Good morning everyone and welcome to the session of the Montgomery County Council. This morning we begin with a presentation, proclamation, recognizing minority health move by council member sales, albinas and council vice president, juwando and I just want to note that council member albinas and luke are joining us virtually today. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. If you are here for, yeah. If you are here for the Minority Health Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So as everyone making their way up to the front, I just want to thank you all. Yes, make your way in. I want to thank you all for joining us for the Minority Health One Proclamation. I am Council Member Lori and Sales and the lead for eliminating disparities in public health. So I am honored to be joined by my two colleagues, Council Vice President Jawondo, who chairs our Education and Culture Committee, and Council Member Albernos, who is joining us virtually, who chairs our Health and Human Services Committee. Although Montgomery County is proud to be recognized as one of the healthiest counties in the nation. We still face significant economic and racial disparities in health care as evidenced by some concerning statistics. For example, nearly one in six residents rely on Medicaid for health care services, benefits that are currently at risk at the federal and state levels. Black babies are more likely than babies of any other race to have low or very low birth rates, and our Hispanic population has a higher preterm birth rate than white residents. These are key risk factors that contribute to infant mortality. The Montgomery County 2024 community health assessment found that nearly a third of Hispanic or Latino residents were only sometimes are never able to get health care when needed compared with 7% of non-Hispanic residents. The same assessments found that people who identified as Agender, Gender Fluid, non-binary or transgender were more likely to consider access to medical care, challenging or somewhat tricky. These disparities stem from broader systemic social issues like food insecurity, lack of housing and economic instability. Nonetheless Montgomery County is committed to diversity, equity and inclusion, despite federal threats to these values. We will continue working collaboratively to care for our community together. I want to recognize everyone here today who shares our mission, especially our three minority health programs. The Latino Health Initiative, the African American Health Program, and the Amazion American Health Initiative. An amazing. Today we reaffirm our commitment to ensure access to quality healthcare and preventative services, including gender affirming care. I look forward to working together to improve health care access and outcomes for all residents through a racial equity and social justice lens. And now I want to welcome my council vice president colleague, followed by council member Albernos and our special guest speaker, Dr. Engolsey Wexler, an obstetrician at MedStar Hospital, who will discuss her work on maternal health disparities. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Sales. Good morning, everyone. Happy April. And happy National Minority Health Month. I'll be brief and be additive. There's a lot going on right now right now and whether it's mental health whether it's physical health whether it's social emotional health We know that in our communities communities of color The toll is bigger. It's deeper. It's more systemic You know, I was on a panel this weekend at the... There's a great play at the only theater called Sleep Over. You should go see it. It's there for a couple of weeks. God bless you. It's about three or four young women who are all from the Black Diaspora, different parts of the Diaspora, and they're talking about all the many issues impacting them at their first ever sleep over their teenagers. And one of the things that they came up and brought up was how do you present to go out to the world every day? What do I do with my hair? How do I get up? What do I wear? How are people going to perceive me? It's one of the many, many things impacting the mental health, the physical health of people of color. There's a long list. You heard some of the medical diagnoses, but it's one of the reasons that this council I authored a resolution a couple years ago declaring racism with public health crisis. When you see your neighbors being rounded up without due process, when you see people being fired for no reason, when you see people who are supposed to protect our public health being fired, just today people showed up at FDA and their badges didn't work. 10,000 HHS employees. We, I'm proud that we're in a county where we care about everyone's health. And so we have to double down and say that we recognize the systemic and institutional factors that lead to worse health outcomes for our communities of color. And then we have to play to our strengths and make sure we support. And that's what our health programs do. So I really appreciate Council Member Sales and all of her work on this. I'm proud to be on a council and in a county that recognizes that this is important work because we're healthier as a community. That's, that's good for everybody. Turn it over to my colleague virtually and chair the HHS Committee Council member Abernoss. Well thank you both and in a bit of irony I am homesick today and not able to join all of you but that is an all-star group that I see on my screen before me and we're going to need all of you to help us get through what we know is going to be yet another challenging time. We tend not go backwards and during these disorienting and frustrating and frankly in raging times, I've lost a lot of sleep, I'm sure a lot of you have as well, but what has gotten me through these difficult times is the knowledge that we have such a strong public health infrastructure here in Montgomery County. And if you look back on COVID as difficult and as tragic as that time was, think about the innovative practices that were worn out of that really difficult time. We were able to establish the Office of Food Systems Resilience, the Black Physicians Network, our hubs. And each of our African-American Health Program, Latino Health Initiative, and Asian-American Health Initiatives did some groundbreaking work and significantly expanded their reach through some really strategic thinking and partnerships. So we're going to need all of that and more to make sure that, again, we don't go backward and we move forward, but I am proud as Chair of Health and Human Services, and also for 12 years as the Director of Recreation, I'm intimately familiar with our Public Health Infrastructure here in Montgomery County. And I wanna thank our colleagues in HHS and our Public Health team who are all stars in their own right. Thank you all so much for your dedication and commitment, and we look forward to partnering on so many more opportunities moving forward. Thanks. All right. There you are. Come on, Dr. Elvary. Good morning, everyone. And thank you for inviting me. I'm Mungazi Wexler, the chief medical officer of Metsungunga Medical Center. Metsamunga Marie is one of 10 hospitals at Metsam Star Health. Metsam Health provides services across Maryland and D.C. And as chief medical officer and an OBGYN physician, the issue of decreasing severe maternal mobility is something that is very near and close to my heart, especially when we have racial disparities in this arena. And my colleagues and I are very passionate about closing those gaps and decreasing disparity for all. At MedStar Health, we recognize that the ongoing maternal health prices affects not only our county but our state and our nation. And severe maternal mobility, which you would normally hear us refer to as SMM, this proportionately impacts women of color. And at METSAR Health, we choose to be bold in taking the size of action to ensure equitable care and safer outcomes for all of our mothers. Regarding our strategy for change, METSAR Health has built an operational infrastructure for health equity that is fully integrated in our clinical governance framework. We focus on reducing health care disparities, of course, in severe maternal mobility, but also in all other areas of medicine. We really work with our colleagues to optimize health equity data collection. We ensure equitable care delivery and we address on met social needs. Our action plans to improve maternal health is very comprehensive. We're tackling post-partum hemorrhage which we have identified as a key driver in severe maternal morbidity through safety event reviews in every single post-partum hemorrhage case that we have in our labor and delivery unit. We also provide experts oversight in this area to improve our clinical protocols to ensure we have good outcomes for all of our patients. Our initiatives that we've been implementing recently include implementing CODOB hemorrhage activation protocols. I'm sure you're all aware of COBLUES. We now have CODOB and and CODO-B hemorrhage to make sure that we are ensuring that rapid response to emergencies. We are expanding the postpartum hemorrhage simulation drills in our hospitals to ensure that we have enhanced preparedness for all of our patients. We conduct risk assessments and pre-delivery timeouts for every patient to ensure we have that timely intervention for all. We've also increased access to iron infusions for patients who are pregnant in the pre-delivery time period because ideally if you decrease that risk of anemia by giving iron, then you don't have that increased post-warham hemorrhage that leads to all the bad outcomes when you do come into labor and delivery and it's almost too late. However, when you do come to labor and delivery, we're also doing things there. We're giving a medicine called trinocomic acid, among other medicines that help you constrict the blood vessels to decrease that risk of bleeding, despite all of the things that may put you at risk. Now recognizing that collaboration has to happen not only in our small hospital, but across all our metastar entities and our outside of our our metster hospital walls. We work with other metster hospitals to share our protocols, our best practices, our clinical policies. We share information with each other and we ask each other to look through our records to make sure we did the things right. But I'll be remiss without giving good credit to our community partners beyond our hospital walls. We recently, actually, we had a meeting yesterday with the American African American Health Program, Smile Program, to see how we can engage with our colleagues there to get case workers to come to visit our patients in their homes during pregnancy and up until one year after delivery to make sure that no patient is left behind. We are also partnering with the MDMOM Program and those initiatives to help decrease the risk of hypertension. We're providing education on implicit bias. We are also working to make sure that patients have access to donor breast milk if they choose to give breast milk to all their babies. I would be remiss if I didn't also recognize the excellence of others who have worked diligently and tirelessly with me to make sure that we're making all these changes. And so I would like to give some kudos to the Chair of OBGYN Department of the Sugita J.R.O.D. The Vice Chair of our Department, Dr. Amy Blunt, Director of Quality and Safety Linda Sue, and our Director of Risk Management and Patient Safety Caroline Frazier. And of course, our nurse director, because we can't do it all as doctors. We need our nurse colleagues to Dean McDonald. They have really owned this problem locally and really taken it by the horn and have really worked hard to make sure. And so I'll just end with this final note that at Metzome Montgomery and at MetzStar Health, we are committed to ensuring that every mother, regardless of background, receives the highest standard of care, regardless of where they might live, what they might earn, or what the color of their skin is. And together, we are shaping a future where maternal health disparities will truly be a thing of the past. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Engozy. And I would be remiss if I didn't let our expert attendees introduce themselves as well briefly. Hi, I'm Mayor Modi with the American Diversity Group Executive Director and also Stating Member of Asian American Daltini Shetty. Hi, my name is Juan Deng and I'm with the Maryland Vietnamese Mutual Association. Hi, my name is Winwin, I am the Vice Chair, Opti-Asian American, how initiative is doing committee. And Gazi Wax, Chief Medical Officer, Met some Montgomery Medical Center. Jackie Williams, Co-chair of the African American Health Program Executive Committee, the Board. Dr. Pack Grant with the African American Health Program. Marcella Campalico, Chair for the Latino Halsestirian Committee. Good morning, James Bridges, the Director of the Department of Helping Human Services. Good morning Dr. Kisha Davis County Health Officer. Good morning Ana Mejia with the welcome back center program of the Latino Health Initiative. Good morning Ingrid LeSama Latino Health Initiative. Good morning Karen Bernal with the fetal and infant mortality review board. Good morning Angelina and Bell with the baby's one healthy program. Good morning I'm Crystal Trent Paltry nurse with the baby's born healthy program. Good morning Dr. Nina Ashford Chief of Public Health Services. Good morning Sara and I'm Ana Gerald Latino Health Initiative. Good morning Monica Martin Chief of Behavioral Health and Crisis Services at HHS. Councilman Robinhouse will handle it for you here. Right. We, whereas National Minority Health Month highlights the disparities in premature death and illness affecting racial and ethnic minority groups, and Montgomery County, one of the most diverse counties in the United States, it's crucial to offer healthcare services and resources that reflect this diversity and. Whereas this year's theme advancing commitments to eliminate health disparities highlights the importance of improving healthcare systems and ensuring equitable access to resources for all residents and. Whereas one Montgomery County ranks among the healthiest counties in the United States with high vaccination rates, more healthcare providers per resident, longer life expectancies than state and national averages, lower rates of disconnected youth and preventable hospital stays, these benefits are not evenly experienced across all populations in the county due to health disparities impacting communities of color in Montgomery County and... Whereas health disparities are evident in various conditions, with higher cardiovascular disease and maternal morbidity rates among African Americans, and increased diabetes rates in Native American, Hispanic, and Black populations. Mental health issues often go untreated. In access to healthcare is limited for low income and rural communities. Additionally, Black and Hispanic populations face higher cancer rates, asthma, prevalence and obesity rates, and are disproportionately affected by HIV and AIDS, highlighting the need for targeted interventions. And whereas we we remain committed to achieving the tenants of Healthy People 2030 to eliminate health disparities and create fair opportunities for people to live healthy lives by investing in cultural competency, research, innovation, community engagement, and a holistic view of healthcare to enhance services and meet the needs of our increasingly diverse community and Whereas safeguarding access to essential health services including gender-affirming care reproductive health and preventative screenings must prioritize residents with disabilities members of our LGBTQ plus community veterans racial and ethnic groups, and other marginalized populations, ultimately aiming to enhance health outcomes for these communities. And we finish. Whereas Montgomery County is committed to cultivating academic diversity in the healthcare system and medical professions, addressing the social and structural determinants of health disparities and partnering with local providers community and faith-based organizations minority health programs and individuals to promote equitable healthcare and eliminate health disparities and under-resourced communities now therefore be it resolved that the County Council of Montgomery County, Maryland, hereby recognizes minority health month as a critical month to further progress on reducing global and local health disparities for minorities presented on this first day of April in the year 2025. By council members, sales, alvernos, Vice president and Jawando in President Stewart. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry. you you you you you Thank you. Thank you everyone who joined us this morning for that proclamation. Thank you so much to Councilmember of Sales, Albinas and Council Vice President Jowondo and for all the excellent work going on by my non-profit partners and our Department of Health and Human Services. Now we'll move on to general business. Madam Clerk, will you please share today's announcements? Good morning. Thank you. Public hearings on the proposed FY26 operating budgets and FY26 to 31 public services program and fiscal policy for the Montgomery County Government, Montgomery College, Maryland National Capital Park and Planning Commission, WSSC Water and Montgomery County Public Schools will be held on Monday, April 7th, 2025 at 130 PM and 7 o'clock pm and on Tuesday, April 8th, 2025 at 1.30 pm and 7 o'clock pm. Those wishing to provide testimony in person or virtually must register in advance via the council's website. Written, audio and video testimony may also be submitted via the council's website. Also as council presidents do or previously announced council members, Albernos and Lutki are attending today's meeting virtually. Thank you Madam President. Thank you. The minutes from the March 4th and 11th, 2025, Council sessions, March 5th, 2025, Bethesda Downtown, Minor Master Plan Amendment, and the March 10th, 2025 State Legislative Session have been circulated to colleagues for approval. Are there any objections to approving these minutes? Seeing none, the minutes stand approved. Next, we will sit as the District Council for action on Sectional Map Amendment amendment H-153 to implement the approved and adopted 2024 great Senna Kaplan connecting life and science As mistun comes to the table. I will turn it over to chair Freetson of the PHP committee Thank you, Madam President happy to just turn on this one. Great. Good morning, Council. As you know, the Council approved the Great Seneca Plan, and it's been a few months, typically following that we do get a sectional map amendment. It implements all of the zoning changes that the Council has previously approved in that master plan. So this is very administrative action for the Council today. Public hearing was notified, it was held, there were no speakers for that public hearing. So there is no discussion about any potential changes to the sexual map amendment as presented to you today. All right, I am not seeing anyone with any questions. Is there motion to approve sectional map amendment h-153 council member freets and move do I have a second council vice president Joondo second This is a roll call vote so I'll turn it back to the clerk Councilmember Luki yes council member Luki votes yes council member mink yes council member mink votes yes council member sayils yes Yes. Council Member Seyes, Vosiers. the Yes, Councilmember Albernolz. Yes. Councilmember Albernolz. Yes. Councilmember Fondagosales. Yes. Councilmember Fondagosales. Yes. Councilmember Baltham. Yes. Councilmember Baltham. Yes. Councilmember Duwando. Yes. Councilmember Duwando. Yes. Councilmember Stewart. Yes. Councilmember Stewart. All right, that is the section on map amendment. Sorry. Now we're going to move on to item number two, which is a work session and a straw vote on the Bethesda Downtown Minor Master Plan amendment. I'll turn it over to Council Member Freetzin and then over to Council staff. Thank you, Madam President. Appreciate it. We're taking up the Minor Master Plan amendment in Bethesda. Fortunately, we're not in the pouring rain for those who joined the bus tour of the plan area. It was quite an ugly day, but good thing is that there are beautiful things happening in Bethesda as a result of the 2017 plan. This is essentially an update to that plan limited in scope and in its nature. I'll just hit a few highlights of things that we did and then turn it over to staff to walk us through the packet and can add in any clarifications if needed. and then at the end, we'll be taking up and I will move to make one slight adjustment to language that came in from the Maryland Department of Transportation that's been reviewed by both Council staff and by planning staff. And we think and they think and, as was shared with colleagues, that it is a good approach to be able to leverage Womada and Maryland State Department of Transportation, as well as our county transportation officials, as well, which we'll talk about in a moment. But essentially, what we've done, this minor master plan amendment is recommended by the planning board, lifts the density cap, it requires and we added a five year conference of review to understand the cumulative impact of development and progress toward the master plan vision, which was a significant request from stakeholders, including the implementation committee. We are increasing the park impact payments as recommended by the planning board. We're adding in specific and significant language, reflecting a recreation center as a major public benefit and trying to move forward in that direction. There's a lot of buy-in in the community as you heard at the public hearing for that. Address privately owned public spaces, also known as POPs, to ensure that these assets are not viewed equally to publicly owned spaces, but they are a given credit because they do provide a benefit and included language in that. Also included language on affordable housing consistent with recent master master plans specifically related to the retention of naturally occurring affordable housing. And we provided flexibility on funds for public art to leverage partners at Bethesda Urban Partnership in the state designated arts districts so that funds can be directly shared with those organizations that are actually the implementers in this plan area of public art. A number of other areas that we covered, but I think those were the main highlights that I just wanted to point out. I also think it's important and just wanted to point out in the packet you'll note there's a fiscal impact and the dynamic here, as reflected, is that the net benefit of what has occurred in Bethesda to the public cost versus the private investment and the public benefits and the net positive impact, including the cost of public spaces and schools as a net positive of $17 million. So we're coming out ahead here as a county. The community is coming out ahead generally, but there's a lot more that's been committed in this plan, particularly in terms of public open spaces and the parks as well as the Recreation Center. And hopefully this minor master plan update will help move us in the direction of delivering some of those public benefits as well as Bethesda has seen significant amount of private investment, particularly