This meeting is being recorded. Good morning. This is the Council's March monthly meeting. The proceeding this morning is a hybrid meeting which is held in person and via WebEx teleconference. It is also available to the public via video web via video stream online at the County Council website. At this time I will do a roll call of our council members, Dr. Jones. Morning, everyone. Good morning, Mr. Rigby. Present. Ms. Young. Good morning. And Mr. Youngman. Here. Oh, sorry. We will now proceed with our agenda. We have five items on it. This morning, first up is federal and state budget impact on Howard County. Next is Council Resolution 63 2025, the amendment to the IAC submission. Third and fourth are spending affordability advisory committee report and bond rating update. Following that, we have our various reports. If who do we have for Federal and State Impact on Budget? We have Mr. Michael Beard online. Oh online. Okay. Welcome. More. There he is. Can you hear me okay? Yes, I can Mr. Reads. Sorry. We asked initially a whole host of people to attend today's meeting on this subject, but understandably given that the state legislature still is in the midst of session. That was a difficult call to return. But thank you, Mr. Beard, for being here with us. I don't know if you have prepared remarks that you'd like to deliver to us or a message from Miss Leraman or whatever you'd like to do. I'm happy to give you the floor. Absolutely, thank you so much. Good morning and thank you, Chair Walsh, Vice Chair, Jones and members of the Howard County Council. For the record, my name is Michael Beard. Nice serve as the Director of Intergovernmental Affairs for Comptroller Book Fair, then. And although the counselor cannot be here herself, I'm grateful for the opportunity to address the body. I understand that the council opportunity to address the body. I understand that the Council wanted to address the impact of ongoing federal actions and to stay budget outlook. So I'm just wanting to jump right into it. So at the federal level, we're seeing several changes that can impact our state's economy at the recent March Board of Revenue Estimates meeting, the Comptroller, and other board members that address this point directly. We like to highlight a few of the findings from that meeting that may be relevant to Maryland's economy as a whole. There's a lot of uncertainty right now surrounding federal government actions and the rapid reduction in the federal workforce. And we know that the federal workers rather play a large role in Maryland's economy. Further reductions in federal employment and spending will have a slowdown on Maryland's economy. That's just a fact. We've seen a similar trend from past federal reductions where Maryland's labor market and withholding income attacks were slowed down and we can expect that the extent will be likely greater this time around given the rate in which the reductions are expanding. Looking at data from Tax Year 2023, we know that Howard County produces almost 9.7 percent of the state's share of the gross income from federal wages, but then average federal civilian salary of $129,580. You know, it's not just federal workers that will have an impact. It's also the reduction in federal contracts as well. Federal contracts make up 10% of Maryland's private GDP. We should also be looking at the reduction in government spending, like grants and hospital reimbursements that have direct impacts on nonprofits, organizations across the state, as well as state government agencies that impact civilians directly. While this data is from past year, 2023 does give us some insight, and we are actively monitoring federal data and data tax data to estimate future impacts as well. Last thing I would like to note on the federal side is that BRE or Board of Revenue Estimates lowered the tax year 2025 with holding forecasts, predicted growth to about 2.4 percent. I was lowered from the previous lowering from 3.1 at the December 2020 meeting. And this was voted on at this March meeting last week. Now, you can and you do have the ability to view the full presentation. You can just visit mdbr e.gov and some also happy to share that link with you guys after this meeting as well. On the state side, the Bureau of Revenue estimates now to separate bodies technically, recently released an analysis of the state's 2025 or the budget reconciliation of financing that proposed changes to the personal income tax. Few key takeaways from the BRE analysis to mention, you know, high income tax payers have more deductible expense, mortgage interest, as well as property taxes, and a more and make more charitable contributions. As a result, most lower income tax payers claim that standard deduction with most higher income taxpayers itemized introduction. By eliminating itemized deductions, the birth of 2025, effectively the couples, the state from federal changes to these deductions. So I think the tax tax cut and jobs act of 2020 2017, that is being we look at right now, but should this proposal pass, you know, move forward itemized deductions to get removed, you may see an increase in state taxes revenue at about 5.2% for the, for Howard County. I also want to add that jurisdictions with high levels of middle class earners like Howard County and others in Central Maryland, Baltimore County and all the county for example, use dynamite reduction rather than standard. So, you know, this is seen at that highest increase of all counties, Howard County specifically. In addition, local income tax revenues would increase from the changes in itemized reductions. It should be noted that these estimates are based on 2023 tax year data as we are currently collecting taxes from 2024 tax year. I would also like to note that the analysis conducted by the BRRE on the buffer is based off of the original proposal. As we all know, that will likely look very different towards the end of session as it moves through the different chambers. I do want to just acknowledge the incredible work that the Bureau is doing, the Bureau of Revenue estimates are doing, and the Comptials Office in developing these estimates. And we look forward to continuing to work in partnership with you guys and have you answer any questions that I can. And if I can, we'll be the first to admit, I'm not a non-adconnist, but I'm happy to answer any questions that I can. And if I don't have an answer for you, I'm happy to pass that over to our folks in the library. Thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. Baird. Can I ask before I turn it over to my colleagues one, one clear, not even clarification. I think I heard you. I just was surprised. Did you say that very early in your statement that in 2023, 9.7% of the state's federal income. that. 9.7% of the state's federal income tax or I'm sorry state income tax came from federal work federal workers not Yes, so how can I produce is almost 9.7% of the state's share of the gross income from federal Okay, the share okay good. Okay, good. Because I was like, oh dear. Okay, that makes my money more and more and so much better. Relevant to that though, is there an estimate on contractors? And Lincoln's gonna be nine percent of the trick. Yeah, not yet, but I'm happy to make a note of that and run it up to the folks at GRE. Thank you. Any questions? Go ahead, Miss Ann. Thank you for attending our meeting this morning. We really do appreciate it. I am wondering and thank you for giving us a little bit of a Howard County picture here. Back up to the state reading the Department of Legislative Services report over the weekend, I am wondering how you all are viewing this session's budget and what you think might, and this is just a guess because I know you're not in the governor's office, but what you think will happen to the blueprint, the current blueprint in the future. It looks like it will continue to contribute mightily to a potential deficit. So I will say and I think our folks at the Bureau would appreciate me saying this. That we, as the governor. Go ahead and say it. Yes, and just think that's made us we we do aim to be neutral, especially neutral in any of these analysis as it relates to the budget. So we don't try to make any guesses ahead of actions coming out of the general assembly and session. So I know that doesn't answer your question. That does not answer my question, no. But it is vital to our roles as the state's revenue estimators to stay in the trolley situation. What do you look at, for example, what the state is hoping to do right now, which is put more of the burden of some of the state. Some of the programs that are right now funded by the state, such as half of the teachers pensions and a big portion of the special education expenses. And paying 100% for the state assessor's office. Are you trying to examine if we know that there's going to be an income tax increases and decreases for each local jurisdiction? how that will be offset by what the state legislature is planning right now as of today. And I don't think those numbers have changed dramatically over the last two, three months. Have you all done that analysis yet? Not to my immediate knowledge, knowledge nothing that I have seen, but that is something I'd be happy to follow up with the bureau on. That would be great. Yes, and of course there are rumors flying about about other items that the state legislature is considering asking the counties to pay for, which I think is obviously very concerning, to just take the issue and throw it into 24 jurisdictions. But I can see that you're not going to respond to that either. So and hey, I'm not going to force you to do that, but I am just making that observation. Absolutely. I'm going to say. Mr. Yammon, you have any questions? Mr. Rikby. Thank you. you. Mr. Beard, I appreciate you touching on the impacts that this, I guess, massive layoff approach will have in Maryland. But I also wondered if you'd be able to touch on some of the immigration approach that the administration is taking. I know that your office is really focused on the need for housing construction as well as childcare. And both of those industries rely heavily on immigrants under the TPS programs and other programs. And since they've ended the TPS for, I think it's 30,000 people from Venezuela and looking at other countries, have you studied what that impact will be on those really, really important sectors that rely on immigrants for their workforce? Yeah, I mean, I think the immigration report that our office put out, I want to say last April, don't fully quote me on that timeframe. Really show the positive impact in the immigrant community has on these days of kindness as a whole, especially also you know just our general population base. If I remember correctly and there was a note in there that indicated that we would have been a population would have been in that, I wanna say a deficit or a drop, if not for the immigrant community coming into it as well, just general benefits to the economy in general. I'm definitely happy to share that report with you as well for some greater context, but that report does really go into detail on some of the great benefits that the immigrant community has to the state's economy in general. And that's something that we've also been sharing with our federal delegation members as well. Now, I really appreciated the report on immigration and on childcare. And that's kind of what led to my big concern is that if we're ending legal pathways for people to immigrate and come and work in our communities and live, then what happens to these very necessary and essential workforces that do very necessary essential work. But I guess that's kind of one of the things that we'll have to wait and see what those approaches are. Yeah. Yeah. It's, I mean, I think this is the first everyone that this is a very ever changing situation that we're in right now. And we're just kind of all collectively monitoring as closely as possible the changes that are happening. you know attempting to I guess figure out how that impact what that impact will look like long-term. But there is something that these are all things that we are obviously tracking very closely. Dr. Jones do you have any questions for the Comptroller's Office? I'll take that as a no. I thought I was unmuted, but I hit the wrong button. No, not for me. Thank you. All right. Thanks. We're going to go another round now with Ms. Yan. Okay. Mr. Baird. in the Department of Legislative Services report, it shows can you put Mr. Beard's face back up so we can can we see him again? That would be from the that would be from the control room. Mr. Beard, could you say hello to us please? Yes. There we go. Now we're seeing double of you. So the Department of Legislative Services stated that federal employment and contracting drive Maryland's economy, the state's 161,000 direct federal civilian jobs, and 250,000 Maryland residents working in Washington, D.C. generate billions in taxable wages. You just mentioned that your office is following this very closely. Do you have any idea at this point as to how many federal employees have truly been laid off as opposed to your fired your back, your fired your back, your fired your back? Yes, no. There is an estimate that was released at the work of Revenue Estimates meeting last week that is predicting that we are probably going to see, or we have seen upwards of 29,000. And that number is broken down in the, it's broken down by the various different buckets of the probationary, for example, et cetera. And it's only looked at at a statewide level, not at a, not at a jurisdictional level, but we are,, those are something that again, again, as we're looking into the larger predictive models, those are items that the Bureau is looking at closely. So as a follow-up question, I think you might have already told me that you won't be able to answer this, but I am curious if you have any estimate or knowledge about how many of the federal employees, particularly in Anorundal, Howard, and parts of Prince George's County, are Department of Defense employees, because we of course have very large defense installations in our area and I don't know if that means that they're safer than other groups because it does appear that everybody is game in this administration but typically that has been an area that the Republican Party has been concerned about. So we don't have an estimate on the number of individuals that work on at various different departments. I do know that the Department of Labor, State Department of Labor, rather has a overview of buckets on a statewide level not on a county or jurisdictional level. And what's And what do you happen to know what those buckets might fall into? The deal, deal these specifically not offhand, but I'm going to follow up, I'm happy to follow up with you on that one. Okay, that would be great. I would appreciate that. And when you all, I know that the Department of Legislative Services is the one who usually does a lot of this fiscal forecasting. But how involved is the comptroller's office and what it is that you're trying to accomplish this year with this budget. Are you constantly saying to the legislature, we think that taxes and Whatever other types of, you know, revenues are not going to allow us to do X in the coming year. And we're going to have to cut even further. Where are you on a daily conversation with the administration to let them know what you're getting and what you're hearing. We release the various analysis as they come out. So for instance, the Board of Revenue Estimates analysis of the burfo was sent directly to the governor's office as well as to the Department of Management budget. So those that information just goes to them as it's done and when we produce additional estimates and analysis of the burfa it will be sent to them as well. Do you post that publicly so that people like us can also, you do, okay. It's on our website, it's on our website. And again, I'm happy to follow up and send any of the various links book to the boards meeting as well as the Bureau's analysis of the Bertha directly to you, guys, after this. That would be great. Yeah, I'd really appreciate that. The more information we have, the better informed will be our budget, of course, like all the other local jurisdictions will be arising in just a matter of weeks now. And we need to be as well informed as possible about what can and can't be done. Absolutely. Happy to share that information with you. Two things. One, while it's impossible now to know all these employment numbers, or is anybody doing stress tests on this If it's 1% of federal workers, if it's 4% of federal workers, I mean, there should be a model somewhere where we can plug that in and quantify it. Well, if we know there's 161,000 federal workers and that 29,000 have been laid off. That's somewhere like 21%, 22%. But you said before, you know, they're going to lay it off. Maybe they're coming back. I mean, what if the FBI headquarters doesn't move to PG County? Like, have we quantified that? Or are we just kind of sitting here complaining about it instead of trying to at least put some numbers to it. I... I... I can't... This is what economists do. Stress tests. Yeah, I can't personally speak to what the Bureau's modeling efforts or modeling strategies. but I am happy to relay that to them and to try and identify if those type of stress tests are included as part of the modeling. I will be asking our county people to do the same thing, so it's not just picking on you. you mentioned how exposed Howard County is to it. And as far as stress tests to Howard County, what else is happening in anapolis right now to, I mean, obviously the budget deficit's terrible right now. It could get worse. You know, this eliminating itemized deductions is probably the biggest thing they could do to further drive businesses and hide net worth people out of the state, which is going to have a huge impact on Howard County because a lot of them live in Howard County. We've looked at the immediate revenue picked up pickup, but has there been any sort of projection of as we start to lose those businesses, as we lose the