Good morning everyone and welcome to the session of the government operations and fiscal policy committee. Today we have a number of budgets we will be reviewing as we go through the FY26 operating and CIP budgets. Today we are going to start off with our work session on the cost sharing for my Garmory County government and I want to welcome. I guess we have Senator Zucker is here. You can come on up have Senator Zucker is here. You can come on up Senator Zucker. We're going to start off with you because on a big part of our cost sharing is what our delegation does for us in the General Assembly and I And I will say thank you to you and to the Montgomery County delegation for this last General Assembly. We have nearly $135 million in new state investments coming back to the county. In particular, 82.8 million of that is in infrastructure projects like healthcare facilities, community revitalization, arts and culture, housing, parks and recreation libraries, and others. There is a whole list of the projects in the packet thanks to Ms. Clemens Johnson for a terrific packet. And we thought we would kick off with you so you could tell us how the 2025 General Assembly session went, what you were able to bring back here to Montgomery County and then I'll turn it over to our staff and Director Murphy to go through with the Office of Grants Management's is doing on that. So, Senator Zucker, we'll turn it over to you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Distinguished colleagues, just for the record, Senator Craig Zucker, I wanted to thank Delegate Plotch of it, Carr, and Senator Kramer for providing me the opportunity as well to represent the Montgomery County delegation. Madam Chair, thank you for your comments. I also came here to thank, in particular, U3. And often with County and the state, we hear about how things aren't working well. And part of the reason why I really appreciated the opportunity to be here today is to really highlight what is working well, especially with all of the chaos we're seeing in DC. Montgomery County and the state delegation is an example of how we're collaborating. So, Madam Chair, the first example of that is when you and I were speaking on a Saturday morning and we were talking about all the federal earmarks that were stripped away for non-profits and I'm sure you and I spoke about it and through your leadership and the county council and the delegation We were able to backfill that with state capital funding So they didn't feel it but they certainly will feel the benefits of that and Councilmember Freetzin your ingenious idea a month ago where you saw how businesses were we're struggling in terms of infrastructure with federal grants disappearing. You know, you and I sat down and announced and collaborated with the team to really help small businesses with almost a half a million dollars worth of economic aid for direct grants. And Councilman Rick Katz, what's interesting is that Even though you don't necessarily represent my area of the district That doesn't stop you from helping out other people throughout throughout the county and an example That is the only police satellite station You were very helpful in the past in terms of helping out with operating money and again This is just an example of county and the state work together. I also wanted to salute Melanie Wenger and her team. Her team plays a viral role in being a teammate of us and an app was often there are things that go overlooked that we're just busy looking at. Sometimes the big picture and we miss the small stuff. And the small stuff is actually very, very consequential and it'll have both positive impact, positive or negative impacts on the county. And I just can't thank them enough and how indispensable they are to our entire delegation. So Madam Chair, I just thought there would be a few things that I wanted to highlight. We are facing very difficult budget problems. And with the capital budget, it's called general obligation bonds. Those are all the capital funding that's, so I gotta tell you, I was really excited when I, and we call it GEO. So I was very excited that I'd be coming today to talk to the GEO committee. This feels like home to me with the capital budget, but we invested in hospitals over the last three years. We've invested more than 6.6 million for Shady Grove eventist. We have helped to fund Strathmore this past session. We are one of the things that I'm really proud of. And everything that we do in Annapolis is as a team. But one of the things that I'm really proud of that I helped lead as Chair of the Capital Budget SEP Committee was investments in our playgrounds in Montgomery County public schools and over the last three to four years we've invested close to six million dollars starting with the most vulnerable schools and that doesn't regardless of where they are on the county and we've helped to build or renovate more than 40 schools but for those that are listening and those that are in the, one of the things that I wanted to just explain is where our collaboration goes and how it proceeds is, we get a checklist, we get our marching orders when we go to anapolis of what the county's priorities are. And what we do is we systematically and purposely go through that and figure out what we can do and we're following, when we're doing doing funding we're following what your priorities are. So not only are we working with Melanie Wenger but we're also your advocates in Annapolis. So I wanted to just come here I know you have the list but I just wanted to come here to say thank you thank you for your continued collaboration and we're able to accomplish a lot together and I'm happy to answer any questions if you have any. Great. Well, Senator Zucker, again, thank you so much for your collaboration. We know how busy you are when session is, when you're in session in Annapolis and we appreciate that you continue to think of us and particularly think of the folks on this committee as you all are working through that budget. I'll turn my colleagues to see if they have anything. Council Member Freetzen. Yeah, I'll just very quickly say thank you for the partnership and the leadership. It really is amazing what can get done. If you don't care who gets the credit and just a tip of the cap to you and your role or capital budget, I'm really not sure where we would be as a county without your leadership in that role. I got a chance to see it firsthand going to anapolis and working with you in the wee hours where it seemed like you might be the only person who knew where within the bowels of the capital budget certain money was was was parked but to fund critical projects that are just absolutely essential for our community and for our county and has been a lifeline at a time when it's needed more than ever. So thank you for your leadership, thank you for your partnership. It really is amazing. The operating budget is gonna continue to be a challenge for us. I'm optimistic that the capital budget and the partnership between the state and the county can be an area where we can help to fill some of the needs in a creative way and an opportunity that we have and so look forward to continuing that. I just had a quick question for you. 6 million playgrounds, which is really a remarkable number. How many playgrounds does that equate to how many schools have been able to benefit from that in Montgomery County? So we, from what I've gotten from Montgomery County Public Schools is more than 41. And what we've done is, about every year we put in about 1.3 million and we make sure that every school, every part of the county feels the benefit of the capital budget and so every part of the county gets playground. Regardless of where they are, up county, down county, really based by legislative district and because some schools need more money than others, we've been able to really spread that money out where those are 41 direct schools. That doesn't include any indirect schools that benefit from it because as we're chipping away at any backlog, it's creating more capacity. But no, thank you for that. And well, I mean, I think what you said is correct. I mean, the way that we try to govern it in anapolis, and I see you all govern is not necessarily by press release, but by doing the right thing. And just getting it done, our constituents deserve and expect that. Appreciate that. And those playgrounds which have benefited all of our communities, and I can speak to that myself. It's not just the school, it's really the community because the playgrounds are used all week long, you know, during school time and after a lot of them are used by early child care programs before and after school programs, after school as well. So it's a huge benefit. So thank you for that. And I just wanted to highlight what's on as we talk about the money, but not not the impact I think the 41 schools is just as important as the six million dollar Price tax so thank you and I'll you back. Thank you council member cats and thank you I will try to be brief as well But you know one of the best things Senator about being elected as you get to meet people who you might normally Not have gotten to become such great friends with and And you certainly are with to that to me. And I sincerely appreciate that. And you mentioned that the state had a difficult budget. Of course, we don't. Air budget is just as easy as it could possibly be. But you also mentioned that that even though you represent one area, you affect all areas. And you above and many of your colleagues the same way, you understand that. I always tell people, you don't get the vote for me, I get the vote for you. I mean, it's what we do because it might not be in your district. People don't just live in a district, they don't just live in a state area. So I sincerely appreciate it. And really of all the things that you do, the money that you have brought back is just so helpful. And it really does get us to the next level. Sometimes we have to figure out how we're going to, you know, put this puzzle together. But thank you and all of your colleagues for everything you do. Thank you. It's definitely a team effort. Absolutely. Great. Well, Senator Zacher, I hope you can stay for a bit because we'll go through with Director Murphy and Ms. Clemens Johnson, the packet, and I know some of us may raise the issue of making sure we have enough matching money in the budget to do that. As a committee, we had actually requested more money be put in this year's budget to help match some of the money being brought back from Annapolis and unfortunately we got a budget that has less money than last year. So we're going to have that discussion this morning and some others so but we also understand you have a busy schedule So if you have to scooch out we understand that as well Miss Clem and Johnson before I turn it over you to go through the packet I just wanted to highlight one thing as we're talking about cost sharing particularly for Director Murphy and his team because I know with the Office of Grants Management over the last couple of years this committee has raised a number of concerns. We've talked long and hard about our community grants and getting things up to speed for our community. And when we have good news and praise I always feel like it's very important to share that as well. And so I do want to say that in terms of the process for the cost sharing, some feedback I received from a member of our community was that this process was one of the clearest and well-supported government grant processes. I've ever been part of. Office of grants management had an incredibly helpful information session, promptly answered, followed questions, and communicated clearly throughout the process. So I just wanted to share that because I know we have shared a lot of other news over the years about our processes. But in terms of the process for the cost sharing, I think the feedback we have gotten for what you've been able to put in place in the last couple of years It seems to be working well for folks. So we want to be able to continue that momentum With that I will turn it over to our staff Good morning, and thank you, Council President Stewart We are talking about the cost sharing MCG project For FY26 the county executive for has recommended 4.9 million to support the project This is a 24-per-per-per-per-per-per-per- are three main projects or that are being supported for FY26. The first is the Scotland AME Zion Church Second Century Project for $400,000. The state A provided to the Glenneck Park Spanish Ballroom Project for 1.5 million and 3 million to support the FY26 Capitol grant. There is a memorandum from council members Sydney Cats in Auburn and Gabe Auburnales, requesting support for the Adventist Healthcare Shady Grove Medical Center included at Circle 11. If we flip to our next page too, I just included a few updates for the committee's knowledge. Per the Office of Intergovernmental Relations report, Montgomery County did well with the estimated 134.9 million of new state investment coming to the county for fiscal year 26. This includes 