over the last several years since the 2017 plan was approved. So with that, let me turn it over to Miss Dunn and just express my appreciation to Chair Harris and to Elzane and the team for all of your work on this and Council staff, Mr. County Miss Dunn in particular for working together with the planning department to work through some of these issues that my colleagues on the committee who thoughtfully went through this, very much appreciate we're able to navigate some of these dynamics and help land us in a good place. So with that, let me turn to everybody Miss Dunn. Good morning and thank you.. I just want to see if the I also want to thank the planning department for collaborating with us and helping us get through our review of this with the planning housing and parks committee and see if you had any remarks before I get started. I'll just be brief. I'm already here as chair of the the planning board Council President Stewart and members of the council on behalf of the board and the planning staff, I wanted to recognize the hard work that council staff is starting to get us to this point and we're here today to answer any questions you may have. So thank you. Great, thank you. So just to see the little stage setting, the staff report goes into more detail. We won't cover every word of the staff report here for the council. But just to note a few changes that have occurred since 2017 since adoption of the plan. Bethesda's grown both in population and jobs. The downtown population is now estimated to have increased to over 17,000 people with over 1700 new housing units that have been constructed. And approximately 4,200 new jobs have been created. This represents an increase of 12% over the 2017 employment. So as you can see, the area of the Bethesda Plan has certainly been very successful in getting both population growth and job growth in the area. However, since the pandemic, the pace of that development has slowed considerably. According to Planning Staff from 2017 to 2019, there were 11 site plans that were approved with eight projects being built, or under construction within that following timeframe, which was approximately 1.2 million square feet of development per year. From the 2020 to 2024 timeframe, there were 14 site plans approved, but only three built are under construction and averaging 600,000 square feet of development per year. So you can see that that has fallen off. But in light of that, this minor master plan amendment has come forward to the council because the original plan in 2017 did include a development cap. And that was designed to be a signal for review of the plan, review of the recommendations as an approached 32.4 million square feet. The bell weather for whether this should come to the council was at a 2 million square feet amount of development remaining under that cap which was hit last fall. And as you know, the Council then approved the planning department's work on this minor master plan amendment. Because that cap is really related to the adequate public facility analysis that was done for the initial plan and based on transportation, I'm going to turn it to Mr. Kenney and he's going to cover the next section. Thank you. So going into the recommendations of the plan, starting with on three of the packet the development level section on this really the core recommendation of the of the minor master plan amendment. So the plan recommends updating the BASA, Bethesda Overlay Zone, to remove the cap on development imposed by the 2017 plan, affirming the ability of private development along with county investment policies, to deliver needed housing, jobs, and infrastructure improvements. This, there's several layers of analysis that are included in the plan that were conducted by planning staff to reach this recommendation. The first was related to transportation, the ability of the current transportation facilities or current and planned and scoped out, transportation facilities in the plan area to handle future development. Because this is a lifting of the development cap, we don't know exactly how much development will come in over the lifetime of the plan. So, planning staff prepared three different scenarios of development by 2045. So, these are all beyond the current 32.4 million square foot cap. So, these would be 11 million, 16 million, and 21 million square feet over the current cap, basically that much more development by 2045. The transportation analysis here looks at five adequacy metrics that we use on all master plans. These are auto and transit accessibility, auto and transit travel times, vehicle miles traveled, VMT per capita, non-auto driver mode share, and low stress bicycle accessibility. The analysis showed that all three scenarios resulted in increases to auto and transit accessibility and low stress bicycle accessibility due to households and jobs being in closer proximity. Within the plan area, scenarios one and two show an increase in VMT per capita, while scenario three shows a decrease as more people choose not to drive due to longer travel times. And all three scenarios show little change in non-auto driver, mode share, and auto and transit travel times increase in all scenarios as more people are traveling into the policy area for work. There was additional analysis conducted on school and carbon impacts. The school impacts show enrollment increases over the course of the plan, over the course of by 2045, under all three scenarios, all of which remain under the surpluses, at or under the existing surpluses within the Bethesda Chevy Chase cluster, indicating adequacy under this additional level of development. And the carbon analysis reflected a, you know, as we see more development, a gross increase in carbon emissions, but a significant per capita decrease as building standards increase and become more eco-friendly and the area achieves more density. There was one more element of this analysis, but just wanted to pause here to see if there's any discussion on those first three, given that there's some more nuance to that last one and change is made by the committee. Thank you, Mr. Kinney. I am not seeing any questions. Great. So the PHB committee recommends approving, removing the limit on development or the development level. However, included in that recommendation was a change to the last component of that section which in the planning board draft is called measuring the cumulative experience of implementing the plan vision. The committee discussed this recommendation which you can find on the bottom of page four of the staff report, and the committee recommended a couple of textual changes in which we would change what is currently an element that would, quote, quantify the cumulative experience of change resulting from implementation of the plan vision and change that to understanding the cumulative impacts of development and progress towards the plan vision, as well as changing the actual kind of crux of the recommendation from investigating approaches used in other jurisdictions and presenting them to the planning board as part of an upcoming annual monitoring report, changing that to undertaking a five-year comprehensive review of the plan. This came out of a desire to sort of make this recommendation a little more specific and tangible and provide some more guidelines on what exactly that five-year review might look like. The committee directed Council staff and planning staff to work on an outline of what this five-year comprehensive review might look like based on the 10-year review of the White Flint Sector Plan and to reach out to the Implementation Advisory Committee. This is not part of the master plan. The text of this, will the goal would be to include it in the attachments and some components in the, in the BAS as well. And eventually working on this, you know, coming out with a more fleshed out line in the plan would be to work on this at PHP at a future date. Okay. Not seeing any other questions or continue. Great. Thank you. So moving on to recommendation number two, or the second set of recommendations. These are five recommendations for transportation and adequate public facilities. These are some minor targeted measures to address specific resident concerns with respect to loading and delivery management as well as sidewalk closures, mostly directing MCDOT, DPS, and planning to work together on some loading management and curbside management elements. I will note that as Council Member Freetson brought up, we did receive a requested change in language to the last component of this, which is the study of transit support services, M.Request that the MCDOT, WOMADA, and M. and other regional trans-providers be more explicitly included in there, and that we should look at, including existing and enhanced service as well as bus layover capacity in that language as well. That language is included in the addendum to this staff packet on the agenda today. Council Member Featson. Yes, I have received the apologies for the late notice from MDOT, which we had hoped that this would have come sooner, but it is, I think, appropriate language to include there is ongoing work that is occurring particularly between MDOT and WAMATA, and MDOT believes that This will help to strengthen their work and their efforts along with MCDOT with WAMATA and so that's why they think that it's quite important. It's not new but it will strengthen what's already happening. The language specifically and you have it in your addendum is to support MCDOT WAMATA M. and other regional transit providers study and implementation of enhanced transit service connecting downtown Bethesda, it's in nearby residential neighborhoods and regional activity centers, including expanded transit support facilities needed to accommodate existing and enhanced service and then adding such as bus layover capacity. So it adds WAMADA, M.DOT and other regional transit providers. notes existing as well as enhanced service and it adds bus layover capacity. So it adds Womada, M. and other regional transit providers. It notes existing as well as enhanced service. And it adds bus layover capacity because bus layover capacity is something that they are actively working on and feel like this will help to strengthen their case. So with that, since the committee did not review this, since it didn't come in as a request until after with the apologies from our state partners who admittedly and understandably are a little bit focused on the state legislative session and the state budget. I would move that we amend the committee recommendation to add this language. Thank you. Do I have a second? Second. Second. Councilmember Fanny Gonzalez, second. questions regarding the amendment? Not seeing any all those in favor, please raise your hand. And that is everyone. All right. Any other issues? Not with that. Okay. So we're going to move on to the next section. Thank you very much. And this has to do with the Recreation Center. I know you're aware that there was language in the original plan wanting to emphasize getting a Recreation Center and it was really focused on the Bethesda Regional Service Center site or around the Metro station. So what the minor master plan amendment does is adds additional recommendations related to that Recreation Center to really enhance the ability and to incentivize actually getting the recreation center throughout the plan area. So not just focused on these certain locations. Those recommendations are listed for the council on the bottom of page five. And several of these recommendations will also be mirrored in the Bethesda Overlay Zone language and you'll see that later. We cover elements of the Bethesda Overlay Zone also for you today in this work session because that Overlay Zone does implement the master plan, so they must work together. We're going to cover a lot of that later in this session, but briefly. So with that, the committee was unanimous and their approval of the board's recommendations for these recommendations related to the Recreation Center. Great, we have a recommendation from the committee that we just amended and not seeing any other questions or anything today, we have a straw vote. So all those in favor of the Bethesda Downtown Minor Master Plan amendment, please raise your hand. Oh, we're not done yet. Is it true? Yeah, sure about. Oh, we're not done with the whole thing yet. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. My apologies. With that. Yeah, we could do with that objection. Sorry. I thought we were at the end. My apologies. Yeah. Also, I wasn't clear. But we do have a few more things to cover. So if you turn to page six of the staff report, the minor master plan amendment also addresses some of the implementation recommendations related to the parks. And the first was just a refinement of strategies that the park should adapt to changing things related to purple line implementation or various things. The only sort of more material recommendation related to parks in this section had to do with the Veterans Park Civic Green. And I know that the council members that were on the tour did go to the site, did understand and receive a briefing from the Parks Department that has been difficult to achieve getting the site to do the expansion of that park across Woodmont Avenue. And so the idea now is to make that civic green expansion adjacent to the existing Veterans Park. And so this minor master plan amendment recommendation is really just to recognize one that difficulty and two make it clear that further work to get the expansion of veterans park civic green will be adjacent to the existing veterans park. And then there were two other more minor ones really about looking for alternative financing and to continue to seek advice from the IAC, and the committee unanimously supported those recommendations. Okay, not seeing any questions, great. The next section is about the Park Impact Payment itself. In the 2017 plan and the Bethesda Overlays Zone, they created this park impact payment to help fund the acquisition and construction of park land in downtown Bethesda and today that's collected over 15 million dollars. The amount that was paid initially under the Bethesda Overlay Zone the rate established was $10 per square foot with biennial adjustments based on the average of the prior two years inflation of construction, the most recent adjustment approved by the board in 2023 was for $12.49 per square foot of Bethesda overlay's own density requested by a development application. But as the council's aware, you were brought the issue that the average was not really calculating sufficiently and accurately the amount of inflation adjustment needed and this led the council to change to a cumulative methodology rather than the average and that was approved in January of 2024. The minor master plan amendment recommends incorporating this new cumulative methodology which would result in an increase to the park impact payment making it $15.57 per square foot. It is a 25% jump. There were some community developers who were concerned with that jump and yet analysis by planning staff had found that the higher rate would only increase development costs about 0.2%. And so with that, the committee recommended unanimously approval of the cumulative inflationary adjustment and the increase to $15.57 per foot. Great. Council Member Feetson. Yeah, I just think it's important to note every time we talk about the PIP that this is intended to be additive. It's not intended to cover the full costs of all of the parks and open space in downtown Bethesda. There's no place in the county that is expected to capture the funding through development of their public open spaces. The idea was in order to enhance what was already going to happen. The park impact payments would be a way to do that. So I just wanted to note that, I think it's important, I will reiterate that every chance that I get will never generate the revenues needed to fulfill the vision of the master plan through park impact payments, nor was it ever intended using this vehicle to do so. Having said that, there were some stakeholders who wanted this to be higher. There were some that wanted to be much lower. We accepted the planning board's recommendation, which seemed reasonable, but it is a significant jump at a time when you heard in the beginning where development, which had gone significantly in the first few years of the adoption of the plan has really slowed. So I just think it's something again as part of the monitoring. We want to see the public infrastructure. We also want to see the progress and the impact that some of these recommendations have and that's why that comprehensive review that the committee supported and that the IAC had recommended is so important. Okay, thank you. Thank you. So that's a great segue into the next piece which is that the planning board has recommended to help mitigate the impact of this higher cost on developers that the park impact payment be made into payments. This is similar to other legislation you've recently worked on, which would the first half would be do at the first building permit, then the second half do at the first use and occupancy permit, and the committee unanimously supported this as well. Okay. Then there was another piece related to the park impact payment, to which Chair Freedson mentioned at the beginning. When land is dedicated for parks, the applicant who dedicates the park and receives a reduction in their park impact payment to offset the value of that dedication. What the minor master plan amendment has recommended is that when an applicant is providing a privately, what is a pop again? Privately owned public space. Privately owned public. Pop. Not the singing groups. When developers are providing pop, they should also receive a discount in their park impact payment, but it shouldn't be at the same level of discount received by somebody who is providing a dedication. And so there is language for you on page seven of the staff report that the committee has recommended that just clarifies that the minor master plan amendment Suggested that it should get a discount. We wanted to make sure that it was clear to the public that the amount for dedication would be more than the amount provided for a POPs and more language like more specific language will actually appear in the Bethesda overlay zone. And that will be sometime in the future. Councilmember Featsom. Yeah, I just wanted to note and reiterate the fact that we'll take up the BAS later and that's where we'll have more specifics. We actually talked about what those specifics could look like planning and council staff are working through that with parks and the parks department to work through that to make sure that it reflects the overall plan but is consistent with what the parks department is looking for. So we wanted to talk about them together although the more specific language will come up subsequent to this effort when we take up the BAS. But this language kind of sets the stage for that and we'll take it up then. Okay. Okay. Awesome. Okay. The next section is affordable housing. Affordable housing was a key priority in the 2017 plan and continues to be that the minor master plan amendment is made a recommendation to extend sort of the incentives that are in the 2017 plan. It has incentives to provide 17.5% MPVs. It requires 15. It wants to extend the incentives for providing 17.5% MPVs to projects providing 15% MPVs if they are providing family sized units that exceed the minimum number required under Chapter 25A and or they are providing deeply affordable units as defined by DHCA. So it's recognizing that while the plan area has done really well in achieving a higher number of MPDs in the area, I think over 400 MPDs have now been constructed since the development of the 2017 plan. I want to see the next focus and the next incentive go to family-sized units as well as deeply affordable. So it just expands sort of the universe of the types of MPD use that may be achieved in the Bethesda plan area and the committee supported this unanimously. Great. The next recommendation I think also Chair Freedson mentioned is in the beginning, recent master plans, the Viers Mill Plan, the Silver Spring Downtown and Communities Plan, St. Komopark, Minor Master Plan, all included a recommendation to strive for known at loss of naturally occurring affordable housing. This Minor Master Plan amendment also recommends that redevelopment of naturally occurring affordable housing sites in downtown Bethesda strive for no net loss within the larger redevelopment, particularly in conjunction with again receiving those larger family sized and deeply affordable units. And with that, the committee supported that recommendation. Okay. All right. The next thing that was discussed was a recommendation related to the heightened incentive area. It's an area within the Bethesda Plan area where additional height can be achieved for the provision of MPDUs. And there was a recommendation in the plan to expand that heightened incentive area in a certain particular part of the plan area. You'll see a map of that on page 10. It is to include blocks to the east of Arlington Road between Moreland's Lane and below Montgomery Avenue. And the committee had conversations about this and where they landed unanimously was that rather than in this process expanding the heightened center area at this time to have language in the minor master plan amendment that recommends further study of the expansion of this area that could be addressed in a future zoning text amendment to the Bethesda overlay zone that is where that change can occur. You don't have to reopen the master plan rather than making the change today. Go back to the community with a little more input and propose this in the future. Great. Council Member Freetzer. Yeah, thanks and appreciate colleagues for their indulgence on this and also to Planning Director Sartori who actually recommended us in adopting this language. I just want to give a little bit of context on this. The heightened sense of area was set in the master plan. When this was decided that we were going to move forward with the minor master plan amendment, the question came up of whether or not things like this would be addressed as part of this effort at the staff level it was not it was considered and ultimately decided it was not it was shared with the community that it would not be taken up as a result of that when it went to the planning board the request came in the same request came in from an applicant who was interested in what is a relatively modest increase in height in order to achieve affordable housing. A request that was well received by the planning board and ultimately the planning board agreed to accept that request and recommended as part of this effort. The issue and the concern is that the community that was told that it wouldn't be included had no opportunity to weigh in because they had no idea that it would be included and by the time it was included, it was already done. And so the concern that was made was relative to process and whether or not that was the most appropriate and reasonable way to move forward by going through the BAS and including language that puts it out there and makes it clear that it will be something that will be looked at but not prejudiced as part of that allows for a better process in order to move forward. So I just wanted to