sole proprietors that run all their businesses expenses through their tax return, as they then form LLCs so that they can go back to deducting, like, is any of this, and I know it wouldn't be done in your office, it would be legislative services, but do you know if any of that's happening? I don't know, and I would, you know, wouldn't want to speak for a department of the services on that and what they're doing there. But what I, I guess, what I would say is that, you know, and I mentioned this in the, in my remarks, but, you know, the budget proposals going through the process and the initial proposal has already been adjusted in some ways with the supplemental that was released recently. And we'll likely look very different towards it. I think this is also just a way to see what the proposal changes if any from the House and the Senate look like. Are you hearing about any more cost shifts other than the ones that Miss Young went through the ones we've been talking about? I have engines, etc. No, I have not. Okay. Do you have your ear to the ground, Mr. Barrett? He's a fricking neighbor's office. I think we have our government liaison though from the administration. Are you comfortable coming up now and sharing what you know? morning. It feels like afternoon, but yeah, it is morning. It's already been a week. Good morning, councilmembers. My name is Maureen and I serve as the director of government affairs for County Executive Ball. In ongoing conversations with the Maryland Mico Maryland Association of counties, there have been some floated DLS proposal, some of which present future cost shifts settlements of wrongful convictions. So I'm not sure, I will just preface and say, I'm not necessarily sure. There are a lot of things being floated in lots of conversations, but every week there just seems to be different conversations about potentials, and I do know that that is one thing that DLS has put forth as a potential option is the future cost sharing of settlements of cases that have been found for wrongful convictions. But unclear of how they will determine what that shift is, which yeah, I'll just I'll stop there. Any kind of wrongful conviction and like if anybody who went to court and then got there. Yeah, so the Walter Lomax Act which was passed in I think 2021. Michael, I'm not sure a you have the exact date, but there's legislation passed. Yeah, there's legislation passed that folks who had received wrongful convictions can move forward and sue the state. And there's also all the liability from the juvenile facilities, right? I believe so, yes. The abuse at H at HIKI, you know, I mean, it could be $500 million. Yes. It looked, there were 3,500 claimants so far with a maximum of $890,000 per settlement amount. That doesn't mean everybody's going to get $890,000, but it does mean that's a pretty scary number. And I just, and 500 million came out of my mouth. I've talked to myself. I think it's more than that. That would say, every person, if we just said, OK, one million. And every person got the maximums. Right. So here is a state agency that Howard County's never had a role in running and operating that that messed up is incurred incurring all of these expenses and Not only does it screw up Obviously the budget state level which impacts us indirectly, but now we're going to shift some of those costs that we have to take out of our school system and out of everything that we have to do here. And I still don't see any major expense cuts at the state level. It's just shifting bigger percentages that we already spend. Well, that's a good question for you, Ms. Elm Sartre. And actually, Michael, I know that BPW are typically the ones that are tasked with determining what that award settlement amount is. Can you provide any further details on that? The Board of Public Laws. And that's the apologies. Yeah, that's specific settlement. Right now, that's specific settlements, but just future settlements and maybe how they determine what the award amount is. They don't want you responsible for determining the award amounts for all of the, I guess they would be called the plaintiffs that come forth. Yeah. Generally, I have a general idea of it. And what our Board of Public Works director is the expert on that and I would be more comfortable having her talking to her about that and kind of reporting back on the process. Got it. And the only reason I really brought it up and I don't want to deviate is in a half hour we're going to be meeting with our spending affordability folks and while we everybody focuses on this year and maybe next year you know we're going to be talking a little bit about what the next 10 years look like and I think that a NAPA list is going to be the gift that keeps on giving for the next many years and taking. Yeah, not giving, yeah. Not giving. Giving giving. Yes. And Councilmember Young, you'd initially run through the list of shifts that had actually been put on paper. But in addition to additional conversations from DLS had mentioned expanding that 50% cost shifts for teacher pensions to 100% of the cost shift. Did I miss that one? I'm sorry. And just to make sure we're putting a little, you know, exclamation point on that, it includes the teacher pensions at the community college as well. Correct. So, yeah. So for folks filing, you know, just proposals. So for folks filing budget, if spending affordability says we have a $58 million increase in revenue we can spend Well, 13 of it just evaporated overnight with these cost shifts more than that. Yeah, 15 Yeah, yeah, so you know that leaves the counting executive in the county council 30-ish 40-ish on our best day additional funds this year I Think the school systems request is 110 So that's three or four times what we're gonna have And again, that's why I wouldn't know if a nap was just thinking about shifting anything more to us. Right. Because it's just. Well, other than settlements that we should not have any responsibility for. And I can say that. I know it's harder for you to say it, but none, we should have no responsibility for that. Okay. And granted that might not be in the final proposals and what they move forward with. These are just amongst the conversations and it is that the pension cost shift is 50. It's currently 50-50 and that's say think about six million. I think it might be 6.2. So if that shifts to 100, then it's more than double. Right. So yeah. Not good. Go ahead and say. But you know, as you're part of MECO and you're part of some of the ongoing conversations, I'm sure in our next meeting they'll be able to provide additional insight of what's being discussed. We have what less than 30 days of session left to go. So I know that those conversations are still ongoing. The budget still has to get to the Senate as well. So. I think probably the biggest elephant in the room right now, Mr. Baird and Ms. Evans Arthur, that Medicaid, I mean, if we end up having to take on a huge Medicaid portion of payment in a position, a negative position. started off in a negative position, have been working hard to make up for it, putting a lot of their, or at least some of this, on the 24 local jurisdictions. And now with potential liability for Medicaid that we haven't had in the past, and my understanding, and I don't know if you know this figure, Mr. Baird, that 30% of the people who live in Maryland are Medicaid. Is that do you know if that's, I thought I saw that somewhere, that's a big number. Yeah, no, that, that, it wouldn't be a percentage that we would be tracking directly within our agency. Okay. Yeah. All right. Do you know? I'm not aware of that exact number, but I can look into it and circle back the percentage of. I would imagine that would be a pretty big create another pretty big hole. Sure. Yeah. I find that out. And And since we're forecasting, I'm not gonna ask you, Mr. Baird, okay? Ha ha ha ha. Since we are forecasting about what the future might hold. If there are big cuts in Medicaid, I have heard that the state legislature may be called back into session for a special session to determine what to do then with that particular whole. Is that your understanding as well? That's my understanding that there's that it's currently on the table. I think that it also determines what happens at the federal level. So that's mid-March. I know that that's like next week. It's a sweet option. Yeah. Mid-March is next week. I know. It's going to be close. So I think that's a potential. It's a potential every year. And definitely likely as to whether or not it would mean an extended session. I think signing dies, April 8, 7, whatever that first Monday is, whether or not it's extended or if there's a break in between and they're called back in before May. but the governor has the opportunity to do that. I'm not sure when they would end up making that determination as to whether or not an extended session is needed. So in the past they've done both, right? They've just continued and extended or they've had the break and come back. I would have to check and see, but I do know that it's I think it's been years since they've had a special session. I would have to look and and see whether or not it was just extended consecutively or if there was a break and they came back, but I think it's been quite a while since they. And the reason why I ask is we will be starting our budget process. So if it's if there's a break and they don't come back for another two weeks and then then they make decisions that could, again, impact our county budget. That's going to be that much more difficult for us to keep moving forward and do what we need to do on the local level. Right, correct. Since our budget is due at the end of May. Yes, you were correct. Yeah, okay. I just wanted to make sure that people understand. Yeah, Michael, do you know the timeline of when the governor's deadline of what he can call a special session and when that determination might be made? That's my knowledge there. I feel like that I think it's on the key dates of interest that I don't have in front of me, but I can get back to you. Okay. Yeah. I know that the most recent special session was coded related or pandemic related rather. So it wasn't super long. It was brief. Yeah, it was brief. It's brief. If you believe if you believe Google and AI, it says seven days before the end of the regular session. That would essentially be April 1st because typically the 90 days session doesn't go by calendar dates. It goes by actual days. So that would be April 1st or May 31st. May still be March 1st. May still be March 1rd. Yeah, the 7th is the last day of session. Yep. Okay. So like May 3rd. All right. I could. Thank you. Mr. Rebius so patiently. I know. I only jumped in to try and save Miss Walsh, the hassle of saying Mr. Rebius, there are times I appreciate your efforts. I wasn't going to say it. I think the point that we all agree on the council is that it's especially hard to take over more cost share from the state on things that we have no control over from a policy level when they continue to, when they make policy changes at the state and then pass on those costs to the locals, it's particularly hard. We could do all we can to raise our revenues to meet our local goals and when those are shifted from the state, that's what makes it really difficult. So. And I will say that this past week on Wednesday, our SAT committee and Dr. Sun presented to the state's delegation with board of education members invited as well to be able to provide and lay the framework for the challenges that the county is going to face that's coming year in their budget cycle. Thank you. Oh, we address that later today too. Are there Mr. Youngman, did you have another question? Or are you good? I. What's this? Do we know what the status of Kerwin is? I heard this week that now, instead of slowing things down, there might be a full pause. Is, is, no. I think that's still part of an ongoing conversation. OK. Yeah. Okay. Thanks. Ms. Evans, you mentioned the term and I've been struggling on morning for it. Dates of interest. Mr. Beard or Ms. Evans, like what are the upcoming markers at both the federal and the state level that you're looking to that will give you some indication good or bad. You know, this is working, this is not working, this is the next decision point. You know, those kinds of things. Actually, just because I don't have my computer in front of me, but Mr. Youngman or Council Member Youngman, since you're online the MGA's website right at the bottom, has like a dates of interest. Oh, it does. Okay, perfect. This thing's got like, cattle your blocks. Yes, exactly. Yup. And it tells you the last day for, you know, everything from crossover green bag appointments If I had my computer in front of me, I could tell you. But the council member has it pulled up, and then I can just send you the link. OK. But I'm thinking more like just walking into the meeting room this morning, the televisions out in the lobby say that the federal Congress is thinking about extending the government, you know, potential shutdown to at least September, I think it's said. September. Yeah. So like one of those kinds of markers that are going to give you confidence or despair as you see them arrive. I say at the federal level, the March 14th and on the federal team, correctly, is the deadline for passing a budget before we go into a potential shutdown. And you're correct, Chair, that the possible conversation right now is to do a CR or continue our solution in two September 30th, which they're currently looking at is a clean CR, which would effectively just be maintaining current spending levels. Okay, and I know that even though the budget proposals and are still being discussed both in the House and then as the budget prepares to go to The Senate waiting for that March 14 deadline at the federal level has been You know one of one of the reasons why the state has been waiting Okay as well All right, okay. This is the last question. Miss Young question singular Well, I just think that people should I'm looking at the Department of legislative services this handout that they gave us a couple weeks ago and in the state of Maryland Medicaid and M-CHIP which is for children shows that we spent out of general funds five billion dollars on that amount on those two programs. 763 million, we got federal funding of 9,488 million for a total cost of 15,332 million. million out of a $63 billion budget. So if you think about that number again, that's what about 20% of our budget? I can't do that. It's a big percentage of our budget. And if we're not getting that 9.5 billion from the federal government, and we are scrambling to close a $3 billion whole this year. I just don't, I just think people should start thinking about the potential consequences. Correct. Not getting our money from the federal government from Medicaid. Correct. And that presentation was provided by Vicki Gruber, the executive director of legislative service. She was great. Incredibly, incredibly informative. I don't know if you've already shared the link with council members, but we can definitely get that to you. But again, that was proposals as of, I think, January 25th. And so that doesn't even necessarily include everything that has been that's been added since then but it was a really great overview and assessment. Some things were broken down by county but I'm not sure if everything was broken down by specific county impacts that was listed in terms of those proposals but some things were. Yeah, that's big. Yeah, absolutely. I don't know how our state is going to absorb that. Right. Thank you both so much, Mr. Baird and MS7s for joining this conversation. We appreciate you fighting it out in Annapolis and figuring out what to do in this uncertain environment. Of course. Thank you. Don't you get a morning? Come on. Yes. Please send our regards to Miss Lerman. I will. Thank you all. Thanks, Mr. Red. Thank you for joining us this morning. All right. Next up, we have Council Resolution 63 2025. Miss Evans, if you'd like to rejoin us, I have worthy. All right, next up we have Council Resolution 63 2025. Miss Evans, if you'd like to rejoin us, I have you and Mr. Fishing as representing County Administration. We have from Howard County Public Schools, Mr. Cordell-Brown and Mr. Dan Loebly, if you're both speaking. Miss Mosley, I have you as Chair of Board of Education, and I'm not sure if any of your colleagues are online, Ms. Herod. Okay. Coming up to the mics, I'm not sure if you need more mics, are you moving for that purpose? So we have three more seats if you want to join us, Ms. Mosley and Mr. Lugley. So I'll provide some context while we're getting situated. On, I think it was Friday last two Fridays ago then, at least in my office as representative of the body and chair got the call from the administration that we would be seeing a late-filed resolution that is CR-63 for the purposes of re-upping our ass to the state funding agencies for the purpose of school's capital budget. And the general gist of that is, and unless you would like to continue Mr. Fricin, because you're the one who made that call, do you wanna go ahead and set the context? As I'm talking, I'm like, why am I saying he likes this part? I can Good morning chair of all should members of the council feel it's machine here on behalf of the administration The long story short Is that earlier this year we met with the IAC? Alongside our colleagues with the school system and learned about four and a half million dollars in State funding through the IAC that was allocated a set aside for Howard County that is available to us. That was not currently reflected in the IAC request that went to the council in the fall. And so working with the school system, we supported a request to amend that so that the county could provide matching funds to fully realize that 4.5 million in state dollars. And so that's reflected in about a 9.1 million dollar increase to the FY26 CIP for the school system. And so the Board of Education approved that amendment on their February 27th meeting. and it was after that, I believe the next day that we prepared to light file the