This meeting is being recorded. Good morning. This is the Council's second fiscal year 2026, capital budget work session. The proceeding this morning is a hybrid meeting which is being conducted in person, MVA WebEx teleconference. The public may view through live stream, available through the county council website. At this time, I will do a roll call of our councilmen members. Dr. Jones. Good morning everyone. Good morning. Miss Young. Here. Mr. Rigby. Morning. And Mr. Youngman. Here. We have a number of recreation and parks and DPW items on our agenda today. We start with Recreation in parks, storm drainage and road construction follows, most likely then to be followed by lunch break, and we conclude this afternoon with road resurfacing bridges program, sidewalk and traffic intersection. Our order of questions begins today with you, Ms. Young, and goes in councilmanic order afterwards. But we start with our recreation in parks. I see Director Muni-Hannis with us, and you've brought some friends. Please join us. Okay. Good morning. Councillor Chair Wash, council members. Thank you for the opportunity to present our fiscal year, 2026, Capital Projects funding request. Like to start by introducing my team I have with me today, Bureau Chief of Capital Projects, Bob Lins to my left here. I have Scott Monroe and Jason Thompson, Park planters and Brenda Mercado are senior administrative and an analyst. Thank you for being here today. Getting the spinning wheel of death on mine. Why I have a turn out to. All right, next slide, please. All right, to summarize our request in our fiscal year 26, Capitol and Premier requests we're requesting 4.15 million in grants 12,000 in other sources 4.13 in Pego funding and 5.48 in T tax are total fiscal year 26 funding request is 13 million 772 thousand dollars. I do want to make a note that as I go through the projects, there will be a couple amendments that will be forthcoming and I've done the best I can to try to highlight that for you as I get to them. So the total funding request will actually go down to 13,172,000 post amendments. Next slide. In 3102, I'm still open up here. Blandair Regional Park, we're requesting $250,000 in grants. We received an African American Historic Preservation program grant, and we're also requesting $500,000 in T-Tax, the project, so the $250,000 for the slave quarters and the T-Tax is for the new bridge and path connection at Blandaire South. Next slide. I'm going into the order of the projects in your budget book. So I wanted to highlight that N3108 Park Systemic Projects is replaced by N3982, which you will see later in the presentation. N3109 Park's resurfacing program is also replaced by N3983 also later in the presentation. N-3958 to SORC structures rehabilitation in 3940 North Laurel Park and in 3953 Centennial Lake Restoration are closed. In 3957 Troy Park and Historic Rehabilitation requesting $90,000 in T- T tax for park improvements that include expansion joint repair recycling and trash can bins and picnic tables. In 3959, Patapsco Fremont Institute, this is the first mentioning of the amendments I have to walk you through. So we're requesting transferring $200,000 in program opens based grants to N3984 which is historic structures. Transuring $300,000 in T tax to N3984 and transferring $500,000 in T-text to N3982. The Patapsco Female Institute, the original scope, was for a restroom, a building that included a restroom, office space, and a meeting room. But with the courthouse renovation and acquisition amount Ida, we didn't feel that it was necessary anymore. So we're just building a standalone restroom and storage facility. That money will be transferred to B&O museum for exhibit design and construction of the exhibits in preparation for the 200 anniversary, which is in 2030. So we have time, takes time to develop them and build them. But we certainly felt like we need to get started on that project. And then transferring $500,000 in previously approved T-Tex to N3982% Tenio Park West Ball ball field project contingency funding and Belmont bridge repairs so by reducing that scope we were able to fund some additional projects with that that money. In 3960 Robinson Nature Center requesting $250,000 in grants and $50,000 in T-Tax And that is the fun the Ampitheater construction. And that's the concept you see on the screen. In 3963 pathway and trail rehab expansion. Requesting $200,000 in grants and $525,000 in T tax. The project schedule includes savage military improvements, three bridges, replacements of Woodland Road, a 20-foot high-rig park bridge replacement, and a new bridge at David Forrest Trail Park. In 3973, East Columbia Library Athletic Field Site improvements, requesting $200,000 in T-Tax. This is the fun renovations to the existing restroom renovation, which you'll see circled on the park design. And then just to give you an update on where we are with that entire the entirety of the project construction will begin in September 2025 with its estimated completion date of September 2026. My apologies Mr. Mooney, would you mind moving the mic a little bit closer? Sure, some folks online. Very close. Thanks so much. Thank you. In 397-78 Parkland Acquisition Program, requesting $600,000 in grants and $100,000 in T-Tex. This is for the funding for land acquisition and property incidentals. Also, some of that money is used for the 2027 land preservation, parks and recreation plan update. And our objectives within our park land acquisition program are to further the Patux and Greenway. Small and large property acquisitions to help expand the park system preservation for future facilities. Increase park access countywide. You know, we use that 10 minute walk, five minute drive metric. So we're always looking at identifying properties that help further that initiative. In 3981, Ilchester Park and Recreation Center. This is another project with an amendment. We're requesting 1 million in pay go. $750,000 in grants is what's in your budget book. If you can just leave it to you, right? That way you're facing the screen and the mic. Okay, thank you. Appreciate it. Technical difficulties with my spinning wheel of death here. Where's TJ? So we were only approved for $200,000 for the state bond bill, not $750,000, so the amendment will be deducting 550,000 from grants. That project includes exterior restroom shower facility to support the overnight camps and camp programs and exterior and interior renovations. In 3982 park systemic improvements, requesting $750,000. This is another project with amendments. 2.43 million in T tax and 1.5 million in pay go. So the amendments that are forthcoming are to transfer 500,000 and previously approve T tax from N3959 to N3982 for the Centennial Park West Ballfield project contingency funding and Belmont Bridge repairs. So that's coming over from the Patexan Female Institute project and then removing $250,000 because we did not receive in grants because we did not receive the state bond bill for the restroom facility. Also included in that project is renovation of the Bowman Trust Bridge, three field replacements and Blair and their phase one playground and safety and surface replacements. 3-9-8-3 Parks resurfacing, requesting $500,000 in grants, $725,000 in T-Tax, 1 million in Pego and 12,000 in others. Grants are going to be used for the School of Mill Park Roadway and parking lot resurfacing. Pego is the additional funding towards Alpha Ridge Pickleball Courts, Savage Mill Trail, and Bridge. The $725,000 T-Tex is for grant matches, sport court resurfacing, school email additional funds for school email resurfacing in South entrance pathway ADA improvements and the 12,000 others is funding received for a BG and E easement at the Ellicott City colored school. I'm sorry, can you go back one slide? Of course part of our resurfacing program is the tennis and basketball courts that you see listed Guilford Park, Metapro, North Laurel, Savage Park, and Cedar Lane are on the docket for fiscal year 26. In 3984 historic structures and rehabilitation requesting $100,000 in grants,1.66 million in T-tax, although there is an amendment, which is to request a transfer of $300,000 in previously approved T-tax from the female, protects a female institute project instead of the original $800,000 that was listed. That will include the design build of the exhibits for the B&O and the Fire Museum and Waverly Mansion Stucco and Painting. And finally in 3985, the public gardens, we requested a $1 million dollar congressional direct spending request and $600,000 in Pego. The first phase of that project will include drivelane improvements parking and the initial garden elements that the design for the public gardens is underway as we speak. Excellent. I wanna thank you for your time and the opportunity to present the fiscal year 26 budget. There are quite a few slides after this one. They're the completed pictures of completed projects in fiscal year 25, as well as a list of the end progress projects that you can peruse at your own leisure. Thank you. Thank you, Director Minnihan. Ms. Herod, I made a crack at the beginning of the, this morning, 20 minutes ago, that we're going in a counter-mantic order, but we started with Dr. Jones just on Monday, right? So how did we jump to D4? Did you prepare, do you care, if you go first today? OK. Great. We did. 2 plus 1. 2 plus 1. OK. If you will indulge that, OK. I'm missing you'll go first next. What? Yes. Okay. Yeah. I just wanted to ask about the project, if about changes at the state around project open space, because I was reading a bit about some of the things that they were looking at, but I'm not sure where it ended up and how that impacts Howard County. I mean obviously impacts all the counties, but how it impacts us going forward. That's sort of my overarching capital question, hearing that they wanted to look at that program for cost saving. Sure. Well, program open space we have seen a reduction in funding from the state that kind of began last year. The prior five years to that they were in a catch up period where additional money was being added to program open space that was deferred years prior. So we had elevated program open space funding for quite a few years. The program open space funding is tied to state transfer tax. So we are seeing the implications of just lower amounts, statewide, but also the catch up period is over. While there was some legislation to defer, I believe all of it, it was preserved in the budget. So, we are seeing dealing with lower amounts, but it still is the funding still exists. So it still exists. It's more just sort of back to the prior catch up levels. Yes. I mean, while the costs are increasing, so it, you know. OK. No, I appreciate that. And I'm glad to hear that it's still preserved, even if it's not where it was before. And then I also just wanted to congratulate you on the African American Heritage grant. It was a really good achievement to win that. And I'm excited to see what you guys do in telling the story of land air. So great. Thank you. Yep. So start you off with an easy one. Yeah. Miss you. Well, I'll start off easy. First of all, thank you guys. Everybody loves our parks. You know that. It's always one of the top rated things that people say they like about Howard County, right after the schools. Okay. Schools and parks. Schools and parks. And we of course are very proud of all the things that your department does to make it such a popular aspect, amenity of Howard County. And I do want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for completing the Bird Safe Window Program at Robinson Nature Center that took way longer than I thought it would, but we are done. So that is excellent. Just hope there will be birds left after the pilot plank. It's built, but that's a whole nother issue. And I know that there's going to be like a grand unveiling. And I really look forward to being there and thanking you all for seeing that project through. It's important. Three billion birds lose their lives every year, flying into glass. You all know that. You know that that was why it was a critical thing to do and it is a showcase for our whole county and I hope that other entities also see that. So now on to questions. Okay. As opposed to just thank you. So as always, always there are way too for my liking. There's way too many artificial turf fields. And you know that that's not one of my favorite things, especially since my daughter played Golly for many years and had to stick her face in that whatever it is that's in that artificial turf. For I also think way too many years. Have they made any improvements in artificial turf that would make me less afraid for the soccer players of today? And the football play, I should add everybody. Yeah, everybody. Because you're also putting in artificial turf baseball fields, too, right? Or, no, yes. That's entertaining. That's Centennial yes yes artificial baseball turf and artificial football well the football and soccer I know they use the same that's that's multi-purpose yes I'll start by saying we we our intent is not to convert every natural field you see in Howard County to artificial I like like to start with that because I think to meet the demand of the sports community, we certainly have relied on artificial turf, especially at our regional parks, but we don't foresee ever changing over natural fields in a neighborhood or community park to artificial fields. That's one reason why we kind of changed course on what was a 10-year-old design at East Columbia Library Park, and now that's rebuilding to natural fields. Oh, yeah, yeah. I was going to ask you about that specifically. Yeah. Oh, that's great. Those are natural fields. And the artificial turf companies are, they recognize the challenges with artificial turf and are coming out with products and we get kind of bombarded with different options every year. And we look at those. We want to make sure that we're we're selecting the best choice that that meets our need and and within the context of its use the most sustainable option that we can. So we are at an additional expense. We are making sure that the fields are sent to the recycling of recycling plant in Pennsylvania that we actually took a field trip out to and visited. Where all the crumb rubber and sand is extracted from the carpet and then rebagged and reused. So that could get reused on one of our jobs but also another field. And then the carpet gets sent to another recycling plant that I have a chunk of recycled lumber that they make out of it. There's some turf options that have come out that have different recycling options. Can be recycled into different products. At Torrey Park Field Number 2, 3, we used a new product for the infill. This is the crumb rubber that's on the surface. It's actually white. It's supposed to reduce the heat by 30 degrees. It's a pilot project. We'll be taking temperature readings over the summer and see if the additional cost was worth it for the users. And there's even technologies coming out that are using systems below the field turf for carbon capturing and sequestering. So that's new. We haven't even dove into it quite yet. We'll engage with Tim Latimer, of course, in sustainability to kind of see if that's worth it and if the science is proven. So we do look at that each and every year and we'll continue to do so as new products around the market. Thank you. It sounds like you are doing your homework and I really appreciate that because I know that our student athletes and older athletes because they're using these fields too. As long as we're all loving our parks so much, you might as well give them the best parks that we can. And then on the baseball note, it's worth mentioning. Other than Centennial, there's a good chance that we will look, we'll pivot to considering just doing the infields. So there's a tremendous amount of maintenance associated with the infield game practice and game. Wall shouts, you know, because of rain events. We certainly experienced that over the past couple of weeks. So we're looking at options to just do the infield. So the outfield would be natural turf. We'd improve the drainage, but the infield would be artificial. So kind of limiting the amountfield would be natural turf we'd improve the drainage but the infield would be artificial so kind of limiting the amount that would be out. Okay and then you mentioned land acquisition for them. Wait Deb let's go around and do one question per. Okay all right Mr. Yemen. Public gardens. Do we have a market study or anything on that or like the feasibility? I don't remember. No, there is no formal feasibility or market study. Are we going to do one? So we have a landscape architectural firm, EDSA, on board. We just kicked off those meetings. I mean more like the demand for if we build it who will come. Yeah. So we have gotten some information out of that process with them and we can pursue, you know, as we design the gardens with them that's kind of all being considered like what will attract people. So your local users are going to be your primary users, but we certainly envision this being a destination for you know to drive some tourism into the county as well. So as we fletch that out, you know we could either consider adding that as a more formal scope. I guess I'm trying to say it's being done informally through the design process with the landscape architectural team. So then is is four million the whole cost of getting it up and running and maybe we hope that some user fees offset the maintenance. Yeah I think that gets us up and running. It certainly doesn't, you know, the creation of a public garden is a long-term prospect, you know, that can be created in several phases. If you look just to our neighbors at Montgomery County Parks and Brookside Garden, it wasn't built, you know, overnight. It was several phases that occurred. We have a meeting next week with the DSA team to speak specifically to exploring the formation of a friends group that would drive some donors and volunteers and to help with the maintenance. Yeah, I mean, I absolutely support that we bought the property. I just, I don't want us to over the next hell every many years dump $10 million into a public garden, just to have a public garden when we have other probably 100 more pressing needs. So the operational plan program will be something that, in the design, that will develop, that will speak to revenue generation and how we can be as self-sustaining as possible. Yeah. And I also, at least for me, and I think for generally the part of District 5 in the West, the AgCenter is a priority over this. And I don't want this to just, because we have to justify buying the property this to take money away from what we need at the AgCenter. So for what it's worth. We'll revisit that when we see what next year's budget is like. And then what happens if we don't get the congressional the million bucks from the feds? So we'll do what we can with the 600,000. So we have enough money to continue the design and that 600,000 would go to the initial improvements on the property. OK, good deal. Thanks. Oh, I'm next. I'm one. I disagree. If you spent $6 million on a property, we better have a good plan for it. And we better invest in it. It's going to cost you a lot of money just to maintain that size acreage. So why not have an upside in a community amenity? What are we doing? Otherwise, we shouldn't have bought it. I'm just concerned that if the user fees can cover the installation of the garden and some of the property costs, then do it all day, which is why I said, like do we have a feasibility? I also just feel like. But if it's just more money after more money, and it's like, and it's probably already bought. So, paying to think about that. The public garden is scalable. So again, we can collectively get to decide how quickly it develops. That can be a five-year proposition, 10-year proposition, 20-year. I mean, Brookside's awesome. Yeah. It's just, it's the market big enough for Brookside and us to have one and not a half-bought in our county has one. I don't know how many people. I think we talked about this last year, Delaware Botanical Garden. I think it's the model. And that started with friends, right? Like that was an idea before a land presented itself to cash out in. So I think that's where we want to pay attention. I think the other model that that particular garden provides is a world-class designer. And I know we're doing this on the cheap and just like you said, it's scalable, it'll change over time. But I think the way that you get the kind of revenue and the kind of traffic that I think we want there and the marquee presence is you're going to have to invest I think in a rural designer and again that's phasing over time but we brought this property for a reason and I think a lot of people support it for all the reasons you'd want them to but I think that does take a reciprocal investment on the on the county side going forward. I was hoping actually you know I think your total budget was 11 or 13 million, is 11. 