Please do continue to keep us a prize of the ongoing litigation, which most legal scholars deem unconstitutional, but what do they know, right? So thank you, without any other comment, this joint committee is adjourned. We will start with a nine-month- Residential Energy Program Manager at the Department of Environmental Protection. We will start with a nine-month-old. Residential Energy Program Manager at the Department of Environmental Protection. Welcome back to make a difference, Larissa. Thank you for having me back. I also think spring is rainbows and green things. So I had to put my hand on it. I mean, you look like a full-fledged leprechaun. So like, I'm loving it. I'm loving the whole thing. I'm a spring leprechaun. So like I'm loving it. I'm loving the whole thing. I'm a spring leprechaun. you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you Good afternoon. It is Thursday, May 1st. Welcome to the Transportation and Environment Committee work session. There are six items on our agenda today for the FY 26 budget. The first item is the Transportation General Fund. I'll turn it over to Mr. Kenney to walk us through. Thank you. So the Transportation General Fund, the county executive recommends a, executive recommends a budget of $67.4 million for the FY26 operating budget. This is a 5.9% increase over FY25 or a roughly 3.7 million dollar increase. There's some information on pages two and three regarding the general structure of the transportation general fund. Basically it funds everything in the Montgomery County Department and transportation not covered by the mass transit fund or the District Services Funds, aside from a smattering of NDAs, so the bulk of MCDOT's work. There's also some information on page three about the Operating Budget Equity Tool Analysis for the Montgomery County Department of Transportation. We covered this in some more detail. On Tuesday's work session for the Mass Transit Fund, it's the same results as they were department-wide. So unless there's a desire to engage in more detail on that, I'll defer to that discussion. So moving to budget discussion items, There are four items for four additions and enhancements for discussion by the committee. The remainder of the increase from FY 25 can be attributed to compensation adjustments, other personnel adjustments, and non-discretionary Cost Adjustments. So that's the bulk of the transfer. So the four changes for committee review. The first is a $61,581 enhancement to the new subdivision road maintenance program. covers covers the county's responsibilities for maintaining new roads built by developers that are eligible for county maintenance. This enhancement covers both the addition of new roads in FY25 as well as those anticipated for FY 26 as the council deferred the FY 25 item in last year's budget due to fiscal capacity. So council staff has designated these items in two tranches. I want to cover the FY 25 deferred spending and then the other for FY26 adjustment or enhancement rather. Thank you, Mr. Kenney. Director Conclun. Sure. I'm not sure how familiar the council is with how these appear in our inventory, but what happens is there are subdivision approvals, roads are built by developers generally. When the bonds are released by the Department of Permitting Services, those roads are transferred into our inventory for maintenance. And there is an assumption about how much per lane mile is added to our, should be added to our budget to cover maintenance of those roads. And in these cases about five lane miles per year have been added to the inventory through this process. So these amounts correspond to the additional increment for the operating budget to accommodate the larger road inventory. I'm not sure. I've asked this in the years of budget conversations, but have, has the department found discrepancies and different types of roads or different type of road builders over the years as it relates to maintenance of? It's not something we've tracked and it's not something you would necessarily see right away. Usually if there's any defect in the construction, those are identified by the inspectors for the department of permitting services for privately built roads or our own inspectors for roads that are built as part of the CIP. But you may see over time if there was something that wasn't identified through a construction inspection, a faster deterioration of payment if the mix wasn't exactly right, or uneven settlement if there was uneven compaction, but those usually show up three to five or more years later, and there's no longer any recourse to the developer for correction of those. But I wouldn't say that's a common problem that we talk about on a routine basis. Great. Any comments? No, I just say I'm supportive of keeping making sure we keep this in the budget, particularly since we deferred it last year. So, I just... Agreed? Yep. Without objection. Thank you. The next item is a $50,000 enhancement to the short span bridge inspection program to increase the number of condition inspections by short span of bridges and culverts and pedestrian structures, as well as to respond to increased costs of these inspections. These inspections provide information on the current condition of bridge structures and are fundamental to understanding the structural integrity and serviceability of a bridge. Sound private director, yes. With that objection. Thank you. The next is $88,000 cumulatively for new operating budget impacts. These are impacts of projects, suspected to be completed for expected CIP projects that are to be completed within FY26, as well as some enhancements required for