resolution for a council for consideration. And our hope is the ISE meeting again on April 10th and items are due March 13th and so we are hoping to have this resolution approved by the council signed by the executive and over to the ISE to confirm that the governing body of Howard County has supported that amended request. Perfect, thank you. And so that was the purpose for scheduling this special legislative session on Wednesday. I was glad that a majority of you voted to accept that because that allowed us to have this conversation today and monthly meeting. And if there's no questions, I'll start it. Miss Mosley, you sent over a note about this meeting and the questions that might be asked. And I think I had two general areas of questions. And one related to how those five projects identified in the supplemental request were identified. And the second was kind of on a larger scale, which is how did we get here? I thought we'd had several conversations about maximizing state contributions to our capital funds program. And although I knew it was squishy around the Bill to learn act, I thought since Mr. Brown got here that I thought that was the word we used. We paced it out over the 20 or the years between now and 2031 to get it to maximize it. But so I will admit it was quite a shock to receive that call from the administration to say, we've got to mend this. Also, it's light. I mean, I'm certainly glad that we're going back and the state has extended us the the ability to do that and again, it's why we've Decided to convene a special meeting to not get in the way of that deadline, but those were my two general Categories of interest if if no one else wants to go first I'm not gonna answer the first question Good morning, Kono Brown, Chief Operating Officer with Howard County Public School system. When we met with the County Executive's Office and with the IAC, our board and the additional funding was identified, we were challenged to go back and look at our project priority list. And we did that. We looked at the building systems and the condition assessment that identified needs for systemic renovation projects. And we identified two of our roofing systems that with the size and scope of the projects, when we put them all together, would be able to leverage the funds that would be available. So with the forest ridge, elementary, and how a high roofing projects, along with the Althogen Elementary Elevator, and Oakland Mills High, GMACC and Reservoir High, GMAC projects, the cost of those projects were such that would allow us to leverage the funds. That was available. The condition of those two roofing projects, when looking at the state assessment, the conditions assessment that the state performed for Howard County, Forest Ridge, and Howard High are the ninth and 10th worst roofing system that we currently have. And looking at our maintenance records, they rise to the top as the next roofing jobs that we would move forward given the size of those two projects. And Aflten is one of our, has one of our, you know, worst elevators. And then the Oakland Mill is high and reservoir high. We have the gym AC projects. We have a list. And they were the next two that were due. So those five projects were of the appropriate size and scope, you know, where we could leverage the state funds and the matching funds from the county. So that's why those projects were presented for consideration. Okay, let's stop there then. You want to add something? Yeah, I'd like to add that it's not built to learn funding. It's EGRC funding. Which is part of CIP? Yeah. Yes. But this isn't built to learn. Yes, I know that. But I've had all the conversation about maximizing state funding was we can't necessarily maximize built to learn. But it never was mentioned we're not even trying to maximize CIP. That was not in my, I had no idea until that call on Friday that we as a matter either of this year and that's the next category of questions or as a matter of continuing operation are leaving CIP funds with whatever other alphabet we're putting behind it, EGRC in this case, if we're leaving that on the table year by year. So different. I think Mr. O'Lebally can talk more to acronym EGRC. Can you just tell people what that stands for? Enrollment Growth Trailers. This is Dan Lubley, Executive Director of Capital Planning and Construction. stands for Enrol McGrillth and Reload. for enrollment growth trailers. This is the Dan Lugel executive director of capital planning and construction. It stands for enrollment growth and relocatable classrooms. So the different projects and the different funding sources, they have to be allocated in a way that they are able to use that funding, right? So that's the other element of this. to learn has its own requirements, EGRC has its own requirements, things like that. So that's another thing to keep in mind. OK. Back to the list, right? There are in the list, there's five projects total. Two are roofs. One is an elevator and two are gym ACs, right? If I heard you write Mr. Brown, the roof parties were 9 and 10 on a state list. When looking at the FCI, when the state did the conditions assessment for all schools throughout, and they provided us with the FCI data. Looking at those, they are ninth and tenth on the list as far as from the worst to the best of our roofing systems. Yeah, I know, yes. I mean, is there a county list, or do we defer to the state list the state list? No, we have the facilities conditions assessment that the state conducted a couple of years ago where they evaluated all school facilities in the state for each of the 24 LEAs and they provided each of the LEAs that data. and that data is what we use along with our maintenance records and some other internal information to determine which roof we're going to go first, which HVAC we would move forward and our request for capital funding and support from our local government for matching funds. Okay, so what maintenance records and internal information did you use in addition to the state FCI to make that choice of your intent? Yeah, maintenance staff that have work orders where they have roofing issues that surface that they have to go and to correct. So our maintenance team took a look at the state information, took a look at their local knowledge in terms of the condition, and then they recommended those to, you know, for this supplemental request. Okay, so did the superintendent and the school administration on your side or did the board select Forest Ridge and Howard Hyde Rouge my team selected those two, okay, and you made that recommendation We made that recommendation as we do for you know all of our projects Mm-hmm. I'm through the superintendent to the board. We recommend that these five projects be considered Okay, and the school board accepted that obviously or we wouldn't be looking at it correct Was there any conversation with the administration about are these the okay roof projects or is there any back and forth between the board or the administration and the board and the schools administration and the county administration? We presented the information to the board, had conversations with board members. Okay, but what about? And then with the county executives team, we forwarded the list to them and then they accepted our recommendation. Okay, so it didn't change once it went from board to administration. Okay, what where would we find what? Okay, where would we find one through eight? What's on the list for one through eight? On the roof, on the FCI roof list. We have the state's data that shows the results of their facility's conditions assessment. I mean, what kind of information did you send to the board? Like, surely they ask questions like, why these two schools? They don't ask any questions. There's no backup data. The backup data is our facility's conditions information. Okay, so was that presented to the board? The recommendation was presented to the board. Okay, but not like a list of one through 10 and a circle around nine and 10. I mean, board members have seen the state's assessment data. Okay. Okay, so where would council members find that list of one through 10, roofing? I mean, we provide to the council if that's what you request. Yes, that's what I requested when I sent the email over like that kind of information. That would be helpful. It's not in my, I don't have the ability to go into a board. I mean, I just don't, I try it even and I get caught up in some map where. I would be more than willing to sit down with any council member to review with you the facilities conditions data that the state provides for us. And as mentioned at previous work sessions of the state, they evaluate our schools on a continuing basis. So every school facility is re-evaluated, say about every three to four years, then they present every LEA with that updated information. Okay. Right. So the recommendations that we're presenting to our board currently, it's just based on facilities data, our work order information. But as we move forward, as we had already discussed, we're gonna be continuing with additional evaluations, space, efficiency, and things of that nature. So we can have more comprehensive data that would not only look at the age of our facilities, but also how our facilities are supporting our programs. Programmatic, yeah. Yep, we've had this conversation many times. So for example, then our fiscal year 2026 capital budget that already was approved by the IAC, that is based on the state FCI. Some of that information, some of it is. And this, right, Mr. Brown, I mean, you're making it seem like it's very objective, but that's going to be a different answer. I think we're going to go to elevator. Is that going to be a different answer? Is that going to be a different answer? It's a different answer when we go to what we approved back in November. No. Okay. Maybe you'll stop sighing audibly if you get a turn in asking a question. I think it's the approach more than the... We just approved and just had a discussion around the need for a local assessment. We know that there are things that are not captured in the state FCI. And we have said and heard multiple times in this forum and many others that using the state FCI as a single data point would be foolish. And- Well, not using the state FCI, though. We're picking 9 and 10 on the FCI. You are making the argument. I don't understand a question that says, how did we pick? And you say we picked 9 and 10. If you are using the state FCI, why wouldn't it be 1 and 2? He said they were using the maintenance cost. So if I could and I'm not trying to get into a confrontation or I just give me pieces of paper so I can look at them. And again, I can sit down with you and I can show you all that information if you like to have a meeting to discuss it But we're looking at the conditions index we look at our maintenance information and also we look at this size and scope of the project How much will cost? Because some other projects are cost more and we wouldn't be able to put together a recommendation that you see in front of you. So it also includes how much it would cost to complete the work. So if I have a budget of 4.4 from the state, the matching dollars from the local government, how much we have available, the nine million roughly. We looked at several projects that are on our list and said this will qualify. This makes sense. How about this? How about that? And put together a recommendation for projects that are on our list that we can recommend to the superintendent. Okay. Do you have another question, Ms. Rigby? Your line of questioning seems to be that you believe that they should exclusively be using the FCI. No, my line of questioning is that they should be exclusively using an objective, transparent methodology, whatever it is. But we just had this conversation in November. We just had this conversation in November. And I can't find any public documents showing me why these five projects were on this emergency resolution that I have to call into special session on Wednesday to vote on. We're going to do it, right? And that is not the stance like we have to do it. And again, you're looking for like the ending and we're not there yet. So. But you had you have to be able to justify your process now. I know we're going to improve it. And I have to be a justifiable process now. And it has to be transparent. Like, why is it a riddle? I don't think it's a riddle. I mean, that's just the way I'm looking at it here. I don't think it's a riddle. I think there's a couple of, you know, data points that we looked at and we identified two roofing projects that were of the appropriate size and scope and condition that would be eligible for state funding. And we recommended those two. We looked at our elevators and we recommended an elevator. And then we looked at our ACs and our gymnasiums because that's also another initiative that we have and we recommended two of those. Our needs are huge when we're looking at maintaining a portfolio of approximately non-mean square feet of space, 70 schools and some administrative buildings. And our needs are huge. So this is just representative of some of our roofing systems that are poor condition, an elevator that's in poor condition, two gymnasiums that do not have air conditioning. And we've been moving forward to provide air conditioning in our high school facilities. So we said let's finish those and that was a conversation that I had with Mr. Loubly and with Mr. Sovje and staff to determine schools that we believe will be eligible. And then we presented that to the superintendent and we presented that to our board and we're having come into the county executive's office and now we have an conversation here. It's not trying to be secretive or anything like that. That hasn't been anything that I've done since I've been here. So it was a recommendation that I move forward to the superintendent. So now you're asking me, not the board, Cornell Brown, and I believe that we gave five sound recommendations or needs that we have, that we believe our priorities that we should address, given the amount of funds that are now become available. OK, I'll come back to now became available. You have a question, Miss Young, go ahead. I respect your position, Mr. Brown, and Mr. Lutley, that you went through this list and found the best projects to fit this amount of money and that the board made its decision. And I also respect the fact that that's how these decisions are made for these small amounts of money when we happen to get it. And I appreciate your honesty and transparency again and again in this conversation in describing how it was that you came to these decisions. I do have one question. How did we end up qualifying for the EGRC funding? I assume that we didn't obviously know that we were going to qualify for it previously, or we would have applied for that money previously. So the EGRC funding that the state identified are funds that we qualified for in prior fiscal years. And there are funds that we were unable to utilize based off of the priorities that were put forward in prior fiscal years. And wasn't it 250 trailers? You had to have 200? So there's two different ways to qualify for enrollment growth and relocatable classrooms. One, your enrollment growth is at least 150% of the state average, which is how Howard County Public School System actually qualified. Oh. Or you have an average of 250 relocatable classrooms over a five-year period. We need to buy nine more. That way we'll always qualify. It's actual classrooms not just quantity of units because if you use a unit for administrative it does not qualify for that. Yeah okay so can you then the way that we qualified? Can you go back to a little more detail about that? So with our enrollment growth prior to the pandemic and the way that the state looks at it at a five-year average, we continue to qualify for the enrollment growth and relocatable classrooms based on the enrollment growth. growth and because the state looks at a five-year average, it extended through or into and past the pandemic years as well. Okay, so this would be our last year, probably. FY 24 was our last year of qualifying for enrollment growth and relocatable classrooms. That's why these funds were in prior fiscal years. Okay, so that's it for us on this. Unless we- Unless we start to grow- Unless we start to grow again. Yes. Or get nine more portable class rooms. So, okay. Which would not be our intake. Okay, all right, just putting that out there. All right. because we're working on the long run. You have any questions? Any questions? Dr. Jones, do you have any questions? No, we're moving in conversation. No questions to me. Okay, thank you. I'm gonna go back to the list then. So next up is an elevator list or an elevator project. How is that selected? In the same manner, we have elevators. We have the conditions index. We have our maintenance record. And we identified the elevator that we believe needed to be replaced over other elevators. Did that change over time? What that elevator project was? Did that change over time? Yeah. At the beginning when you found out that there was additional funds and we're arriving at the conclusion. There was some, there was an elevated that we identified and then when we went back and looked at our records, we said no, this is not the elevator. We replaced it with the afterton elementary school. Okay. Based on age, based on maintenance work order data, our facilities team realized that the afterton elementary elevator was in need of replacement over, I can't remember what the other elevator was. Okay, so what number on the state FCI index for elevators was Athleton? Athleton is number 10 on that list. Okay, I mean was it the school system, the administrations, your department's decision to do five projects instead of one or two of this kind and two of this kind. So again, they were looking at the cost of projects, the condition, the available money. And then that was the recommendation that the team advanced. Yes. Okay. And so then last up are the two air conditioning units and the gems. Are there how manyms we have 13 gyms, right? Yeah, I