13 million. I mean, 1.2 of that is grants, you guys, are either chasing or already received, right? Could you, I didn't, until I read this stuff that our auditors gave to us, I didn't know about the African American Heritage Granite Blender. And I'd like even to hear more about the CDS is what used to be called earmarks. Yes. I mean, I have looked for seven years in these books for that kind of thing. And I don't know that, you know, we really ever seen a big one. I think we were happy with DPW last year for doing some of the pitops. Potoxyn had a good grant for something. But can you talk about like that process and how you decided to go after that for this? And what next steps are, and we'll know whether you actually get that larger award? Yeah, I'm actually not familiar. This is the first time for me as director, submitting for CDS grant. So I'm not familiar with the timeline. So I know the due date is long passed, so we've already submitted, we're already requested it. You know, we look at each guide and try to just figure out a project that best fits with what, you know, that particular crime member is looking for. Because it can be a little bit different whether it's on the Senate side or the House of Representative side. So, and then within that, I think the county looks at it, like trying to balance like which ones as a county, do we have the best chance of receiving, and then that was the ones that was presented forward. So. So, it was submitted to a particular federal legislator. Mm, Matt can you tell us? We did both. We both. Yeah. Okay. And do you do that internally like with Reckon Park staff or administration or do we have outside? Through a administration. Okay, but no outside consultant or anything. We just okay. That's right. All right. Do you know the timeline? Mom will know. I think I think we'll know soon but I do not know the time. Okay. Okay all right well I mean I commend the effort. It's good to see and I think there are lots of other projects that we've seen come through on these books that would have benefited from that initiative. Thank you. Dr. Jones. Good morning. I don't have any specific questions. The one comment I had was already addressed with respect to the I read on the test feels on the baseball face. my middle child is having baseball player and I happen to have seen some of these fields in another state where they didn't feel those turf and the outfields grass, different colors and different highlights and different things. Not only is it really cool and it's aesthetically for parents to, when they pay on these muddy for these tournaments, but I think it is a little bit safer for those that may be more agile without you running around. So that was all for today. I was going to say, thank you all for watching you. I'll be love for Steven and the parts that we have, I'll continue to do one of the things. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Back to you, Mr. Rikli. I really don't have a lot. You guys did a great job answering the portal questions. I think you're doing a lot with the little and really trying to maximize your budget and fulfill your goals from the LPPRP. So thank you. Thank you. Ms. Yam. So just a couple more things. You mentioned the, a protection greenway and land acquisition. Do you have a map of what you have acquired? Yes. You do. Could you send that to me? I would love to see that. And how much, you're requesting grants for that. 600,000, where are we in that process? And who did you request those grants from? That's program opens space. That's the lay in acquisition for program opens space. OK. And where are we in that process? Have they already said no? Oh, no, that'll be definite. Oh, that Oh that's a definite caveat is as we don't know the final amount yet so that would be subject to change a little So we did contact DNR about a month ago and they just said they couldn't give us a final number yet But it would definitely be a little bit less than we received last year and last year was about 2.3 So I just guessed it like two right now so we may be coming forth with more amendments just of fine-tune what we end up with but that five hundred thousand is a 25% of the grant. We're happy to move that up. We like open space. We usually hear by may. By may. Okay so we'll know. If we find out that our estimate was our estimate is is is conservative. So if we find out that we have more coming from the state, then we the amendment will reflect that we won't turn money away. Okay. Good. We can find a place to to stick that in. Yes. I know lots of good places in district form. Yeah. Where you could buy land. And we do have prior years appropriations that we're still using as well. Okay, and my last question is Mount Ida and Patapsico Female Institute. How you guys bought Mount Ida last year, right? And how much did we pay for Mount Ida? Do you remember? That wasn't a facilitated through Reckon Parks, so I'm not. Oh, okay. Yeah. So that's Emily who's sitting back there. We'll find out for Emily. Okay. I think it's under C0337, the Safen Sound. And I think the price was about 4 million, 4.1. Okay, but now you all are going to going to program it, is that what? So what are your plans? We're exploring operating operating it much as it was as an event venue, including even overnight. So my team's been working with risk in all of this of law on what that would look like. Like a bed and breakfast. Yeah. sounds like. Yeah. But also a wedding venue. Yeah. I was at an event there last spring. That was really nice. Well, they did a fantastic job renovating the building. And it's gorgeous. I mean, we purchased all the furnishings. Oh, good. Exactly the way you saw it. It's the way it works. All right. So we don't have to put money into renovation or anything like that. We can just snuff the old courthouse. That's right. It's all another issue. All right. And then- It was four million. You're right. Four million. My last question is about the Female Attapsico Institute. What was it that, why were you thinking that you would do these other things adding the office in the classrooms? And what was it that, why were you thinking that you would do these other things adding the office in the classrooms? And what was it that made you change your minds and say, no, we're not gonna do that? Yeah, the thought was we would do more, like it kind of be, would be home-based for our archeology programs. But that just wasn't really the direction we wanted to go forward with. So we're looking at some other options for that where, you know, they do find some interesting things from time to time and having an area where we can display that. It just didn't get based off of our other, you know, really what we need there is just a restroom facility to support the programs that are there, the park visitors, the events that we have there. And so the refinement and the scope just reflects how we feel like we'll actually use the property going forward. And do you guys have weddings there? Do people have weddings there? They used to have wedding actual ceremonies there. With the acquisition of Mount Ido, we really envision it as it being a photographer, like for wedding photos. And we're even like hosting a prom dress photo shoot. Oh, that sounds great. They're super intent of that area. Kim Prime has lined up. So you have your wedding ceremony at reception at Mount Ida. And maybe we have a little golf cart and close golf cart that we can drive the part of the party can drive with the PFI and take pictures. Low impact, because it is a historic site. And we don't want to, so we don't see going back to having wedding ceremonies at PFI when they could do it at Mount Ida, but maybe making it accessible for wedding pictures is something we're considering. I like that. It's wonderful. Thank you. Pickleball. So it looks like we're starting to convert over tennis courts to pickleball. I thought that's what that alpha-rigeling was. No that's actually the art. It was an old roller ring when we went down to just one roller ring and then was converted to our outdoor archery. Right. And archery, do you have a roller ring? An archery might move to West French. To West French. The friendship, right. The burn's already being built. Good. But pickleball. So as we add all these pickleball courts, and I don't think we've ever run into this issue with tennis. You know, it's like the multipurpose fields, baseball fields, we have a permitting process. And I guess the sports leagues, UZOM, and it's not like the average resident is looking to get out on the football field. Right? Tennis courts, I don't think you have many organizations that are trying to permit tennis courts. It's more of an ad hoc you show up. Pickleball seems to be both. We've got some organizations that have cropped up, but yet I might want to just show up at a Pickleball court and go hit the. So are we permitting those? Are we recognizing certain leagues and letting people permitting them sort of at specific times of the day? Is that restricted to certain times of the day? How's all that working? We currently are not permitting the pickable courts. But what happens is these large groups will show up in mass and kind of capitalize all the court time. And there's certainly groups like the Howard County Pickball Association that lets others work in and are a little more friendly to put it. And while some others are not and we're not aware of every group that is out there, but we've been working most recently with individuals like the mother and father that just want to play with their kids, and they're not even keeping score. I just want to hit the pickleball over the net a few times and not be subjected to like a 10 minute, like a pickle game typically last 10 to 15 like one game. But I want to play with my kid for an hour like I didn't drive you know what I mean. So there's like competitive play versus you know leisurely play and then how do we balance that certainly. I mean we have four courts going in at six courts going in at Blandaire. How many in Rockburn? Six at Rockburn and then Alpha Ridge. So, you know, having these dedicated pickable courts is certainly helps with that demand. But we're also Brian Moody, Brian Moody, Bureau Chief of Parks is working with these groups currently looking, researching what some of our neighboring jurisdictions are doing to kind of adjust our rules signage also. And then permitting is an option if all else fails, we can consider permitting at specific times. Because it isn't intimidating. I used to not feel totally comfortable, like putting my quarters on the rail of the pool table without getting a dirty lock. But it seems like it's going to continue to be conflict unless you really get to like these particular like a Western regional, what's there? Four, six, eight, eight. So, you know, four of them are available to be permitted in the evening and four of them are not. Yeah. And that is something we've looked at. And there's some, you know, going back and forth, there's some challenges with that because, you know, how do we know they're with that group or not with that group? You know, you get people to say, oh, I just got here, but they've been there for two hours. You know, all of the, what we hear from constituents that are, what they're experiencing at some of those are recognized like a baseball team. Yeah, out there. And then we, you know, while we've lined pickleball court lines on,, overlaid onto a lot of our tennis, we still want to have dedicated tennis courts also. Because while pickable might still be the fastest growing sport, tennis is still growing. So we don't want to ever lose sight of that as well. Great. Thanks. Number one, I only have one more issue or not issue. Well, it is an issue. And Miss Young raised it in her first question and I knew she would is I don't think there is a place for our artificial ball fields except in very strategic locations where we know that that's a revenue generating Fielder facility and we have tournaments and that drives you know economic Growth up and down. I mean for me like that's Troy Park like we could get some some actual accommodations and more Restaurants there like that's gold and I get that blend air same thing. I think right? But otherwise, especially where we have kids playing, I really don't see it, not even in the basketball aspect. And I think we need to get away from that. And the other two things, just in general, that concern me. And you always, I don't know if you wrote it, but our auditors wrote it. And it's like my trigger word for Reckham Parks, which is shade structure. I suggest to you that A tree is a shade structure. I don't think I suggest it every year. As someone who watches a lot of baseball played and practiced at Kwanis, there's not shade on the field, but there are a lot of coverage on the sides, the trees, and umpires hate them, but moms love them. Right. And Blandaire Park is like, you know, the surface of the sun after like April 15th. Like, you know, that we're kind of, I think you guys love your playgrounds. I get that. But I think there's like this, you're really good at it. And so we see a lot of really good cool playgrounds in places where maybe we don't need really good cool playgrounds. And the example I will give to you is Elchester Park. Love, love, love, love, everything about Elchester no matter what you do there, probably I want to be like that's fantastic. But it's right across the street from an elementary school and we're building two more playgrounds at I get the preschool one, especially if we're going to have an active preschool right, that makes total sense and that's not what's over it. But it'll just, but literally right across the street, which is supposedly, hopefully part of this complex there, is an elementary school playground. And that's not what Elchester Park was. There are other locations where hopefully we start to turn to see that there is a beauty and an amenity and passive recreation. And that we, you know, I see every time I go to that centennial where I was with you, Mark Richmond, that centennial north, I think. Every time I go there, there's something new. Now that there was a skate park and now there's like some big playground in the back. Like I just hope that you guys are aware like it's It okay to just have like a bench with some trees over it sometimes. That's recreation too. And that's all age is recreation. I think maybe it's just a case of you guys being so good at what you do. But the shade structure may add, don't write that next to your. It's a tree. It's a tree. A shade structure. It's a tree. And I give you the boundaries of Kiwontis Park is a really beautiful, I think, example of how that works so great. That's all I have. Do you guys want to go around one more round? I just have one more question for that. Okay, do you miss? say that I do love to stage structures over the playgrounds because the metal becomes hotter than the sun. And you know... Well I think it's a common it. You really do need the confidence. It is a comedy. I just want to publicly say that I do love to stage structures over the playgrounds because the metal becomes hotter than the sun and Well, I think it's a common it you really do need the combination But you know especially when you're going to a new area or it's not a wooded area like Hillchester I think that some of that is climate-forward Thinking because the longer that metal is hot the hotter it gets And we certainly you know want to protect the kids around here. I have two little ones and this is a common when I'm at the playground with them this is a common thing I hear so it's something that you know Bob's teams worked on we've been successful getting you know some grants to do some say canopies and structure we certainly you know come in with some tree planings also, but that tree's gonna provide, that new tree's gonna provide shape like 15, 20 years, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So. Okay. So it's all just anyone. Yep. Okay. Miss Boston, I do have a question. Okay, go ahead, Dr. I don't know where we are on the one, three, go ahead. Obviously I have no idea. I'm sorry. I'll wait my turn. I'll wait my turn. Please do not make me forever. I'll wait my turn. Go ahead, Dr. Jones. Go ahead, go ahead. Okay, okay, thank you. I failed to mention earlier about plan there. I noted that there was $750,000 increase to restore. I know there's been a,000 increase to restore. I know there's been a lot of discussion about it. A lot of advocacy behind it about these slave quarters. In addition, a new bridge and pathway. I'd like to know whether the department is in this. Dr. Jones, you want to know where we are in the process with the slave quarters? Yes, or any more, I should say, where you are in the process of getting funding and asking for funding and dealing with the schematics behind the restoration of it, yes. Yeah, we have the funding. So we have approved to $250,000 grant is approved. We have a fund block on $250,000 right now to make sure that the funding didn't get spent out of $3102. So we have a half a million for the project. We've teamed up with DPW. So Beth Burgess's group is working with Scott on the project. So we're going to do a design build on that project. And it has to be done by the end of 2026. So it's going to move pretty quick. They've done a 3D scan. They've taken samples from the slave quarters. So we're going to try to restore it the way it was. But you're going to see progress within the next year. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Okay, Ms. Young. I just wanted to, I forgot to ask about the Ampitheater at Robinson. Is the total cost of the Ampitheater 300,000? I see 250, but no, what was the total cost? We're just guessing that the estimate's going to be between 800 and a million. We've been banking money for that. So we have already approved POS funds in the amount of, let's say, 450,000 for the project. So we're adding this, it was 250, 300 to it. And then we also still have some money in the Robinson Capital Project. So we think we have enough to do the project. To get started on it. Request this year. OK. And how many people do you think this amphitheater will seat? I would think at least 100. I know I've scott sitting behind me. About 150, max. And it looks like it's concrete seats, and then the grass is below. It's, there's turf. It's a port and place concrete walls with a stone veneer on the outside Again fitting in with the natural aesthetics of the building It looks very yeah looks nice and then turf in behind that So that you have the ability for drainage going in behind the walls and you cover most of your drainage within the site for print Where your feet go is that what's that is that there would be a at the the wall, there would be a little bit strip of concrete that would be there just so you've got a solid surface to put your feet down on. But the idea is there's enough space between those walls. You could actually lay out a picnic blanket or some chairs or something like that behind that and sit there as if it was a picnic. Okay. Space. And I'm just, I have to admit, I'm also, this is my hope that one day we would have something like this at the chrysalis. So I'm wondering in my head what something like this would cost and how many people it would see. We generally have a lot more than 150 people at the chrysalis, probably closer to 300. So we would end if there was a comfortable place to sit. We might even get 500 people there. So yeah, you didn't have to bring your own chair. So yeah, that's got me thinking when I'm looking at this really nice design. So that will be, and what kinds of things do you think they will you guys will be programming is there a stage there already there is a stage well there's no there's a stage included as part of the project oh that's part of the project okay anything just anything could be anything could be showing off at night yeah everything yeah yeah yeah and the p Project is almost completed. Okay. And the one thing we're trying to do. We'll just show off the out. Will you? Yeah. Well, that used to be one of the places I took my dog all the time before they built Robinson Nature Center. Yeah. But no. Yeah. The one thing we're also trying to do is do an impervious surface where your feet would go. So we're thinking flexy paves so we're working through those details. Great. Because you know that's the other question. Thank you. Wow you guys are good. You just prepare ahead of time just in case. I really appreciate that. Okay great. That's it. Everybody loves Rick and Mark's neck. everybody can't help it thank you for all of your support thank you guys thank you all right next up we have Stormdrainage. There's Director Capiti. Okay. First Stormdrainage and then we'll get started with the team. just for the record record, Joseph Cabeta, director of DPW, team members here, John C. Fried and Sue Voice from the director's office. We have, is that, yes, that's correct. Bureau Chiefs, Mark Deluca, Chris Jagarapu for Environmental Services and Highways, and Daniel Davis for engineering and then Mark Richmond Abdul-Akbari. Did I cover everybody? I think I did. I don't mean to single out Dan Davis but I thought you were water and sewer not did you steal him from water and sewer? So he's engineering, which has transportation. OK. Right. Nice. Yes. All right. So start off with just some project highlights and some references to key projects for FY26. This is a picture from a D1177 and D1178, our strong drainage projects. The picture on the left is a completed pond repair, and the picture on the right shows the in progress, the reconstruction or rehab of their riser. And so this is a very critical project where we do, based on our tri-annual inspections of ponds. We identify ponds that are critical, that have potential failure. And then we execute projects to rehabilitate and fix them. So we, on an annual basis, look to do seven to eight of these types of projects through the 1177. Next slide, we discussed this last year, Green Project, the 1184. We are currently in the process of working with a consultant to identify opportunities where we can implement, quote unquote, green streets. So these are obviously just renditions and a picture. The picture on the right is, I think, New Jersey. They have a very well-advanced green streets program. So we do not have any projects completed just yet, but this is just to give you an example of the types of tools and toolbox when it comes to green streets that we potentially can use. Obviously, we have to be situation or location dependent in terms of what types of tools we can implement where. Road construction, so that image at the top is, I think this is an older slide. Okay, okay, okay, Broken Land Parkway and Snowden River, addressing safety considerations, enhancing the bike pad mobility and the picture from the bottom is Gorman Road. So that's 4167 4211. We don't have pictures for Maryitzville 4205 and 4212. But those are two other key projects under RJ portfolio. And we anticipate to go to construction for 4212.5 on Mariusville Road from US 40 down south to 144 in FY27. And then for 4205, the other portion of Mariusville, we are in pursuit of grants to make up the gap that we have right now in terms of funding. But the likely scenario is that will complete 4205 in FY29. Road resurfacing is a overall program that has several projects within it. that obviously road resurfacing would be one of it, but then also street three program where we address safety conditions by removing trees and replanting trees that might pose safety risks for residents. all together for this fiscal year we're looking for $15 million for the overall program, the large chunk of which will be under 2014 for road resurfacing. So, one of the quickly highlight, the picture on the left is Henry Town Road Bridge replacement project. This is a completed project. We were fortunate to have been awarded the Project of the Year Award by MDQI, the Maryland Quality Initiative, which is a transportation forum or body in Maryland made up of all the various M.D. And so we received the project of the year for projects under $5 million. So very successful project that is already completed. But the pictures on the right just identify the types of projects that we execute within the bridge program, the top, you have a corrugated metal pipe that is a culvert that is obviously failing, and then after we rehabilitate and line it, that's what it looks like on the bottom picture. So we do have a new project in the B portfolio. We're not asking for any funds for FY26. It's an existing project, the Border Bridge Program, where in collaboration with our neighboring counties, there's a cost sharing approach to fix these bridges that straddle the borders. So we are transferring money from a pre-existing project that was already funded to set up this one new project for the future. sidewalk projects two before and after examples, the pictures on the left are from Frederick Road, from Plum Tree to Under Oak Drive. It might be hard to see, but again, for mobility and safety, we implemented a sidewalk project to build the sidewalks along that stretch. And then on the right is Roosevelt Boulevard east of Cemetery Lane. Moving on to our traffic projects. You're familiar with T7089, which is our traffic calming program based on the revised Tower County residential speed calming policy that was issued last year. And we're requesting $800,000 for the upcoming fiscal year. And we anticipate to complete projects, traffic calming projects at Hanover Road, Furnace Avenue, Phelps Luck and Dorchester Way this year. And then I think this is the last slide, intersection improvements, again in collaboration and working with the Office of Transportation. identified've identified various areas. This one in particular is for Quadal Rock to, again, enhance the bike and pedestrian mobility access for that particular road on Old Montgomery at Tamar Drive. And with that, I want to thank you for listening to our projects and we'll have you take any questions. Thank you, Dr. Committee. No, Dr. What, Dr. Committee? Director Committee, sorry. Sorry. I'm sorry. I think we should stick to, we'll just storm drainage first and then do the other letters after that. So D is first. Go ahead, yeah. Yeah, this is a much more of a broader question, but it really goes to material costs. And just if you could touch on how material costs have sort of fluctuated over the past few years, where we are now in in a snapshot and any impacts of projected tariffs that could be affecting our material costs that you use for your projects. To the last point as far as tariffs we are doing an internal analysis on where we see traffic, a Arab sensitive components for our typical projects, whether it's linear under very infrastructure or above ground. So we're still in the process of identifying this really hard to tell obviously, but as far as the previous years and the trends, is your question specific to storm drainage work or? Well, with storm drainage, it's the concrete. I would imagine. Yeah. And some of the steel materials, you know, we can certainly touch on asphalt. And when you get to the road section, if you want. But really, I mean, you guys use a lot of materials for your work. And so I've just been, it's been on my mind about how these changes will impact some of these projects and we can plan for it but then if the costs significantly increase then we'll be playing a lot of catch up. Absolutely. And I'll invite the team members of Dula and Mark to chime in with any details but just really quickly it goes beyond our capital expenditures, obviously, as you know, chemicals for the treatment plant. That's a very terrible sensitive component of the work that we do, but you have, like you mentioned, steel lumber is a big, terrible sensitive component for construction and mechanical and electrical components, right? Whether it's pumps or whether it's motor control centers and things with that sort. So I don't know if Mark or up to have anything. That. So I should have asked this during water and sewer as well, really. Yes. I would just add that most of the stream and pond work that we do, it's essentially dirt, rocks and trees and we don't get them from abroad. So it's locally sourced. In terms of strong drain, there was a steep increase that can begin beginning of COVID, but it seemed like the prices have kind of flatted out now. So, but like I said in the future, like the director mentioned about the tariffs and how it's going to impact, we're doing debt analysis now. Miss, yeah. So probably my biggest concern in this area of our county government are the stream restoration projects, which I see Mr. Diluka is getting up from this seat. Thank you. And I know we've talked about this quite a bit, but this is yet another opportunity to discuss this. There were, my recollection is there were eight stream restoration projects in planning in the amendment that Ms. Walsh and I actually did not vote for. At least for me primarily because of all those stream restoration projects. And I do want to say how excited I am to see green streets get its own slide this year, even though we didn't have one to show in Howard County, but at least we are thinking along those lines now. I want to go back to what we talked about when we were talking about that amendment during the work session that we had on that, which was, and I'm sure you told me then, but I I thought this would be another good time to bring this up. How many acres of impervious surface do we have left to mitigate under our, this program? And can we mitigate that impervious surface without doing any stream restorations? Or as I call it, stream destructions. And how? Or stabilization. Or stabilization. We can use whatever term we want. And I'm well aware, and we were talking about this actually before we started our session today that when the State Highway Administration comes in, they bring in huge bulldozers, which are totally inappropriate for stream stabilization, destructions or restorations, whatever we're going to call them. And the hope is that we can keep SHA out of our streams forever and ever, but back to my question. Is there any way to do this? So for the exact number of acres or closer approximation of what I could probably give you, I know Mark Richmond would be able to give you that. And I just want to speak to, just preface, the stream stabilization projects are part of the toolbox. And I know that all of you understand that. And so there are times when the, that type of work is a necessary thing. And so we wouldn't necessarily want to see it completely eliminated. But I think what we could discuss would be to characterize what types of stabilization projects we're doing and the purposes for why we're doing them. So it's not necessarily, and I can let Mark speak more directly to that. But so it's not about chasing credits, which I know was out there because there were some ill planned projects that begun to move forward in our community. forward in our community and for various different reasons and upset the community rightfully so and that were that ended up stopping and that looked like a chasing credits, banking credits, things like that. And that hasn't been the motivation behind the way that we have moved forward with our stream stabilization projects. So that's the first thing. But I won't say that from the very beginning that when we started this, at the beginning of the first This 2013 permit, I think it was 13, could have been 15. That, you know, stream restoration projects were seen as a way to stabilize the stream bank and get credits. But I think that through the trial and error and learning from the community and also learning on how we actually construct these projects, there's one thing to know how you design them, it's another to see how they're constructed, that there have been a great deal of lessons learned and I recently visited a site over off of In Long Fellow that I know you're aware of. And so I know what the goal there was from a technical engineering perspective, but the way that it's executed to be able to do that, it can appear to be very, very destructive and it could take years for that area to actually come back. I know that Mark and I have discussed projects like that and what the goals are for the projects. We don't have anything like that and that we are even planning or that we would plan in the future. And so I think that, but there are certain stabilization projects that should go through. Either they're protecting personal property from streamerotions where their individuals' residents are losing their property or they may get, it may be a maintenance operation where sewer line which runs along a lot of our streams because they're in the flood plains becomes exposed and destabilized and we need to be able to stabilize that bank. And there are a number of other very specific type of situations that we need to be able to address. And we need this as a tool to be able to address that. But wholesale, 70, 80, 100 acres of land being ripped up, things like that. I think that they're not the type of projects that we're going to be going after. Is there an expectation that we spend so extra amount of money or is it only the acreage that we have to focus on? I'm thinking some of these PON projects also count for, right? and they're huge and they're expensive. Shouldn't we get credit for spending a lot of money? I mean, seems like. So that's the reason why I always say, and lately a lot is that what needs to be fixed is more at the state level because I think that there are there are options and I've spoken with members of the community that are strongly strongly advocating for change and And I think they are realizing that changes have to be made at the state level The the locals are only responding to what the state is mandating and I think there are solutions to be had at the state level, that the locals are only responding to what the state is mandating. And I think there are solutions to be had at the state level. And hopefully some modifications will be made, some modifications will be made to the way the state implements their program. I also think that there was a time many years ago where we wanted to stop, right? A lot of the locals just wanted to stop and say, let's evaluate what is it that we've done. And that was brought up to the state just so that there would be an evaluation period. Not because of the environmental impact we were causing, but because we were investing a lot of money and a lot of types of engineering projects and we wanted to see what would actually come out of it. So, but that didn't happen either. So these things are, these are state issues that we are hopeful that they will be addressed by MDE or some of the other, like DNR, some of the other organizations at the state level. I think for our part, and I don't want to pontificate. But I just think for our part, we have tried to reach out to communities, Mark has done a very good job with this, where he's reached out to communities, done a lot of sight walks. We've walked the limits of disturbance with communities, with community groups. And we've made adjustments to the limits of disturbance, the LODs, if it meant saving a tree or saving a specimen tree or things of that nature. We've also done projects that were actually highlighted in one of Director Kabetty's slides, where we actually had the initial idea was to dewater the whole pond. And with that would be to wherever the turtles go, whatever happens to the fish, whatever happens to the wildlife. And the community through the public meetings, the community didn't want to see that. They had always seen the pond as an amenity. And it was also a recson park pond. It was listed as a park. So, we re-engineered the project We'reered the project where we only de-watered a portion of the pond, and then before we did that, we moved the wildlife from the area that was going to be de-watered. We shocked them and moved them to the area and the turtles, and whatever was there to the area that was going to remain wet. And then we created that dry spot. We fixed that embankment, we fixed that pipe, we did all that work, and then we released that water back in. And it took more work for us to do that, but in that particular situation it made the most sense to lessen the environmental impact that we were going to be causing if we just drained that whole pond. So we've been sensitive to things like that, and I credit the stormwater group for going along with that and wanting to do that. And I think that it's in our toolbox to always look at that type of an option before we go and do a project. And you would think it should be in there all the time anyway. But a lot of times it's based on expediency and whatever the design engineer comes up with first. So I think I credit Mark's group for doing those kinds of things. Well, thank you, Mark and Mark. Appreciate that. My last question on this topic is, I didn't notice as quite as many green streets projects as I was hoping that we would see. Are you? Is that's what we have to we're going to go around we'll come back to you okay can I can I help answer the questions since I got credit for about green streets well not green streets but the first question yeah no I thought you had like two or three follow-ups to what mr. Lucas was saying and as a time management which a time management thing, which is what I'm responsible for, this right here is the worst case scenario, which is Mark DeLuca answering questions asked by Deb Young. But you're reputation. I don't get that. But you did, I mean, like I would have, I, what was the pond the half and half so that you know, you left out specifics on the pond description, but then you also said there are solutions, I would have liked to have heard what they were and you know, that's where I thought you were going to go Deb. The pond that was- The pond was Sewell's orchard. Okay, that's what I thought. So what are some, you know, you're saying that it's the state and the localities follow the state, but there's no prohibition that says the localities can't proceed and implement solutions at the local level without waiting for the state, right? The, well, I'd say generally that may be true. However, we do have the requirements that they're putting on us. They set the parameter and goals for those requirements. And this is about the MPDES permitting. OK. And well, specifically, they're enumerated in the MS4. OK. OK. All right. We're going to circle around again. But now we're going to go in the MS-4. Okay. Okay. All right. I wonder if we're going to circle around again. But now we're going to go to Mr. Kim Merk at least respond. Oh yes, yes, sorry. You're right. Can you please start? Please start. There are a lot of questions and there's a lot of answers. I want to hopefully fill in a few. Perfect. Yes, thank you, Mr. Richmond. As far as the the stream work for FY26 and it's probably been the case for FY25 and 24 as Mark said, we're going more towards the, what I call the strategic strikes. We've got someone's backyard where the decks falling in. We've got a sewer manhole or sewer line that's being impacted. the day of us doing, at least lately, the 2 to 3,000 linear feet of stream have kind of gone by the wayside. We're doing the 200, 300, 400 feet. Okay, I'll try not to yell either. So it's failed. Storm drain outfalls. It's more of the strategic let's work in this small area, let's impact as little as possible to fix the infrastructure. So that's where we are lately and I see us kind of going in that direction for a while. An example that, you know, we don't write it up a lot but I got called out to School of Mill Park, and there was a very badly eroded stream bank, maybe 10, 15 feet high right next to a pathway. And the question I was asked is what kind of stream repair can we do? In talking with a person from Schooly Mill, we kind of hashed it out, and we decided let's not touch the stream, but we can move the pathway off to the side and we're thinking it's a $200,000 project with minimal impact to the woods as opposed to a multi-million dollar project with taking out a lot of trees. So there are things like that going on in the background that we don't have neon lights flashing every time we save a tree. But we are doing that kind