52 million and for public school construction and 82.8 million for other important infrastructure projects that are listed in your packet. That the list as you referenced earlier is included in your packet and we can go through that as well. I wanted to highlight the cost sharing competitive grant process. You just gave us very positive feedback. I'm sure that is moving us towards a positive direction. So in FY24, we began the official formal grant review and approval process overseeing by the Office of Grants Management. And then in your packet, it talks about the FY25 process. There were four awards that were provided to the organizations. And then the Office of Grants Management highlighted also what they saw was a significant problem at the time was that the previous structure of the capital grants was that larger projects had to apply each year resulting in a significant administrative burden. But by awarding multi-year capital projects, the county can maximize our scarce resources while also supporting our nonprofit partners. The FY 25 grant process, the OGM received 11 eligible applications, three for arts and eight nine arts. There were two applications that had already secured county funding for the same project, so they were disqualified. And so right now there are three reviewers assigned and they are in the process of completing their reviews and the awards should be announced soon. And in support of that also, sure the Director Murphy will go over this, but the FY26 capital share, cost sharing capital grants process, stage one has started to try to gauge what the need is. And so right now there is one applicant that has finished their application with six others in progress. This information isn't in the packet, but Dr. Murphy can certainly highlight the details if needed. So much earlier start than last year, we're starting, which is great news. So the budget discussion items, I'll stop there and see if there's any questions. We'll get to that. No, I don't think we have any questions. Dr. Murphy, do you want to jump in with any opening remarks or highlights you would like to give us? Great. Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you, Council President and the STEAM Council members for the opportunity today. My name is for the record. My name is Rafael Pomerillo Murphy. I'm the Director of the Office of the Grants Management. I just want to start with thanking Sen. Zucker as well as a kind of resident and in this role, you know, we're very grateful for all the money that he upto bring in from the state that certainly me and my family enjoy as residents here. I'm Wednesday, I was discussing the FY26 helping out an applicant for that process who had won the state award in this last session. And he heard that was gonna be testifying with Senator Zucker and he asked me to pass along his thanks as well and gratitude for the award that that he got. So just wanted to pass that on from a from a nonprofit colleague. For FY 25 and FY 26, the CE has within this recommended than the approved budgets, has prioritized all of the costuring capital grants to state matches to make sure that we invest as much money as we possibly can to match our state colleagues. So as I've said before, in other hearings, when the state does work for us, we need to do work for the state as well. So this year, again, within the C's recommended budget, the $3 million is all for matching of state awards. That's likely not going to be sufficient. We don't know the level of need yet. That's why we've launched the FY26 stage one process is to collect the level of need and what people folks need, but that's ongoing. But you want to note at least for this particular pool of funds. Last year in the FY25 budget it was 2.5 million and now it's up to 3 million. So I can't speak to the other, you know, projects in the MCG cost share. But at least this pool of funds has been increased to help us match our nonprofit awards. And with that, I look forward to your questions. Great. Well, before we get into the matching on the capital grants, how about we just dispense with, because I think they'll be easy, the cost sharing for the Scotland AME and the Glenneagle Park Ballroom. Council member Featson. Well, these are two very close near and dear to me in my heart that the Glen Echo Spanish Ballroom will just know this is an ongoing commitment that the state and the county have committed to in order to leverage NPS National Park Service funds in order to renovate the Spanish Ballroom, which is really a county asset. So just want to remind everybody that this is really year two of that ongoing commitment, which is significant. But any of us who have sat through an event at Glen Echo and have the sweat stains to prove it. This will help us to air condition that just to make sure that this is a facility that can be utilized year round and can be leveraged for community events. I just think it's really important. Appreciate the County Executive continuing with that commitment and want to thank DGS for their work, David Dyson and others and Ken Hartman and others who have been involved in that for many, many years and partnered with my office and me. And then Scotland, Amie's, I am church. This is something that I have been advocating for for many years. It is nearing its conclusion. It's a restorative justice project writing the historical wrongs of many county and public agency decisions that have put the church in a floodplain, which it wasn't, which is at the center of a community that used to be 500 square acres and is now one street with a church across the street, which was used to not be separated and bifurcated in that way. And so this is a modest amount of money given the amount of impact. And we heard significant and powerful testimony as colleagues will recall during the public caring. So enthusiastically support these and I'm glad the county executive has continued the commitment. In the Scotland AME Zion 2nd Century Project, this is a continuation of prior commitment that was made which was a match of state funding that Lily Chi in the District 15 delegation was able to champion with senators, suckers, help as well and with the strong support of Catherine and Ike Leggett who are co-chairs of that effort. So appreciate that and know that we'll support it and just want to acknowledge the details there. Yeah. I think that will be enthusiastically in that unanimous decision and recommendation to the full council on both of those projects. And I just want to highlight I was able to attend the interface theater at the Scotland and it's just the community there and what we're they've been able to do and the small amount that we've been able to support that is really important. So yes, we'll move forward with that and now we'll get on to the capital grants and the matching for that and thank you, Director Murphy, for clarifying what we had last year and this year in terms of the matching. I will say that I'm going to propose that we actually add to our reconciliation list additional funds in the amount of three different tranches, a million and then two five hundred thousand dollar tranches for additional funds for matching. And the reason is is because Senator Zucker just did and our delegation did such a terrific job that we are seeing so many of our community organizations and others be able to receive the state funds and leverage that. And we know that that gets them closer to completing projects, whether's you know the Strathmore Music Hall we've been talking to Don Bosco and the gym that they're trying to get rehabilitated and we know that will benefit not only the school but the entire community. I appreciate the letter from Councilmember Alvinaz and Katz regarding shady grove. We've also received a letter from the only theater. And I know our colleagues are probably receiving other requests as well. And I believe that since the Office of Grants Management has been able to set up this process in the last year that the best way to deal with these various requests we have is to have them go through the process and to be able to be evaluated. But we know because of the requests we're getting, I'd like to see us put more funds to that. And Director Murphy, as you said, in past years, the requests have outpaced the amount of money. And so as we're going through our budget deliberations, even though we know this is very tight budget, wanting to have that as part of our discussion moving forward. So I don't know if we get Council Member Freetzin and then Katz and then Director Murphy, I'll turn it over to you. Well, thank you Madam Chair. I strongly support the recommendational remind colleagues that don't need to be reminded that we sent a memo to the county executive requesting that more funds be added prior to the budget. He added some, but I think we need to add more. And so this is collaborative, not competitive and I think very much in the spirit of where we have been and what we have been signaling. The Shady Grove Project, 6.6 million from the state, we heard earlier from Senator Zucker, there are huge needs there. I'm a strong supporter of those efforts, the Don Bosco-Cristall Ray High School. I had the opportunity to visit with former delegate Mark Shriver, who now is doing amazing work there with his team, was shepherded through and got to see the student run assembly to start the day in a gym that can't fit. You know, it's not even really a proper appropriate gym. I mean, this is a facility that doesn't reflect the needs and those needs are going to become greater and greater as we move forward. You mentioned some of the other projects, very worthwhile projects that have come forward. I think right now more than ever, we're gonna have to leverage our state and county funds to work together with our nonprofit partners and with communities to meet the growing needs that we're going to see in our county and in our region. And these are really important investments to make in healthcare, in youth development, in education, in the community building that we're going to need. So, you know, this is how we demonstrate our partnership with the state and more importantly, the state and county government public sector partnership with our community and nonprofit partners. And I will just note, these cost sharing grants are one of the types of grant programs that actually are able to be implemented pretty seamlessly. You know once we set a clear direction and we heard from the positive feedback we are putting our Office of Grants Management in a position to have a finite pool with very clear requirements. These are intended to be matching funds to leverage state dollars. You know It's a finite pool and the dollars can go a long way. So thank you for the recommendation. Strongly supported, the three tranches, a million, two, 500,000 for the non-arts matching, cost sharing grants. And I think this will take a significant step towards meeting these needs for Adventist, for Don Bosco, for many of the others that will have the opportunity to apply and compete. Great. And for anyone listening at home, we did say non-Arts, but want to make sure people know there is a $1 million for arts in the budget. So I want to start getting text messages. Council Member Katz. And do you think that'll stop you getting text messages? But and I agree I go along with what your suggestions. We did receive the memo from from Council Member Auburnus who's the Chair of HHS and he's sorry he couldn't be here this morning. He's actually working upstairs, I guess, for education and culture. But and for me on that memo. And this is for the million dollars for the Adventist health care. It's hard to believe that Adventist health care is already 40 years old. And I, it makes you wonder because the City of Gaitesburg wrote the original bonds even though industrial revenue bonds, even though it was not in the city, we knew that every person who lives in the city of Gaeth is burned was going to be affected by it. So we've certainly been there from the beginning. We need to make certain that they continue to have a modernization from not only the emergency department for expanding the psychiatric unit, replacing the intensive care unit and other necessary improvements. The original cost was $180 million, but the hospital experienced additional costs due to inflation, global supply changes, COVID, and the list can go one, and they had increased to the amount of $246 million. But the Venice Healthcare was successful in raising $16 million in charitable contributions and has received $6.6 million from the state. We've been working on this for a long time. We've been working on this for a long time. We've been working on this for a long time. We've been working on this for a long time. We've been working on this for a long time. We've been working on this for a long time. We've been working on this for a long time. We've been working on this for a long time. and care for assault victims. So we need to do our part. The state has helped us and continues to help us. And we need to do our part. The state has helped us and continues