Opinion: Talbot Voters Bought an Ambulance Station and Here’s the Receipt by Brian Naranjo

On July 21, Talbot County cut the ribbon on Station 95 in Cordova — four bays, a round-the-clock crew, advanced life support. In Cordova or Queen Anne, Station 95 will shorten response time by twenty percent, a significant accomplishment when lives are on the line. Now the north end has what the rest of us already had.

That station exists because of 400 people.

Those 400 are the margin by which voters renewed the county’s “penny tax” in November 2024 — one cent per $100 of assessed value, levied above the property tax revenue cap for public safety. It first passed in 2020 by nearly 2,800 votes. In 2024, it barely survived.

Support didn’t collapse because the money was wasted. It collapsed because nobody ever showed people what they bought.

Here’s the receipt. The penny tax funded 26 positions — paramedics, EMTs, school resource officers, 911 operators. It moved correctional officers and EMTs into state retirement systems, including the Law Enforcement Officers’ Pension System, or LEOPS. It funded the Public Safety Complex. Last year our dispatchers handled 69,277 calls, responders on scene in 7 minutes, 49 seconds.

Sheriff Joe Gamble made this case before almost anyone, better than any other politician. Since taking office in 2014, he has watched the cost of neglect up close: 42 deputies lost over twelve years, and $4 million in training already paid for. He took those numbers to the council and called the price “astronomical.”

Competitive pay and real pensions aren’t charity for first responders; they’re how you stop setting money on fire. We need to continue to fight to fund public safety fully; if I’m elected, my job is to keep it honored — so it reaches the people for whom the county’s voters intended it.

I’ve seen this from the inside. On the county’s Police Accountability Board, I’ve seen how fortunate we are — our deputies and officers are strong, professional, and committed. Their toughest challenge isn’t misconduct; it’s recruitment and retention. Fall behind, and service degrades. Keeping the penny tax funded is how we stay ahead.

Here’s the harder part. That renewal runs seven years, and the council collects the penny tax in full nearly every year. The levy is routine; the accounting never has been. The easy part is the ribbon-cutting. The hard part comes later — when the cameras are gone, salaries keep climbing, equipment wears out, and no one checks whether the money still delivers.

For 32 years I ran U.S. government operations overseas — multi-year budgets, capital projects, a duty to report honestly to the people who funded them. A promise nobody audits stops being a promise.

So, one proposal. Before the council votes on each budget, the county should publish a single page in plain English: what the penny tax raised, where it went, what it delivered. No jargon. One page.

Four hundred voters gave this county seven more years of public safety funding. The least we owe them is an accounting they can read.

Brian Naranjo of St. Michaels is a retired Senior Foreign Service Officer and a candidate for Talbot County Council.