planning for 2026 and said departments will begin detailed budget work in April and May, with formal budget proposals presented in November and adoption required by the end of the calendar year.

“In the preliminary numbers, we’re projecting an excess of revenue over expense of about $9,000,000,” Brotone told the board, while urging caution until the audit is complete.

The county coroner, Dr. Janine Darby, gave a separate presentation describing the coroner’s office workload and data. She said the office provides 24/7 services and investigates “reportable” deaths such as homicides, accidents, suicides and deaths in county facilities; a subset of those reports — which Darby described as full coroner cases — require autopsies and additional work. Darby reported that just over 1,100 of the reportable deaths in the prior year proceeded to full coroner investigations. She identified the top causes of death in coroner cases as cardiac-related conditions, falls and drug-related deaths, and she announced a Donate Life flag-raising on April 2 and a coroner open house on April 11.

Public Health Director Christina Miller presented the county’s 2024 community health assessment, which combined an analysis of existing health statistics with primary data from roughly 3,300 qualified survey responses and multiple focus groups. Miller said the assessment found Montgomery County generally ranks well on many health indicators but also contains significant intra-county variation and racial disparities — for example, higher infant mortality rates among Black infants and lower early prenatal care rates among Black and Hispanic residents. The assessment identified mental health, chronic disease and environmental health and safety as top community health concerns reported by residents.

Miller said the health department will hold community conversations to share the findings, then develop a community health improvement plan focused on equity, and publish interactive and PDF versions of the report online.