to the government operations and fiscal policy committee meeting this morning. We have one item before us, which is bill 3-25, homeowner's property tax credit, county supplemental amendments. This is our lead sponsors is our committee, government operations and fiscal policy myself, council member Freetzen and Katz, co-sponsors of council members, glass, Luki, Balcom sales, sales, fennigan, zollas, and alvarnas. Basically what this would do is allow us to change some of the requirements for the state's homeowners tax credit supplement to allow more of our homeowners to be eligible and take advantage of this. And I will turn it over to Ms. Wellens. Great, thank you Madam Chair. And thank you committee members. So as the chair said, this bill relates to the county supplement of the state Homeowners Tax Credit before I start just to note that we have Mr. Hepman and Mr. Folly King from the Department of Finance. Should the committee have any questions? Where are they located in the audience? It's so hard to see that. Yeah, I just wanted to say that. So as you know, a number of the state has a homeowners tax credit, which is the eligibility is based upon the net worth and the income of the homeowner. And it's a progressive tax, so the lower the net worth, the lower the combined income, the higher the tax credit. And the state has allowed counties to provide a supplement to that state credit. A number of counties do that, including Montgomery County. Currently, our criteria, Montgomery County is aligned with the same criteria that the state uses for its main tax credit. But what this bill would do would be to alter that criteria so that the bill reaches more homeowners, it would increase the income eligibility from 60,000 to 75,000 combined income. And the net worth criteria from 200,000 to 250,000. I should note that the net worth calculation excludes the dwelling for which the property is sought, cash value of life insurance, cash value of a qualified retirement savings or individual retirement accounts and any tangible personal property. The bill also would increase from 300,000 to 375,000 the assessed value upon which the credit can apply. And it would make some alterations to that progressive scale as well, again, like including a greater number of homeowners. A few things to note, I don't believe there are any amendments for your consideration, but just highlighting some issues in the staff packet starting on page four. You'll see one notable thing about this credit is that it is administered by the state. OMB estimated that the that will probably be paying you know 100,000 a year to the state for just administering the credit. But obviously that's a lot cheaper than us doing it. Then there is, again, there's some examples about how that progressive scale would apply on page five. So you would see the total tax limit, the total credit based on, excuse me, the total tax limit based upon the combined household income for the eligible property tax recipients. And finally, just to note that the last time the council altered the limits under the county supplement for the HOTC was in 2006. Obviously, there's been inflation since then. So this is bill is in part to accommodate for that inflation that has already occurred and also, and as you know, you included within the bill a provision so that going forward, the dollar values under the bill are linked to inflation going forward. So that they'll go up over time without the need to Revisit the bill again. I think that's it. Thank you. Great. Thank you Miss Wellens And I do want to acknowledge my colleagues who have worked on other property Tax credits for our homeowners particularly our seniors and those on limited incomes You know this council has discussed this and I'm glad that as as colleagues here on the GO committee we were able to find a path forward on making sure that we are able to provide tax credits for our residents who are on fixed incomes and lower income especially as they are seeing an increase in their assessments over the last couple of years and so I just want to say thank you to my colleagues and I look forward to moving this forward to the full council and turn it over to council member Freizen. Yeah thank you so much echo the acknowledgement appreciation to colleagues, the Council President, to Councilmember Katz. I last year had put forward an effort to try to adjust our senior property tax credit in the county to make it more targeted and more progressive. And while that ran into some roadblocks in terms of concerns about implementation and the ability for the Department of Finance to actually implement it in a time-sensitive and cost-effective way and whether or not it was too costly. I thought we could do it. I thought it was important enough to do, but there were concerns that were raised about that. And so this is a really important and meaningful step for in a way to address this in another way, but to try to target some of the same folks who as the council president noted, are on fixed incomes, are struggling to keep up with rising costs, are struggling with the increasingly less affordable challenges that we face in our country and our community. So, this is meaningful to go up to 2,500 nearly in property tax relief for those who make limited incomes, for it to be targeted to those who need it the most to ensure that we can implement it in a relatively easy way by just utilizing the existing HOTC and expanding from there and from allowing us as we move forward to adjust it to inflation so that we don't have to keep coming back to address these issues. I think we're all meaningful and very important. And I think what aspect of the accessible portion of homes is important as well. We have set those standards and those rates well below what ordinary people are living in, based on the costs of our homes today. So this is a significant step forward. It's a meaningful step forward. It targets the most vulnerable homeowners who are feeling the affordability challenges the most. And I think this will be a major step in positive directions. I really appreciate the partnership and one acknowledge staff as well who have helped us run through a number of different scenarios to to do it in my heart of hearts. I would love for us to do more, but doing something as significant as this is meaningful and I'm appreciative and I look forward to moving this forward. Thank you very much Madam Chair, Madam President. And I too want to thank my colleagues on government operations for this. You know, to do the right thing sometimes can be difficult. And that's exactly what we all work together. There was a meeting of the minds to say, you know, yes, we want to do this, but we want to do this the best and the fastest to help those who everybody's talked about. And I think this does it. I think that we certainly need to not say that now that we've done it, we don't have to do this ever again. I think we have to revisit from time to time. The inflationary clause in here is certainly the workable thing to do. But we have, you know, I've often mentioned there are people who live in 400,000, 500,000 dollar homes who really to them live in a 100,000 dollar or $115,000 home when they bought it. They made improvements, they might have painted it, but they didn't add a room. And so this really helps them stay where they can enjoy. So I think this is a good legislation. Look forward to the entire council voting on it. Great, thank you. And I just wanna add my thanks, Miss Wellens, to your work, Mr. Ali, who are our central staff, did a lot of the number crunching on this and our finance department as well. And I do think we ended in a good place. And I will note also there are a number of municipalities who also do the HOTC supplemental. And I know they're actually looking at the model that we're pushing forward now. So I'm glad to also said that standard for some of our municipalities as they're looking at the supplemental as well. So I think with that we have a recommendation from the GO committee, 3-0 to put this before the full council. Thank you. Thank you. All right, with that, we are adjourned for the Government Operations Fiscal Policy Committee. We will come back at 10.30 for our joint committee of Government Operations Fiscal Policy and Economic Development. Thank you all.