you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you The OBAT analysis noted some of their strengths include explaining the connection between historical and current farming agricultural inequities and that the core team is planning quarterly staff engagement on building racial equity and social justice knowledge amongst their staff. They are also looking for ways to use a racial equity lens in their data analysis, reviewing existing contracts to identify opportunities to enhance marketing and outreach to underserved communities, and are also going to investigate whether they can do some data analysis to inform some of their practices. That's also been noted as one of the opportunities for strengthening their equity output. So, they're also going to identify tracking staff engagements to see whether they are engaging with smaller beginning farmers who typically are black and degenerate people of color. So that's pretty much that analysis. Section E just summarizes those budget items that I referenced at the beginning. And the BELC our compensation adjustments as I noted and there are no service impacts. And Council staff does suggest the committee consider approving the recommended budget. Thank you for that high level overview very quickly. I really appreciate it. Let's give the office of agriculture an opportunity to chime in and provide any input here, Mr. Schiff. Sure, thank you, PHP Committee. Thank you, Council Staff, and also always thank our OMB analyst. She does a great job with us. I appreciate that. So the Office of Agriculture, we're no different than everybody else in this county. It's chaos. We're just trying to keep our head above the water. Our farmers are resilient. Our new and beginning farmers are resilient're continuing to find ways to help these people who want to get into farming. With the racial equity component of it, the biggest challenge we always hear and you all have heard it to is access to land. So land continues to be expensive. It will always be expensive here. So we're working with some civic organizations on finding ways to increase the private side, private land owners allowing no one beginning farmers to farm that farm. And we've had some beginning conversations with some interested parties on looking at an incubator farm. If we can find that a public private partnership. So we're continuing to push there. We're very happy that our cold storage unit at the accuracy farm park is alive and well. It's in use. We know it will continue that use as the growing season gets here upon us. We are still engaged with the Park and Planning Commission on the lease of the building and we are hopeful and we've had some positive conversations with them that the commercial kitchen in our building could then be used alongside that cold storage to make shelf stable foods that the farmers could sell at their farmers markets or go to food pantries to help people in the end. So that's as brief as I can be. So thank you. Appreciate it. Well, I'll just say I recently took over as chair of the Council of Governments Farm Policy Committee. And we got to host all of the members, the annual onsite meeting at the Ag Park. I appreciate you joining and being there and all of the regional leaders who work on these issues elected officials and nonprofit leaders were amazed by this incredible asset that we have and just were completely blown away. And it was a reminder of how lucky we are in Montgomery County to have the Ag reserve and to have the office of agriculture and to have that beautiful piece of land that you call an office that I call a refuge and a respite to be able to join it. Could you talk a little bit about this, but any new opportunities are expanded on some of the work that you're doing specifically to engage new and emerging farmers from historically underrepresented communities and specifically on the question of land access, land link and other programs that you have and how that's going and any plans for the future. Sure. So we, unfortunately, the way, it's not unfortunate, it's just the way the preservation programs work. It's tough for new and beginning farmers to access what our traditional egg preservation programs are. So we do have some programs through the Maryland Agricultural Resource Industry-Based Development Corporation, better known as Marbidco, that has some preservation programs set up they call it Next Generation or Small Acrid Next Generation Farmland Preservation Program. The challenge with those programs as well-intentioned as they are for those who are in the real estate world world they know cash is king right now. So land acquisition from a government aspect takes time. So we are trying our best to find ways to really mobilize ourselves and make ourselves more nimble in that world but it's tough when people can just put cash down a bi-form and then when beginning folks kind of lose out on that. So that's where I believe in staff we've been working on this. An incubator farm would be a kind of good bridge in between that. So we're trying to the capacity that we are able to work with our partners at the commission who manage Parkland to see if we can get something viable at the Acastry Farm Park to kind of bridge owning land but building up your business base to then help you make that purchase and combine some land. It would serve kind of the similar purpose as what Landlink does with private landowners. We're a large public landowner and parking planning and in county government and lead with the power of our example and not just example of our powers. I appreciate that. I want to do to be able to share that