to help us. And we need to do our part to support hospitals, not just here, but throughout. And so because of all of that, I am in agreement with what you're suggesting. And I also have had very good conversations with former delegate Mark Schriver about Don Buskoko. Those types of places, when you were talking earlier about playgrounds, a playground is not just for a school. People use that playground as it would be a park and as they should. So Donbassko's request is not just for the school and no it's important for the school, it's for the community. So I'm in support of all of that. Thank you, Madam Chair. All right. So we have a unanimous recommendation for the reconciliation of Director Murphy that if you would like to speak to it or have any thoughts on the recommendation from the committee. Just to be clear, just emphasize how the process is going to work. So right now the FY26 Stage 1 is a very, very small application. Contact information, how much you need, a brief description of the project, and then some optional background information, and then legal ease to check off. That's the Stage 1 application. So we've made it as easy as possible for these folks who have gotten these awards to quickly get there, hat in the ring to let us know how much they need for these projects. And once that closes Monday is the deadline, we might extend its some folks have had trouble with the platform or working to help them. But we will we can transmit the list of of that total top line. And so as the as you go through your process, you'll have a more complete sense of information of what is actually being asked from us from the county so that that may help inform your votes that you're on. What is being asked of us versus how much is needed for the various tranches? But then depending on that and how much money you're available, how much of the need is, how much money's available, after your appropriation will immediately launch. The second stage, we'll collect a fuller application, we'll look at timeline, could that million dollars being requested, some of that be pushed to a later fiscal year to create space for another nonprofit, just what you do with the CIP budget, just on a macro scale. So that's how it work. But right now, we just, we made it as easily as we possibly could for our nonprofit partners to get their hats in their rings so we can get that exact level of need that they want. Great, that sounds terrific. And I also believe but correct me if I'm wrong that there was actually proactive outreach also to some of the or all of the groups that did receive the state money because I did hear from folks that they actually proactively heard from the county. Yeah right. Yeah. Yeah. So I just wanted to make sure that was confirmed. For the nonprofit, we got the list maybe 24 hours if not less from, you know, Director Winger, you know, from all her work that she does up in the NAPLIS. And the ones that I recognize that we had contact information in our database, you know, we reached out saying, saying, hey, this is here. This is for you. But even with the list that Ms. Clemens provided, there's a couple who... information in our database. You know, we reached out saying, hey, this is here. This is for you. But even with the list that Ms. Clemens provided, there's a couple who have not even started their application that Marty engaged with them on and what they need to do, how they need to go through and they're planning on submitting. So I expect the list that she has is very partial. I think that's going to grow. Great. Terrific. And as Council Member Friesen just said, that was a as a recommendation from this committee in prior years. And I do want to just say thank you. The work that your office has done to get our cost sharing portion of our grant giving is up and running and informing the nonprofits and everything else has been terrific. So I just want to say thank you very much for all that work. And we look forward to the additional information as this budget does come before the full council. So if we want to change those tranches when we're considering reconciliation, we can. So great. Thank you. All right. I think that's it for our office, the cost sharing portion of the Office of Grants Management. Again, thank you, Senator Zucker, for joining us this morning for that bit. And now we'll move over to the Office of Community Grants and the Community Grants more holistically. And I'll turn it over to Ms. Clemens Johnson to walk us through the packet. So sorry, thank you. Unless you I didn't get to say bless you the last time. Thank you. The county executive has recommended an increase of $150,695 or 14.43% for the FY25 from the FY25 approve operating budget for the Office of Grants Management. Personnel costs comprises of around 77% of the budget and there is a total of 6.0 FTEs. There is an increase of 2.4 million recommended from the FY25 approved operating budget for the Community Grants in DA. We will talk about that secondary, but I did want to make that note on this cover page. So there is a recommended increase of $150,695 in programmatic and staffing enhancements. The main enhancement that we will discuss is $100,000 for an incoming grant data tracking and approval system. There are increases in compensation, and the RESJ office stated through their review that the Office of Grants Management provides deep commitments in the area of the government alliance on racial equity framework with the aim of meeting the needs of those who have historically been disenfranchised from such funding opportunities. So on page two of your packet, you will find the budget detailed and I included the council presence approach to the operating budget in terms of how the reconciliation works and those items that will be considered for how we're managing this list this year. In terms of background, there is a summary of the Office of Grants Management, and we also highlighted the work of the Go Committee in conjunction with the Office of Grants Management. This year, there were two sessions held on November 12th and one on February 27th, discussing some of the systemic issues that we have been seeing since the Office of Grants Management was founded.. Resulting from those work sessions was the creation of the A.A. Advisory Work Group on a strategic plan for county grants, which was approved by the Council on last Tuesday. I believe that grant, that group will start meeting. The goal is to start mid-May and I believe the dates for the interim report are August and November. So the goal I believe is by December. there is a marching orders and kind of a solidified plan about how the Office of Grants Management will manage their traditional grant programming, the three ones the cost sharing community grants NDA and I am blanking on the last one. So that either. Oh, oh, community grant legacy awards, which I think has been highly discussed here. I highlighted the operating budget tool and we did want to just provide a few updates on page four. I asked the department to provide information on the grant writer's contracts and how that was managed and working with the different departments. OGM currently has four grant writer contracts under the solicitation, that is posted currently. Assignments to these grant writers rotate as departments request a grant writer. And just to highlight an FY 24 and FY 25, grant writers from this contract worked on 10 assignments of those 10, one grant was run, five of five, the type of apartments deferred their application and four and the four remaining were submitted but not one. A total of 90,588 dollars was spent on the grant writers by the departments with $10 million one. So that is a 10,939% rate of return. So I didn't want to highlight the work that the grant writers are doing and how the departments are utilizing them and they will be continued to be funded for next year as they are part of the base budget. Another highlight from last year was the from was transitioning to the UNA grants platform. I won't read through all the detail but the the office highlighted that they have completed one grant competition, and they are advancing two grant competition programs to the subject matter experts. And currently has additional three competitions now open for applications through the UNI grant platform. I can let the office talk about this, but there was lots of training that was provided over 20 hours of virtual and virtual and hybrid drop-in office hours, helping people establish their accounts, learning how to utilize the system. But you didn't note that as with any system there are challenges which have been for both the OGM staff and their stakeholders. there's differences in how the platform functions, accessibility, so OGM is planning to continue to offer more training and train their staff as well as they continue to use the platform, but I believe it has been a positive transition for them. I will stop there before we get into the budget item to see if there are any questions. Dr. Murphy, did you want to highlight anything or? Thank you. I'll just want to start with our two sides of Office of Grants Management incoming grants and outgoing grants and say a few words about each. On January 29th, the roll administration rescinded a memo from their Office of Management and, calling for an analysis and rescission of a wide range of programs that, and many of which are high priorities and reflect Montgomery County values, things like climate change, things like diversity, equity, inclusion. So on January 29th, they rescinded that memo and everyone felt that was the end. They lost, they're moving on, we're going. But later that day, they came out and said, oh no, we're not. And I remember texting, you know, colleagues saying, this is not a retreat, this is a retrenchment. And everything since then has proven that to be true. What we're seeing more and more from the federal government is every time they lose court case, and they losing court cases, you know, non-profit states, including the state of Maryland, are standing up and suing the government on many of these restrictions and policies related to federal grants, which we and our non-profit providers receive from them, you know, they lose, but then they regroup and they defuse their efforts. So my team, the income grants team, I, very, very proud of the work they do in terms of daily going through the churn and figuring out what's going on, what new policies have dropped, what new information is available. We work very, very closely with the office of County Attorney on the daily basis, office of Intergovernmental Relations on the daily basis, who coordinate with our federal delegations. We have roughly $300 million of federal grants. This is not a small amount of money that provide services to our residents, support of projects in our communities that, you know, if that disappears, that's going to be a huge blow. And so our office is really the tip of the spear in terms of defending these funds to ensure that we stay there and that we are able to expand funds as new federal opportunities pop out. So I want to thank the committee first for the recommendation for the office of county attorney's additional position on the grants focus position. Yes, that will help expedite some of the slowdowns with the approval of outgoing grants, but really a lot of that person's role and importance is going to be having an attorney helping us in departments on a day-to-day basis as we grind through. And I think the metaphor for trench warfare is very apt. It's going to be a grind for these next two years, if not next four years, as we see back and forth as they continually change your strategies and approaches to, you know, make funding difficult for us to try to push us back. So again, we're very grateful for the office county attorney's work and help with that, but they need more support and I thank you for recommending, you know, that position. In terms of the data management and the tracking platform, there's been some perception that this is related to the outgoing grants. It's not, this is purely to have a database of all of our grants that we do, track the approvals and vetting it, make sure all the key stakeholders are looking at this. Because again, what we're seeing from the federal government is a lack of better term, poison pills, being inserted into the terms and conditions of what if we want the federal funds, you have to do this. Some of those are manageable, some of those are being challenged by courts, some of those are being forced to be changed by the courts. It's an ongoing grind to see what we can do, how we can stay compliant. And so this system will ensure that the streamline the approval and vetting of all of these grants as they go forward as well as be able to better track compliance to ensure that we are able to hold on to the federal funds we have and as we get new federal funds or we seek out future federal funding opportunities we can make sure we're not signing up for something that we're not ready to do as a county. So that's an extremely important system that we're