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This is a working document from the project, published verbatim for reviewers. File paths in it refer to the project workspace.

VERIFICATION: every model input checked against the outside world

2026-08-12. Ten scouts (citation-gated) plus frontier PDF pulls. Statuses: CONFIRMED = external primary or archival source, exact quote in hand. CORROBORATED = external source close but not exact, or secondary. FLAGGED = external source DISAGREES; see note. LOCATED = the authoritative document is found but is a PDF not yet fully read. INTERNAL-ONLY = no external source exists; verified only by the replication's internal cross-line math (see RESIDUALS.md).

FY2018 rates (the study's inputs)

Property tax $1.014 per $100: CONFIRMED. County tax-rate schedule, Wayback captures 2017-07-21 and 2018-03-02 (both inside FY2018), quote "$1.014".
Fire tax $0.176: CONFIRMED. Same two captures, quote "$0.1760".
Income tax 3.2%: CONFIRMED. Maryland Comptroller local rate table (archived 2019-02), quote "Howard County .0320 .0320" (tax years 2018 and 2019).
Transfer tax 1.00% pre-July-2020: CONFIRMED. The county's own recordation page: "Effective 7/1/20 the Howard County Transfer Tax rate is 1.25%." (i.e. the increase date; the 2019 study predates it), plus a title-company rate table still listing 1.00%.
Recordation $2.50 per $500: CORROBORATED (title-company table, "$5.00 per $1,000"). The county's current page carries the same rate.
School surcharge $1.32/sq ft: CONFIRMED. MACo Conduit Street (2019-05) quoting Maryland DLS: "The fiscal year 2019 budget for the county assumed a fee of $1.32 per square foot"; County Code 20.142(c) CPI mechanism quoted; a 2022 bill compilation still cites the $1.32 base. Continuity chain to today: $1.32 -> $7.50 (Business Monthly, 2020, quote) -> CPI to $8.63 FY27.
Road excise $1.18 -> $1.40: LOCATED only (DLS county impact-fee report, PDF). No readable external source found; internally the pair reproduces the excise line against the surcharge-derived series to ~0.0003%.

FY2018 base-year worksheet (A-1) vs the audited CAFR

Local copy: ../refs/cafr2018.pdf (218 pp, from cc.howardcountymd.gov). Verified VERBATIM in the audited document:

Local income tax $444,453,384 (CAFR p. 133)
Recordation tax $22,702,722 (pp. 43, 81, 133)
Public schools $572,871,655 (pp. 57, 138)
Police $114,497,006 (p. 137)
Fire & Rescue fund: expenditure $100,091,778 (p. 149), revenue-side $94,008,293 (pp. 146, 149)
Debt service $99,673,172 (p. 139), matching worksheet line 188 "FY2018 Debt Service per CAFR"

NOT in the CAFR (and not expected to be): the worksheet's grand totals ($1,185,452,805 / $1,194,296,267) and group rollups like Property Taxes $627,692,940. These are the consultant's constructs; the worksheet includes its own adjustment lines (Ellicott City flood, refunding savings) that make its totals differ from raw statement totals by design.

The study's published results vs what the world was told

County press release + Baltimore Sun (2019-08-07) + The Business Monthly (2019-08, 2020-10), all quote-verified:

SFD +$5,048, apartment +$942, condo +$4,134 per unit per year: CONFIRMED, match our parsed $5,047.87 / $941.94 / $4,133.70.
Townhouse: FLAGGED. Press release and Business Monthly say $3,531; the report PDF says $3,520.74 (and is internally consistent: 11,417.89 - 7,897.15 = 3,520.74). The press release apparently carried a typo or a draft number. We keep the PDF value and flag it whenever citing.
APFO cost $63M-ish/6yr and $152M-ish/20yr: CONFIRMED ($63.4M and $151.7M in Business Monthly, "$63 million"/"$152 million" in the release, "$64 million by 2024" in the Sun).
Foregone revenue $135.5M/6yr and $1.02B/20yr: CONFIRMED (Business Monthly, Sun). Bonus: the Sun quotes $865M avoided-cost by 2038, and the release quotes nonresidential results (retail +$1.31/sf, office +$0.68/sf, manufacturing +$0.91/sf per year): recorded for the commercial module. Note: these headline scenario numbers are still UNREPLICATED by us (RESIDUALS.md scope note); this only confirms our copy reports them.

Demographics and construction

2018 population: model uses 322,118 (DPZ forecast, A-12); Census-era estimate 322,895. CORROBORATED (0.24% apart; different vintages).
HCPSS enrollment 2017-18: 56,799 (official 2017-09-30 count, HCPSS archived About page). CONFIRMED, and it RESOLVES Residual 4's arithmetic: see RESIDUALS.md update.
Household size: Census 2.79 persons/household (2013-17 ACS) vs model's type-specific 2.07-3.19 (A-8): consistent range. CORROBORATED.
Per-seat cost ~$63,000: CORROBORATED loosely. IAC statewide 2018: $302/sq ft building-only, $360 with site work; Hanover Hills ES (built 2018) 120,000 sq ft / ~788 seats = ~152 sq ft/seat, so ~$55k/seat on IAC basis; the study's $63-64k plausibly includes soft costs. Not exact.
New-SFD value $802,149 (2018): NO EXTERNAL SOURCE FOUND. Scout found no 2017-18 new-construction price series for the county. Stays internal-only (it is, however, the value that makes the transfer-tax line divide to exact integers across 21 years).

No external source exists (internal-only, by nature)

Student yields (A-10), sizes (A-4), occupancy (A-9), the recovered internal series (units, size, students, population), Table 2's per-type blend, and the resale schedule. The one deeper check that exists in the world: a public records request to DPZ for the Urban Analytics Excel workbook itself.