ongoing level of effort projects. These can be split between three. They're listed in the budget as between three programs within the mass transportation general fund. These being transportation management operations and storm emergency and storm response, which receives a $45,000 enhancement for operating budget impacts, transportation infrastructure, construction and maintenance, which receives $36,000ment and community and transportation safety which receives a $7,000 enhancement We're back in objection Thank you, and then this is one specific Fourth enhancement that we're looking at today is one specific operating budget Component for for a CIP project and this is for the US 29 street lighting project that project provided for installation and energization of street lights along the US 29 corridor. This increase, this $9,000 increase will provide the up for the operation and maintenance of those newly installed street lights. Much needed lighting along that corridor without objection. Thank you. Now moving on to potential reductions for committee consideration. These two potential reductions were identified by council staff the staff via, as a response to the Council President's guidance for the budget. These are non-recommended reductions, non-recommended by Council staff and non-recommended by MCDOT. These particular reductions were identified do by by MCDOT and OMB due to their lack of direct, direct safety impacts on county road users who were residents and are identified for the purpose of identifying fiscal capacity should the committee and council choose to do so. So the first of these is a $97,500 reduction to the bike share program. This is a reduction that could be made if necessary to remove low ridership bike share stations as the council did last year to create fiscal capacity. Last year's reduction resulted in 10 low performance, highly low performance, very low performance stations being eliminated. This reduction would require eliminating and resizing $150,000 worth of capital bike share stations. So this would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 14 to 16 stations. We arrive at the $97,500 figure as an approximate net reduction, as the $150,000 reduction would trigger an inflationary increase with our contractor, with the county's contractor, with lift of $52,685 for the stations for maintaining them, per the terms of the county's maintenance contract. This is an increase that the vendor was willing to defer if should the county not reduce the number of stations even further. So this potential reduction is a net between the reduction of stations plus the increased cost. So, Mr. Kenney, as you noted, these are non-recommended cuts. I'm not going to recommend them. I suspect the same with my colleagues. But as you noted last year, the executive did recommend 10 stations. Director Concklin, can you just speak to the usage of the program in general and rather than reducing are there any stations that can be repurposed or relocated? Well, that's an interesting question. I was going to first comment on the usage. The usage is up year over year. So the stations we reduced were indeed low ridership and removal of those stations may have had some marginal impact on what the usage might have been, but even with removal of those stations, the usage over the last year has increased. I'm not sure exactly how to answer your second question. You don't need to then based on what you just shared. Okay, that's okay. Good. Great. Colleagues, yeah. Council Member Bobbombe. Yeah, just a question. When is the current contract up? Another excellent question. Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Joseph Mogus, Chief Division of Transportation Engineering for MCDOT. What I can tell you is each station has a 10 year warranty, and I believe our contract will be up in the coming years. I have to get back to you in the exact year. It's a, I can comment a little bit about the nature of the contract. It's a cooperative contract region wide. And I believe Arlington may have been the lead agency in doing this contracting and we all use those same terms. So it's not an individual county contract. Okay. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, I agree with the chair on this. Although when the contract does come up, I think it's worth having a look at the usage and repurposing or shifting or something like that. But yeah, this makes sense to keep this in. Thank you. Great. Great. That's unanimous. Mr. Kenny. Thank you. There's one more non-recommended reduction that is possible that has been identified. This is a roughly $1.1 million reduction to the road resurfacing program. This reduction would result in a 7.67 fewer lane miles of road resurfacing in FY26. This amount, this particular amount, was chosen just to meet the target reduction amount, if need be. But the committee may choose to tranche this, if it so chooses in sort of this very it's a very flexible fund so if you'd like to do tranches in in half or in quarter that we can we can do that. So the recommendation that you're making or the non-recommended non-recommended cut whatever however we we term it nearly seven and a half miles fewer lanes, director Conklin, what is the backlog for this need? It's hard to comment on a backlog. This is an early repair strategy in the pavement maintenance program. So in early what strategy? Repair. So roads that are starting to move from good to fair condition are likely to get this kind of treatment to forestall later more expensive repairs that we would see show up in the capital budget programs for street resurfacing and street patching. I unfortunately