The Carroll County Commissioners voted to accept a total of $105,526 in state grant money on Thursday to fund the county’s branch of the ENOUGH Initiative, a state-run program aimed at combating childhood poverty.
However, because the state cut Carroll County’s ENOUGH funding for FY2026 by nearly 40%, the county had to pull nearly half of this money from other state funding streams to keep the program running. Carroll County doesn’t meet the poverty rate requirements to qualify for a larger grant.
“The census tract data doesn’t help us. Yet, we have numbers. We have the total in certain areas. Is there any way we can get to the root of the problem?” said District 5 Commissioner Susan Krebs.
In order to qualify for a grant through the ENOUGH Initiative, a county must contain at least one census tract with a child poverty rate of over 30%, and at least one school serving a census tract with a poverty rate of over 80%. The two census tracts in Carroll County with the highest child poverty rates are located in southern Westminster and Union Bridge, and have child poverty rates of 29% and 19%, respectively.
The state also offers capacity-building grants for counties that don’t qualify for the primary ENOUGH grants. Each county’s Local Management Board uses this grant money to conduct surveys in high-poverty areas and collect data on how to help provide better social services in these areas.
This year, Carroll County received a capacity-building grant of $56,739 — a major dip from last year’s grant of $142,000.
“Funding has been difficult,” said Ed Singer, manager of Carroll County’s Local Management Board. “Last year, the governor intended to give us the same amount of money that we got the year before that… but the legislature had different priorities.”
Singer said the county pulled the remaining $48,787 from state funding obtained through the Children’s Cabinet Interagency Fund, a program that helps Maryland counties build community programs for children and families. The county’s local management board has been “out engaging communities in high poverty areas,” Singer said, and has developed a plan to better serve these areas that the group will present to the county board next week.
The extra funding, he said, will help the local management board expand its work to high-poverty areas beyond Westminster, such as Union Bridge and Taneytown. Celene Steckel, the county’s director of citizen services, said the board has also been talking with “the philanthropic community” about funding for the ENOUGH Initiative.
“What we’re looking to do is try to take the existing resources we have… and direct that to where it’s most needed based on the information that we’re gathering,” Singer said.
Some county commissioners, though, said they were frustrated that the county isn’t eligible for more ENOUGH Initiative funding. Krebs pointed out that Carroll County is also one of the only counties in the state that doesn’t have a Federally Qualified Health Center, a type of clinic that receives federal funding to provide health care in rural, low-income or underserved communities.
“We are a wealthy county. So is Howard, and so is Montgomery… and all of them qualify for these things,” said Krebs. “It just happens to be the way they look at the census tract. It just happens to be where people live.”
As of 2024, Carroll County’s poverty rate sits at about 5.4%, compared to 9.1% across the state of Maryland. The county’s median income of $115,982 also puts it well above the state average of $102,905. Neighboring counties like Howard and Montgomery have similar poverty rates and median incomes, and are home to their own FQHCs.
Krebs attributed this difference to the way that Carroll County’s census tracts are drawn. Past Carroll County officials had tried to suggest redrawing the census tracts, Krebs said, but the conversations never went anywhere.
“[The state] just needs to understand, and maybe they need to tweak something, and look at maybe three or four census tracts together,” Krebs said. “They have the ability to do that. I’m just saying open that conversation.”
With or without changes to the county’s census tracts, Steckel and Singer said they want to keep the program running.
“There are a lot of things we’re not going to qualify for,” Singer said. “Does that mean we shouldn’t do anything for our at-risk population? Absolutely not.”
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