asking for. In terms of pivoting a little bit to outgoing grants or sorry with you in the grants, that is a big part of that platform is a project management platform. So as we go out and we seek state and federal funding, as we win those awards, the departments can manage those awards within the platform where seamlessly and again, the better compliance. What they also have is a proprietary function to scan the internet for private sector opportunities, their foundation opportunities and help our departments go after this other funding source more efficiently. It's as any nonprofit can tell you, it's like finding a needle in the haystack to find foundation opportunities. This helps us do it. The Office of Animal Services is already one in the ward using this that we've found that we posted to them and they've been able to get an additional $50,000 to do some extra projects within there. So that's already working. It's already paying for itself. In terms of outgoing, I want to thank you for the past positions you've supported in other budget years. We've gotten the staff that we need within the Office of Grants Management. I think really going forward to snap about how much money for this to support, but it's really how we do our program programs. How are we going to approach grants? Is are we going to do in the way that's going to create this enormous administrative burden that we can just throw an endless amount of staff at? Or are we strategic? Are we focused? Are we, as many of you have already said today, that makes these more seamless? For FY 25, the transition to department, us helping departments put their funds out of this grants, a better vehicle for nonprofits has already exceeded the amount of the community grants in DA. We are on track to implement 16 department grant programs. $17 million total is the projection of that's department-based budget funds that are being put out as grants or compete as grants. Whereas there's only $10.9 million total in the NDA across all grant programs of FY25. So we're already exceeding the community grants NDA in terms of grant funding to nonprofits from based budgets. And I expect in FY26 that trends can even exacerbate as already more and more departments are coming to be saying for FY26 we want to try this as a grant. We want to compete these funds as a grant. In terms of getting our work with the racial equity lens, we collect so much data that we don't have time to really dig through. It's kind of a luxury to kind of do that back in the analysis for one of the county executives budget forums with the black community. They did ask me to do a drill down and I was was able to do some analysis of kind of, have we started to be successful with implementing RESTJ approaches within our grants. So within this, for the FY24 community grants, in that competition, 19% of the awards went to a Black-led organization, 32% of the funding went to Black-led organizations forerved community projects fund, 27% went to Black, 20% 27% of the awards went to Blackled organizations and 30% went to, of the funding went to Blackled organizations and community projects funds, which is a small grant pool, 42% of that went to Blackled organizations and 44% of the dollar value went to there. So as with those three programs, we're highly intentional with a lot of great feedback and support for the Office of ResJ. How can we integrate these considerations into our grants programs in the legal way? I think these data, which is just partial, just shows that if we are intentional how we do these grant programs, we can make county funds more accessible. We don't have historical data to compare this to, but I think this is probably pretty good compared to what we think it might have been. So without a pivot back to you, thank you. Great. Thank you, Director Murphy. So if we go back to the office of the Office of Grants Management before we get to the NDA, I think there's one budget decision, correct Ms. Clemens Johnson in terms of the incoming grant data tracking and approval system. And I think director Murphy, you answered my question because I think it was some of the things is understanding if I'm pronouncing it correctly, the UNA, and what you're doing with UNA and what you're doing with the new tracking program. So these are separate things. It's not to replace that, correct? Correct. And not every department is going to be using UNO. So we do need this separate platform to be tracking all of these other grants and have that database of them. UNO really, for the incoming side, is really kind of a project management platform and grant search platform has very, very different functionality. And if we try to put this function into Yuna, we will be spending a lot more money changing that platform. We'd have to be training a whole range of stakeholders who don't need to be going into Yuna, how to use that platform. Whereas if we stick with a TEPS developed platform, it's going to look and feel like all the other types of approval and data platforms that the county has. And also it's going to be more accessible and folks are not going to need the same level of training that would if we tried to cram doll into you. Great. And you're expecting this to be developed and rolled out in FY26 and that don't see any problems with that. No, as soon as preparation, we get, assuming we get the appropriation, we will move forward. And most of the costs, again, are one-time costs with setup. The maintenance, I believe, is somewhere in $30,000 range for the long-term. But again, it's the amount of staff time that has spent just collating efforts and grants. I think that it will make it a lot easier for us to, again, make sure that we're in compliance, make sure that we're aware of threats, make sure that we're, you know, the right people are all seeing these things before the county's making the commitments. Great. Well, I have no objections to that, but I would ask Ms. Clemens Johnson, just like we did with the Board of Elections, to request from Ted's just a breakdown. I'm going with the county executive's recommendation on the Office of Grants Management's budget. But I break down. I'm fine with going with the county executives recommendation on the Office of Grants Management's budget, but I would like to get into the practice when we have things like I think for board of elections it was something of $300,000 and we've gotten that information. Today it's 100,000 just to know from tabs what that money, how that breaks down because I think it's important as Director Murphy, as you said, what is one time money to get us set up and running versus what is going to be ongoing funding. But I have no objections with accepting the county executive's recommendation. Okay. All right. So that's with that. And then we'll, let's turn it over to the Community Grants NDA and back to you Ms. Clems Johnson. All right, thank you. And what you requested is noted. So on page 10 of your packet, we start with the Community Grants NDA. The FY26 recommended amount from the CE is 13.3 million. This is a change from the FY25 amount of 22.5%. I have listed in your packet the programs to be supported. The largest of which is the multi-year grant awards for 6.2 million. The legacy awards are next to 4.7 million. The one million for the nonprofit technical assistance and management support grant is 1 million for the nonprofit incubators grant and the inflationary increase that will be discussed at full council and that will be provided if approved by the council to the nonprofit partners that are funded through the NDA. Just in terms of an update, monitoring the grant performance, I question the Office of Grants Management of how they were making decisions in terms of performance. So if somebody is underperforming, how do we define that? How do we discuss and engage with that organization? So the office provided the following details, they really take a different approach when it comes to all of the grants, depending on they notice like if they've made timely and clear progress and timely and clear progress towards their award goals, challenges phase, innovative solutions that they've faced. So it looks like the Office of Grants Management really just engages with the awardees on a case-by-case basis depending on what what their issues are. Some of the issues OGM has reported are missing our incomplete, reporting demonstrating the impact of funds, low performance against stated goals, not adhering to approved budgets with the program spending, and not adhering to program scope and or lack thereof from recipients. So the OGM states that you know they they monitor very small amounts of grants. So this role is really that of the department to stay engaged with the Office of Grants Management to tell them about how progress is going with certain grants agreements and if they would need to talk to those organizations jointly maybe to discuss those issues. So I will stop there before we get into the budget discussion items. Great. I think I wanted to delve into just a little bit more on Ms. Clements Johnson, what you were just talking about about the performance measurement, and particularly Director Murphy, how Ms. Clements Johnson just started referencing that for the different departments, and as we're looking at the community grants and these legacy grants, I guess I'm just trying to figure out are we moving towards something that is more standardized in terms of evaluating performance? Or it sounds like it's being done on a case-by-case basis right now. So this is where you get the divergences between again how I framed before the targeted or the department and the target aggrands programs and kind of these traditional open-ended grants programs where with the departments they set very clear measures, very clear goals as you apply for the program the organization says they're going to achieve those what their milestones are, what their metrics and targets are going to be. And then as it's, we run the grants competition in partnership with the department, but then after the awards are made, we're more hands-off and more and more trouble-shooting support mode if there's an issue with a grantee. The department is responsible for monitoring and checking and making sure that they're meeting those targets, which are outlined very clearly in the grants agreement. And if they're not, or if they're not reporting on time, or if there's other issues, they're not meeting their milestones, then we work with the department on corrective action, including canceling grants towards that legitimate. And all that has to be documented and why not. On the community grants, we, and office grants mentioned oversee directly, we administer this kind of departmental role for about half the community grants. So where the ones are collecting reports, where the ones evaluating them and signing off are they meeting their metrics, are they being their targets and if they are, then we give them the next trunch of payments. And also with the underserved community partnerships projects, that is also being administered directly from our office. All of the legacy renewals and then the other half of the community grants, all of those are being overseen by departments who traditionally or historically have always been overseas and seen these awards. So if this was one of the awards that we've had since FY18, you know, that stuck with that same department for the most part, you know, and they're the ones administering it now. So they're the ones, just like a target grant program, they're the ones looking at the metrics, they're the ones collecting the reports, they're the ones who are monitoring individuals. If there's an issue, they raise it to us and we help them navigate that and push through. So there is a little bit of a mix. I think it's how it works is kind of standard in terms of roles and responsibilities. Just for some grants, we're the one administering, which is not really in our scope of what we're, OGM is built to do. It's like procurement managing a procurement contract for like a on behalf of the department. But again, since community grants don't really fit, you know, in the department, that's kind of, we've kind of taken that on. So I think there is more of a eagerness, and I know this is one of the recommendations and nonprofit Montgomery's recent report was to create more of a standardization how we approach it. And I think you're seeing more of that with the targeted grants programs where yes there is more of a standard federal method of the evaluated approach and how we go through that. It's with these kind of historical programs that it's we still are kind of doing things the old way which yes they're being monitored yes they're being looked at but there's less of a formal way of doing that than there has been. And part of that is also the diversity, the range of programming. So often, like nonprofits ask me, can you give us a template? And it's like, well, I hesitate to give you a template because your programs are so unique. And maybe this template might work for you, but this is a cause problems for your