provide context. The committee didn't weigh in on whether this was a good idea or a bad idea related to these particular properties, which are essentially single family home structures that serve as businesses for the most part in many cases. And so ultimately that that was the decision that was made and it was very much a compromised recommendation by the planning director. So I just wanted to note that, which I appreciate. So thank you. Okay. So the final section we have here is related, as I mentioned earlier, to the Bethesda Overlay Zone. You will take that up as a separate legislative item. Actually, the public hearing on that is later today. But because some of the recommendations for the Bethesda Overlay Zone that you will take up are related to this minor master plan amendment, the overlay zones are really designed simply to implement a master plan. We want to cover them with you here because if you hear them for the first time during the overlay and you want to make a change to it, we would have to make sure that it was consistent with this master plan. So we want to give you the heads up here. We'll tell you what the committee agreed to and that way when it becomes a review for the overlay, it is more of a perfunctory action because it is implementing something you have already reviewed. So with that, one of the first elements that is suggested to change in the overlay has to do with the requirement to purchase BOSS density. Currently, the way it is stated in the 2017 plan is that before you can request additional density through the BOSS and make a park impact payment to receive it, you must use all of your density, meaning total density. And we have properties that have a certain amount of commercial FAR given to them and a certain amount of residential FAR. And sometimes those amounts don't equal the total. So if you are going to move forward and you want to use boss density, you are being required to do a mixed use project to hit that total. What the planners have recognized is that it is more efficient and better for many and flexibility for the development community. If they only have to use the total of either their commercial or the total of their residential before asking for more BOS density, that would allow them to do a completely commercial project, request more BOS density density for it and make a park impact payment or a totally residential project and do the same. So it's really a flexibility issue and the committee recommended unanimously approval of that recommendation. The next has to do with a, it called a use it or lose it provision which really had to do with the cap. We wanted to make sure that as development moved forward under cap, nobody was going to hoard density, get an approval and then sit on it. So there were time frames related to moving forward. Without a development cap, those time frames that very strict time frame is less important. And it's important to note that there is an adequate public facilities time frame already associated with every development that gets approved in the county of five years. And so with that, the committee also recommended approval. The next has to do with public benefit points. Currently now to promote sustainability and energy efficiency and new construction. The boss requires buildings in a designated high performance area to achieve 15 public benefit points from energy conservation and generation to achieve this buildings must exceed the energy efficiency standards for that building type by 17.5% for new buildings more exceeded by 10% for existing buildings. However, since the 2017 plan was approved, the council has worked to adopt ever more efficient building and energy codes, which make the BAS stretch goal requirement exceeding the higher efficiency standards very difficult to achieve. And so what the minor master plan amendment is recommending is an update to the BAS language to change the requirement for achieving the 15 points to making it exceed the amount that is currently required rather than a certain percentage and with that the committee supported that recommendation. The next one has to do with the incentive zoning update. This is more sort of administrative and in sense. It is not really substantive but it basically is coordination language. It says that as the council goes through and makes changes and you will be receiving a zoning text amendment to implement the incentive zoning update, council is briefed on it over the winter. That whatever happens with that incentive zoning update recognizes how the buzz has been set up and what the goals of the minor master plan and master plan are. And so it's done in concert with that and recognizes what's trying to be achieved so that those things work together. Of course, the committee agreed with that. The next is public art. And then the BAS overlay's known there is a maximum benefit for public art that had been increased from traditionally its 15% in the code to a 20% in this plan area. And the public art steering committee is the entity that can accept a fee for public art. What this recommendation in the minor master plan does is it extends that to say that the Bethesda Arts and Entertainment District, the Bethesda Urban Partnership, these other entities can also accept a fee to provide public art in the downtown Bethesda. The committee, yes, of course, recommended approval of that. The next two are minor modifications to the Basel Relay Zone for to provide incentives for the new Recreation Center. One is that it could set up payment in lieu based on the new Recreation and Civic building, and also to make it a major public facility priority. And the committee recommended both of those. And then last, there was language related to expanding tree canopy in downtown Bethesda, also another just supportive recommendation that suggests to build on incentive programs that exist to help incentivize more trees in the downtown area and with that the committee also recommended approval. Thank vice president, Javanda. Thank you appreciate all the work and my colleagues on the committee just wanted to emphasize something I emphasized in committee that the comprehensive the five year review of the plan is just a really important feature here and that working with the community who you know had some who worked really hard the group worked really hard to come together with recommendations we moved the cap did a lot of what Plenty has suggested but want to make sure that the Pips and the Pops deliver what we the open space that we want and that we're reviewing it in a real thorough way at the committee and the Council to make sure we're getting what we need. So really appreciate work on that and just wanted to mention that. Thank you. And just quickly note on March 21st, the PHP committee received a fiscal impact statement on the minor master plan amendment. That is attached to the council's staff packet today. It's largely around transportation investments based on different development levels. And with that, we've covered it. So now you can take the straw vote. And I'll just mention that after the straw vote, everything will get updated and a resolution that implements any of these changes that the committee has recommended, and you've seen the draft language for, will be posted tomorrow for the community so that we can take action next week. Terrific, well thank you, Ms. Dunn, Mr. Kenney, and representatives from the planning department and planning board, and my colleagues on PHP for their excellent work. And I do, I was part of the field trip, the tour. And I appreciated that. We could have done without so much rain, but it was very helpful as it always is when we're dealing with master plans or minor master plans to be able to go out and actually see it. So I appreciate everyone organizing that for us. I'm not seeing any other questions. So now we will take a straw vote on the master plan. We had a recommendation from the PHP committee. We adopted an amendment today during session. So all those in favor, please raise your hand. And now that is everyone. All right. Thank you very much. The final vote on the plan is expected next Tuesday, April 8th. All right, thank you. I think Ms. Dunn, you're staying there. And we now have the semi-annual report from Montgomery County, our Maryland National Park and Planning Commission. So I think folks are going gonna make their way up. Most of the first half. All right. I think we're just trying to get the PowerPoint up. 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 sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. We have chair Harris. I just want to say that thank you to planning and our parks for coming to do this semi annual report. This report is always something we look forward to on the council, particularly those who do not serve on our PHP committee because we don't get to see you as often, though many of us work with you and the full planning board and I see we have also our vice chair here, thank you for attending as well. And today I just want to say that, you know, given where We are in our community and in our country, I think the responsibility and the work that we do together on planning our communities, making sure our residents are heard and part of that conversation and making sure it is all of our residents and that we are continue to center equity and social justice in our communities particularly when we're planning for it is something that Montgomery County feels strongly about and that we will continue to feel strongly about and will not just feel strongly about but will work towards those goals. It has always been a privilege to work with our planning department, our planning board, and parks in sharing that. And I hope we continue as we work together to share those goals and make them a reality in our community. And so I look forward to hearing about the semi-annual presentation today and then opening up for questions. So Chair Harris, I'll turn it to you. Thank you so much. Good morning, Council President Stewart and members of the Council. Thank you for this opportunity to share highlights of the planning board, the planning department and parks. Most recent accomplishments and updates on our ongoing efforts to make Montgomery County the premier destination to invest in, live, work, play, and thrive. We have so much to highlight in planning in parks, so I'll be extremely brief in my remarks to give directors, Sartorri and Figueroa more time to dive into their departments. I know we will have an opportunity later this month to review our budget in detail with you, but I would be remiss if I didn't take a moment to highlight the critical need of financial resources for our work. We are your departments and I thank each of you in advance for working to ensure we have the resources we need to keep doing our work. On March 14th, you received the County Executive's recommended fiscal year 26 operating budget. Our budget was cut close to $8 million from our requested funds. We knew going into this budget season that it would be a tough year and our requested budget was already primarily a maintenance of service budget. These cuts, however, will keep us from fully funding compensation and major known commitments. Therefore, your support is greatly needed during the budget process to make sure we have sufficient funding for our work. We are proud to serve as the resource for you and all the residents of Montgomery County, and hope that we are able to continue our work at the level of quality and service everyone has come to expect. Housing has been and continues to be the top priority for the planning board. The Housing Shortage is a present day and future crisis affecting our county, state, and communities nationwide. This sentiment was echoed during a gathering of regional planning board chairs that I convened in January and my capacity as chair of the Maryland National Capital Park and Planning Commission. As a group, we have committed to meeting on a quarterly basis. While there is no single solution to address the housing shortage. We believe the more housing now packaged, sponsored by Council members, Freedson and Fanny Gonzalez, and co-sponsored by Council President Stewart and Council members, Lutke, Balcom and Sales is a valuable step. One that garnered unanimous support from our bipartisan board. We look forward to working with the Council to continue to advance measures to support access to housing for all county residents. A crisis of this magnitude must be addressed from multiple angles. One critical piece of the county's development is the county's development pipeline. As you know, the pipeline is an inventory of development projects that the Garmee County Planning Board has approved, but that are not completely built. The pipeline includes recently approved projects as well as projects that are dead cates old that remain unbuilt or incomplete. The board requested that the Planning Department conduct a thorough review of the pipeline to more fully understand housing developers barriers if any to advancing their projects and the opportunities that could encourage them to move forward. Planning Department Director Jason Sartori will share more about this in his upcoming remarks along with an update on the department wide effort to launch the community planning academy later this year. Complementary to housing are the amenities that make our county desirable. As noted in the recently released 2024 National Community Survey from Montgomery County, parks were rated positively with an 8 and 10 respondents praising county parks. This is not by accident. This overwhelming community support reflects the hard work and dedication of our park staff and the investments made by the county to make our park system one of the best if not the best in the nation. In a few moments, Parks Director Midi Figueroa was share more about how she and her team are making key enhancements to our 100-year-old park system. Before I turn it over to my colleagues to share more about our work, I want to thank you for your work. In these uncertain times, you are faced every day with significant challenges that directly affect the lives of our residents. I know that it cannot be easy. We truly appreciate your leadership as you navigate these complex waters. I will now turn over the presentation to Planning Director Jason Sartori. Thank you, Chair Harris, for the record Jasonartori, Planning Director and good morning, President Stewart and members of the County Council. And President Stewart, I wanna thank you for your opening comments of support and our continued collaboration. For this spring semi-annual, I plan to update you on several important initiatives underway at the Planning Department, providing overview of development activity in the county and the plans that we reviewed in 2024. Check in on the status of active master plans, summarize our FY26 budget requests, and provide you with additional data that is important to know as we navigate these unprecedented times. I want to begin by talking about the community planning academy. This is an effort that is really important to me because it taps into planning's work in educating the public, engaging community members, and ensuring equitable outcomes. The county council funded the economy in our FY25 budget, and we've made a lot of progress on the program, which is focused on empowering more stakeholders from across the county with the knowledge and the resources that they need to fully engage and advocate for themselves and their communities in the various planning processes. The program includes a mobile friendly online learning curriculum that will be offered in multiple languages. The goal is to ensure as many people as possible have access to information and education about the county's planning process. While it will be ultimately open to the entire public, we are currently registering an initial cohort of 50 participants that will complete the course this summer and help to refine the curriculum and its methods. The images that you see on the right of this slide are some of our online marketing materials that we are currently translating into Spanish and mandering to promote the program. And here on the next slide is our course outline for the initial cohort. We'll begin with an in-person meeting with participants to introduce the program and explain the importance of their role, then they'll participate in eight different learning modules that they can complete at their own pace over a two-month period. These modules include an introduction to planning, overviews of the master plan, zoning, and development review processes, the junction between environment and planning, effective advocacy tools and more. In addition to the online course, this group will have multiple in-person opportunities to learn about the planning process, including staff office hours, a site tour, and a graduation ceremony. An important thing to note is that the focus of the modules is on explaining the processes and educating participants on how to participate in them. It is not about telling participants what to think or say or what to think about our work. The course curriculum has been developed by planning staff and staff from partner agencies including DPS. We've also had great collaboration and coordination with MCDOT, the county's racial equity and social justice office, and our sister department in Prince George's County which launched the similar program just about two years ago. Our planning team, which has been led by Deputy Director Bridget Breuer and our Equity Initiatives Lead, Khalid Offsul, have also presented to you and received some really significant and helpful feedback from each of the five regional services center citizen advisory boards. Anyone interested in participating in our initial beta cohort can indicate their interest by going to the URL that you see on this screen or by scanning the QR code that you also see on the screen. And that's where taking names and interests by through May 9th. Since our space is limited to 50 initial participants, not everyone who expresses an interest will be part of the initial cohort. In fact, we've already received interest from more than 200 people. We will ensure this cohort is geographically diverse and will prioritize people who haven't actively engaged in our processes previously. That said, we do plan to include a few community members who are more familiar with our processes already, in the hopes that they may be able to help us identify gaps in the curriculum. Before moving on, I did want to also note that if any council members would like to receive a briefing or your staff on the community planning academy we would be happy to schedule one of those. Another project that we are currently pursuing as Chair Harris mentioned is our development pipeline analysis. This effort emerged from our work with the Ph.P. committee last year on local housing targets. Through that effort, we learned that only 50% of the units in our pipeline six years earlier had come to fruition. We also learned that this varied widely, depending on the different parts of the county. So we've also heard from a lot of people who have suggested that the solution to our housing crisis is advancing projects in the pipeline. In a planning week, we acknowledge the role that the pipeline can play in helping meet our housing goals, but also know that the current pipeline of approved projects will not meet our county's diverse housing needs alone. Nevertheless, we want to better understand the pipeline and the obstacles preventing individual projects from moving forward. As of this January, the pipeline included 278 unexpired approvals, accounting for more than 29,000 units. About 88% of those in the pipeline are in multi-family rental projects. So over the next five months, there were a variety of methods, including data analysis and applicant surveys and interviews. We will build a better understanding of the pipeline. We will uncover barriers to moving projects forward, whether they are regulatory requirements, market conditions, the availability of financing or something else. And we will identify high level solutions for the Council to consider exploring. Here are some more details. Next slide. Here you go. More details on the current pipeline showing the location of pipeline projects and how many projects and units were approved in four different time periods. Using those same time periods, the next slide identifies the largest projects in terms of the number of units in each of those time periods. So these include the Tasty Diner site in Silver Spring, the Westfield Montgomery Mall, the remaining unbuilt but approved units at Pike and Rose, and the Geico site in French Epites. A related tool currently available to the public on our website is our development dashboard and it's been on our website since 2023. It provides a way to learn more about development plans, dwelling units, and commercial square feet that have been approved since 2010. Here you can see the totals for 2024 which included nearly 500,000 square feet of commercial space and just under 2900 units, which is more than we had in 2023, but continues to fall short of levels that we need to hit our housing target. In 2024, our regulatory teams reviewed 928 different applications to a decision. This includes a variety of applications from sketch plans, preliminary plans and site plans to force conservation plans, mandatory referrals and record plots. It also includes 238 historic area work permits that are reviewed by three members of our historic preservation team and 137 historic tax credit applications totaling more than $3 million in tax credits. I also want to highlight a few specific development projects around the county that made significant progress in 2024. On the left is a rendering of Parkland Gummary in Long Branch, this project which had a site plan approved by the Planning Board in 2022, had a minors administrative site plan amendment approved last November. The site plan adds up to 76 new units to the existing 141 units that are managed by enterprise. The new building will be entirely affordable due to a 9% light tech credit, but is condition to maintain 15. a half percent of the units as MPD use subsequent to expiration of the light tech restrictions. On the right is Sligo Apartments in Silver Spring, which is approved to include 98 multi-family units across 115,000 square feet, and is currently under construction. This project is 100% affordable housing through light tech credits, and 24.5% of the units will remain as MPDUs when the light tech restrictions expire. Strathmore Square is a mixed use development located on the Grove Nurse Strathmore Walmata property. Phase one of the project was recently constructed as the Revell in Royale, a building with just over 300,000 square feet, including 220 multi-family units, 15% of which are MPDUs, and 9,000 square feet of retail. In addition to the new mixed-use building, the project delivered a beautiful, new 1.2 acre park, enhancing the new community with green space. On the right, the Logic White Oak is a residential development on Broadburts Drive in Silver Spring. The property is located within the 2014 White Oak Science Gateway Master Plan area and is across the street from the new Montgomery College East County Education Center. Leeson has begun at the logic, which includes 387 units including 15% MPD use. 359 of the units are within