think these are the last two maybe. So every one of our school has a gym, not just our high schools. I know, but I'm talking about high schools. So high schools, yes, we have 13 main gyms and then each high school has an auxiliary gym as well. And these are the, I believe these are the last two high schools that are state eligible for funding. What does that mean? Because there are some high schools that we can't put in air conditioning unless we full fund it. So with the state, there are many criteria that go into it, one of which is the age. So if it has had renovation or work done with state funds and within the last 15 years it is not state eligible. That is work. In the gym or just in the school at all? In the area that you're looking to do the work. So in this case it would be in the gym or specifically with those HVAC units. So if the HVAC, even if the gym itself was not renovated but the HVAC unit was replaced within the last 15 years. It is no longer state eligible until after that 15 years. So how many high schools are on that list? These are the last two that are down to being state eligible. I don't recall off top of my head the quantity of high schools that would still need an air conditioning. Do you know, Mr. President? I don't know off the top of my head, But I know these were the last two that were qualified. So we said there are there up next. Okay. need an air conditioning. Do you know, Mr. President? I don't know off the top of my head, but I know these were the last two that were qualified. So we said they're up next. OK. Is that on an FCI list from the state? So the AC, we're providing AC that was not part of the conditions assessment because AC didn't exist. So that was an initiative that we identified so it's a need to provide air conditioning and we've been moving forward with upgrading our gymnasiums to have AC. Okay. And so these two gems, now I'm forgetting what they are, Oakland Mills and Reservoir High. Reservoir High did not get built with air conditioning in its gym. Those are the two remaining state eligible high schools. Are there state eligible middle schools and elementary schools? There are are I'm in speaking with our building maintenance and looking at our use of community or Community use of facilities It was decided that we should focus on high schools first and march down since high schools have Athletics as well as community use which is why we're looking at high schools or to continue as mr. Brown said with that and close out high schools first. Okay, and here's my last question on the selection of items, and I mean, again, I wrote this to you last week. Oklahoma's high school is the next renovation project on our FY Capital budget without an objective analysis that we would ideally have in the future based on legislation this council has passed. Why would we be spending money there when we're planning to renovate it if there are other schools in need and could actually meet the state eligibility requirements as well? We had that conversation internally and given the amount of time we will take to finally get to the high school. We didn't think that seven, eight years without having air conditioning in the gym was a right decision. So we decided to move forward with that. Also the conversations that I've had with our maintenance team is our ability to repurpose equipment as well. So, you know, we talked about being able to take that unit and repurpose it to another facility, you know, when the time comes. So we made the decision to move forward with that project. So you'll be able to take HVAC equipment from one gym and move it to another when the renovation renovation at Oklahoma else happens. That's correct because it will be around halfway through its life expectancy so that's a strategy that we decided to deploy. Okay. All right. Another point of confusion for me. Does anyone have any other questions? Is...go ahead Miss, miss whatever, Rigby. So I think it's a bit around the repurposing efforts, but when that happens, then would that be considered wherever it goes, it would then start the clock over for that 15,16 year HVAC piece is that correct? No not for the equipment. Okay. No. Okay it's only when it's new. Yes. Okay great. I really appreciate it. I know we've had a lot of these discussions and I know that have you been here a year yet? No, six months in the day will make, what, 18 days? Well, I really appreciate all those six months because as you can see, we have a need for wise and thoughtful and clear leadership and I think that you provide that. So thank you very much. And we're going to get better when we get more data and we'll lay out what our long-term strategies are and we'll get more and more transparent in time. But it does take some time for us to move forward with the evaluation and then to analyze the data, present the data. Yeah, and I think in the future it's just sending an email with, these are the four, this is why that would certainly probablyay a lot of the confusion ahead of time. So thank you. Understood. OK, I'll go back to my email and a question raised there is in November when we approved the long-range systemic renovation projects, understanding that roofing is separate in a separate budget item, but all of things like AC and elevators and water piping, replacement, boiler replacement, all of those things are in this slide item, right? So I would have thought, and that's what I expected to kind of correlate once I got the call from the administration, that if we have additional funds and we had gotten through a certain, you know, row on that list of long-range system renovation projects that we would go to the next, however many projects there were until we got to the, you know, whatever the matching requirement was. But not only did we not do that, but I couldn't, I couldn't necessarily even find some of the projects, right? There was an HV or an elevator replacement, a couple down, or their HVAC replacement. That was one of the ones that was right next at Ilchester Elementary, like, right, why when we go to these next sequential next sequential theoretically prioritize for some reason list of long-range system renovation projects to decide what we're going to do with additional IAC funding. Again, you're talking about size and scale. The roofing, we have a whole list of, you know, roofing projects. Yeah, but three out of five of the items that we're going to fund are not roofing projects. They would theoretically appear on a long-range systemic renovation project list that goes to fiscal year 2031. And I understand there's one that just says elevator modernizations and one that just says retrofit gym HVAC. but before that are two other projects. It was a decision that we made to focus on elevator to focus on roof and to focus on the AC So we don't list in that document all of the Opportunities now we will when a year from now a year and a half from now, you're going to get a document that's going to show how we're going to look at every school facility and roofing jobs and renovation and new construction and you know we're going to do our best to lay out every component that we are attached to maintain. That's what we're going to do. We're not there right now. So we don't have a document that lists sequentially how we're going to maintain all of our assets. So you're looking at a summary document. But within it are many requirements that we are tasked to, you know, do our best to manage. Roofing and elevators and AC and high schools are three of several. So we just thought that those projects were the best projects to leverage the available funds and to address the needs that we currently have. AC and roofing being the main two and honestly the elevator being the smallest was like okay we have $400,000 remaining elevator project would qualify. So as a combination of need, available money and building condition. Okay. If the elevator isn't working, what does that mean? It's working, but it's in need of replacement. Okay. The elevator is working today, but it has, you know, failed on a day where we had to have folks going there to repair it. Okay. Did you have something to add, Miss Wrigby? I was just saying that it's a very old school and it's a small elevator. It's an elevator that needs to be repaired and And it's failed. We fix it. It failed. We fix it. Okay. The second category of my questions related to how many years before or how even this year do we find out, right? That's what you said in answer to. I think Miss Young's question's question funds that have now become available from IEC are the is this 4.4 million dollars or I guess it's 4.1 and we're contributing 4.4 is this additional funding that's the subject of this CR63 was that not available to the county school system when we undertook this original exercise in September October, November? So I believe we had conversations around how much funding was to be made available to the school system for capital planning and discussing with the county executive's office how much money would be available? We initially set off with the 50 something million that we were charged to kind of find matching dollars. The board asked us to add some projects if we got more than 50 whatever million to 60, we added that, presented that to county executive's office, and they said, yes, we'll move forward with that. And that was our target. And I think I sat here at this table and had conversations around the mark that has been identified for the school system, and that our needs are greater than 50 and 60 million dollars a year. But then again, with conversations that we had with the state, we had an opportunity to again have more discussions with the County Executive's office. And they said, you know, I think we'll consider adding to that and then they did. So when the state said we had 4.4 million, the county executive office said we think we can match that and they said they would. And we added that to the list. So it's the ongoing conversations, collaboratively. And I was thankful that the county executive office said, I think we can add some more this year, you know, to that, you know, request, and we had a meeting with everybody. I think it was the state and our board, Superintendent, County Executive Office, and then we all agree it, okay, yes. And we identified the projects, and they said, can you identify a project? They said, yes, we can. We did. And they said, we will support that. OK, but that wasn't my question. My question was, was this funding available when all of us went through this exercise in September, October, November of 2024? Yes. Obviously, it was available because it was 2024. So the money was available, but at the time, given the mark, we didn't add that into our request. We stayed within the target, the budget funding level that was identified at the beginning of this process. OK. But I don't really think that's the case either. I think the superintendent stayed within that mark. And then I think the board added projects to that. The superintendent's budget increased by I think $8 million between when it was issued by the superintendent and your department and got to this council. And again, these are all conversations that we had or tried to have in the October, November timeframe when that corresponding resolution was before this body. So we didn't stay within that mark. We elected to add $8 million to that mark, but we elected to add $8 million that apparently did not make a veil of $4.1 million that were available in the September, October, November timeframe from the so-called EGRC fund, right? That's a question for you, Ms. Mosley, because the board is the one who added that additional $8 million to the county's budget for capital funds. When the board asked the projects that we added for that $8 million were not EGRC fund projects. I know that's what I'm asking. If the board decided to go above the mark that Mr. Brown just described, the board elected as a matter to exceed the request that the superintendent had suggested, had recommended. The board, four of you, elected to add $8 million to that capital budget for presentation to this council who then approved it. But that additional 8 million above the mark that Mr. Brown and the superintendent adhered to, as you noted, did not include EGRC. And so my question is why not? If there was $4.1 million additional available through the EGRC, why wouldn't we have done these five projects identified in this CR 63 then and not been here this morning. Because that's not how it happened. What does the board do to ensure itself that it is making the best use of the available state capital funding, whether from CIP funds, from bill to learn or from whatever other source may be available in a given year. We have regular meetings with Mr. Brown's department and have conversations around that. The board does not have staff that does that work specifically for the board. The board has to rely on school system staff to have these conversations, right? to ask the questions and things like that. We don't have staff that do that work for the board. But without staff, the school board or a majority of you elected to add $8 million worth of projects. What information did you have from the administration on those $8 million projects? Usually how that happens is we'll hear from the community that something needs to happen and then we'll have conversations with Mr. Brown or his team. And we had a gap for a while there, right, without someone in that role, right, as you're aware. And that's where those conversations happen. And then a board member will just motion to put it in and put it in. We see that a lot. Mr. Brought you have something to add to these. Yeah, because I'm learning. So I appreciate this opportunity because I'm definitely on a learning curve here today. Me too. And I'm gonna say wow. That's what I'm gonna say. So, and I'm gonna do, I will do better, right? Cause I'm just, I'm looking at myself. Like where did Cornell go left? And what I'm pledging today is to do a better job sitting down with everybody to help build understanding around this capital budget process because I've been confused since I came on board. And what I'm hearing and I might be a little off, there's just some difference of opinion about what our capital program should look like. And in this case, um, when looking at the conversations that we've had, um, my first meeting was August 22nd. That was my first board meeting. I started August the 19th. Um, so try by, I learned there. And we've been meeting with the council several times since then to talk about this capital budget. There are projects that are eligible for state dollars. And then there are needs, requirements that are not eligible for state dollars. And what we try to do, not to board the staff, what we try to do is to look at all of our capital needs, those that are to be supported by the state, eligible for state dollars, and those that are not, and that we will have to engage our local fiscal authorities for funding playgrounds, for example. And we look to, if someone says to Cornell, you're going to have $60 million, how would you spend it? We have the difficult task, knowing that we have like, you can get me $250 million a year, and I could spend it. And I would need more. So if you tell me that I have $60 million, how would you spend it? I'm going to give you a mix of state eligible projects and I'm going to give you a mix of only local funding stuff. It could be technology, not state eligible, playgrounds, not state eligible, and some other things that I can't even go to the state to ask, right? Because they're not eligible. But I do need to leverage our local dollars in order to move forward some of these other requirements. So what you'll see in front of you is a mix of state eligible projects and things that are not state eligible, but still are needed. Right? And the board, they tasked us to look at some of those other things that are not state eligible and how and try to, you know, do something additional above what the original mark was. And then we went back and forth and talked to our Technology Department and did some other things and came up with what we thought was a reasonable ask given the fiscal challenges that we all face today and came up with a recommendation. That recommendation came from my office to the superintendent and supported by our school board. So if any confusion is to be addressed, it would be with me. And that says to the 8 million, not just the board added. Yeah, the board, they asked if we can look at some of these other things, and they're not state eligible things. So they would not even qualify for that additional money. Had nothing to do with that. We have other needs beyond state eligible projects. And that's one of the reasons I'm going to I'm gonna do better. I actually, we already suggested a better path forward. So next year when we come before our school board and we're having great conversations with the county executive's office, so speed dial. So we're talking, we're gonna first present state eligible projects only. So there's no confusion, right? I think you heard me say that before, and we'll be able to say, here's the amount of state money that's available, and here's what we need to match. What say you? And then later on in a year, we're gonna just come up with our local projects, and we'll have that conversation about our local needs. And then it won't be confused next year because we'll have our state projects, we have our local projects, we'll then put them together, and then it will be clearer of what our needs are and how we will go about funding. And then we won't kind of miss that to not leverage all of the state dollars that are available. You know, so that's, I think that's what happened. This go around. And we're all learning. And I think I came in and I confused people because I'm trying to use my experience to move things forward. And all I might have confused some people here, but I'll do better. But that's what happened. We presented based on, you know, what we thought we were available. The board says we need to look at, you know, these other things because these are other