partner. So we'll give you a very broad one. And so I think that's often the challenges when you have this huge diversity of programs. When you try to standardize things, it's not going to work for some organization. Some types of programs more than others. When you've targeted grants programs, yeah, it's a very clear mission, very clear objective, very clear target. You can standardize things very easily. For these open-ended grants programs, it's much more difficult. So there's more of a broader criteria. Great. Thank you. That's very, very helpful. Can I ask you on the community grants for FY25, how much have the funds been distributed to the partners now? All funds have been converted. I'd have to do some sort of budget run to see how much money you've actually been paid out, but all funds have been in convert for all the FY25 community grants. We are working to encumber the FY25 funds for the UCP right now. There are FY24 awards just recently ended and we're renewing those, so we're encumbering those funds. Legacy awards are also all in convert as well. So that was a mix of FY 24 and FY 25 in Cumberd funds. The only funds that are not in Cumberd are the incubator funds and then the nonprofit technical assistance grants. So those I need to get those competed out. And you have a timeline? Do you know for very soon the the no NOFO, it's with the federal and with the federal situation of invests a lot of time in that. And then just kind of, I think also the needs and the needs of the nonprofit communities are evolving. It's not getting worse on a kind of a day-to-day basis as we see these trickle-down impacts. So as with everything in the budget, there's a finite amount of money. How do we direct that at needs? And so I think that's kind of shaping how do we do that the nonprofit Montgomery's recent report helps give some clarity, helps give that. And even that, it's how do we structure this no-fo to do it. My option, what I usually opt to is, and what I'll probably be going with this more open-ended no-fo and let the nonprofits tell us what they need as opposed to saying, this is what we think you need to apply for this. Great. And I will mention at this juncture that last week we did pass the resolution to establish the workgroup to help us look at the path forward on community grants and the legacy grants. I think in part of that resolution we also had the cost sharing but it sounds like the cost sharing as we just talked about has been getting up and running really well. And I will just say on the legacy grants, you know, we've talked about this on the committee. We said it last year. It is just a real disappointment that we are here again this year and continuing with this. And so I'm really hopeful that the the work group will roll their sleeves, help us get a path forward because I don't think just continuing this honestly is equitable or fair to the entire nonprofit community here in Montgomery County. And we need to find a better way forward. Before we get into the budget, issues just want to see if my colleagues have anything on these points. Council Member Freeden. Yeah, well thank you, Echo, all the comments that you made at Madam Chair. I didn't get a clear understanding. Do we have a timeline for the technical assistance and incubator grant programs? Launching within the next week or two, and then it will be probably open for a month. And then the way we're structuring it is again, we'll be looking for a nonprofit partner to be providing these services or support to other nonprofits. And so we're looking at only a couple of awards, big deep chunks of money, really, really investing in capacity building. So that takes care of a lot of the, that'll make the administrative side of it go a lot quicker. But yeah, we will get these funds in Cumber before I fly and develop F-25. Okay, so the goal is to incumbent, I mean, you're pretty tight against the clock here. Can you share with us the exact timing of that at each step of the way when it goes public? I assume there's a no-foe or some public notice and then when the funds are actually encumbered and then when they're actually distributed to the recipients. I can provide you those updates. Okay. Everything is advertised through our newsletter. We've had an other contributing factors. There's an end of fiscal year rush with departments coming to us with grant programs that they want to put out there. So we've been helping a number of departments put out their programs as grants. So that's all part of it. But we've been, the newsletter has been delayed a little bit as we've dealt with this churn and trying to like hammer down the timelines. But that is it'll go out through the newsletter. I can send you like I did with the cost share and capital grants and a lot of that process. I can send you a special notice. be reaching out to the likely folks who I know are varying. On the weekly basis are reaching out to me saying, when can we apply for this, when can we apply for this? We have all these ideas one week. notice I'll be reaching out to the likely folks who I know are very on the weekly basis are reaching out to me saying when can we apply for this when can we apply for this we have all these ideas when we apply I'll be doing proactive research to them that hey this launched this is up and then I can give you the timelines of the process of when we're doing your information session when it closes when we how we go through it and move towards you know final execution of the awards. I appreciate that we're gonna get out of this cycle where we're expending Fiscal year funds in the final days of the fiscal year or in the wrong fiscal year So I just want to reiterate that I share the frustration about the legacy grants that it looks like this is an increase, but not to the actual organizations who are making requests, who are meeting the needs of the community, because most of the funds are being soaked up in the legacy grants and the new funds are not increasing at the same level. The packet notes departments are offering similar issue focus grant programs from their base budgets or special funds. Is there a listing of that? Like can an organization go to your website or go to some finite place and say okay here here is every single county grant program and the bowels of every single department that they can apply for? We don't have that fully for FY26 yet. Some departments have already another product that we have, we update usually weekly is what we call the grant program forecast and it's like a long-term view of the grant programs that will be coming out and when we expect to compete them. So some departments Office of Food Systems Resilience has already got a plan and we've already published it for their plan, FY26 grants, with the big caveat, of course, assuming appropriation. But so there are other departments I'm working with who are already thinking about FY26 and when they want to put out. But I don't have that final list yet. I think that's okay. Okay the Office of Fusus and Zrulins, which is great, but you have a unique relationship with them. So that's the lowest of the lowest possible hanging fruit, to be honest, and it's a teeny tiny department that does great work. We have much bigger departments that do lots of things that are probably happening, that it would be very difficult for someone to know what is happening unless there was a clearinghouse for it. And one of the main reasons why your office was created was to have a clearinghouse. And one of the ongoing frustrations that many people have are statements like that. We have an office of grants management. but unfortunately that's just a tip with iceberg of where the grants are and you have to go into each department and figure it out and maybe it's public and maybe it's not and maybe it's on their website and maybe it's not. So we need to tighten that up in a much more significant way. You should know every single one of those projects that are happening. Every single one of the timelines that are occurring. You don't have to be running it, but you need to be aware of it. Then there should be a clearing house, and I think it should be you and your website that says, here's everything that you run, and here's everything that everybody else runs. And if you want to go to what other people run, here's how you do that. And we can't say there's no wrong door when there is a wrong door, and it feels like a black hole for a lot of the organization. So I am very hopeful that that becomes the process moving forward and that we can go to one place, we can direct people to go to one place, they can go to one place, and it's very simple to understand how to apply for funds. I mean, the reality is I'm OK if the answer is not everybody's going to get what they ask for. I'm not okay to explain to people that it's not clear how they ask. Well where they ask or to whom they're supposed to ask. That's where the issue becomes. And in a lot of ways we already have achieved that In the sense that all grants have to go through us. Just the same way, all procurement contracts have to go through the Office of Procurement. Any grant competition has to go through the Office of Grants Management. It will appear on UNA, it will appear on our news letter, it will appear on our grants forecast. What the knowledge gap is is I don't know the department's individual budgets of what they're planning to put out as grants until they reach out to me and say, hey, we've got this funds, we want to put out as grants, it doesn't show up. So that's really, it's all going to show up in the products that we've already started. It's already going to show up in us as a clearinghouse. If they want to do a grant program, they have to go through us. I think what's often the misconception is that all nonprofit funding is grants. And we grants remain a very small minority of the nonprofit funding, the vast majority of nonprofit funding is grants. And we grants remain a very small minority of the nonprofit funding. The vast majority of nonprofit funding is giving out as procurement contracts. And I think that's where the big confusion is. As folks are coming, and it's there on our website, I say, do you know that less than 10% of the county's nonprofit funding is giving out as grants? And you're still linked to the procurement solicitation page and you guys should go there and check that out as well. So that is, that's kind of where the gap is, is there's an assumption that we are the main source of nonprofit funding and at least right now we're not, or like the grants will be. So I think there are all these other areas in county budgets. And so mapping that out from nonprofits because it is, to the department's money is being given as procurement contracts. I don't have access to the budget. I don't have access to the budget. I don't say of access to there, but I do make that point. The never presentation I think I give is, hey, if you're looking just at me, you're missing opportunities. You need to be also looking over who does the reporting for those grants? Not procurements. That's a separate dynamic. Who does the reporting of that I'm sorry that the individual department if they're running their own but it has to go through you as a clearinghouse are you reporting on that oh yeah we build the plan we we build the program in uniform for them we make sure it complies with you know all of our requirements we make sure that they're integrating res J considerations into their design of their project. We draft the NOFA. We, that's an administrative service that we offer to departments is we compete it on their behalf. It's their money, it's their policy directive shaped by council appropriations, but the administrative service we do for them. And also part of us holding the standards. It all goes through us. It all goes it'll all appear in you know. Okay. My suggestion would be that we set up a timeline that you set up a timeline. The CAO sets up a timeline where you find out about the sooner in the process and that you are able to share publicly not that you know the deadline started yesterday. You know once it's in you UNA and you set up the process and all of that aspect, but in 30 days, there's going to be a process of that people can prepare for it and think through it and well run foundational dynamics. Most nonprofits know there is going to be an available foundation grant that they're going to apply for and they have time to prepare. A lot of them have boards. They have to decide whether or not they're going to even compete for the funding. They have limited staff. They need to plan for it. I think that's one of the challenges too. We can control that part. So I know that's not on you. That's on the departments sharing the information with you earlier in the process, but we can set an expectation. You know, they all work for the same person. You and they work for the same person. And so I think the CAO could set that directive. So if you could share that and if that makes sense to you, I think that would help so that folks can prepare for what's coming. Because one of the issues