and the work that you're doing. So appreciate you. Providing that, I'm glad that the OBET analysis, spoke with us because it's an ongoing issue. It's a frequent topic of conversation that we have at the foreign policy committee as a regional and a national challenge as well. And as we talk about food resilience, we need cultural food as well. And some of the new farmers, immigrant farmers who come from parts of the world where rural agricultural lives are a central part of what they do, but they grow different crops. Those crops can grow here and we have people who know how to grow them. They need land access to be able to make that happen. Appreciate your work. You have some great examples of folks who are already doing that, but having more opportunities to do that would be welcome. I don't see any, oh Councillor Moorjouanda. Thank you, yeah. I appreciate the question in this line of reasoning and glad you're in the job. We haven't seen you that much this year so it's good to just check in. What is the timeline on those conversations and let us know how we can be helpful because I just think with a lot of these things we can, there's a lot, there's always things going on, there's priorities and want to try to accelerate it because it is a problem. Even our, you know, successful businesses that have, you know, we often, the food council often lifts up as an Afro-care,, excuse me, Africa thrives. I knew it was a caring thing, if I've, if I've, if I've thrived. I was talking to her recently about, they're, it's just really difficult for them to even do, and they've been, they're a successful model, you know, and they're talking about just being out there, it's just really hard and they're kind of pivoting to other parts of their business and not spending as much time at the farm there. So, you know, if you speak to a little bit now, but like I want to help you like really, all right, incubator, love the idea. So two questions. How do we get speed that up to help you get that? I help identify that. And then the second thing is incubator to where, you know, like where are you gonna go? And how are we thinking about that pipeline realizing the challenges that you talked about? Sure, thank you, Council Member Joando. So we've talked with Afro Thrive. They're obviously very interested in creating incubator concept. As you well know, our office is county-owned land managed by the park. So anything we do, we have to be in concert with our partners there with the commission. So it's ongoing conversations there, and I'd be happy to bring in anyone who wants to try to help us achieve that all my years. So I appreciate that very much. And so the best example of incubator farm, in my opinion, in the country is a place called Intervale and Vermont. So what you said is exactly the challenge. The folks get to lease the land from this incubator farm and they don't want to leave. They invest in making the soil better. They know how to grow. They know what grows there. That will always be the challenge in the Mid-Atlantic, is land is expensive. So that is a conversation I've had with County Executive, and he's aware of this. We just need to come up with a way that allows farmers, new and beginning farmers, to access what would traditionally be the preservation program concept but scale down on a lower level. And I don't have a good answer for you, but I'm very happy to talk further about it. I appreciate the candor and I appreciate, you know, honestly, I need to count us in. Luke, us next meeting will join it or my team and I'm sure I speak for my guys. We all want to help move this along. Thank you guys way too often. I'll tourism falls into the Economic Development Committee. So, and with Afro-Thrive, I have worked a lot. And I'm working with them in two projects on urban farming in my district. And I look forward to the next agro-terrism work session that we're gonna be putting together in the fall, which you guys know about. And everybody's always welcome to attend. So that's it. You guys do great work and I look forward to saying yes to the county executives proposal. Okay, we have a proposal from the county executive. We have no objections from colleagues. And so we will approve as recommended by the county executive. Great. Thank you. Appreciate it. We're going to move on to the next items on our agenda. We have the Department of Housing and Community Affairs, the General and Grant Fund and the Housing Initiative Fund. We're going to welcome up our Department of Housing and Community Affairs, who we hope presented well at their conference this afternoon. We're not going to go through the full presentation here in the interest of everybody's time, but we have received it, I think yesterday afternoon or evening. I think all colleagues have received it. Council staff has received it. We will can be ready to talk about it as needed, but I think we should go through the packet because similar information is shared in the packet. So let's get into it. Let me turn it over to Mr. Mia and you can walk us through the packet and we can turn it over to our colleagues in DHCA as needed. In addition to the DHCA operating budget, there's also two CIP items for the committee's review today. In terms of the operating budget, the overall increase across all funds of DHCA's operating budget is increased of $5.2 million or 6.7% over the FY25 approved level. The bulk of the changes are in a general fund portion of the operating budget where the executive is recommending an increase of 1.8 million or 13.2%. And as primarily driven by a number of staffing and programmatic enhancements, only five