needs too. How would we go about doing that? We talked and say, okay, we can do this. What can we do? It's all not enough. And then we added that and the board said, can we do more? This is, you know, this is all we can do given the amount of money that we believe will be available. We presented that, everybody supported it. Then we had more discussions because we've been meeting with the state, we've been meeting with the county's office, county executive's office, and then we say, okay, maybe we can do more. And then the state identified that we kind of knew it was there, but we didn't think we could leverage it. They said you can leverage it. So we said, okay, what can we do? We added more, we got on the same page, and it wasn't trying to be non-transparent. It was just the way the process kind of went along, right? And we're thankful that everybody said yes, we can do more, and we identify projects and needs that are there, and we presented that for consideration. our board say yes thank you I don't know what Phil is how many times I said thank you since we had this conversation about these additional dollars and I'm hoping that after this meeting I'm going to say thank you to you right to say yes we can move forward and fund these projects there are needs right we have other needs We have other roofing projects that we need to you know do But with the amount of money that we believe is available. This is what we can do Right and and that's how we ended up getting here Go ahead Let me Deb. Let Madam check. No jumping really fast. Yep. How about let's let Ms. Yang go and then Dr. Jones, I'll come back to you. OK, once again, Mr. Brown. I think that you've explained it very well, that you kept looking at this to see if there were other needs. The state said, oh, yes, you can qualify. And then you're like, oh, wait a minute. Now we can qualify. I assume then that there was a conversation with the County Executive's office. Mr. Fishing, were you involved in that conversation? Did you, is that who your contact is, Mr. Fishing?? And Mr. Fischin said, yes, well match this at 4.4 million and we love that idea, is that what you said? Not quite. That's a quick way. Okay, there were a few more conversations, but it took some, I assume it just took some time to say yes, and here's where we can identify those millions in order. And I would like to think that our participation on HB1450 Task Force has shown a spotlight on these capital needs more. So then anything over these last few years, because we have been talking about it now for seven months. Yeah. So. Yeah, I would agree. And I think- On to you. I think where there's a lot of agreement and collaboration is that we do want to maximize available state funds to the extent possible, especially during a tight fiscal year that we're about to face. We don't want to let any state dollars sit on the table and potentially expire. So that conversation with the IEC was, you know, with myself, Cornell, Chair Mosley, and so it was a collaborative discussion. And that was, you know, when we identified that there was state funding available, you know, we took some time to evaluate, you know, is this something that the county can, you know, endorse and support to try and secure that additional state funding. And that is how the process unfolded to put in this supplemental request. Thank you. That's the I think the little piece that that then puts the last puzzle piece together that then the county executives office said yes we support that good idea go forth and we can try and get that matching money in. Go ahead Dr. Jones. Yes, good morning, everyone. Again, I just wanted to briefly say that I believe we're approaching our seventh budget together as a team, as a council. And although we may have new faces in front of us, yours including Mr. Brown. I believe that we are on an upward trajectory in terms of transparency, data, structure and process, along nothing presented to us maybe perfect or there may be some frustrations and some concerns. I can easily backtrack a few years when it was not what we see today. So I just want to say thank you to all who are doing great work and let's together as a team, as a big team, serve in the county, continue this upward trajectory process and transparency. And I thank you specifically for that, but what you've done is I just showed him on a time. Thank you. If, well, I mean, going back to what Miss Young said, the IAC calls whom and says, hey, hey, Howard County, you could, you could use some more money here this year. Like, how does that happen? How does all of a sudden we figure out we have 4.1? We all of a sudden it's not all of a sudden but we submit to the IEC and we have a representative that our staff meets with them and all the time. We're talking with them about our projects and what we've submitted, the status of our approval, or the approval process because they kind of go through 50% to 95% to 90%. But with our state representative, we're in conversations with them throughout the entire process. So there are conversations that kind of surface up. They're like, well, you know, and then, you know, the county executive's office, they're also involved in those conversations and we kind of brought everybody together. Just based on conversations that we're having. Okay. Yeah. I would just add to that, to echo it, Mr. Brown said, that was generally the process. You know, the question came up of are we maximizing state funds this year? And so, Count execs office convened a meeting with HCPSS and the IEC to explore that question. You know, we generally are not directly engaged with the IEC. That's the school systems role, but recognizing that there was some additional state funding available, we wanted to be part of that conversation. We were approaching it collaboratively, and we were really coming into find some solutions. Okay. Did the, well, you wouldn't know, Mr. Brown. And I guess the administration wouldn't know. But who wouldn't know whether those conversations to any one of the preceding seven years? Like Mr. Jones or Dr. Jones mentioned, we've been we've been approving this. The five of us have been approving that the end result of a school capital budget for six years. And you know, have no understanding of what may have been left on the table because we didn't maximize state eligible capital funding requests. I would say oh there's Mr. Lubley you're sitting on the corner. They put me in the corner. I would say conversations with the as Mr. Brown said we do every single year have conversations with the IAC staff. There have been conversations between the school system and the county staff through each year as well. As we all know, there have been staff changes, personnel changes, I think on both sides. What I would say is I think the collaborative effort between the school system and the county has grown and has continued to grow. So what we're seeing now is not necessarily new but as an expansion, a good expansion, I think we'll continue to help both parties going forward. Okay, so this could have happened in the past. We just didn't follow through with the conversations that would allow a supplemental request to be made. And I would say that there probably were similar conversations in the past, but as Mr. Brown indicated, there's a lot of variables that go into the capital budgets and it's potential, I can't recall every conversation. It's potential conversations did happen instead of it's just not in the cards this year. OK. And you would have heard that from the County administration or from the IAC. Either or. It would have been a collaborative discussion. OK. Does each jurisdiction get, how does the jurisdiction, how does Howard County know what IAC or what that matching is going to be for the CIP that year? What matching? Like how do you know? What the local share is going to be? Or you know what they'll fund if you meet the local share. Like do you get a piece of paper? Is there a list? There's a formula that they calculate to determine what the local match will be for every project. But is there a cap like in an AMU given year, just like there's this sometimes imposed cap on the county side? Do you know going into a fiscal year 2026 budget? This is going to be the the total max CIP funding we're going to get from the state this year Not necessarily a total max, but the state each year does provide an anticipated allocation So they do give a number for us to be working towards. It's not a guarantee that the state will actually provide that number either but they do give us an item to be looking towards. Okay. And I assume that's relatively consistent year by year not counting the one that's coming up. No? Not necessarily. It depends on the total capital funds that are provided at the state level and then how it's divided out before it gets even to the school construction funds Okay, let's start off with a general number But then they could you know introduce legislation like they did with the built-to-learn funds where the additional money is made available You available. I believe you know that for years the state pretty much funded like $280 million statewide, but every now and again you get additional funds that they kind of add in there. Then you pivot and then you just identify additional needs, identify additional needs to, you know, leverage those funds when they're, you know, made available. In this year, did we initially think we were gonna get more than $4.1 million in state funds from the CIP? The supplemental is in addition to what we ask. I mean, I'm sorry. So I'm looking at a memo that says the IAC staff have recommended that the school system submit projects with a state total request of at least 5.9 million in case the IAC receives additional funding. Yeah, again, that was some conversations that Mr. Luley had with the state's representative. And you can probably speak to that because you had that conversation. Yes, so after the joint or the collaborative meeting that we had with the state, I followed up with our CPM, our construction project manager with the state to confirm the number because I had heard a couple different numbers. And at that point, it was recommended that we submit stuff that was or submit projects that were at least 5.9 because at the point the state was anticipating additional funds those additional funds did not come through fruition though which is why went back towards the 4.4. Okay so that we are it by virtue of this CR63 making the most available state plan leaving anymore. This is it. It's yours out. As far as the conversation we've had with state, these are the only dollars we are aware of. Okay. And in that February 3rd memo, that's the one that identifies, you know, a different, a different elevator project and doesn't identify which schools will have AC, but rather identifies high school, middle school, and elementary school just by, you know, ESMS or HS. So and that was a board, that was a memo to the board from the superintendent on February 3rd. So, so after that point, you're saying Mr. Brown? Yes, then we just identified. So, the elevator project that was identified, the records that we had did not reflect that the elevator had been replaced when the school was renovated. When our staff, you know, went to the building to confirm some information, they realized that the elevator age wasn't what they initially thought it was, so afflitts and elementaries elevate and replace that project. Then they just got more information and we identified the schools. Because there was pretty much a, you know, we met in January. It's pretty quick turnaround, because obviously, well, let me go, this is unprecedented. It's not, yeah, yeah. So supplemental adjustments like this at this stage in the capital cycle is not typical. OK. Right? So to after you know January, February going back to the well to move forward and ask for additional funding and to get in the queue is not something that typically occurs because by you know that the fall pretty much have all of that kind of stuff wrapped up. But with the collaboration that was happening, as we already described, they basically are making an exception to allow us to submit and to be considered. And we had to identify those projects pretty quickly. Okay. OK. It doesn't look like anyone else has any other questions, which I'm surprised at. You may know, I hope you know, that our office district one has submitted a bill just coincidentally on this same subject matter which is funding deferred capital school needs. And that bill asks that the county uses excess surplus funds. It's a term of art in our county charter. And in the past year, certainly going back to the six that the five of us have been on the council that excess surplus revenue has been sizable and could Certainly start knocking off more of those individual projects on your list as we work collaboratively towards a more transparent and objective methodology for prioritizing and actually executing these capital fund projects going forward. So I would encourage you to look into that. If you haven't already seen it, I'm happy to meet with anyone who would like to discuss it. But I think it's another funding source for these projects in whatever ordering they come up. I mean, I think that's the bottom line is, as unhappy as I am about how opaque this process continues to be, it nonetheless gets five projects done in five different schools with X number of students who will benefit from that. And that's the ultimate goal. So I'll close the discussion on this if there are no more questions for my colleagues. All right, thank you all for coming today. Yes. Do we extend? Well, we need to fix the clock because you keep psyching me out. It's a daylight savings. Sorry. I know. Okay. So yes, I think so. Sorry. Yeah. I mean, it depends. I don't know how long. Next up, we have the Spending Affordability Advisory Committee Report. I have that all of our guests from that committee are confirmed, which includes Dr. Holly Sun, the chair of the Spending Affordability Advisory Committee Report, Todd Adderburn, itsson Dr. Richard clinch Ellen Flynn Jowls Steve Hunt and Josh Zucker are all online I'm guessing since I don't see them in this room we also have Brooke Mamo deputy budget administrator and in our room we have Refu a Healay director of finance you want to join us up here mr. Healer you're you're gonna let the SAAC go. I assume you have a few of you a Heale director of finance. You want to join us up here, Mr. Heale, you're going to let the SAAC go. I assume you have a presentation for us. I'm looking at Mr. Adroburn, but I think that's probably because you made a noise. Yes, there's a slide. I think I don't know whether it could be put on this. Thank you very much. Is that the one that Mr. or someone, Trish, is that the one we just received this morning? Okay. All right, go ahead. Thank you, Dr. Sun. Thank you very much. Is that the one that Mr. or someone Trish? Is that the one we just received this morning? Okay. All right. Go ahead. Thank you, Dr. Sun. Thank you. Thank you chair and council members on that. Paulie Sun, but the administrator. So the administration. I'm also chair of the committee. Sorry, I cannot speak louder. Today. Today with me, there are multiple members from the committee. I want to start by thank them for their years of delegation. Many of them have been serving at the committee for some for one decade that have been very passionate, provide very thoughtful, non-cartisan data driven recommendations to elect officials as well as the government. So I really want to take opportunity for the years of service and then great advice to the government every year that helps us frame our fiscal year planning and also long term financial sustainability. So I only want to start by saying one thing is that this is really not a normal year. What we have been facing is it really think is unprecedented. What has been happening in the last six weeks is probably shocking to many and we are still in a process of digesting potential impact and understanding of certain type of likely severe impact Some of this will be covered in the presentation today. We also have the KIPL close eye because who knows what's going to happen in the next six weeks or six months. so we are all doing our best but uncertainty is a big deal and last week just as example I heard that our state revenue forecast or lowered their protection. So they are now at 26 journal fund projection is 0.1% gross. And my colleague from DC just to be charged to me, their journal fund projections now are a negative 0.5%. Everybody is still keeping away and trying to do our best to guess at this point if I would like they happen. So we just have to be very prudent at this point. Without a meaningful hand it over to Todd, we started the discussion. Thank you. Thanks Holly and thanks everybody for inviting us this morning. We're happy to present this report. Can I have the next slide? We'll start our morning with a little cartoon. This is just a little refresher on the county budget, a nice infographic that Holly's department is pulled together on general fund revenue and expenses. So the top dollar that's exploded says where our money comes from. And that's $0.47 of every dollar comes from property taxes, $0.45 come from income taxes, and $0.8 come from other sources. That's roughly 100 other taxes, fees, levies, and so forth, which produces roughly a $1.5 million general fund revenue. Then the money goes out. 62 cents of every dollar goes to education entities. That includes primarily the Howard County Public School system, which I believe is 56 or 57 cents of that 62. The other two uses in that category are the public library system and the community college. 13 cents goes to public safety, police and fire primarily. 