a traditional multi-family building and 28 are two over two units, which is what you see in this image. The project underwent a streamlined speed-to-market review process and set aside 11% of the site as public open space. And last year the planning board approved a major amendment to the Clark Spurg town center. The amendment was primarily to remove previously approved office buildings and replace those with two residential and mixed use buildings while still providing a much needed and desired grocery store and opportunities for new retail and restaurant tenants. The project will be completed in one phase and represents the last remaining component of the Clarksburg Town Center community. We're really excited about that. Beyond our regulatory functions, our master planners have been hard at work creating comprehensive visions for neighborhoods around the county. We were thrilled to see the council's enthusiasm for the Bethesda Downtown Plan amendment this morning. I think that plan better aligns the county with county policies and priorities and ensures that downtown Bethesda remains the thriving economic engine and vibrant, complete community that we've come to enjoy. So thank you for your support for that plan this morning. The planning board is nearly finished with its review of the master plan of highways and transitways, technical update, and should be transmitting that plan update to the council this month. The board also recently held the public hearing on the University Boulevard Corridor Plan and is currently in the middle of its work sessions. We expect to send this plan to the council in June. The Clarksburg Gateway sector plan team just presented their emerging ideas to the planning board last week. We anticipate sending the board's draft to the council in November. The Germantown sector plan amendment and the Eastern Silver Spring Communities plan teams are both doing visioning with their communities as they work to develop their respective plans. And both of those plans will be coming to the council next year. Also coming to the council next year, the French Epid sector plan recently had its scope of work and boundary approved by the board, and planners are meeting with the community to start getting feedback about the plan area. Also recognizing the council's concern over recent federal government directives, I wanted to take a moment to highlight the federal workforce and federal leasing in Montgomery County. In 2023, approximately 70,000 Montgomery County residents worked for the federal government in the Washington metropolitan area. That represents 16.4% of the county's full-time civilian employed population at least 16 years old. In 2024, just under 76,000 people, who may or may not live in Montgomery County, but 76,000 people worked at federal facilities in the county and this is across 22 different departments and 50 agencies. Seven campuses provide most of the employment with the largest employment at NIH, the FDA, and Walter Reed. And as of October of last year, the federal government leased approximately 7.7 million square feet of office space in Montgomery County, which is approximately 10% of the county's total office space. Leases for about 3.5 million square feet of that space will expire by the end of 2027. So obviously, none of this accounts for the many private sector, jobs, and other public sector initiatives that rely on federal contracts or grants. We're working currently with the MCEDC to get a better understanding of that workforce and that data. Nevertheless, I wanted to provide you with this baseline information now so that you have it available to you. And I want to thank our research and strategic projects team led by Carrie McCarthy for pulling this together. And finally, I wanted to highlight a few key components of our FY26 budget request, which will obviously receive much more scrutiny over the coming weeks. First, as you'll recall from our last semiaeanual, we recently completed a new strategic plan for the department in which we identified 149 actions across 26 strategies. The budget process presents an opportunity for us each year to implement the strategic plan, and so our budget request identifies the specific strategies or actions that each request helps achieve. On to screen you can see now the new ongoing initiatives in our request, which includes three new positions. But I wanted to call your attention to the first item on the list, master plan support. This represents a new approach to funding our master plan efforts following guidance that we received from council members during last year's budget process. The prior approach required us to know exactly what we would need to conduct a master plan in a community and what it would cost years before we were intended to begin that effort. This year, establishing a base of ongoing funding for our master plan efforts will provide us with greater flexibility to meet the needs of each community as the plan process unfolds. This will increase our ability to invest more in engagement on translation services and on data analysis efforts as the needs arise in master plan efforts. This new approach would also ensure that master planning, a core function of our department, is not on the reconciliation list each year as new funding tied to specific master plans. The council will continue, however, to determine which master plan efforts are added to our work program and we will use the fall semi-annual each year to report details on how the master plan support funding was used the prior fiscal year, maintaining appropriate council oversight off our budget. And on this next screen, you can see our requested one-time initiatives. I'm happy to answer any questions you might have about any of these projects or what you saw on the previous slide. But again, I want to, you know, I know that there'll be opportunities to go dig deeper into these requests. I did want to, where we're going to the planning board actually on Thursday to, with our non-recommended reductions to see how we can meet the county executive executives budget. While the planning department request was for a 5.7% increase, the executive only recommended a 4.5% increase to the MNCPPC admin fund that we're part of. However, the planning department share of that only represents a 2.5% increase, so less than half of the increase that we had requested. If we need to reduce our cut or cut our new initiatives, we will try to do as much of this as we can in-house and pursue other funding opportunities as feasible. If the department has year-end funds available, we would like to potentially allocate those funds to the retail market analysis or the Green Street's guidelines efforts. The retail market analysis was last done in 2017 and much has changed to the retail sector over the last eight years, as you know, especially due to the pandemic. This analysis would measure the health of the county's retail market and identify opportunities for improvement. The Green Street's guideline would be an update to the complete street design guide that would be prepared collaboratively, again with MCDOT. Green Streets help mitigate the impact of climate change and increase tree canopy. And it's important to ensure our guidance for master plans and development efforts incorporates the state of the practice standards. And as we always do, here is an updated, very hard to read, work program chart. A few of our initiatives have been delayed due to staffing, grant funding delays, extended engagement efforts, and other scheduling conflicts. We've kept Council staff abreast of these delays and coordinated with them on scheduling, but I'd be happy to discuss any of the details during the Q&A if desired. I think the fact that it's so tiny suggests we're doing a lot of work, which I think is good. I will now turn it over to my good friend and partner, Midi Figuaredo, to provide the Parks update. Thank you, Jason. And good morning. I am really happy to be here again today to showcase some of the work we've been doing at the parks department and in this time I've also brought along with me some of the staff whose work I'm going to highlight during this presentation So in our opening slide you'll be looking at a picture from our Pickleball court ribbon cutting at East Norbeck local park which some of you attended As many of you know pickleball continues to be incredibly popular among Montgomery County residents of all ages. In fact, my son was home for a couple of weeks in March and he played Pickleball almost every single day with his friends. So now I want to, well, we're trying to, I want to take a few minutes to highlight a few of our accomplishments. So over the past year, I'm going to give it like one second for our slides to come up for us to catch up a little bit. And also just to let colleagues know, I think everyone knows this. The slides were in the packet. Yes, so you can also pull them up there as well. So I will, I'll go ahead. oh, it looks like it's okay, we're just about there. And then we're on the second slide. Ah, there we go. So our trail crew constructed this past year more than four miles of new trails. And two and a half miles of existing trails were renovated. We opened or renovated more than 30 facilities including parks, playgrounds, sports courts and athletic fields and more than 4,000 trees were planted on Parkland to preserve and enhance the county's tree canopy. Our community volunteers also make significant contributions in our parks. Community community gardens program donated almost 5,000 pounds of fresh produce. Volunteers collected almost 150,000 pounds of trash. And our weed warriors freed more than 18,000 trees and shrubs from non-native invasives. Finally getting people into our parks, being active and social is at the heart of our mission. Last year, we did 12 surveys over the course of the year that got almost 3,000 responses about our parks, projects, and programs, including our Jean Lynch Urban Park art contest, our Elm Street Urban Park renovation, the Wheaton Regional Park Preliminary Design Survey, and more. We held more than 7,000 different programs in our nature centers, historic sites, and other facilities. And we had more than 135,000 hours of permitted playing time on our fields and courts. And as the chair mentioned earlier Montgomery County residents really do appreciate what we have to offer. In the county's recently released National Community Survey, which as the police are not in the position to be in the position of the police. The police are not in the position of the police. The police are not in the position of the police. The police are not in the position of the police. The police are not in the position of the police. The police are not in the position of the police. The police are not in the position of the police. The police are not in the position of the police. mentioned earlier Montgomery County residents really do appreciate what we have to offer. In the county's recently released National Community Survey which pulled Montgomery County residents to assess the county's livability, parks had the highest overall quality rating among county services and a large majority of residents rated them as very important to their quality of life. And it's because of your ongoing support that we can succeed in this way. Each year, we fight for our same level of services budget so that we're able to meet ongoing parks needs, including maintenance and operations of a 100-year-old system, while including a small increase for enhanced programs and services to meet the needs of a growing and very diverse community. In this year's budget, we once again requested a same services budget with a less than 1% increase for program enhancements. In addition to the reduction in our FY26 operating budget request, we also, by the way, received a $2 million CIP cut from the County Executive, most of which will hit us in fiscal year 26 and will affect Wheat and Regional Park projects. Today we're reporting to you on the impact of Council-funded initiatives that we received in recent years. We're highlighting the staff we hired, the work they accomplished, and the stories behind their efforts because as you all know, most of our budget is people and our work is done by people. So you can see in our next slide what our proposed budget has looked like over the last six years. I'm going to give it one second to catch up. There we go in the top line. And below that in orange, you'll see what the county executive has recommended. And finally, the middle line, which will be in green, shows what the council has approved going up to fiscal year 25, which is always the result of hard decisions that you have to make considering all of the significant needs and the limited resources in the county. So I wish I didn't have to make this point quite so explicitly right now, but given what's happening at the federal level I think it needs to be set out loud at Montgomery Parks. We believe in public service We believe that government exists to make people's lives better and we respect and value all our employees This is a picture of staff receiving their five ten fifteen and twenty year service recognition awards their time at the commission. We're able to recruit and retain outstanding staff because we have a culture where staff are empowered and encouraged to do their best work in an atmosphere that's supportive and respectful, and I hope it's also fun. With the next series of slides, I'm going to talk about what we've been able to accomplish with the positions and funding we've received over the last few fiscal years so you can see the impact. Over the past three years we've expanded our adaptive programs to ensure that everyone regardless of ability can access and enjoy our parks because we believe that spending outdoors, spending time outdoors engaged in physical activity is really for everyone. FY FY22, for example, we received funding to help create inclusive programs like Adaptive, Kayaking, and Mountain Biking. And last year, we served over 130 participants in Adaptive Recreation Programs. And that was up from zero the previous year when we didn't have that funding. Strategic program enhancements have also allowed our parks activation team to expand events and increase community engagement, bringing in record attendance and growing participation in parks across the county. During the last semi-annual, I shared multiple slides and some of our events like Sligo Creek Fest, Acoustics and Ails, the Ale Trail, and our Sunday Sarah Nades, with funding that we received in fiscal years 24 and 25. We hired Joshua Henning, Lester Kugel, and Megan D'Amillo on our team. These events are a lot of work. Earlier in March, we hosted our first acoustics and ails events of the season. And we had a record number of over 1,300 attendees. And we know that we need more food trucks and we're working on that. So with a commitment to equity and accessibility Montgomery Parks has expanded efforts to connect more residents to our trail system. In fiscal year 23 we received funding for our trails equity engagement program also known as Roots to Rocks which offers learn to ride clinics and youth mountain bike rides and has its own fleet of bikes that they bring to events. And with additional support from the Montgomery Parks Foundation, we developed our trail ambassador program, which gets high school students out on bikes and building trails, who otherwise might not have been exposed to this. And enhancing trail connections goes beyond just building the actual past. It's about creating a seamless, enjoyable, comfortable experience. Our goal is ultimately to create a world-class trail network. With funding that we received in fiscal year 22, we've been investing in essential features like maps, bike parking, fix it stations. With these amenities, we go a long way towards making sure that all of our trail users really have a great experience. Maintaining high quality parks is a top priority for us and court resurfacing is a cost effective way to revitalize them. A few years ago, we asked for it and we received some more funding for court resurfacing. By the way, I want to add that we use data, including inspections that are performed through our GIS and EAM systems to determine and our community equity index to determine court renovation priority because we want to be systematic about how and where we make improvements. In addition to the 314 parks fields on Parkland, Montgomery County, Montgomery Parks has continued renovating MCPS, elementary and middle school fields and then taking over maintenance and making them available for permitting by-cuff, which improves our overall ball field quality but also increases our capacity. In recognition of this, the council has funded several ball fields positions in recent years. And this past year we renovated fields at Brookhaven, Rock Creek Valley, Cantalwood and Sally Ride Elementary Schools. Our in-house renovation team is also constantly improving the quality of our own parks fields and we renovated over 12 parks fields over the past year. A 2023 program enhancement allowed us to create the untold stories program which engages diverse communities and telling the stories of people and places connected to Parkland throughout the years. Through untold stories, our team of historians and archaeologists in our cultural resources stewardship section have developed deep community relationships while uncovering and sharing new stories such as the first county county wide pride events which were held on Parkland and celebrating Black baseball sites. We now have a dedicated untold stories web page with dozens of story links and a downloadable map that's been viewed thousands of times and we're also working on an interactive map as well. Brookside Gardens is one of the park's departments most cherished and visited amenities and keeping the gardens in great shape takes a lot of work as does engaging our diverse community. And when you visit Brookside Gardens, you can see firsthand how diverse the visitors are. They come from all over the world and they speak many different languages. In fiscal year 21, we used some seasonal funding to create a new horticulturist position at Brookside Gardens at zero cost. Prior to this, we hadn't had any new positions at Brookside for like 20 years. We hired Edieberto Diaz Galvan. He's here with us today. He's also known as Beto, and he's here with Stephanie Oberly, who's the director of Brookside Gardens. And now through him, we can offer educational programs in Spanish by a native Spanish speaker. And this is something that we weren't able to do before. 2024 was also an exciting year in our community gardens program. We completed our Gardener demographic study, which gathered data on who we are serving and how we can improve. Working with our data team, including our GIS and EAM specialists, our community gardens team mapped all 14 gardens and 546 plots and included specific features like access to water, compost and systerns. And then they used GIS to automate the inspection process, which resulted in a 25% reduction in the time spent performing inspections. Overall, our gardeners told us that 2024 was our best season yet. Our garden plots are still in very high demand. This means that even though we've added more gardens and plots, including accessible garden beds, we still aren't quite keeping up with the demand and we have a waiting list. So we are working on selecting new sites for community gardens and we're hoping to add several more over the next few years. Our community gardens assistant manager Emma Moral is here along with her supervisor, Michelle Nelson from our community gardens program and Emma was hired with the fiscal year 23 program enhancement. Also here with us today is Adrian Thomas, who you also see pictured here, who we hired a few years ago as a sustainability program analyst when we converted some contract funding. Adrian has had a leading role in making our operations more carbon neutral and sustainable. And since then, we've added five additional rooftop solar sites, increased our recycling rates, and reduced our energy consumption. Keeping our parks weed free without pesticides is very labor-intensive, so we're always looking for innovations and alternatives. With fiscal year 22 funding, we now have two dedicated park maintenance workers for this program, and they're pictured here using our non-toxic foam stream system to control weeds in our infrastructure. Our customer service staff typically handled 300 to 500 calls a week during the warmer months with at least 200 written cases coming into us via email. So we hired a new position thanks to some funding you gave us last year. This is Chanel I know, Babin, and we hope to expand our customer service hours to Saturday starting after Memorial Day and Chanel's here with us also today. We pride ourselves on data-driven decisions, but to do that we have to have good data. So our data analytics team helps us track all our assets, what we have and where we have it. What you see here is a collaboration between Tiffany Wu and she's also here with us today and some of our operations team and they're doing a training on how to use a new asset request tool that we developed that will allow staff to directly input data on our 187 different types of park assets with so much parkland and many many thousands of individual assets having an automated way to let park staff enter data themselves is really critical. So we've now mapped over 14,000 assets in GIS across our park system and the numbers growing and we've had a 500% increase in GIS usage from parkstay. This means of course that we can spend more time actually making our parks better, improving them and less time pushing paper around. Just last year you also proved funding so we could hire an assistant barn manager Catherine Horosiewowicz, whose first day is today, and she's here with her supervisor, Captain Lakisha Robinson. Our park system, like ours, relies on mounted police and ours are something we're really proud of them and our park police, our mounted police can't function if they don't have a healthy and well cared for, heard herd and UC, one of our happy herd members there in that picture. Our internship program is a recruiting tool for us. With about a quarter of our workforce retirement eligible over the next few years, it's really critical that we hire a diverse workforce with the skills that we're going to need for the future. And we have actually a long history of doing this. Three of our current 11 Division Chiefs, Holly Thomas from Horticulture Forestry and Environmental Education, Mike Little from Northern Parks and Shu Chi Vera from our Management Services Division all started out as interns. Since expanding this program in fiscal year 21, we've hired and paid 21 interns, and we hope that some of them will eventually come back to work for us. Over the last few years, I think you've seen how hard we work to find other sources of funding to supplement our capital budget. But we've done this with existing staff who have other job duties and functions and work programs and actually getting our hands on the money even after it's been awarded to us is an incredible amount of administrative work. So with funding we received last year, we hired Denizki Tharra to manage our grants and she's already hit the ground running. Multiple surveys have told us that trails are among the most important