100 comments will now be recorded. Okay, now. I'd like to go up to the 111th annual meeting of Chevy Chase Village and the 111, I gotta say, my husband and I immediately said to each other, that's the product to prime numbers, three times 37. This is like an art alert. But before we begin, I want to call your attention to our second annual Junior Art Show, the works of art by children in grades kindergarten through eight displayed throughout Village Hall. The art will remain displayed through April 27th with a closing reception at 3.30. And this was organized by the Community Relations Committee. So we thank you for that. And the flower arrangements that you see in the reception area in the meeting room were provided by the Garden Club of Chevy Chase and sourced from yards in the village. So thank you, Garden Club. It's customary at the annual meeting for the chair to provide an oral overview of where the village stands as well as highlight some of our activities over the previous year and what to expect in the year ahead. The state of the village continues to be awesome. I say every year that we are grateful and aware that we are among the most fortunate people on earth. Board Treasurer Gary Crockett will elaborate on our fine financial situation in his remarks later. And as usual, please refer to all the written reports for more information. But I want to highlight a few things. In terms of changes at the board, last year Lou Morseberger was elected as vice chair and Bob Goodland stepped into the secretary position. And Bob has recently informed us that he is moving to the Eastern Shore, a great loss for us, but a gain for him and his wife Judy and their kids and grandkids. I want to say how very much the board and staff and neighbors will miss Bob. He's a thoughtful, dedicated leader, a wise and kind educator and he's been serving the public as a village elected official for 12 years without fear or favor. He has always looked out for doing the right thing for the village and its residents and staff. And we will celebrate him more at the June meeting his last meeting. And but I'm now I'm joined by the board and staff in thanking Bob for his service. We will miss him and we will arrange lots of reciprocal visits to Easton. And when he moves, there will be an open board position. His vacancy will be an appointment by us, the other members of the board. Our election code provides a process for residents to apply to be appointed to the board to fill Bob's term until next year's election. Bob is currently our only board member from the east side of Connecticut. So we especially want east ciders to throw their hat in the ring for this board opening. It has been so valuable to have people from the other side. They're point of view. So anyway, as you know, this past year we had numerous proposed legislative matters from the county and the state to engage with and we were so very lucky that Lou Moorsburg stepped up as the tireless board lead on them. First, the planning board's attainable housing strategies, a sweeping proposal that was ultimately denied by the county council, this morphed into the more housing now legislative package which potentially impacts just 10 properties within the village compared to 162 that would have been impacted by the attaining housing strategies legislation. Another legislative initiative we have you may have been following was the technical amendment to state issued authority, the Maryland legislation led by lead sponsor delegate Jared Solomon, who, surprise, is here. Past the state's legislative session that ended just earlier this month, and it will now go to the governor to be signed. And since we have our surprise visit by delegate Solomon, I thought I'd give him a thank you to shout out for working with us and an opportunity to tell us a little bit about the legislation, Delegate Solomon. Thank you very much, Chair Leonard and Vice Chair Morseberger. I want to thank both of you and Shaina, your incredible town manager. I think we spent more than a year actually working on this legislation. And it was a direct result, frankly, of the incredible engagement of the village of Chibi Chai's. We actually have eight other municipalities that we represent in district pay team. And I should have mentioned, delegate Jared Talman, I have the pleasure of getting be one of your your four representatives in the NAPA, it's myself, delegate Emily Shetty, delegate Aaron Kaufman and Senator Jeff Wallstricker. And we have nine municipalities that we actually represent in our district that were sort of in a similar situation. We needed to go back and clarify really some law that had been on the books since 2006, but created a little bit of ambiguity around what did the law mean by single family home or single family building. And in the situation that we were in, obviously with some significant changes at the county level around zoning and the really intense conversation that we know is still ongoing around housing, it was really important to the four of us working in concert with our colleagues in the neighboring district just across Wisconsin district 16, where all again the only other municipality outside of that area is to come apart work with us, making sure that we really clarified what was in this law and that we were working collaboratively with our municipalities with the county, with the planning board to make sure that your authority that again has been on the books for almost 20 years gets to remain intact. And so what this bill at its core is about is making sure that we clarified that for housing units under four and under. So essentially, you know, single family, a duplex, a triplex and a quadplex, which is what had been under discussion with the council in Rockville, that your municipal authority, the village, the town, you know, the town, Kensington and so on and so forth still have the ability to be able to create regulations around that. So again, things that had long been settled, but because of the now tweaked definition and the different look at sort of what was meant by single family, we wanted to make sure that that maintained that state intact and that that was strengthened. And this piece of legislation did that. We passed it, I think unanimously, actually through both chambers, through the House and the Senate. And as the Chair mentioned, it is sitting on the Governor's desk, we expect it to be signed, this bill signing tomorrow, probably at some point in the next couple of weeks. and they're just kind of going through all the bills. We would not have been able to get it through frankly without the incredible collaboration and your municipal attorney as well, it was also fantastic. Again, it was a real collaboration with our partners on the council. We wanna recognize council member Freedson who is a great partner as well as council president Stewart. And we were able to get that through. You know, this was a tough session. This was a real bright spot. We want to make sure again that our municipality was so important to us. The work you all