new positions being added or requested for addition to the budget. There's also about 1.2 million of compensation adjustments for existing staff. And there's also a 3% inflation adjustment for DATA managed contracts that are funded through the general fund. On the general fund side, there's also a revenue increases for three licensing types. The rental licensing fee isn't being proposed for an increase of from $76 per unit to $100 per unit for multi-family units. The short-term registration rental license fee is being proposed for an increase from $325 per unit to $500 per unit and the COC fee is being proposed for an increase from $650 per unit to $10 per unit. And so that's driving revenue changes on the general fun side as well. On the grant fund portion, not a lot of significant changes, simply a same services budget. It's actually a slight decrease of about 132,000 over the FY25 approved level. There are a number of positions being shifted out of the grant fund to either the HIF or the general fund. And that's primarily because of rising compensation cost hitting a cap on what a grant award allows for. So those positions, those existing positions need some shifting to other funds. And then finally, the Housing Initiative Fund portion, there is an increase of about $3.6 million or for the FY25 approved level that is primarily driven by a compensation adjustments as well as increase of the home buyer down payment assistance fund program by 1.5 million. There's also an increase of 2.5 million in the rental assistance programs which the joint committee, HHS and PHB committee cover on April 22nd and finally on the HIF side there is some adjustments to the debt service fund associated with increasing the taxable bond portion and the CIP. As I mentioned, there's two CIP amendments, the countywide facade easement program, which programs 500,000 of state aid and FY25, and also the affordable housing acquisition preservation CIP, which programs 75 million in taxable bonds in FY26. And finally, on the operating budget equity tool side, the overall analysis from the Office of RestJay states that DHA continues to demonstrate a strong commitment of advancing racial equity and social justice. It talks about how the apartment will plan to use data to support racial equity initiatives and support its programs. But beyond that, that's the high level summary. Great, high level, anything to add from the department? I'll turn it over to you, Director Bruton. And after you do that, we can dive into the packet. No, nothing to add. We appreciate Mr. Miyas staff report. And as you referenced earlier, we hadn't planned on doing the PowerPoint. We provided a PowerPoint to provide background information and context for any questions you might want to ask us and for our reference for any future questions you might want to ask us. Great, well I appreciate it. We have an up, so if it needs to be referenced, it's there as a reference in response to any questions or a topic that comes up. We can flip to it. But with that, we have some budgetary items and some dynamics of the council's role versus the executive's role and decisions that we have to make. So I'll turn it over to Mr. Mian and we can go through that. Before decision, I just want to turn your attention to page six of the packet on table one. That shows you essentially the difference by program area for DXC's operating budget. These programs are organized budgetarily, so they don't quite line up to the organization chart that's been provided previously. And the reporting structures, it just shows you where the bulk of changes are in terms of dollars in FTEs. On table two, on page seven, you'll see a history going back to FY20 approved budget of the number of FTEs being added to each program over the last six, seven fiscal years of budget. Essentially, in FY20, the DHC operating budget had 100.7 FTEs across all funds. And in FY20, in the current years, FY25, we're at 121 FTEs. So that shows you the growth in FTEs. And that's primarily driven in the rent civilization program that was added. That was nine FTEs last year. But you'll see other programs being changed as well. And that's important context as we think about the positions that are being requested and where they're being requested for. I did want to talk about the fee part of the general fund portion. So as a little bit of background in the packet, the council can review the fees as part of the budget. It's assumed in the revenue portion of the general fund piece of D H C S operating budget, but the executive sets the fees through exactly regulation. That's the current process under the current law. There have been a proposed bill that would change that process, but that's beyond the scope of today's discussion. But that is the current laws that the executive, the council can review the fees and make advisory suggestions and assumptions in the budget. But the executive would actually set the fees through an executive regulation process. OK, we'll get to the fees later on in the second. Unless you want to talk about that now. I can jump to the positions, if you'd like. And the fees are the positions. They're two different topics. The fees and the positions are related. So we could talk about the fees first and the revenue side. Yeah. OK, All right. So again, as I mentioned, there's three proposed fee increases in this year's in the recommended budget. The first is the rental licensing fee, which was part of a two-year phase in, going for 52 to 76 in FY25, and now being proposed to 100 in FY26I-26 and that's for multifamily rentable units. The rental registration fee is also