is there might not be enough time but the time they're aware of it. It may be too late for them to turn it around and actually get their application and request in. Can I suggest that maybe we add that to this scope of work to the advisory work group that maybe they develop a policy or something. Perfect, sounds good, great idea. Great. Great. All right. I'm moved. All right. Ms. Cummins Johnson, why don't we go through the budget discussion items? OK, thank you. You all are. Started this conversation, but the first item is 1.1 the continuation of the FY 25 legacy renewals for $4.7 million. There's any discussion. Okay, we will move on. No, I think we've discussed this and I'm not sure there's anything but to say yes and accept their recommendation from the count executive. understood. We will start with decreases. There are three programs recommended for decrease. Grant programs are recommended for decrease. The first four discussion is the community projects fund small grants for a negative $1.2 million. In FY25, this grant program was funded for 1.2 million and was available for small and Emerging and volunteer led organizations. There was actually another $200,000 that was added in FY 25 the FY 24 amount was 1 million to Mentor train and coach the small and emerging organizations. So the council staff posed the question and why this program was recommended for elimination but they just stated that because of budget situations and reductions that had to be paid it was recommended that this pre-it program be eliminated since these ongoing programs that it would result it would not result in service losses. The CE decided that reducing this funding would have less of an impact on residents than other potential reductions. The Department or office did note that departments, and we just kind of talked about this, are now offering similar, smaller issues, focused grant programs from their base budget or special funds. So even though this funding pool may not longer be available, organizations will likely have an increasing number in dollar value, dollar volume of other grant opportunities to apply for. Yeah. I think we touched on this just a little bit, but I was kind of surprised, I just want to say, Director, I was kind of surprised given what we have been talking about, you know, office grants management kind of being the tip of the sphere, as you mentioned before, and helping our smaller organizations, especially during this time. And so I don't know if you want to speak to this reduction a little bit, and really how you see us continuing to support our smaller nonprofits and others who were the recipients of these grants or could have been. So These were the community project funds was one time short-term projects that you know It was geared towards and I know there was concern over the definition and the criteria that we set of what counts as a small Emerging nonprofit and what doesn't. But these were geared towards smaller organizations. There's a lot of volunteer led organizations who you know they can do with $5,000 they can do some great stuff and no with no administrative costs or overhead. And so that was it was again with the ID and previous geo hearings I talked about creating lanes. You create a lane for small organizations, volunteer led organizations that are not going to be able to compete with the bigger or medium size organizations, same pool of funds. So that was the idea for this, but because these are all short term one time projects, there wasn't seen as a long term impact as if there's a long standing program that you're going to be cutting that's been having an impact is entrenched in the community that would have a bigger impact than these things are by definition one time. Also looking at some of the other funding pools, the I apologize, I don't remember the full name of it, the commission that manages the marijuana tax revenue is going to be a very, very, very, very similar scope of work or types of project that they want to support. And so that's going to be a very, very, very similar scope of a work or types of projects that they want to support. And so that's going to have about, I believe, $800,000, $2 million a year. So you've got another funding pool where we can say, okay, this pool of funding isn't available, but here's a different funding source for you and your community to apply for and maybe support the exact same type of thing. It's just you're going to a different place to you're applying in a different place. So that was looking at that. And again, the top line stat of the community grants NDA was only 10.9 million and FY25. And we've already done 16 or were on track to do 16 million and non NDA funded grant programs. And already more and more departments are coming to me and again, they're not on that list, and they should be. It helps for me, am I planning of my staffing time, to know when we're gonna be competing stuff, but I think there is gonna be these other types of opportunities coming out, and maybe this is not there, but hey, there's two or three other ones that they might have available. Great. questions on this? No, the committee will accept the recommendation. Okay. Our next item is 1.3 to decrease for the nonprofit technical assistant and management support grants of 1 million. The executive has made this recommendation that the amount be reduced from the FY25 amount of 2 million to 1 million. I will note in FY25 the recommendation that bumped up from $1 million to $2 million. So this looks like it's bringing it back down. The original vision and significant FY 25 investment in that grant program was to capitalize on trends in federal grant making that increasingly have been providing funds to nonprofit partners directly instead of like the county. Those funds were aimed to strengthen nonprofit partners' ability to secure and manage complex federal grants. Due to the changes with the current administration, we are seeing that the administration have de-prioritized the county's competitive advantage and federal grant opportunities have been drastically reduced. So the funds will be bit out and the nofo will be released soon with a new focus on building nonprofit resilience and pursuing alternative funding resources. So I guess that being not just federal. It remains in the county's interest to have the nonprofits develop a more diverse set of funding resources So the funding has reduced or has been recommended to be reduced and FY26 to accommodate the difficult budget year in a more focused scope I think we discussed this before with the council member Yeah, I mean obviously I'm okay with this and I'll just note We added you know we doubled the funding, but the money hasn't gone anywhere. So I think it makes sense to reduce the funding, but I think it's reasonable to be frustrated that the money was increased to express an urgency to meet the needs, and yet the funds aren't going to go out until almost 12 months actually more than 12 months afterwards approved but almost 12 months after the fiscal year started but I think accepting the county executives recommendation is reasonable given what we heard earlier. Okay the last item is the decrease continuation of FY25 grant winners of 505,477. The executive reduced this funding amount for the award-read winners to create enough bandwidth to fund all the legacy renewals. I think Dr. Murphy could discuss this, but I think this is reflective even what we were talking about of performance. So people that received grant awards may underperformed or maybe didn't spend their money on time. So this was funding that the county executive was, saw that they could recoup to help support the FY26 grant award winners. Yeah, sorry to say, it's a clarity on that. That actually it wasn't a reduction based on performance. It was the, There was a budgeted amount of how much was supposed to go to the community grants award winners. But when we made the actual awards, the amount was lowered by this amount to 500,000. So there's only actually 5.2 million. So this adjustment actually just reflects how much was actually awarded last year as a continuation as opposed to a reduction because of performance. Okay so we did this last year so people who got community grant who got the awards aren't we're not taking money away from them. Yeah. This is they are getting the the level funding plus 3% yeah if there's performance issues Yeah, we can we can cut their their funds or not renew their grants for another year, but that's ongoing so But this is just level setting from what we actually did versus what was in the original budget Yeah, how are we off by 505,000 when we're just renewing legacy grants if it's not based on performance. I'm just trying to understand, do we just overshoot it? We just calculated wrong. It was a math problem, accounting issue. Would legacies were not part of the FY24, they were within the NDA, but the money was in the NDA, but in order to fund the legacies, money was shifted around within the FY 24. And so bandwidth was created by reducing the community grants and the amount winners. So where is this money coming this year? I guess I'm confused. Yeah, why is this a reduction? That's what we're trying to figure out. It's a reduction to the overall amount in the NDA compared to last year's budget. But then we do that last year. Sorry, that's not trying to figure out. I thought we we dealt with this last year because we said okay to the legacy grants to move forward last year. So I thought we took the reduction already. Because legacies are funded by a mix of fiscal year money. It wasn't a clear, this was funded in this budget year versus that year. So it was a mix of FY 24 and FY 25 funds. And so this is just kind of writing that and removing that mix where everything's being funded by the San fiscal year. If I recall to the council, which is why we had those committee meetings didn't weigh in on the legacy award. Yeah, that happened after. It was awarded after. So we never discussed the budget details. So I think maybe that's where it's missing for council members because we never discussed the details of the budget. We did during committee once they were awarded, but we did not talk about the process by which they funded them. So it just said it was funded by the executive, but we didn't see where the polls of money came from to help fund the fund. This particular item encapsulates a lot of the frustration. It includes the challenge of having multiple fiscal years carrying over because of a process that hasn't worked. And confusion when you read this, it's very confusing if you read this as a stakeholder. And it says continuation of FY25 into FY26, which presumably would be additive. And yet you look at the chart and it is subtractive. That is a very challenging dynamic to understand. But yeah, I mean, such is where we are, I suppose. Yeah, Council Member Katz. Yeah, I agree with the confusion. There again, if the money came from FY 24 and an additional money came from FY 25, where is the money now? or going to be that was there from FY24, then it had to be a higher number rather than a lower number. I don't understand how this works. The FY 24 funds were undercombred funds from the NDA that were shifted and then it was pumped into existing grant agreements. So that encountered the FY 24 funds in the additional 12 months. So we just extended their grant terms and gave them additional money to fund their programs for those grant terms. So it was basically a 14 month extension from their FY 24 award. I guess I. That is. Good. I just have it. Okay. I think you just answered the question, which is way clear. Yeah. Unless I'm mistaken, there were 14 month expansions and now we're only funding 12 month expansions And so the two months you see edition would reflect the 505,000 Correct I recommend leading with that part because that makes a lot of sense that you you did You know because we haven't been on fiscal years because we've had a lot of rollout issues with this process, there were 14 month extensions. We only do 12 month fiscal years, and so for that reason, we haven't done so much. Right, so let's revise the packet for full council to reflect that when we did the legacy grants in FY24, there were for a 14 month renewal. And so this year it's for a calendar, not a calendar year, fiscal year, one year, which results in a reduction of $505,477. Yeah. Yeah. It's really annualization from 14 months to 12 months. Yeah. And that's really how it should be reflected, much clearer. Yeah. So I didn't mean to jump in, but I heard that. And I said, now we have an answer. When that was the best answer, because I couldn't get there. So I appreciate that. So I think we're good with that. And we'll change. So in looking at the continuing legacy grants, the reductions we had in the three categories, this committee accepts the county executives recommendations. So, and again, thank you so much for all the work. We're really looking forward to the working group on this and continuing moving us forward. So, thank you and thank you to your whole team. I appreciate all the work. All