do is really critical, the more local, it gets sometimes the harder it is. And we know housing is probably one of the toughest issues to navigate in our county. And this was really important to us. There's just two other, a couple other things I want to mention very briefly. was the tough session particularly in the budget, but we prioritized bringing resources back for our community. And I wanted to just highlight, we heard a lot from people around the proposed cuts to developmental disability access. We restored almost everything about $300 million to that. We know how important that was to communities across Maryland, but particularly our community. We have some incredible providers in this area that do amazing work for families across the spectrum. We brought money back for Strapmore, which dealing with some roof renovations that need to be fully funded, a million dollars for the noise library. I have two little ones and a lot of people in this community take advantage of noise and we're going to push that renovation forward in partnership with the county. And we brought some additional money back for Purple Line pedestrian safety. I'm really excited that the county is getting a specific bucket of money for, which I know is obviously really important to everybody as well. So thank you for the partnership. Thank you for the opportunity to say a couple words and we're really excited. And you're all welcome to join us for the bill signing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So we're on the lookout for other future legislative plans. We monitored legislation introduced on behalf of Governor Westmore called the Governor's Housing for Jobs Act that could have greatly preempted counties and municipalities housing authority based on regionally determinants and gaps. We worked with the Maryland Municipal League to submit a series of concerns and proposed revisions. Ultimately, the bill was drastically modified in response to our concerns. And it never received a full load before the end of the legislative session. But we in test speed a version of this bill will be reintroduced in the 2026 session. We're also preparing for the county's rewrite of the 1998 French-Pite sector plan. The board invited the county's planning staff to present information regarding the rewrite process, including the 2025-26 timeline and opportunities for our residents to engage. A newly written sector plan will create a vision for the future of friendship heights, the area that abuts the village just to the west. And you may know that due to all these legislative efforts at the county and state level, the board along with several of our neighboring municipalities authorized hiring and zoning attorney to monitor the legislation and assist with ensuring our interests are protected and our concerns adequately relayed to the county council the planning board and state legislature legislatures. Our zoning plan attorney's name is Michelle Rosenfeld and we are so fortunate to have such a pro looking out for our interests. Rest assured that we will continue to monitor these areas for any future developments in the next legislative sessions. So what else will we up to this year? Some highlights. We did some park maintenance, the Board Authorized Replacement of the Perimeter Fence around the Brookville Road Park. This replacement greatly enhances the parents of this park and helps the people of us in the park. We maintained an important focus on stormwater management in the village, including earlier this year, the board authorized a capital project to install a trench drain along a portion of the block of Primrose Street between Connecticut and Brookville Road. The project also included replacement of the curves, the gutter plan along the entire block and resurfacing the roadway. And at our meeting last week, the board approved a plan to completely rebuild the roadway in this block because it was determined that it really needed substantial repairs to bring it up to current standards. And working with the Parks and Green Spaces Committee, we are nearing completion of the design work for the Buffer Area drainage project. This last phase has concerned snow removal operations and finalizing the planting and screening. And we look forward to advertising this project for construction vids early this summer with construction starting later in the year. A board working group was established to assess the adequacy and appropriate use of village funds for projects to address stormwater challenges. The working committee included board treasure, Gary Crocket, board secretary and former board liaison to the stormwater committee, Bob Goodwin, and board assistant secretary Linda Willard. Thank you all. The final report was issued in September last year and the working group concluded that there are sufficient reserves available to fund the slate of public projects in the pipeline to address known stormwater runoff concerns. And we'll keep monitoring this. And can you tell we're nearing completion of a major capital project to fully replace and convert the village's HVAC system? So the new system is in operation here, in the host office, the police department, the administrative offices, and the systems that serve the public rooms will be operational by June, early June. We maintain the village's designation as a tree city USA by the Arbor Foundation. And I have to read the proclamation so that we can continue our designation into 2025. where as, Arbor Day is observed throughout the nation and world and whereas trees are a renewable resource giving us paper wood for our homes fuel for our fires and countless other wood products, and whereas trees can reduce the erosion of our precious topsoil by wind and water, cutting heat and cooling costs, moderate the temperature, clean the air, produce oxygen, and provide habitat for wildlife. And whereas trees wherever they are planted are a source of joy and spiritual renewal. And whereas since 2018, Chaviche Village has each year been designated a tree city USA by the National Arbor Day Foundation and seeks to maintain the designation for the coming year. Now therefore, on this 21st day of April, 2025, we hereby proclaim and urge all citizens to support these efforts to protect our trees, woodlands, and support our communities, urban reforestation. And further, I urge all citizens to plant trees, to gladden the hearts, and promote the well-being of present and future generations. So that was required. In 2024, we planted 55 trees within village parks, green spaces, and along the public rights of way, this program allows us to maintain and expand the tree canopy in the village in spite of losing trees when they're aged or damaged. In fact, next month, the public works will plan another 22 trees in village rights of way, parks and green spaces. And please keep in mind that we offer reimbursement of up to $125 per tree to residents who reforest with qualifying trees on their property. What else did we do? The Block Party subsidy authorized by the board, as recommended by Board Vice