being increased to the part of the two-year phase in, went from 150 in F-I-24 to 325 in 25 now to 500. And finally, the common ownership community's fee was $5 last year, $650 in the current year and and it's now being proposed for $10 per unit in FY26. All told, the three fees will generate about 2.8 million more in revenues than the current year. Table 5 has a summary of each fee and each revenue source. But essentially, the three proposed fee increase will generate an additional 2.8 million in revenues. And in terms of the COC fee, that fee is set to be essentially self-supporting the Office of Common and Rorship Communities program. The county code does not allow the fee to be set more than the cost of administering the program, so the fees are being adjusted to match compensation adjustments in that program as well as a new position being proposed. But I think I'll stop there and see if there's any questions on that piece. I think there's quite a few questions on this. We've received quite a bit of feedback. Why don't we, let's put the COC piece aside for a minute because I think there's two different dynamics here because the COC is a slightly separate conversation that we should have and need to have. There was a question of the enterprise fund. We had a significant conversation last year on the other items in it including the positions and the guidance from the committee was we wanted to go in the direction of an enterprise fund. We had, after much discussion and debate, landed on a phase in. That phase in, though, was for me, I don't want to speak for colleagues, but based on the conversation that we had, one of the reasons why I was willing, and I stated this last year, to go along with higher fees, phased in over time to make them more palatable and reasonable and affordable for those that they would impact, is that they were specifically to fund positions. But in order for that to be a real deal, in order for that transaction to work in the way that is intended, that's an enterprise fund. And that's not the direction that has been decided. And we were not aware that the intention is not to go towards an enterprise fund until the budget came out. And it turns out that enterprise fund is not a direction that it appears that the executive branch or the department is willing or are interested to go in. So can you talk a bit about why we didn't hear about it until the budget? If you were going to go in a different direction, then what we had hoped it intended and had discussed, and that you had shared an interest in a willingness in moving that direction as well and what the reason for that decision was. Sure, happy to. As you mentioned, last year during the budget deliberations both the PHP committee and the county executive expressed a strong interest in doing an enterprise fund. The intention of the enterprise fund was to make sure that the programs were self-supporting based on the fees and that those fees were segregated so that they wouldn't be used for other general fund responsibilities. And so, Hope and Salem, our Director of Finance and Administration and our previous Deputy Director, spent several months working with the Office of Management and Budget, the Office of Finance, the Office of the County Attorney and the County Executive Office. And we evaluated the use of an enterprise fund, a special revenue fund, and a restricted fund account. We talked with the other departments in the county that have enterprise funds. We investigated what went into having to put them together in the case of DPS. They had to hire for I think more than a quarter million dollars, what do you call it? A special consultant to put together a report to figure this out, it took multiple years to do. The biggest impediment to doing an enterprise fund is that you have to have a significant surplus each year. And you have to have that surplus from day one. You can't build it up over time. And the intent of the surplus is that, you're like, you are as an enterprise fund, you are completely separated from the general fund. You're not gonna get any help. And so that surplus has to be there to help you in the off years, safer permitting services when there are fewer permits requested and fewer fees coming in. What we found in doing that, so the fees that we proposed last year and which the Ph.P. Committee deemed it important to do a phase two year increase were based on becoming self-supporting for our programs. What we found with the Enterprise Fund because of having to create that surplus is those fees would have to be significantly higher than the already significant increases we were making to be self-supporting. And so it was the concern of OMB, OCA, CEX, and finance that doing those increased fees plus the level of complexity having to hire an outside consultant to work through the legal and financial issues that the costs and the complexities were just too much and that it would not be able to be done within one year. We also, in our research of the enterprise fund, we found that there were two other options, the special revenue fund and the restricted fund account. The special revenue fund, these are in the PowerPoint, we have kind of an overview of what the research we did was. The special revenue fund also has some additional difficulties, but it doesn't have that requirement of having the surplus. We ended up, and we can, Miss Salem can go into those differences more, if you'd like. What we ended up settling on was the restricted fund account. And the restricted fund account based on what all these departments and CEX evaluated would produce the goal of making