of stuff in the background. We are looking for how can we minimize the impacts. Let's see, there is a question about credits. I don't have the exact number that we still have to do, but I will kind of mention what we did last year. We got, we're applying for, we have 392 credits. Probably 20% of that is from Pond and Stream Projects. The rest, a lot of it is just doing street sweeping. We can take credit. There's a lot of things we can take credit for other than stream repairs and pond repairs. And we're maximizing that. Hooking up septics to the treatment plant, we get credit. People pump out their septics, get credit. Or we get, they get credit for their septic, but we get credit on our permits. So we're looking at the whole menu of things that we can do and we're not just all our eggs are in the stream basket or the pond basket. The ponds were primarily doing to repair infrastructure so they don't fail. As we're doing that we see how we can maximize the credit. Most of the ponds that are out there were probably shoehorned into a small piece of property in the corner of a subdivision. And we're coming in 2030, 40 years later. And requirements are saying the new design requirements are saying the pond actually needs to be bigger. So we're kind of looking at can we make it bigger? Can we add water quality features? What is the neighborhood going to accept? We have a lot of neighborhoods that the pond's been dry for 30 years. We get a lot of credit if we make it a wet pond. People, it's not what they've seen for the past 30 years. So we get pushed back. So we don't do a lot of going into a community and saying, we're going to make your dry pond wet now. We listen to the folks that live out there and see it every day. And relic. going into a community community and saying we're going to make your dry pond wet now. You know, we listen to the folks that live out there and see it every day. Um, and relative to, do we get credit based on how much we spend? It's, no, you know, it's how we, how we use that money and how the state's crediting guidelines say we can take credit. So it's not a function of if we spend more money, we get more credits. It's not always the case. And there is one other thing I'll point out is that it's all based off of the Bay model. This Bay model that was hashed out several years ago. And we had know, we were, we had a 20% goal to convert the or treat in pervious area in the county. And that was in our, this past permit. If the state were to come back to us and say, do another 20% and because maybe the Bay model didn't indicate what they wanted to indicate. And so that's the reason why I'm saying, you know, well, we can do some things. There are some things that can be done, but it really has to be the state that makes a decision and says, you know, maybe 20 percent is too much. I mean, we could push back because they are expensive programs for us to do on a local level. We could push back, but will the state listen to what we have to say? And so that's the reason why I think that change has to occur at the state level. Thank you. Thank you both. Mr. Erman? I thought about asking this yesterday, and I forgot, and now asking today, on all of these things like storm drainage systems, water, sewer, frankly, could even be roads. I don't know. Do we have studies? Do we have something that says, you know, the average system or each model system lasts 50 years? And this is what maintenance it needs in that 50 years. And this is what you're going to spend during that 50 years, and then I'm making the 50 years out. And at 50 years it's going to have to get replaced. And like a projection that shows the maintenance of all of these. This is, it's akin to what the school system is finally moving towards, which is we own 80 buildings. and this is how long of roof lasts, and this is how long HVAC lasts, and there's no reason why we don't have modeled out routine maintenance, not necessarily a stabilization thing we were just talking about, or some new drainage to solve a problem. But the routine maintenance and replacement of what we have. So to answer the first question as far as, I think the first question, the first part of your question was about the standard asset life, for instance. So yes, I mean, the short answer is the right one. That is yes. I mean, you pipe different types of pipes with different materials and typically 50, 67 years would be the lifespan expected. Roads, you know, 20 to 30 years before resurfacing or maybe less. So we have these industry standards, but more to the point, what we are focused on is because of the broad, the diverse set of asset classes that this department has stewardship over, whether it's above ground, you know, rows, bridges, so on and so forth, or pipelines below ground, we are in the process of establishing an asset management program of the transfer of the transfer of the transfer of the transfer of the transfer of the transfer of the transfer of the transfer of the transfer of the transfer of the transfer of the transfer of the transfer of the transfer of the transfer new maintaining a particular asset, whatever that could be a pump, it could be a bridge or whether a wholesale replacement is required. So it's a slight shift in terms of how we're doing it. Now, that's not to say that we don't already assess the conditions of our assets. As I mentioned earlier, Ponds, we have every three year inspection cycle. Bridges are, was it every two years? Large bridges every four, small every two, right? So there are those frequencies of asset condition assessments that will then inform, you know, what level of engagement there would be in terms of maintenance or capital improvement. I mean it's almost a reserve analysis where it's like same store, nothing unusual happens, nothing new installed. Like over the next 30 years DPW is going to need $X a year on average to maintain the water system, the sewer system, the storm drain system, the road system, so that spending affordability can look out 20 years and you guys can look out 20 years. Otherwise, I mean, this isn't the stuff that people fill up the banicard room to scream about, right? Precisely. And I hope we've done a good job, hopefully we have. But this is the stuff that I feel like is easy to, when you need a little money, when you don't really want to, you can fall behind on this stuff, and nobody's going to scream about it. So I just, I hope we're maintaining that, I hope that budget pays attention to it and you guys are so we don't end up falling behind and maintaining what we have. Yes, I appreciate the question that is critical. It is top of mind for for all of us because to your point it's not necessarily a sexy thing to talk about as far as especially if it's buried and out of sight. Yep. sight. But we have a water and soil master plan for instance that we put together every four or five years. In fact, the next one should be submitted to the regulators here shortly. And that looks at where we are with our water and soil assets and what needs we'll have to make sure that they're still delivering the service that they need to deliver. Nobody's going to advocate for, none of the citizens are ever going to advocate for any of your stuff until they go to turn something on or flush something and it doesn't work. Except for Miss Rayby, we know when someday he was to come and run the wastewater department. So thanks. That. is we know when someday was to come and run the wastewater department. So thanks. That's just my question. And it relates to all these different classes of things. So thanks. Thank you. We got in response to a question. Attachment C, which was the impervious area of quidline crevidates for fiscal year 24. And that's I think where you're pulling your 392, Mr. Richmond. I was surprised, and I don't know why I didn't notice it. When we were going through the financial assurance plan that did pass last month, just as you said, that the vast majority of those impervious area equivalents is from street sweeping. I mean, would it be possible to actually meet the goal just by street sweeping? I'm not sure. At some point there's just so much street sweeping you can do. I think we'd, I don't know. Okay. And then in pervious area equivalent, if you eliminate one acre of impervious area like you know an asphalt parking lot that's not being used say by the district court house right now, does that translate one to one? Is that equal to one credit? Yep. I mean, or see where we put our own asphalt down, down park drive. I mean, this is just like what I see on a walk kind of thing. Like, do we ever actually target impervious area that is by all accounts unnecessary? Like, I don't know that we've gone out looking for impervious to get rid of, but I mean if it's out there we'll certainly look at it. I mean there's a lot of parking areas but everyone needs their parking so it's kind of tough to. I mean we're getting to roads next but you know I'm like why why why is it so wide? Why? If you eliminate a foot on either side of a traffic lane for a long distance, that's a lot of surface area. It's a lot of surface area. But if you're literally going to take a foot of pavement away, the construction cost, the cost per acre removed might not play out. It might be very. Oh, yeah. And I'm not saying remove it. But I'm saying, I noticed there's a tendency as we resurface the Rogots' wider and wider. And I think we should very deliberately avoid that. But I'm just saying, I mean, all of this strain, stabilization, whatever you wanna call it, Chesapeake Bay Foundation has been out there, at least it's engineers saying what we should be doing is literally eliminating upstream pavement that it's unnecessary. And I mean, I'm sure any of us could point to some number of things or even going to private owners and saying, what are we doing here? Can we take this out? To me, that seems like an avenue that we hadn't pursued. But I was really shocked at would have shocked at the, you know, the 237 impervious acre equivalents for street sweeping. The next one is a mere 62.27 for a stream stabilization. And then everything out, you know, like half that list is underpoint or under one. It just, I, maybe not chasing credits on stream stabilization, but chasing credits more strategically in terms of ecological value. I mean, I'm not used to your own question. And I think that green streets can help there. And it's in its infancy with us. I know Montgomery County has their own manual. We had the idea of let's put the manual together for Howard County. And I know that that was a year ago, maybe two years ago, an office of community sustainability and storm water had discussed it back then. But I think that that could be, that can be a place where it can start because there's definitely best management practices of our existing infrastructure that we can take a look at. So for sure, I mean my view is we should have done green streets with complete streets. That that was known. I mean we were behind when we passed complete streets and we tried to get it in language and that that didn't happen. I'll say yeah. I was just going to just add on to what Mark mentioned. It is definitely the administration's priority also to make sure that the green street program is not just a one-off project, but it's very comprehensive and incorporated into infrastructure development where we can implement it. Again, it's adding to the, if you're looking at it from a strong water management perspective, you have your gray infrastructure, our pipes, and what have you. This is just another tool that we can use to attenuate the flow, manage quantity as well as quality of water above ground. So for sure, I mean, I mean, I would hope it's highest priority, particularly in places like we are now. I mean, the cyber Hudson watershed is the disaster. The attachment C.I. reference, that's for fiscal year 24, I get it. That's the only fiscal year that's been completed. But we must have some guess as to fiscal year 25 and 26. There was, there were a couple of other comments in the right up that we got from auditors that say like that tri-annual list is being updated continuously, so there's not a formal prioritized list. I mean, you must have a list. Like, there was some documentation that it seemed to odd to me that we were looking at FY24 or there's not a list. So I don't know if we're still as an auditor team following up and going to pursue those, but I would like the most up-to-date information we have, even if it is going to be updated, you know, next year or in six months. I mean, that's what we're doing here. This is the snapshot in time. So I understand it changes, but I would like us to have the most up today in information. Yeah. I mean, what we'd like to report is what we'd report to MDE. So there's that consistency. Yeah, but we're not MDE. This isn't retrospective. Right. What I can say is that a number of the items on this list, including the street sweeping, is what's called an annual number. And as long as we maintain, you know, if we sweep the same amount of streets this year as next year, we're going to be somewhere around 237. And maybe because it's based on the tonnage of material that's picked up and gets sent to the landfill. So that two, somewhere in the 200 to 250 range is probably a good number as long as we maintain the street sweeping schedule that we have now. Okay, yeah, and that's true, but I would like to see what the other, you know, and I didn't, I will admit, as I was looking at this and was shocked by the 277 on the street sweeping, I didn't go back and look at the financial assurance plan and the documents submitted with that to see if I just missed that in those documents because they're should, I mean, those should kind of fit in next to one another. I'm just saying, and I'm sure, I mean, I looked at training to more carefully than others in a shocking admission to no one. But I'm sure there are other cases where our guys have asked for information if we want the most up-to-date stuff, understanding that it's going to change. That's what we're doing here. And it may be different than what you're giving to the state regulators because of the timing. But we're approving a budget going forward 18 months from now. So we would like to see whatever it is that's the most up today. Do you want to do you have more I have I mean I could talk about drainage till five o'clock tonight but I'm gonna do you want to do one more round? Well yeah my question actually kind of goes it's a it's about a road and drainage so should I? That's great streets. Well so so I was on I Regially Run Road, which is one of our newer roads. And it's actually really, really, it's the road to Gilford Park, but it drains the center, it's got these basins in the middle, and it is not what you do not like okay but not about the high school or the location or any of that but about the road that entire complex is designed as though we were like you know in 1850's west doing whatever we wanted with them like it's absolutely use of land ever. Yes well I would agree that we don't necessarily need 20 sprawling acres for a high school. Not ideal. Yes, if only we would change that approach. But we don't we don't control that. So I'm going to focus on what we can control. But in thinking about this road and in this discussion about credits, when you do projects like that, do they count for credits? When you're designing a road in that fashion, will that count towards your credits? If the drainage feature is required to provide treatment for the new impervious, that's part of the project. If they go over and above, if they retrofit an existing street to add some of these features, then we can take credit. We're coordinating with a dual on a rolling basis. Just whenever you do a project, let us know. Gotcha. We'll try to take as much credit as we can. But if you're adding the impervious and it's just managing what you've added then no but if you're kind of going above and beyond that and capturing more then it can it can be used for those purposes. So I'll also say too that I'm not familiar with the road but I believe that is a developer road and the design was I think that I think that road was us road how are county designed it I mean there's like 15 or the development of circling the school it I can't even yeah I can no one should ever send me to guilt for park high school and think I'm gonna be in a good mood. It's okay. I think the portion that you're talking about is the portion that the public works build. Okay. So the second portion of the, both answers are correct by the way. The portion that Mr. Deluca is talking about is the portion that was built by public schools and the initial portion up to the water tank or just beyond the water tank project was built by public works. Yeah, that part I like. And that is a portion I think the requirements were for us to meet the stone water management requirements. Okay. And part of that trying to do the all way of doing it is, I mean, you would send a lot of this drainage into large ponds, but now we have to do more linear along the roadway is where a lot of the storm drain requirements are needed. And part of those requirements is what I was looked at is a lot of wetlands adjacent to the roadway and trying to minimize impacts on the wetland area and then trying to find opportunities where we can build it is how the design came up came about. Okay yeah I just I was like oh this is different and then with the green streets that's really for your betuminous curb areas or is it for concrete urban gutter as well. I think I think one of the things that I actually was thinking about I know I think everybody's talking about green streets as a new project and things that we don't do. There is one just around the corner. Well, this one project that we did few years ago, like White Acre Road, for example, it was classified as a complete streets project. There's a lot of green streets elements that were incorporated as part of the design that is between Stevens Forest Road and Road and Baskot Ring Road. The project was completed a few years ago. Like behind the Village Center and the School of Rating. It is. So if you go take a look at it, the example there looks pretty similar to the New Jersey example. You may not have as many green elements. But when you go there, you look at it. There's a median that was incorporated with three trees. There's bioswales that were built in our microbiota tension areas that were built in as part of the bump-outs. So some of that stuff was already incorporated. And what we're trying to do between Bureau of Highways and Bureau of Engineering, we're trying to identify locations where we're planning to do road repaving. And if there's other capital projects looking for those opportunities to see where we can either eliminate some existing asphalt that is not required, we're not talking about linear, you know, taking a foot away. But what we're looking at is in the roadways that were built assuming that there would be a connection in the future, but those don't exist anymore. Do we need to keep them as an asphalt surface, or do we take the asphalt surface out, and put topsoil on it and put grass until such time when that connection is done, you'll already have a road graded for future construction. There are opportunities that we can identify that we can eliminate some impervious area in the near future. Thank you. I appreciate that explanation. Ms. Walsh's comments and questions combined with sort of that recent viewing really prompted that. So thank you. Ms. Yal, thanks, Mr. So thank you. Miss Yam, thanks Mr. Jaggerrup. Okay this is a more complicated question but so according to the budget book the source of funds for the capital project is the stormwater utility funding. Correct I just want to to make sure. No, we're talking about the Green Street Project, correct? For watershed protection fee, the watershed protection fee. It's the stormwater utility fund that, where we get this money. Correct. Okay. Thank you, Mark. Which was raised last year, as we all know. And well, there's a request to raise it again. Not this one. This is a different one. It's a different one, different one. Yeah. The operating expenses salaries listed in the cash flow model for the watershed protection fee increased by 2.6 million between 2024 when it was 5.7 million and 2025 then now listed at 8.33 million Can you explain the increase in operating expense? Did I misread it you look confused