brought my wrong packets with my notes but this was a relatively significant cut to the magnitude of this program And we are already seeing relatively significant declines in the pavement condition around the county somewhere between 2 to 9% depending upon which category of road. So this is again, we didn't recommend this cut. It was put before the executive is an option, but has serious implications for the overall condition of our road infrastructure. Understood. And I just want to, I appreciate Council staff working to try to figure out how to make a budget, right? How to make the most out of the budget or to figure out how to balance the budget. I don't think this is the way and so I won't be supporting this. I just wanted to ask because I know when item earlier when we talked about that we had deferred the funding of it. In the past we have fully funded this item. Is that correct, do we know? We have a baseline, a mobile antenna from Deputy Director of DOT. This is that, you know, we have a total dollar amount in the operating budget. What I would say about paving in general is if you look at the capital side of this because our overall payment management is both in the operating and capital budget. So Chair Glass, to your point about the backlog, we no longer measure a cyclical backlog. What we do is measure all the pavement and produce a pavement condition index. And we're trying to keep the entire system at an average of 70. We're currently at about 67 for the residential roads. And we don't have the funding, it would be orders that have been too higher to actually get to the 70 PCI or even maintain the 67 PCI. And the position we're in now based on affordability, the pavement condition average PCI will decline over time. So our recommendation would be not to take this because it will further accelerate the degradation of the pavement system. I'm relying on my own memory of your consideration at this, but I think this is something the council has maintained. Yeah, I think so too. I believe so. Yeah, I believe this committee has recommended it. And I just couldn't remember if it went through. So yeah, I think so too. I believe so. Yeah. I mean, I believe this committee has recommended it and I just couldn't remember If it went through so yeah, I'll be supportive of keeping in the budget, but it's just such a hard budget this year But I appreciate that but I think there are certain things that if we let our Infrastructure deteriorate and then we're playing catch up in future years It's just that's that's not a way to balance out budgets either. So I'm supportive of keeping it. Yeah. I will note the pavement condition index is new to me. I did not know that was a measurement that that we utilize. So what what are the observations with it or whether metrics for that? So it's a ranking from one to 100, where 100 would be a brand new road and one would be a road that is ceasing to exist based on its condition. And there's good, fair, poor, imminent need of repair metrics within that. Each year, a LiDAR scan of one component of the network is done either the residential or the arterial system and that index is determined for each road where it is in that scale of deterioration. And our process is to use the most cost effective repair strategy as soon as we can. That's why this particular line item is so important because it's the least cost of cost lee way to extend that condition of a road and then once it drops from those categories the repair strategies get more and more expensive. So you may get questions from constituents why we're not repairing a road that's in really bad condition as quickly as a road that's in better condition and the answer is because repairing that road that's in better condition can get us another 10 to 15 years out of it whereas we can only do a small amount of full repair for the same dollars. Important context, thank you. On that note I just want to thank your staff for always being so available because from the perspective of constituent service, this is probably one of the number one calls we get is when are you going to pay my road. And we get pictures and we send them onto you. And so I just wanted to give a shout out to your staff. Thank you. Thank you, Richard Dorsey and his team do a tremendous job. Second that, thank you. Thank you. I can provide just quickly some additional. This is, PCI's a metric utilized also by the infrastructure maintenance task force. The IMTF's 2024 annual report estimated the backlog of resurfacing if we want to keep around 70 PCI, which is a decent target for county roadways, it's about a billion dollars. It's the backlog. That was a B as a billion dollars. I appreciate that. Next budget. There you go. Okay, so we will not be accepting this reduction, but good conversation. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes the discussion items regarding the FY26 operating budget. Moving on to the CIP amendments that we have received since this committee's an initial review of the executives recommended CIP amendments. We have amendments to eight new projects that were transmitted between March and April. of these recommendations by the County Executive are delays or reductions that cite a projected 27.8 million dollar reduction in impact tax revenues and a $13.7 million projected reduction in recordation tax revenues due to an expected decrease in home sales. There's more information on that in the executives' transmittal and in the staff report, but I'll unless there's any requests for more information there, we can move into the individual projects. Yeah, if you want to take a look through them. Sure. So