DHCA programs self-supporting. But it wouldn't require the surplus and the level, other levels of complexity involved in creating the enterprise fund. And so when looking at what the state of goals had been, the determination was made, so we don't get to make this determination on choosing this all by ourselves. So the determination was made by the entities that control whether we'd be able to do this, that the restricted fund account. So I just, when do those conversations happen and when was that determination made? The, sorry. Because I mean you could understand our frustration here is we talked about it last year at this time. And it wasn't until the slide deck came and your explanation that you just provided now that we were fully aware that you had completely abandoned the idea of an enterprise fund for the reasons that you stated and that you were going in a completely different direction for the reasons that you stated. And we don't have time now during budget to go through what could be an hour long, multiple hour long conversation to weigh the pros and cons and the costs and benefits of the various different options. We could have done that before the budget, so that we were prepared for the budgets, so that we, under so we can't do that now. So we just don't have the time to compress the schedule. So, I mean, that's part of my frustration and concern. It was my understanding that when the county executive's budget was released, the information that we were moving toward a restricted fund. Yeah, on March 14th. Right. Because you had said not until the slide deck. Not until the county executive prepared his budget with no explanation. And the slide deck that gave the explanation. Right. And you know, generally if there was going to be a different direction from the guidance that is received, there would be some consultation. We could have had a discussion. I mean, that's the crux of the concern for me. So, you know, the other question is, what assumption? Because you're not doing an enterprise fund and because we we didn't do an enterprise fund last year, what were the assumptions of the positions that the enterprise fund eventually was going to cover and what was funded last year ultimately? I don't quite understand your question. So I can explain further. Yeah, yeah. So we did a two-year phase in part one of the rental licensing fee and the short-term rental registration fee was increased. Number of positions that were recommended last year were not funded by the council's approved budget. In the final approved budget, but are now being re-requested in this year's budget. So I think the question is, there's more revenues collected than expenditures from those revenues. That makes sense. So we, the short term, so the second half of the short term rental, so the short term rental fee increase that was done last year did not fully pay for all five positions. The second half fully pays for all five positions. And part of the reason that that worked last year is that those five positions were hired most of the way through the fiscal year. And so if the second half of the short term rental fee increase is not done this year, then we will not have the money to pay for the positions that were higher last year. And then as far as the second half of the multifamily fee increase, the recommendation that we made last year that was divided into two was to pay for the positions that were requested last year. And we weren't given those positions last year, but those fee increases last year and the ones we're requesting this year were calculated to pay for those five positions. And so if we are, if those five positions aren't created, then yes, we will be generate, we would have to do another calculation because we're moving into being self-supporting. And so part of it was to pay for those positions for also for our operations to be self-supporting with those positions. And that's what we conveyed in our budget testimony on our conversations last year. So do you have a calculation of what the fees would be if you didn't include positions versus if you do include the positions? Hi, this is Paul van Seglum. Yes, I can present that and then send it over to Mr. Mia and And it's not included in the question that he asked me, but I can provide that information, provide different scenario. Look at what is our current expenditure and then project the over next six year, waste the fee or without the fee. And so that kind of give you a clear picture what implication would have. And also include if we need to use the fee increases to pay for additional position to support our operational need, then I can also incorporate that into all different kinds of scenario for you to review. Yeah, my suggestion would be for us, I mean, if we're really talking about this as a restricted fund, then the fee should only align with the budgeted positions that actually get approved. So ultimately, if we decide to put some of these positions on the reckless, they should be tied to an increase. so it should say, here's the position, here's the fee increase. And if we fund it, then that's what it is. If we don't include it in the budget, then the fee increase doesn't happen. So it's hard to justify the fee increase if you don't have the position. It's a little more complicated than that because it's not only paying for the positions, but it's paying for us to not take anything out of the general fund. And so the total amount of the fees pay for all the relevant positions that are covered under the work that we do. And so part of that covers our own indirect costs, part of that covers the management