This meeting is being recorded. Good morning. This is the Council's 4th. 2026 operating budget work session. The proceeding this morning is a hybrid meeting which is being conducted in person and via WebEx teleconference. The public may view through live stream available through the county council website. We'll now do a roll call of our council members. Dr. Jones. Good morning, everyone. Mr. Riggby. Here. Ms. Yang. Here. Mr. Yeoman. Here. Nice. We will now proceed with our agenda. I would guess that we will get through County Executive, county administration, inspector general, finance, office of law and economic development before our lunch break and then after the break we would get to technology and communication, housing, community and development and financial discussion, which I think we should spend some time on. But if you were one of those three things, I would not expect to go before lunch. I don't see you, so I think you're okay. All right, with that said, if we could please be joined by whoever is speaking to us about the county executive's budget. All right, I see Chief of Staff, Angela Cabello and Deputy Felix Fischi. Welcome and good morning. Welcome and good morning. If you have opening remarks, we'd love to hear them. If not, I think our questioning this morning begins with you, Mr. B. Okay, I do have opening remarks. I'd love to provide them. Good morning, Chair Walsh and Vice Chair Jones and members of the council. I'm Angela Cabellan and I serve as chief of staff to county executive ball. I'm joined today by my colleague Felix Fachin who serves as deputy chief of staff. Thank you for the opportunity to present the operating budget for the office of the county executive. We are requesting a maintenance budget this year with a proposed increase of 3.8% over last year's budget. The majority of our requested increases driven by countywide increases in chargebacks, particularly related to data processing charges. Excluding personnel and chargebacks, our budget represents a 0.16% increase. I wanted to take a moment to highlight some of our major accomplishments from the past year, as well as our goals for the year ahead. In this calendar year, we have already been mitigating major federal and state impacts. Through multiple town halls, career fairs, and direct services offered by our departments and offices, we have been flexible and responsive to the evolving federal landscape. We absorbed some of these impacts, such as personnel costs in our office of emergency management and other departments, but are also aware of several risks in the community which we are preparing for. Total impacts are not yet realized such as potential reductions to head start, housing funding, DCRS funding, our nonprofits, and to businesses who have relied heavily on contracted services. We have proposed 2.5 million in Pega funding to be able to address the emerging federal impacts, many of which are yet to be filled. I'm honored to chair our economic competitiveness and opportunity now task force where dozens of representatives of private industry and government agencies are charged to come up with community and business interventions, innovations and efficiencies. We will continue to partner closely with the Howard County Economic Development Authority to cultivate a positive climate for small businesses and job growth in Howard County. EDA has played a strong role in promoting entrepreneurship amidst the federal impacts. One example among many where EDA has made major strides is in cyber security. Just this month with our support, they recently opened the first cyber-powered accelerator. These efforts help grow our tax base and position the county for a fiscally sustainable future. Additionally, we continue our focus on expanding youth programming and engagement in Howard County, which we see as a key priority. This has included our successful youth engagement programming grants, which have engaged more than 10,000 young people in free programs across the county over the last two years. We have also established the Youth Engagement Strategies Council, which engages stakeholders on violence prevention strategies among young people. We look forward to continuing these efforts in partnership with each of your offices in the year ahead. You have heard our departments collaboratively and collectively working on youth services, capital projects such as the source, and early childhood programs in addition to our commitment to the education budget. Furthermore, we are continuing to work diligently to deliver high quality services and facilities that benefit our residents and workforce. This upcoming year, we are looking forward to opening the Center for Arts, Cultural and History and Downtown Ellicott City to meet the civic, cultural, and educational and recreational needs of our community. We are also excited to put forward funding for the long awaited Elkridge Community Center. We greatly appreciate partnership and collaboration with the county council on these shared priorities and look forward to continuing to work with you. Thank you again for your time this morning and we are happy to take questions that you may have. Thank you. I was ready. All right. I can promise for the rest of the day. And this one might speak more to Mr. Mamo, but on the data processing services, obviously that's a really large increase. Yes. I'm imagining that this is part of that we inventory and catch up post-COVID so if you could just touch on that and explain more. Yes so since COVID the inventory can't we get from DTCS has not been updated and primarily because during COVID a lot of people were issued laptops and they still had their desktops so the Count would be misleading so For this year for the 26th calculation we did receive an updated Inventory counts so that created a lot of shifts for some departments significant increases for others Reductions, but it's primarily due to the updated inventory. Okay. So it's not you haven't added a thousand lamps. No, no. Okay, that's exactly it. It's just the catch up with the charge of acts. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Miss Yan? First, know that our employees appreciate it too. There were a lot of them who were concerned about that. And I appreciate the fact that you heard their voices and that you went ahead and did that. So thank you, thank you, thank you. So I don't need to ask that question in this particular session, just expressing my appreciation. So there was an increase in subscriptions and publications in your office and one of them was for an increase to the county executives newsletter through constant contact and a program to track state legislation. I'm worried now that we all use constant contact to deliver our newsletter. Is there something happening that I don't know about that we are going to also have to recognize or is this something special? I can speak to that. Largely, the increase is due to the number of subscribers we have. So constant contact works on a subscriber-based payment. So as you increase the number of subscribers, you have increased costs. And so we did an analysis of what we were paying and actually found that we were under budgeting for constant contact in prior years. And so there's two things going on here. The first is that we're bringing our budget up to what the actual costs are. And then the second is that we had an increase in subscribers that is driving up that increased in cost. Okay. And then the tracker for state legislation, can you tell me more about that because I'm thinking that would be great if you could share that with the council members too. Right? Right, Ms. Rigby. I know. Some of us like to look at this. Yes. So what's the deal? Absolutely. And first of all, I would be remiss if I didn't say happy-belated birthday. Oh, thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. It was so nice not to have a budget work session on my birthday. Yes. I mean, believe it or not, but for a long time, our legislative team has largely been working on Excel sheets and that's just not tenable. So as you know, these trackers are extremely important. they're used across the state and used in many other jurisdictions so that you know they can manage the tremendous volume around legislation. 100 are extremely important, they're used across the state and used in many other jurisdictions so that they can manage the tremendous volume around legislation. 100% agree, so I'm serious. Can you just add subscribers to this? Can the council members also subscribe to it so that we can do the same thing, which is track legislation? Or at least let our legislative analyst track legislation so that they can let us know what's going on with legislation that we're interested into. Is there a way to do that? I think there should be and we're certainly happy to share that. This is a tool that's also used by Mako and so we're able to get a reduced rate for the subscription because Mako also uses it so it's called engageify and we're happy to share that information with you to see if there's some synergy there. Okay, that would be great because I know some of us would really like to be able to do that. It's so easy to lose track. Exactly. Yeah. I don't have any questions for you. Thank you, sir. I'm going to ask this, but maybe it's a question for this afternoon when we talk about departmental expenses. Last year there was a pay go non-departmental expense for economic needs and emerging, or economic assistance and emerging needs funds for two and a half million. This year there's something similarly titled like federal assistance and economic needs. Is that your office who administers that? That is us. So that question is now? Yeah, sure. It is our office. We're also happy to answer during the Pag session later. And we administer that with county administration. Okay, I mean, just from our right up, it looks like there's still a million remaining from last year, two and a half million dollars. What, what, that goes back to general fund? Yeah, any unspent Pego funds in the current FY25 budget, if they're not expended by the end of this fiscal year, will return back to fund balance. I believe on that one, we likely will be spending down the majority of that, but I can speak to that in more detail and follow up if needed. Yeah, okay. What is the plan for the federal impacts and emerging needs that's the 2.5 million now? Sure, absolutely. You know, we have a strategy right now where we are hearing many of these impacts, you know, not just to nonprofits but to businesses. And, you know, I just want to give an example of Head Start, for example. Right now, you know, there's rum rumors out there that things are okay, but we don't quite know that. Because from what we're hearing, they're still delaying payments. So that's just one example that's happening in the community that we're kind of keeping our pulse on. And right there, that could be just wipe out a lot of that fun if we're absorbing any amount of that. In addition, our businesses, we keep hearing that businesses have contracted services with the federal government, and this is evolving. And at this point, the federal impacts are rolling. They're not, we're not feeling everything now. So part of it is keeping a pulse on these big issues that are going to take a large amount of that potentially take a large amount of that fund and then immediately dissipate. But there's also a strategic portion where we do have the Econ task force that I am chairing and that allows you know private entities, businesses, you know organizations and our government to look across this landscape of need. You know whether it's in housing, whether it's in other areas, and give us key recommendations that are from the experts. So these are from economists, from experts who are seeing and watching these trends and saying, OK, this is a way that we may mitigate these impacts or create some efficiencies. So that is the strategy is ongoing and it's to be, you know, immediately be able to be flexible but also be strategic in the long run. And I can add on to that as well. We are currently tracking the federal administration's budget and there's a series of proposed cuts that will be making its way through the process at the federal level that could directly impact Howard County. Those are things like eliminating the Community Development Block Grant Program and funding for continuums of care for homeless services. We don't know if those are going to materialize, but if they do, that's going to have a significant impact on county departments. And so this funding is really intended to allow us to, you know, if some of those cuts do materialize at the federal level and impact our departments, be responsive to some of the core programs that are delivered through current federal funds. And some other jurisdictions across the state of Maryland are budgeting similar amounts in their budgets to prepare for potential cuts and federal groups. So your knowledge and a rundle has got 7 million. So one would argue that we're not doing enough, but we have kind of put in our absolute need. Our write-up from our own analysts reports that the office of the executive will use half a million of that two and a half for youth engagement programming initiative. Is that right? In FY26, that is not correct now. We have a half a million dollars in pay-go funds budget as a separate line item. In FY26 for youth engagement programming. Good answer. What's the difference though? I mean you mentioned Anorondle County having seven million dollars does Anne Rundle County also have 43 million dollars in a policy reserve 10% in contingency I would have to get back to yeah, I don't know the exact nuances of their budgets I'd have to get back to you on that because I feel like Obviously, it's a good practice to have money sure Horted away But I think we're getting way too good at that. The budget does talk about, for the last two years, we've had $43 million in policy reserve. There's a $1 million contingency, just general fun contingency somewhere. Then there are floaters like this that you've carried from last year and only used a million and a half of, and another two and a half just for this particular item out of 22 million. There seems to be a pretty significant redundancy there. Can you speak to that? Well, our triple A bond rating see these as excellent practices. Having the rainy day fund is something that we absolutely should try just not to touch unless it's something catastrophic. That policy reservists, we can talk about later, there's emergency legislation before you, and that's also not very common, but we are looking at that. But outside of that, this is something that we can plan full around. And so this is why it is really designed to be a one-time pay go, which is in the federal impacts. Okay. Is there still COVID money floating around? There is really not any COVID money floating around. We had a December 31, 2024 deadline to obligate all of our American rescue plan funds. Those have all been obligated 100%. We do have until December 31, 2026 to fully spend down on those ARPA funds, but the vast majority I think probably more than 80% at this point have been spent down. And so the remaining ARPA funds that have not been spent down are for programs that have continued costs over the next two years. For example, we supplemented the recreation and parks before and after care programs with ARPA funds to help encourage recruitment and that's funding that will continue to be in place and spent down over the next two years. But all of those federal funds from COVID have been obligated. And I just want to underscore that because our bond rate agencies also saw that as great across other jurisdictions that we already have 100% of the funds obligated. Okay, where is that in this book? So the ARPA funds would not be in the budget book. However, we do have quarterly reports that we file to the Department of Treasury that are posted on the county website. And so that includes all of the latest American Rescue Plan updates. Okay. Why wouldn't ARPA, aren't those revenues, aren't those the same as a grant? Or? I would probably defer to maybe our budget office and Department of Finance as to why it's not in the budget book. Yeah. Go ahead, Holly. Yeah, it was already... Gary, this is coming to you. Yeah, it's already a budget director, Holly, son. This is what's already appropriated a couple of years ago in the county's grand fund there. So that's a total appropriation of authority of receiving and spending. Our profoundly was already included there. So it's a grand fund, so we don't re-appropriate every year. There are plenty of things in here where you're not getting new money but I still have to look at a page in a book that accounts for how you're spending that money, right? It's part of what the county is spending. Right, grant is a little bit different because grant once we get a appropriation on that, the spending still goes through the system there but you don't have to re reauthorize every year. And that's the only grant, that's the only fund I think that's currently, it was a lapse there, so that's non-lapse, I'm sorry. So there's no county overs, or there's no council oversight over our funds. I'm not sure the oversight part because it's, it's go through the SAP system financial system there and then there's a quarterly report to publish on the county website. There everything was pretty transparent. We just don't need another reauthorization of appropriation, that's it. And that's no different than any other grant. There's pretty much in this book. Yes. So when there is new funding available, we have to get the spending authority. So we would request that and it would be published in the budget book. So is everybody in a former budget book? Yes. Yes. Yes. Which book? Gary, Office of Law, do you agree that there's no need for this to be carried in a budget book? You can't what now? We will solve that problem. Grant appropriations don't lapse at the end of a fiscal year. So the money remains appropriated in subsequent fiscal years until it's paid down. The operating budget is on a current year basis, so the current operating proposed budget is for new appropriations for FY26. Prior appropriations for like every office aren't reflected over and over again in the place. Okay so by what means does the council have any review or? I think the council can very well ask based on the total appropriations to say $5 million. Right, let's been spent in 23, FOA 24, FOA 25, and you get a breakdown of where the money has gone, and then the balance would be how much is still remaining of the original appropriation. All right, I don't hear anyone weighing in, so I'm not going to belabor this, but sounds about if you want me to I can I can remind you that I proposed an amendment three years ago four years ago when we got the arpa funding saying that arpa funding needed to be approved by the county council and it was a two three vote. Oh, great. Okay. Well, it's going to say I remember when we had this discussion that year of the budget because the alternative was the That we could get the funds out faster But we did it well four years later and there were and most of the local workers most of the the Jurisdictions were doing something similar where they were having the county council review the upper funds I was going to just my point though office of law is it is not this council's obligation to make them do what they're supposed to do under the charter if the council is supposed to be reviewing budgetary expenses revenues on a year by year basis by what means is that ability afforded us for this source of funding I couldn't even tell you I couldn't even tell you what you know I have no idea what the 20% remaining is I looked at at the dashboard once and was like this is not helpful. clarify something. The budget was approved by council, the full amount. When though, when, brook. I mean, I don't have a committee. I don't have a committee to remember, but we're talking about the spending authority, but when we actually spend the funds, it gets recorded in our financial system, and it gets picked up in the budget document. So spending would be reflected. So where, okay, so where is that? That was the my original question. Where is that money in here? Is it under other when we see categories I mean that was my first question where is it and the answer was it's not going to be under other I would think yeah I think we got yeah is that right? appropriation or spending? Look is it under other when we see funds being spent Hello, good morning. Rafiq, director of finance. I ask. Is it under other when we see funds being spent? Hello, good morning. Rafiq, Director of Finance. As for the American Rescue Plan Act, the budget was approved, was accepted because that came with huge conditions and the council had to vote to accept the money and you did in 2022. And so all we're doing now is tracking the spending. We've allocated it and the first the Treasury tracks whatever category they wanted us to allocate the phone still. And that's what we're tracking. And we're going to give us two years to obligate all the phones, which was December 31, 2024. And then additional two years because they knew that there would be some salaries and there would be capital projects that they wanted us to spend down in two years. So the crunch would be fully spent by December 31st, 2026. And if not, whatever balance is left, we'll be returned to the Treasury. Okay. Have we received any additional ARPA funds since 2022? No. Just the same amount. Just $62 million. Okay. And so where in the budget book are those expenditures reflected did I ask you right at that time? Yes. Yes you did. It should be under the Department of Finance. So like any grant when we actually spend, I guess recorded and it gets shown in the details for that department that the grant is allocated to when ARPAs will under the Department of Finance. So the expenditures will be shown. The appropriation was done, I guess, back in 2022. Yeah. So for the spending, you're gonna see the actual spending in our Akra and the single audit. But you won't see it in the budget book because it was already appropriate. We're not gonna be appropriate again, just like Mr. Cook said. However, we're tracking their expenditures. As we spend them on a regular basis, the upper phone requires that we do quality reporting and which we do every year. And I happen to, we, GFW has a huge group for all the 50 states and municipal governments that receive the upper phones. And we are proud to say we are one of the very few that have complied strictly with the upper funding and the requirements. The account is who are already turning that, returning money because they've not obligated by this 31st 2024. And they're very strict about it. I don't think there'll be any other tougher restrictions than what the facts are provided. Because you can't move money from one category to another, they created categories that they have to approve before we actually started spending money. And the administration of Felix are very involved in making sure that those allocations were all mapped out and we submitted those to Treasury, they accepted it. And now we're doing this reporting how much we spend according to the categories that are mapped out. But you see this spending in the aqua. But not in the budget book. No, because budget book is appropriation for the upcoming fiscal year. However, all expenditures will not be reflected in the aqua. And I think Mr. Ashman can address that as well. Okay, but like what is one one what's an example of a cost that's going to continue through December 2026? Sure so the cost I referenced earlier is one of those so recreation and parks we use ARPA funds about I think we dedicated a budget of about three million dollars to the Department of Recreation and Parks with the explicit intention of expanding their before care and after care