the first is the Brink Road Bridge project. The executive recommends delaying the construction of the Brink Road Bridge project by one year due to technical delays in regulatory review by the U.S. Department of Transportation. This is not related to the revenue shortfalls referenced earlier. Total project funding remains unchanged. Without objection. Thank you. The next is the Greg Road Bridge project. This is a proposed delay to account for the changes in impact tax and recordation tax collections. You will not see an FY 25 to 30 approved expenditure schedule for this project because this project is new, newly proposed by the executive as of January 15th, as of his, his, his, his, Transmental this year. So this is not an existing project, but rather a new one. The original schedule approved by the council would have the project start in FY26. And then in this is delaying one year to start in FY27 and end in FY28. That's an objection. Thank you. Moving on, this is another delay to address impact tax and and Recredation Tax Collections, total for the mouth of Menocacy Road Bridge project. This is a two-year delay to with this project that was originally planned to conclude in FY27, would now conclude in FY29, total project funding and expenditures remain unchanged. Found objection. Thank you. Next is the Forest Blend Passageway project. This project is where the executive, at least within transportation, found the majority of the dollars to compensate for the projected reduction in revenues. This executive recommends a two-year delay to this project that was initially planned to, as approved by the Council last year for the FY25 to 30 CIP was planned to conclude in FY 30. This amendment would push the project out beyond the six-year period, resulting in 22.8 million dollar savings within the six years. However, this amendment also reflects a $3.8 million increase in total project costs, including the beyond six years component to reflect increased design costs. As a refresher, this project would provide for design and construction of a new grade separated connection under Georgia Avenue to improve access to the Forest Glend Metro Station from adjacent neighborhoods. and this project was restored by the council to begin construction in FY28 after the executive recommended a similar delay beyond six from adjacent neighborhoods, and this project was restored by the council to begin construction in FY28 after the executive recommended a similar delay beyond six-year period as what's being recommended in this amendment. Best I can say is at least it's still in the CIP without objection. Thank you. Moving on to the Oak Drive Maryland 27 sidewalk project. The executive recommends delaying construction of this project by one year to FY28 to conclude in FY29 rather than its initial schedule of concluding by FY28. This is also done to address affordability, total project and total project funding and expenditure expenditures remain unchanged. Found objection. Thank you. Following is the residential and rural rehabilitation program. The executive recommends a technical adjustment to this project switching some funding in FY25 from GeoBonds to Landsale Proceeds, total project funding within the six-year period is reduced by $1.1 million. But this change was included in the January 15th amendment. So this is an amendment on top of an amendment as we've seen with some other projects as well. Obviously the committee has already seen and approved and recommended for approval that change as well as full council. So this change is just that technical adjustment switching, geoballs and land sale proceeds. And without objection? Not to extend the conversation, but the change in funding was related to an acceleration of work that was completed earlier rather than a change in funding level. Great. Good contrast. Thank you. Moving on, the executive recommends a new project, Whites Fairy, to the FY25 to 30 CIP. This project in the CIP provides for a public incentive to the owners of Potomac Crossing LLC and Rockland Farm LLC to restore the operation of White's Ferry to provide service between Montgomery County and Loudon County, Virginia across the Potomac River. This project's $3 million in FY 26 expenditures will be funded in equal part by the general fund and state aid. So $1.5 million a piece in each of those revenue categories. This is a project that is a partnership with the state to attempt to get the whites very restoration to move forward. I'm glad that we have this proposal before us. I know it's taken a lot of work and appreciate the Department of Transportation and our state partners and the delegation as well. And I'm fully in support of it, but I think the technical question is the 1.5 million that's allocated from the county. What happens to that if a deal is not achieved? Montgomery County, sorry, Gary Nelvin, Office of Management and Budget. The Montgomery County share, it's not immediately apparent on the new PDF, but we're not requesting any appropriation right now, so we're holding that aside and reserve. In the case that a deal does to get done, we'll rush to send you a supplemental to appropriate that funding. So then the decision point before us is to add the new project in the CIP with the program funding. Got it and we program funding will come when yes if and when. And I would note that a new round of discussions has been opened up based on this proposal with the Rockland owner, the Potomac Crossing owner and also engaged loud at in county. And I'd like to also thank the town of Poolsville for their engagement and this better. So the best way you could publicly describe it