right now we're going to Council staff to walk us through the packet. Okay, good morning. So getting into the public information office, the county executive is recommending an increase of $49,683, or 1.68% from the FY25 approved operating budget for the Public Information Office. The executive's recommendation also includes a $173,760 increase for compensation adjustments and required operating expenses. These items reflect a continuation of current staffing and service levels. The operating budget equity tool analysis for PIO states that efforts to advance racial equity and social justice in the Office of Public Information are evidenced by its targeted commitments in each area of the Garf framework, particularly in the areas of normalize and organize. PIO has designated targeted staff time and fiscal resources for an RISJ coordinator slash liaison position in addition to devoting resources to outreach and communication efforts designed to reach diverse communities in the county. On page one of your packet, you will find table one which summarizes the county executives recommended and approved operating budgets for FY25 and FY26. This encompasses the general fund of personnel costs, staffing, and operating costs. And on page two of the packet, you'll find information about the background and functions of the public information office alongside a detailed OBET analysis. Next on page three of the packet, you will find Table Two, which summarizes all of the county executives recommended budget changes for PIO. Overall, the executives proposed FY26 budget for the Public Information Office is a same services budget that only includes compensation and non-disgressionary operating budget changes. The budget does include, however, an internal shift of three FTEs within PIO. This is from public relations to web content and graphic management. And when the department was asked about the shift, they stated that these positions were previously funded with the K-WOLF fund, which has since been fully shifted into PIO, beginning in FY25. The positions were initially transferred to the public relations program, but are a better fit within the web content and graphic management program, as the positions are focused mostly on creating content for the cable channels. Thank you. Terrific. One, I just want to say thank you to Ms. Anderson. Stepping up as Acting Director at this time and Mr. Peterson, thank you for all your work. I'll ask if my colleagues have any questions or anything. Nope, this is pretty straightforward. I think committee will take the County Executive's recommendation for this budget. So thank you very much. All right, moving on, we'll go to the office of intergovernmental relations. Okay, we can start when you're ready. So for the Office of Intergovernmental Relations, the county executive is recommending an increase of $25,822 or 2.56% from the FY25 approved operating budget for the Office of Intergovernmental Relations. The executive's recommendation also includes a $42,880 increase for compensation adjustments and required operating expenses. These items reflect a continuation of current staffing and service levels. The operating budget equity tool analysis for the Office of Intergovernmental Relations states that by virtue of its mission, OIR has the ability to influence and facilitate decisions that greatly impact outcomes for county residents facing disparities and disproportionalities. The office has detailed how they plan to include racial equity and social justice in aspects of their work. Below you will find table one which is a summary of the county executives recommended and approved budgets for FY 25 and FY 26 and on page two you'll find some information about the background and functions of OIR as well as more information regarding the OVET analysis for the department. Something of note is that OIR has a dedicated RESJ lead who works to advance racial equity and social justice. Moving on on page three of the packet you'll see table two which summarizes the county executives recommended budget changes for OIR. Overall there are no budget changes of note. The budget reflects contractual requirements for maintaining operations. That's all for me. Thank you. Thank you to the team. This was quite a year in Annapolis. And we appreciate all your work and we heard from Senator Zucker earlier this morning but it's's one guy, I don't know if he wanted to say anything else. It's a pretty straightforward budget. It's straightforward at 90% personnel and really no changes. So appreciate your time and effort looking at it and really don't have a lot to add up in that. Great. I will note just for folks that Councilmember Freetzen had a funeral to attend to this morning, so he has left. But the two remaining members of the committee vote to support the county executive's recommendation on this budget. So thank you for being here. Thank you. Thank you all. He didn't leave because you were there. No. I just wanted to know. Yeah, yeah. What did I say? All right, next we have the office of the Inspector General. Okay, I'll set. Okay, awesome. So for the Office of the Inspector General, the County Executive is recommending an increase of 482,243 dollars or 13.35% from the FY25 approved operating budget for the office of the inspector general. The executive's recommended increase also includes $115,417 in programmatic and staffing enhancements. This is encompassed by one enhancement, which is to add one investigator to the education oversight division, which will get more and two later in the packet. The executive's recommendation also includes a $376,646 increase for compensation adjustments and required operating expenses. These items reflect a continuation of current staffing and service levels. The executive's recommendation also includes a $9,820 decrease for the elimination of one-time items approved in FY25. The operating budget equity tool analysis for the Department states that the Office of the Inspector General continues to demonstrate a strong commitment to advancing racial equity and social justice through its current and planned work in each area of the Garfheim work. The Office's support for core team members, their professional development, and their role leading the Office's racial equity and social justice efforts is no worthy. On page two of your packet, you will find Table One, which details the county executives recommended and approved operating budgets for FY25 and FY26. There's also some information about the background and functions of OIG alongside their O-Bat analysis. And on page three of your packet you will find to table two which summarizes all of the county executives recommended budget changes and as we move through the packet I'll go over each relevant change. The only item for OIG is an enhancement to add one investigator to the the Education Oversight Division in the amount of $115,417. When OIG was asked about the rationale and the impact of the additional FTE, OIG responded stating that the recommended one FTE will be used to assist in addressing complaints and also allow OIG to be more responsive to community concerns. OIG also shared that MCPS is a high-risk area of oversight, and currently the Education Oversight Division has four staff. However, OIG reported that additional staff are needed to meet the demands of the division. OIG has regularly devoted the time of additional staff members who are reassigned from their regular duties to assist with MCPS issues and investigations. And the reassignments have impacted OIG's ability to perform timely relevant work in other county departments and programs and has extended the timeframes within which OIG performs their other engagements. Currently, the EOD has one manager, three position and two investigative of analyst three positions and investigator and one investigative analyst two position. For some context around staffing Bill 1119 was adopted by the council in October of 2019 and this bill expanded the inspector general's duties by one requiring the OIG to conduct a systematic risk-based rotating review of the internal accounting and contracting processes and controls used by each department and principal office in the executive branch and to required the OIG to audit high-risk county contracts and agreements. The bill also requires the council to ensure that the operating budget for their 4 OIG is sufficient to provide the services required by this law. as part of the revised FY23 to 25 work plan and projected budget, OIG has updated the ultimate staffing complement needed to 23 FTEs by FY25. OIG added 14 FTEs total between FY20 and FY25. The one proposed position for FY26 is specifically geared towards MCPS oversight and was not part of the original estimate of 23 FTEs. For vacancies, the Office of the Inspector General reported that they have one vacancy, which became vacant on March 24th, 2025. This vacancy resulted from an internal promotion and the position is currently being advertised with a closing date of April 3rd at 2025. Overall, OIG aims to have the position filled by Mid-May. And lastly, on page five, you will find a summary of the budget changes, which are to be discussed for committee consideration. Thank you. Great, thank you so much. Ms. LaMarzy, thank you for being here and all of the excellent work of the Inspector General's Office. I think having your office and the work that everyone does is so critical. And I will just say as we, I think this committee is always expressed our thanks to you and the work you do and given where we are in our country right now what we're seeing happen at the federal level I am just so glad here in Montgomery County We continue to have a very strong IG's office and the work that you do with our department and our agencies So I didn't know if you had any opening remarks you wanted to say or I always First thank you for having me. I'm always very pleased to be here before this committee. I really do appreciate the support that the entire council, and specifically this committee has given to our office, the opportunities we had this fall to discuss the projects that have come out of our office and to have continuing to dialogue with the departments and the agencies that are subject to our oversight, really, really has moved the needle forward in driving change in the county. And it's just been an absolute advantage. I talked to a lot of inspectors general throughout the country and we really do benefit from the support of the council, as well as the executive branch, and my discussions with Dr. Taylor at MCPS. Everyone really is interested in this county about doing right by our residents and being as careful as they can with the resources that we have. And as I've talked about with you before, there are really two main components to the work that we do in our office. We have our hotline, we respond to complaints, we conduct investigations, we do a lot of helping the residents or anyone who calls our office that just needs to ask a question and we help direct them in a lot of the the right ways. So far in FY 25 we've had over 300 complaints about a third of which relate to MCPS directly. The other component of the office is our proactive work our reviews our audits our inspections that we do that really is the vehicle that drives the change here in this county. So our budget request year after year is continuing to grow and support our capacity to meet the demands of this county, to be responsible in that proactive work, because the proactive reviews and audits and inspections that we do, that's how we meet our mission of increasing efficiency and effectiveness here in the county. That's how we strengthen controls and how we prevent as best we can and deter fraud waste and abuse in the programs that are funded by our tax sellers. So you have in the executives recommended budget one position to add to EOD that is a completely growing for us. I've told you before we sort of kept a list of areas we thought needed to get a look at MCPS and I got to the point this fiscal year where I couldn't just keep holding there. So I had to redeploy other staff and assign them to MCPS. So this is the first year. We have three proactive engagements at MCPS. Two should be finished this fiscal year, one will carry over a little bit further, but that's really really critical work to sort of driving change in their processes and updating. A lot of what's going on there. The other side where we do a lot of our proactive work of course is our audit division and we heard talk about Bill 1119 which will live on an infamy and gave us our mandate for audits but I would be remiss to not point out that this is the third year in the budget with level staffing there. We have gotten to about 42% of the principal of departments here in the county. What that means is if we continue at this pace and it is driven by staffing, you will get to 2029, which is a full two terms of any inspector general, not just me, and you won't have gotten to every department, let alone the responsible rotation of getting there every four to six years. So that is a critical component. We're