Chair Lou Morseberger, continues to be a success. Residents through Black parties this year and the first one or last year and the first one this year is scheduled for later this month. The program reimburses residents up to $250 for Black Party expenses and we have a total of $3,000 each, just a year for this program. The Board approved numerous contracts and contract amendments, including our revised contract for refuse and recycling collection. Very important. The Board also approved our continued participation in the county's hazard mitigation plan to ensure the village has access to resources in the event of a major But now let's talk about our excellent staff a few highlights We have a certificate of appreciation for William hat Avernapping for 30 years of service to the village Could you come up? Um. 30 years of village service to the village happens been on a leave of absence since last year following a stroke and we wish him well and thank him for his three decades with the village. Thank you so much. It's great to see you. And then Vota. One more. Try not to get the exit sign of it. There we go. We now look at it and very much appreciate it. So good to see you tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Please, Steve John Niskey completed his first full year of police chief. Do you even recognize him? Not a police car during which he welcomed the community to support his work with the special Olympics and he represented the department both locally and internationally, which was totally cool. He facilitated a number of initiatives to enhance our ability to attract qualified police applicants, given the shortage of candidates in our region. Special thanks to the members of our public work staff led by director Anthony Young, for their snow clearing efforts following a series of snowstorms this year, the first measurable snowfall in several years. Ellen Sands is not here, right? But she retired from the village last June after serving almost 14 years as permitting and code enforcement coordinator and then director of municipal operations. We miss Ellen. She has a very humble nature and and resisted a more grand celebration of her service. Anyway. She has a very humble nature and resisted a more grand celebration of her service. Anyway, as I mentioned earlier, financial matters update will be covered by Gary Crockett, our board treasurer, but I enjoy stealing his thunder every year by saying that we are in great fiscal shape. To end my oral report, I would like to honor the village residents we lost since our last annual meeting and after I read their names, have a moment of shared silence in their memory. Sylvia Broderick of Grove Street, Joanne Nelson, formerly of Summerfield Road, Natalie Bramson, Montgomery Street, Charlie Steiner of Center Street. Thank you very much. As always we are grateful to live in Chevy Chase Village. We're so grateful for the staff, for the honor of being on the board, for all the volunteer commission and committee members, for all the residents, for our neighbors and friends. Thanks. The next thing on the agenda is the Thank you very much, Madam Chair. And good evening everyone. Welcome to our beautiful village hall to those of you who are in the room and of course to those who are joining us on our virtual feed as well. I'm honored to present my 16th annual report as Village Manager to the community. I also want to say a special welcome to our new residents who have joined us this evening. Thank you very much for coming out to learn more about your government in action. So thank you for joining us. So as I sat down and prepared this year's report, I noted that last year I remarked that one of the highlights of my job is that it is ever evolving and highly unpredictable. And certainly this past year was no exception. As you have already heard a significant amount of time over the last year was dedicated to monitoring external agency's efforts that stood to impact our very small residential community. And many of the things that make this such a desirable place to live, including access to Metro, amenities, and major corridors, were the same factors that placed the village and the bulls-eye of both county county and state level legislation that could have greatly impacted the character and the future of this community. And so it is my job as your village manager to alert the board and in turn village residents so that you are well informed about these efforts and know how that you can advocate to ensure that your voices are heard. So over the past year, we were one of the first communities to get deeply engaged. First, when the planning board's attainable housing strategy is initiative followed by the more housing now legislative package introduced by the county council. And it is clear that the concerns that were raised by the very residents of this community were impactful to the county council's change, course as they looked at these rezoning efforts. But we know that Dilligis remains in order as the county council continues its deliberation of the workforce housing legislation and this will remain a priority for us in the year ahead. Related to this is the current rewrite of the Friendship Heights sector plan which is an effort that will reshape the future of the friendship heights area, including sacks with Avenue, which is located within the village. And we intend to closely monitor this process, but it will remain important for residents across the village, not just on the west side, to remain engaged and to share your thoughts and concerns through what will be a multi-year process. Over the last year, we also track the district department of Transportation's now canceled proposal to install bike lanes along Connecticut Avenue. Chief Nesky and I submitted testimony to the county council in support of the county police department's expansion of its drone as first responder program to enhance the department's crime finding abilities in the Greater Bethesda Chevy Chase area. And while we focused on these external impacts, we also implemented various initiatives and projects within the village as well, including the replacement of the HFAC system here in the village States and the United States and the United States and the United States and the United States and the United States and the United States and the United States and the United States and the United States and the United States and the United States and the United States and the United States and the United States and the United States and the United States and the United States and the United States and the United States Postal Service associated with their lease of the Northern end of the hall and from the Chevy Tastes Lairn Company for their contractual obligation toward the ongoing maintenance of the buffer area. I want to give special thanks to my right hand financial man, Demetri Protos, our finance director, for all of his support in management of village finances and our HR functions. With assistance from our Director of Municipal Operations, Jacqueline Parker, we