is that the offer has been well received. It has been received and started another round of discussion. I don't want to over promise that conversation. It still remains difficult. Councilman Balcon. Thank you. I, of course, support this. And I really appreciate the director and deputy director who have been in this deep, deep, deep into this conversation for many, many years. And I think that this is the best way that we can go about it at this point in time. So I appreciate that. It's been received. OK. You can't put the adjective before it. I get it. I hear you. OK. So that's unanimous. Okay. Thank you. Moving on to the bikeway program minor projects project. This is another amendment on an amendment. This committee saw this in the initial January Transmittle of CIP amendments. Council staff has enumerated the difference between that amendment and this one in the table on page eight. The original, the original amendment, a scene and recommended for approval by this committee, added $150,000 to complete stormwater management design and approval with park staff and Department of Permitting Services. The committee approved that first amendment on March 3rd, a recommended for approval. This new amendment adds a further $814,000 in funds to this project to finish design and construct improvements between the Bulless School entrance and along Falls Road to Democracy Boulevard. So this is some additional work that is in this moment. That's a long stretch of windy road. It's recently down there. So without objection, most important. Thank you. And finally, this storm-drain general project, this project is not within the transportation category of the CIP. However, Council staff has been working with, I guess, the East side of the TD Committee to make sure that this project gets in front of the committee. This project is administered by the Department of Transportation, which is why we're bringing it up here. The County Executive's recommended amendment includes a technical adjustment in the funding schedule for the storm drain project. It involves a funding switch of $3,000 from long-term financing in FY24 to current revenue, water quality protection fund in FY26. This does not include any changes to the project's scope, cost, or timing of work. With that objection. Thank you. So that concludes the committee's discussion of this item. Great. Thank you. Thank you to MCDOT and everybody for their work there. The second item is the Homeowners Association Road Reimbursement Program, NDA. There are two reimbursement programs, including a county and a state one, and this recommended appropriation is the same as FY25, and is fully funded by state funding. I don't think there's really anything to add. Without objection. Thank you. Third item is the Weather Response NDA which supports the cost of MCDOT and DGS when actual expenditures exceed their individual snow removal and storm cleanup. We know that happened this year. So let's, I was going to make a bad joke. Let's get into it. So the executive is recommending a $2.884 million budget for this item. This is no change from the FY26 item as DOT and DGS believe that the cost that this appropriation within this NDA. It will be sufficient to cover all weather response activities in FY26. Any further costs as they are unpredictable will come over as supplemental to cover the costs of responding to these incidents. I will just note for all the budget fans at home that this item was previously enlisted in previous budgets as the climate response NDA, this committee changed the name to the weather response to be more accurate last year. That is an ongoing effort for truth and budgeting and more accurate budgeting. And so, whether response it is, you didn't mention it, Mr. Kenney, but I'll ask Director Conklin clearly while we're talking about the FY26 budget, the FY25 budget funding for this item underfunded because we have a lot of snow and a lot of weather events. And so I can turn to the council president if it's been introduced or not, the supplemental, but can you talk about that, Director Conclan? Yeah, so I mean, we had a more challenging than normal winter season this year and our expenditures were about $18 million more than this budget at a amount. So there are years in which that happens. There are also years in the last six where there's been no supplemental when the storm events have been handled within this budget. So it's not predictable, but the county has always been able to respond and we've been able to respond with quick action of our colleagues in the office management and budget and the council's ability to find funds to fund that activity in a rears when we do exceed this budget. Important perspective, I know we'll talk about that when the supplemental comes back with forest as well. So without objection. So that's the weather response NDA. Now onto item number four, which is the Vision Zero NDA, Mr. Holland. Joining us. Thank you. You know, I want to highlight before we start this discussion, the good news that in the first two months of this year there were zero pedestrian and zero bike fatalities in the first two months. That is a good sign of the work that we're continuing to do. That's why these investments are important. And in a moment we'll hear more from Mr. Holland, but Mr. Kenny, you wanna expand upon the items. Sure. So the Vision Zero NDA funds the County Executive's Oversight and Coordination of the Vision Zero Initiative to end traffic related serious injuries and fatalities through a full-time Vision Zero Coordinator, who is Mr. Holland that we have here today. This NDA also includes the operational funds that