amenities in our parks. Heart-surface trails aren't just recreational, they communities and parks. We recently hired Laura Barnett as our Heart Surface Trails Manager, and thanks to a number of trails grants we've received in recent years to renovate some of our 80 miles of Heart Surface Trails, we're keeping Laura extremely busy. Some of our active projects include building trail connections to and in Wheat and Regional Park with our safe Streets for All Grant, renovating the Sligo Creek Trail with our raised grant, purple line crossings at Wayne and Sligo and building a side path on Veer's Mill that's next to the county's bus rapid transit project. And as you know, environmental stewardship is at the very heart of our mission. We just hired Ian Rodway and our park development team to provide more planning and design expertise for stream restoration and other water quality related projects because increasing our in-house capacity also increases our efficiency. I hope that what I've shared with you demonstrates how we use our funding to expand popular programs, improve our parks, and deliver on our commitment to you and our park users to maintain a high quality and accessible park system for everyone. So now I'm just going to take a couple minutes to talk about our upcoming ribbon cuttings and openings and run through a few events. You can see some of our upcoming ribbon cuttings here and you can also receive more information on those from us because we're happy to have you attend as many or all of these as possible. Our acoustics and ails event is coming up. Our next one is coming up on April 4th at Elm Street Urban Park and then on May 22nd at Flower Avenue. Our second Sligo Creek Fest this year is on May 3rd. Thank you again for funding our ongoing ability to have this program every year. Pride in the park is in June. Mudfest, ever popular mudfest on June 14th and we're going to have multiple Shakespeare and the park dates all summer across the county. And then this Friday is our Wheaton, Carousel Ribbon Cudding. It's at 4 p.m. We're gonna have some free Carousel rise and we hope that all of you will be able to attend if your calendar allows. And now thank you and I will hand this back over to Artie to close us out and we'll be ready for any questions you might have. Yeah, thank you, Director Figuerollo, and thank you again, Council members. My colleagues have shared the value and importance of the work we do. I strongly believe that our team's work is a vital investment during these uncertain times. The land use projects and programs we advance today will pay dividends to our residents for generations to come, allowing our county to remain a highly desired destination. So thank you again and we welcome your questions. But before I take your questions, I'd like to thank my vice chair, Petroim, for attending today. I so appreciate her decades of service and work in the county and at the commission And and she brings such a breadth of experience to the board. So thank you and we love to take your questions Great. Thank you chair Harris and thank you for that great overview and presentation I just had a few questions and then I'm gonna turn over to council Council Member Freetzen, Chair, PHP. First for the planning department, the community planning academy, Glad to see it has moved forward and to hear 200 people are already interested in it and we have slots for the 50 people moving forward. One of the things and I think, Director Storey, you and I have talked about this, that once you get the pilot off the ground and you all are in a good place I think this would also be an excellent resource for our staff in our offices you know as them learning about the planning process and I would be a very useful resource so looking forward to hearing more about that and doing more of a one-on-one with you and the department to learn more about that. Thank you for the update on the federal employees. I will just note that one of the reasons many of us are a bit distracted this morning is that today there are lines outside of FDA and our health resources services administration here in Rockville where people are literally learning they no longer have a job because their badge doesn't work when they try to go through the turn style. And so that happened as people were getting to work this morning we began our session. And so I appreciate that all facets of our Montgomery County government, including our planning department, is keeping track of this, looking at it, and thinking about the implications as we plan for the future. So thank you for that, and thank you to the department. I also want to say, turning to parks. turning out. The parks department is wonderful to see folks. It's great always to hear about the work you're doing, but then to also see the folks who are doing that work is terrific. So we appreciate you taking the time this morning. And I will just lift up the South Silver Spring Urban Park and the fact that I think it was last week a naming contest went out. There are three names that are potential for that park that folks can get on the website and vote for and I just want to say we're all very excited. The urban parks that have come up in the particularly the the downtown Silver Spring area, have really added a great deal as that community in particular has been really just impacted by purple line and a number of other things. These urban parks really provide a respite for members of the community. So I just want to say thank you and lift that up. With that, I will now turn it over to Council Member Freeton. Well, thank you, Madam President. Thank you to the Planning Board Chair and Vice Chair for all of your work. And thanks most importantly, I just wanted to really take most of my time to thank the team and the staff who work incredibly hard. It's a time when public servants, as we just heard from the Council President, are getting beaten up for their interest in serving the community and serving the county and the country. I think we can't do it enough to thank those who choose to serve our community, serve our county, and enter into public service. It's sometimes a thankless job, sometimes either collectively or directly, you get criticized and vilified for the work you do. I will suggest you not hop on Twitter, or next door today and just take this gratitude that you're going to hear from myself and from colleagues because it can be a challenging time and a challenging moment. But we have an incredible team of public servants that help us in the Park and Planning Commission and a lot of folks who are here today who work incredibly hard. And I just want to thank you for your work and for your talent and for your efforts and for choosing public service, which is a choice that you make where you could do other things and probably make more money and probably have less stress and probably go off and do different So thank you for that. I did just want to highlight, there are a lot of projects and individual aspects that I could go into. I'm not going to do that for the interest of time, but obviously both presentations reflect all of the work that is happening, which is significant. I did want to just highlight again the planning academy. This is something that was a significant conversation during last year's budget at committee and at the full council, something I feel very strongly about. I just wanted to thank Director Sartorian, particular for his leadership in advancing that and really moving that forward. And I'm really excited to hear what was news to me is the interest in it. I knew that it was launching. I had gotten that part of the update. What I hadn't heard was the level of interest that there is and it just shows how important this program is not just for the community itself, but for those who will directly benefit from it. I think it's a win for the department. I think it's a win for the county and I think it's a significant win for those who will be fortunate enough to participate in it. And I think it's an example of how we answer the question of how we're doing intentional planning and land use policy decisions that have huge impacts. How are we doing that with the type of intentionality that it requires? And it's not the only part of that equation, but it's a key part of that equation. I really appreciate that. And then with parks, there's lots of exciting things that are happening. I was excited to be at that pickleball game. I won't tell you the outcome of the game that Council Vice President Juondo and I participated in. I will say that it probably was more my partner than me, but it was just one example that demonstrates it. And I love the fact that you mentioned the personal connection with your son because we think of pickleball and we have talked about it oftentimes as an older adult activity. But pickleball is the fastest growing game that we're seeing and it is for all ages, for all communities and for all people. And I think it's just another example of providing new amenities to help support our growing and diverse community. That's true with cricket. That's true. With pickleball, there's the cultural dynamics of reflecting a community that's one third, four, and born. It's also about the age demographics. And I just think it's really, really important to note that I could go on and on about some of the other ones. But I do want to ask a specific question of an update. If you just give an update on Little Falls Parkway and where that stands, there is a lot of conversation at this council on that. There's a lot of questions of all the things that have happened here in the public decisions that were made and where that stands if you could just give us an update on that. Here we're hoping to begin construction on the actual work soon. Later this spring, we've been engaged in permitting and then of course over the winter, we're not able to do the actual work because of the temperature and weather issues. So later this spring will be implementing the plan that the council approved. I think it was a year ago. If you recall after that we had to go to get NCPC approval. We had to go through that process and we had to complete design and go through the permitting process, but we will be beginning construction soon. Do you have a sense of when the work will be completed? I do know that, but I don't want to say without being quite certain so I can confirm that. Yeah, you could follow up and confirm that that would be appreciated. We're hearing about it a lot as you can imagine where there are questions understandably of why the processes like these take so long. I know there was a lot of approvals and there's weather-related dynamics. But there is- We've been moving with all deliberate speed. We would like to get this project completed as well. I appreciate it. So please share that with us. We'll also share with our state delegation. It's been asking about it as well, which we very much appreciated. All right. I will just- I started with the staff. I want to close with the volunteers. They were highlighted here, but we have one of the best trail networks anywhere in the country. We have some amazing amenities. None of that happens and none of that is possible without the incredible volunteers that we have. Many of us have been out many times for trash pickups and for weed warrior activities and for even me with helping to fix trails. Admittedly they were refixed after I thought I fixed them, but I do just want to note that and appreciate that our parks in particular have been just a huge lifeline for health, for wellness, for mental health that has been the main focus of the council president this year. But none of those amenities are what they are without the volunteers that make them possible that leverage our great staff, which we don't have enough of to possibly keep up with the demand. So I just want to note that we can't thank them enough. We have an amazing community and the parks and the partnership that parks represents with those volunteers really are what make it work. So thank you for your work and your efforts, and I will yield back to you, Madam President. Thank you. Council Vice President Joondo. Thank you. I want to echo the thanks. I noticed some new faces and familiar faces. I scribbled a couple names down. Tiffany, Emma, Michelle, Chanel, Adrian, I did a few others. Hello to everybody. Good to see you. Thank you for all the work that you do on the parks team, and thank you to the planning team. From faces I see a lot at PHP as well. Just a couple of updates or questions on your updates. Start with planning. I wanted to first say, as you probably know, I'm excited about the development pipeline work. We talked about it in the committee. Going back to even old PHP committee or Fed committee about the development pipeline. And as you know, I've been working on legislation around this, but want to make sure I benefit and we all benefit from the great information that you guys are going to get with survey. And what are the appropriate incentives to make sure, either carrot or stick, that we are getting development done. And what the impediments to that are. So really look forward to working with you on that and glad that that's going to move forward. You mentioned also the Strathmore Square project. I just wanted to bring that up. That was a result from the Womada pilot, correct? I believe so. Yes. OK. Yes. Yeah. And what do you have a sense in some of this you may not know, since you brought it up I wanted to how what were the Units how much you said there was 15% I thought it was higher affordability there I Think that what I was referring to was the actual the building that's been built okay And I know that there are still more to come I know there's some senior housing I think that might have more affordability in that one So there I thought it was around 25% for the whole project. Maybe they achieved 15 and that just in that one Yeah, the in the building that was built it's that that that we're valent Rayal has 220 units 15% of those are MP to use 220 units Okay, you know, I just will note you know, we're gonna we're gonna have a talk about the effectiveness of this type of pilot, obviously, Bermata, that was a debate last council. You know, some of these units are going, rents are over $11,000. You know, and so I think having a good understanding of what the breakdown is and how that's gonna move forward, I'd like to have a bet. Since I think this is one of the first projects that move forward in that pilot, I think it's going to be important to understand that. Also appreciate the work you guys have done on the planning academy. I think that I want to emphasize that. That's really exciting. I know my office is eager to participate. So you said 200 and some so far? Yeah, and we still have over a month of time for people to express an interest. And so I think, just if I could real quickly, I think that this kind of underscores the importance that we had in creating a system, a program that was open to as many people as possible. So there are programs like this that you register 30 people for the year and that's it. We knew we have people in Montgomery County who want to be engaged and want to be effective in their engagement. And so seeing that amount of interest already is a really positive sign about our decision to go in the path that we have that This is going to be open to everyone once we you know get past that first cohort make some tweaks to it that you know People will be able to participate to whatever extent they want to half of it all of it at their own pace But be able to get something valuable about how we do the work that we do in the county, not just planning, but DPS and with the council and all of that. I think it's great that we've got that much interest in it. Agreed. And I think the ability to do some of it online and in person and the different options is going to be really important. So thank you for all of that. To parks, thank you. I was going to ask about little falls, but you already answered it. But we all are filling the heat on that one. Actually, can I? Please. Hot-up progresses are our craft park development team is like answering questions like. So it's going to take about four to six weeks and we think probably early summer for a start. So let's hope like mid-summer, it will be completed. I almost feel like we should have like a or trip, go out there and celebrate that it's done. You can join me, I walk it almost every weekend. But thank you. Okay, four or six weeks once you get started, lace rank got it, so hopefully by summer. Beach drive, I've heard feedback regarding requested reopen on Fridays because NIH has returned, those who extent of the open parkway, but adding back in the Fridays, one of the things that the planning board asked us to do was to come back in a year and report back to them on how it's going and what the traffic is looking like. And we are, of course, aware of the, you know, the back-to-work requirement for federal workers. And so we are doing traffic counts and monitoring and we will be reporting back. And we will, if changes look like they're needed, we will of course evaluate that and make recommendations to the board accordingly. And you have a sense of timeline on when you'll be done with that process? I think we said by the end of the year we would would be coming back to the board, but we're evaluating now. So we are doing traffic counts periodically. And when we get them in, we assess what the last time we did the traffic counts, we hadn't seen a change, but it might be the next round might look different. Right. Yeah, especially since those changes were March Right. Great. Okay. We keep us posted on that. I appreciate that. And last, I'll just mention, I know my counsel president will appreciate this. The Sligo Creek, we've heard some feedback. We've been working with her office on the snow removal issue on the sidewalks along Sligo Creek Parkway. And kids going to and other things. And I just want to even know it's warm now. I just think it's a good time to plan ahead as we did get hit pretty hard this year more than others. And just wanted to mention that because we heard from several very motivated folks. But I know you're working hard, we never, but that that's just I just want to make sure I mentioned it. Um, council president. Nope, you're done. I'm done. Okay. Thank you. Um, and I just want to say, um, on that for the folks who do work on Slago, I very much appreciate all the trimming that gets done at certain times a year as a runner. I'm always see you all out there and I appreciate when I'm not running into branches. So thank you. Councilmember Albinaz. Thank you guys and sorry again, I can't be there in person, not feeling well today. And director Harris, I want to just open by appreciating your real and raw and candid comments regarding your FY26 operating budget challenges. Obviously this is not the appropriate forum for us to go in depth in those challenges, but it's more than appropriate for you to uplift and elevate the challenges that that budget proposes to your respective agencies. And we will do our best as we always do and go through the planning process or the budget process, excuse me, but I just wanted to express my appreciation to you for your honesty and openness about that. Thank you so much. A couple of just general comments, thoughts, and then a couple of questions. The first is, and we've talked about this for several years now, but with our colleagues and friends and parks, you can draw a straight line between the great programs and services and amenities and facilities and parks that they provide and improved overall behavioral health and wellness in our community, which continues to be as recently as just a year ago. And the public health survey, the number one issue of concern for a public health standpoint among our residents. And I once again commend our council president publicly for selecting behavioral health as a policy priority during her presidential this year. And I would encourage you, Ms. Figueroa, to know that you are close to Ms. Martin and our behavioral health team in HHS, but under Council President Stewart's leadership, I think there's going to be even more wonderful collaboration opportunities moving forward. And I would just encourage you to proactively reach out to Ms. Martin and her team to see which different committees or project initiatives that parks can be a part of because we're going to once again need to collectively work together to holistically address the needs of our residents. And just a point of privilege, the reductions that I'm just shot with the reductions that Council President Stewart was talking about today and again within our federal framework, just as Chair of Health and Human Services, it is catastrophic. The types of reductions that we're seeing to our health agencies at a national level. Obviously, we're going to have to process all of that, but that will mean once again that we're going to have to pick up the slack and the burden in too many ways to count or to be able to understand at the moment. So it's just hard to concentrate on these conversations when something that dramatic is going on at the same time. But obviously we're going to have to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. But thank you again, Ms. Bigaretto, for your tremendous leadership. I look forward to meeting the new members of your team and person. And I just want to extend my deepest appreciation and respect for your all's work. Mr. Centauri, thank you so much. Just on a lighter note, our Terps are looking for an athletic director and basketball coach. And so we want you here. We want you to stay here. Don't want you to apply for either one of those positions, but I appreciate that we have something wider to commiserate over. That's right. But I'm very excited about the pipeline project, which obviously is so critical right now. There's a lot of misinformation. There's conspiracy theories that are out there. Can you talk a little bit more about the timeline for that project when you anticipated being completed and then can you expand a little bit on I obviously we need to look in the mirror but we also need to look out the window how we're going to incorporate data and analysis of our neighboring jurisdictions in the analysis of that work. Sure. So there's primarily two components to the work that we're doing. One is a very data intensive trying to dig into the numbers in the actual development pipeline so that we understand it better. And that is a lot of work that we've got one team doing and then we've got another team that's focused on having the conversations with the applicants, the developers who have these approvals. And so that is kind of going on concurrently. So our expectation is that we'll have this completed within the next five months and that'll give us an opportunity to kind of wrap it up into a report that we can present to the board and to the council so that you are aware of, you know, where we have on that. In terms of engaging our neighboring jurisdictions, we hadn't given any thought on that or just even looking at their data to the extent that we can. But that's something that we can try to take a look at to see how we, because I think that does play into how things may move forward. And some of that may even come out in some of the conversations we have with some of the applicants, too. But if we can have a