program through additional staffing, wages, training. And so that is funding that I think today we probably spent, I have to get this specifics, but in the range of about a million and a half to two million. And the plan was to continue spending that through the end of 2026 to bolster their before care and after care program. And so that's one where we'll continue to see that spend down occur over the next year, year and a half until those funds are fully expended. Okay. So was that cost of that two and a half million dollars that we spent on a student personnel reflected in the Reckham Parks operating budget that we reviewed this year? No, it would be reflected here because it's been accounted for already in 2022. But actual spending, okay, when we're looking at the budget book, we'll be reflected, anything related to ARPA will be reflected under finance, the Department of Finance. And in the budget book, we don't go, we don't have the space to go down to the detail of every single grant the county receives, right? So we have a category that says grants. And it shows you what was spent in the prior actual was budgeted in FY25, what was proposed in FY26. But the details are not going to be available, but the details will be found in SAP and the budget report said the auditors have access to. Okay, but there's a full time employee count in the recreation and parks operating budget that shows personnel costs being paid by grants. Yes, yes. Would you include the ARPA? May. Yes. Yes. OK. So technically it is in here. It just doesn't say ARPA. Exactly. Exactly. Why? OK. Yeah. OK. I'm walking. So early in the mornings. OK. As equally a report that you can see, we have what we call the single audit that is required for all organizations for federal grants. So we have that and you're going to see the upper phones there and how much we spend and how much was we received and all of that will be there. It's very clear. That was published in January, is online and I think we sent the soft copy to all cancer members as well. So there are two reports you can see how we are spending the upper funds. The main one is, of course, the singularity is that compliance audit, which means we are compliant with all the rules and regulations as mapped out by OMB. Okay. And is it the director of finance that's are you the direct communication with the feds about how we're spending it or is that Office of Executive? I am. Okay, all right, then I will definitely walk away from this. Okay. Thank you. All right, who's after me, Dr. Jones? Good morning, everyone again. I just want to say thank you so, so much for the delicate balancing act. The hours and hours pour into making sure that the county is running at a place may not necessarily be optimal to everyone's marking, but it's optimal given today's climate. There are a million things going on from local order way up to the administration federally, a lot of projections, the unknown, everything that's going to happen over the next few months or maybe next couple of years, you all have taken a really, really strong stance in making sure how a county comes on top and looks really, really good. So I want to thank you for that. With respect to the budget that's in front of us today, I do not have any specific questions. I appreciate the background with respect to the three percent change increase. And again, thank you so much for what you do. Thank you, Councilmember Jones, Vice Chair Jones. This, you know, none of the hard work could be done without ever departments, department heads, and staff. We appreciate it. I was wondering if you could touch more on your yes, the yes program, because I think that there is a significant need and maybe always, maybe post-COVID, couldn't say, but to engage our youth, but especially in violence reduction. And so I'd really love to hear sort of how you're utilizing this council and how community members can engage and amplify that work. Yes, the yes council or the youth engagement strategies council has a heightened focus on violence prevention and you really have a mix of community members who are doing this work on the ground every day whether it's the nonprofits or our faith leaders, and even some of those who are just more engaging informally. Since we've established this, we also have many just residents who are concerned asking to be a part of this. So there is a subcommittee structure. The idea of the yes council is that everyone, and let me not be remiss in saying our departments as well as our education entities, community college and HCPSS, etc. And workforce, right, because workforce is a big part of this. But the beauty of it is that, you know, every single entity has a piece of the solution. And this allows there to be a form of discussion on, okay, you have your piece, I have my piece. Instead of us working in silos, let's come together and work more strategically. And getting the actual youth involved, you know, a lot of times, one of the biggest criticisms of government bodies that we don't have the actual voices, yes, does have those voices and they're on the forefront of this engagement. And that's critical because, you know, not one entity can profess to know the answer. Government cannot do it by itself. So that's why, yes, is an important tool to be working towards not just the safety of the community, which is very, very important and not just to help residents feel safe and be safe, but working on all the wraparound services, needs, and most importantly, one of the biggest pieces of feedback is how do we get these youth into education and workforce and different types of pipelines to be in a more productive space. So we think that by engaging all these entities, that there is not just an energy but a really coalesce vision for a healthier, safer and more well community. So there's a lot of interest in this because there's a lot of stake. Yeah, and I, there's certainly been a few incidents as of recently that I think it really shows that our youth are desperate for alternative paths. How would, if we have community members or other entities interested in engaging with the Strategies Council, who do we direct them to? How do we connect them to this engagement process? Yeah, our Director of Consurban Services and Community Partnerships, Paul Thompson, as well as my Special Assistant Luke Verdi are working as staff to staff the council. So they can certainly contact our office and we will immediately get community members plugged in. Like I said, we have had a lot of resident engagement and residents are now being part of those subcommittees. Great, thank you. Thank you. And thanks for this initiative. I was excited when you guys started yet because absolutely we need engagement outside of school hours. And I think that have specifically focusing on violence reduction and community connection is essential for their future. So thank you. We appreciate your support, Council Member Rikby. Miss Yan? One other follow-up question to the yes council. Are there public meetings? Because I know that I have a lot of people in my community too who would be interested in serving on something like this or knowing about it or connecting with the people who are on this council. Yeah, absolutely. So the yes council is established by executive order. So it is a public body. We have a web page and we invite and encourage all members of our community and residents to attend those meetings and engage directly with the members. That's another great opportunity to just learn about their work and be part of it. And we're happy to share that web page with you after this work session. That would be great. And I think I'm still looking for those, the app programs with the names of the people who are in charge of each one, their websites, what they do how the kids and parents can get in touch with them. I think that's really important because that's more money that we're spending on youth engagement I think it's great. I want us to be doing that but I also want us to all be finding ways to get that information out and to help people access those programs. It's really important. Absolutely. And on that point, we have been working on updating our website for you up the last couple weeks with updated links and information so people can be directed to program web pages. Good. Excellent. Back to the 2.5 million, you mentioned that Head Start was getting delays and payments and I'm wondering if, I mean, that's one of my biggest concerns actually in terms of what the federal government might be doing to our community. And I'm wondering if you can use that to some part of that 2.5 million if needed to help bridge for head start while they're waiting for payments since they're being delayed. I don't know if CIC has enough of a reserve fund that they can do that and they can take it on, but at some point they may not be able to. Right. We are working closely with the executive director and CIC. And so right now, they said that they would be in close contact with us. Should there be that absolute dire moment? So we are just monitoring right now. But we are looking at these specific funds if allocated would hit July. But who's to say, if there's anything that happens earlier, we'll be ready to hear them out and try to work something. So you said that the rumor was that there will be money for Head start again. Right. And I'm thinking, oh, three weeks ago the rumor was that there wouldn't be money for head start. Exactly. So it should have been glad that the rumor is now the opposite direction. I know. That's why we, you know, are really, you know, prepared either way. You know, it's hard. It's hard. This is the way that we're working through these. That we're just kind of watching. You would see what we know, but the experience on the ground may be a little bit different. Good. Good feeling. And I'll add, there was word that Head Start was going to be cut from the President's proposed budget several years ago. I think due to a lot of community pushback across the country in the actual budget that was released by the federal administration, Head Start is currently in there. But we know that these things are changing on a week to week basis. And so part of the idea is to make sure that as these things are changing, we really don't know what's coming down the pike throughout the next 12 months. And we really want to stay nimble to be sure that we're supporting core services like Head Start that provide such a critical early childhood education to so many families in Howard County. So I think that just speaks to the importance of our just close conversations with CAC and other partners that are really heavily reliant on federal funding. And just note that's just one example. You know there are other examples that may come forward which is which is the emerging needs part. You know, we just don't know. Because you know, it's kind of odd to ask about that. If you do have any kind of updated figures on how many federal employees or contractors here in Howard County have lost their federal jobs? And is there any other plans to directly assist those individuals? So I think we continue to use what the Economist project, which is that projected minimum of 5,000 job loss. I think all of us have heard friends, neighbors who share with our experiences. So it's definitely a moving target. We know that's the minimum. And I think it's just not even taking into consideration what I mentioned earlier, which is the contractors. Because in going to events and hearing from businesses, we forget that businesses have had to make a reduction in force because they had contracts with the federal government. So the answer is yes, we are prepared to mitigate these, you know, with that federal fund, emerging needs fund, and we are open. One body is the e-contest force, but we're certainly hearing it from every angle. We're hearing it everywhere we go about the heartbreaking stories of our federal police. And I know a lot of them are in limbo right now. Yes. Yes. A PI event on Saturday. I was talking to a number of people who said they had not been terminated yet, but maybe would be. And they would know by they were placed on administrative leave and maybe they would know by the end of June so they weren't working but they're still getting a full federal paycheck. Big savings there right just saying okay yeah and that even in June they wouldn't necessarily know because they could continue on administrative leave because of all of these lawsuits, in which case, I guess, they would continue to get paid for a job. Anyway, it is very confusing and complicated. I understand that. Yeah. And on that, I mean, the anxiety is real, which is why we've had these career fairs. In our office of workforce development, or EDA, and our community college, and other partners have been awesome. Our departments have been there. And walking through these career fairs, where you have 1,400 people coming through. Like what you're saying, those stories, they're all slightly different, but there's all of what the underlying anxiety that's going to families and the real impacts that the families are enduring. So it is a tough time and it's particularly hitting our region in a big way. In a big way. Yeah. Yes, it is. Do you have any questions? No I mean it's more specific to the department's that will be being impacted. What are you putting it? Oh okay. I do not. Okay. But I think that the places I have concerns I'll be following up with like housing, HUDs receiving a huge cut, you mentioned potential for CBDG. I just appreciate that you guys are trying to stay on it, even though it's a very quickly shifting landscape. I don't envy you or the whiplash you must be experiencing. So, thanks. Miss Andy, have you had any more? I just, yeah, I wanted to ask about your multiple saving strategies that you, the list of items that I think we were providing yesterday. So I would ask respectfully if we could have Brandigan, Sar CIO, also. You may have that. Thank you. It was under administration. It was under administration. Oh, is it under administration? You have it. OK, I had it under my county executive. All right, we're going to share. I'm willing to. The administration does a lot of the artworks. OK, and that's, I have no more questions. OK, all right. Thank you both. Thank you. Thank you. All right, next up we do have no more questions. Okay. All right. Thank you both. Thank you. Thank you All right next up we do have office of the administration and I see County Administrator Brandi Gans approaching Welcome, Enka morning Good morning. If you have remarks, we'd love to hear them. Otherwise we'll get into questions and I think you just got a preview of what at least one of them will be. Thank you. Yes, I do have remarks. Good morning, Council Chair Walsh, Vice Chair Jones and Council members. Thank you for the opportunity to present our budget to you today. My name is Brandi Gantz and I'm the Chief Administrative Officer for Howard County. I oversee the Department of County Administration which consists of multiple offices, staff services, human resources and risk, budget, procurement and contracts, central fleet, public information, mail services, community sustainability, human rights and equity, workforce development, transportation, and our two newest offices, consumer protection, and the Office of Agriculture. As we all know, federal and state budget impacts have brought challenges requiring us to be innovative and think outside the box. We've implemented many cost saving measures that have already been put in place and will continue throughout FY26. These cost saving measures include fleet replacement and usage reduction, IT savings, reducing travel, training, printing and expenses, and energy savings. Before I provide an overview of our funds, I would like to highlight some of the work completed this fiscal year and what some of our offices are planning for FY26. The Office of Human Rights has a new administrator, Lakeisha McClendon. She's joined here today. She took the job. Yes, ma'am. Oh, excellent. Okay, sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt that, but that's very exciting. Okay. In FY26, OHRE will continue to safeguard growth in the community by reinvesting in a strong foundation, challenging ourselves to establish best practices and remain both exemplary and responsive to the current climate surrounding this work. OHRE will continue to invest in the five commissions along with expanding community participation and providing increased opportunities for dialogue by building deeper relationships. The Office of Human Resources will finalize the class and compensation study in FY26. For FY26, the Office of Workforce Development will continue to invest in career pathway programs, employer driven training, and technology modernization to meet growing needs and changing needs of Howard's County's workforce and economy. In this uncertain period time of federal workers, the Office of Workforce Development has assisted over 1200 job seekers who served through specialized career fairs, workshops, and career coaching. More than 120 local businesses participated in multiple hiring events to connect directly with displaced workers. In FY25, our Office of Community Sustainability won more than 500 million in grants for energy efficiency improvements, EV chargers, and resiliency efforts. OCS Advanced of solar power purchasing agreements to 97% completion, powering half of county government buildings. OCS also executed an MOU with Maryland DNR, which planted 46,800 native trees. The budget for the Department of County Administration covers many budgetary funds. However, I would like to provide a brief overview of the proposed of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the sold a reduction in grant funding and therefore had to absorb positions in the general fund. We also increased the allocation number of participants in the summer youth experience work experience program. The AgLand Preservation Fund has a $1 million proposed budget. This is a 392,000 above the prior year. The majority of this is increases from food purchases from Howard County government farmers to distribute through the Roving Radish program. One time costs to install freezers at West Friendship Park and purchasing of a pickup truck for the office of agriculture to facilitate farm visits. Our new efforts in our budget amendment to be filed provide for a new and beginning farmer program which provides space for new farmers to lease property at a low cost and establish their farm operations. The employee benefits fund has an $85.6 million proposed budget, which is $1.65 million or $1.9% above the prior year, our health claims account for about 95% of the costs of this fund. The risk management fund has a proposed budget of $14.9 million, which is $1.3 million or $9.2%2% above the prior year. This is due to increases in claims, inflation, as well as some one-time settlements. The fleet operations fund has a 29.9 million proposed budget and a 5.3 million or 151% below the prior year. The primary reductions come from vehicle replacement and removal of one-time funding for a fluid dispensing system. Before I close, I also want to thank the team behind me. This would not be possible without all of them. And thank you for your time and I am happy to answer any questions that you have for me or the county administration at this time. Thank you, Ms. Gaines. I just, I just start off, I just want to confirm two things that I heard. One that will be finalizing the class and comp study prior to next fiscal year. Is that correct? Yes that is correct. Which is exciting but also a little scary in these financial times. And then the other thing is that you said we planted 46,000 native trees? Yes we did. In one year. Yes. That's. Kudos. Then my question is, I'm going to start off with the Office of Agriculture. And I feel bad because you're kind of waged back in there. So it seems like the mobile market has been a pretty big success. and then along with your enhanced roving radish efforts, with the cuts to school meals and specifically the funds that go to local farms to purchase school meals, I was wondering if you're looking at any ways to partner with HCPSS's Office of Food Nutrition Because you know, I just I see these hits that are coming to our farmers the hits that are coming to our schools and I'm wondering how We can we're not going to be able to fix the whole situation, but what can we do to it? Meal you rate it Sure, so we actually are currently partnering with Howard County Public School System Through they've been providing funds for a gift card that students can use at the mobile markets, they're going to continue that program through funding that they have. We were working with them to process vegetables as well for their school system. Not sure how that's going to go for the school lunch program because that federal funding has gone away. But we're going to certainly continue to partner wherever we can. I mean, I know I'd say at least at the several of the schools have the salad bar options. And so that seems like an approach to your impossibility for our local farmers as well. I'm glad to hear that you're already connected with them, that you have those connections going. And I just, yeah, it's a big concern of mine. So anything you guys can do to fill those gaps for farmers in the school system would be great. Great. Thank you. Miss Young. The plastic bag fee, where did Raffu go? Oh, here we are. Tim is going to respond. So it looks like it's going down. And the plastic bag fee, disposable plastics reduction. FY25 approved was 1,034. FY26 proposed is 817,000 for a reduction of 217,000. And I'd like to know, it looks like the trend is to have it keep going down. And I guess this actually is a combination question because there are people in the Department of Finance who are being paid in order to keep this fund going as well as people in your office, Mr. Latimer, who are taking extra money and using that for grants. So I'd like to know how would this affect your grant program and I'd like to know how we are continuing to pay for people in the Department of Finance to collect this money as it's continuing to go down. First, thank you very much for the question and I'll defer to my colleagues from Finance to speak to the latter part of your question. On the grant program, we have seen increased interest. We issued a record number of grants this past year, some 16 grants, to a variety of different community organizations, and we're seeing strong demand again for the coming year. But we understand that this is not a fund that will last forever, hopefully, because we anticipate that there will be a continued decline. So we are going to have to look more closely at the grant proposals that come in. It's going to be increasingly competitive. And we'll just have to make sure that we're still able to funnel that money back into the community for the kind of waste reduction and other environmental projects that the nonprofits and faith groups and others are carrying out. How much of that $1 million went out for grants? I believe it was this past year was about $519,000 in grants and then other resources we used to support a couple of our critical positions that we have. One of them is our climate coordinator position and the others are community outreach specialist and we've used it for also supporting Chesapeake climate and conservation core fellows that we have two of them working with us to help us on both nature-based solutions and energy issues. And we've also used it to help support an advance pilot project to work on conversion of electric or landscaping equipment over to electric, as well as doing waste reduction outreach and education programs. I mean, that all sounds great. You know, who wouldn't want to have money from plastic bags to support all those positions? But again, it does concern me that we're relying on people continuing to use plastic