Maryland’s Board of Public Works approved $4.6 million this week for trails, playgrounds and land conservation projects in 11 counties — and Southern Maryland is on that list twice, though the state’s own announcement leaves unclear exactly what Charles and St. Mary’s counties are actually getting.
The Aug. 19 approval, issued by the Department of Natural Resources, names both counties among the 11 receiving funding from this round. But unlike every other county on the list — which each get a specific project, dollar figure and program named — Charles and St. Mary’s appear only in the release’s opening sentence, with no itemized project, funding amount or program attached to either one anywhere in the announcement. The $3.18 million Community Parks and Playgrounds allocation, which funds 13 named projects this round, doesn’t include a project in either county; neither does the $950,000 in Program Open Space – Local funding, which the release says covers four total projects but names only two, in Montgomery and Washington counties, leaving the other two unidentified. DNR’s own August meeting agenda, linked from the release, would presumably spell out the missing detail, but the public-facing announcement itself does not.
One likely candidate for the St. Mary’s County funding: Leonardtown’s proposed splash pad and pump house at Miedzinski Park, budgeted at $300,000 through the Community Parks and Playgrounds program as part of the governor’s original fiscal 2027 spending plan released in June. That plan described a phased approval process, with individual projects brought to the Board of Public Works as each becomes ready — meaning Leonardtown’s project may simply not have reached the board by this particular meeting, or could have been approved without appearing in DNR’s public summary. No specific Charles County project from that same June proposal list appeared to match this round of funding either. Confirming either county’s actual project would require checking the underlying Aug. 19 board agenda directly.
The gap stands out because it isn’t the pattern of the release as a whole: Caroline, Dorchester, Montgomery, Prince George’s, Talbot, Wicomico and Worcester counties all got named, itemized projects, down to specific park names and dollar amounts, as did Baltimore County’s conservation easement and an unrelated Allegany County land acquisition — even though Allegany, notably, isn’t listed among the release’s 11 named counties at all despite receiving $325,500 for a 170-acre buffer near Rocky Gap State Park.
Southern Maryland has fared better in other recent Board of Public Works rounds this year. St. Mary’s County received roughly $2.8 million in February and May for a working forestland acquisition and a new bus-accessible recreational park, plus smaller grants for recreation signage and a Rural Legacy conservation easement protecting stream buffers along the Patuxent and Potomac watersheds. Calvert County does not appear in this week’s approval at all.
The Community Parks and Playgrounds program, now in its 25th year, has distributed more than $97 million to over 900 park and playground projects statewide since it launched in fiscal year 2002. DNR Secretary Josh Kurtz has described the grants as “investments in outdoor recreation that provide children with opportunities for unstructured play.”