assist the coordinator in implementing and updating the Vision Zero Action Plan. The county executive recommends a $146,000, or $146,167,000 or 39.1% decrease from the FY25 approved operating budget for the Vision Zero NDA. You can see how we reach this at the top of page 2 of the staff report. This is a net result of a, what is the FY26 compensation adjustment for this NDA for the one FTE, as well as an elimination of the safe streets and roads for all grant, $160,000. This is, I'll admit, a slightly misleading, as this is not a policy decision made in the recommendation to eliminate the work done by this grant. However, this is a grant that was awarded to the county in 2024 under the Federal Safe Streets and Roads for All Program. It was approved for incorporation into the Vision Zero NDA budget by the Council during last year's budget review for FY25. You may remember the council, the county was awarded another grant to continue this work for FY 26, but has not yet received a signed grant agreement from our federal partners, thus in order to make sure that we're not, appropriating money that we don't have, that we don't know we'll have yet the executive recommends removing the expenditures funded by this grant revenue until a grant revenue, a grant agreement is received. Really important context there that neither the executive nor the council will be reducing the work of the Vision Zero Office and Mr. Holland's leadership. It's that we have not yet received the grant and we're hopeful that we will receive the grant which will restore the funding. Mr. Holland. Yeah, just to add to that, because there's a competitive grant, we've had a war for $160,000 and that's the federal side of it. That was for this current fiscal year. And we're starting the work actually at the sign contract a couple weeks ago, excited to start spending their money. This next round, as Mr. Kenny mentioned, was part of a second competitive grant that we were awarded. And that one, we'll have to obviously come back with a supplemental to make sure that actually gets appropriated when we actually get the grant agreement in place. We had a meeting with FHWA Maryland this week, and we think that they will still hopefully honor the draft grant agreement that we have. The awards are made under the last administration. The last update we got was that they were making just some changes to the template that gets filled out for the grant agreement, but there's nothing saying that they will not be honoring those agreements. And the total for that will be, at least on the Vision Zero NDA side, will be about $240,000 from federal funding. Great. You preemptively answered my question about when those, when the grant agreements went out, or at least the call for submissions, and that was the last administration. Correct. Yeah. This is awarded as part of the federal fiscal year 24 round, and those were awarded last fall, and the grant take take a long time so when the administration has changed over that just slowed it down even further. Conn. Colleagues, yeah. Conn from Red Pockham. Thank you. My only concern is what you know what if we absolutely don't get the grant and that's my concern And because we just stated that we're not gonna reduce the function of this money. So I think we just need to be up to date on that. So the funding is really kind of to one time fund. So we've already spent that and we're not gonna ask for more because that is federal money. So we can't can't say that so that's why we it shows up as a negative there because it's taking away that one time funding if you have $12,000 I'll take it I mean I'll just have that in no so we I was I was thinking that it was something that was coming to us yeah so everything that we've been the past grants agreements have been honored those are still going to get reimbursed, we're good on that piece. I'm not going to look. And then for the future, why don't you just get in those grand agreements. The past grants agreements have been honored. Those are still going to get reimbursed. We're good on that piece. I'm not going to. And then for the future, why don't you just imagine getting those grant agreements? And that's why we made sure to not put it in the budget. Because we don't want to be on the hook for money that the federal government is not going to pay out on. Got it. Thank you. And while you're here and I shared some of the high level data, can you elaborate a little bit more on how we're fairing in 2025 already? So in terms of fatalities, again, what's happening now is not always a precursor of what's going to happen the rest of the year. There have been 10 fatalities in Montgomery County. A to those been drivers of motor vehicles to have been pedestrians. That is a decrease from last year and overall the state of Maryland. We're seeing a decrease about a decrease from last year. And overall, in state of Maryland, we're seeing a decrease about 30% year over year in fatalities. Partially, that's because of, there's a lot of different reasons, but one thing being much colder and snowier, rainier start to the calendar year. So it's good to see that those decreases are happening year over year. And we hope to see those continue throughout the year. but again the first quarter's noise predict what's going to happen the rest of the year. In those pedestrian fatalities the two that you Reference those were very recent finders. Yes, the last limited the last two weeks one was on shady Grove Road and one was on Georgia out Georgia Avenue near Aspen Hill Road Keep us posted on the the federal grant awards and we'll have a deeper dive with you after we get