bags. When the point of this legislation was to get people to stop using plastic bags, which just there's a part of me that's like, I don't see how this all makes a lot of sense. I know that Ms. Walsh and I were in favor of actually just making plastic bags go away in the legislation as opposed to having people pay five cents per plastic bag. And I think actually Mr. Youngman now looking back on this would have agreed with us. We might have gotten a third vote. Yeah, so what do you, how fast do you see this trend going down? How many positions are you going to have to eliminate of the things that you were supporting this past year, a $200,000 reduction that is anticipated for next year. I really don't want to speculate on the rate of decline, but yeah. So, so, Stim mentioned, I mean the expectation is for the fund to continue to decline, but it's not going to go away next year. We have a fire member correctly about close to $600,000. We're expecting to collect. We have 350,000-ish in reserve, and is one position in OCS that we're paying for out of this fund. And 25% of that position is being paid by the General fund. So we continue to monitor revenues, we continue to, and as revenues decline, we have to adjust spending and then we have to make a decision for the general fund possibly picking up, you know, more and more percentage of the one position that's paid out of this fund currently. Would it the one position, Brooke? In OCS. OCS, okay. So there's one position that's fully funded in OCS. Is 75% funded out of the plastics fund revenues and 25% out of the general fund? Do you know how many positions are funded in finance and finance here is I believe one position Okay, thank you. Sure I'm gonna stick on this fund So Where like you talk about the grants? Who's getting those grants? What types of organizations? So we have some environmental organizations, like the Community College Institute, the Howard County Conservancy, the Patapsco Heritage Greenway. We also have faith groups, some local congregations, the interfaith partners for the Chesapeake, interfaith power and light, and also some community organizations like the Murray Hill Homeowner Association, also some educational institutions like the Howard County Chinese School that are carrying out different kinds of projects. Now, in the first few because because there are entities, I think we know reasonably well, what specifically are they doing to reduce the use of disposable plastic bags? So versus just general environmental stuff. It's both, in some cases, there are waste reduction efforts, for example, with the Murray Hill Hummer Association. They're getting more trash cans into the community to collect litter. They do community cleanups, et cetera. We have some faith groups that have put in for putting in like a water filling station so that people will reduce the amount of plastic water bottles that they're using when they go to their congregation. And let's see, we have like CEI. What are they doing? CEI is doing a cultivating climate-friendly food choices. This is an experiential education program to help people learn about growing food, where they live, work, and play, and basically helping them to reduce food waste as well, to look at going to plant-based diets. And I also would point out that food waste is also a particular problem because when it decomposes, it generates methane, which is a very powerful greenhouse gas. Right. I got that. I just know that what this fund is for is not that. This fund is related to disposable plastics. The personnel costs, it seemed like the personnel, except for the person in finance, none of them were really working on reducing the use of disposable plastics. They were more just sort of generalized staff working on a variety of things. Did I miss that? Well, our community outreach specialist, a higher that we have is working on the community engagement piece and also trying to help make sure that we are getting reusable bags into the hands of the food bank and Columbia community cares, the roving radish and others and other organizations to try to help remind folks and give them the resources to take their own bags with them so they will not be using plastic bags. Yeah. I just, I see this small little 10% reduction in the revenue which is great that it's not going up, but at some point it hits the ceiling and we're not really doing anything other than using this fee to pay for stuff. And this year we need to wipe out the fund balance to cover everything. And I think this is where you were going. Next year without that fund balance, a half million of dollars of stuff that are being paid for out of this fund are going to go away. So what's the plan for those positions and those grants and what do we just say we've done the best we can and this is the where it's going to be? Well I think we're going to be seeing like I said earlier increased competitiveness for those that are submitting grant proposals. We're going to have to make harder choices on those. And then we have sought to try to move the permanent position over to the general fund who are making some progress, getting 25% of it covered there. We're hopeful to progressively move it in that direction over the coming years. See, and again, so we hire someone because we can pay for them in this fund and then when this fund dries up Then they become a general fund. So it's, it's, it's The problem is when we create these funds with a holistic goal and then they drift and then the money starts paying for stuff that's not really related to the goal of the fund And then then when the fund dries up, you start with those people. And those CSP partners still want to maintain their programs. And then their CSP grants have to go up. Like everybody should know, this fund, the amount of money this fund can spend is going to get cut in half next year. Right? I mean, it's going to be out of fun balance. I don't think people are going to start using more plastic bags unless you're in less, now we're stuck and then we have to double the fee because it's pay for all these other things. And that's where the real, that's why Votie can't sit. Thanks Tim. Okay, absolutely not on this planet I did. But thanks. Thank you. Okay. Absolutely not on this planet I did. But thank you. Our write-up for this particular fund says that there's still an open inquiry about the percentage of non-compliant disposable bag fee vendors, a list of groups that will receive funding, and which other, I think we got the answer to contractual services, right? We got the answer to the first one. So the only thing we don't have is a list of groups that will receive funding. Is that right? A list of groups that will receive funding from the disposable by-production fee. I mean, I checked this morning. I think we got. You got that. We got that as well. I believe so. But definitely the first one. I think it's about 15% on the floor. Yeah, yeah. No, I see it's on my little purple sheet, which means it got here this morning. OK. Miss Young, I know you're going to ask about the savings, so I'm not. Well, I can't find that page. I thought there was a page ahead. Yeah, the buildings. OK. Where was that? Well, never mind. OK. I knew I had seen it but I couldn't couldn't find it. All right, then I'm going to ask about that. We heard about, and the budget office presented to us as recently as last week, the multiple cost saving measures taken by county agencies. And so the sum total savings of those 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 cost saving measures is about what? About 20 million? 7.4 or 7.9, 8.3, 8.5. 17.5? Okay. Okay Is her mic on Dr. So we need to get you hear me? Oh, sorry about that. Yeah. It's close to $18 million. So that's Ms. Washby, right there. And that actually also, beyond that, there are also measures like we work with agency, like, example, in some cases, supplies there are lower than what people originally was hoping to get on that. And just so we didn't kind of count every single dollar here, but that's just represented very hard choices between administration and all the agencies, try to generate savings possible to support the critical needs in the operating budget. Yeah. Okay, I'm trying to even just match up what you presented to us last week with this email that we got, whenever we got it today, today. Yes, today. So freeze vacancies, freezing 3% civilian positions cross county agencies. That was what we were told last week. Are we still doing that? Yes. Okay, and so that's described in what we received yesterday as 44 fully or partially unfunded positions across different agencies representing nearly 3% of all civilian positions. Resulting savings $4.4 million. I don't see on this list because we have moved back from that reducing employer health care premium contributions and using health benefit fund reserves to lower increase in benefit costs. Well, you're still doing the latter aren't you? You're no longer planning on reducing employee health care premium contributions, right? That is correct. And the expected savings for that was about $2 million. Fiscal year basis, it's about $1.1 million. If annualized calendar is $2.1. So we're going to So we're going to identify other places to fund that to 1.1 million dollars in FY 26 budget. Okay. I mean, I will use whatever language you want and you'll ask for fiscal year. This is budget. So I'm talking budget. So it's fiscal year. It's a million dollar because that plan would have been implemented at the beginning of the health plan year the new one calendar 26 So the savings for FY 26 for the fiscal year would have been half a year worth of savings So it would have been a little over one million So you are gonna cut how many employees were affected by that? It's all employee all employees that are participating under our health plan. For savings of $1 million. For half a year. Full year savings would be double. A little over $2 million. Okay. Good job taking that back. But we're still planning on using health benefit fund reserves to lower increases in benefit costs. Yes. Question Mark? Yes. Yes. We are. All right. And in this right up that we have, it says we're going to use the fund balance to various internal service funds to lower charge back costs for a total of 8.9 million. Yes. Were those, were any of those listed here, we health benefit fund technology fund risk management fund and fleet fund Those weren't mentioned last week right the only one mentioned last week was the health benefit fund Yes, I believe so and and we mentioned and we'll get a comprehensive list Itemize list to you this week When the question came, came up last week. All right, and and somewhere in this book, in our budget book, the actual fun balance of each of those four. All of them should be yes, in the, in the, in the budget. And so the budget office and, and the county administration is comfortable in removing those amounts, sir. Because I'm sure if I showed up with an amendment that it moved those similar amounts, there would be a lot of squawking. So there is going to be we're going to file an amendment for the health fund to remove that additional revenue that was factored in from the increase in employee contribution. Okay, and what about these other technology fund risk management and eight point? Is it eight or three point eight million? No, no, that was part of the strategy to build this budget, so that's not going to be modified. So basically what that means is in a typical year, you know, if we didn't have financial challenges, we looked to generate enough revenue through chargebacks to cover or anticipated expenses in that fund, right? But because of higher priorities we had, instead of increasing chargebacks to the full amount we needed to, we relied more on reserves or fund balance. Now, that's not a sustainable strategy, but as part of the tough decisions we have to make. And we did that in all the funds. Technology, fleet, risk management, health fund. Okay, so that was already done as part of the proposed budget that's before us. Yes. So none of these four use of fund balance reserves will be reflected in any subsequent amendment. No, except the modification in the health fund based on the change in the policy of charging an additional 5%. You're taking that away. Yes. Okay, I got that part. That's going to be the only amendment. All right, so the total savings there is now reported to be $8.9 million by those combined for internal service funds. Correct. Closing various buildings on selected days to save on energy custodial and security costs. What, the estimated savings of that is $400,000. Yes, that's accurate. I mean, I think we've beat this one to death. I can't love to see the actual figures. And it would make sense to me if we were taking energy saving days on, I don't know, a week in August, when it's a gazillion degrees out, or a week in February, when it's freezing out, but to tack them on to holidays doesn't I don't see a policy match there. If we're saving energy, I just okay. Can I just ask a question about that? So it's 60. I noticed that it said 60 days of energy savings. Does that mean that we're going to tell all of our employees to stay home for 60 days out of the coming year, which is three months? So employees will be working from, they will be working from home on those days and to address the question of as to why it was tagged on the holidays. So when you tag it onto a holiday, you're actually getting more energy savings because it's less ramp up time for turning the heat up or turning the air down so it's down for a longer period of time. Okay. That's a lot of days to tell employees to stay home. But not only that, and whoever wrote, oh you wrote this, this is yours. I'm like, we wrote this on my thing was very smart. It's 60 business days. So that's three months. three months. I mean I just okay Okay. IT cell phone savings. This is another thing that applies to all county employees. Yes, so no one's getting that stipend now? That's correct. How many employees have just a county issued phone? I can get back to you on the specifics of how many employees have a county issued phone. Okay. And the expected savings from that is point is $500,000. Okay. And then reducing IT mobile comms in county transportation costs. So that's what our number two on this list is, is fleet replacement and fleet usage reduction, $3 million of fleet fund of which approximately 2.2 million transfers into fleet chargeback savings in general fund. What does that mean? OK, so I don't know if I got all of what you read, but we looked at or fleet looked at our utilization and based on that assessment came up with percentage reduction in our replacement costs, so that's one of the savings identified. And anytime you generate savings savings in any of these internal service funds the beneficiaries or the user agencies that would pay those Charge back so the allocation Of that savings to the general fund. That's what it means the general fund got Charged less in charge backs because these actions were taken. And also their additional savings that came from the building closures. They identified how many people in those buildings have taken vehicles. The average fuel savings and maintenance savings associated with that. In addition, going back to that, eight plus million number you referred to earlier, a decision was made instead of increasing chargebacks to the level that was needed that we would rely more on our fund balance or on our reserves this year. Again, not a long-term sustainable option, but as we had a lot of competing needs, and that was the way we were able to address some of our critical issues. So are there, you know, I have list list list of six items. Using fund balance was number six and Fleet Fund is mentioned there. Is there more than $3.8 million in fund balance being used from the Fleet Fund? No, I think $3.8 is my recollection of the total. That's the total. It's not $3.8 from... No. Okay. Okay, do we have a list of what the... You know, if we're removing underutilized equipment or downsizing our fleet, do we have before and after? We can provide that, yes. Like how much we would have replaced in 26 had we not in assessment versus yes. Or the yes. Yeah, we can provide that. And then I guess last is reducing travel, printing and training costs. A savings of 10%, so 0.2 million, $200,000. Again, do we have a before and after of that? And that's actually directly in the reports that the auditors are able to run. All these conference travel related costs then including printing are individual line items shown in the budget report. So they can easily do a comparison, but we can also provide that if needed. Okay. Are there any other measures? Dr. Sainte, you mentioned that you're doing something else now. I mean, these, I think this fund balance is not addressed in the... I mean, I think Dr. Sainte was referring to just in our initial development of the budget. We looked at all expenses and made significant reductions from what the departments communicated to us as you know what they need to maintain their services. So we have to make a lot of tough decisions but these were the kind of the big policy changes we wanted to highlight like the building closure and more reliance at least for one year on our fund balance and the internal service funds. Okay. 60 days is not a typo. I'm building closer, energy savings day. No. No, I just not. Have those days been identified through the next fiscal year, right? They were identified through December of 2025. Okay. Okay. I don't know if anyone wants to do follow-up on that item before. Yeah. Yeah, I'll probably mention it too. You can be all right. I think yes. We do trust here. I just want to confirm these are working days. They're not days off. They're just like days that you work from home like people work in 2025 Yes, ma'am. Okay. Thank you Well, and I want to confirm that there are people who have to be in their positions some of them at these buildings that are planning on being closed and One of them is this building here. There is no way that you can close the George Howard building for 60 days. We have to be in this building. The county council on numerous days to stream our meetings so that the public can see what it is that we're talking about. That alone forces us to be here day after day after day. We have to be able to access a lot of the equipment that's here in this office that we can't access elsewhere in our homes. The finance department has to be open in order for people to come in and pay their bills and talk about whatever their issues are. Dilt has the department of licensing impermits has to be open regardless. And I don't know who's at, I don't know everybody who's at these other buildings. I think the Carol building is Carol and Ligna, or both of those, Office of Law. I mean, I imagine that there are days when the Office of Law has to be at work, regardless of whether this is one of the closure days. They have to be able to get together to talk about things, to work on briefs to meet with a client. They can't be with a client off or a witness, you know, somewhere off at their homes. I mean, I'm just thinking the complicated nature of what we do here in the county government and the need for us to be in our buildings, just to say blanket, we're going to close these buildings or tell everybody that they need to go home and work. It just doesn't make sense to me, especially for that many days. You might be able to work around 30 days. Maybe you could do a work around. Even that is what, 20 days, work days in a month. That would be, you know be a month and a half. But 60 days, that's a lot of time. And I have to say that I am not in favor of this at all. Just saying. Ms. Gans, do your- I'm sorry. Have we left the rotation or are we still- We're sort of on this. We're we left the rotation or we sort of on this we're on this topic. Okay. All right. So first of all just so you're aware for the council primarily our days or Mondays that we need to be here, but I'm sure you can work that out with our council administrator and then just to confirm. Do county government employees have access to WebEx and teams the same as county council employees do to host virtual and hybrid meetings? They absolutely do, yes. Oh, great, thank you. Look, I'll be the unpopular one. This is a huge perception problem. Ever since we allowed to work, we get complaints about TPC and plan processing and people not getting calls back and people not getting I mean as late as last year somebody still had one their voicemail, I'm working at home today because of COVID. Well, no, you're not really, and by the way, working at home isn't why I should be getting your voicemail. That should be transparent. I don't want to generalize everybody. I have staff that works fantastic at home. But it's not efficient. It's not efficient in a lot of these departments. It's it's exasperating a perception issue and maybe a real issue that we have with the public. We have no way of verifying that people are actually working home. We're now bolting these on to what will become long weekends. Like corporate America knows never let people tell them to come you on Fridays. You know, because you're going gonna lose them, right? And I at least thought if we were gonna do all this, we were saving like a bunch of money. We're doing this to save $400,000. With this list of pay go, we can't have like $400,000 from the junk that we're spending money on to keep this building open and make sure that the public can access their government. I just can't wrap my head around it. We could probably save it by just talking to the HVAC company and getting the temperatures balanced right in these buildings. I know it's just a policy decision. I'm not attacking anybody personally, but this just seems to be a gimmick and one that isn't a good luck. So. I agree. Dr. Jones, did you have anything to say on the issue of these proposed savings measures? Otherwise we'll go back on rotation.. Actually and you're next anyhow. So yeah. Yeah, I've been I've been patient waiting. Thank you. I will since the conversation has gone this way I will just have to say that. I think it's up to the department. And I trust that they will. You know, if they are allowing telework. My assumption is that there's a way to do the work efficiently. will, you know, if they're allowing telework, my assumption is that there's a way to do the work efficiently. I don't need to know the end and ounce of if you have WebEx and tele this and can you check email. I'm assuming, especially after a revolutionized way of communicating and working through COVID that this is already happening. So if the department heads are saying it's efficient, if the public is saying it's not efficient in an amount of numbers that is actually concerning, then it's something to talk about. But if we're getting one or two emails or talking to one or two people saying, I stopped by and no one was there, that's not a reason to spend an hour berating the wherewithal of a department head if they can handle their departments. That is not our job today colleagues. I'm so sorry. I, you know, the numbers wise, I don't have a question. I do want to say briefly, going back to an earlier comment with respect to the plastic bag fee, that if my memory is correct, that four out of the five council members voted in favor of that bill. Now granted, there was some time ago, and things have transpired since then. We have data now, we have processes and trends now. So it's great to talk about those. But to make the claim like it didn't have support or it shouldn't have passed when four out of five of us voted for it. That's just not telling the history accurately. I want to personally think the department for all that you do, I don't have any questions on your numbers. I have trust and faith that you guys will be as efficient and as monetarily sound in what you do. And again, I don't need to spend another