costs, things like that. I mean, so if we're truly being supported by the fees, it is the full picture of what's included in providing those services. If I may, I'm just adding another context into the conversation. Because by setting up either enterprise fund or a restricted fund, one of the policy considerations is do we plan to increase the fee on the annual basis? Because the revenue, if you collect project effort that particular fiscal year, you only factor in that how much you should pay for the expenditure. What I mean is that by the following year, depends on the personnel cost increase, the labor negotiation, we would have to increase the fee again. So sometimes when we do that kind of projection, we are hoping that maybe by increased the fee, it can support for several years without increased the fee again. So that's another policy consideration that when we put it into the estimate, in terms of what is the level of the fee need to increase in order to maintain that sustainable, you know, for much longer period time without increased the fee, you know, for the following year. Another factor to calculate is that there are going to be changes in compensation, not just for our department, for the whole county each year. And if we are to pay for ourselves as we go, there is each year with each contemplated fee increase, there has to be a projection of what the costs would be because we don't know what the compensation costs are going to increase. And so there has to be some projection. Otherwise we would be lagging where we would have a year where we would be taking in less than was committed to with compensation increases. And then we would need some backup from the general fund to do that. And so it's never like a complete penny for penny, like exact science, because you don't know what the cost increase is. And that's what I mean, you called it a surplus, or I would call it a reserve. I mean, that's, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I would call it a reserve in an order to do it, which is generally called the fund balance from our counting budgeting. If I can say that's a high level context. So as this curl. in order to do it, which is generally called the fund balance, you know, from our county budgeting. If the fact that it's a high level context. Yeah. So, as it currently stands, the CES recommended budget on the general fund has 15.3 million of expenditures, including the five positions that are being proposed. And the revenues, what the fee increases are about 13.7 million, so that's a delta of 1.6 million more expenditures on a general fund side than revenues coming in. If we were to not fund the five positions, it would decrease expenditures by half a million in 26. And if we did not increase the revenues, all three revenue sources, it would have about 10.9 million of revenues. So there the gap is not 4 million roughly. So back of Don Valop, that shows you the revenue impacts if the fees were not increased and if the positions were not approved. That makes sense. And this Salem can provide you detailed spreadsheets for how we've calculated all the way. Just to be clear, I mean, I just want to make sure I heard that right. The positions, the five positions equate to about a half million dollars and the fee increases related to FI26. Right. And you know, the annualized PC would be much higher because for the new position, because you're lapsing it to be able to hire. And then any, for instance, staff, any composition adjustment for them would also drive the fee increase. So even if we had an opposition, the fees would over time increase. Right. But the fee increases are how much? Total value of the fee increases. Not the COC, because we'll put that separate. 2.3. 2.3. Yep. All right, so we're charging people 2.3 million for positions that cost annually like 600,000, but annualized cost. We're charging them for the positions plus moving to the restricted fund model. That's the biggest cost is moving to the restricted fund model. So they don't get the benefit of the enterprise fund where it's truly separate, but they get charged for the cost. I don't understand the necessarily, go ahead. Ms. Sorry. I think the concept of restricted fund is just, I think, from finance perspective, because if we move to the enterprise fund, normally, we take DPS budget like the example, then you need to have at least about 20% to 30% in fund balance as required. And so if we need to achieve that policy call based on the county fiscal, you know, over all policy plan, that would really have to increase our licensing fee significantly. But for restricted funds, it's still support the same concept that we collected revenue. We will set up specific account and committed those funds only for specific program operational purposes. And the department will always be in the finance on the annual basis, we will continue to track to make sure whatever the fee collected, pay for whatever, you know, the actual expenditure and hopefully that we don't have to increase the fee on your basis. So the two, the over two million dollars is going towards an ongoing fund balance to be able to cover $600,000 worth of new positions over time. It seems to me that it's going to cover existing positions and existing operations. Exactly. I think also that we factor in, let's say, we are moving into the FY26 budget development. Whatever the fee that we've collected in its year, we would have to make sure that some flexibility or cushion there to cover the following year with PC increase, operating, associate-operated increases, that we don't have increased the fee again