14 cents goes to all public works, park and recs, community service. And then finally, the last 11 cents get spent on that service and on several other categories. So that's just a quick refresher of the ins and outs and the general scope of the funds that we collect, the 1.5 billion. And with that I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Richard Clemch. He's going to talk a lot about the local and state environment or economic environment, which has informed our process this year. Thank you, Todd. Holly, if somebody could advance the slide. So I'm Dr. Richard Cleansch. I run the Jacob Frans Institute. I've been doing a fiscal forecast for the county for a couple of years now. As Todd and Holly talked about, 92% of county revenues come from property and income taxes. So when you think of it economically, there are three things that really kind of drive those. Population growth. So population moving into drives real estate, earning from their jobs and the federal workforce issues, we're going to talk about in a little bit. So the earnings and that drive the income taxes, the economic growth, the jobs in the county. So not jobs held by residents, but jobs in the county, which is really where the county has experienced very slow growth and lagging recovery, is the jobs in the county. And that has yet to recover. And that again creates property taxes through the commercial taxes, but also more than a third of Howard County residents work in the county. So you're creating job opportunities for county residents and the slower that grows, the less opportunities we're creating. And then finally, you know, the real estate issue, which is again, pretty stable, you know, with the homestead tax exactly the cap, you know, you know, it has been growing. So as we heard in the first presentation this morning, the state is really facing a significant risk factor in terms of the federal and state issues, state budget and federal issues. But there's also some context here that's important. One is that the state really was one of the last states to recover from the COVID recession. The county still has not recovered in terms of its workforce or its jobs in the county. So this slow state growth has really hit Howard County relatively hard. Population growth in the state was negligible over the last five years, and the state has experienced significant out migration, especially among highly educated residents and high income residents. And again, because Howard County is among the best educated counties in the state of Maryland, frankly, in the country, but also the highest income jurisdiction in the state of Maryland. When these groups leave Maryland, Howard County suffers disproportionately. And then as the comptroller's office talked about federal tax issues, when we did the forecast earlier in the year, the know, the science scope and content of what was going to go on in Washington was really unknown. And again, also the state grappling with this significant deficit and raising income taxes on high-income individuals, again, may yield more out migration, which again could hit County Disproportionately. If you could hit to the next slide. So I think the most significant risk factor, the county is facing right now, is the issue of federal spending. Now there aren't a lot of federal jobs, direct jobs located in the county, but overall in the state of Maryland, you know, about 10% of jobs are a little bit over in the federal government. When you talk about where people work, roughly 11% of Howard County residents work for the federal government directly. So these are direct federal jobs, these are jobs held in the federal government by a county resident. So it's higher than the state's average. And then you look at federal procurement. There was $6.1 billion in federal procurement made from contractors located in the county. So APL is the largest of these or roughly $18,000 per person. And in terms of the questions asked about kind of testing, scenario testing, what does this mean for the county? You know, at the state level, procurement is about 11% of GDP at the state level. In Howard County, it's about 15% of the level. So that's in addition to this. So when you think of it, 25, 30% of revenues at the state and count and even more at the county level are directly dependent on federal or indirectly and in terms of procurement on federal spending. So, for you know, we've run a little bit of scenarios here. It's hard to model this whole thing. There's a lot of working parts here. So we've looked at this kind of kind of back of the envelope calculations and came up with a loss of 3 to 5 percent employment. And again, to point out the county has not read yet fully recovered from the COVID recession. So on top of that slow recovery, if we're starting to lose this federal base is a loss of 20 to 30 million dollars in income taxes in the coming years. And then on the spending side, as you've all talked about, the county receives significant grants, you know, typically $25 to $35 million a year in grants and loans in the federal government, across all departments, housing, health and health and human services. And if that money goes down, you know, the county has to make up those gaps. So I think what we're really kind of talking about here is if you could hit to the next slide is, you know, there are some good things in the county. And these remain the drivers of the county's success. We have a highly educated workforce. We have among the highest percentage of people with a bachelor's degree and the highest percentage of people with advanced degrees in the state. We have the highest median income in Maryland and the 10th highest in the nation. We have a strong property tax base. So these are all good things that are paying for the services that the county residents want that attract people into the county. Now the bad, so the bad are these issues of things that are really hurting the fiscal outlook for the county. The county's population growth has been, we've gone from being one of the fastest growing counties in Maryland to kind of lower middle of the pact. Moreover, the county's population is aging. As we've talked about in the committee a lot, as the county has run out of developer land and has implemented policies to slow growth, the permitting activity has slowed significantly, so there's not a lot of replenishment of the housing stock. The home sales have been down for the last two years. The county had experiencing net out migration in the last two years, so we're losing residents. And it has gone negative in terms of domestic migration. Howard County used to attract residents from the rest of Maryland attracted here because of the schools and other things. But as a result of kind of a slowdown in development activity, we're attracting less of them. and the employment base, as I said earlier, the county has still not, and that's the bottom chart here. The line with the little squares is the county, still not recovered to pre-pandemic levels. So those are kind of the bad context, and then the really threatening things for the future, are these issues you've talked about earlier in this meeting today? You know, this shift of state costs to local government, you know, $8 million shift was in the governor's proposal and that has since from what I'm hearing here gone up. And the federal impact is potentially huge. As I said, 25, 30% of county activity is directly or indirectly dependent on federal spending and as a result, you can expect at best uncertainty at worst kind of reductions in revenue growth in the coming years. Now pass it back over to Todd. So our committee is tasked with three primary, active one is the fiscal 26 revenue growth projection. The second is the Geo bonds ceiling recommendation for the year. And thirdly is revenue growth projection looking out for the next five years, give or take. But the fiscal 26 revenue growth, our recommendation is to plan for a 4% increase. This goes back to a number of points that Richard has previously made. The issue that allows us to have a little more confidence this year is the underlying property tax revenues, which are pretty predictable with respect to their levels. And that primarily goes to how the state assesses real estate in thirds. And then the increases of prior year's assessments are capped at 5% a year. So that provides a pretty nice base on which we can grow as a county. On the other hand, income taxes are wildly unpredictable. And I think that's where our fear is as a committee is that we really can't project with any sense of accuracy what's going to happen this year, let alone looking forward. So that's what has driven our recommendation of 4% growth for this year. And I'm going to skip to the third bullet here on this slide and that's kind of the fiscal 27 to 31 revenue growth projection. What I will say is that, so we're recommending 3.6% is the planning targets for the next five years. It's perhaps lower than we've seen historically, but it's not bad. And in fact, as a county, we are incredibly fortunate that we're looking at projecting increases. There are many, many, many political jurisdictions throughout the country that are faced with not just flat lines, but declining revenue growth. So we are still in a position we believe as a committee that we can be looking for mid-range growth over the next four or five years. It gets a little cloudier when we get to our second bullet point which is our new Geo-Bond ceiling. We recommended a very conservative level of $25 million and for this year and the reason is that we fear as a committee that we're at an inflection point that the county is. And it's at every level. We have systemic challenges to our revenue and our expense streams on a long-term basis that are very hard to see through at this point. We don't know what's going to happen with federal employment. We know we're highly dependent on it. And federal employment doesn't recover from a recession like private sector employment does. If those jobs leave, they may be gone for a long time or perhaps permanently and that poses a great challenge to the county. So when we start looking at making long-term obligations to make payments over the long-term for a 20-year geo bond issuance. We are cautioning very strongly that it's very hard to know as we go through the continued property tax reassessment cycles looking forward over that 20-year period where we're going to end up. That's a primary issue for us looking forward. And we don't know at the local level what to be expecting from income tax purpose, from income taxes. And Josh Zucker is going to talk a little bit about housing growth and growing our revenue streams through the growth of housing. And what some of those challenges are. So we are cautioning with a flashing red light on new geovond issuances because it does commit the county over a 20 year period to make payments on that and to also staff and service those buildings, those new structures that we build with the funds that are covered by the new geobond issuance. The one thing, the sub bullet point here in this category is we come at this with a paramount objective of preserving the county's triple a bond rating from all three major rating agencies and And we are cautioning that there are some metrics in some of the rating agencies toolbox that we're challenging. We could be threatening over the mid to long term. We also know that we're surrounded by a state of Maryland that is on the downgrade list and Prince George's County that's on the downgrade watch list. We want to make sure that the county's ability to continue to borrow at that triple A rate in terms is protected. And so we're cautioning that the best way to do that at this point is to take a little pause, pause on all non-essential new projects, let the dust settle, and see where we are in six to eight months. We'll know what the state budget situation is, we'll know what our, we'll have a much better sense for our income tax revenues, and we'll also have a much better sense for what our, I guess, cost sharing obligations will be coming down from the state. So with that, I'm going to turn it over. I think to Ellen. And she's going to talk a little bit about the schools. Okay, well, first I'm going to start with, can we go to the next one? Okay, so first I'm going to start with the demographic trends and this inflection point that we're looking at in terms of the changing state of the county, if you will. One is the rapid growth of the 65 and over group, which is not really a growth. It's a shift in the amount of revenue we can anticipate from an increasingly large percentage of the county's population as there's more this group than depends on fixed income which is dropped from their working life level and so the percentage that they'll be presenting is less. And then that's coupled with the continued decrease of the under 19 group, which is in line with with HCP SS predictions in terms of flat enrollment or even drops over the next 10 years. This brings with it the need to address the needs of a rising senior population coupled with that low likely slowdown in income taxes and the drop in the needs for the schools, just a readjustment in the priorities needed at the schools and a chance to look at that as growth isn't the issue, but addressing some of that systemic maintenance and the most efficient use of the assets that we already have investments in and that can continue to deliver for a while. So we can go to the next slide, which is building off of that enrollment sort of stabilization to reexamine, to look at how we best and most efficiently deliver as Mr. Brown discussed in his earlier discussion, how we deliver changing program needs within existing spaces and how we make our existing assets deliver in the most efficient and effective way. So we're looking at re-examining how we fund to meet those, some of which can be minimizing new permanent structures, free of spending on maintenance, make use of existing properties or facilities that exist in order to program for regional needs and that kind of thing. So we just want to focus on the fact that we need to take a point, a moment here, or pause here to reassess where we're going, what our needs are as we look at the future, and how we're going to be able to fund all of that. So now I turn that over to Josh to look at where these wallets are going to come from. Thanks, Alan. And thank you. Thanks, Ellen. And thank you to the council for your indulgence of having us here. Look, this is the slide that speaks for itself. We have moved from a very fast growing county as far housing starts to one of much more modest growth. When we look at the future tax revenue and tax base for the county and our fiscal needs, I like to say there's only three things that we can do. One is taxes, we can either raise or lower taxes. Two, to meet our needs, we can cut spending. So we can taxes, raise taxes, cut spending. The third is the long term healthiest thing we can do for the county, and that is to grow the economy. Those are our three choices. Higher taxes, lower spending, or robust economic growth. Robust economic growth literally means as Ellen just said, attracting more wallets to the county. We need more wallets, more open wallets, spending either in consumer spending, spending in investment, spending in getting businesses off the ground, but we need increased spending from a more robust, deeper internal marketplace. We have made policy choices over the last few years that has created a dynamic where we are preferring certain people. We have made regulatory choices to prefer seniors, to prefer people without kids in some of the housing choices we have made. And that has limited our growth. That slow down in growth is really hurting our ability to spend on the that's a very important thing that we have to do is to have a very important thing that we have to do is to have a committed hour growth. That slow down in growth is really hurting our ability to spend on the policy choices that enable a growing long term county. So, next slide. So, the county is already taking a look, hard look at this. And we commend the council and the executive for the Hoco by design. There are some smart policy choices included in Hoco by design that will look at our zoning and regulatory structure in order to enable longer term growth attracting new families, attracting the people who have children in the school system, the type of people that we look at for allowing for the robust economy that we expect in Howard County. Our recommendation here is literally to put the pedal to the metal for Howard County by design. We think it incentivizes the sort of developmental trends that will help Howard County continue to have the sort of dynamism that attracted us here in the first place. So thank you very much. I think Barbara's next. Yes, and I apologize. I don't seem to have a video, but you've got my voice. You've got some other recommendations coming from the Spending Affordability Committee, and it has to do with being really clear about what ongoing expenses are going to be to complete the Safe and Sound project, to make sure that we limit our pay go out to things that are really essential, that won't require ongoing operating expenses far into the future that we, it fixes something immediately immediately and I think you all understand the issues around pay go so I don't need to go further with that. We're going to prioritize as Todd said the county's AAA ratings. You've already covered today the the risk things happening at the state level at at our county level, and will be continued. I'm sure to be looking at all of the impacts that are going to come our way. And then looking at the school system and our assets there, as well as other capital assets in the county. My job is to continue to push the word pause that it's a now a time for us to just pause, be patient and understand what the changes are going to be before we move on. We, in that pause, we need to be prudent, we need to figure out what is happening so that we can be more strategic about our spending in the future. But right now it's not a time to encumber ourselves for 20 years or even five years. We need to know what the lay of the land's going to be. With that I don't want to lose some of our experts here so if you've got questions I'm going to open it to that. Thank you. Thank you, Barbara. Was that we wrapped up our presentation and just want to open to question. I know a couple of members will be leaving shortly. Thank