Mark? So did I miss read it? I donread it? I don't know. I'm just trying to figure this out because it's in this odd place, which is where we put operating in capital into this fund. So and when then we pretend like it's capital or something, but it's really both. So I guess this is a good time. You look like you might be able to explain it. Come on, Mark. Can anybody explain it? Well, I was gonna say that the fund is really managed by, not necessarily managed by us in stormwater or Bureau of Environmental Services, but it's something that is managed by the Office of Budget and us and, you know, conference with us. There are others that are paid out of the fund and, for example, highways has a portion and So does OCS. Now, not large portions, a lot, you know, the lion's share of the money is in storm water, but it's not necessarily to, it's not necessarily salaries or any of those things. I don't believe that any of Mark's inspectors, actually in the fund, maybe just a few of the engineers are being paid out of the fund. Properly, not in the fund, okay. So the operating costs total, I really have to, I think budget might be able to answer a little bit better, but I think that it would, you know, if we had something maybe three or a point of board, if Holly is on the line, where is Holly's on? board if Holly is on yeah or Mr. here will you are we gonna talk about that I just had it in front of me I guess we have a utility fund as part of a different operating or separate conversation we do also talk about the cash flows and the operating I believe the cash flows are prepared by finance and the budget office. We do have Mr. Heale on. No, that's not my question. My question is, isn't there a future work session where we will talk about operating costs of either highways or office of community sustainability and or the input and output of a given dedicated fund? Yes, we do have discussions of fund statements during the operating work session. Okay, so I guess then people will come back for that. I think you should put that in the portal. I did. You're saying there's a big increase in personnel. Like we raised the rates and always spent that on with additional personnel. That's what I heard from your question. And now there's a cash increase in personnel like we raise the raise and always spent that on was additional personnel that's what I heard from your question and now there's a cash flow model that shows it going from a surplus of 12.3 million in 2025 to 24.3 million in 2030 wait I'm sorry it's going up or going down it's going way up okay so let's hire a lot more people no or do a log or green street projects or something if we're going to have all this extra money. Okay. So I do believe that can be explained because I'm familiar with the way that the cash flow models work. And if you're looking at the 2030 or if you're looking at 2035, you may see surpluses. And that's the idea is to carry the surpluses. They're paying the debt service of the bonds that are, and they have to finance requires that we project out 20 years. But I can leave it to them to explain. OK, that's great. And my last question was about Fort Mead, because I don't know that I ever focused on that before. We're doing a project with Inurondo County or with the Army in Fort Mead and we're making money from it. It looks like it is a survey. Or we pained them. I couldn't know. I was trying to figure it out. Money's coming in not going out. That's what I thought. It looked good. So a number of years ago the administration worked with the higher-ups at Fort Mead to have a what's called an IxA intergovernmental service agreement. But basically it allows Fort Mead to utilize our existing contracts, and in particular, they are working with storm water for pond and stream work. And it allows them to access our contractors and our consultants to do work. We have the right to say we're busy and we can't get to this. So it's not like we're both totally beholden to them. But it gives our consultants and our contractors additional work. It's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it to this so it's not like we're totally beholden to them. But it gives our consultants and our contractors additional work. It's a pass-through. We pay the consultants and contractors. We send an invoice to Fort Mead and then we get paid. We add a certain amount of management time for each project. And that stays with us to date, I think it's about 180,000. We did the same thing. Yeah, that's what it looked like, 190, yeah. And we're probably on the 12th or 13th task for the Army or for Fort Meade. They're very happy with it because they're getting local experience. People that know how to deal with MDN. That's nice. The fact that it's in Anne Arundel County, that that was a question I had in day one, but all their permitting goes through the state, not through Anne Arundel County. So that doesn't really, they just wanted the best. Yeah, and that's what they got. Okay, that's what I was gonna say. That's why we got the yes. And what kinds of product can we count any of this towards our storm? I'm like, oh yeah, that's right. Yeah, actually the Army has an NPDS permit and they're using some of the projects for their credit. Oh, see? Yeah. Mr. Young, would you have more questions under an age. Negative. Mr. Rigby. What now? I'm ready for that. All right. I do have a more question and that is the T-1180. Is that what a D-1180? In our write-up I guess I wasn't really paying attention to that. And I'll write up there, there's some discussion about, um, wait, sorry, let me just find it so I'm not mistating it. Oh, I'm in Reckon Park this way. Man and hand drive and Tyber. Man and drive and drive. Thank you all. I'm going to thank them for their really good answers to the questions this year. I just felt like it was I got a lot of good information this year from you all so I appreciate that. Okay, yeah, that's all. Manhand drive and cyber falls drive. It says a stormwater management issues. What what stormwater management issues? This is an area for you guys that's immediately upstream of the T1 pond, isn't it? The answer is yes. This was one of the assessment areas in the watershed study. So in terms of the specific details, I don't, I don't have that of top of my head right now. Okay. But we can. I'll follow up with you. Okay. Here's my concern. Is, well, A, it's in my watershed. And it's in the watershed where we're spending literally like what a gazillion dollars now on on stormwater projects. And my guess is, I don't know and we'll find out when we talk after the fact is Tiber Falls Drive is a relatively new development. Manahend Drive is not. But Tiber Falls Drive I'm guessing we're going to find is what are these places where we did quantity and not quality. And when we traded among drainage areas among that development. So even though this pond at the bottom, I'll say it the other way, this pond at the top is being credited for controlling more water than it could possibly even receive given that it's at the top than this pond at the bottom of the same development. I mean, I've knocked doors in that development. I've walked in those driveways in the back. That is a development problem. That is a DPC problem in allowing those kinds of calculations in those drainage basins to advance as though it adequately controls water. And that's going to show up in our D projects. I'm saying that same as you're talking about stream stabilization, it's getting too close to someone's deck. Shouldn't be that close. Shouldn't be encroaching into a stream buffer like we've allowed it to do. And we saw that on the walk at Mayfield's Woods behind the elementary school. Like that's why we did that stream stabilization project because these cul-de-sacs in the townhomes on them are coming right into that stream bed. Like there has to be a recognition I think. And I probably see something like this every time, right? And I don't want to wait for the state, but the county is not going to do it unless we do it. If we don't control quality, and if DPC doesn't actually make any of these new developments adhere to the laws, this drainage thing, that's all we're ever going to do. We're just going to be chasing these developments that didn't adequately control that aren't in that, you know, like you're giving credit for in the calculation of whether or not we have to control that additional water. We, every time we break ground on a new development project, we are in a deficit. We are creating more of a whole because there is no other than perhaps the new standards in the type of water should standard there is no Reasonable claim that we are controlling the volume of water that will Shed off that property as a result, right? It's not we can't say that Just to specifically the project the our project is like I mentioned is one of the assessment areas So it captures the runoff of man and drive I've don't want a managing division has a project in the area so we've been coordinating our works to make sure they align okay but like I said if you need to do yeah oh no yeah I had no idea that there was I mean I'm curious to see because it's got to be right upstream of I mean it's literally got to be right upstream of the T1 pond a landmast we're trying to get the county to acquire because why does it make sense to chop that up and put in like more driveways there and then the end of Tyberfal's drive? Like, what are we doing? Like, we spent all this money at the bottom of the hill to rebuild. We spent all this money somewhere between the top and the bottom to pretend like we're controlling it and everything else else just goes like gangbusters as those that there's not a problem. And even in my watershed, in the most vulnerable watershed where we have the most stringent standards, we're going to keep digging ourselves in a hole. And everywhere else, you're automatically at a deficit. These are just going to show up as deep projects forever and ever until we get a handle on it. I can shed a little bit more light on it, maybe not all the facts. But we were called out, the people that lived off of tyber foals were complaining that water was coming through the woods and into their backyard. So we went out, just man of hand and tyber foals is lower. So we went out and assessed the area. And from our project was primarily to divert some of the water that was running through the woods, through berms, through a non-structural manner towards the stream where it was meant to go. We were working with a Dull's group back behind on the down slope of Manahan. There's a storm drain system, and I think it's primarily a ditch. Water comes out of a pipe, goes through a ditch sideways, and it discharges. The ditch is filled in with sediment, and the outfall from the storm drains are causing erosion in the channel itself. So Abdul's group is handling the upper area to be more efficient with the drainage non-erosive. We were looking at a quick fix for the neighbors who were getting water and sediment into their backyards. So that's the joint project, but that's probably a little bit more of the history of why it's getting looked at. That helps. Okay. Is there any possibility that Dorsey's Ridge is contributing to this problem? I do not know. Because as my colleagues may recall, there's presently a bill before them that says no more waivers in that watershed for these kinds of reasons. Torsese Ridge is upstream of this location as well. And again, we are not doing what we say we do. And as again, no one is as proud as to here. I think TPC is a big part of the problem, but it's not great. It's not great. All right, you want to leave drainage? Is everyone good? Don't move to drainage. OK. Do you want to do lunch now or do you want to do roads? Let's do your thing. Let's do roads. OK, then let's do roads. Let's do roads. OK. No, I want Chris to stay all day. There's no new road construction. Well, but then he have to stay for traffic in sidewalk, right? Yeah, I don't know. Right? Chris isn't getting out of here. Who's here for like, I know you're off the bridge. I think we get rid of marks, right? Mark's get to go home. Mark's get to go. Well, you know what I mean. Get out of here. Thank you. Thank you both, Mark Zaluka and Mark Richmond. All right. Now that I want to give really, no, just trying to look out please, so you don't have to say this freezing cold cold cold cold. OK, so five hours. And I know your bridges, but you're also then everything else is going to be outside for free. I thought you were special projects. I don't know what anyone is. Transportation and special projects. Oh, gosh. And dance. OK. OK. Well, I feel like you have the right people in the right places. So OK. You want to start us off? This would be? So just on the Snowden, I just want to start with Snow and river and broken land. Because it's such an easy project. So we still need land acquisition for that. Is that correct? That is correct. And are we still also pursuing just in that area? We are also still pursuing the land acquisition from KFC. So not as part of that project. So J47 is specifically the intersection of Brooklyn and the Sonoran Ruve Parkway. And it's the east leg of Sonoran Ruve Parkway. It doesn't include the west leg. So it's in front of the AAA. Right. There's like a little bump out that's going to be removed as part of that project. So we're progressing towards 90% design. And as part of that we're also developing the plants. So there's far acquisitions that we're going to need. We have been in contact with the property owners. So we're hoping that we won't have issues, but that process is yet to be initiated. OK. Great. Um, that will stick to one question. Thank you. Miss Young? Warm Road Construction Road Construction, right? Yes. Okay, so the only road construction project actually in district four was the Santa Road improvements? Yes. So, I know Ms. Walshie just talked about making road skinnier, but I also know that Ms. Rigby always likes to talk about bicycling. So I just want to say here's where these two things marry because the Santa Road project is going to have to increase the amount of pavement on either side of the road in order to make room for a bicycle lane. So that and it's a very, I'm sure that you know Santa Road, Mr. Rikby. It's a very narrow windy Yeah, very narrow windy not so great road for bicycles to be riding on if cars are riding on them too I believe someone died over there. There's a ghost bike. That's awesome. That's too bad. I didn't know about that. Yeah so so I see that Let's see how much has been spent look like there was around three 300,000 dollars has been spent so far Almost 400,000 420 or so has been spent so far on design? Yes. Is the project going to get done or is it all just going to be designed? I mean, I hope it will get done. So the original project, I believe the road was recently resurfaced. Right, which wouldn't that have been the right time to have also done the project. So I know as part of the resurfacing project, bike lanes were added where there was sufficient payment with. So the original project was widening the roadway to accommodate just a bike lane. So based on the complete streets manual update, we are looking at potentially maybe looking at shared use path that could be added instead. So I saw that in this project. So the shared use path then would be even wider so that people could walk up the street too. Is that the point? So that was the idea behind it. That's what I wanted to take a look at that. So it would be accommodating bicyclists and pedestrians. OK, that would be great. I mean, as long as we're putting more in pervious surface there, we might as well make sure that human beings who are on their feet, as well as on a bike, can use it. Yeah. And there are a lot of people at APL. I don't know how many of them would walk out there, but maybe some. Okay. So when do you think that will... And there are a lot of people at APL. I don't know how many of them would walk out there, but maybe some. Okay. So when do you think that will be moving forward? Because I do every once in a while get inquiries about this. So we are active in design now. So like I said, we're looking at the shared use path option as a possibility. If we do proceed with that, then we'll progress with the design. I'm not sure what we have in the schedule or when we have the funding requested, but. It looks like nothing. Looks like nothing has been requested. And that was the reason behind it, because like I said, we're not sure which way we're going to move forward if it's a shared use pad. Like I said, we need to come up with how much that would cost. What it would it would cost. And before we proceed. And what the impacts would be. Okay, mine. So we're at that point now where we're trying to figure that out before we figure out the next step. All right. My last question on this project then is, do you think there will also be a lot of issues with property acquisition? If we do, the shared use path. That's so yet to be determined. So, like I said, once we have the concept finalized, then we'll know pretty much what the impacts are, what the cost is going to be, and I guess what the next steps are. Just so that you know, and I imagine all the council members do this now, probably didn't do it the year but now when we drive up roads we look to our right and we're and our left and we think oh they're going to have a problem with land acquisition on this one. Every time I drive up Santa Road I'm like oh man this is going to be a problem place for land acquisition so I don't know I hope you successful. I think it would be great to have a multi-use pathway there. I know there are actually a number of people who live in the communities as you're going. Away from APL, who have family members and wheelchairs. And they have asked us about putting in sidewalks along Santa road. So the shared use pathway would be great for some of those families. So I'm glad that you're thinking about it. But I don't have any more questions. Mr. Youngman doesn't have questions. Dr. Jones will be joining us after lunch. Do you have any more? Wait, did I skip myself again? Damn myself. Okay. I have more than one question, but my first question is there are, well there are three J row construction projects that haven't been spent down in more than three years or something. So we have the summary of those as part of our audit or write-up. The two biggest ones is J423. J4237, Maryland 175, Oakland Mills Road Intersection, and J4249, fiscal year 2017, Maryland 100, Maryland 103 And the combination of those two gets you to way more than half of all of the projects with no expenditures for three years. What's going on there? And you know, we don't need that money there anymore, do we? So the Maryland 175 project, the bridge over 175 is the one that connects both sides of land air park. Yeah So the reason why we haven't moved forward is we're still coordinating with wrecking park in terms of I guess the timeline Of that project and when we need to move forward Because no Never that well the answer to that is never at least next two years. But I mean, it's not in Rick and Parks plan right now, is it? I mean, we just heard from them and they had phase three and there is a bridge, but it's a little pretty wood one over a tiny waterway. Independent of that, though, I thought the law was pretty clear, which is if you don't spend it in three years, like it goes back. I don't even think that it's discretionary. I think it has been because we just allow it to, but that's what it's for. It's this bridge that some people hate a lot. And that isn't in any near term. I think that was a John Bird thing. I don't know. Hold. What? I wouldn't say a home. It's a place. OK. That one's going nowhere. OK. That's good to know. And what about the other one? Or what? I'm sorry. It's only day two. Why don't we want people to be able to cross 175? You guys have to stop building roads. Like, what? Why can't I just... That's not a car road, right? That's not a car bridge. It's a person bridge. Oh, it's both. Yes. Okay, well, now I'm with the haters too. Just know. Okay, right after Guildford Park are the roads around Blandere Park, like what were we doing? It looks like a spiral graph. Make it stop. Okay. All right. I mean, we're leaving that. We're never talking about that again. Literally. Literally never again. But what about the 4249, the Maryland 100 at Maryland 103? Is that not? No, that's not my intersection. Yes. So for that particular project, there's some coordination with the state. That project was supposed to be partially state funded. Yes. So obviously there's state funding issues. So that's why we haven't moved forward beyond the 30% in middle of that project. Okay. Maryland 100. So that's still in planning or something? So a 30% design. 