immediately. Because I think from policy of decision making process, that might really cause some concern. I'm not sure I see the benefit of having a restricted fund. If the cost is four times the cost of the actual positions. Well, that's the issue. I can't go to a resident and explain it and their fees going up, but it's OK because your fees going up because you're going to get an improved service, and it's going directly to that improved service. I have to tell them that your fees going up four times the cost of what the improved service would cost. And that's a bad deal. It's terrible deal. Well, why not just ditch the restricted fund, go back to how things were happening before and only increase the fees, the value of what 500,000 would be and revisit it next year. That's what I'm trying to figure out. I don't think it's fair to say that an enterprise fund would be a good deal for them and a restricted fund is a bad deal for them. An enterprise fund would cost them significantly more than what's been proposed. No, you're arguing that the enterprise fund is a bad deal too. What I'm saying is the restricted fund isn't necessarily a good deal because it is still overcharging them for the value. So you're not getting what the thought process was that of an enterprise fund and you're still getting overcharging, maybe you're getting overcharged less, but you're still paying for more than the cost of what you're getting in return. So I think that's the other way. Another way of looking at this is that if you are charging, if you are making it a fee-based budget, it is those paying the fees who are paying for the services. If we don't go to a restricted fund or some other model that segregates the fees, as was requested of us, then the money will still be coming out of the general fund. And so who's going to be paying for it? Is it the general fund that's paying for part of it, or is it all being paid for? Some of the same people are paying into the general fund too. I mean, I just want to note that. It's not as if that's a totally different category of people. All right. All you'll to colleagues, I'm not comfortable with the fee increases in light of the fact that we're charging for things that were not in the spirit of what we had talked about last year. That's what I had agreed to last year. I wish you had come to us much earlier than March 14th. We could have talked through what this was going to look like and come up with a collaborative strategy. We didn't do that. That didn't happen. We could revisit it but I I'm not supportive, and I don't know what the number would be of equating to the 500 or 600,000 for the actual positions, because I'd be open to that. I think that's a reasonable thing to do, depending on what positions ultimately get funded in the budget. But I'm not comfortable saying that we're going to charge four times the cost of a position in increased fees. I just don't think that that is something that I could easily justify to the community when we talk to them about their fees going up. But let me yell to colleagues and see where others. All right, customer refining is ours. Good afternoon. I think the chair mentioned this quite a few times already. I think the biggest problem that we have right now is the lack of communication. We should have had this conversation once before arriving to this place. And I'm going to use the example of TPS, TPS falls under the Economic Development Committee, which I chair. And I am highly aware of the DPS Enterprise Fund because I have so many conversations with them about that fund. So it's nothing new. Here we're coming in this hour on Friday with this bombshell. And I have more questions I came in with lots of questions and I'm happy and I'm actually now very very unhappy and Yes, it's and in on top of all that we were facing federal level, people really struggling, because at the end of the day, this fee, somebody had to pay these fees. The tenants will pay these fees. It's not the landlord. It's the tenants. It goes to them. We're going to make it more difficult. And it's a difficult year with everything going on, and the lack of communication, it makes it worse. I know you need the staff. I'm one of those, one of those council members who usually call you guys. And I love you in respect you so much because you have been there for me with all that issues that we handle in my office, things are happening with my constituents. But it's the process has been broken. And I'm not going to blame anybody. I'm just going to say it's just sad that we're here at this hour discussing this instead of having this conversation long before. And then coming in here and saying, this is what we're going to be voting on, based on all the information and analysis and questions and answers that we have had before. That didn't happen. So, I want to ask you of the five positions that you're requesting. Which ones? Because also, I'm also coming in here in every single budget session that I have in ECON and BHP. What am I going to cut? So we don't have increases, tax increases for this year's budget. OK, and trying to be as responsible as possible of the five positions that we have here, which ones do you think is crucial? You're like, Natalie, you cannot. We must have this position. And maybe the solution, just me thinking about what? Maybe the solution is to say that position should come from the general fund. And then we, the three of us, come back after the budget and really look at this structure and see what makes sense. So I'm just, yeah. Does, can you answer that question? Which of the? I would say. Don't tell me all