have also continued to liaise with outside organizations and agencies including enhancing our role in the county's emergency management group, promoting the expeditious rebuild of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when Western Avenue at Kirkside, that was damaged beyond restoration in a fire in 23. Advocating for maintenance and improvements by the State Highway Administration for the state's rights of way, along Brookville, Connecticut, and Wisconsin. Thank you to Jack Hay for all of your work in these areas, as well as your management of our numerous contracts, capital projects, parks and green spaces, and oversight of our local utility companies. Our public works departments, continued maintenance of village sidewalks and their response to numerous winter storm events and summer storms that was unmatched. Special thanks to all of the staff led by department director Anthony Young for their continued service. And our Perming and Code Enforcement Coordinator, Rillio Baca-Ash, are continued his administration of our permitting operations and patrols of the village to ensure residents and contractors operating compliance with the code and issued permits. A full list of the permits that were issued over the last year, including 202 building permits and 67 tree removal permits are available on our website and will also be shown here on the screen. We welcomed a total of 13 new families to the village since last year's annual meeting and many of these new residents are initially welcomed by our wonderful administrative and constituent services assistant, Jennifer Yell. Who not only manages our calendar of community events, she is responsible for producing our monthly newsletter and blast emails, but above all else, she keeps us really, really organized and professional. So thank you, Jennifer, for your hard work throughout this last year. Last but certainly not least, special thanks to Chief Nesky for his forward thinking and new perspectives in leading our department. And just over a year, he has implemented initiatives to empower and engage our officers in new ways, modernize our functions and enhance our hiring capability. He has represented our department locally and internationally all while maintaining a great sense of humor. So in the year ahead I intend to work with the board to update our fees and fine schedule which has not been comprehensively updated and I checked this because I wasn't sure that I was reading it correctly in 19 years so So I would say it's long overdiff. We also hope to finalize a path forward for the purchase and ownership of the street light network that exists here in the village. And we look forward to the long awaited Buffer Area Drainage Project to restore this unique green space to its original glory. We are continuing to look for opportunities to enhance our competitiveness as a premier public service employer and so we will also continue to hire and maintain the best of the best. As always I want to end my report by thanking the board for its continued support. We truly could not do what we do without each and every one of you and we really are appreciative to to have such a supported, supportive, elective board. And I know from speaking with my peers locally and nationally that that is not always the case. So I'm very appreciative of that. Thank you. I also want to close by welcoming residents to contact us. If there's a question that you need answered, if there's information that you need to access, if there's an issue that needs to be addressed, please do not hesitate to reach out to our office. That is why we're here. And this outreach ensures that we are meeting residents needs as we seek to preserve the legacy of this wonderful community. Thank you. Thank you so much. I typically also read the our Village Council who has a standing meeting on the third Monday of the month and cannot join us. I will read her annual report as well. To the boarding community, I am regretfully unable to be with you for the annual meeting as a result the Village Manager is presenting my report. During the past year working closely with the Village Manager and Department heads, I have prepared a review to significant number of requests for bids, contracts and extensions, and memorandum of understanding including for the arborist, landscaping, and refuse and recycling services, as well as the Village Hall age-fac rehabilitation. The Primrose Street Stormwater Management Project can ongoing post office utility payment issues. I have assisted in the review of staff reports and the preparation of board resolutions with respect to variances and special permits, enforcement of stormwater, and other building permit regulations and with several personnel issues. I have continued to work with the village manager and a coalition of municipalities on the PEPCO rate case, LED lighting and related issues and have taken part in detailed negotiations to reach agreement with PEPCO on template language from municipal poll attachment agreements and sales agreements which are in the final review phase. Another PEPCO related issue that arose this past year is the street light inventory which has been more complicated than expected with SHA unilaterally allocating streetlights in its rights of way to municipalities. Something we'll be talking with our delegate about very soon. I have provided legal advice to department heads with respect to numerous legal matters. This past year also involved many zoning related issues primarily with respect to both state and county bills concerning attainable housing and workforce housing, and a possible zoning text amendment. Michelle Rosenfeld, the zoning attorney, was engaged by the village to also work on these issues. A coalition of local governments, including the village, actively presented and defended municipal interests and was successful in obtaining the adoption of MCPG 11625 also referred to as HB1167, which preserves municipal zoning powers. Finally, I'm pleased to report that there are no cases of any significance in litigation at this time. She burried the lead. As always, it is a pleasure to work with the village manager and village staff on the legal matters that come up during the year, very truly or so well. Great. Thank you. We're so lucky. We have wonderful staff and you really are the glue that holds it all together. We have the best Village Manager. Thanks home. Next is a report on Public safety by Keith Neskey. Good evening board. Good evening, everyone. You're too already. So what it sneaks up on you. So I'm going to dive right into it. I'm going to digress because it popped in my head. If you're, you know, this great, if not, Google it. But Shayna, there is our Sergeant Hulka, our big toe, so to speak, if you've ever seen the movie Stripes, We'll get the, I'm sorry, I didn't agree. It's very quick. I didn't say that we'll just eat it, be the entire time. I have to get it down. Thank you for your indulgence. I'm going to step and do some stats first. So if you look at some of the numbers, just kind of