30% design. 30% design and it has been on hold. Okay, but same thing. I'm going to look and see what that number means in my chart. Number two means it's reported as having no years, no three years with no expense since 23. So now we're six years without expense. I mean, yeah, I don't, this is a question more for a budget and and Dr. Sun but they shouldn't be in here and maybe auditors and whoever's helping us do this can verify what the I'm looking at you, Ms. Herred. What the code is or what the what this rule is if it's discretionary or not but if if the rule says Office of Law then get it out of the budget book shouldn't we get it out of the budget book? I'll need to look at the specific project. I mean, there is a charter provision that details when funds lapse to the general. Okay. Okay. All right. So am I the only other one with a question? Are you want to go? Oh, go ahead. Yeah. No, I just wanted to check on the Oklahoma Mills road acquisitions and specifically the FCC parcel because if we could acquire the whole thing, that would be even better since there's this potential fire sale on government owned properties. I don't know if that's on the list, but I do just want to put that pitch out there because I know we need it for this sidewalk on Unoklynville's Road, but it really is this key parcel that connects to Gateway and around the school. And it really is this last thing. So if the FCC, Emily, we're looking at you. If the FCC will, we'll give it. I mean, it could be a use of Project Open Space Funds, little as they may be, but it really is this opportunity, especially in that area, which is pre-Columbia,-ride-of-way. And I also just want to highlight my appreciation on that, because I know that Gilford Road and Oakland Mills Road are not easy roads for you guys to do projects on. They take four to two, they take patients, they take determination, but you guys have really worked to, you know, we got the intersection and that was done and now we're moving on to these other parts. So I was just really glad to see it and not just, like as a line, but as actual details that things are actually happening. So, I appreciate it on that one. And then Snowden River, widening. Please can we remove widening from it? I think that there's been a lot of discussion about the improvements that are needed. I know that widening is potentially so far off that we should not have it in there. That would be my request, would be to remove widening from the title. And Ms. Walsh would enjoy that as well, I believe. Right, because there's trade-offs, right? And we recognize that the more people we have moving in ways that don't use internal combustion engines, the better for our community. Take these people off the road and me and Ms. Walsh will be in the bike lanes and Mr. Youngman and Ms. Youngcan travel freely. We will be in our cars wondering why that little, why that nice sized road is now skinnier than it was before. So you drive this beat. Oh good. Here comes Mr. Youngman thank goodness. It's okay. You guys were two to two. Uh-huh. Okay. I just went. I was. Yes. All right. I'm good. Thank you. Okay. I'm going to combine. Well, actually I still have two more questions left. But I'm going to combine one. The Elkridge Mainstream improvements, it will just follow up with you guys. I'm not even sure what that is anymore. But then there were two other of our write-up set, implicated Rogers, right here at 40. I think one is on 40, and that's the stuff that was done around the write-aid, is that right? It's actually on 40, OK, I see Emily shaking her head, yes. And then the other one says that there's a safety and operation study for Rogers Avenue North of US 40. What is that all about? And yes, please. So there's a study that was completed or worked on from, so we have a project, the J-project that's to work east. And then on the north side, we did a traffic study to look at, I know there's some deficient areas. So the traffic study looked at what sort of short term and long term improvements could be put in place to address those issues. Okay, perfect. Because yes, the one between 40 and here almost is, I think, in a K. But in general, Rogers is really wide. I mean, the roadway itself, shoulders plus travel, vehicular travel lanes are wide. The speed limit does not match up to what you can physically do on those roads, and so people take advantage. There have been really serious accidents on the north side of 40, but that's also how you get to Mount Heverin High School. And there are lots of kids who live on the way who could get themselves in a safe way to Mount Heverin High School if we may better use of that existing asphalt surface area. So I hope that, again, this notion of adding users to existing surface area and agreeing streets implementation that that's all involved. But I agree just around here, you have so many overwides streets that could be repurposed in ways that even a check gone on a weekend might demonstrate. But those were my only last two questions on road construction. I think that means that the council has concluded their questions on that J section. Should we take a break now, Mr. Anne? Yes. I'm saying yes. Okay. And how far break is that? Will we allow it? We're medium on time. OK. Come make a one. One? OK. Yes. OK. One. Yes. Thank you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I We have. Ms. Respiss, are you in the control room? We have four left. Thank you. We have four left. Depending on where you are. So go right now. We're good. Okay. Welcome back. We are resuming our work session with CPW and we are on the subjects. First of road resurfacing followed by bridge. Bridges, sidewalk and traffic. Mr. B, do you want to kick us off on road resurfacing? I just wanted to talk about asphalt costs and sort of see where we are in the up and down of it all Since I think that was like the one of the one that we sort of left off from earlier Well, I think you know prices go up and down Depending on when the fuel prices go up asphalt prices go also go up And we currently each month I think there's a price index that we all follow. Made in asphalt institute puts a price index, and that's the price that is used as a basis for us to determine what the costs that we pay are vendors. So all of our requirements contractors, other unit prices are fixed, except for the asphalt cost. They give us a price on the asphalt cost at the time that they put the bid in. And because the contracts are sometimes 4 or 5, 6 years long, they didn't want to commit to something even prior to this. Even during COVID it was the same issue. COVID it was kind of like interesting. you know fuel prices went up but then they can know as we were coming off of COVID fuel prices dropped significantly and asphalt prices were a lot cheaper at the time. Right now the price index is about $620 a tonne for a liquid asphalt and that's what we use as their basis. You know, from my time at the county, I've seen the prices in the upper 300 range to close to $800 range. So that's the difference as we see on a given year. When we have prices that are higher, we tend to see if we can slow things down a little bit, in that we can advance when prices are low. But it's extremely hard for us to time it right all the time. So when we make our projections, we actually based it based on what the price that month is. But we also keep an eye for any fluctuations that we anticipate. And when those things happen, typically looking at spring months when we are trying to pay things will be a certain way. And as we go into the summer months, automatically prices go up. So we keep an eye on a lot of that stuff as we move through the months in a year. Yeah. Ms. Yann. The law wasn't going to ask any questions, but now, is there a place where we can store asphalt? Is that possible so that you can buy it when it's cheaper? No. Okay. No. No, it has to come with a certain temperature from the plant. Oh. And the ones it's made temperature is actually less than what we want it to be. We actually, our inspectors decline it and then send it back because if it's too cold, we can't lay down and roll it to the density that we want the road to be. So that's one of the things that the inspectors are checking as that's what is coming off the truck. So those are type of discussions that we normally have, how many trucks we need to have. So that the trucks are not just sitting there and waiting with the asphalt in them, especially Lincoln cold months, summer, it's fine. You know, towards the end of the season in November. That's where they jack up the prices. Well, towards the end of the season, they can November, for example. If the temperatures are cold and we don't want asphalt to just sit in the truck for too long, so we wanted to get into a truck, get a plant, get to the job site, get into a paving machine and roll it. So that duration, we try to keep it as tight as we can. OK, then I did have one question. There's a tentative across. That's two questions now. Okay. That was the follow. We're moving backwards. I know. tight as we can. Okay, then I did have one question. There's a tentative across. That's two questions. That was a follow-up. We're moving backwards. I know. There is a 2020, oh that's, I just noticed FY25. So this was what you completed in FY25, the list that you completed, But it's just tentative. I think the list itself, we'll take a look at it, but the ones that are already completed, this active construction that is happening now. So the list, if it says completed, or if it says they can plan, the plan might actually be happening now, is probably the reason why it still says tentative, but we can take it off the tentative. Okay, I just, and do we have a 26 list of everything? We will submit that list to you. We actually have a list of what we're trying to do is trying to determine when we do, when we come up with with a paving list we actually coordinate with every other bureau within public works to make sure that there's no conflicts with other projects that we currently have and we also look at other features along the roadway they could be an underground stone brain pipe that needs to be repaired and when those things need to happen we make sure that we can can actually complete those tasks prior to repaying happen. So our inspectors are out now checking the tentative list. But once we finalize that, we'll be able to give you a list that is close to being a list for FI-26. We should have that in the next couple of weeks. Okay, that's great because I love to put that for my district in my newsletter. Look everybody, you're getting resurfaced roads aren't you happy? Yes. We'll definitely share that once we have it ready. Thanks. Mr. Yaman. No questions. Me. That was actually my only question is we We did these supplements I think this morning, but in the Right-ups that we had prior to that there was a lot of as of April 15th we don't have these. So I would just ask that we continue to pursue what we don't have and have the most up-to-date stuff. Otherwise I just had a comment which is being closely related to someone who lives on a road that was resurfaced in the last fiscal year on Bethany Lane and is a retired transportation engineer who himself has built a lot of roads. He was very impressed with quality control and what was done there. So I promised I would pass that along to you. Thank you. Does that mean we're done? What? There's a lot of residents in the county that notice these things. I mean, occasionally I get these things where people will notice something special about how we do things. And credit goes to staff that are working on some of that stuff. So thank you for passing that information on. You probably don't always get the bad news, but this particular person usually has a lot of bad news So it was He was saying something nice at all But no he was he was definitely watching very critically and had nothing to complain about and had only good good things to say so that's good to know You may not ask it. I'm kidding. Go ahead. Well, it kind of relates to just some of the things in the news about worker safety. And I've seen in your operating budget, we can discuss it then, your safety plan. But the thinking about how you guys work with the contractors, we have some really, really hot days. I know that some businesses, their employee safety is a real high priority to them and other businesses. It is not as high a priority. So I'm just wondering what safeguards and supports we provide when we're working with our contractors. Just the road resurfacing in particular, maybe think of it because I often see them out in the summer and it's a really hot time to be out doing work. Yeah, I'm glad you're actually bringing this question up. So there is a change in law now, the occupational safety and health. So now it requires us to have certain days where the heat index crosses a certain limit for us to give employees breaks. and we actually had conversations with our paving contractors, not only with county staff, but also with contractors and all contractors that also wear this because this is a new motion requirement that is coming up. All the paving contractors are expecting that they will be inspectors out on job sites looking at these things. We normally make sure that all of our staff already have enough liquids and for the county staff on highway side, their work hours from 6.30 to 3 o'clock. So when it's getting towards the really hottest part of the day, their work day is already over. And we also pay attention to what the weather forecast is for each day. And we try to plan jobs. So we won't plan like a really hot asphalt job on a hottest day of the month. If we have other tasks that we can look at, try to do for those days, we try to accommodate that. If we do have to do for whatever the reason might be, it could be an emergency work that we have to complete, we add additional staff and then try to give staff more breaks and also make sure that they have a cool water supply when they're on job sites. So. Thank you, thank you for that. And I think especially the Baltimore Public Works employee, I mean, it's just really heartbreaking to hear and I'm really glad that we're taking different steps. So thank you. Thank you. Are we we're departing road resurfacing and moving into bridges? Okay, is he on? No, no. I think you guys did a great job of answering all my bridge questions through the portal. I appreciate that. I learned some good interesting information. I had no idea we had so many shared bridges. Are we, okay, I guess this is one question. Are we forced to, how do we decide when we help pay for these bridges and how much, we're much smaller county than Montgomery County? So I hope they pay three quarters and we only pay a quarter. Is that how it works? No. It's not 50.50. It's not fair. I'm trying to get money for you guys. We get credit for the for need stuff. We shouldn't have to pay fully for the bridges. Okay. How does it work? It's 55. Okay. All right. And that one bridge it looks like we're going to be doing. That's a complicated, that's the one in over the dam. Brighten dam bridge. That's a kind of a complicated bridge, isn't it? I mean, it is. It is? It is on a dam. It is. So, that project is scheduled to go to construction this summer. And that's actually, that project, the cost share is actually one third. So, WSSC is also in that area. So, the cost share is third between WSSC. Okay. coming in Howard County. Yeah. So what are we paying for that shared? That one third. That would be a amount. You don't have to look it up. OK. If you knew it off hand, that was fine. That's all. I have no other questions. Mr. Arman. No questions. Excellent. Based on the name of this section, I would have thought I would have no questions, but given the very lovely write-up that we got from our auditor's group, I do have some mostly all pertaining to what looks like to be retaining wall issues in, you know, very bottom of the hill, downtown Elkett City. That's one question. And then the other one, and I guess I'll'll start there is this notion of letters of concern that were received And projects that result in both fiscal year 24 and now 25 Can you please give us some more information about I don't mean what is I don't know what a letter of concern is or who it comes from but what's involved there? so typically Structures get inspected so large structures every two years small structures every four years and depending on the condition of the structure is getting inspected, so large structures every two years, small structures every four years, and depending on the condition of the structure, the frequency could be less than that. So, once the structure gets inspected, if there's some major issues in terms of repairs, they need to be made right away. So there's typically something called better of concern. They get submitted to us from the inspectors. And so that means basically like we have to address it pretty soon. So it's not something they can wait years. Is it our local? Is it our county inspectors? So is it a state? It's a combination. So we have a small structure inspection team. We also use consulting forces to inspect our structures. So you could come from either one. Okay, but it's all county driven It's not Someone from the state of Maryland. Yes, they're Conor okay, okay Okay, and so what like what is the project that remains to be done from the fiscal 24 list sure so we had a I can pull it up quickly. I have a list. So we had three letter of concerns previously and two of them are scheduled to go to construction. This year, the summer to concerns And then they were on I don't have the so one is on Maryman Street and the other one is on Frederick Road Okay, so are that those are also kind of in or around Old Ellicott City? I don't believe so Like I said, I don't know the exact location. I just have the structure number. I mean, Maryman is definitely old delicacy. Yeah. And I mean, depending where you are on Frederick, that is also old delicacy. So yeah, can we, I don't, I mean, we have like a very long list for the 3857, but we didn't really get a listing of, or any detail. I mean, there's 1,000 projects listed in the actual budget book, but in terms of identifying, I mean, I think we even internally counsel staff know maybe what these projects are, because we know there are two of them and two have come forward. I would just like more detail for 3853. And then in 385O, we have a statement that the Ellicott City's stream wall is scheduled to begin in May of this year? Yes It's not the one down by the parking lot. I think all the retaining walls in the Ellicott City all the flood walls Yeah, they were previously inspected. I believe in 2021 So we're doing the next round of inspection for those walls. Okay, that's just inspections. There's nothing wrong with them right now. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with them. It's just inspections. Okay, good answer. I don't know yet. Well, I guess it's true. And so then, then, I'm not, right? Nobody else has any other questions, so I'm just going to blow through these. Then the last one I have is 3862, once again, this courthouse drive, slope repair, hill straight retaining wall. And it says we're waiting on a roadside tree permit by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Was there a pre-construction meeting or anything for that or what was going on there? We haven't had a pre-construction meeting. The goal is to get this project to construction, probably this summer. So to address, like you said, the slope stabilization, stabilize the slope there. So like I said, the summer is the plan. The design plans are complete, but the construction has started here. What is destabilizing the slope? Stabilizing the slope. So I think there's some slope failure. Yeah, no, I'm asking what's causing that It the slope is very steep at that location. It's pretty much a one-to-one if not steeper So like I said this project would address that Okay, I feel like this is replacing a project that used to be in here that Jim Irvin took out is that possible There were two courthouse drive projects for drainage, I think they used to be under. One was completed and was very close to where those courthouse apartments are now. In fact, my claim was that it actually was on the land of courthouse apartments. And that was stripped, you know, just cleared, edge to edge, and a drop pipe was put in, and then outfall at the bottom of the slope and then put in these baby stick trees that maybe when I have grandchildren will look like it did when when the clearing started. It might be right these are drainage problems from upstream so my preference would be that we actually address the point source of the water that I think is causing the erosion of the sea slope, right? Rather than clear even more the downstream portion of the stream that's already been damaged. Again, can follow up with you. I had no idea. I think, right? I mean, that was Jim Irvin error that I've been like, what are you doing? Stop it. Lots of not-pretty pictures on social media. I can raise a stink about that because it is painful to behold, especially if we don't address the upstream cause. Like, what are we doing? So that's my word. I don't know if that's what that is. I just, in a very lazy way, looked at this the first time last night. It's hot and panicked. But the same thing with Hill Street, this is all upstream water I think we're dealing with, just like we talked about in drainage. I'd really rather not fortify the bottom of the hill and let the problem remain at the top. I'd rather we look at the whole issue and solve the problem versus put a fix at the bottom that, you know, now requires maintenance and could get worse if we clear something else upstream from it. Like, I just worry, it's not a coincidence. Again, all these projects are in Old Ellicott City. Like, this is where we do the most time. So, we'll follow up with you on those two. But I normally would have been like Henry Chan. That looks okay. Yeah, great. Caramel. Okay, great. Put it in the right up. It's all these retaining walls in, you know, just on the street. And I don't know if, I mean, I hope that's the right way to fix the problem, but I'm not wrong. Sure it is. Okay. the right way to fix the problem, but I'm not. We'll show her this. Okay, are we done with bridges? All right, well, you let me know if Dr. Jones joins us because otherwise, I think everyone here is inclined to get out of here, so we will move on to sidewalking curves. I'm guessing you have questions on sidewalking curves. Yes, okay. Thank you, Mr. Dan. Okay. We are joined by Office of Transportation, Trey Diggerson and Chrissy Toff. Welcome. Welcome. I just, I guess I'll start off with the Gilford Road Multicuse path because why not start in a super complicated project. So where are we now and what is left to be done and cleared out before we can all walk along Gilford and not in the roadway. So that project obviously is three phases. Phase two is like the intersection project at Volmerhausen, where sidewalk was added. So we're currently in design for phase one and phase three. So phase one basically starts at US one and goes towards Winter Winter Brook Lane. That project previously went up to 30% design and it proposed sidewalk and it pretty much kept the existing pavement edge at the current location. And then that one has significant land acquisitions that we needed. So we had a public meeting not a lot of involvement. We reshotted our property. But with the complete streets manual update, they kind of gave us a little bit more tools in the toolbox in terms of lane widths and things of that nature. So we're going to get that. Because that lane widths meeting was two hours long. Chris remembers it. Both Chris's remember it. So that project is progressing towards 60% design. And then we'll have a public meeting afterwards. With the revised design, we're thinking we're going to have less land acquisitions needed. So we won't need the drainage. There's a gentleman who has three holly trees and his mother-in-law lives next door Will this will the new design require that property or it would not so the drainage is actually on the opposite side? Yeah, so that was I just not like if you're Yeah, we wouldn't because that's part of the drainage project. We're actually widening the roadway So the original intent was to have wider lanes so bikes and pets could share but that's not recommended in the current design. So we're looking at more of a shared use pet option for that one. And then the phase three project is progressing towards 60% design. We do have some land efforts in these for that one. We have a technical issue. If we can just pause for just one moment, I'm sorry. The room dropped from WebEx. So anybody on Web may or may not be original yeah so. This meeting is being recorded. Let's start from the beginning. No. So it's out of 30. It's progressing towards 60. Towards 60. And then we're hoping to start face construction for that project in fiscal year 26 for phase three. Okay, that's what it's going to ask for phase three. Which basically goes from Oakland Mills up to the improvements they were put in as part of the intersection project. And then which phase would the sort of from Gilleford Park Mission Road to Winterbrook be in? So that's also, that's part of phase three. Okay. So when we phase the project, we haven't made that determination yet. When we phase the project, that could be potentially a phase that we move forward with. And on the other side, the other phase portion could be from Mission Road all the way up to Oakland Mills. Okay. Awesome. And again, I just really want to thank you guys because these are not easy roads to work on. You've got to get every little piece and it's tough. So thank you. Thanks for that update. Ms. Young. Debbie, you need to put on your mic. Whoops. There were three., well I have one general question about school route pathways and then two specifics about school route pathways. So the school system reduced the walk zones and did that change eliminate the need for any ongoing or planned projects. They shrunk the walk zones again a little bit particularly or yes they shrunk them so that some of the particularly the high school students I think they brought it back to 1.5 miles which was good because almost all the kids in my district in in Columbia were impacted by those expanded walk zones. I'm going to Chris give a little more detail about that. So yeah, the reduction that's coming in the next school year will not have much impact on our K-35. We've always been focused on projects that are closer to the schools. To be honest, you know, that's always there's plenty of improvements that can be made at plenty of our schools close to the schools. So those kind of further reaching distances that they had for a couple years were not as much of a focus for improvements and the improvements are working on now. So it didn't change. Okay. Then there's there were two questions I had about projects that looked, I just don't quite understand them. And one was the $50,000 sidewalk along Stevens Road from Hammons Overlook to Hope Baptist. And I was wondering what school that connects to. Do you know? It looks like you might even be able to visualize it. I'm visualizing. I'll try my little school. It's the middle school that's on Gorman Road on the north end of Gorman Road there. OK. So it is connecting to a school. And then the other one was what houses that are currently service by bus transportation would be walking to school with the addition of a $200,000 sidewalk along Savage, Gilford from Baltimore Street to Vomor House. Does it mean that we we and they will all be walking if and not taking the bus anymore if we complete that sidewalk. That's the question. The residents on the west side of Savage Gilford that don't currently have a sidewalk would be able to walk to both those the elementary in the middle school on the north end there. Okay, so that is money well spent. And they will. walk would be able to walk to both those, the elementary and the middle school on the north end there. Okay, so that is money well spent and they won't have to get a bus. All right. Yeah, so I mean, obviously, do they know yet that they won't get to ride the bus yet anymore? I mean, usually those communications come from the school itself. So I'm not sure how much they've communicated with that, but obviously that's a good example of an improvement that's very close to the school. It's not a far reaching over a mile away that's immediately adjacent to the elementary and the middle school and there's also the community benefit as well as well as the walk to school aspect but you know the whole community gets to benefit from that sidewalk there. Okay good and. And I just wanna say thank you for connecting the Harriet Tubman Cultural Center to this sidewalk that actually exists there. I love it when you see the sidewalk to know where it becomes a sidewalk to somewhere. That's the thing that warms my heart the most. So that's a really great project. Thanks. Thank you. Mr. Yaman. No, thank you. In our write-up, there is mention for the Guildford Road pedestrian bike improvement that there's a pending request for Congressional Directed spending for that project as well You know I I commended Nick Muni-Han. I think you were here director Cabetti earlier when When it became a parent that they'd asked for that. Do we is there are do you know of others besides this one for Guilford Road improvements? I do not Okay, silly one okay do it. You're the only one. Okay. It's the only one. Okay. Otherwise, I would have asked just so we get a summary. But again, I think that, you know, yes, please more. Right. And I don't know, and I forgot to mention this during drainage, obviously with the federal climate, who knows what's going to happen. What's going to happen, but the pitch that our office has got, and I assume hopefully your departments did, or at least your boss did, from particularly Sarah Elfrith as a new federal representative with new constituents seemed to have at the ready all kinds of ideas in terms of grant applications that they didn't have the usual connections because they're new in office and a new jurisdiction that they, you know, they didn't have the, let's go to these people for this kind of thing. So as I recall, it was mostly about during it, wasn't it, it was storm water stuff, I thought. Do you want to talk about? I don't because we've tried to do that a couple times ourselves and realize that only comes, that only is successful when the county executive gets that project and brings it up to you guys. That's's why I'm telling you guys. Yes, that's why I'm saying that. Is the council members got the pitch from Sarah Elfors office, particularly a legacy staff member who had performed this. I think in a Trone's office was now tasked with figuring out how to connect grant applicants to grant programs, but didn't have this inventory of connections because he's no longer in David Trone's jurisdiction, he's in Sir Alphurus, New One, which isn't even, you know, which is only, what? Is that here here? No, it was, no, it was somebody else. No, actually this was his job with David Trone. Taylor. Taylor something. Yeah. Oh, Taylor, right. Yeah. I mean, I don't remember what the number is. Nasty doesn't have the connections in DC. He doesn't have the connections to the local. Great. Yeah, the people who would get the money. That's what I'm saying. Hey, what do you need? Yeah. He knew how we knew where the money was. He knew what the programs were. But he worked for a different... He didn't know who here would be applying for them. And I think he said something like, before my list was 81 people long, that I would be like, hey, do you guys have something, you know, going on with this or that or this? Because these are coming up. But I have one here now. And so we jokingly were like, don't tell these guys that. But the reality is just what Miss Young said is, it doesn't matter what we say. and even if we forward it to some church group or some HOA, they're not gonna have the success that you guys are. So. But the reality is just what Miss Young said is, it doesn't matter what we say. And even if we forward it to some church group or some HOA, they're not going to have the success that you guys are. So yes, if you're looking at me back, yes, we did have this conversation with Sarah Elfrith and her staff who has spent years doing this and other jurisdictions. But that's what I meant to bring up during drainage because as I recall, again, kind of a focus of mine, they probably said other things. But that offer was made. Who knows what good it does for a very new representative in a federal climate like we are now, but still I meant to mention that. But again, I commend you for. I think they all get money. They all get, you know, what they used to call it the pork. This county has never gotten money. We did. We did. We have gotten money. There's a grant that we just saw today. I'm saying, look at the last six years. Are you saying the council office, or are you saying the county government? The county. Every time this list come out, I look and I see other jurisdictions getting money for libraries. And this museum and that thing and this public garden. and we are are not on those. We've gotten money for like specific programs like the police department. Oh yeah not these big. Yeah we've got money. Yeah okay but go get it. Yeah that was the bottom line. It was made at least to the five last that there was that potential. Yeah. And so I don't want to, I wanted to make sure that you directly heard that. And I think that is it, I know that they're working on a project that I think Felix is handling upstairs. So I mean, people on the third floor know who, no, Taylor and who to call to be working on this. I just know he's working with them on one but it sounds like there's multiples because we heard Reckham Parks today. Right, Reckham Parks is getting money from for their project. The garden. Was it the garden that they were getting money? Okay, we're going to circle back around. We do not have Dr. Jones yet, right? Okay, well it's just let me know when he comes on and then we'll go circle. Do you have any more on this? No, I think it. I feel like I'm a frequent flyer to your offices, so I appreciate the responses and updates I've received. Ms. Young. So it's a general question, but there are the pedestrian plan projects, the bicycle plan projects, the curb and got a replacement. No, not that one. Pedestrian, not that one either. There were four different projects that were, there was money from last year still, left in the project, for example, bicycle plan. The appropriation includes $1 million in bond funding. There was $11.2 million in prior appropriations and only $8.9 million was spent. So, and there were three projects like that in this. And is there, how does it operate? What do you guys, are you planning on spending all the money by May 31st, which is only a month away? So I'm assuming less there's $2 million that you've got encumbered within the month. But then you're asking for another million. So can you just explain the request here and how that works? I'll take first question. I can do a few more questions. So we do have spend down plans for each one of these programs that you mentioned, 35, 36, and 61, 62. Yes, that's exactly what it is. So we do have plans to spend all the money. I think there were some questions about the, you may have the 35 spend down plan and I believe the 61 spend down plan, which shows all the plan projects that we have for end of fiscal year 25 and also fiscal year 26 that would spend all the money they were requesting for these programs. Okay, so then you're you're only asking for one of the programs the bicycle plan you're only asking for a million dollars in bond funding for the following year. Is that because you don't have many projects or you're going to be using the spend-down money to complete the projects that you have? It's a little bit of both. There are physical years not over yet, so there will likely be additional funds encumbered in the remainder of this fiscal year. There could even been some encumbered since we provided this information, right? Because this was already a few weeks that we provided this information that's in the capital budget. So, yes, projects are still ongoing for this fiscal year. There's a lot of projects in these programmatic, like K5 or 6.6 budgets. So some of them do end up carrying over or starting in the next fiscal year than maybe they were intended for FY25 but they end up beginning in FY26. Just because there's a lot of projects going on sometimes the timelines shift a little bit. But as Abdul said, we do have spend down plans for each one of these programmatic areas to spend both the previous years funding that's remaining and the new request. Okay. And my last question is about the CSX. I don't even know what to call it. I mean, it's gone on for so long. And critical, was it an abandonment? Is that what it was delayed year? Official abandonment. What's an official abandonment? Do they officially tell us that they're abandoning it? Or do we wait for it? After a certain period of time? Is it officially abandoned? Because now it's been abandoned for 25 years or 50 years. What does that mean? What does that term mean? I will probably say, excuse me, I will probably say that it's from a official standpoint. A railway can be, you know, what would stop being used, but on the books is still part of their right-of-it. So I'm taking it as part of this of your question is basically them trying to officially deem it from a paperwork standpoint, officiallyed on their side so that we file paperwork then to say this We believe this track has been officially abandoned because they haven't used it for 25 years or something I don't think any paperwork would be coming from our and I think the paper will be coming from their end CSX is actually going to file paperwork if I understand I will hallelujah I cannot believe that's going to happen yeah I'm looking at you because it's a really good effort that's in play but that's the way I've taken it. Do you have any any further insights? I don't have any additional information on Okay,. We can get some more information. That would be great. I do desperately hope that that does occur. I know there are big plans for those tracks. I'd love to see it. Mr. Erwin. Wait, I'll skip myself. I'm so. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. being completed. I feel like a project like that would be cool if we could bring in the green streets part of it to that. But go ahead and tell me why I don't think that. So we do have a public meeting coming up on maybe 22nd at the Fire Hall for that project. So we just started promoting that to put the signs out you're about to see an on Montgomery Road. So yeah, it's very early stages, feasibility study. It's a very tight corridor. Yeah. Right of way is tight. The homes are close to the road. The road is not wide at all, and there's a lot of utility poles and trees all along the corridor as well. So there's major constraints along there. we're trying to see what we can do to provide some kind of accommodations for people that are not in their cars. Green streets does sound great, but that's definitely not an area where there's excess roadway that can be repurposed for a green space. OK. But we'd like to see you at the public meeting. And let's just know. We're hoping to get a good robust public engagement going here to get ideas and also just to let people know what the constraints are. We're not going to be able to provide full facilities on both sides of the road there. It's just not going to fit in, but we want to see what we can do. Okay. Alright, and actually in my head, you're doing some of my handover road before then, right? It's not a meeting coming up. Public meeting this evening I think. It's tonight. Okay. I will be here. Chris but I've met someone from my office together but yeah. Now I've lost all. I am one. Hope all is two you are three. You have no more. Deb do you have any more? Nope. Okay I have one more. Deb, do you have any more? Nope. Okay, I have one more. Let me see. I can't tell from my note what I meant. But I think probably what I meant was just, I think those school route projects, you know, Deb started this session or this section of the budget asking about whether it changed, whether it changed or it doesn't. Like you said, we're so in need of those kind of safe routes, particularly for high schoolers who are doing after school stuff and can't drive or don't have the ability to get to a car. To me, that's like one of the most important things we do. And there still seems to be ample low hanging fruit, kind of thing where you do have the space to do it you just need the money to do it and so it seems like this this this council at least a majority of it is very in favor of those kinds of projects and would love to see more and more of them accelerate it so yeah if they grow up using not a car, then they'll probably be more inclined to stay that way. You need to, we need to indoctrinate the youth. But also, I just want them to be able to get home safe, like, especially now that I'm spending so much time on 99 getting to Hebron and back, like those babies with their backpacks and their instruments, like walking between a a telephone pole and the traffic is scary and the lights right at the wrong spot for drivers. Okay. Last call on whatever that one was, which brings us to our last one, which is T traffic. Is that all you same gentleman? Oh, this will. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Welcome, Gemu. You have Chris, Dragon Ball Ball back. Okay. You want to start us off? Sure. How can we put more money into T789? It's 7089. It's just, it's so, people love it. They want more of it. Except for the people who hate it. What is it? What are we talking about? It's traffic calming. Oh. But I think especially after, you know, we've had this shift in approach, which has been good, but it also seems a little overwhelming in terms of the feedback. So I guess, I mean, how can we really support you guys more in this project? Because it's, I feel like you're eating elephants with just two of you and like a pickle fork or something. Well, I think this is the first year that we're going to be going in after the new policy was implemented or the revised policy was implemented since the implementation of the new policy received over 260 requests for traffic calming. Obviously, there's a lot of locations, a lot of things that we need to prioritize to see where we're going to start, where we're going to end. When we were looking at other jurisdictions that were applying these models, what they did, what they do is they give a certain time frame for people to be added into the next fiscal year. When we created the policy, we said, let's try to see where we are. Is it only the initial spike that we have given that this is a first year or are we going to continue to see over 200 requests each year? If the request will be over 200 requests each year, obviously, with the staff levels that we have, we might not be able to produce the demands that the community might have. But I think the way we are approaching it is we are going to prioritize with the locations that we have. Some of them might be easier to work on, some of them might be a little more challenging to work on. If the improvements, I think not every project is going to cost the same, obviously. Not every project is going to take the same amount of effort. As we go through this cycle with the current requests that we have, we're going to start looking at some of those details to see, okay, where are we succeeding in trying to deliver projects quickly? We have a few projects that were in the pipeline already. We actually have a public meeting tonight. It's a follow-up meeting, a second meeting for a couple of locations where we are planning to do traffic calming. So we'll look at the requirements to see, like, maybe, you know, if we need to make any tweaks and adjustments to it. But I think like, you know, going through a 526 will definitely give us that benchmark to see, you know, whether we can accept more money and still be able to deliver or are we reaching a max with staff support? We are thinking like if we have funds available we could try to use consultant support to compliment county staff if that is a choke point. That's one thing that we already talked about internally. That we could use one of our requirements contractors for support. We do have staff that we didn't have like a year ago. We were able to successfully fill up a position in traffic and engineering division to support Jen. So that person is solely focusing on traffic calming requests. So hopefully we can go, once we go through it, probably by end of this year, calendar year, we'll have a better idea of where we are as we go to the budget cycle. Thank you. I feel like you guys have been really responsive to coming out and hearing from residents and I just especially the the cradle rock safety projects and stuff. I just really want to say thank you and the recent Aladdin Drive meeting as well. Yeah, I think I think like you know as we move along we'll be in touch with you. I'm looking one of the things that we are noticing is that if it's a minor traffic calming request, do we still need to have two public meetings or not? I think right now the way we wrote the policies, we need to have two public meetings. With the projects that we have a public meeting tonight, I think we felt like we addressed most of the concerns already, but because we put a requirement that we need to host two public meetings, coordinating to have those meetings might take a little bit longer time. One of the things that Jen came up with is we'll consolidate a group of projects and then make it into a workshop rather than trying to have individual roads as traffic calming. So we'll come up with different ways of doing it rather than trying to make it more onerous both for county staff and also for the public to attend multiple meetings about the same topic. Sounds good. Miss Yang? Sounds good. Miss Young? Well, of course, I'm going to ask about the same thing because this is, this is a game changer probably for most of the county council. Thank you guys so much for taking this on. This is something that we get asked about all the time and John is not here. I'm wondering if we get asked about it at all anymore, because you all have done such a good job about saying, here's where you go for your traffic calming. And that it's, we can answer. We always, it was always come to us and and then we would have to go to you all, and then maybe we'd come back to us, and then it would go back to you. So having that one-stop shop now for traffic calming is so useful. I'm so glad that you're doing it this way. Now, you mentioned 260 applications. Are they still flowing in? As of this morning, yes, we were up to 266. You're a list of those. We asked for a list and I think you couldn't give it to us yet. So I could give you a list, but it wouldn't be complete up till today because you know as we go through the applications you know it's how we add them to the list we can't go through the applications right as they come in even if it's as of the last month then or less quarter end just to say we can get an idea of where the the people are the most upset okay yeah or just if the ones that we hear from the most have actually gotten around to get on your list right once you do hear from the most are also on the list. I think. I think. Thank you, Jen. All right. You know. We'll put a list together and get it to you. Okay. So I'm curious, what do you think you mentioned in response to Ms. Rigby's question that there are from the most to the least of these manners in which you can do the traffic calming. What do you, like you said tonight, we probably wouldn't necessarily have to go out, but because it's not the most intensive of the traffic calming, what is the least intensive and what is the most intensive? Well, I think sometimes it might not be the type of project today is the support that we get from the community, right? It's something like some people, some communities that we visit, they all support them. And you have, you know, everybody's in favor of them, but some locations and communities are divided and whether they want them or they don't want them. Going back to, you know, the last 15 years or so, like when I think about it, there's one project that, from the time that they contacted the county to the time that we actually installed them, close to like three months or four months. So that was the quickest project that I saw that happened. Speed bumps? Speed bumps, traffic calming speed bumps. And community was united and everybody, they wanted it and they did the process. This was going through the old process, not even the new process. Where they had to go get a vote and then they let us know that more than 60, 67% are in favor of them. They went through the voting process, gave us the documents, all of that was done in time for us to go into construction. Wow. And we got a contract available and then they, you know, we went and put those in. So from the time the request came into the speed hubs going in, that was a quick test. I can think of locations where I think they know there was a community support, not quite support, you know, 60% initially they were all they kind of wanted to come in. They wanted it. We went and we thought it was going to happen, but then somewhere along as the voting process was going through, they couldn't generate enough votes to support the project. So we kept, you know, nudging the group to keep going, knocking on doors, but it didn't happen. So the project actually stalled. So we kept waiting, waiting, waiting, and then it never pursued. But now that we don't have the voting requirements, somehow when we evaluate the roadways, and if we determine the traffic coming east necessary, then we will have an option to take action quickly. Oh, I didn't realize there's no more voting requirements. Well think not, you know, we still are in a one support from the community. But on the same token, it's not the two thirds, two thirds majority that we need for us to move forward with construction. Okay, so what are you guys doing on Brown's Bridge Road? Because I'm already fearful that I'm going to hear back from people on Brown's Bridge Road because I'm already fearful that I'm going to hear back from people on Brown's Bridge Road who might not be happy. I actually don't have a status update on that yet I know it's under evaluation but I couldn't tell you at this time there's no design for it yet. Okay, it's not always speed bumps right I mean sometimes it's crosswalks with with the, you know, just... That's correct. I wouldn't call a crosswalk traffic calming. Um... speed bumps, right? I mean sometimes it's crosswalks with the you know just that's that's correct I wouldn't call a crosswalk traffic calming you know before the old programs speed humps were pretty much the only device used now there's other devices whether they're for horizontal or vertical deflection vertical deflection being the humps there's raised intersections there's raised crosswalks but we don't use that crosswalk as traffic calming. You know, there's bump outs, chakains, other stuff. Yeah, we have those on Martin Road. Well, I'm just, I'm a little fearful about, if the speed bumps end up being going in at Brown's Bridge Road, what I might hear back from the people who live over there. We'll let you know before anything goes out. Especially now that I know that we don't have to get 60% of the neighborhood signing on. But thank you. Thank you to two public meetings, right? At Brown's Bridge, have you had no? We haven't scheduled the public meeting yet. So initially we still have to collect the speed and volume data for these requests and that'll be the first step that we go through. And once we have that information, then it'll help us to determine what the calming measure should be based on the data. Are you gonna send us the notice, the council member, the notice, before you have these these public meetings if it's in our district. Yeah, we actually do send those to your offices to help us get the public outreach out. Okay, all right. So the fact that I haven't gotten one yet means that- No, we don't have a design for that. Okay. All right. Thank you. Mr. Youngman, tea questions? No tea questions. Thank you. Except that list. I am next. On our list of abandoned due to no activity for three years is a million dollars or so in one singular tea project. And that is T7101. State County shared intersections. Is there a reason that that should continue in our budget book? We'll take a look at that project to see what we used to use these capital projects, these were programs where we had, if you had a project and if there's an improvement at State County intersection meaning like if there's a State road crossing a county road and if improvements are needed and if there's any cost share that the county has to bear then we would use this capital project. If you haven't had any projects recently with the States we're going to circle back if we have locations that we want them to work on certain things. We could use this as a funding source for us to push the project through as one thought that we have. But we'll take a look at it to see if we need to continue this project on or not. OK, thank you. And the budget bulk right up for it talks about Maryland 108 at Shepherd Lane between Maryland 32 and Lyndon Lentha Cum. That doesn't have anything and then there is actually reference to a developer contribution of 200,000 or yeah 200,000. Is that that's all done? Is that related to Ericsson and that little strip I guess it's not a little strip model? That's all that has nothing to do with that right? Whatever that because what they're gonna have to pay for what they're gonna be Responsible for is a lot more than 200,000. I'm talking about where like the Mawan Cababas and the yeah was the real life of shepherd You the the 108 at Shepherd is part of the River Hill garden No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no that what that's, oh, oh, yeah. Oh, my God. So not Erickson property. So is that all done and did we receive whatever contributions we were supposed to from? Yes. Okay. Okay, so that, for example, would not be a recent to keep this budget item open. No, I think all those projects are completed. the ones that I see at the top, they all should be complete now. Okay, thank you. None for you, Mr. McRidby. How about you? When do you think there will be a shovel in the ground for the Clarksville Street Escape project? Looks like the design was supposed to be completed at the end of FY 25. Mr. Cookson, good to see you. I saw you hiding back there. Just waiting for you. Waiting for me to bring up Clarksville. You knew I would. T7108. There we go. Yeah, so we're looking at 27. Mr. Cookson, can you bring it real close? How's that? Is that better? You have a very soft voice. How's that? Yeah, so we're looking at 27 FY27 and through 29 for the construction of the StreetScape project itself. So it's another year away? Yeah, we're looking at another couple of years away. I mean, it's a very complicated project. We're looking at splitting different phases up to handle more one part on the side by 32 and the Ericsson side and River Hill side and then the other side over by Gilford and one away. Trying to visualize that. Yeah. Trying to visualize any streetscape at all actually going through there but it certainly will look nicer than what's there now and I hope be safer than what's there now because for bikes and pedestrians that's very unsafe area. Actually for cars too. That left hand turn into Chick-fil-A could not be worse. That's the worst left hand turn. Oh, Tray, even you know. Oh, man, that is the worst left hand turn in all of Howard County. Yeah. Go ahead, try it. Get on 108. Yeah. Okay. So I'm sorry to hear that it's up far away. Um, and then I have one last. Well, well actually you can just nod Chris you don't have to come back up but the downtown Columbia Patuxon Ranch Trail extension is that the Jane Denver Trail that okay see I told you you could just nod. I knew that that's all right I think that was it for me. Yep, that's it. I'm skipping you, Mr. Raman. I have one more question and it goes to the street light developer street light program. T7109. How does the sequence work there in terms of scheduling when the county would install streetlights versus when a project is underway or under construction or when do you guys go and install streetlights? So if it's a streetlight project that the county's overseeing without having to do with the site development plan, we have a separate capital program T7094 that we use for streetlight installation. These are mainly for new subdivisions that are getting built and as part of new subdivisions when they get bill, the developer pays for the cost for new street lights to be installed. And county collects the funds at the time of the planned review process. And once that is done, we hold the funds and we work with the Baltimore gas and electric to install the street lights when the developer comes and tells us that the construction on their aspect is complete or near completion. And once we get that notice, we contact BGE to release the job and BGE will design and install the sweetlights. Certain projects there might be needs to install conduits and those kind of things. So then the developer will contact us ahead of time and we'll make sure that their contractor installed up, installs appropriate conduits and once construction is done we make payments to BGE from the funds that we collected from the developer already. So BGE does the installation and the county pays BGE from developer payments? Correct. So we hold the payments from the developer. So what happens is that sometimes I think these projects are completed from what I understand the reason for creating this is Baltimore gas and electric might take a longer time. If a developer comes and builds a subdivision everything else is complete except for Streetlights and the Streetlights will be waiting to be installed and that's the only thing that'll hold them up from Dedicating the roadways to the county so the decision was made to allow that to happen where like you know county collects the funds ahead of time And we hold the funds and we release it for construction when the project is ready to move forward. It is not uncommon, you know, other jurisdictions also do something very similar to what we do in Howard County. The, this year has 25, or 25,000 in Pago. Why would we have anything other than developer contributions in that expenditure? I think part of that is that you know, so one of the things that we made a change with street lights is we switched over to using all LED street lights. If you have like an old, old subdivision plans, the plans were approved, but street lights weren't installed as we come along and to go and install those street lights. Sometimes it's difficult for us to like have enough funds that the developer paid towards those street lights because the cost of the fixtures went up. And we use that to, or they paid-pressure sodium bulbs but we're installing LED street lights now. So that's where that money is get used. Typically we don't ask for any pay-go funds or any county funds for this program. As you can see they get things like most of the funds are paid by the developer contribution. There's a very small portion that we ask for if we know of a project that needs a little bit money. Okay, thanks. And the reason I caught my attention is you plainly have a list of potential projects in the book itself, but the auditor's legislative team did a nice job of breaking that up into councilmanic districts for us. And at least one of the ones that you list for District 1 is no longer going to be developed. Louisville overlook is in county possession. So N. Lacey property, until my dying breath, will be in that same category. But you're saying it, you don't get ahead of it. You do it. You know, no, no, no, we don't because somebody can know usually what happens is me Kerb and gutter has to be installed if it's a closed section door way and And streetlights street trees if there's street trees that need to be installed sidewalks that need to be installed a lot of that stuff goes in Streetlights are like one of the last things that actually go in in a subdivision. Perfect. Are there any more questions for T? Okay. Then I think that we have concluded our agenda today, haven't we? Thank you so much, DPW, Director Cabetti. Thank you until the operating on May 7. Is that what it is? I don't know. I'm on like a 24 hour. Yes, kind of like we're in labor, but it's just to keep having stress. Have a good day. Thank you. Thanks very much. adjourned.