you. Okay. Thanks very much. Ms. Rigby, go ahead. Thank you. I want to start just with it's an assumption that I think is kind of baked into this report. It's on page 29 at the bottom of the second paragraph. So it's touching on some of the changing residential patterns. And part of this is because we have a lot of single family detached houses. And those single family detached houses send many children to our public school system. And each of those children, we expend about $17,000 on for their education. And that shift will even further increase because of the state's proposed pension shift. So when we're looking at denser development in certain areas, to me, that would be increasing the amount of income tax. Even if you have less per person, because you have more people, you would be achieving a higher income tax yield. And you would be reducing your expenses because presumably we wouldn't have as many children. We know we don't have as many children coming out of the sort of high rise modern development coming from modern multi-family development. So I wondered if you guys would be able to, whoever was responsible for that portion could explain a little bit more about it because I was surprised to see that in here. Sure. The issue is, yes, different patterns of development do yield. When we look at this for a study we did a couple years ago for the county, almost all types of development generate a surplus in the long run. However, the single family detached generates the highest. So as you get one of the things we show in the report is that every unit, every type of dress, the single family detached generates the most apartments, etc. I don't have all that in front of me. And it's old data we did a study about for four years ago. But you'll generate a lower surplus. So the incomes in multi-family are much lower, and the housing size is not that much lower. So you would generate a relatively less of a surplus. So you would expect, you'd get less revenue than different patterns of development. So you're just going to generate less of a surplus. So you would expect you get less repinal than different patterns of development. So you're just going to generate less of a surplus from one type of development that has been covering the costs of others. Are you referring to the fiscal analysis for Hoco, sorry I just wanted Dr. Clendon. Are you referring to the fiscal analysis for Hoco by design by any chance? I did a study before that one. And that's the one I'm referring to. And I look at the one for hook-up by design, but it's not fresh in my mind right now. Okay, thank you. Sorry, Mr. Arterberg. But yeah, I'm sorry to, kind of figuring out how to jump in here effectively. I'm also chairing the app for committee. And one of the key data points is from Jeff Brownau, who talks about student production by unit. I'm also chairing the outflow committee and one of the key data points is from Jeff Brownow, who talks about student production by unit type and round numbers single family detached, produces 0.5 students per house, single family attached, produces 0.3 or 0.35 students per house multi-family produces 0.1 to 0.15 and depending on the character of the multi-family produces 0.1 to 0.15. And depending on the character of the multi-family, the high-rise elevator buildings that are one and two bedroom units might produce 0.01 to 0.05 students per unit. So you're right. The premise of your question is spot on. And that is that if roughly 62% or 60% of our budget is going to the public school system, and as the hook-up by design units are generally smaller and attached rather than larger and detached, we'll get a much smaller head count going into the school system with the addition of those housing units, but they will be paying property taxes and they will be paying income taxes. They just won't be generating students at the same rate as the historical single-family detached housing did back from the 80s through the even into the early teens. So as that shift accelerates and even if you went back to Josh's slide where the the character of the roughly 700 or 800 units per year that are being started, it's much much different than you saw historically. And almost half of those new units are multi-family units, rather than any kind of detached, either single family outtatched or single-family detached. So we're definitely moving in that direction, which will provide revenue to the county, but not the same level of spending, because the student production out of those new units is a good bit lower. Thank you. Go ahead, Miss Young. I just, well, a couple things, number one. I want to commend you on recommending the limiting to limiting Pego to essential and critical projects, not nice to have projects. Again, repeating what I said earlier, I think that House Bill 1450 Task Force has recommended, some people on that task force have recommended that the essential projects would certainly include spending on school capital. I also commend you on doing a much deeper dive of the financing options for the Ellicott City Safe and Sound Project. Now that it has gone millions, millions, tens of millions of dollars over budget. I would like to say because I see it throughout this report, this reference over and over again to the fact that the school population is not growing. And while that's obvious, that does not mean that the school capital needs are any less. Thanks to decades of overgrowth, we still have 241 trailers. And thanks to requirements at the state education level, we have many more programmatic requirements that require a relook at how our buildings are being purposed. And on top of that, we have huge deferred maintenance needs that we've been discussing for months now in this 1450 task force meeting. So it isn't really just about capacity, which seems to be a way to push off more school funding. It's a lot more nuanced than that and the needs are much greater than just the number of students who are there. I see a recommendation to pause all new, critical, all non-critical new programs in the operating budget, again. I think that that's an excellent recommendation and I really appreciate you all coming forward with that. That is something that I agree with. I think that what we are facing right now is unprecedented and I can't even imagine what we could be looking at in another six months. So if ever there was a time to recognize the more concern, what I consider the more conservative nature, which actually tends to be my nature too, if ever there was a time to recognize a conservative financial projection and wanting to ensure that we're not overspending, this is the year. And I appreciate you coming forward with that. I do have a couple of things that I wanted to ask about. One was, I think it was Josh, Zuckers, Recommendation, which I again totally agree with, but I'm wondering how we can go about it because it's been made very clear. Again, I appreciate your recommendation to go forward with the HoCo by design, recommendations and amendments that we put into our plan and the plan overall. I'm sure that you all know, because at least we've said it over and over again, that the county executive has made a decision not to move forward with comprehensive rezoning. And if we don't do comprehensive rezoning, it's very hard to put into place some of these recommendations unless we go at it zoning regulation amendment by zoning regulation amendment. Which unfortunately does appear to be what people are doing. But back to Josh Sucker, Josh, you had made a recommendation and I guess this was somewhat going along with Mr. Clinch's observations as well that one of the things we need to do is pursue more houses to purchase. And it seems like there are a variety of ways that we could do that. And one thing we keep talking about, and I would like anybody's viewpoint on this, we keep talking about the growing number of seniors in our community. And I've now attended two of the public listening sessions for seniors. There there have been two that have been held and I've went to both of them. And the number one issue at both of these sessions so far have been seniors saying, please help us by giving us a place that we can downsize to, preferably purchase. And then we can make our big houses available to the families who want to move in. And it seems like a perfect way to really try and generate that new income by getting new families to move into these homes that a lot of seniors don't want to maintain. They don't want to live in any longer, but they do want to live in Howard County and they don't want to move to apartments. So where are you seeing? And I guess I'll start with Josh because you kind of mentioned a lot of those areas that I think I'm also interested in and you seem to be on top of that. Look, you know, we have almost the worst of all worlds in Howard County for housing. Right now we have a limited number of supply. We have increasing prices. So like increasing prices obviously is good if you're a homeowner. It's bad if you want to join the community. So we're kind of caught in a housing stagflation where the market just isn't really working. I would bet most long time residents, and this would include Howard Howard County seniors and then probably also everybody on this call is advantageously stuck in a mortgage which is less than half of what mortgages are going for now. Yes. So there is a distance and of macro economically economically, and also to buy something. I understand you're going to community meetings where seniors are saying they want to leave and move into a new condo. But when that new condo is going to be at 7.5%, I'm not sure how quickly they're going to want to move into that new condo. You're absolutely right, which is why I wanted to get your view on that. Honestly that is beyond our controls can do as a county but we have made regulatory choices where we have put a preference on over 55 communities because it doesn't for a long time that in the fact schools. And we did we had a school overcrowding problem. So we made regulatory choices preferring that. We have made regulatory choices giving seniors an advantage on property taxes. And that has all kind of metastasized into not bringing in people whose incomes are going to be growing. That's the young families. And preferring people, again, whether we did it purposely or not, but now it's at the leading edge of a crisis where we are going to have more residents on fixed incomes who don't have the ability to recharge your economy to grow our budget to pay for the things that we need, including increased places for growing senior population. But how do we get young families, Josh, they want to buy. They do want to buy and right now if you have You know a market that's stuck because you have long-time residents with low mortgage rates and People who want to move in that can't afford the prices of our decrease supply You know the best thing I can If if if the executive doesn't want to do comprehensive rezoning Then I it's incumbent upon, if you agree with where we're going with this report, and you don't wanna get stuck on hundreds and hundreds of hours of zoning amendments that have to make through their way individually, through the county council, the only thing I can tell you to do is get out there and talk to your constituents about why we need and create the political pressure we need in order to do comprehensive resounding. I mean that that's the only thing I can do. Thank you. Can we start with you, Josh? If I can jump in one second here, that one thing that is some cause for optimism, although it's probably still a decade out is some of the housing stock that's envisioned for the Gateway in the Gateway Master Plan. It is looking at delivering kind of a new generation of housing that's attractive to younger families. And I'm encouraged by what that represents. I'm disappointed in what I think the timeline is going to be because I'm sitting for instance on the APFO committee. We talk a little bit about Hoko, or I mean about Gateway. And I think we're realizing that that's for the next general plan, that's for the next app foe, that's not for now. And I think that's probably the case. One thing I want to go back, there's a point of clarification and if Dan Lutley is still there, he can provide better than not in their pot. So he is on the app foe committee as well and he presented some information. One thing that's just a striking development in my mind is the perception that trailers are a reflection of crowded schools. We have roughly 225 trailers in the system right now. You reference 245, that may be the case. I think it is 225. 211. So that includes the administrative ones. Okay. Which account for capacity? I'm talking about in this in the schools. In any event, my point though is not undermined by it. And the point is that 145 of those 225 are used at schools that are not overcrowded on the app post charts. So roughly only 80 of the 225 are used at schools that are not overcrowded on the app code charts. So roughly only 80 of the 225 are being used at schools that are listed as closed because they're overcrowded for app code purposes. The other thing on on on on mobiles on trailers, whatever you want to call them is we need to remember that they do not account as capacity for the at-folk calculations of what when a school is open or closed. And when Josh talks about the regulatory environment that's been created, those are key considerations because as Dan will also tell you, you know, the school system only has three remedies when a school is overcrowded. One is ad brick and mortar, which is a long-term difficult process and ad seeds with brick and mortar. Two is redistricting, which as you know, the school board is very reluctant to do. And in fact, one school board member said to our group that it's a bridge too far in most cases. The only other remedy is adding trailers. But trailers don't count. So redistricting counts and changes the allocation of students between schools and open schools up. Brick and mortar changes capacity that open schools up. but they only remedy of the three that the school system reliably pursues when it's necessary is the addition of trailers. That doesn't open anything up. It adds capacity in the sense that students can be more effectively managed at schools once they get spread out a little bit more and put in trailers, but it does not count toward the at-foe percentages on what schools are open and what schools are closed. So I just want to make sure that that's clear because it's very clear and you're going to have many opportunities to continue to make that argument and I'm sure you will. Before we go to Mr. Youngman, can the board or the spending of affordability, whatever your body is called? Committee. Committee. Thank you, Ms. Gals. Ms. Young made the comment. I consider schools, deferred schools, maintenance projects to be essential and therefore part of what should be continued to be funded going forward. Does the committee agree with that? I can address that. We believe that this is one of the key opportunities for Pego because it's one time funding. It does not incur additional debt. So we look at the pay go being applied to decreasing our existing debt, which if everybody understands whatever we funded last year still has 19 years of debt on it, the year before 18. So we have debt, we have a cap on what that debt can be. It cuts into the operating budget and the eligibility of funds to operate our buildings and fund the services that we need. So we do believe that the Pego allocation should go to critical maintenance needs, which are not exclusive to the schools. Those also exist within our storm order management systems and other buildings around the council. We have obligations to meet under NPDES that if we don't meet, we'll get fined for. So there are a number of those things, but we do believe there are critical maintenance needs that need to be addressed. And Pego is a good place for those funds to be used as well as to cut down on our existing debt so that we release more funds for operating. Great, thank you. Mr. Chairman. I'll go back to the long term if it gets back around to me, but switching over to the short term. Was there any discussion among spending affordability about proposing a flat budget this year? Todd, you can answer that. Yeah, no, I'm happy to know. And the reason is that when we were going through our process of determining what we thought was a reasonable target for this year, I mean, I mean, the situation has changed in that last four weeks for certain. We work with the best information that we have when we make the recommendations that we do and we can't assume what's going to happen looking forward. I mean who would have assumed some of the things that have happened at the federal level in the last four or five weeks? I mean, there's just there's really just no way to know and now it's happening at the state level as well. So So that's how we settled on our on our 4% recommendation for this year, but no the direct answer to your question is no we did not look at a flat budget recommendation I bring that up because looking back I went went back to like 2008, 2009 time frame, so it's been 17, 18 years. But we've had two years of actual revenue decline, not counting the COVID year. And we've had, I saw two, could be more, where revenue growth was less than 2%. These are in like, you know, the ones that were less than 2% were in the last 10 years. Normal times without any of the headwinds from the federal government, the state government, 7.5% interest rates, all the things we've talked about, we've gone through a couple years of 2% revenue growth. If this budget comes down at your recommendation plus more, which it usually does, I mean we could be looking at rainy day fund in next December. I think one of the key considerations though here is that our property tax increases are kind of baked into the system right now. We've had huge increases in assessments at the state level as we've gone through that month, third, one, third, one, third, reassessment process over the last three years. That's kind of cooked in and historically, it