going down. Instanted reports went down by 40%. And if you're wondering why that is, it's because we kind of reallocated or re-adjusted some of the reasons we wrote reports to make sure that the officers are using their time wisely, and they're not writing reports, maybe to this certain need to be written. We're definitely writing things that incidents that need to be written, but we're trying to get out of the paper writing business and more to the petroleum business. Autoclysions work 5% residential alarms down 6%. Code enforcement checks were of 18%. So between officers and Rulio we're out there looking to make sure permits are in place. Things are being done to courtments with ordinances. There must be doing a decent job because the actual code enforcement violations are down 54%. So I'd like to think there's a correlation between those two numbers. If we look down our vitally-crime thickness is almost non-existent. We didn't have any of those incidents. We did have, we had two assaults of 2020-03-0 in 2024. So that's a good trend. If we look at our large means, our basically thefts on the thefts of auto especially, they are up 20%. So I will say that we were on track to be below until December 2nd when we had a spree of 15 in one night on December 2nd. And I will just reiterate that every one of those vehicles were unlocked. So we were trending very well and the December 2nd killed us. But... I will just reiterate that every one of those vehicles were unlocked. So we were trending very well and the December 2nd killed us. But we are still working on that. Please, we're trying to get the message out continued. Lock your car doors and remove items. If you look at the current numbers, we are trending just about the same, maybe a little bit higher for for 2025 but we also had six theft models from the sex Bethabini parking lot and those had their windows broken and the rule of thumb is usually you're not going to have your window broken if there's nothing inside and all these cars had purses bags and computers inside so you're going to get your window broken. So those six happened to separate occasions on the SACS. Out of touch remained flat. Van Lysons were down 50%. One number that I'm very happy about is traffic citations, warnings, and equipment orders, went up 19%. So we went from 416 in 2023 to 494 and that's just the the outstanding work by the officers being out there being village responding to residents complaints about stop signs or speeding in areas. So I'm very appreciative for them to be out there and be an active. 2024 and arrest we had two. One was a active sex pathad, one was burglar at sex pathad, multiple subjects right now Wisconsin's an avenue. One of our officers was able to apprehend one of them And I was covered by the county, so we handled him over the county. The other was a stolen auto, but it was an occupied park on the side of the road. And the officer responded out to it. We were able to get one, one juvenile suspect out of it. There's one that's not listed on here because they were handed over to NPDC, but it was a stabbing suspect from one of the mittrails. And the officers caught up to them at the Czechosarco. He was still armed. They were able to apprehend him without any use of force. So another outstanding job by the officers. We continue to work on our general orders. It's a long, arduous process, but we've been updating our general orders to an electronic version. We just got all the logins set, so we should be releasing those updated orders and to the officers in small batches, so they actually read them. And that should be ongoing here shortly. One of the things that I talked about when I first got here was getting more involved with the community. Getting the officers more involved with the community. That's in our community, that's community adjacent. Get them out there, get them face-to-face with people, forging bonds, bonds forging relationships and We've been able to do that. We've been out to all states preschool a couple times having the kids come out look at the cars have a climb in it some time with them We've even had an officer that just stopped out of Yorktown and I don't know they were actually shopping or not or just just in the community. I didn't ask them they bought me faith. But again it's just interacting. How a week to get exactly my blood for us. Stopping by you know on foot patrol during trick or treating. Of course we did public safety day, did a fraud presentation here. We do our rad ourselves defense classes. I see a couple of students in the audience. Not gonna call you out. We did our national night out, of course. We had a pack of scouts that were here just prior to everyone's arrival. And again, it makes them better officers. Being out there humanized, talking to the community, being those one-on-one actions. We talk about staffing. We have been struggling with that, but right now I have two applicants in the back of the background, the back end of the background section, and I've got one that's getting ready to do a ride-long. I make all the applicants do a ride- long so that they know exactly who we are, the way we police and what our community is. I don't need one application until they know who we are and that they know they wanna do the kind of policing that we do. So I'm happy to say we've got three viable candidates at this point, so we're looking to fill those very, very quickly. When we talk about engagement, we've got our public safety committee who'd be hearing from shortly. They've been outstanding partners since the day I arrived and I truly appreciate all the hard work that Saul and the crew do and he's going to give you some updates and live a little of that. One of the things again that I harp on sometimes is how fortunate I was to kind of lead here. I had nothing but support and being welcomed from the community. And I greatly appreciated the board and the staff have been just fantastic since I've been here. When we talk about some things I do with special Olympics, including the Superplunge, I've raised $15,000. It's a daunting task, but I did a music gig up at Hunter's Hound, and I just can't say enough how touched I was by the support I got from the Residence that came out and listed me and do me a little bit. And do me a little bit. And do me a little bit. And do me a little bit. And do me a little bit. And do me a little bit. And do me a little bit. And do me a little bit. And do me a little bit. And do me a little bit. And do me a little bit. And do me a little bit. And do me a little bit. And do me a little bit and didn't get them. Pat at the show has been fantastic about supporting things and getting our message out and getting ways to communicate. Speak our communicating. I do do the chief chats on, I do, I make the chief chats, put them on the website. It's just me and my office rambling for about three minutes. I try to keep it blessed and that on what's going on, what's coming up. So if you don't have anything to do with three minutes, to kill, enter your day before you log out of the