through budget session. Great. Thank you. So we'll accept this budget recommendation for you. Very good. Thank you, Mr. Holland. Thank you. Item number five is the parking district services. Thank you. So yes the county executive recommends a 30.4 million dollar budget for parking district services. This is broken out between the three, so this budget funds the three parking lot districts, Bethesda, Silver Spring and Wheaton. The budget is broken out between the three parking lot districts in the table on page two of the staff report. This is this budget represents a $1.5 million or 5% increase from the approved FY25 budget. There's some information on the department background as well as a link to this committee's work session on July 22nd of last year in which it talked a little bit about the PLD budget and got it a deeper dive on the funding structure so that's some helpful context. Also have information on the operating budget. Equity tool for the Montgomery County Department of Transportation, but again, this is the same as as the previous items in which this information was included. So I'll defer to that discussion unless there's desire to bring it up again. top of page 4 of the staff report, table two, summarizes all of the changes to the budget, which land us at the net $1.5 million change, our increase to the parking district services budget. These are compiled between three parking lot districts. Most of that change as with all the rest of the pretty much every budget item can be accounted for between the FY26 compensation adjustment, other personnel adjustments and non-discretionary operations adjustments. This includes a 3% inflationary increase for non-profit service providers across items. Again, these items were covered council-wide, so we will not dive into them here for the council president's guidance. The two items, the two proposed budget changes that we will bring up here for committee review. The first is an enhancement to the parking revenue and control system or parks system in Bethesda. This is a $25,000 enhancement to address an outdated, gated parking system in the garage 31, the capital pressing garage in downtown Bethesda. This will not cover the full replacement of the GARRAGE system, which is the last GARRAGE system still remaining in downtown Bethesda in garage 31. However, this item due to affordability and fiscal constraints this year will provide, is a temporary measure to allow the current system to remain in compliance with the parking lot district's payment systems in the interim as we either move away from the gated garage system in that garage or update it to be in full compliance with the payment systems. So, this can be considered as a stopgap in this particular garage. Garage 31, I presume, is the one across from Marriott. That's on it. No, it's the one that's at the intersection of what Mon Avenue and Bethesda Avenue? Oh, yeah. Got it. That's underground, you don't see it And I'm blaming it's not going there. Yeah There we go easy easy to forget Okay With that objection Thank you Sounds like my colleagues want to add money for wayfinding for that parking garage I never seem to enter the garage in the same location I leave it from. So I have the same experience. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. Very well hidden. So thank you. And the next item is a council staff combined two items as they are related that result in a net $65,796 increase to the parking district services operating budget. This is the result of the shifting of counting room, counting room FTE from right on to the parking lot districts. I'll admit this is a complicated one. I made it for it to to do to kind of fill in some blanks here. But essentially this is related to the elimination of ride on fares that this committee talked about on Tuesday. So currently ride on and the parking lot districts share a revenue processing center and split the FTEs for that center between the two. Due to Ride On going fair-free, doesn't make sense to have any of that funding come out of Ride On since it won't be needing this service. So this $65,000 enhancement or addition on enhancement is the net result of a shift of $107,000 into the parking lot districts to cover a full FTE to bridge the gap between what Ride On is paying for now and maintaining the counting room. And this is partially offset by $42,000 reduction of .4 FTEs that are previously used to support collection of Ride On fares, resulting in a net and that .65 FTE or $65,000 increase to the PLDs. Director Conplan. I thought that was an excellent summary. Essentially the staff compliment is getting smaller, but 100% of it is assigned to parking since transit doesn't need this anymore. Okay, that objection. Thank you. Moving on to, there's one CIP amendment in this for related to parking. There is an amendment to the FY effort to the CIP that delays completion of the Women's Market Parking Garage project by one year to match the updated construction schedule in the ground. And this is, it does not change the total project funding or expenditures. And I don't know if you just noted it, but that is the request of the project itself. Yes, yes. Right. Just need to stay back. Great. Without objection. Thank you. There's a section. We've covered all of the items in the executives recommended budget. However, there is a note. Council staff added to address the fund balance policies as this is a crucial policy item for the PLDs. The PLDs are enterprise funds and as a result have policy target fund balances of 25%. This is not required, but this is a fiscal practice that they follow as enterprise funds. However, the