Wicomico County executive outlines four budget options as schools seek millions in new funding

County Executive Julie Giordano on Monday described a narrowing set of choices for the county—s fiscal-year 2026 operating budget, telling a large public hearing that a local revenue cap will sharply restrict property-tax revenue and that the Board of Education is asking for about $4 million more than the county currently plans to raise from property taxes.

Giordano said the county—s largest revenue source has shifted from local property tax to income tax and that, under the revenue-cap rules, the county can increase property-tax revenue by roughly $1.6 million next year. "We have a revenue cap," Giordano said during the presentation. "What the revenue cap is is that we can only take in a certain amount of revenue." She added that the state has shifted some costs to counties, notably about $3 million in teacher pension costs that the county did not previously pay.

The county executive laid out four options for responding to the school system—s FY26 request: 1) fully fund the Board of Education—s ask while cutting other departments; 2) seek an explicit property-tax line item or override to "break" the revenue cap for education so other departments remain funded; 3) spread the limited increase across all departments (the approach used the last two years); or 4) fund only the state-mandated maintenance-of-effort (MOE) level and leave further increases to the council.

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