may not have been, I don't know the, you know, the specific years that you're talking about. So for there to be a flat year or a decreasing year, when we know that the increases on the property tax side are pretty well cooked into the budget, it would require a really, really significant reduction in income tax revenues to the county, which we're not saying can't happen. We are saying that we don't think at least when we came with our recommendation, we didn't see that as a likely outcome. Well, and I just did a quick calculation of there's 19,000 federal workers. If you lost 5,000 of them at $100,000 taxable income and our 3.2 percent, it is only $8 million. So I might have been inflating that in my head a little bit. But one of the challenges we have looking at the mid to long-term, you know, into that three to five-year horizon or beyond, is that we could get into a situation with property taxes where the reassessment is negative. We've had that before. And so we've had this massive run-up in the last three, four, five years. But we could easily be back into 2009, 2010, where we had a decrease in property tax assessments, or I mean housing assessments which reduce property taxes. If we had that at the same time, we had a systemic threat to our income tax revenues. We could get hit pretty hard. We actually have a refute here and might be a refute question or you guys of our real estate taxes. What's the general break down between residential and commercial real property? I don't have that right in front of me. I was prepared for another better get back to you. Okay, we have the breakdown. Because I think we are going to see that contraction possibly over the last over the next couple years on the commercial side. But your right assessments have gone up so much over the last three years that it they unless they come down know, as they spend into that 5% a year, that should be pretty reliable. I'll pass it down the row. Ms. Ruby. This goes to the question of Ellicott City and the notes on that. I just, and this is really more I I guess, for the administration. It's kind of putting a request in the queue. But having a timeline of how we're going to approach that, when we're going to approach that, what things are being looked at, that would be helpful because it's, to me, really a concert of approaches. It relies on many factors working together. So better understanding that as you know construction costs increase would be very helpful. Yeah and that's why we included it in our report. We feel the same way. I mean obviously if we get federal grants for Ellicott City Safe and Sound, that's in effect free money. But whenever we start talking about, oh, it's not a problem because we're getting wiffy a money to pay for it. Well, that counts against our debt service ratios. And have a lot of money that has been made to the government. We have a lot of money that has been made to the government. Miss Young. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm just sorry. Okay. Well, no, I'm not asking questions in this run. Are you want to go to Mr Young? When I come back? I'm not going to miss you. One to the long term. And I guess this ties a little bit into what Josh was talking about because obviously those aren't you know short term solutions. Can Howard County maintain its existing level of services, even without the blueprint at 3.6% revenue growth? I guess that's a highly question more than anything. Yeah, I'll be happy to. I think the, this is a report under the Multi-A projection section, including a projection of requests from all the public entities at local level, and that request or preliminary projection of collective needs, definitely outpaced the projected revenues there. So that is an ongoing problem. And that's without the external threats. That's without including Annapolis. Actually, we are looking at currently on that. So again, we all have to work with all those stakeholders closely. though, is that, when we always talk about growing the economy and growing it on the business side, commercial side, to take this rely on self-residential. And we've all talked about that. But I think we need to really wrap our head around the fact that we are a small county in the middle of, in extremely, I mean, a potentially top three business unfriendly state. No matter what we can do policy wise here in Little Howard County, it's not going to offset what's happening at the state level. And, you know, I don't even want to get into the out migration, which you guys talked about, but itemized deductions, consolidated reporting, our 8.2% corporate income tax rate that might come down to 7.8 someday, maybe, but Virginia's six. I mean, I think we need to get real that we're not going to be in a position where we can maintain an existing level of services on the backs of growing commercial development. And we're never gonna hit the general plan housing allocation numbers with 18 closed schools. And I don't understand why we have 18, or I think it's 18, whatever, 18 closed schools, if the system is operating at less than 100%. Apparently the Board of Ed's not even pursuing capacity dollars at the state right now. I mean, I know you have multiple school people on spending affordability. Like, what was the defense of that? Or did it even come up? Well, going back to your original question, can you maintain the current level of service with basically next year's money? It's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's.6% growth then obviously there's major shrinkage in everything else that you do because of the growth in the school's budget. and then you said it earlier, I believe Councilman Youngman of over a hundred million dollar request, which is you know two or three times what we actually have in growing revenues. So obviously if the schools are getting an overwhelming increase relative to everybody else, the answer is going to be no. We're not going to be able to provide the services, the other services, other than the school services. With respect to APFO, I can't say, I don't know, with respect to how the committee was structured and the membership was structured. I don't know. We're dealing with what we're dealing with, and we'll see how that process works out. I mean, people hear me comment on APFO all the time that a lot of times you're dealing with, especially as the county runs out of developed land, I see a lot of individual families, like a family that's had that property in their family for however long, and for a long time we could justify that four or five year hold because we needed to give the school system time to mitigate. But if they're not even pursuing capacity projects and they don't need them, because we're under 100 right now, and redistricting the bridge too far, then what's the justification for getting those folks, for shutting those folks out of the market for four or five years. I probably, this is more of an app-to-food discussion than it is a spending affordability, but it directly drives this long-term outlook and it's really hard to separate them, unfortunately. All right, Mr. Young, how about one last question for our committee? Sorry, I have a couple things. Josh has a... I just wanted to address one thing, instead of the top councilman, youngman. Obviously, Maryland has the state business climate that they want to create, that is going to be created out of an app list that the county won't really have the ability to mitigate. To mitigate. Sorry, just noise in the room. But there are things that the county can do to make Howard County more attractive to businesses that want to stay in Maryland. And I think something that the county Council should do is take a hard look at things that we make regular, we add regulations on top of what Maryland adds that could help to make Howard County more of a magnet of businesses that want to stay in Maryland and grow our commercial tax base. So let's leave that that. Well, and that would help us to, even if it's a small pie for the state, some folks are gonna wanna stay here, and we could maybe get a disproportionate share of that pie. So that's fair, thank you, Josh. So actually, I had two questions, and I don't know if you wanna add to this, Josh, or Richard you'd like to add to it because you all mentioned that Howard County is still flat or has actually decreased in our number of businesses in Howard County since COVID and that we're one of of the future restrictions that has not caught up or exceeded the pre-COVID times. And I was wondering what you attribute that to, and it sounds like Josh, at least one of the things you attribute that to is adding piling on regulations over and above what the state has already done. Is there anything else? And can you give me an example? I'm not sure. We piled on regulations on top, like piled on regulations that made in Howard County less attractive. I'm saying that it would be useful to just as an exercise for Howard County to take a look, whether or not there are areas where we could streamline things that maybe the county had done previously with good intentions, but now in a constrained environment, keep commercial and private sector investment at bay that we ordinarily could have more investment in the county, but for things that are unique to Howard County that limit that. That's all I'm saying. There are certain places where my personal opinion, you know, Newtown zoning might need a hard look, but I understand that there's a lot of political pushback on that. Well, and there's also covenants. Certainly speaking, that's something that. Yes, there's a lot of things as well. If I can add something there, I think one of the explanations is the luxury of affluence. We have a lot of families that, and if you drill down in the employment data, it kind of peels back the onion a little bit in the sense that our employment number recovery among women is lower in the county than it is among men. And it seems that one possible explanation is that our affluence has allowed more families to become single-income families rather than two-income families. And at some point, as people feel threatened or challenged, they might become two-income families again. But for now, we have a larger percentage of one one income families that we did going into COVID and the recovery in the female job market has not been as robust as the recovery in the mail. That's an interesting point. So there was one other thing. You guys mentioned that we have, that we should do something with underutilized county brick and mortar assets. And we are constantly getting requests to enter into multi-million dollar leases because some department or another needs all this extra room. And we actually have made it a bit of a refrain when we get another request for one of these leases. And I was wondering, did anybody actually tell you that we had underutilized brick and mortar because if they did, I want to locate it. And I want to bring it up the next time that we have somebody in our county telling us that they need to enter into another multimillion dollar lease. Or was that just sort of an assumption? No. Well, two things. Schools that are at 75% percent. I'm not asking about schools. Now you said county and schools, I'm not asking about schools. I am specifically asking about county buildings. Well, I can say it's nothing but anecdotal, but if the county is committed to long term teleworking as it is happening still now, it doesn't take long and you walk through the Howard building and you see how many empty desks there are that there are, there is unutilized brick and mortar and I think it's largely a reflection of kind of the move toward teleworking where you just don't have the same demand for space. It's true in the private sector as well. And that's what's happening when you're seeing, you still see a lot of space even in gateway as a good example where property is leased, but it's not occupied or it's way under occupied. And the reason is that moved for telemarketing where businesses now are taking less square footage per employee because the employees don't need as much square footage because half of them are there on any given day. So that's how we're suggested. That's what you were thinking when when you put that in the report. So the next time a department asks for more room we can tell them that they can move into all the empty desks that are here in the George Hour building. I like that. I don't think it's a bad idea. Ted, I mean, a dad can I add that I mean we also see that with the underutilization of commercial space. I mean that it those are assets in the county that could generate revenue or at least provide working space that offsets others. We in the cost of building something new as opposed to assessing how we use what we already have an investment in is overall something that we should be doing. We look at how we more efficiently deliver our programs utilizing the space that we have available, how we make use of assets that are out there. Okay. I can tell you even. No, I just want to make one last comment. And that is there was another comment in there about not being, not that the spending that we are, that we're engaging in on our school district is unsustainable. And yet there was another sort of item that flowed throughout this conversation about how we are so fortunate in that we have a county of people who are so well educated. And one of the most well educated counties in the United States of America, as well as one of the wealthiest, and the two probably go hand in hand. And I just wanna remind everybody that the reason why we have that well-educated, wealthy community here in Howard County is because of the status of our school district and what people feel like we have the resources that we have put into our school district to make it one of the best in the nation and that spending on our school district is exactly what it takes to maintain that status. And with that, I'm done. We're all done. I'm going to close the discussion on the spending affordability committee. Now, thank you all for your participation and thoughtful answers to our questions. We have like what, a minute, Mr. Haley? I noticed as I was flipping through my budget or my monthly meeting binder that you guys do not have the 107 page document that was actually presented to the bond rating agencies, you have maybe, I know, you have a 12 page one. And so I forwarded it to you earlier in today's meeting once I realized what's in here is not a fraction of, I mean, it is a fraction, right? What 12 divided by 107, that's the fraction. It's that fraction of what was presented to the Bonne Ring agencies. The problem is that there is some confidentiality that we have to maintain to certain of that information. And so my preference would be that we have that conversation later on when we are comfortable about asking questions that are limited to what can be publicly discussed and those that might more privately be pursued with the Director of Finance and is able crew. And I'm sorry to say that we are now at 1230 Mr. Hela. I agree with you. I think as you know the first year that I did this I out a nine-page summary of everything that we discussed to my colleagues so that you all would know what it was that the County Executive's Office presented and how the credit agencies reacted to that information. which was generally fabulous. And I doubt that it's any different this year, but I think as the county council, five elected members of this representing this county, we all have the right to know that information, not just the chair. I agree with you. All we ask is that you keep your confidential because no county, no municipal government shares their presentation with anyone because it's a marketing strategy or the information that you have in there, I think you've discussed it today. All that information is privy to the rate agencies or we're doing together, putting together is how the exec wants to present it to the rate agencies. Yes, it was fabulous, and now we're very happy. We did issue our bonds last week, and we got some good rates. So anytime you're ready for me to come talk about it, I'll be happy to. Just we can't disclose all the information. We'll be giving quite a few information to other counties and they look at every county uniquely. And so we don't want to be trying to share information and then questioning the written ages. It's hard they are looking at us when they believe that the same information is what everybody, everyone is unique. And I will bring to my colleagues' attention the page that caught my attention both in the 107 page version and the 12 page version is paid date in our 12 page version that's here and it shows the growth of the total fund balance as of June 20th through June, I'm sorry not June 20th June 2020 through June 2024 to have more than and doubled so that our total fund balance as of June 30th, 2024, is $475 million, almost half a billion dollars. And I'm sure Mr. Aheley will explain to you why that is something that is purposeful when we meet again, but that to me was. Quickly just quickly. Sure, yeah, go ahead. For that, the denominator just gave. And I will tell you that under Moody's rating, we do not meet the AAA rating. Moody's require you to have 35% or above in your total fund balance for you to be considered a AAA. We are approximately 32%. So we do not meet it. But they do give us that AAA. That's why we try to keep the information, excuse me, confidential because they do have a way of looking at everything else. One of them is how we manage a county. The first question is really that the county has is always what give us our notch for them to not say, even though you don't mean the 35%, we know you're doing everything right to keep the county going. So fund balance is critical. We need to have it. I think you had it from, you spent that vulnerability advisory committee and you had it from the federal influx of what the county will probably have to take on. Thank you. Thank you. All right, without we're adjourned. Congratulations again. This meeting is no longer being recorded. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm sorry. Thank you.