MD: Vincenti opposes $65M Harford bus depot — then votes to buy land for it

Harford County Council president and county executive candidate Patrick Vincenti has campaigned against building a $65 million bus depot in Aberdeen. Even so, he voted last month in favor of the county purchasing land that would essentially green light the project, once funding is secured.

At an April 21 Board of Estimates meeting, Vincenti and other county officials agreed to the $8.5 million purchase of a property off Research Boulevard in Aberdeen.The county intends to build both a new transit facility and Harford Community College’s Workforce Development Training Center on the land.

Vincenti said the driving factor in his vote to purchase the land was the workforce development center.

“That is why I signed off on the thing, but I am adamantly opposed to a $65 million plan to build a bus depot in Harford County,” Vincenti said.

Controversy about the transit facility began earlier this year, when Vincenti said he would not endorse the county’s annual transportation priority request, which included the transit facility. Plans for the transit facility have been outlined in the county’s priority request letters since 2023, and Vincenti, as county council president, had endorsed the annual request letters without voicing concerns in the past.

The letters are sent to the state each year in hopes that some of the transportation projects will receive state and federal funding.

Vincenti’s campaign materials have alleged that Gov. Wes Moore is “investing in Maryland transit and working with [ Harford County Executive] Bob Cassilly,” as well as claiming that Cassilly’s “radical” public transportation expansion and any expansion of public transportation opens the door to “high-density housing.”

When asked about his former endorsement of the request and whether he knew the bus depot was going to be built at the Research Boulevard property, Vincenti did not comment.

Vincenti and Cassilly, who is running for reelection, traded barbs on social media about the project, with Cassilly mostly emphasizing that the plan is a revitalization project to make the county’s public transportation more reliable for residents.

The county’s transportation funding request does not mention any expansion of public transportation outside of Harford County, and the federal legislation governing the project’s potential funding does not outline route expansion as an allowable project scope.

When asked why he believes the transit facility project would expand the county’s public transportation outside Harford County, Vincenti cited the $65 million price tag: “I support our Link service – we have 30 Link buses – and if we wanted to build a new facility for that to accommodate those buses, it should [cost] a fraction of what [Cassilly is] talking about.”

On his campaign’s Facebook page, he wrote: “If this were truly for our 30 existing Harford Link buses, it would cost $15 million—not $65 million.”

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