computer, please check those out. I'll probably do it one this week. So again, thank you for the support. Thank you for locking your car doors. We'll see you next year. Yeah. Yeah. Next on the agenda is our financial overview? Last year's meeting, I had a hand-growing pie chart of where I'm going to come from and it was added to the I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm going to come from. And it was added to the. And then, you are down there. We're at one to a horse. We want the horse-towelish. And this is how next. So this year, all I'm doing, I hand typed this. These numbers. I thought I'd say a few words about the budget. Not the numbers in it, but the budget itself. What it really is and how it comes to be. Of course, like any budget, broadly, residents can look at it and pour through it and infer our priorities and our values and our ability to achieve those things. But the budget itself, it's not a narrative, it's not a forecast, it's not a manifesto, what it is is a request from the village staff to the board of managers for authorization to spend particular amounts of money or particular things. It's created by the village staff, led by the village manager, Shannon Davis Cook, the finance director of the Detroit photo-os, the Director of Municipal Operations, Jack Parker, the Director of Public Works, Anthony Young, and the Chief of Police, John Neskey. The Board of Managers and the Financial Review Committee to review the budget in detail, but the professionalism of our staff is such that it's very rare for any major changes to result from that review. We aim for a budget that is conservative within reason. So, for example, we don't plan for a winter with no snow. But we also don't plan for another snow beginning like we had in 2010. So we have all of these different categories and within each one we're trying to be a little bit conservative so that we can handle minor surprises. And the way the numbers work on that sort of thing, when you have a whole bunch of things of each are a little bit conservative. Even if some of them turn out not to be conservative enough, usually the result is that the thing as a whole is darn conservative. And so that's what I'm expecting in this case. If you looked at the budget materials at all, it's like sure you want to be and enjoyed it very much. The budget calls for a draw on our reserves of about $1.45 million. And based on our track record, I expected the actual amount would be about half that. Look, the resurgence. It comes in those, but in general, that's kind of what to expect. And speaking of reserves, I'd like to say a few words about the village's ability to weather a period ofing day. Our largest source of funding is the village's share of your state income tax payments. So the ups and downs of financial markets do matter to us and our funding. But we've had strong revenues for the past decade or so. Sometimes that's been because of good income detectors, also for a couple of years in there, it was because of the speed cameras before people were. But now that's relatively trivial amount of things. But we were fortunate for a long period of time. so we have been able to build up a reserve that amounts to more than two years complete budget. If we had no revenue coming from anywhere, we could still keep tuning one for them. Here's what we wanted to. And the besides the fact that we've been able to build up 7, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8 way that they do the distribution means that the money that we're actually getting from the state for income tax really doesn't reflect current financial situation. It really, it's based on the financial situation of about two years ago. So what does that mean? Well that means that if there is a serious downturn in economics for your reasons that you can see that it in the news. First of all, we won't really feel it directly in our budget for another year or two. And secondly, when it does affect us, we may have the luxury of a couple of years perspective to know whether it was just kind of a short blip that we should just just swallow and move ahead because we have enough reserves to handle it. Or whether it's something more significant that we have to think about restructuring some things. So based on those facts, the size of our reserves and the way the reserves are distributed, I'd say that we are not only are we financially strong and stable, but I would say there are very few communities say there are very few communities that would want to trade place with that we would want to trade places with in terms of our financial stability. So we are indeed very lucky to live here and Bob is. We have the public safety committee. I it's all good. See you. Yeah. There's some. Thank you. Hi. It is a remarkable feature of life and the village that even though we only have some 700 homes, we have our own police force patrolling our streets and our own 24-7 community communications center. As a community, we benefit not just from having these outstanding public safety resources devoted to protecting us 24-7, but also from having local control over those resources. A critical factor in the success of any police agency, but particularly village our size is to have a very strong chief and senior police leadership team. We are quite fortunate to have that in Chieftanese, Lieutenant De Silva, Sergeant Teedamann, and the Public Safety Coordinator, Virginia Cortez. They are a terrific team and we are very lucky. I wanted to address tonight a few issues about our committee. The Public Safety Committee serves as a citizens advisory board to the village board and to the chief. We also serve as liaison to the commander for the Bethesda District of Montgomery County Police. Our members are Byron Anderson, Ali Davidson, Meredith Griffin, Peter Kilborn, Rachel Mokkehi, Betty O'Connor, Melon Ko, Lisa Sanders, and Ashton Wilshire. During this past year, our primary work has been working with Chief Neskey to provide him with resident input on his public safety initiatives and priorities and the proposed budget for the year. One issue that's been front and center for our committee, and we've already heard about this from the chief, is the recurring problem of thefts from unlocked vehicles in the village. It is really clear that we have an unacceptable, acceptably high incidence of unauthorized entries into and fast-prom autos. We had 54 incidents last year, we have 11 already. Most of these have involved theft from unlocked vehicles at night. In some cases resulting in theft of valuables like wallets and laptops, we have an incident where the vehicle itself was stolen because an unlocked car had a key fob in it. Most concerning about these incidents is really not the property loss. It's the risks that are being created to our community from a public safety standpoint. We are inviting a criminal element into our community at night, and that's just not cool. We need to do a whole lot better. So what our committee did in December was to send out a letter to all college residents in