hour asking about the nuances of how you can or your job. So thank you for what you do. I just want to clear up in case there was any misunderstanding. When I said earlier that there was a plastic bag ban, it was myself and Ms. Wash who voted for an amendment to ban plastic bags bags on that particular bill. We then voted for bill because the amendment didn't pass. That is true, but I would appreciate you telling the full story. That you supported the bill as back on it, maybe there's need for a rediscussion of plastic bag, bags, paper bag, bands, all sorts of stuff. Are we doing? That's the beautiful thing about going into the future and having empirical data in which to rely on. But to sit here today and rewrite history, I don't think we should do that. No, we are going to return to asking our administrator about her budget. Miss Rick, be here up next. So this kind of goes back to the use of fund balance. I mean, if you go through the budget book, you see that we are relying pretty heavily on fund balance this year. And so my question is really, and just for anybody who isn't Brooker Holly, that is concerning because we are using one-time dollars to cover reoccurring expenses. We're not using reoccurring dollars to cover reoccurring expenses. And it does give me a lot of consternation. I feel supportive but nauseous at the amendment for the school system for the policy reserve. If it's a good year, then we'll be okay, maybe. But maybe not, because we're using a lot of fun balance on reoccurring expenses. So are there efforts, are there going to be efforts throughout the year to figure out how we're going to be changing our expenses so that we're not relying on these one-time use of funds? You can yes and it if you'd like. Yes, there certainly are. I mean, I think when we reference some of these things on here on our list of savings, some of these will provide ongoing savings. For instance, the vehicle utilization. So we're going through the process of a vehicle utilization and looking at everything so that we have those ongoing savings that we'll be able to look at in future years, as well as we're looking at all of our funds to see where we could find additional savings and what we could do. I'm glad to hear that because I mean, it's also at the same time that we're finishing our class and comp study, which just as a reminder to the public has not been done since 1992. So if you want a point of reference, I was in second grade. Yeah, right. I heard a G's. That's how long ago that was. So we are really out of alignment and we're going to be coming into alignment and that's going to have an increased cost at the same time that we are not getting increased to be a current dollars. So it really is all coming to a head. So my hope and please is that you do continue to work on these cost saving measures throughout the year, but that we also work with our unions. I mean, what can we do if we don't have increasing dollars to provide for appropriate, you know, market-based salaries, what are we doing to meet our employees where they are and things like 40 work weeks. I mean we there will have to be some sort of change that occurs so that way we can continue to retain and recruit employees to do some of the mandated work by the state, mandated work by the federal government, mandated work by the council. But, you know, I just, I really see a storm brewing ahead. And I'm just very concerned when I look in both at the use of fund balance, the use of the policy reserve. I mean, we are, I feel like David over here, but you know, it is really concerning when you look out. Absolutely. It absolutely is concerning and we went through multiple, multiple things in order to come up with these cost savings in order to try to make sure that we submitted a balanced budget and that we are looking at everything effectively. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Ashman. So there were some open inquiries as of May 6th. We have an open inquiry from the Administration to confirm if any positions will be frozen in FY 2026. This is in the office of public information. Provide the plan timeline for filling two vacancies and how many months of funding is budgeted for each vacancy. And what makes up salary other expense of $77,500. And we've provided that response, but there are no positions that are gonna be abolished or frozen in PIO. The two vacancies were fully funded. The, I think for both positions and offer has been made, I'm not sure if it's been accepted, but. That's accurate. And yes, it has. They have accepted. They have accepted. And we did provide not just for County admin, but for the entire county, a list of old vacancies. How long they've been vacant, the hiring status, what stage of the process those positions are. So that information is also provided. Okay. Thank you. So how do you did it say how long that vacant those vacancies were there in? Yes, you see it in the end where there are vacancies for a while. And then before we get to the end of the fiscal year Those vacancies get filled vacancies or a moving target Okay, it depends when you pull the data. They can be significant changes those two positions in PIL actually Have been vacant for a very short time if I remember but that information is in the worksheet of vacancies that we provided. Okay. They were vacant for less than four months, both of them. Okay. Go ahead. Employee benefits. So, we've burned down almost 6 million of fund balance. Looks like our estimate in cost increase this year, fiscal 25 is 7.5%, but we're projecting an 11% increase for fiscal year 26, which I go ahead. So I don't have all the data in front of me, but for the entire fund, when you're doing a budget to budget comparison, it's less than a 2% increase. I think if you're looking in the budget document, the 25 numbers are estimates, not the appropriation. So maybe referencing that. Yeah, I think compared to the budget, it's actually a very relatively moderate gross on that 5% or something, but on the computer estimate is a higher number. But that also fact in some new strategies or mandates there that's implemented at the beginning of this calendar that impact post 25 and 26. And we have a chart director here that's really to Medicare advantage changes there as well as the more you have to benefit for a part time and contingents on that, all those also add to the cost increase above the normal trend. So what does- As well as the increase in dental. Okay, so are you saying that the estimate for fiscal 25 is the cost actually going to to go up. So the budget number looks like a smaller jump. I mean, and instead, actually, I'm going to take the question away. If I look at actual 24 to budget 26, it's a 19% increase. So whether or not this year where we're going to come out, I mean, I can't imagine it's just a 2% increase for next fiscal year, as far as our costs. Yes, so the 2% again was budget to budget, but as Holly mentioned, there were several certain costs that we had to incur the related to Medicare and for a tour HR director to detail that, but also some benefit enhancements that were provided that led to an increase in our actual claims expenses. I mean, I don't want to totally revisit the, I mean, I don't want to pay more for my the insurance. Nobody does. But that at least was seemed like a compromise strategy. And now we're not going to do that anymore. We're sitting on 20% increases over two years, could be 10% this year. And we've burned down 6 million of fund balance. And just like we were talking about the Plastic Bag Fund, like this is the last year we can do that. Like we're out of fund balance at the end of fiscal 26. So then what? What do we do? It's the same thing we do every year. We can continue to monitor our expenses. See if we can have any savings without impacting our services, we look at the cost we charge departments to pay for these benefits for their employees and it would be most likely increasing what they pay to contribute to this fund. Once the last time we sort of, I don't think we bid but reproposed, we bid, revisited the plan, the costs, the provider, the carrier. Last year. I don't know, that's awesome. I was hoping you were going to say like four years ago. So we're looking at exhausting the fund balance in the budget book, but now I'm taking away I think 2.6 million in revenue right because that's that that was going to be the savings for the one one million so it's only one million in this book it was 6.6 for the fine here okay so we probably go negative but not catastrophic I mean I do think I to the extent anybody's watching or paying attention, I mean, something has to give. We weren't just being mean, changing that allocation. If we like this health insurance and we want this coverage, this is how much it's going to cost and this is not sustainable here So I don't know I don't know if it's the plan or the contribution or what it is, but this is Kind of scary look at so But thanks for trying it Thanks On that same topic, the write-up we got this morning says that the estimated budget for last year showed that we were going to have a deficit already in this balance of 4 million and now it's showing a surplus of at least the 350. So, does that, what, how does that happen? I'll start and others can time me. There's two part. One is that if the questions about the fund balance drop, then part of that is what a lot of is what we just discussed that because we're facing a very difficult year, try to cope with all those competing needs. So even it's not sustainable, we end up made a decision like try to use some of the fund balance to mitigate a cost increase on chargebacks. And as a result, this fund balance drop from historical level in this fund and other funds and hopefully in the future will gradually restore or like build some fund balance when financial situation gets a little better. But computer lashes projection is that at that point, we were experiencing one year ago, we were experiencing some spike on the benefit costs on that. So 25 budget was originally viewed upon that, then actual estimated, current year experience is better. That's actually why the overall fund balance is a little better than what we originally thought about that, but still represent the trend of going down because of the decision we hard decision had to make. Okay, so there was about a $4.5 million swing between fiscal year 25 and fiscal 26 estimates. Okay. I mean, health claims can be very volatile. And, you know, we budget looking at the long-term trend, so we don't budget for anomalies. So even though the long-term trend may be consistent with an individual year, so you can have swings, you can have expenses go up significantly or the opposite. And luckily this year was thus far, are having a good experience with claims. Okay, and you're 11 months in. Yes. Okay. All right, thanks. Dr. Jones? Nothing further from me. Thank you. Ms. Ruby. I just wanted to touch on Workforce Valment and we owe a grant. This could be our last round, just to see. Yeah. Before we depart. Because just looking at some of your grant funds, it looks like every single one is decreasing both from WIOA down to Blueprint and summer youth connections. And I'm not sure where that one comes from, but the others are obviously federal and state. So can you touch on that and sort of what you're doing to prepare and manage? Come on, everyone, and thank you. That's pretty consistent for us. Like we routinely see a decline year over year in our federal allocations. It's just that in the past, we've had like, either funding like ARPA funds that we were able to use to supplement and kind of make us whole but right now we're out of ARPA funding so that's why in this current budget I'm sorry in this upcoming budget we are asking for accounting support to make sure that we are able to retain all of our staff. And the $127,000 decrease from the blueprint grant from the state. Is that, can you just talk to how that came to be from the General Assembly? There's been a lot of background work on that. That's been a really hot topic, you know, with the General Assembly. assembly and it's a formula allocation and we have to our allocation on the split between us in the school system and we have a MOU where we kind of align what that split is going to be. I mean, I wasn't planning on going there, but I'm glad you brought it up because that does seem like an area of duplication where you know, this school system could rely on the funds that are going to the county. because that does seem like an area of duplication where you know the school system could rely on the funds that are going to the county and then utilize those career positions for other in school support. Why agree? Okay well that's good to know that I am not out on a limb there. Thank you. You're here. Miss Yam. Not out on a limb there. Thank you Miss you Um, I wanted to ask about See Office of Human Rights, there's an increase of $272,000 in personnel costs and I wanted to understand that better. So we have a new effort position. I believe it's funded for nine months, included in the proposed budget. So that is probably the contributor of that, along with, you know, call us step increases, things of that nature. That's for a deputy administrator in the office of human rights inequity. Is that a new position, a deputy administrator in the office of? Yes, ma'am. Human rights. OK. And how much is that funded at? It is. Oh, sorry. I'm sorry. 121,000, but with benefits, it's probably like 200 and some change. So that's where that's coming in. But I think we did nine months, so nine months would be 155 in the 26 budget. And the rest of the personnel costs are step increases. And then I had one more question. Actually it was about the 29K rental cost for workforce development. Do you know where that's coming from? Yes. Yes. I'm sorry. We're currently in a state building and that is our share of rental costs. We have a resource sharing agreement and for it's renewed every two years. We were able for the past two years to provide in-kind services. We are due to renegotiate our resource sharing agreement. And should we have to pay that as what the amount is? So we want to plan for it because in June, we have to renegotiate. So there might actually be a savings of 29. That's a possibility? That's a possibility, but it's included in the budget, just in case. OK, you go for it. Okay, I hope you're successful. And there was one last question actually going back to Patexant Woods. 9820 Patexant Woods, is that the new building that we're buying? 9755. Correct, 9755 is a new building. 9820 is currently where DCRS is. Okay. And we own that building. No, we do not own that building. We do not own that building. So that's another least going back to this list. Howard building. We own. Reckham Parks. We do or don't own. We don't do. Okay, are there any other lessies in that building? No. Ascend one we own but we have two other major lessies that HCPSS and the Health Department. Riverwood building do we own that? We don't. Okay, and are there other lesses in that building? Are we, do we list, lease the entire building? We, we lease the entire building. Okay, gateway building. I know we own that, but there are also lesses incubators that are in that building, who I would want to be able to be heated in air conditioned if they don't want to leave the building. Lignin and Carol, we own Patuxent Woods, we don't own 98, 20, don't own. And the Ellicott City Historic Courthouse, we the attempt, the construction workers, they can't work there for 60 days out of the year. No, this was accounting for when the courthouse comes online. Okay. Just a couple random things. I picked on employee benefits, but right next to it in the budget book is risk management. And it looks like we're doing a crazy good job there managing expenses. So there's something. But, you know, we've kind of danced around it a little bit and maybe we focused a little bit away from it because we've been talking about federal grants more. But Stephanie really just five minutes ago touched on something and it's a reality of where we are is despite all of our pounding during budgets the last few years of don't go hiring people with ARPA money don't go starting new programs with COVID money that money is going to go away we did it our partner your CSPs everybody did it that is gone, and we don't have the capacity to supplant all that money with tax revenue. Even if things go well. And I just think that there's some reality checks people are going to need to go through this year and understand that all that all that temporary money is it's not sustainable county government's not going to be able to support all of that and it's you guys are doing the best you can I know but you know you can't just print money so thanks for being here thank you All right, we're going to wrap. Dr. Jones, do you have any last questions for Office of the Administrator? Sorry. Is that even your title? Administration. I'll take that as a no. Thank you, Miss Kans. Thank you. All right. registration. I'll take that as a no. Thank you Miss Gans. Thank you, Ms. Kans. Thank you. Are you leaving? No, no, no. Are you doing Inspector General Brandy? Is this anyone? Yeah, we have Inspector General next. Yeah, are you know who was talking to us. I will stay up here for Inspector General. Okay. Okay. All right, then, Ms. Herrie and Ms. The layer me. All right, so we have Inspector General and't have remarks for Inspector General? Do you have any questions for Inspector General? I mean you're funding it. They have office. That was my read as well. Yes, that is accurate. Well, sorry, because I didn't say anything about it. I'll also read it. But just to confirm, you're funding the office of the Inspector General to get it going, so we can begin hiring, and they will have office space in the new County-owned office building. Yes, ma'am. Great. That's all my questions for Inspector General. Thank you. I am a little concerned because I think in order to start an Inspector General Office in the most efficient and best way possible, you need an investigator. And I see that there's a senior administrative analyst, but that does not say investigator to me and for the amount of money that is established for this individual. It doesn't look like that's enough money to pay for an investigator. Yeah, I can speak to that council member. So that is an investigator position. What you see in the budget, I think reflects, a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. Yeah, I think we could, think we could certainly have those discussions about whether there's opportunities for that. I think what we proposed was 12 months of funding for the inspector general position, nine months for the deputy IG, and then six months for the investigator, thinking that there's going to be some time needed for the inspector general to go through the hiring process. Under normal circumstances, I would totally agree with you, Mr. Fishing, but these are not normal circumstances because 17 IGs were fired from the federal government. And I imagine that a number of their staff were also fired too. So we are not looking at normal times. We are looking at a lot of people who probably have an amazing amount of background and ability in this particular area, which is odd that we would be looking at that during the time that we are setting up this office. And I would be shocked if we don't get many resumes that will very easily fit the descriptions of these individuals that we won't be hiring, but that our IG board will be hiring the IG, and then the IG will be hiring. I think probably that person's biggest issue is going to be able to set up in a building that's actually air conditioned or heated for any period of time to interview all the people. So I do want us to keep that in mind. I don't think it's going to be hard to find super qualified people. Yeah. I completely agree with you, especially with what we're seeing at the federal level. I think the other thought process we had was really wanting to ensure that the Inspector General, whoever that person is, has the most autonomy possible when setting up that office. And so we kind of put forward a budget proposal to fund positions with when we think the timing on those positions and hiring will likely take place. But we did want to ensure that the inspector general was the person that, you know, just had that flexibility. And really our hope is that, you know, this budget is, you know, the only budget that we're putting forward where we don't have an inspector general. And in future years, it'll be the IG that is, you know, identifying the staffing needs for that office and making those decisions. True, but I know it's a little odd because I don't think we have a position description or even a name in all of our employee descriptions called investigator except for in the police department. I don't know if there's any place else. Is there any place else? I was just going to say state attorney. Yes, state attorney. Okay. And we do have investigators in OHRE, but they may not be called that in terms of the classification. Okay, so that's what we're looking at in terms of setting that salary. Do you know that those? I believe we looked at comparable investigator positions across the county to determine that salary amount. We can get back to you on that. All right, thank you. I mean, the fact is if for whatever reason, we do stand up in the Office of Inspector General and do end up hiring a deputy and associated staff, sooner than you've budgeted for the process would be, we would go to you and say the opportunity to hire these people has accelerated and we'd like to add to the funding available. Yes, that's correct. Okay. It's okay. Dr. Jones? I have nothing for me. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Office of the Inspector General. Short and sweet. Thank you. And this gets. Thanks for staying put. Now we have Office of Finance. Department of Finance. What can I find it? It's Department of Finance, right? Director Ijili. I'm not going to ask you to ask me to ask you to ask me to ask me to ask you to ask me to ask me to ask you to ask me to ask me to ask you to ask me to ask me to ask you to ask me to ask me to ask you to ask me to ask me to ask you to ask me to ask me to ask you to ask me to ask me to ask you to ask me to ask me to ask you to ask me to If you have opening remarks we'd love to hear them otherwise we'll get into questioning. Yes I do. Good morning, Councillor Chair, Vice Chair Jones and Council Members. I'm Rafu Healey, Director of Finance, and I'm joined this morning by my deputies, our very own 18, I'm surprised to my left, and I'm more to my right. Our FY26 operating budget remains unchanged from last year. However, I would like to highlight some accomplishments from this current year. We successfully implemented a new tool called Norge for Buddha Watan Siwa and tax accounts. This platform allows residents to sign up for notification from our department and view their bills directly. We also launched our BondLink website, which enhances transparency around data issuance and providing investors with access to key budget information and of coming bond sales opportunities. This summer we are launching, and I think this addresses some of the stuff we've been getting about the energy savings. This summer we are launching the ability to accept credit card payments in person. Currently credit cards payments can only be made online. So we are trying to make sure that we have good options. This option, we improve convenience and accessibility to our residents. And also, we are equally reviewing opportunities to see if we can get with the 21st century, which is what most governments are doing. They have a kiosk that people can actually come in and make payments to a kiosk without people present and the assets cash, credit cards, checks and all forms of payments. So we are equally looking at that. We are reviewing two companies who we think will be best suited for the county and working with our DTCS to make sure that it's well-verted. So a key focus of our budget is staffing, specifically the number of vacant positions we have. But I'm very happy that none of our positions is frozen. However, we have, I think the information you have in front of you, you have about seven vacant positions. So I'll start by saying that of those seven, three of them have a field. One started on Monday, May 5th. Second one is starting on Monday, May 19th, next week Monday. And then the third is starting on Monday, June 2. The remaining four positions currently are being recruited and the jobs are deposited and some of them interviews are underway. Of the four positions, one supports the upper funds and is fully funded by the upper funds. Not the general funds, so this position is vital to maintaining compliance, as we're talking about, with the grants requirement and ensuring timely reporting. Without it, other staff who already managed over 300 grants will have to, or we face to increase workload, leading to delays in reconciliation, reports and of course audit. So another position is charged to the pension master trust and is essential for the trust operations. Leaving this role on field would delay the preparation of financial statements, audit completion and again this will have the obinus savings to the general fund as well. The third position is the Bureau Chief of Taxes and Specialty Services. Of course, that's the one we hear most of from our constituents. So this oversees our property tax billing and customer service. This rule is essential, is essentially important as we work to improve our communication with our residents. And therefore, now supported by our new two Norge, not feeling this position with significantly strain our team, particularly in terms of handling the high volume of customer calls. The fourth position is within our payroll and Disposmeter Bureau, critical for ensuring accurate and timely payroll, and of course vendor payments. This rule becomes even more important as we work to upgrade our timekeeping system, which is ongoing. The leading feeling disposition would affect both operations and staff workload during this critical upgrade. And lastly, we are equally developing a strategic plan for our department. This job is being conducted internally because we want to make sure it's holistic, that all our entire staff participate. But the progress has been delayed due to other pressing priorities, as we've mentioned. Customer call are working through our tax system, which is hanging by a thread. Or 40 lieu have not been able to find a suitable vendor. So we are working with this current vendor to see how they can assist in improving. As you know, property taxes are a major revenue. So that's why we said we need to focus on that and make sure that we are moving forward. We're handling it. We have to make sure that we focus our entire team on working on that just to keep us going. Thank you for the opportunity to share my open remarks and I'm available for questions. Thank you, Director Healy. Just one clarifying to start. The system that you mentioned is hanging by a thread. Is that the munist system? Yes. Okay. I mean, that's good in bad news, but I'm glad you're proactively working to reinforce it. This is much more of a broad question. I mean, I think when you have a lot to manage in finance, especially now, when things are much more fluid, less predictable. I mean, when I am trying to understand budgetary risk at the county, you know, there's the three main areas I think of are, you know, optimistic projections, which I think it's good because most people would not describe Dr. Sun as an optimist. I think I would go for realist. I'm my go for pessimist. So I feel that we have more that we're strong in that area. The others are unexpected or unanticipated expenditures in which we have a lot of risk. You know, we were just talking about the potential of head start not being funded. And then the other pieces, the dependence that we have on state or federal funding, like our workforce development grants and those types of things. I feel like you guys do a lot of work when it comes to managing our financial elements to maximize the dollars, but I know that that's even harder when it comes to an uncertain economic environment. So with that context, can you talk a bit about what you're doing to position your department to really maximize the resources that we have when we're looking at sort of, I forgot what it's called, but we did it like two years ago with our bonds. And it was like what you do when you are... Are we funding? Yes, thank you. Yes. Well thank you. I would say thank you for the brilliant kind words. I think the issue of the where we work starts from, first of all, the support from the administration and to having the fantastic team. I would say about 32 of them. And the price is, I won't get out for a while. I mean, what's it did do help me a lot. And the prize is she's on the board of the very much here for you with me. I'm the incoming president of the association, which focused on government accounting and financing. She's equally on the debt service committee for the main GFO, which happens to be on the executive board as well. So, and the price is the CPFO, and she is on the council for the advisory council for GFOA, for CPFO management and how to improve it. And so, having these two folks, of course, we have a lot of people who have CPAs and CPA efforts, but having the two of them equally be out there, Lenny was going on. As you know, I do for his, is our foremost ex-parting government accounting and they produce all the best practices and all. And so having them participate in all of these really does help move all of us forward. And so when it comes to the work we do, we know ours is governed by rules. We have gasp and this year we are implementing two gasp for announcements. But we do ahead of time because gasp gives us almost a time frame of when the gas would be effective. And so we know at least two, three years. So we have a plan of what we're going to do. And so that has been the two now before the year ends, where we've worked out a plan. We've talked to the auditors, independent auditors, of what are the changes we mean for us, making sure that they review those plans of what we are changing, because if they come in and say we've implemented it wrong, then everything changes. We go back to square one, so we try to walk with them throughout the year, just to make sure that when they come for the audit, there are no issues. So that takes a whole, it takes a team, and we have a very dedicated team who enjoy what they do, what they do and happy to be here walking effectively just to make sure that they take us forward. When you talk about the initiatives or requirements that GASB is that are coming into effect this year, are they on the same level of impact as the sort of lease recognition and accounting for leaseciabilities or are they a bit lesser than that? Well they are the most. Oh great. Okay. Because everything we do in accounting, government or accounting is governed by gas people announcements. Yeah. There have been number one. So when the council approves the budget, for example, we have to make sure that all of them are in compliance with those accounting rules. Basically, the general accounting principle. So all of that is what we follow. So that produces kind of the guidance of how we should produce the act front, you see, and of course the single audit. I set off processes that we follow. Of course the awards come from the middle awards come from GFOA who has the review process for the excellent financial reporting. And I think I've mentioned it before we are triple crown, which means we get the award for the aqua, the award for the budget, this process and once it's approved, that will be fired by budget office, and we get that award and we could get the third one, which is the popular and financial report. So Gaspi governs what we do. So if you, when we talk, the first thing that you hear me, he always says that we follow the accounting rules. And that's really what we do. So once we take this appropriation, one of the budget is approved. Now we follow all those accounting rules in making sure that they're all the expenditures and everything is done properly. Thank you. Yeah. Miss Young. Oh, see. And now your mic's pretty simple. I said good afternoon and now the room is freezing! Okay. Okay. Here we go. Thank you for all that you do. Appreciate it. And I know that you all work hard. We see a lot of satisfied customers, but everyone's normal. We hear from one who isn't quite as satisfied. And I did want to, there was something that came up a couple weeks ago with a constituent who was not happy that she couldn't pay her bill, except by credit card, although she can pay by check. But she, more and more people are getting fearful, paying by check, because we get so many notifications now are here about so many people getting their checks stolen out of the mail. So she was, she didn't like the fact that she would, if she used her credit card, she would be charged for a credit card fee and she didn't want to pay by check because she was fearful that her check was going to get stolen out of the mail. So and then she said what should I do but she didn't want to come in in person. So I'm like are there any other I see you looking to the heavens because we couldn't think of anything else. Oh, we had one idea and I thought, okay, it's far-fetched. All right? Venmo or something like that that is an automatic bank payment that we wouldn't have to charge a fee too because we wouldn't be charged that fee. But then somebody said, well, then, well, then, then I said, but I've never seen a fee charged to my Venmo. So I'm confused if you could help me. Sure. Well, currently we do have ACHJB from people's account, which is something that you can do at your own bank. You can do it at your own bank. From your own bank. from your back. And. from people's account. So you can do a direct deposit from your bank. From your own bank. From your own bank. And how, when you get on to your website, you can find that easily. Yes, you can find all the way the payment methods that you can use. So a lot of people use that. They go to their bank and then make a payment. If that's how I pay my tax bill. You do it from our bank directly. So there's no fee. So you don't have to pay the credit card fee. You're smart about that. OK. All right. And then secondly, as for very more and other methods of payment, we are currently going through an RFP for banking services and all associated financial services. And one of the key points that we are making sure that is available to all our constituents and all our taxpayers and customers' businesses is these other modes of payment. Oh, that would be great. Oh, that would be great. Zell and all of these. Oh, beautiful. So we are looking at it. So we are hoping that any bank we select should have this. That's one of the criteria as we are looking into. Oh, that's great. That's really good news. I mean, I was saying it kind of kiddingly, but I mean, that is how a lot of people pay for things nowadays. So to be in the 21st century, I think that was you who said it earlier today, that's good. Thank you. You're welcome. I questions Thank you, but thank you Me neither Do you have anymore? I'm just I'm really looking forward to next year with the Munis replacement But then also to see what happens with the rental meter building because it sounds like that's gonna create a lot of effic efficiencies. Yes, I think we implement that now. And so that should be next year you see it's going to be smooth. As for the tax system, that implementation period takes a little while. And so we are looking at all the options because we want to make sure we get the best for the county. And to make sure that it's easier that the interface between our customers and us is seamless. We're equally looking at other stuff, apart from that, is in terms of our vendor payments. We want to make sure that we find a way to centralize invoice acceptance from our vendors so we can actually know what is a do because that will help in our investments because our goal is that if we know what we're paying out, it morts ahead of time, that helps us with our investment strategies and how we plan and when cash should be coming into the county. Because once you invest, you can't just, we've never broken our investment before. So we want to make sure that we keep that. But that will help. We're doing a fantastic job now. But having those processes in place helps enhance our productivity and efficiency as well. Thank you. I just have two quick questions. You mentioned one of the vacancies was for an ARPA funds manager? No supports ARPA funds. Supports ARPA funds right and then does that position go away when we've at the end of 2026 when we've finished spending our ARPA funds? We are hoping it doesn't. Okay. Because the reason is that we do a lot of review with all our other counties and we have a approximately 340 grants managed by three people and they do the accounting and the compliance now. So you could tell, having over 100 grants have been managed by one person, something is gonna fall off. And the single audit is not, is not merciful at all. Because if there is one error, they put you at the high risk. So we do need to find a way to reduce the workload on our team, but we have, we see more than a year before we make that call. So we're trying to find ways and looking for systems that will assist in reducing that workload and hopefully that will be done before the next cycle. OK. And my last question is on the TIFF District Fund, downtown Columbia, you assist with that, don't you? Mr. Healy, that's what I thought. OK. So I'm looking at the property tax from the revenues had us actually 2025 estimated was 4,795, which was actually less than in 2024. And then 2026, it goes back up again to what the 2024 numbers were. So I was curious about that. Then I'm curious about the fact that the expenses, the contractual services went from 2024-50,000, 2025 100, 2026, 120, dead service went from 2024 2.5 million, 2025 2.5 million, 2026 2.9 million, and then also in 2026 there's an expense other of 2 million 32. So the in 2026 the expenses look as if they're doubled from 2.6 million this year to 5 million in 2026. So I'm just, those are like a lot of different numbers than I'm trying to understand why this is going on. I will try to walk you through. Thank you. First of all, the revenues, of course, our projections and the reason is that we try to make sure that we review what is that sending us and one of the things that we look into is that when we know there are pills we make sure we take that as so the revenue is that. Right I know that we're really on top of that so I appreciate that Mr. Healey. And contracture services of course cost of living has gone off for everybody so that's why I call that. That's a lot though, in two years to go from 50 to 120. Okay, I'm just saying. I think it's you all the information, neither but did do provide reports because since we issued that, we are required by MSRB to provide annual reports that has to be submitted because now investors are looking at the issued bonds. So they want to see that somebody is reviewing it, making sure that the TIF is to producing what is should. So the debt service is 2.9. That is the way we projected because of when the projects are we are completed. So that comes online. However, this expense order. What is that? Please tell me. That is a plug. The reason we call it the plug is, the revenue is $5 million. And we have to have a balanced project. We can come to you and say, revenue is $5 million and expenses is $2 million. So we have to make sure that there's a plug. If you look down below, you say, a preparation for fund balance, you see we added that back in there. That $2 million is back in there, because we know we are not spending it. It's going to go straight to the fund balance. So that's what that is. Thank you. It's an accounting thing. Yes. I understand. I appreciate it. But still too much on contractual services. That's my own opinion. Is your time in? Just killing no questions for finance. OK. Thank you. OK. Then thank you, Department of Finance. We will move on to the law. Thank you. OK. Then thank you, Department of Finance. We will move on to our floor. I had my nose to say good morning too but that time has come and gone. Good afternoon, Chair Walls, Vice Chair Jones and Council members. I'm Gary Cook. I'm the county solicitor for Howard County and I oversee the Office of Law for the County. I want to thank the executive and the council for its support of the office over the years and for what I hope will be your continued support for FY26. I also want to especially thank my team. We have a great team of attorneys and paralegals in the office and it's through their dedication and their skills that we're able to deliver the service that we do. The attorneys on average have about 25 years of practice experience and the paralegals actually outpace us having about 27 years of paralegal experience. This year coming up the request is basically a flat budget. The increases are related to any colas that the council may approve plus steps that are baked in by budget And then some contractual arrangements that we have for like municode that have Year over a year Increases built into the agreements We have one vacancy which I expect to fill at the beginning of this coming fiscal year. I've got two retirements, this calendar year is the expectation. I don't expect any in calendar 26 and probably will have a couple in calendar 27. But those are people's personal lives so that's just kind of a placeholder. I just wanted to highlight a couple things. In FY24, the office recovered 4 million and changed on behalf of the county that was owed to the county that hadn't been paid. In the opioid litigation, and we can talk about that further if you want. But so far the settlements to date have produced five and a half million bucks for the county. And then the e-cigarette litigation has generated 1.4 million. So far this fiscal year we've recovered a million and a half dollars that was owed to the county that hadn't been paid. The other points I'd like to make is to just sort of reiterate a theme that's been throughout the work sessions thus far and that is the status of things at the federal level. As I'm sure you know there's lots of litigation pending and lots of different states. Litigation will be a very inefficient mechanism for resolving the issues that have been created at the federal level. You know, district courts make decisions. The current powers that be in Washington have shown a tendency to not necessarily follow those orders or to implement them in a way that effectively they're not being implemented. There'll be appeals. All of this is to say that the court process is not going to resolve anything anytime soon. So I think it's wise that you all are thinking about what resources you do have from the feds and what's important and how you'll backfill if you know the need should arise as time goes on. Two other things about the office. One is I know it's been talked a lot about the ASAP company, the monitoring, right? Ms. Young, you've asked about that a few times. Just to clarify, because I think there's been some misinformation discussed publicly that I just want to kind of clear the air about. So that company has a contract with the state. I believe it's with, I forget which state department it is. And the judges who sit over, you know, pretrial detention hearings and what have you, make the decision whether they want to release a person prior to trial and then have them being monitored by this company. I believe there's only one company in the state that has the contract. I can tell you that the county did not get notice of what it should have been notified until after the event. And then the last thing that I wanted to bring to your attention, there's a new program at the state level called the outpatient treatment program. It basically creates a private right for someone to have another person evaluated for their mental health status to see whether they should get care for their condition. state state law, I think, is going to be implemented at the state level, and it's not really clear how the program is going to be implemented by the Department of Health. I only raise it because if there is a proceeding in circuit court, Judge Porter has told me many times that she plans on calling our office to be present because in a case, really regardless of who files the case, could be a family member, could be the State Department of Health. For some reason, the Office of Law will get notice. And Judge Porter has said she expects somebody from our office to appear. So I don't know what it's going to look like, but I just wanted to let you know that. That'll be potentially another litigation matter that the office will be getting involved. And I don't know in what form or how. But the program is effective July 1 of this year. And if you really want to dig into the weeds on it's a 2024 Maryland laws it's chapter 703. Is the chapter law that established this? So with that I would just please ask that you fund our budget so that we can continue to do what we enjoy doing and are good at doing and I thank you for your consideration. Thank you, Solister Cook. Mr. Ruby, do you have any questions for office of law? I mean, I think my biggest question is how well positioned are we? Should we face legal action from the federal government? We are preparing for that. And if the council would like to have a close session at some point to discuss legal strategy, we can certainly do that. Oh, my questions. Now I lost them. ASAP. Can we go back to ASAP for a minute to the contract for the monitoring. You mentioned that you thought people had misinformation. The Baltimore Sun article indicated that there was more than one monitoring agency. And this one in particular had multiple irregularities in their paperwork that indicated that they had just wrote down the same time every day for check-ins, etc., etc., that were clearly not accurate or true. So why would our court system, and this isn't really on you because you're in the civil world, so I don't want anybody to think that you're not in the criminal world, and well, I don't mean that you only practice civil law. You're not practicing criminal law, so I know that, but I'm curious since you brought it up. No, I was scary in the criminal world. No, you're not. No, you're not a criminal. In any way, but so I don't know. OK, but if you had more insight into this, because I'm kicking myself for not asking Judge Tucker about it, I mean, that's really, it seems like he would have been the person that I should have asked to say, are you still using this system knowing what you now know about what they've been doing and how negligent they've been. So, I don't have a lot more. There may be another company. I'm not aware of that. I'm just aware of this one particular company. These hearings are typically held in the district court, not in the circuit court, right? What I do know is that the state statute provides that you know and whenever circumstances are provided for the judge may release somebody on on home private detention monitoring And is also supposed indicate, well, when notice is required by law under the statute by the company about a violation of the terms and conditions of the release, they're supposed to notify that the judge who ordered the person released with the monitoring and they're also supposed to notify the law enforcement agency that the court designates to get such notice. And I'm there's been back and forth in emails but the Howard County Police Department is the one that's supposed to