better understanding of the environment or the circumstances that may be better or worse in some of the neighboring jurisdictions, it could give us some insight to the appropriate solutions. That would be great. I know it's apples and oranges, but we need to be dealing in facts when discussing this really important issue and take a motion out of it. So that's why I think it's... We have to use this time and space to look at this holistically. And so I would just encourage as part of the project that you all to do that and incorporate that in your findings in some way. Cause you know, you are our subject matter experts. You are here to advise our body on these really important issues. And if we have to make adjustments in any direction, we need to be ready to do that, but they're going to be based on your all's recommendations. So thank you for that. I appreciate it. And my last sort of thought for now, and this is just a general comment, and I'm stating the obvious, but my goodness, the world is changing every five minutes. And so all of those projects that are currently underway or that are in the queue or through your timeline are going to be impacted in one way or another with all of the changes that are happening so rapidly at the federal level. And so I know we have to give you all grace and a little bit longer of a runway than usual, I think, because projects that may have been initiated six months ago, we're going to have to look at all over again and take into account real-time information that's on the ground. So it's a general comment, not expecting you to respond to it. I know I'm preaching the choir but thank you all again and I yield back to you, Madam President. Good. Can I just want to thank Council Member Abin, part of the meeting convening board chairs around the areas to create that regionalism, to get regional collaboration and cooperation. And so we started that in January and we're going to be quarterly. And part of that is to talk to other jurisdictions, the chairs, about how are they dealing with these same problems or issues. And so that collaboration, as you talked about, how are other jurisdictions doing? We'll be talking to them. We're, by getting a better relationship, it's easier to get that information. So that's one of the things we're all about collaboration and regionalism here. So thank you for bringing that up. Thanks, Director Harris. Thank you. Council Member Baltham. Great, thank you. So I just want to, first, I'll be brave I want to say thank you to not only to both directors, but to the staff. We've appreciate the partnership that we have between the council and both departments, but really it's the relationships that your staff have with our staff. We've always had just immediate service whenever somebody from my office calls your office. So I just so appreciate that. So I wanted to mention that. And then from the planning perspective, we have three master plans in my area going hot and heavy with the Clarksburg Gateway Center, the Clarksburg plan, the Germantown Plan that's ready to kick off. And then we're really looking forward to seeing the master plan of highways and transit ways that deeply impact my area. So appreciate that. And I'm very interested in the pipeline assessment that's just been a big topic of discussion. And I think that not only will it answer questions for the community but it will identify really specific areas where if there are obstacles that we can get rid of, we need to look at that very deeply as well because we hear that a lot in of, it's so hard to get a project done. And I would guess that a lot of that pipeline is just financial. The project won't work financially. But if it is issues of the process, I think it's really important to look at. I'm looking forward to that. I agree with my colleagues on the planning academy, agree with Council President Stewart about our staff being able to look at that. I would have loved to have done it two years ago, two and a half years ago, and I'm sure I would still learn new information. So I love this idea and I think it's great. And then just from the parks perspective, and we've heard this several times, parks are just so necessary in our community. And we should be very proud of the system that we have. I know we all are. And especially now from the perspective of the, it's not only physical, but the mental health of our community is so very important specifically for our seniors and our youth. We're talking all the time about how we need more activities for our young people, for our students, and we need more, not less. And so we've heard you loud and clear, and I appreciate that. Community gardens, I think, are fantastic. I want to do more and more and more of that in every space we possibly can. And also, the rooftop solar. I would like to have an offline conversation about parking lot solar. I think that we can do a lot, lot more county-wide. And so I would like to have that conversation for parks to be a partner in that. I think it's important. And I've already put myest on my calendar. That is so up my alley and I'm so happy to do it and so I look forward to that. So thanks. Great. Thank you. Council Member Fanny Gazzaz. Thank you. I'll be joined you with a ModFest. A couple of things. Again, thank you so much for all your work and And yes, I'm gonna say something that Councilmember Balkan said, thank you to your staff because I'm one of those Councilmembers that call you guys a lot and I thank you for your partnership. Two things on the parks side, yes, I'll be there on Friday for the carousel in Whedon. And on the issue with the community gardens and the GIS, the mapping and all that work, as you may know, and actually parks have been a great ally as well for me, we are working on three urban gardens in my district, in connection with MCPS and another one in connection with the county, county lane. And right now, I'm in the situation that I, we want to map all the urban gardens, not just in my district, but countywide. So as you're doing that work, if we can perhaps meet and partner up with the office of food systems for silence, because They do a lot of work with them with urban gardens, but also MCPS. I have two urban gardens on NCPS land. The one in Kenmeal Elementary School that you guys attended and helped me with Baro and your tools. And the one with Mary Lotherman Middle School. So maybe we can have one centralized big map for everybody. Otherwise it gets confusing for people. So it's one that we can follow up to with the planning department. As you mentioned, and we're gonna talk about it when we have our meeting with the budget, on the budget, which I think is pretty soon. The Rito study that you guys wanna take on. As you may know, maybe you don't know, but as you may know, the Economic Development Committee is going to be doing a retail study work sessions starting this fall. And just like we did with the office market, which landed us with a bill and the ZTA that you guys know about. And I worked and I, you guys were a big ally, big help for me for the office market. It's going to be the same deal with the retail work. So we're going to have a meeting and see where the resources are going to come from. As we deal with the budget, but we need to have a clear understanding before we dig into this during the budget. So know that. And then the last thing I'll say, Pico ball, I have my little notes, Pico ball, my kids are playing Pico ball in MCPS in middle school, they're teaching kids to play pickable. So they had the pickable session like a few weeks ago. So that was awesome. And then, so I just wanted to say that. And then the last thing I want to give a shout out to John from the Parks Department because they're members of the sports industry task force that this can so put together a few months ago and we're meeting every month and Parks Department has been amazing and also we're planning because they help us with a GIS the other day and we have interns from Montgomery College and they're all paid by the way. Okay, so thank you, that's all. Thank you, Council Member Sales. Thank you, Madam President, and thank you to Parks and Planning for the updates, particularly the positions to diversify experiences within our parks and your commitment to highlighting the historical significance of activities that go on in our parks with the Untold Stories initiative. We've heard a lot about the pipeline during our discussions regarding zoning reforms, knowing what is approved is always helpful as we plan for future development of the community, especially with over 76,000 residents potentially impacted by federal job cuts, new graduates and couples wanting to start and grow their families here. I've received many emails regarding the proposed more housing now legislation and fears of gentrification due to the limited amount of affordable housing. These projects will yield for our ever growing affordable housing wait list, which is nearing over 40,000. What portion of our current pipeline of master plan projects would account for the affordable level and do you have any specific numbers at what percentages? I've seen upwards of 80% in this specific area of area median income. So do we have hard numbers at the 80% 60% and 30% AMI or the varying AMI levels of the what's in the pipeline of what's in our master plan pipeline before this legislation? So the what's in the the approved development pipeline I don't have an answer to that. It would depend on where the project was approved, how the project was approved, and when it was approved in what the requirements were, whether they were large enough to require MPDUs. And then the MPDU law has changed over time. So some of those are much older, and so they fell under different requirements when they were approved. The, it is something we may be able to look into. It might be kind of difficult to get into all of that. You know, in terms of our master plans and what we have there, you know, with each master plan, we bring, you know, considerations to what percentage of MPDs we should be requiring. Yeah. In a lot of our master plans recently, we've been increasing that to the 15%. Yeah. We've seen even higher, 17 and a half percent. So, it's, you know, it's something that we think about with, you know, with each master plan effort. Yes. We're thinking about it as well. And if we can have that information to better understand future recommendations on our housing needs or legislation related to development and the percentage of affordable housing. I had another question regarding the projects and permitting process for projects that have not been built. Has planning reached out to any of our developers to gain a better understanding of some of the common reasons for a stalled project. are there any unique features in certain parts of the county? A team at planning I know may review applicants who are facing delays but just wanted to better understand that process. Sure, that's it really hits at the heart of what we're trying to do with that pipeline analysis. So I mentioned the two components, the one being the data analysis, the other being the conversations with the applicants, the developers who have their approvals. It starts with a survey that we're asking to try to get some baseline information and then follow up interviews with. We're trying to hit all, you know, all of the ones, a lot of these are, you might have a developer who has several approvals and so we can have, you know, we don't need to have 278 conversations, but we're trying to talk to as many as possible to understand the specific circumstances around why each project is not moving forward. Okay. And one with that project or analysis be ready for. We're hoping in five months. Five months. Okay. Thank you, sir. And now to Miss Figurero. Thank you to your department for the presentation, specifically the funding portions, regarding the upcoming budget challenges. If you can share some of the services that may be subject to cuts, if the department is funded at 3.2% increase rather than the requested 7.2%. Well, absolutely. And during the budget process as we go to the planning housing and parks committee, and ultimately the council will be addressing that in detail. But the current recommended budget from the county executive that gave us only a 3.2% increase. That increase over our last years approved budget doesn't cover our increases in compensation or expected increases in compensation for our employees. So what that means is not only can we not add any new program enhancements and I shared with you today what some of those in past years, what they've resulted in and what we've been able to do for the community with those programs. Not only would we not be able to do those, but then we're looking at either some combination of increasing fees, staff reductions, program cuts, reductions in maintenance, so less grass cutting, fewer bathrooms. A lot of things that directly impact park users would have to be eliminated or reduced because we are now in the hole. And obviously we'll be sharing more information about that with all of you as we move through the budget process. Thank you for sharing that. I look forward to learning more about those impacts. As we've mentioned, our parks, similarly during the pandemic and the last government shutdown, became a place of refuge for our residents and we don't want the quality or experience diminished because of budget cuts. So thank you for sharing that. I want to also share that I am particularly heartened by the emphasis and inclusion of more youth in our parks, especially in beautifying our parks. I joined Council Member Fonding Gonzales yesterday at an elementary school in Rockville with the Department of Environmental Protection to kick off Earth Month. The green shirts were there on their day off from school. They could have been home or on their, you know, tech devices, but they were outside rolling up their sleeves, building benches, painting murals in the community. And so I'm just excited that we're also investing in the workforce pipeline through internships. And of course, trail maintenance is so important for safe and active enjoyment of our outdoors. The food delivery program through the community gardens, the increased community interest. We had a park open in the city of Gapesburg, all of the plots for the community gardens were spoken for. So I'm glad that we are looking at more sites to increase access and the grown at Pope Program to bring more fresh produce to our residents. All exciting initiatives and always good to hear about the updates happening with parks and planning. So thank you. Great, thank you. I just wanna note a time check. We do need to wrap up because we do have a lunch with Macreya this afternoon. I do have three colleagues in the queue and we have one other, we have our consent calendar after this. I have council member glass. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you for the presentation. Chair Harris, your agency, your commission and the two departments, the work is probably more important now than ever. And director Figueroa, picking up on the theme that others have shared, we love our parks. It's not only exemplified in our surveys and in public polling, but we see the joy that people have when they're outside. Now more than ever, being outside is necessary for mental and physical health. It is cathartic, nature is healing, and we all need a lot of healing these days. So thank you and thank you to all of your staff who are here and in doing the work in the community. And Mr. Sartori, Director Sartori, we are in a housing crisis. Residents cannot afford to live in Montgomery County. And the work that you and your staff are doing is critically important. I'll say you might not always have the perfect solution but you're working towards them and that is what the process we all work in is towards figuring out how we best solve the solution, find a solution for the problem that is before us. And it is a collaborative effort. It is you, the planning board, planning staff, the council, our staff, and ultimately, the community that helped figure this out. I wanna pick up on a question that has been asked in various ways, but it was based on a statement you said about the pipeline. You said, if I understood it correctly, that the pipeline does not provide for sufficient housing, as we need it, can you expand upon that? Sure, I said basically that the pipeline alone cannot solve our crisis or housing crisis. And in particular, in meeting the needs, the diverse needs of our that we have as a county, especially when I mentioned that 88% of what's in the pipeline are rental apartments. And we need more than just apartments. And so that's one of the things, one of the things we have in our budget request is the housing needs assessment. We did that prior to thrive, gives us a better sense of going forward. You know, where are our needs in terms of oner versus rental at different price points? You know, we've talked a lot about how we're growing at the low income level and we're growing at the high income level, but we're losing population at the middle income level. So it's going a little bit deeper into all of that and the types of housing that we need to be able to meet all of the art needs. And that the pipeline itself as it exists today, not just in the numbers but also in the content of that, that the types of units aren't going to meet the needs that we have as a county. Okayview for many, many more conversations we'll have in this chamber. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Mink. Thank you. This is obviously not the time that we want to be losing our value public servants and thank you to everybody who's in the room here with us and thank you to everybody who was watching because they're hard that work from their offices. Our parks are the great equalizers. We know that federally where there are efforts to trash our national parks, that it is obviously not about finding any savings because those are huge money makers, which they ask the question why? And the answer to that question is exactly why we need to keep our park system strong here in Montgomery County. So thank you to everybody who was working to do that and we are behind you in that and I will note that with all of the the destruction that is going on and continuing to unfold even today to a range of departments as it turns out FDA and IH H centers for Medicaid and Medicare that the health situation on the ground is Going to be getting worse unfortunately not better. It seems obviously we're gonna work to curtail that as much as possible at the state level at the county level And to push back against the rifts or attempted rifts that are happening now, but we saw the value of those open spaces during COVID and they're not going to become less important in that realm either. So thank you all very much. And if anybody who is being rift from those places today wants to come out, my staff and the offices of Jamie Raskin and Senator Van Holland are at the East County Community Rec Center. Thank you. Thank you. Did you want to say something? Thank you, Council President. I just wanted to go back to Council member Jawando's question. We lasted traffic counts this past week on Beach Drive. And the timing for coming to the planning board is the summer. So prior to that, we had done the counts in January, obviously in January, you know, we're not going to see a big change. So I think these last this last week, that's going to be sort of important information for us and we will be bringing that to the board this summer. Thank you so much. That's even better than the end of the year. Great councilmember cats. Thank you very much council president. I will try to be the most brief of all here today. As I've mentioned first of thank you all for everything you do when the entire room. I mentioned to councilmember Finney Gonzalez-Henrympley. There's anybody left in Wheaton as we speak. You certainly have a room full and we're very pleased that everyone is here. As I mentioned several times, the least directly district that's directly impacted by you all is a third district. Gathesburg, Rockville, Washington Grove, had their own planning and zoning. But as is no secret, that's only to the borders. You all obviously go much beyond the borders and what's in the borders affects you as well. But I do want to emphasize that the perhaps the most important part of economic development is planning. And we need to continue to work hand in glove with the economic development groups to get us to a better place. If it's because of the economy itself, that you all can't really solve. But if it's because of the planning, if it's because of the economy itself that you all can't really solve. But if it's because of the planning, if it's because of the anything beyond that, we need to sit down and have groups that actually don't silo, but actually combine each other together. So I know you're working on that. I feel comfortable that you'll continue to work on that. But in this day and age, any day and age, it's been bad. This day and age it's been horrible. Thank you. Thank you council member cats. I'm not seeing any other council members who wish to speak at this time. Again we want to thank you for coming for the semi-annual update. We appreciate all of the work that you're doing. Thank you again to everyone who is here, everyone who is watching. As I think all of us have set up here, you are all so very valued for us here in Montgomery County and working for the county. And we just very much appreciate all the hard work. And look forward to continuing the collaboration the collaboration and so and I know you'll be back to dig into the budget and we will roll up our sleeves and I promise you we will work in partnership with you because we have some tough decisions to make ahead of us over the next two months and we really look forward to working with with you as we figure this out for our entire community. So thank you everyone for coming today. Next item four is our consent calendars, our motion to approve the consent calendar. So move, council member, Balcon moved, council member, sales second. All those in favor, please raise your hand. And that is all of us. Yes, the council will now move in a bit to the Capitol Press and Trail Conference Room on the fourth floor for a lunch meeting with the Montgomery County retired Employees Association. This meeting I think is expected to begin at 1230, so you have little time. And we will return to the council hearing for our televised meeting that begins at 1.30. Thank you all. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome back to the Montgomery County Council meeting. Just as a reminder, we have council member Luki and Alvaraz on Zoom virtually. This afternoon we have a number of public hearings. Our first item is item five, is a public hearing on zoning a text amendment 25-04 overlay zones, Bethesda overlay zone. This DTA would amend the Bethesda overlay zone, implementing recommendations found in the Bethesda Downtown Plan, Minor Master Plan Amendment. A planning, housing and park committee work session will be scheduled later at a later date. Those wishing to submit material for the council's consideration should do so by the close of business on April 10th, 2025. As a reminder of our public hearing testimony guidelines, your comments must be limited to the issues relevant to the public hearing topic for which you are testifying and are appropriate for a public meeting. You will hear a tone when your time is up and we appreciate everyone abiding by their a lot of time. We have Miss Lane here and then I'm just going to call Karen Bolte. She I will wait to see if she gets here but Miss Lane if you want to start. Thank you. Good afternoon, Council President Stewart, Vice President Toronto and County Council members. My name is Irene Lane, and I serve as the mayor of the town of Chevy Chase, and I appreciate the opportunity to provide comments on the Bethesda Downtown Plans Minermaster Plan amendment. The town of Chevy Chase is consistently supported that Bethesda Downtown Plans goal of encouraging growth while enhancing residents' quality of life. However, the proposal to eliminate the development cap raises two significant concerns. First, much of the approved development remains unbuilt, meaning the full impact of current growth is still unknown. We are already seeing the strain on infrastructure. For example, recently when we requested an adjustment to the traffic signal at Wisconsin Avenue and Bradley Boulevard, the county's transportation management section responded that, quote, traffic volumes along Wisconsin Avenue and Bradley Boulevard have returned to pre-pandemic levels, and motorists are experiencing delays that they have not experienced for several years. As a result, the traffic volumes along the corridors in question exceed the roadway capacity during peak hours, and the traffic signal cannot compensate for the physical limitation of the roadway." If we're already surpassing roadway capacity, how can we justify removing a tool designed to help manage growth? Second, eliminating the cap also eliminates the comprehensive evaluation process and ensures development lines with the plans objectives. Without this process, we lose a holistic view of the cumulative development impacts and the ability to make timely informed adjustments. adjustments. To address these concerns we recommend establishing periodic data-driven reviews to assess ac cumulative impacts of development incorporating community input. While site plan reviews, monitoring reports, and growth in infrastructure policy metrics provide some insights, they fail to capture the broader picture. For instance, the 2024 Bethesda Annual Monitoring Report presented to the Planning Board earlier this year identified school capacity and traffic challenges but provided no framework to address them. Our written testimony suggests key metrics that should be tracked within this comprehensive review. These metrics combine with a comprehensive review process when not only address resident concerns, but offer developers greater predictability by ensuring Bethesda's infrastructure keeps pace with growth. The recent MMPA process itself highlights why these reviews are essential. It surfaced key recommendations such as increasing the park impact payment and eliminating the user lose provision and would not have emerged without without, I reviews alone. In conclusion, eliminating the development cap without providing for a structured review process, perhaps undertaking every five years, removes the opportunity to assess progress and adjust policies as needed. Regular comprehensive reviews based on updated data would allow for adaptive responsible growth that aligns with both current needs and long-term aspirations. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you very much, Maryline. We're going to now go to the virtual public testimony and go to Alexander Campbell. Hello, my name is Alex Campbell. I'm a student at UMD. And also a resident in Bethesda. I am here to express my strong support for the ZTI and lifting the development cap in Bethesda. Removing the cap is crucial to achieving the goals of the Bethesda minor master plan because it gives the investors the certainty needed to invest in Bethesda. That investments here are safe and worthwhile. And continued private investment is so important because it funds new public recreation centers and new permanent deeply affordable housing units all at no cost to the county and taxpayers. Beyond deeply affordable housing units, spurring new market rate housing will increase housing supply and help address our region's growing housing crisis. This is an especially important point for me. As a young person, my future in this county is uncertain. Despite us being a growing demographic nation, while my government county has lost tens of thousands of young working people between the ages of 25 and 34 in the past 20 years. This is largely due to housing costs being unaffordable. We have heard concerns that we don't have enough data about the effects of building more housing. This is simply not true. The academic literature is very clear. Building more housing, lower housing costs, and not building more housing in dense urban cores contributes to urban sprawl, which will increase traffic, increase pollution, and stretch our infrastructure farther. It will actually cost Montgomery County more to not build dense housing. Art County planners, the experts on these matters, have made it abundantly clear that to realize the vision outlined in the 2017 downtown plan, namely more abundant housing, economic growth, and improve public infrastructure, we must lift the development cap. This is a unique opportunity to promote sustainable growth, prosperity, and enhance quality of life for those who live in Bethesda. I urge you to vote in favor of the CTA. Thank you. Thank you. Let's see, I think we will keep this hearing open to see if Miss Bulti is able to attend before we finish the others. Again, thank you Mayor Lane. We will now move on to item six, which is a public hearing on expedited bill 9-25. Technical corrections, this bill would correct technical typographical grammatical reference drafting and codification errors in and make stylistic clarifying conforming amendments to various provisions of county law. Council action is scheduled for later in the meeting. There are no registered speakers for this hearing. The public hearing is now closed. Next is item seven is a public hearing on expedited bill 10-25 personnel and human resources. Hiring displaced federal workers. This bill would establish a preference in county hiring for displaced federal workers and generally amend the law concerning personnel and human resources. A government operations and fiscal policy committee work session will be scheduled at a later date. Those wishing to submit material for the council's consideration should do so by the close of business on April 10th, 2025. As a reminder of our public hearing testimony guidelines, your comments must be limited to issues relevant to the public hearing topic for which you are testifying and are appropriate for a public meeting. You will hear a tone when your time is up and we appreciate everyone abiding by their lot of time. We have three people who are registered to speak in person. We have Trisha Swanson, Linda Gutierrez, and Jacob Goodman. And Miss Swanson, you can kick us off when you're ready. All right, good afternoon, Trisha Swanson, Director of Strategic Partnerships here on behalf of the County Executive. We are here today in support of Bill 1025. The timeliness of this bill hearing today is not lost on me as we're hearing news from our residents and the community about the hundreds of layoffs that they are facing happening today. So the timeliness of this hearing isn't lost on me and we appreciate the Bill sponsor for introducing this legislation. We have begun to talk to the sponsor's office about three issues that we need to work through. So we're able to successfully implement this. So I just thought I would briefly touch on those. The biggest issue we have is the actual implementation of this. As many of you know, we set up a new hiring program in August of 2024. And since then, we've seen a 300% increase in applicants. And I had HR pull a certain position and there were 251 applicants for a data analyst position. 54 of those were federal workers or had worked for some federal agency. So those would be people that potentially would be required to be interviewed. So we're hoping to narrow the scope just slightly on the bill. So you're not required to interview potentially dozens of applicants, which would greatly slow the hiring process, which again would probably defeat the purpose of the bill as we want to to pull people in. The other part of it, the verification process. Unfortunately, I've had to learn a lot about unemployment the last couple of months. And one issue that came up with verification of ensuring that someone had unfortunately been laid off is where their laid off is where they receive unemployment. And so we would have to coordinate potentially with Washington, D.C. to get that information. These are all things that I think we can work through in committee or with the sponsor's office before committee. I just wanted to make sure I was raising these. And then just the the bottlenecks that would potentially occur with having to verify this information, verify residency, verify unemployment, verify loss of potential revenue. And then secondly and more minorly, the priority structure in this tying it with veterans, we want to have a conversation about that. As many of you know, Congress implemented the veterans hiring preferences and recognition of the sacrifice they made and to try and get higher employment rate for veterans as they historically have faced a lower employment rate than other citizens and just helps them ease back into civilian life. So we're wondering if maybe this should go below our veterans. And then finally, the impact this might have on internal employees and retention and promotion from within is just another thing that we heard as a potential concern. But again, supportive of the intent of this legislation and look forward to working with the sponsor and the committee on this bill. Thank you. Thank you. Now Ms. Guideras. Good afternoon. My name is Linda Gutierrez and I'd like to thank the council for introducing this bill and for the opportunity to speak today in support of this legislation. I've called Montgomery County home for over 30 years. I'm an MCPS graduate and only left the county for four years while at the University of Maryland in College Park. After graduation I came right back. I lived here while attending American University for grad school and have been here ever since. My husband has lived here his entire life. We purchased our home here and our son is now an MCPS student. We never ever considered leaving the county until February 23rd, 2025. After 18 years at the US Agency for International Development, dedicating my career to improving global health including helping women, children and families, access critical services, working to expand immunization coverage, fighting against malaria and responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. I was informed that my position was eliminated, would be eliminated. Then I was given just 15 minutes to clear my desk. My 18 year career was gone and my family was thrown into uncertainty. family and I are now facing loss of income as well as, excuse me, loss of health insurance coverage. To avoid financial instability, we've considered, we've had to consider all options including leaving the county and the state. But my first choice is to stay and to continue serving the public in the community I call home. This is why I've applied to a number of Montgomery County government jobs, so they can hopefully bring the skills I've built in federal service to local government. This is why this bill is so important. It offers federal workers like me who have lost or slated to lose their jobs through no fault of their own a chance to prove they're qualified to serve Montgomery County. This bill gives county residents who are public servants a chance to stay and serve rather than a brute our lives. I urge the council to support this bill and to ensure, also ensure the definition of federal displaced worker includes both employees already separated from federal employment and those who have been notified of separation within the next six months. Employees have received rift notices with future termination dates are already job hunting. They can't afford to wait until after the separation to begin the job hunt. This bill benefits everyone. If hired former federal employees can contribute to the community while maintaining financial stability for their families, the county would gain a highly skilled and highly dedicated workforce and tax revenue would stay local. Most of all, Montgomery County would show that it values its residents not just in stable times, but when they need support the most. I urge you to support this bill to keep families together, talent in our community, and Montgomery County a place that values commitment and service. Thank you for your time. Thank you, and thank you so much, Ms. Guthieras, for being with us today. And Mr. Goodman, did he? All right, no, I'm not seeing Mr. Goodmanman and I don't believe our virtual participant was with us either correct Right then I this public hearing is now closed I hate them eight is a public hearing on a resolution to approve supplemental appropriation 25-66 to the FY 25 operating budget Montgomery County government Office of the County Executive, UM-3 Institute for Health Computing, Non-Departmental Account, in the amount of $3 million. The source of funds is a federal grant. An Economic Development Committee work session scheduled for April 10th. Those wishing to submit material for the council's consideration should do so by the close of business today. There are no registered speakers for this hearing. The public hearing is now closed. Next item is item 9 is a public hearing and action on supplemental appropriation 25-37 to the FY 25 operating budget. My government, Department of Transportation, streets and roads, roadside trees protection in the amount of $79,950. Source of funds is the Street Tree Planting Fund. Council action is scheduled immediately following this hearing. There are no registered speakers for this hearing. This public hearing is now closed. We will now move on to the action portion of this item. Is there a motion to approve supplemental appropriation 25-37? Council member glass moved, councilmember Katz seconded. All those in favor, please raise your hand. And as unanimous everyone. All right, I will go back now, did Miss Bulti, Karen Bulti, I don't see her. So then we will close this public hearing. That will do it for our public hearings this afternoon. We will now move on to item 10. Item 10 is action on a resolution of lifting fair housing month and affirming Montgomery County's commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. And I will turn it over now to the lead sponsor, Council Member Glass. Thank you Madam President. April is recognized as Fair Housing Month, time to raise awareness about the importance of equal access to housing and it's also a time to combat housing discrimination in all its forms. The resolution that we are about to approve today are firms, our commitment to housing policies that are fair to everyone, regardless of race, nation of origin, religion, gender, or physical ability. The resolution also affirms our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. It's why Montgomery County is the most religiously diverse place in the country and home to four of the 10 most diverse communities in the nation. We are so beautifully diverse because we have policies on housing that welcome everyone from across the country and across the world. And as we watch the White House try to dismantle DEI policies and programs, we know here in Montgomery County that our diversity is our strength. We don't build walls around Montgomery County. We built housing, housing that is needed to welcome people. And if we want Montgomery County to remain diverse, equitable, and inclusive, then we need to build more housing. Housing that is free from discrimination and housing that is available to everyone. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you. Seeing no other council members wishing to speak, Miss Wellens, was there anything you wanted to add? No, thank you, Madam President. Thank you. All right, then I will entertain a motion to approve this resolution. Council member Glass-Mo, do I have a second? Council member Freetson's second. All those in favor, please raise your hand. And that is everyone. Thank you very much. The next three agenda items are work sessions on the FY26 capital budget and amendments the FY25 to 30 capital improvement budget. Our first one is Montgomery College. And I will turn over now to the E&C Chair, Council Vice President Joando. Thank you so much, Madam President. And I see we've got Dr. Williams and the great Montgomery College team here. And welcome you all down. I'll, by way of, I'll give you an opportunity to make a few comments in a second with the President's indulgence. On March 20th, the Education and Culture Committee reviewed Montgomery College's proposed CIP amendments, which increased the previously approved CIP by about 12.4 million for a total of 410.6 million. These adjustments reflected the necessary updates due to increased state allowable costs and plan facility improvements. Some of the highlights include that we're very excited about and I know Councillor Barclay will be excited to renovations of the German town and Rockville campuses and library renovations, capital renewal projects as well. In the committee unanimously recommended approval of these amendments recognizing the very important role that our community college, I've noticed you've been saying our community college more, and I try to take up on that. Plays in workforce development and higher education access. So I will turn to Dr. Williams, if there's anything you wanted to add, and then to Mr. Proudy, if there's anything I missed. You thank you very much. Thank you very much, President Javondo. Thank you, President Stewart. Thank you to all the council members for everything you do, day in and day out. I was just amplify what you said to compliment. We are the community's college, even during this time of tumult. As you just mentioned, council member glass and I have no resonates. With everyone we stay committed to diversity, equity and inclusion. We appreciate deeply your support. The items that you mentioned create the places and spaces for our students who represent 157 countries. For our students who 50% of whom identify as first generation. For our students who almost one in every three identified as Spanic or Latino and almost one in every four identify as Black African right. Our students who about 11% identify as Asian and create so its opportunities for them to learn to grow and create opportunities for us to meet our educational mission and also creates opportunities for us to provide for our community at large like the more than 100 displaced federal workers in regards to life sciences specifically, who we had a job there for yesterday with about 10 organizations on there conducting interviews, doing resume review, doing headshots. It creates an opportunity for us to have events like the world of work and MC experience that we just had a few weeks ago in partnership with WorkSource Montgomery and MCPS that hosted more than 5,000 eighth graders at our locations to really build what we call a college-going culture to ensure that everyone in the county knows that post-secondary education is what they can achieve and what they should be shooting for. So you mentioned the highlights Vice President. This will keep us moving in the direction to provide those wonderful places and spaces for our students, our faculty and staff and the entire community. So again, I say thank you for that, thank you for your investment, thank you for ensuring that we can contribute and continue our ROI of $1.4 billion a year into the economy. We're thriving, 7% enrollment increase year over year, and we're serving even more students. So on that note, I just will be brief. Thank you for the opportunity to talk and just appreciate all of your support. No, thank you. And I was gonna mention the World of Work event. It was awesome. I heard from many eighth graders, including one of my home, about how awesome that event was. So thank you for that's first annual. Hopefully we keep that going. Mr. Pratt, anything? I missed. Not at all. Thank you. So that was the unanimous recommendation, Madam President. Great, I'm not seeing anyone wishing to speak, and I just want to add my thanks to everything that... Miss, not at all, thank you. All right, so that was you, and Miss recommendation, Madam President. Great, I'm not seeing anyone wishing to speak, and I just want to add my thanks to everything that Montgomery College is doing. The job there's the website to help federal workers. It's just, it's really excellent. And, you know, we don't expect any less from Montgomery College, because we know of what great partners you all are, And I just thank you for really stepping up at this time. So we appreciate everything. So thank you. It was easy today. Thank you. All right. Next, we have item 12, which is a CIP work session on libraries and I will turn over again to Chio, Germando. Thank you Madam President. Welcome our library director and our DGS folks down. We, at that same day, we also reviewed the library refurbishment level of effort. Just to remind colleagues, this is one of the most anticipated and exciting programs we have in Montgomery County. It's almost like a new library opening when it opens up for a refresh. And that was an increase of approximately 1.8, 6 million or 6.8% to ensure that our libraries remain modern and welcoming and accessible to all, which is so important, especially right now. And there was a slight, so that was a slight increase. And then there was a slight cost reduction in the Clarksburg Library project, 180,000, very small, based on updated estimates of that project. This was, there was, we unanimously supported these amendments, and we deferred consideration of the 21st century library enhancements amendment, which is related to has operating budget impacts for MCPL. So we'll consider that as part of the operating budget. Mr. Ambinder, did I miss anything? Nothing that. Thank you. Okay. To give opportunity for a library's director and Mr. Dice to add anything. Good afternoon Darcece Lgram, director of Montgomery County Public Loveries and thank you. I have with me two of my very talented team members, Angelisa Haas, assistant director of facilities and Maddie Hines. Shewhart is our digital transformation manager. Thank you for this opportunity and what I will say since we're here today to talk about buildings and funding for buildings is that we're seeing more engagement and our buildings now more than never. Loveries, as you know, has always been about access and not just the books, but all of our talented librarians, all of our digital assets, but our buildings in particular as well. Providing a safe space that is free and open and accessible to everyone is when we're seeing the need increase and us being able to respond and having a building where the building envelopes our HVA systems, our furniture, the lighting, the paint is conducive for space that everyone feels welcome, a space that is free from trauma and also a space that we engage with our