which we made three simple requests. I'm going to reiterate them here tonight, particularly for our new residents. First, lock your vehicle doors every time you park and remove valuables and anything that looks like it might contain a valuable, the chief has already explained why. Report any suspicious activity, even if it just seems a little unusual to the communication center. You can feel a little reluctant to do that. Yes, you should. That's why we have a communication center. That's why we have our own police force. It takes a matter of minutes for the police to show up at your home. If you have an emergency call 911, but otherwise call the village office. And three, consider installing security devices like doorbell cameras, sensor lighting, and other things like that around your home. If we do have an incident, they're very helpful for investigating and adapting the fact. Our committee asks that you please take these simple protective steps, not just for yourself and your family, but for all of your neighbors. Thank you. Thank you. So we have there are open membership committees first of the parks and green spaces committee. Mario Kingston is going to come up. Is that something good? Thank you, Margot. Thank you, Margot. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I chair the parks and green spaces committee. It's a great committee. We have a hard-working committee members, Carol Kaufman, Susan Dixon, George Durgan, Susan Kilboard, Leslie McKay, and myself. And other people who might be interested in joining, but still in your loop, we have a lot of work to do. In any case, I also want to thank Jack Green Parker with this past year guiding us through all the things that came out because it's had a very important this year. And we really appreciate our help. We monitor the parts of green spaces. We look at the maintenance that might be needed. And maybe there's a problem that might be needed. We check out the beaches as well as the various plants and flowers and trees and such. See how the trees are going along? We have to choose plants that thrive in well shaded areas in many places. And the soil is clay witches. We we all know who diary digging my own garbage. But we always try to get native flowers. And these be called tomato plants, as you say. Because these be part of less maintenance, it provides a familiar habitat and food source for our native wildlife. This last year, much of the committee's deliberations were focused on plans for the upcoming major reconstructions of the buffer park. That is the park on our west side that extends beyond Belmont Avenue, it continues between Grove and Parks Street. It's a very popular walking park. Park partly because it contains an exit to venture pipes, but also because the park is a pleasant sidewalk for a stroll to the Western Grill Park. So those of us who live in the Western Grill Park of Village should really use that park and also do it very, very popular. And that's wonderful. So the both park is adjacent to the sex parking lot, we have to work closely to try to screen the park from real-time vehicles, because that's a more peaceful environment. And so I think this coming year will be particularly working hard on that competitive problem, because we need to get the type of trees that are interesting in part of the park environment that also will provide with screen and we have all kinds of things required based in. We've started working with the administration on this and the trade screen should extend beyond the buffer park which adjacent to the avenueacks of the Avenue, as well as along the Elmonte Avenue, outside of the park, as you go to the north. If Eddie has been working with the Illinois administration and CPGA engineering firm, to develop a plan for the selection of plants for the buffer area. And I think that this letter did mention a little bit of that and her talk earlier that we have. This is going to be a big deal for this. In case we're very happy to work with them, we'll look at your card for native plants in the middle of this shady, play rich area and it will lead to a lot of endowment for all of us. Committee has been outshoken and made to the other parts including the popular and large tribal part which is for people for kids playing games, for little kids doing things. I mean we have some of our own village parties there. So you all know that part. It is well used and it also requires a lot of maintenance. That's part of the deal. And that's it for me. I think you want to hear more about the parts you would make me up or remind me before. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next, we have a report from the committee for seniors, Betty O'Connor. I'm not really sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not gonna let that turtle. He calls me, no, grab my, it's a tourist. I think this is the first time I've ever done this. I usually operate in groups. I don't come up. Anyway, I sort of wear two hats on the chairman of the senior committee, but I also for years about a member of the kids at home, I helped to start that many years ago. And 15 years ago we started having a lot of events. And COVID has done this past year, our past few years. COVID did a number of us. And we were used to have lots of events here in the end of the village. We've cut them out completely for, I think about three years. And we've started up again a little bit now. And first of all, before anything else, I just want to thank you all, thank you for inviting us and allowing us to have these events, seniors. And then also for the staff, for example, all the people in this area who help set up the things for me, we're not, I mean, I don't know why do I ask them to do, they say, what the smile I do. So anyway, let me see if I can quit. This year we had our usual St. Patrick's Day party, which you don't have to be out, which I just did when you come to the event to work with me. And we always have our Irish coffee, and we have always had a different. It's a fun party, and but we have very huge people in the seniors in this village who come. We have a few, a very few, and I don't understand why. So anyway, and that's the Chris' party. And we also had a man who come who builds hearts internationally. And he can show this how he can help build them, play some, and then play for us. And we had a group, a groups of the violin and fluids. And they were the ball, more that came all the way from ball, more. We had a stacked group for that. I guess I think we had more people there than anybody. And we had no flag, any celebration. That's Another thing we all love our flag. We had people bring flags with a few or then. I think the small thing, it was $47 or so, for you, that's really interesting. And let's see, please, I'm trying to bring me. I wrote this down and then, oh, the other one that we did, we had to up we partnered with Chignesky. This is something everybody should do. He gave a wonderful program with fraud and prevention and we don't think about that but this he is so great and he's so knowledgeable and