Does development pay for itself?

Howard County, Maryland. Describe a housing project; see what it would pay the county and what it would cost the county. Every number can be changed, and every number explains where it came from.

Working draft for review. Not published. Numbers and methods are still being checked with reviewers.

Start here

Each button loads a full set of starting numbers. Change anything after that; your changes are listed under the answer.

The project

Number of homes

Money in: what it pays (per home, per year unless noted)

Money out: what it costs

Rules set by law (changing these imagines a new law)

Let me imagine a law change

Judgment calls (fair ways to count these differ; you pick)

The answer

Year by year

What could flip this answer

About the numbers

The labels: set by law means current written law, with its effective date. current, measured means a real, recent number from county records. calculated from county data means we combined real numbers and show the arithmetic. 2018 number, inflation-adjusted is our weakest kind: the county's 2019 study value moved to today's dollars using the Consumer Price Index. 2018-era estimate is a study-era estimate with no newer public source yet.

Where this comes from: the engine behind this page reproduces the county's own 2019 fiscal study (Urban Analytics for Howard County DPZ) to the penny, and every input was checked against outside sources where any exist.

The 2019 county fiscal study (PDF, 106 pages, hosted here because the county's own link went dead; independent archived copy for comparison)
Howard County FY26 budget FAQ and FY27 fee schedules (rates, surcharges)
HCPSS FY26 approved budget and 2026 Educational Facilities Master Plan
CPI-U annual averages, Minneapolis Fed table of BLS data (2018: 251.1, 2025: 321.9)
Companion site: budget.dementhon.com
For reviewers: the full working papers: every assumption with its citation, the outside-source check of every number, and an honest list of what could not be pinned down.

This page is a volunteer project and is not a Howard County product. It answers a narrow bookkeeping question: county money in versus county money out. It does not measure whether growth is good or bad for schools, traffic, or anything else people rightly care about.