other colleagues from around the county. So with that being said, I just wanna say thank you again. Thank you, Director Dice, anything? I wouldn't dream of top in that. Smart man. That was the unanimous recommendation. Great. All right. Not seeing any other comments or questions. Thank you to everyone from libraries for joining us today and director Graham. Thank you and the whole team for what you're doing and personally I'm very excited about McGee Library in Silver Spring and appreciate the conversation. Yeah, we had about that and so look forward to moving forward with that. So thank you to all of you and we're going to keep moving on. Our next item is general government, county offices and other improvements. And I think that's me. March 20th, last month, we had a government operations and fiscal policy and education and culture joint committee meetings and we voted unanimously to approve two projects. The first was the only community building, it was a new project. This is 100% funded through state grants that are expected to be awarded this month in April. It provides for land acquisition and renovations to provide a community center for only. Council approval of a resolution is required to create a CIP amendment in FY25 to move forward on the land acquisition in FY25. And we did that this morning in Arkansas and calendar. The second project is the only infant and toddler program site improvements. This is also a new project 100% funded through state grants program in the state's FY24 capital budget. It provides for renovations to the ITP site at Rosa Parks Middle School and only DGS will administer the funding while Montgomery County Public Schools will manage the project. And so those were the two projects discussed by the Joint Committee. Mr. Dice, do you have anything on that? Or Mr. Mia? No. All right. Then I think we will, that was unanimous recommendation recommendation. We will move on then. On the same day, the government operations committee also voted unanimously to approve the following projects as requested by the executive on January 15. They included the Brookville Depot HVAC system, the Council Office Building renovations, elevator modernization, including an FY25 supplemental appropriation request, X-line PEPCO merger fund, facility planning for the Montgomery County Government, facility site selection for our county government lactation rooms in county buildings, the government operations committee voted unanimously to defer review and approval of the next couple of projects due to additional amendments requested by the executive in his March 14th Transmittal. These projects will be reviewed by the committee in April. They include the Americans with Disabilities Act compliance and energy conservation for Montgomery County government. And those were the recommendations from the Go committee that afternoon. Mr. Mia or Mr. Dice, anything else? Nope, thank you very much. All right, and I'm not seeing anything from anyone else. So, where are you done with the CIP review until more later? Thank you, everyone. All right, now we have a call for bills for final reading. We're moving on to our legislative session. This is day number eight and agenda item 14. We have four bills for final reading today. The first is expedited bill nine-25 technical corrections. And we have a correction to the technical corrections I cover. So I'm going to turn it over to Ms. Wellens to discuss. Yes, we do indeed thank you Madam President. So the technical corrections bill as you know is is a bill that the Council in Acts wants every few years to clean up the code in terms of any grammatical errors or numbering formatting errors, drafting errors. And so we've done a relatively comprehensive look at the code in conjunction with the Office of the County Attorney and thank you very much to them to identify the corrections. And that's contained in the bill before you. The correction to the correction is that on the cover, on the cover memo, council staff had identified an additional correction that we wanted to ask you to add to the technical corrections bill. However, I'd like to withdraw that request because we realized that the original drafting wasn't actually correct. So sorry for any confusion. That's right. Thank you. So we were looking at the bill as was introduced. I'm not seeing any questions here. So I'll entertain a motion to approve this bill. Council member Feetson moved. Council member sales second. All those in favor. Oh, this is a real call vote. Councilmember Luki? Yeah. Councilmember Luki. Councilmember Luki votes yes. Councilmember Ming. Yes. Councilmember Mink votes yes. Councilmember Sales. Yes. Councilmember Sales votes yes. Council member Freeson. Yes. Councilmember Freethan votes yes. Councilmember Glass. Yes. Council member glass votes yes. Council member cats. Yes. Council member cats votes yes. Council member Abernose. Yes. Council member Abernose votes yes. Council member finding Gisalas. Yes. Council member finding Gisalas votes yes. Council member Bauchem. Yes. Council member Bauchem votes yes. Council member Joando. Yes. Yes, Councilmember Joanda votes yes, Councilmember stored. Yes, Councilmember store votes. Yes Thank you very much. All right, but now we move on to Item number 14b and that's Final action on bill 1-25 public safety emergency medical services insurance reimbursement amendments the Public Safety Committee recommends an act to me and I'll turn it over to Chair Katz. Thank you very much, Madam President. Bill 125 Public Safety Emergency Medical Services Insurance Reimbursement Amendments. The lead sponsor was counsel president on behalf of the county executive. This bill amends the law governing insurance reimbursement to all fire and rescue personnel to ask for insurance coverage information for specific purposes of providing transportation to an alternative destination or provide treatment in place. The Public Safety Committee held a work session on March 17 and recommended 3 to 0 in support of bill 125 as introduced with your approval on Madam President. I'd like to turn over to legislative attorney Jim Orgozilek for any other information. He actually knows how to pronounce his name. He does. I don't, but he does. Who counts a number? That was very good. Take three shots at it, you'll get it. It was the third one, was yeah, that's it. Not much to add, I'll just note that the bill generally conforms to recommendations made by the Maryland Institute for Emergency Medical Services Systems and Maryland Health Care Commission in report directed by state law. There are minimal impacts in all four of the impact statements. And next step is a roll call vote. Great. Thank you, Mr. Ogurzlek. All right. Then may I have a motion? She's been practicing. I am practicing. Can I have a motion to approve bill one dash 25? Council member cats move council member fanning is all a second all those in favor please raise your hand. Oh I Councilmember lukey Councilmember lukey votes yes council member mink yes council member mink votes yes council member sales yes council member sales votes Council Member Freason? Yes. Council Member Freason,uki votes yes councilmember Ming yes councilmember Ming votes yes councilmember sales yes councilmember sales votes Yes councilmember Freason yes councilmember Freason votes yes councilmember glass yes councilmember glass votes yes councilmember cats yes councilmember cats votes yes councilmember Albinos Yes councilmember Albinos votes yes councilmember Feining dollars yes councilmember Feining dollars votes yes councilmember Balkham yes councilmember Balka votes yes councilmember Chawanda, from Alice. Yes. Councilmember Feining from the Alice votes yes. Councilmember Balkham. Yes. Councilmember Balkham votes yes. Councilmember Juwando. Yes. Councilmember Juwando votes yes. Councilmember Stewart. Yes. Councilmember Stewart votes yes. Thank you. All right. Our next bill for final reading is bill 3-25. Homeowner's tax credit. County Supplement Amendments. The government operations fiscal policy committee recommends enactment. The three of us introduced it, so it's a good thing we all agreed to it in committee. I will say this, the homeowner's tax credit is a progressive tax credit that is administered by the state. Montgomery County has a supplemental portion of it. And what we looked at as a committee was to increase the eligibility for residents who live in Montgomery County, who are on fixed incomes or who are lower income in order to have them have more people be eligible for this tax credit. Approximately 13,000 households will now be eligible for the credit that who weren't prior to increasing the eligibility amounts. And I will say just as we've been having a lot of conversations about assessments and what's happening in the county with our federal workforce that looking at ways to assist residents who are seeing increases in their assessments. This is one way to do it and to do it in a progressive way, really focusing on residents who are on fixed incomes or who are lower income. And I will turn over to Councilmember Friedzen. Thank you so much, Madam President and Madam Chair. In this case, really appreciate your partnership and leadership here as well as Council Member Katz. It's been a long effort here in trying to address these challenges, which are really focused on the affordability challenges that our residents are facing. We've seen property tax assessments continue to rise upwards of 40% for many of our residents, especially for homeowners on fixed or limited incomes. They're facing significant housing affordability challenges and they are in desperate need of relief. And that was even before all of these draconian and calis actions at the federal level that are leaving so many in our community with deep levels of uncertainty about their jobs and their incomes and their livelihoods. This expansion to 13,000 households who are at risk of losing their home of being able to afford their homes will be a significant message to them and demonstrate our support for them. And I'm just really pleased that we were able to come together as a committee to reach consensus that we could provide this tax relief to more homeowners and ensure that moving forward it keeps pace with inflation so that we can have more residents in our community afford to stay in their homes and age and place in our community and continue to give back and to support a community they've been part of. So thank you for the work and the efforts look forward to approving this and providing this much needed relief to our residents who needed the most. Okay great not seeing any seeing any other comments as well, and did you have anything on this one? No, nothing to add. Thank you, Madam President. Have any answer any questions? Great, well this is a committee recommendation and we have a roll call vote, so I'll turn it over to the clerk. Council Member Luki. Council Member Luki votes yes. Councilmember Mink. Yes. Councilmember Mink votes yes. Councilmember Sales. Yes. Councilmember Sales votes yes. Councilmember Freightson. Yes. Councilmember Freightson votes yes. Councilmember Glass. Yes. Councilmember Glass votes yes. Councilmember Cats. Yes. Councilmember Cats votes yes. Councilmember Alvernvernos. Yes. Council member Alvernos votes. Yes. Council member Feining Gonzales. Yes. Council member Feining Gonzales votes. Yes. Council member Bacchum. Yes. Council member Bacchum votes. Yes. Council member Joando. Council member Joana DeVotes, yes. Council member Storred. Yes. Council member Storred votes, yes. Thank you. And I do want to just extend a thanks to Mr. Ali, who is here in the audience just to say thank you for crunching many, many numbers as we looked at this. All right. Our last bill for final reading today is bill 6-25, Consumer Protection, Defective Tennises as Deceptive Trade Practices, the Public Safety Committee recommends approval and I'll turn it over to Chair Cats. Thank you very much, Madam President. Bill 625 Consumer Protection, Effective Tenancies, as deceptive trade practices. The lead sponsor is Council Member Mink and at the end of, when I have to say if it's a theory indulgence of Madam President, I want to turn to every Council Member Mink. But co-sponsors president, Stewart, Vice President, Juando and council member Luky. And I did want to note that the director of office of consumer protection, Eric Friedman emailed us that he was sorry he couldn't be here, but he actually is an enapolis. The bill would expand the office of consumer protections ability to investigate and enforce landlord tenant issues that could include unfair or deceptive trade practices. The Public Safety Committee held a work session on March 17th. The committee asked for an update on fiscal impact statement that included cost of adding to investigator positions to office of consumer protection. What expenditures would be accounting for a shared case load between Department of Housing and Community Affairs and an office of consumer protection. I had recommended a memorandum of understanding the implemented between the two departments to clarify roles and responsibilities and avoid overlap and handling consumer complaints. The Public Safety Committee unanimously recommended approval of Bill 625 and with your indulgence, Madam President. like to turn it over to the lead sponsor Council Member Member Mink and Ms. McCartney Green for any additional comments. Absolutely, Council Member Mink. Thank you, Chair Keds. And thank you to those who co-sponsored and to the partnership of my colleagues on the committee as well as the work and partnership with the executive branch through this ongoing process. Appreciate the updated fiscal statement. I know a big question of course as we've gone through this process over really the last year, but including up through now is just making sure that there's an understanding of what kind of the logistical process is going to be. And that you'll be able to dive in. But more into the details today and we'll continue doing that when we hopefully pass this bill. But noting that the updated fiscal analysis reflects an additional investigative staff and administrative staff person. And I think that that makes a lot of sense because obviously what we want to see is deep coordination across offices and we need somebody who's going to be able to facilitate that to make sure that this is done efficiently and that efforts aren't going to be duplicative. We're not expecting the office of consumer protection to be going out and doing the same work as DHCA's code enforcement and obviously we want to make sure that they're able to work together and in tandem and so we have to have somebody who's going to be able to manage that and then we also need somebody who will be able to pick up investigative pieces as needed on the OCP side and I'm sure we'll be able to talk more about that but I'll note also in the fiscal analysis here that we have the revenues are at zero but I will say that I think that hopefully we will be seeing that that number actually come in a lot better than that because what we can't say now, but what that's going to be exactly. But the hope is that this is going to allow us to actually recover the many many many unpaid fines that result from DHCA's code efforts, and we know that there are a lot of unpaid fines that go to district court, and we recover very, very few of those, maybe four to five percent ish of those. And so another tool is very much needed here. So I appreciate all the work that has gone into this and the work of my team as well and hoping that we can get this done. Thank you. Great. I have a couple council members who have questions but Ms. McCartney and Green, do you have anything to add to that? Nothing to add. Great. Thank you. Council Member Albinas. Thank you everybody. So headline here is I support the bill. It makes a lot of sense. I appreciate custom and Burmink reaching out to me during its development. It was clear she had done as she always does through due diligence and spoken to a number of stakeholders. My questions are pertaining to implementation. We've run into this with our incredible Office of Human Rights and a number of pieces of legislation enacted that also came with recommendations for additional staff that never came. And we're now running into issues in committee and have had several sessions with Director Stowe. There was an OIG report recently done. So I appreciate the support and the recommendation, but what is the plan from the executive branch to bring on these one or two additional positions? And then if I could also get just an update on the very sound and reasonable recommendation made by the committee chair on an MOU so that we're very clear on who's and who's laying lane because I've also seen in the past where there is the best of intention sometimes confusion that frustrates our constituents and creates some challenges. So if I could just get responses to those two questions on when we plan on seeing the additional staff members added to Director Friedman's important shop and then also the status of the MOU. Good afternoon. Thank you so much. Council Member Alburnos for those questions. For the record, my name is Ken Art Minaspada, Assistant Chief Administrative Officer, and with me, Scott Bruton, Director of Housing Community Affairs, and Patty Vitale. What's your title, Patty? Invested in the administrative for CACP. Thank you. So to the questions, we will begin working immediately with the Office of Management and Budget to identify strategies for bringing on those two positions. We are working on budget amendments to the FY26 recommended budget. That's one course. Another course would be to identify vacancies that haven't been filled. But rest assured, Councilmember Albernoliz, we're working, we will be working with speed to get this done. The County Executive is very appreciative of Councilmember Mink and the sponsors of this bill. It's a simple fix. Our goal has never been to create duplication between DHCA and Office of Community Partnerships. We saw from the start this needs to have a be a consumer protection. This, thank you. I'm rolling, but I forget. But the idea that this bill adds additional leverage to our compliance for landlords that are significantly continue to be, to violate their responsibilities to their customers, their tenants. And so we do not want confusion among the public on who to call when. We want a single point of entry, no wrong door approach. We talked to the committee about creating standard operating procedures, MOU potentially that would define who does what and how this is works so that it can be successful and not another example of an unfunded mandate or no one really knows who's in charge. So thank you so much Councillor Aburn has for this question but we will get right on the staffing. I appreciate that. So just to clarify, when do we anticipate that MOU being completed? Like the staffing we're working immediately, we've already had some discussions between the two departments about who's on first and we can complete this within the month of April. Great, thank you. Okay, thank you, Council Member Bailcombe. Thank you. Thank you to the sponsors of the bill. I think it's an important discussion to have. I really appreciate Council Member Katz's request for the MOU. That was one of the issues that I had concerns about when the bill came to us. And very often when we have two agency, two departments overseeing something, not only can it cause confusion, but it can cause duplication of effort. but also as importantly it can cause gaps in service with one department assuming that the other department is doing X, Y or Z. And so I really think that this adds greatly to the efficacy of the bill. So I appreciate that. And. And I do just want to state that I know about violations occur. We all hear that from constituents and we know that that happens. And we do have a responsibility to make sure that our residents are safe and they have dignity in their homes and that we do our part to make sure that that those violations don't go unchecked and those landlords are held responsible. But I do also want to remind everyone that we have many many many landlords who take great care of their properties and great care of their tenants. And so I think that this will add to ensuring that all of our residents are safe and I appreciate the sponsors and moving it forward. Thank you. Thank you, Council vice president Joanda. Thank you. I also want to appreciate Council Member Minks leadership on this bill and the issue and the fourth thought that went into it and that it's going to be another tool in the toolbox. You know, we haven't been on the housing committee for seven years now. We meet about the, you know, for example, the landlords that aren't doing it. And again, when accounting, we're 400,000 people who are living in rental housing. There's even a small number, or not doing the right thing. It's thousands of residents. And we have those on our troubles properties list. We've reviewed the data, as you know, at DHCA, that by the time it goes through the current process, many, many, many fines are not paid. And it's not really serving as the deterrents. in the backed up courts or trying to get through cases as much as possible and say if you have to fix by the time you get there six months later, you don't have to pay anything and then we go through the cycle again and it's not working. So for us for that population, so hopefully this will be another way once we figure out the administrative of it to make sure that folks have habitable housing. So I really appreciate Councilor Mank and the other co-sponsors and really looking forward to getting you this authority. Thank you Madam President. Thank you. I'm not seeing anyone else who Council Member Mank. Just adding a real quick data point, I really appreciate all my colleagues for their thoughtful comments and agree with all of them. But in FY 24, we, the DHC, attempted to recover a million and a half and unpaid fines and only collected 100,000 of those. So we're leaving a lot of money on the table and we need a way to access it and I'm really hopeful that this will be that way. Thanks. It's all right. All right, not see any other. Oh, Miss, yeah, my car. Yeah, just wanted to note just for everyone, including the public watching, this bill does take effect 91 days after it becomes enacted. And so it gives the department time to be able to work out at MOU before the bill actually takes, goes into effect. Right, thank you very much for that. All right, We have a recommendation from the Public Safety Committee. This is a roll call vote. Madam Clerk, will you call? Council Member Luki? Yes. Council Member Luki votes yes. Council Member Mink? Yes. Council Member Mink votes yes. Council Member Sales? Yes. Council Member Sales votes yes. Council Member Freason? Yes. freezin votes yes. Council member glass. Yes. Council member glass votes yes. Council member cats. Yes. Council member Glass votes yes. Councilmember Katz? Yes. Councilmember Katz votes yes. Councilmember Albinos? Yes. Councilmember Albinos votes yes. Councilmember Fonigalos? Yes. Councilmember Fonigalos? Yes. Councilmember Baalco? Yes. Councilmember Baalco votes yes. Councilmember Jawando? Yes. Councilmember Jawando votes yes. Councilmember Stewart. Yes. Councilmember Stewart votes yes. Great, that was our last item today. So our meeting is now adjourned. Thank you everyone.