get the notice not the sheriff's office. But as I said before that notice didn't come timely. It certainly did not. So there was really nothing to react to because it was already, the incident had already occurred. So you're understanding this is only one agency. So the judges, if they're using pretrial detention, they wouldn't have any choice, but to use this particular agency. And I, and it's my understanding, and I'll try and track this down. The contract for this company is not between the, between the, is it between the court? It might be between the court system and DCJS, Department of Correctional, see, that's not the courts. That's, that's, that's an executive branch department. That's right. That's not the courts. I remember seeing that it was DCJS, Department of Corrections, yeah. My guess is that the contract is between a state department and this company through a procurement process. And then that agency is what the courts are supposed to you know deal with when they order someone released on monitoring. And then you brought up another thing that I just wanted to follow you you mentioned that that Judge Porter said you better be there for every one of these outpatient treatment cases. Who are you being there for? Okay. Are you there on behalf of the Health Department, which is a state agency which we pay for? I will remind everyone. Or are you there on behalf of the county? Who are you there on behalf of? I always do what a judge tells me to do. Well, I agree. That's a good idea. But who are you representing when you show up? I think that the system was enacted with the idea in mind that local health departments would be the petitioner in a large number of cases. But that is not gonna be the case in Howard County. I don't think a single county has elected to take on this program itself. So if a local health department doesn't take it on themselves under the statute of defaults to the state health department, and so it's up to them. So my assumption would be is that if the State Health Department is going to be a petitioner in a case at the AG's office, it's going to represent the petitioner, we'll get notice, we'll probably have to go and we'll try and get out, but if we get noticed to attend, we're gonna have to attend. But no, there's no interest that we represent that has a stake in the matter, unless some judge tells us that their read of the statute as the county has an interest in the matter, in which case, I don't know what it would be different from the state. I have one more question. Okay. Our new initiative that is now in the county council, that is creating this position for an attorney that was in your office. The Barry Sanders, Slash, Looker Board, Slash Planning Board, attorney. Are you familiar with this? Yes, yes. Oh, OK. I'm looking at it. I'm like, do you know about that, don't you?. Well, I wanted to know about your involvement in that and why you just aren't going to keep that attorney in your own office. Why? We are keeping, we're not losing an attorney. Okay. So what is, I thought it was a new initiative and we were getting part of that or the whole attorney get the whole body in our office because we did have this discussion a few days ago about where would we even put that attorney because we don't have any offices. Right. I mean, we're not losing the position that position will be most likely a litigator. And we can certainly talk about how the two can work together. But. How the two of what? Well, whatever. Being a litigator in representative reports. Whichever attorney it is that ends up in this spot that is created. Are you thinking that this new position will represent the board of appeals or will be there to provide legal advice to the board of appeals, the planning board and the liquor board? Or how my understanding of it was that it would be the board of appeals and the zoning board historically that was how it was done a very very long time ago you have noticed that we've had no zoning board cases since we changed sure yeah understood yeah's understandable. But the other boards that you mentioned, like the, this, I call it the baby liquor board, the alcoholic barricuring board and the, and the planning board, I hadn't, that hadn't been raised. I had was not aware of that. So this person will remain physically in your office because you mentioned that that person would also be a litigator. So my understanding is it's an entirely new position that's with the council. Okay. So we can maybe we can talk about it. You know, I'm not. The scans, did you want to add something to this because I am actually having a hard time understanding what this position is going to do? Yes, thank you. So it's two separate positions. So council is getting a new position that would be responsible for the things that you talked about earlier. And Gary is keeping the position in his office as well. So there are two separate pieces. So when Gary was referencing a litigator, he's talking about things that are happening in his office and that person will assume other work and the position that you refer to that was previously Barry Sanders, that will be within counsel and will work on the pieces that you just discussed. Okay. Okay. Not planning board. Not planning board. I... pieces that you just discussed. Okay. Not planning board. Not planning board. I do have some other questions, but I'm going to take them off. We probably, after we had the one meeting about it, I started rethinking, like, should some of the works for the county council even be advising those boards like we should probably just have like another meeting about it. I think we did have a whole meeting about this these positions and the approach and the reason why and everything. Yeah, but it yeah, it was not that clear. Be happy to. Yeah, yeah. I just had something little just to make sure I didn't hear it wrong. So this alternative sentencing Advantage sentencing alternative company is a state vendor. They are not a county vendor correct And and that was one of the reasons normally I wouldn't be up here this long But that was one of the reasons why I wanted to I wanted to clarify because I think some Some comments might have been made at one of the public hearings It made it sort of sound like it was a county vendor and it's gonna be more careful about hiring You know, yeah, there's somebody delivered testimony and and it's not a county vendor, right? The county does not pay this vendor The vendor does not work Howard County. And so that's really the point I wanted to drive home. And that the police department, which should get noticed, did not get notice timely under the statute, wasn't until right after. OK. All right, thank you, Bob, office of law. Thank you. I don't told right after. Okay, all right. Thank you. Thank you. I don't. EDA. All right. I know James here somewhere. Next up is economic development. We have Director Jen Jones welcome. Good afternoon. If you have opening remarks we'd love to hear them. Thank you. Chair Walsh and members of the County Council, thank you for the opportunity to present our budget and to reaffirm our shared commitment to the long-term vitality of Howard County. Economic development is more than a line item. It is the engine that powers job creation, business growth, and community resilience. From revitalization projects to investing in our agricultural economy and supporting innovation at the Maryland Innovation Center. Every dollar we deploy is aimed at creating lasting value for our residents and businesses. This budget supports initiatives that focuses on retention, investment, strengthening local industries, and expanding opportunity. They are long-term investments in the health, competitiveness, and future readiness of our economy. I look forward to answering your questions and continuing our partnership to ensure how our county remains a place where families thrive and businesses grow. Thank you. Thank you. If you could just touch on, obviously, this is a time when we are residents need a lot of support. And you know we really have to start looking at what we can do locally to grow our business revenue, create jobs, and you know if we are not having the partnership of the federal government then we need to be more self--sufficient. Could you touch on some initiatives you guys have started? I've seen things related to both, I mean, everything from child care obviously already had a shortage. Only going to get worse now. And then entrepreneurial efforts and retraining efforts. Sure. So, first of all, you stated it, the childcare. We've partnered with the County Executive's Office to expand seats in the county. So we had, you know, they've allocated a million of childcare grants, and we partnered with them and we helped us first those grants. And right now, we've awarded, I think it was 27 child care providers in the county. They're focused on any kind of, like like they're doing renovation, expansion, and so we're helping them with that. And the grants ranged from, I believe, about 12,000 all the way up to 170,000. And they had to submit an application, discuss their project and the application. We reviewed it and worked with Department of Community Resources and Services to validate the application. And then right now we are in the stage where we're signing grant agreements and we'll have the money out pretty soon. So I think that's really a great, something that we need and a great initiative. And then also with the federal worker situation, we have held several events where we're helping them if they would like be entrepreneurs. So we had a business resource expo, I believe last month, and the whole expo was geared around your federal worker. How do you go from that to being an entrepreneur? You know, it's, and a lot of the federal workers, you know, they have a great skill set. They've had decades of education and exposure in the federal government, and so they actually are primed to actually start a business and be subject matter experts in something. So, we had an expo, it was sold out, we had about 200 people show up, our sessions, our workshops were packed, and we've actually had two companies, two people sign up at the Maryland Innovation Center to start a business. So we have one. She just started, and she started an AI company. She was already doing something on the side. She's taking her GovCon experience, and she just started with her, and she's great. So I'm her name is Carla, and then we have another one that just signed up. So just creating opportunity in different pathways. We're also holding coming up a series of workshops, get geared towards, hey, you know, your federal worker, you don't have a job now. You might want to be entrepreneur, but you might not have the risk tolerance to start your own business. So maybe you can own a fair franchise. So we have somebody coming in talking about franchises that are doing well, how you go about doing that, how you get, how you buy a franchise, and a lot of the the government workers, you know, just anecdotally talking to the SBN, SBDC. They've been working there for years. They have savings, they have savings, right? And so they have the capital, but they might not have the risk tolerance. So that is a great opportunity for them, so we're rolling that out. And then the Cyber Howard Accelerator, we're doing that. We just launched the cohort like last week or two weeks ago. And what we're seeing is that businesses have great products whether it's cyber or what else, whatever else. But they might not know how to navigate the system. I mean, it's just like you start a business, you have a product, you're passionate. Now where do I go? So, we are partnering with the Technology Advancement Center, which is around the corner from us. and cyber experts to make sure you have a product. Let's look at your product. Let's bring industry experts to give you feedback on your product and accelerate you through this 12 week period so that you can hone it and then hopefully commercialize it. So it helps with commercialization and business growth. And how are we, it looks like the latest budget from the federal government and dozens of SBA programs? How are we kind of positioning ourselves in spite of that? Well, so all of our funding programs are not, are either state funded or locally funded. So our VLT funds, that's from the casino revenues, and that's a great source of I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm And so it feels that gap. And then we have the lift fund, which is a micro loan fund, which is funded through the county government, which has been great. We have a pipeline. I mean, that, as soon as we started that, we immediately got a line of applications. And the thing about that is you can go out and see these businesses, right? They're there for you to see. So, you know, and I got a delights, or Candles by Candie, she had a business at Savage, she just expanded to Main Street, Ellicott City. So these are like tangible things you can see that people are taking the money, expanding it, and hiring people, workforce, right, and staying in the county. And then we had our just the new revolving loan that's funded by the county. So we don't have any SBA funded programs. I guess I just met more in the when the business owners are looking at the landscape available to them You know a significant portion of of what creates these possibilities Especially in this type of financing high interest rate environment where capital isn't available But I still think it does kind of get to the question where it's like okay Well all that been cut off, but thankfully, we have these programs that still might create opportunity. Right. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon, and it's getting later in the afternoon, as we can see. Yes. Thank you guys for your hard work and for really taking on this cyber challenge stuff. I think that that's critical. I do think that that's a direction that we should be going in our county. We have a lot of these businesses, contractors who may end up losing their jobs because of the federal government situation. And so the more we can do in that area, the better. How are we doing on our big path project? Are we making those connections yet? Has CSX finally given up the easement? Yeah, we, uh, thanks. We are, we're making progress there. I mean obviously it's a long road. I guess no pun intended but Long trail. Yes, it's the longest three miles of my life. I was good to say I believe we're longer. Yeah, no time coming but yes, it is I mean, I think we're more optimistic than ever. We're having productive conversations. We've done some initial studies to show that physically what we want to do is feasible. And so, yeah, it's just kind of keep moving it, but it's very optimistic and I think we're making good progress. And if you could explain to the public what that trail would do, how it would connect businesses that would be helpful. Yeah, I mean, I think it's, you know, we've kind of looked at as like this connective backbone that connects, you know, kind of root one all the way to, you know, Savage Mill, Hard of Columbia, and so forth. So it's really it's kind of taking this unused rail spur, paving over it, and then utilizing the other local roadways and connections. So really if you're kind of coming from the east, you're kind of, you're coming in to the New High School, Guilford Park would be your eastern stop. Next stop would be Gateway. Next stop going west would be Gateway kind of west, which is like off of Lida Forest. And then it continues over to Berger Road, which I think Housewoman Christiana has a great name for that section. But you know, and then from there, it spurs off. You can either go north via Oakland Mills Road, Brooklyn or you can go south via Gilford Road to get the APL Maple on as well as Savage Mills. So it really opens up connection to everything without the need of a car. So I think we're talking about movement and mobility. It's going to be a game changer. That would be great. Yeah. And we saw a beautiful example of it working really in a way that I never even imagined in Atlanta, which was really fantastic. Yeah. I do have one sort of budgety question. I saw that you are planning to hire two new positions, the Micro-Lone Program Administrator for 158,000 and a business development tech innovation later for 177,000. So the Micro-Lone loan administrator is already there. So she was hired, I want to say, we stood up the program, the micro loan program last year, but she was paid out of pay go money. Right? So what we're doing is moving it to an operating budget. So she, because what is the, so if you remember, it was a pilot year. The first year, this is the first time we've done a microloan program, right? So we were doing a pilot year to make sure that at HAT traction, it actually did what we wanted it to do. It was very successful. So we hired somebody at that time. She was from community lending in Baltimore. She helped stay at the program and did a great job. So she's already on staff. And then we have our business development person. He's actually a federal worker, previous fellow worker. He used to work for the US Commercial Service. And we're hiring him to focus on our GovCon, GovTech Defense type sector, and along with CyberNIT. And I hired him recently through savings I had through this year, but obviously I need funding for like long term for the for his long term success. And I think right now the business development, he's part of the business development team and that team is really rounded out now and it covers we have somebody on the team that covers every major sector in Howard County that we can we can go out and make sure we understand what businesses are going through and we have that connection. you you know Kathy covers AG and then we have him with cyber IT, GovCon. We have a life science as a MedTech person and somebody focused on manufacturing and distribution and logistics and then we have a retail hospitality person. So I think we're at like that's five people that I can deploy and they're basically how I get communication about what's going on you know and how that's how we get communication back from them they provide technical assistance and then we develop programs and stuff also based on what we're hearing. Could you I'm sorry I was just writing the five okay okay that was fast. Okay, we have IT that's broad tech, cyber IT. We have life sciences, Medtech. Life sciences, Medtech. What is life sciences, Medtech? So Medtech is like, we have a lot of medical instruments, medical equipment, companies in Howard County. So people, medical devices, we have a lot of companies that are doing that research. Okay. And then agriculture, you know, Kathy, everybody knows Kathy. We all know Kathy. Everybody knows Kathy, yes. And then we have a manufacturer of distribution and logistics, you know, making sure that we, that Route 1 corridor is taken care of, and also other places in Columbia, too. And then obviously we have a very dynamic retail and hospitality sector. Now obviously we cover all businesses, but when I look at where the concentrations are, where we want to cover those, you know, and then everybody. Great. It sounds beautifully strategic. That's really wonderful. Yeah. Go ahead. You can go on to David. I do have one more question. I don't have any questions for you. Thank you. Keep up the good work. Thank you. Thanks for supporting Ag. Yeah, no problem. Yeah. Kathy's doing all the work. I know. I know. I know. My question's about the Pago amount. We have a chart somewhere that says that the 1.1 million last year of Pego economic development initiatives is to date unobligated. So we do have obligated. So part of that Pego, so part of that Pego was, well all of it is basically redevelopment, right? So part of that is going to be used on restaurant park and I don't know do you do you want me to explain some of what's going on there? Sure. The restaurant park near Costco. Yeah, across from Costco. So I got as soon as I came in I've been here almost two years now. But as soon as I came in I was getting a feedback from constituents like what are you guys doing over there? Because as you know I don't know if you've been there recently but when you first go in, there are two vacant parcels to left and right. One's an old gas station that has graffiti on it, one's of vacant McDonald's, and then you keep going up, you have Bob Evans, that's like just come up for sale. Olive Garden, that you know, it's like not doing that so great. Royal Taj, excellent. And then you have the hotel. Right, so then you have the hotel, that's full, and they're coming out and complaining. And then you keep going where TGI Fridays was, they were vacant for a while and we did have somebody that's recently we're helping to move into that space. So as we looked at redevelopment opportunities around the county, we were like this is an area that really, this could be a really great project that we could do. And so part of that money is obligated to that. I mean, I don't think I've internally we've obligated part of that money to that project and it involves place making, also potentially looking at areas where we can assemble some parcels. And I think that it's something that it's a great, you can, anybody can go up there and see a great before and after, right? It's something that you can say that, you know, you put money in and it's a great return, you can visualize that. And you know, part of what we're trying to do is make sure that there are no, I mean, there shouldn't be any parts, any areas in Harrow County that look lighted like that, you know, and we were getting complaints and I think that's a really great project to put some money into. So that's what we're doing. Okay, is that all of the one-line? Yeah, and then the all the part of it is going to root one. So as you know, as we were looking at ways to deploy that along root one, which I I know it's a priori for the county, a priori for you guys. We knew that there was something going on with the trade point Atlantic that they were going to start something and that's done now. So I, we really feel like this is an opportunity to amplify what's going on there. So they're bringing in at least 500 jobs. They're investing, I think it was a hundred million dollars. They're still trying to work out like, OK, so businesses are coming in. We want businesses to come in. We want to amplify any type of thing that they are doing to have businesses come in, because that could be incentives. That could be programs. But right now, I'm trying to strategically make sure that every dollar that we use out of that fund for redevelopment is going to be a great return. And I think those are two areas where it's like, there's already activity going on. How do we leverage what's already going on there? So those are two areas where it's like there's already activity going on. How do we leverage what's already going on there? So those are the two areas. Okay. We haven't been right up from this morning. A reference to half a million dollars in the area of Traypoint Atlantic And then it talks about restaurant, capital R, park, capital P. But it doesn't attribute that to the past. I mean, we're now 11 months into fiscal year, 25. And the amount that was requested for 26 is exactly the same. So the FY25 was redevelopment money, right? So that strategically, I don't like, so for redevelopment money when that comes in, I wanna look at it in a strategic way. So how can we not just throw some, like say we're gonna do this and just throw it in the middle of Route 1 or just pick some random project. I wanted to make sure that that money was gonna give a great return. And I think those two projects are gonna be great for the county. So redevelopment money is more a strategic pot that I'm looking at to make sure that we can kind of grow and read a by-lice county where we're gonna get the most return. the upcoming amount for more programming. So