county executives proposed FY26 budget when result in a 16% fund balance heading into FY27 for the Bethesda PLD and a 0.4% fund balance for the Silver Spring PLD based on current revenue and expenditure projections. This is the Bethesda and Silver Spring PLDs will reach negative fund balances in FY28 if new revenue is not identified. This does not result in any immediate fiscal issues going into FY26 as there are sufficient fund balances carried over from FY25 to cover unexpected expenses. However, alternative revenue sources or structural changes will likely need to be identified prior to approving the FY 27 operating budget for fund balances to remain at 25% going forward. So this is something that the committee has talked about and may need to address going forward. This is why we've been talking about this since this council sat or was established back in December of 2022. The this committee and the Economic Development Committee have had a number of work sessions. I last had a conversation with the County Executive specifically about this. I believe in December, we need to figure this out and it is here in the packet for all to see. So any other comments? Yeah, I think that from the perspective of the interplay between this and the transfers to the urban districts is a critical component. We have two different committees talking about this transfer. Just so happens, two of us are on both of the committees. But it's one of those issues where if the chair and I weren't on Econ, there would be a big disconnect. And so I think that when we look at what is the long term sustainability of the PLD, that's one question that needs to be answered. And then whatever happens with that transfer, that's a separate related discussion, but they really are entwined. And so I just wanted to bring that to light. I suspect we'll probably have another joint committee work session after the budget to try and get ahead of this. And other staff recommends approving all other items as recommended by the executive including compensation, annualizations and other required personal costs as well and nondiscretionary operating cost increases for the parking district services budget. That's right. With that objection we will. And then that brings us to the last item on today's agenda, the operating budget for the Rockville parking district NDA. Mr. Chair, if I could just make a point before we move on to that. Please. I just want to acknowledge Council Member support to DOT yesterday with the loss of one of our employees in the line of duty. Mr. Ruiz Banks was driving Route 55 bus yesterday when he suffered a heart attack and miraculously and heroically through his own effort while he was suffering that episode. He pulled the bus to the side, engaged the brake, got it out of drive before he became unable to respond. And I also want to give a note of thanks to the customers who are aboard that bus, who called 911 and got our Fire and Rescue Service to the scene as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, Mr. Banks didn't recover from the episode and passed away later that day at Holy Cross Germantown Hospital. And we've been doing what we can to support the operation staff who are deeply affected by the loss of their colleague and our Gathersburg Depot and also the family who obviously it's a large family living in the Emory Grove area and obviously that family is suffering greater than we are as an employer, but nonetheless I wanted to acknowledge his actions and the loss of a loved colleague in that operation. Thank you, Director Conklin. And our sympathy goes out with Mr. Banks' family and recognize the heroic act of undergoing a life-threatening incident. The last thing was Bell, I apologize. Sorry, I'm a mistake. Recognizing the heroism of making sure his passengers were safe and those around him May his memory be everlasting Now on to the last item which is the Rockville parking district NDA. Thank you. The county executive recommends a $430,000 budget for the Rockville parking district NDA for FY26. This is a $3100 or 0.7% increase over the FY25 approved operating budget for this NDA. This NDA is the result of a memorandum of understanding between the county and the city of Rockville for the use of parking in the Rockville Town Center for employees of the Rockville Memorial Library. This $3,100 increase is the result of an annualized increase in the payment and lieu of taxes, which is $3,100 higher than the FY25 appropriated amount. The charge for the employee parking and the debt service payment are unchanged. And Miss Deborah Lambert from OMB as the analyst responsible for this item is here to answer any questions. I don't think we have any questions so with that we'll accept the county executive's recommendation. Thank you that concludes the transportation related items for today. Indeed thank you very much for today's conversation thank you to the department for all the work that you continue do. Keep in our drivers, pedestrians, bicyclists, and every member of our community safe and able to commute throughout our community. With that we're adjourned. A BD-1070 AM on the US-29 corridor and and on county cable Montgomery. There are no reported incidents, accidents or delays on the major or ways of Montgomery County at this time. We will continue to monitor transportation conditions throughout the day. When those conditions change, this station is updated, with up-to-date transportation information to aid you in your daily commute. You are listening to the Montgomery County Transportation Management Centers Travelers Advisory Radio System, WPBJ590AM on the Interstate 270 corridor.