he's so willing to give his services. So we thank him for that. I have to say that we are for the programs and agreements with Debbie Chase at home and the village and I just would encourage you to try to come. Like, she, the gentleman's out, puts us in the village of the environment and it would be surprised, you know, to have, I don't know how I got like this about five years ago, we even had the Montgomery County Green of the Canaan Corps and show us what they do. And one of our members was saved by that Canaan Corps. You know, he was a man who was older and he yelled out of early and left the house before his wife. He couldn't find him. Nobody could find him. And we found the way we found it was a brought the canine core and realized that he had gone from his house to the bus stop. And so they chased him down to town with two and he was very mentally very mentally challenged and he thought it was over all this downtown and he counted. But maybe he had found him otherwise. So anyway, so I just thank you again. Thank you for having me and just come on to the lab. Thank you. And we have our election supervisors report from Maggie Marcus. Thank you. Hello, everybody. I'm Maggie Marcus. I reside on Heskett Street. I'm going to read this to you in Spanish. I'm just kidding. It's so funny. I am going to read it to you. So this is the election supervising report. There's four items. Number one, earlier in the year, early in the year, the election supervisors confirmed that four board members terms were ending in June 2025. Beginning in February and through the first two weeks in March, we notified village residents of the vacancies and the requirements to become a candidate using the prior village emails and the village website. This information included a short summary of the financial disclosure procedures in order to assure potential candidates that this step was not unduly onerous. It also contained very specific instructions as to how interested residents could obtain further information and all forms and documents necessary to file a certificate of candidacy and financial disclosure statement. Two, following the March 15 deadline for candidates to submit their certificates of candidacy and financial disclosure statements, the supervisors confirmed that there were four candidates for the four open positions on the board. All four candidates had submitted the required certificates of candidacy and financial disclosure statements by the March 15 deadline and these have been reviewed and endorsed as duly filed by the Village Ethics Commission. The four candidates were the incumbents, Gary Crockett, Lou Morseberger, Linda Willard, and David Witt, is it Winsde? Yes, okay. And David Winsde. Because the number of candidates and the number of vacancies were equal, there is no need for an election to be held in May. Number three, for so into the procedure specified in the village charter, the election supervisors hereby declare the following four candidates elected to the Chevy Chase Village Board of Managers, Gary Crockett, Lou Moorsberger, Linda Willard, and David Winstead. Number four, the 2025, 2024, 2025 election supervisors are Robert Brokesmith, Joanne Cairo's, Megan Marcus, Mary Shehan, who's the chair and Nancy Wilkinson. Thank you. Thank you. The election supervisor will be helping us with the board opening for the appointments. We'll follow that procedure. So it says public discussion period. Do we have any, anybody wanna talk about anything? Hearing no public discussion. Is that a question? Oh, yes. I don't have the number of carriers on the whole. 18. Oh, it's 20. Where are you? 18. Just aold. Yeah, we have very, very strict state laws about how we can invest those funds. And it amounts to there's only about, as a practical matter, only about three ways you can do it. One is there is something called Maryland Local Government Investment Pool, Milgip, which is run by a bank, but it's a state-sponsored fund. And some of our neighbors just put all their money into that. It's a simple thing to do. It's liquid. It's easy to move it in and out. We have chosen to roughly half and half put half our money in that and half of it in US Treasury obligations. And it turns out it's kind of hard to do that. Most banks and financial institutions don't want to mess around with municipalities because there are special rules. We can't buy treasuries directly. There's just an individual can, a corporation can, a municipality cannot. And I could go into the research if you want, but it just basically means, but we did find a UBS has a private wealth management organization in town that does have people that know how to work with municipalities. So we've been doing that with them. But that's that we don't have the option of, you know, we think there's going to be a big downturn or a big upturn or something. don't have the option of moving things into stocks or out of stocks or anything like that. It's just very circumscribed. So it is invested, it's invested, it's boringly as it is possible to do. And I'm fine with that. Well, it depends, and I should have said, the other thing is FDIC secured CD to get. And I'm in the process of trying to kill the last couple of those that we've had, because we had a half a dozen of the eight or ten. And all the banks that we originally set up up with got bought by other banks. And so I've been just to, to, to, to cash out these things when they mature. I'm going to have to drive up to Baltimore next week, because that's where that bank is now that we was usually somewhere else and it's just not worth our time and an effort to because you can't do more than a quarter of a million dollars. That's a longer answer than you want to probably but we've Thank you. Thank you. So, oh, yeah, Saul has his hand up. Thank you. So, oh, we are all as his hand up. gives you a good sense of limitations. Thank you. Thank you. So, oh yeah, Saul has his hand up. I'm not saying two billion staff that is volunteering but not a form of uncertainty for all of the three-year banks in particular. This has been a very challenging year for you folks. And we're really, really grateful to you as well. So, same for our new residents that has not always been the case. Thank you for your leadership. We're really, really, really, a very challenging time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So I think for the adoption of the budget, we need to move into a. Yeah, so is anybody have a motion to adjourn the annual meeting to convene a business meeting for the board of managers? I move to adjourn the annual meeting to enter into a business meeting of the board of managers for the purpose of adopting the budget and tax levy ordinance for fifth Discussing your 2026 Second all in favor. I Okay, great. So we have resolution number 40225 Anybody have a motion about that? I move. Go ahead. I move to approve resolution number 040225 as drafted. Second. All in favor. Hi. Hi. So we're at that point. I'm looking for a second. All in favor? Hi. Great. Thank you so much. That 111th annual meeting.