that's programming. It's where money, you know, I have the programs. It's replenishing funds for these programs. So you'll have the micro-lending program, bright program, our EIR expansion program. So those are programs where it's like we've already started the programs and that money is replenishing it. And basically it helps with a lot of our innovation center companies, a lot of people that are just thinking of an idea that want to be entrepreneurs that come to our innovation center for programming. So those funds will probably get deployed more in an operational way. Does that make sense? So. It makes sense what you're saying. I just don't see anything that says anything like that. Oh okay. Yeah. So that's kind of the problem. Okay. So yeah, that's the explanation. But my understanding is, you know, I've only been doing this seven years. If we don't use the money in the fiscal year, then it goes away. So I don't understand how you're going to spend 1.1 million dollars at Trade point Atlantic and So I don't park in the next month. So I don't know that I mean, I think we can I don't know We've got an extension before right we've gotten like yeah, yeah, I think I think they like the county knows what I'm trying to do So I can require like if I need like another quarter or whatever to kind of make sure that that restaurant part does what it needs to do and you know we kind of put together a program for stuff that's going on a route one I think that we can do that. I think we've done that before having a wing. Yeah. Is that what's called an earmark? Is that it is not on our earmark list though? Is it? I thought there was like $20,000 or something. No That's for the the current year. I mean, this is for earmarking funds that are budgeted in FY25. We still have to go through that review process and have conversations with the departments and decide if it meets the requirements of doing an earmark. Okay, we're not going to tell this council about those earmarks next year. Well, it's right after this, the budget is approved when we typically start looking at ear and needs. That's always been the timey. I mean, I just, I will say this, redevelopment opportunities they take longer, right? So I mean, I understand what you're saying. You want to make sure people are using money. But redevelopment, I mean, just for us around park, we had to talk to the landowner, like people that like to see if they want to do it. Well, I mean, I totally get it. I don't know. I am this, this pretense is that this body right here is somehow overseeing a budget prepared by that office on behalf of the administration. What you described all sounds great. Sounds great, totally get it. Both of those places need help. Nothing in anything that we have says that. Am I wrong? Like I just read Restaurant Park this morning for the first time in my life. I had no idea. And I just want to clarify. And I just want to clarify. And I just want to clarify. That is in a specified grant agreement with EDA. So should there be a need as Jennifer is describing, then that would come in through a grant agreement amendment. Okay, so you're not carrying it. You're not going to carry it. You're not going to ear mark 1.1 from last year. Well, if, like I said, depending on what that is, it does come in through amendment. So it is essentially that process through the grant. And so that's what we all revisit with EDA. So last, I mean, I remember last budget cycle, I can't remember what program it was, but it was a very successful program. All the money didn't get out the door. I just asked for an amendment extension. I mean, amendment for like, it was a legitimate, you know, and it created and helped businesses. So, I mean, usually we just get a grant amendment for that. And I'm not sure about the process about, you know. OK, and it's not, I mean, it's not just EDA, right? Last year there was an astonishing number of recipients of Pego and the operating budget. And not even astonishing number because I think the prior year there was also an astonishing number of recipients, but there was an astonishing total value of those Pego operating funds. And we have a list of how many of them were actually expended. And I mean it's the reason why I asked out, out of 80 million in pay-go operating expenses last year, it looks like 29 of that still is unobligated, including your 1.1 million. So there's 28 million under. Someone else has 28 other million. But that's what I'm trying to understand is what, why, I mean, it's existential. Why am I here? What does it matter if I say yes 1.1 this year or next year because whether you use it or not it will still be there and it will be there again next year. This just, this one is totally out of the dark. I mean, I only had, I had this morning to read this lilac page that received, that we got here today and it says restaurant park, but it doesn't even say the part that Dr. Jones is saying. Like, I don there shouldn't be a mystery and again you're one million out of 29 and I'll ask those questions if I can and we're going to get to them later on with the non-departmental expenses but I don't understand this notion of you haven't decided what to do with that $29 million yet and won't tell us until after we approve this budget. No, no. So we're not talking about budget approval. That's been done. We're talking about current year spending. The year is not done. So we go through this process every year, sometime in May after the budget is approved. We talk to the departments, see what the spending plan is. And for certain ones, where some matter of of timing we may do a near mark if it meets the requirements of an near mark. And when does the council or the auditor or someone, when does anyone besides the office of budget and the mayor. Once that your mark is decided and it happens is all of it is in the financial system that can be accessed by the auditors. And if there are specific questions at that point and wants to decisions that have been made, we can provide that information. And all I can tell you is generally, the number of earmarks is very limited after the whole earmark process was- I agree with you. I thought we worked very diligently reducing that. But that word came up a lot in my write-ups and where it didn't come up was this $1 million. So now I'm worried about we're going in the wrong direction and I haven't even accounted for all of them. The earmarks I see reference to are $20,000. Don't even ask questions about them. Don't care. But when you talk about $30 million left on the table for payment or for pay- And I think a lot of the earmark questions I saw were dealing with earmarks that we've done. Is that earmark going to be spent in the current year? What is a plan type of question? It's not about new earmarks. But new earmarks, I mean, are just very limited again, looking back in the last couple of years. So typically, a lot of the funding that may be available by your end is going to go to fund balance, not be earmarked, in general. Which is another problem, right? A lot of this is also timing because until the PO was cut or then sometime it's not hitting that and sometime it's the distribution timing. For example, there are 300,000 for educators, loan program. If you look at system, the numbers are because we distribute at the end of the year. And there's an OPEB 2.5 million. We don't do it until at the end of the year. So if you go to system, that number still there doesn't mean this number is not going to be at the end of the year. And there's an OPEB 2.5 million. We don't do it until at the end of the year. So if you go to the system, that number still there doesn't mean this number is not going to be used at the end of the year. There are other agencies like that too. So it's going to be limited. But as Brooke was mentioning, during the year and the closing, we're working with every agency once we get the request. they're still in a process of developing requests to see which one need to be carried over on whether it's eligible or not, which ones there will be liquidated. And also this year is a little bit unusual given all those economic climate there. We kind of have to say if we're talking with the agency, if there's something you don't have to spend, it may be good to keep us a little bit leveraged there because of uncertainty there if something. But we did get feedback from most of agencies. Many of this is already in the process, like going to have people like next week, you know, it's a critical and it's in the process pretty much going to hit the system pretty soon on that. So it's actually end up, will be very limited left, but that's all the process you're going there. We wouldn't know for sure until the urine closing is finished. In like two weeks. No, at the end of the June basically. Okay. I asked at the beginning of our operating budget discussion for the spend on that particular non-departmental expenses pay go. And I thought we got an answer to it. And there were somewhere they said, or I guess someone in your office said, we are aren't going to spend that. But again, this seems different than what we're hearing from the respective agencies. So if you have a list where you know you're going to spend down because it's something like teachers loan or OPEB, can you please update the information you've provided to the auditor so we know that those are going to disappear? But I'd also ask you to review that whatever answers you gave us because this $1.1 million was not on it. I thought literally you were just asking for the same money again for that rack up of expenses that you described for 26, the cyber-hower, the bright, the EIR. In fact, we have a note that says it's going to be a continuation of what was done before. Now specifically for EDA, the cyber and micro-lending, it was about four, five items listed in page. of what was done before. Now specifically for EDA, the cyber and micro-landing, it was about four, five items listed in Pego. My recollection is all of that has been spent. There's no balance. And those particular ones. Yeah. That's what we're talking about. OK. I think this is a different year than before because you put $98 million or whatever the total is $78 million in pay go operating expenses. And you at least thus far haven't spent $29 million of it, according to the accounting records. And again, this goes to the notion of, where does that money go at the end? We've had this conversation about abandoned projects, lapsed funds. It just is all this money that's not being used to do the day-to-day government services that we're here to provide, and end up in some no-man's land that none of us have the time to figure out where it is, nor come up patients. I know Dr. Jones has gone. Do you have more for, let's do one lightning round please. My pass for the end of the day. Yes. Who is your strategic person for retail hospitality? Shantel, Frederick. And do you maintain a list of all the restaurants in the county? Yeah, it's pretty comprehensive. Yeah. So I don't know if it's everybody one, but yeah, we do have a good list of restaurants. Is it? I've been hearing this from restaurants recently. I'm just kind of curious that the restaurants now see themselves as maybe the prolific, the most prolific retail industry in Howard County. Is that just I'm just wondering if just from your knowledge of small businesses here in Howard County. I mean, that's here. I mean, yeah, they're doing pretty well and I know that a lot of them, a lot of restaurants that come here are dining scene are out, you know, our dining scene is becoming very well-known regionally and a lot of restaurants want to move here for that. It's very diverse. And it's, you can get restaurants here in the outdoor life. I think people are coming here for that, like the Maryweather District and Fulton and things like that. So we are becoming known for that. All right. And if you could just give me shuntels. Shuntels Frederick. Yeah. If you could give me her contact information. And we'll talk to some more about this. Okay, do you have a budget question? Missy Younger, we're going to move to Mr. Younger. Yeah, no, I wanted my budget question really was the percentage of restaurants. The percentage of retail restaurants. Okay. I can, I can, okay. Okay, great. Thank you, EDAs. What, oh, we passed you. Well, my budget question is just to confirm that the position that works with Village Centers is still. That's Chantal. Wonder what she also does Village Centers. Thank you. The small business. Okay. Thank you, EDA. All right, thank you. It's 115. How far behind scales are we? We could use limited break during these three hour sessions. We could use limiting our questions. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your attention. No, we're gonna, we'll break for half an hour, but I'm thinking we're moving financial discussion till Friday morning. Yeah. Yes, I think. Okay. Gary said yes. OK. Mary, can you have the question? Mary said yes. OK. All right. We're going to resume the work session. And with us, we now have technology and communications director Mayot. Good afternoon. Welcome. And we're happy to hear your presentation. I think go to questions. Thank you. So as you said, my name is TJ Mayot. I'm the Director for Technology and Communications here at Howard County. Here with me is Deputy Director of Santer Tello, SAP Guru. And online is John Eckerd, should any questions arise that we need to go to that level. I do have a brief presentation. Can we go to the next slide, Isaiah? So thank you for the opportunity to talk to you this afternoon. Before we dive into the next slide, Isaiah? So thank you for the opportunity to talk to you this afternoon. Before we dive into the FY26 requests, I do want to take a brief look back at FY25 because I know it can be difficult to understand the value of investment and technology here at the county. And I thought it would be helpful to maybe talk about three quick areas where we provided value back to the county, just as an illustrative way of how DTCS helps the county achieve as objectives. And we just talked to people, process, and technology. On people, I want to highlight our service desk, which has about 15 steadfast employees. And it is the face of DTCS. Most employees only know us by the service desk. When they call in, when they have a problem, that's who they're talking to. Back in November, we started a program where if you engage with our service desk on their online tool, you had the opportunity to rate the experience and leave a comment. So we've been tracking that closely over the past about five months. We're averaging over 150 ratings and comments a month. So across those 900 ratings, we're averaging a 4.9 rating. That's incredible. I will say other places have been in a service desk, usually has like a two. Because when you call in, you're having a bad day and you kind of take it out there. But to know that that means we have 900 employees who are able to get back to work, helping our residents and other employees is really meaningful. And it shows how we here at TTCS are helping a people across the county. Process. So you might have noticed that when director Eisenberg was here, she mentioned she is working with TTCS on some of their processes. When you engage with us, it's not a matter of we just sling a laptop or a software at you. We're here to help you use technology to better enable your processes. So we are working very closely with TPC to walk through a lot of their online, what are currently PDFs online that constituents might have to download and fill in and scan and then send back in. So get that to an online form and also enable online payments, which is not something that TPC has had previously. So again, it was not just a purvey of technology, we're trying to help you enable your success. And finally, I will mention technology, because it's in our name. When it comes to N1-1, I believe it's one of our most critical assets, and we have worked the past several months and are very close to completing a true, what we call hot, hot backup. So that effectively means that should there be an issue with the 911 infrastructure, we can quickly and seamlessly switch it over to a whole there setup so there will be no impact to our call takers or residents that are calling in. Very important effort to us and something that your investment has allowed us to do. So I just want to quickly brief a few things across people process and technology that DTCS has enabled across the county And if you go to the next slide I say Which brings us to our FY26 request so as a total we are requesting 42.2 million dollars which is an increase of 2.23% from FY25 I'll briefly cover each our four funds. So first is cable administration. You will see an increase of 5%, which is a total of $32,000. This is a slight increase as we've onboarded a full-time GTV producer and the equipment that he needs to better enable this communications channel to be utilized for the county. For the peg fund, that remains unchanged you say zero and zero percent there. On broadband so this is our fiber network and our internet service effectively. We have increased the number of sites that we're servicing. We've increased the throughput because requests never go down. They always go up. But despite this you'll see a 3.71 decrease. We're able to do this by lowering costs. We found a provider that we could bring in-house and use a low-cost tool to basically do alerting and monitoring ourselves. So that is a pretty substantial decrease that we're very proud of. We ensourced a lot of work there. And then the technology fund, of of course the bulk of our fund You'll see a slight increase of 2.6% so almost a million dollars I would like to first point out though that salaries alone or employee costs alone so salaries of benefits Are increasing close to a million dollars and this is basically cola step increases increases insurance So there's a million there. We had nearly a $1 million increase across software. And all of our hardware costs are going up anywhere from 10 to 30%. So while you're seeing a 2.2% increase, we have really carefully managed our costs. And we have well over $2 million of known costs that we've been able to handle with essentially a maintenance budget. I will say as a point of risk that we're assessing, we're continuing to assess. We all know that tariffs remain in the news. We have heard from one example is our provider for printers. Last week, let us know that any printer brand will be going up anywhere from 10 to 30%. So it doesn't matter what we do, those costs are going to continue to increase. So we continue to monitor that closely and we manage aggressively. We've moved some equipment purchases to the left, FY25. We're pushing some out to the right, to FY27. But frankly, it's something we're going to have to deal with as the year goes on and we see how this plays out. So that concludes my presentation. Happy to address any questions you may have. Thank you, Ms. Ruby. Sorry, just trying to recover from the emotional depression of costs increasing up to 30%. Can you just touch on the inventory review? Because that's played a little bit, that's had an impact on various departments in terms of increased chargebacks. Yes. So as you heard this morning, when we moved to more remote work during COVID, DTCS effectively handed out devices as quickly as possible to ensure the workforce can get to work remotely. Now that we've come to a steady state and we're in a hybrid setup, we basically had to go through an accounting of who got what devices and ensuring that they were being charged appropriately for that support. And so you did see some departments that had their charge back go up because it turned out they had more devices than were kind of for some departments went down because they had less devices than had initially been a kind of for. Thank you. I forgot Deb wasn't here. So given that we talk about the tariffs and the printers, where is that stuff coming from China? I mean, I can't say directly because I'm going to make the printers, right? But we assume it is. And the supply chain is so complex. So one example is one provider that provides switches and firewalls for us. We asked that question. And while the devices were assembled in Mexico, some of the parts that are, it's like a car. Some of the parts that went to it came from China. Which is why the costs are not like one to one with a tariff either. It kind of all comes together and they make some assessment on it. Because we're in this 90-day window but I guess it's not something that you can time because you're not buying the printer necessarily for China. So we did actually pull some equipment purchases to the left that we knew we were definitely going to make. And we said, all right, let's get these orders in. And we're working with our vendors. Let's get these orders in now before anything hits. So we were able to get some end user devices, some laptops, and whatnot. But we can't do that for everything. And we know that the situation is pretty fluid. And then what's, yeah, it's off budget. I was going to ask you another tear of question. I'm not sure. You're not actually finding it. Unfortunately, no yet. So thanks for keeping us hack free. Thank you. I'm glad you mentioned the technical assistance part because I will say seven years ago when I started, if I called the help desk, it took a long time to connect with them and I would forget and leave and not get it done. Whereas my office encourages me to contact them because I can't do something and they immediately call me and fix me and it's done. So I probably didn't fill out whatever you're talking about because I didn't even notice that. That's where I am but that's definitely been my experience in a lot year at least. Yeah, so that's funny that you mentioned it, because that's definitely my personal experience. I'm still on the charge back. Is that the same as the data processing charges? Yes. Okay, because we did county administration this morning and for each of the respective offices that sit under the administrator there's a discussion about how you know various costs have changed significantly and in almost every one of those offices There's a reference to data processing And I get that some of it has to do with this inventory of Dispense costs, but like there's whole I mean, we weren't dispensing copiers or data processing equipment, right? Like, why? We have the attachment aid that shows the change. So how, I mean, how do I seem you guys figure this out versus no, you don't. No. It's a book. Yes. And the office of budget. Yes. So how do you figure out like, you know, we're going to charge the county council 166% more for copier charges this year if I'm reading attachment A, right? Yes. So, so there's slightly different methodology for each of the chargeback components. So for DTCS, we have copiers, we have radio maintenance, we have GIS, and everything else outside of that is under that data processing. So that's where the bulk of the charges are. So for the data processing one, we look at all the cost centers and DTCS's budget that are not in copier radio maintenance and the few others are mentioned and the objective is trying to pay for that cost for that budget of DTCS. So that's a base that we're allocating to the user agencies and we're trying to find a fair way to do that allocation. And what we've been using for data processing is the number of devices each department, each agency has that's connected to the county network. And depending on how detailed the inventory count we have, we can do it at the business area level. In some cases we do it at the department level and we would budget it under that administrative fund center. For copier, since yes, that one specifically, if I remember correctly, we do it based on actual usage. We look at the last 12 months of what each department used the number of copies and things of that nature. And based on that, we allocate the budget for that copier cost center. OK, but still, what's in the processing services? It's everything outside of these so-says-sap. It's, I mean, it's all the services- It's a bulk of the services. Everything that we do that's not a few things that are broken out. The ones that are broken out are radio maintenance, GIS, and so any project management support, the service desk that just mentioned cybersecurity, yeah. All server team, the infrastructure broadband itself. Yeah. And so theoretically, they're all based on power years usage. So again, what we're allocating is the 26 budget budget, but the method we do the allocation is based on inventory accounts. So I think there is a lag. So I think we got that information in around October timeframe. So it's based on that and I wouldn't expect the big change from that period to now. My apologies Chair. Well, is your mic on? It's not a problem. The one, the 1.8 million in the appropriation from fund balance is that one of the cost the cost savings measures we went through this morning? Correct. Okay. Yes. Okay, thanks. One, two. Any other questions? There's any other questions for DTS? David? Okay. Voila. Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you. Next up we haveano. Thank you. Thank you. We're happy to hear opening remarks remarks if you have them. Thank you, I do. So I have prepared a brief presentation, but before I begin, I'd just like to induce who is with me today. Deputy Director Rose Burton, Fiscal Manager Tom Wall, and our new fiscal specialist, Kadeja Rayaz, who has been with us just a few months now. Welcome. Few weeks. Few weeks. Okay, few weeks. Thank you Isaiah, you can go to the next slide. So just wanna start out with some of our accomplishments. First of all, in FY25, awarding 30 homes to MIHU home buyers and providing 50 loans to home buyers of MIHU homes and non-MIHU homes for down payment and closing cost assistance. So very proud of able to continue to create home ownership opportunities here in the county. Next slide, please, thank you. Next is our Family Home Start program with bridges to housing stability for families with students enrolled in Howard County Public Schools. And for February of 24 to April of 25, 55 families have been rehoused, which includes 98 children enrolled in our public school system and that is our partnership with Bridges. The Howard County, Howard Community College rental assistance program with Columbia Housing Center for our Howard County Community College students and families, 50 students are currently receiving rental subsidy so they can remain housed while they complete their education. Regarding our Division of Homeless Services, which joined the department in FY24, and our plan to end homelessness. This year we did complete an assessment of our emergency shelter services and worked with grassroots to increase shelter capacity from 50 to 88 beds to reduce the length of time individuals are experiencing homelessness. We also received an increase in federal HUD dollars for our coalition to end homelessness, funding to support homeless service programs, and increase permanent supportive housing capacity by 20%. And right now we are working on an update to the county's five-year plan to end homelessness and the completion date is scheduled for July 1st. I'm going to get you a little bit more. I'm going to get you a little bit more. I'm going to get you a little bit more. I'm going to get you a little bit more. I'm going to get you a little bit more. I'm going to get you a little bit more. I'm going to get you a little bit more. I'm going to get you a little bit more. I'm going to get you a little bit more. And right now we are working on an update to the county's five-year plan to end homelessness and the completion date is scheduled for July 1st. Regarding the Housing Opportunities Trust Fund, we have launched two new programs. The older adult rental assistance program in partnership with United Way that just launched last week. And that will provide rental subsidies to seniors who are paying more than 30% of their income on rent to provide them with a rental subsidy for two years to help them reduce their housing cost burden. And another initiative that's new with the trust fund is $1 million in foreclosure prevention funding. We are hoping this will help some of our former federal employees that may need this assistance over the coming months. Regarding some key initiatives for FY26 in the budget, there is $2 million to exercise the right of first refusal, which has now been expanded thanks to the new bill this year to include hotels and motels in addition to the apartments. million to continue our home ownership programs programs and financial education for first time home buyers. 600,000 to continue the home repair program for current homeowners. Again, 1.5 million to continue the programs with bridges and Columbia Housing Center for the school children and the students at Howard Community College continuing the foreclosure prevention program, 1.6 million in community service partnership funding, which you heard from about on Monday, that's for the planned end homelessness. And on May 5th, we hired a full-time center manager for the Leola Dorsey Day Resource Center, and we will be increasing services there from three days a week to six days a week to assist that population. Looking at just some of the comparison for FY25 to FY26, we do see our transfer tax revenue. We do expect it to decrease. There's not a lot of real estate transactions happening. Same for the MI2 Fienleu revenue. There's not a lot of land left for developers to pay FIENLU on, so we're seeing a reduction in that. This year's budget for the first time does include a request of general funds to pay for three salaries, four staff in the division of homeless services. We've already discussed planned and homelessness funding. There is 4.5 million in the FY26 budget to support the non-congregate shelter capital project. And due to our reductions in revenue and maintaining level of service and the many programs that we have introduced, we do anticipate our projected fund balance to decrease significantly in FY26. And we're available to answer any questions you may have. Thank you, Director Simano. So kind of touching on that use of fund balance. As you're going through the year ahead, I mean, how are you approaching what stays and what goes, what's kept and continued or what what's done it overduced straight? Right, so these are conversations that we have about the success of a program. So for example, our MI2 program and our settlement down payment loan program, creating home ownership for residents here in the county, those are critical to the department's initiatives. And so we wanna prioritize funding those. Also, funding the planned and homelessness and the staff that accompanies that. But it has required some tough choices about how we fund some of things that we have funded in the past with Fianloo revenue particularly. Because our federal funds are so uncertain right now, in the past we have used our MI2 fee and lieu funds to support a lot of our nonprofit partners with programs that are supported our housing needs here in the county. But because that revenue has decreased, we're not going to be able to do that as much as we have in the past. And with, again, with the federal government uncertainty that's making it very difficult to know how to move forward. Yeah, I think could you touch on that? Because I've seen that they're cutting, you know, a significant portion of the workforce from HUD. So I don't know who's going to process, who's going to do the work that was getting done. We have always dealt with the HUD Baltimore office and the majority of the people that we worked with are gone. Oh my God. We have two representatives, one who we worked with many years ago. She is now back working with us, but we are really down to about two people at the HUD Baltimore office who are familiar with Howard County and that we've worked with in the past. The other thing is the budget proposal from the federal government says no CDBG or coalition, COC funding. We have not received confirmation of that. Continue of care. Continue of care, yes. And that goes to the planned end homeless. Correct. To the activities, right? So if those federal funding sources do not materialize, it's going to lead to some very difficult decisions for the department. So the areas of the most exposure are really the CDBG and then continue of care funds and then alternatively what is happening at HUD in terms of the ability to do the work to process the documents. Correct. Correct. All right. Thank you. Miss Young. I don't have a question. Miss Young. I don't have a question. Miss Young. All right. Thank you. Miss Young. I don't know the question. Miss Young. No questions. The um, the notion of paying salaries from the Community Renewal Program Fund. Yes. That was new as of last year, right? So, Department of Housing Department staff has always been paid from community renewal funds. When the Division of Homeless Services joined us, as you recall, those positions came from DCRS to housing and the general funds did not follow them. So this year we are now asking for some general funds to pay for the staff in the division of homeless services. But Department of Housing has historically been paid from community renewal funds. But the group that moved had been paid by general funds. That's correct. That's correct. And is the plan to ultimately restore that funding to general funds? That is my hope. to incrementally add positions each year. Yes. And we have discussed that with the budget office. That that is our goal is to fund those positions in that division with General Fuddes. OK, by a certain time frame. So this year, it represents this shift of three positions so hopefully next a couple years we'll be able to absorb the rest of them as Mr. Semana just said that the founder self there is now struggling tied to copuisa needs on that maintain program so it's a desire to gradually shift the position to general fund when the situation will ask. Okay, thank you. Do you have more questions, Ms. Riepie? No, I just doubt that I have, it's long bothered me that we've used programmatic funds to support the positions. And, you know, I do think that that's a worthy and fair use of general funds for those positions so that those dollars can get out in the community. Thank you. But recognizing those dollars don't get out without the positions to get them out. Yes, I need the people. Yes. Thank you. That is true. I think you're probably the only department that's setting in the right direction in terms of removing people that are paid for by funds that probably weren't intended for that. In the same community renewal program fund, I'm skipping you too because you have no questions, right? Okay. There's an operating transfer for this year's budget of 4.7. Do you see that? Am I reading that right? That's the capital project with facilities. That's the non-conquerate shelter. Okay, the 4.7. That's correct. And that's an expense, so that's coming out of there. Okay, That's correct. What is expense other than 825? Ex-fans. That's our short facts. Oh, okay. Talk, okay. Good answer. And what the contractual services that are almost 10 million, what do you contract for? So we have provided the list and I'm going to try to find it now on my questions because we did provide the list of all the questions. Tom, you want to state what they are? The contractual services please? Oh, okay, okay. You're good, Ms. Walsh, are you good? I got it, yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. third party vendors. These are the programs. These are the programs. Yes. Yes. Okay. Okay. Oh, okay. These aren't like third party vendors. These are the programs. These are the programs. Yes. Okay. Yes. Contractual services is a little misleading. Okay. I got it. All right. And that, well, I'm the one who has questions for housing. You don't either? Okay. On your slides, you talk about, I mean, well, now three housing assistant programs that I think are fantastic. The one for the families with HCPSS schools. That's administered through bridges, right? Correct. So, what role does your office play in? So we are A, the funder, B, we are the monitors. So every quarter they provide a quarterly report to us to tell us how they spent the money, what families were served, we're collecting the data on the income of the families, the school, the family, the children attend, and where the family is moving to, what zip code. We want to know where families are finding housing, I guess, is the question. And then what school the children attend and the income level of the family that's being assisted. So that's our role as funding and monitoring to make sure the money is spent according to the parameters of the program. OK. And what do you do with all that information that you collect? We use all that information to determine was $1 million, which is what we spent in FY25, is that the right amount? Is it too much? Is it too little? How do we do that? Bridges came back to us with some questions about, is there other things they could pay for? Like some families need it. Moving, help with moving, is that an expense that we would consider? some families needed help getting their utility set up. Is that an expense that they could use a funding for? So we're using that data to see how to tweak the program to better serve the families. Okay. But no one from Department of Housing Community Development is actually involved in the intake or the review of the... No, we don't have case management staff that does those type of application intake to do that. No. Okay, and then same thing for the Howard Community College Rental Assistance Program. It's the Columbia Housing Center that's doing the case management. Same thing. We're funding and monitoring, correct. And then the new older adult rental assistance program, it's the United Way doing the case management. That is correct. and accepting the applications and paying the landlords. In terms of homelessness services, yes. Like, does department of housing and community development case manage there? So I'll let Rose speak to how the system works. So the homeless services division really plays a coordinating role in terms of coordinating services across the entire homeless response system. So can you please get a little closer to your life? Sure. I think so. So we play a coordinating role to make sure that clients have access to services that clients are prioritized appropriately and then then we monitor, we kind of follow the plan in homelessness so that our response system is effective and timely so that we can meet the goals of our plan, which is reduce the length of time, individuals experience homelessness, ensure that when we have a presentation of a family or an individual that they have quick access to housing, and we work to rapidly transition clients back into permanent housing. Okay, so when a homeless person presents themselves to us, I guess, or... I don't think you're going to make a living department housing's not made? No, they do not. So the way that our homeless response system is designed, we have a single point of entry, which is the grassroots hotline. They're triaged there and then referred. And then our office does play the coordinating role. HUD has a structure that's required with HUD funded organizations or jurisdictions. And so we do the prioritization and coordinated entry process of looking at the vulnerability of the individuals, what their needs are, and then we make proper referrals. Is it someone that needs rapid rehousing? Is it someone that immediately needs emergency shelter? Should they be referred for permanent supportive housing? Because there's a disability involved. So we do that kind of coordination and then refer to the proper programs. And you do that with Department of Housing Community Development personnel, not through grassroots or correct. We make the referral and then the homeless services agencies including grass roots, pick those referrals up and do the case management and intake and placement. Grassroots does that. Grassroots does that. Bridges does that. Right, I guess I will say, and this is all born out of the Browns Motel and having a large community of people who needed help that there are a lot of agencies and community service providers in our county that have words like housing in their titles or in their mission statements. And I know of no Browns resident who was provided any kind of like, you know that did not happen and I've sat at a budget hearings like this for seven years and heard about the services we provide and I think now naively thought oh well it's you know all of these things you just described are going to happen and again to a person it did not and so that's what I'm trying to understand is is it grassroots is it bridges is it department of housing community development like who is response so everyone should enter through grassroots that's a did that check then be then they meet with then through the staff at the Department of Housing coordinated entry the the priorit prioritization, the by-name list, all these entities with staff from the Housing Department, they work together to decide, does that person get referred to bridges? Does that person get referred to community action counsel? Does that person get referred to grassroots for space in the shelter? So it's a coordination as Rose is describing. In terms of the referral process, in instance, that you're speaking of, they were referred to the Community Action Council. And the Community Action Council then provided funding to provide, hoteling if that was appropriate, or maybe moving services if that was appropriate. But each case is different. But if a resident, individual or family goes to grassroots and is assessed, then the system does work with the providers and grassroots and the individual to determine the best option that is available at the time. But what, so if the homeless person goes to CAC instead, then the housing and community development department is not involved? No, CAC should be putting that information in our coordinated entry system, but they should also be referred back to grassroots to do a housing assessment. But community action council is one of the participants in our coordinated entry system. So that individual's name should be entered into the system so that the coordination can take over is community action council, the right organization to serve that family. They can go to community action council, but that may not be the one that ultimately is the best provider to assist them. Sure, please. So is that sort of the confluence of the no wrong door, which means you could go to any agency, and then they would enter you into that single point of entry, and that is the grassroots coordination point. Correct. And so if we're experiencing things like people have gone and presumably been entered, but not followed up with. Who should we as their representatives follow up best followed with which I recognize thank you for the case management for us at this moment. Right so Rose what staff. So you'll recall a position was created recently and it is the housing navigation manager. So if there is someone who is reporting that they're not receiving access to services or anything that's a housing barrier that gets filtered through our housing navigation manager who then coordinates again, in a coordinating role, coordinates with the other providers to determine what's transpired and why was this individual not receiving services. Perhaps they weren't assessed properly at the hotline. Perhaps new information came to light. And so we have hands on, so that is the one person on our staff that goes more to the client level and less of a system coordination role. But she takes a look at each individual client that comes through council, through county admin from the delegates office, like we get calls, the school system. Oh yeah, I'm sure we're not the only folks. Yes, and so we bet those calls and the services then make sure that individuals are having their services addressed. Thank you. Okay, I'll, I think after budget, I'll follow up with you separately. It is unfortunately my very firm belief that we are not coordinated. It is not, all doors are the wrong door in my experience. And people don't get calls back. And it's really hard to get in touch with someone who's homeless. And then that person vanishes. This is not working. It's not working. Well, we're happy to sit with you and just go through the specifics of how the system is designed to work. And I will say that for many families that have received shelter or have gone into rapid rehousing or permanent supportive housing, yes, there are some that don't. I agree with that. But they're the majority of people we do believe if they are assessed and connected to the right partner are getting the services that they need. But we are happy to meet with you and lay the system out for you. Okay. Again, to a person not one, not one household at Brown's. I sat through the intake process at grassroots. That's all I have. With that being said, I think that that ends today's session. I didn't think you guys weren't going to have any questions for housing or DTCS. I feel like usually DTCS takes more time. On Friday, we're going to start with what we should have finished with today and apparently could have. But Ms. Young, you mentioned that we never have a work session on budget amendments, but I understand the administration is going to be filing an amendment to money back to schools. And I at least haven't seen publicly, maybe I'm wrong, any confirmation that like this proposed deal with the school system that the board needs to approve has actually been accepted on the school side. I mean, is that... I had a phone call with Superintendent Bill Barnes yesterday, and he was very positive about it. So I would encourage folks to reach out to him, but I think obviously additional coordination can't help hurt.. I mean, I mean, I don't. I would like to see them back here. And I would like to hear about their concerns about reducing fund balance and things like that. But I also understand there might be some amendments coming from the administration that reflect grant, state grant funding that wasn't included in their original budget book. I think state grants, state grants is very limited. It's more on the capital side on that, some adjustment on that there. It's very limited. There is a one loan in the committee renew fund there that's already received the need authorization authority to spend that loan. So that's going to be be part of them and to if that's what you're talking about. I'm talking about $13 million in state grants in the capital side $10 million on the on C0337. Yeah that's actually yeah we mentioned that earlier that last year that's that's a novel alone from From federal government that was authorized and applied but rejected so that 10 million authorizations do available to accommodate this 10 million Funding new funding from the state on that and there's a 3 million Jokhondo that actually will be including the amendment. Okay, so that that would be the 13 I talking about. Right. Okay, are there any other significant amendments that the administration is planning on filing? I think the, what you just mentioned, the chairwoman that was on the school related stuff on that, that will be reflected there. Okay, I mean, I think that's pretty significant. I know I will personally reach out to the Barnes and mostly to see if they'll join us on Friday. And the agenda does reflect budget amendments. So. Yeah, that's what I thought we were going to do. Yeah, that's what I thought. I. Did you ever pay an own annual salary? Yeah, it's good that we do this year. Okay. Okay. But without a return, thank you so much Department of Housing and Community Development.