constantly trying to think outside the box and be creative in how we can meet that mandate. I've used staff again from other divisions to do parts of that work. We've tried different configurations. We really are always conscious of the budget. And I know very well how difficult this year is and the year's coming forward. But the work that our office does really is an asset to the county. It is going to reap benefits to the county at higher dividends than probably any other office you hear from in this committee. And so just as you continue to make decisions about budget and our budget and the council, just ask that you keep in mind the value that we add and The abilities that we have when we have the right staffing levels Thank you councilmember cats. Yeah Thank you very very much for what you and your department does You you give us information that we all need to hear You us stronger. I don't know that in your comfort to us, but I know that there's a times when you're looking at a various department. You might not be as comfortable for them at that moment. And that's not a bad thing. We want them to be as efficient and as they possibly can be. And I think to the greatest degree and it's that we have always found that. I mean there certainly there have been things that need to be corrected. And sometimes it's because we've always done it that way before, rather than and if you do something long long enough it doesn't feel wrong. It feels like it's part of the system. So every year is a difficult year. You say for budgets, it's just different in every year in different ways. But I do think that you truly do a new in your department. Do a wonderful job for the, from Montgomery County and all the departments. The other question that I do have and I know You're not going to be shy on this but when you need additional resources Please do not hesitate we we stand ready to work with you to figure out the best way for you to go forward But if we don't need know that you need X we many couldn't, we wouldn't offer it. So please let us know. Great. Thank you very much. And Council Member Cass, I just want to know in which direction you're going. Obviously, as Ms. Lamarzy said, this is a very tight budget year. And I think looking at all the puts and take, I would actually like to recommend we add this to the reconciliation list, because Mrs. Longer, I would actually like you to come before the full council. I know I hate to drag you back over here, but I do think it's important. I think in years past, this committee has generally recommended your additional positions in everything, but I think in particular this is a critical year for the full council to hear from you directly about the need for this position so I'd like to put it on the reconciliation list. Good with you. Yeah absolutely. All right well thank you so much and we look forward to seeing you back here. Thank you both. I appreciate your time. All right. Moving on, we have independent audit. Mr. Seala, come on down. Hello. Hello. So the silo director of the Office of Legislative Urbicide. So item number seven is our NDA for the independent audit. That's a same sort of same level service, same budget. I think there's a 2,493 increase, which is just the increase in personnel cost staff from FY25 to FY26. And please deposit those here. He actually runs the audit to answer any questions that you have about it. Great. I'm not sure we have any questions. Mr. Vasey, if you wanted to say a few words, don't have really much to add. We had a pretty good year. We have great relationship with S.B. and company and finance. So, and I guess we continue to have good auto committee meetings in the spring and in the fall. We have lots to discuss. Great. All right. I think no objections. The committee will recommend the county's seconder's budget. You certainly kept in mind take yes for an answer. That's right. All right. We'll move on then to the office of legislative oversight. Okay. So this is item number eight on your agenda. Come exactly. It would recommend that the of $338,379. This is for the position that was lost last year during reconcilation, and they had recommended that we didn't get. Again, I recognize it's a different call budget year, so we'll see how that goes this year. And the rest is the increase in salaries and compensation,, it's the same level service budget without that position. I was pleased to have from the operating budget equity tool state that we demonstrate in OLO A deep commitment to advancing equitable outcomes for both its staff, Montgomery County residents, as evidenced by the breadth and depths of their work, that encompasses all three areas of the Gare framework. Again, that's driven, I think, a lot by the County Council and their emphasis on this and making sure that we emphasize that in OLO. I don't really have anything else to say except for that we are still, again, this goes back to the vision that was last year. We are still operating at the same level we did when the Redine Council member and before we started doing environmental impact statements. So, you know, we're losing our basically, we've lost the ability to kind of correct mid-year, admit your projects. I think we've added one this year. I'd like to be able to add more of those. But, you know, it is what is with the budget. So, I don't have anything else to say, but I'll take any questions. Great, thanks. That's my cast. Yeah, I would just, I think I would recommend this go on the reconciliation. Give me a second. I don't have anything else to say, but I'll take any questions. Great. Thanks. That's my question. Yeah, I would just, I think I would recommend this go on the reconciliation given the tough budget year and what we just did to the inspector general. But I'm, Mrs. Ciel, I would say that in the description, one of the things that I think was missing this year, we talk about the expanded council members, but also that the staff hasn't increased since you had to do the environmental impact statement. I would add that for the full council discussion, because I think that's understanding the full workload of OLO, I think is really important as we continue these deliberations. All right. All right. All right. Well, we will see you back here at Full Council then. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right. Now we have our Lesbios Latif branch communications outreach. Okay. Good morning. So we have two items here. Okay, good morning. So we have two items here which fall within the county council purview. This is the smaller item and hopefully the more quick item. But the legislative outreach communications MDA provides funds for different communication activities across the legislative branch departments. So not just the council office, but the other legislative branch departments as well. The executive recommends a same services budget, which is $102,528 increase, which is her 3.9% from FY25, and all of the increase is based on the compensation adjustments and non-discretionary operating cost increases. No, I think we'll take the recommendation from the county executive and just to add a huge thank you to our legislative branches communication outreach. Does an incredible job and just wanna thank them for that. So we will now move on to the next item, which is the Office of the County Council. Great. So for the Office of the County Council this is again a same services budget for FY 26. There's an increase of $687,785 or 3.6%, which is related to compensation adjustments and non-discretionary operating cost increases. Before I talk about any budget issues, I do want to take a moment to acknowledge the team and the staff in the council. Both the central office team and the team and council member offices are absolutely terrific and I would take them against any other officer department within the county government or county agency. So I'm glad they're here. And I really appreciate all the work that they do indeed. Indeed. So they're a pleasure to work with and make my job and a lot easier to do in helping the council do the work that you all need to do. So our total budget request for FY26 is 19.9 million. This includes both the fund for the Central Office staff, as well as the Council member. Office staff, it's all combined in that 19 million dollar number. Our operating budget equity tool analysis is shown on page two of the staff report. And the OBA analysis indicates that the County Council demonstrates a strong commitment to advancing racial equity and social justice. The strengths that were identified in the OBEH analysis include an established and active and well-supported core team, as well as the Council's efforts to normalize and organize racial equity are also well-established. They also noted our continuing progress on workforce equity, deepening relationships within the community engagement partners and developing data collection and analysis standards for racial equity and social justice initiatives. And I want to give a lot of credit to Miss Mendy Singleton for leading the council's efforts in all of our in all of our in all these areas. The OBEH analysis also identified some opportunities specifically to augment multi-cultural communication teams public outreach efforts with additional equitable engagement practices and those are things that we will certainly work on during the course of FY26. The only budget discussion item I want to mention is that there is a in the position adjustments that does show an of positions. And this reflects two changes that were actually made during FY25, where two part-time positions, one that's central office and one in a council member office, were converted from part-time to full-time. So it's not an actual increase, but it does show in the budget as a small increase in FTEs. We did not identify any potential reductions in the Office of the County Council budget since we are primarily almost 90% personnel costs. And we are funded at the same services level. However, if requested by the committee staff will certainly review options for savings and operating costs that we could find. I don't have any off the top of my head, but we would certainly look for some and see what we could do if that is requested with the understanding that any change in operating costs would potentially impact what we can do in any given year. The last item I did want to mention is also on page three of the staff report. There was a request and a memo is attached to the staff report from Council Vice President Jawando and Councilmember Fonding Gonzales to add funding to support a sports tourism task force feasibility study. The council last year approved a sports tours and task force to look at a whole slew of issues. And that task force has requested two funding options to consider for a feasibility study. One would be a cost of $100,000 to partner with the Maryland Stadium Authority on a comprehensive study of the sports landscape. The total cost of the study is estimated to be $200,000, but the funding in this option would potentially be split with the stadium authority at $100,000 each. A second option is $75,000 to hire a third party consultant to conduct a feasibility assessment of a multi-use indoor sports facility. And if the committee supports adding funding for either option, it would be placed on the reconciliation list. I note that this was recommended as a potential item in the Office of the County Council budget just because there wasn't really a better or different landing spot for it. If you do put this in our budget, we would just kind of serve as the administrator to help the procurement process, but the task force would be the ones who would kind of organize and coordinate the work associated with this funding. So with that, the only really discussion point would be the consideration of this recommended addition to the feasibility study. know we have members of the task force here and I want to thank you for the recommendation and the work that you're doing. Appreciate the letter. I would recommend with my colleagues agreement that we add to the reconciliation the $100,000 to partner with the Maryland State of already that seems to be a wiser option looking more broadly at a comprehensive the reconciliation, the $100,000 to partner with the Maryland State of authority. That seems to be a wiser option looking more broadly at a comprehensive sports landscape study than to go out to hire a third party consultant to look at something a little bit smaller for just a little less money. So I think we can add that to the reconciliation list and bring that to the full council. Yeah, we agree with that. And I just so I think that is the only item on that we need to discuss. And I just want to say thank you to Ms. Marin. It's nice to see you as the Deputy Director for Operations. This is the first budget you're going through in this role and I'm glad to have you here. So I think with that we're good on this budget. And I think that was the last one. That was it. So thank you to everyone and our government operations and fiscal policy committee is adjourned for this morning.