five, because that doesn't work. Now, I would say the two positions for licensing, each year that I've, as my third budget, each year that I've been here, we've made the case that are licensing folks, which they collect the vast majority of our funding have been for many years, woefully underfunded. And they are not with their current staffing plus a handful of SPS contractors are not able to keep up with our code and statutory requirements. There's one position. There's two. Two. Okay. Any's. Okay. And he's, okay, two. I... Manager three in the program specialist too. Yeah. The top two on the chart. So if we say that those positions can be taken from the general fund, they will go to the reconciliation list. Is that what it is? Yeah, I am just putting this idea out there as a solution but I'll go back to you guys. If I may provide a little bit, maybe I can work with Mr. Mia, let's say with two position in terms of look at our current revenue projection without the increases or how would that that cover our projected FI26 expenditure? So that can give you a better sense of with fee increase or without the fee increase. Or with fee increases, whatever the level, instead of going all the way to 100, maybe we can come up a different scenario scenario and I want with the director to figure out what would be the most appropriate fee because we do need to make sure those programs are self-supported. And so I think just want to provide that kind of different levels of notices enough for everybody's understanding. What about one? Let me turn to Councillor Andrew. I think it's a suggestion. I want to come back to that. Let me first turn it to Councillor Mordredranda. Yeah, I appreciate the thoughtfulness that's kind of building on the scenarios that you talked about earlier. Yeah, I think the, you know, with any fee structure, you have to pay for the positions. There's obviously, you have to have a fund that has money in it if you don't get to your point, that if you don't get the amount of fees, if you're going to an enterprise like or in this case for stricter funds, so I get that. I get now that you're talking us through the analysis, so it would be good. It would have been good to know it sooner, but I get things happen. I will say, though, I wouldn't want to make any decisions absent that information. I would want to see what we're getting rid of. I'm also like the code enforcement people, at the end of the table here, you know, literally, you know, I don't think I think we need help there, too, you know. So that's something that we talk about a lot for people. I hear very often in my office that when they call that it takes a while for people to get their complaint heard and people people to hear back from them. And I don't think it's through lack of trying. I think there's a lot of cases. So I guess generally, right now, all five positions are included in the CES budget. They're funded by these fees. The issue is there's a disconnect of how much is the disconnect between what they cost, the positions cost, and the fee revenue generation, again, is 2.3 versus around 6. What's the annualized cost of the positions? 6. It's about a little bit over 600. Now, March is only three months. Yeah. Okay, so it gets to six hundred. Seven. Yeah. Six eighty. Six. Okay. Are you guys looking at something in the packet? Yeah. What page is that? I'm on the feed chart, so I'm on the page so the positions are Anita IETA OMB the positions are 560 And they lapse for three months. So if we add the three months that would be about $700,000 Okay, here we go. I just want to work with yeah the additional cost of 157 that's in the budget book on circle 16 So there goes you to annualized costs of new positions. So it's 700,000. 700,000. All right. Go on once. Go on twice. 700,000. OK. So it's the Delta 700 and 2.3. Could you just, I want to just give you the opportunity to explain, given all the research you've done on this, and you settled the rental licensing, do you still feel that is a DHCA in the county executive's position that this is the best route to go. Given the information you now know that you have to charge a little more to get the higher to, I guess in this case, it one, what is 2.3 minus 700, whatever that is, right? One six to have in the fund. Almost every half. So I think that provided Mr. Mia, if we look at all the personnel costs, funded with the licensing fee, it's about 73 FTETE and so the comparison is not how much that we increase the revenue that's at $2.3 million from the fee increases revenue generate. We also have to pay for the personnel cost, the incremental increases from FI-20 to all people because that's part of the labor. I think it's a close to two million. Okay. So we have 73 FTE, depends on our assumption based on the county recommended labor union negotiation, and so that calculates close to about two million. So it's not just that we increased 2.3 million from licensing fee just pay for the five position. We also had to cover existing staffing that personnel increases from one year to the following year. So it's not really apples to apples comparison to say these are five positions that cost 700,000 and we've got 2.3 and they're just paying for that. They're not just paying for that. They're paying for the pay increases for the other 68 employees that are paid out of the licensing fee. Is that right? I'm just 68 minus 5 or plus 5, you know, 68 plus 5, 73 or whatever. You get what I'm saying, the other employees. The existing employees. Oh, okay, so that's helpful, because that makes sense. And in that this year, you said is around $2 million. Oh, sorry. I mean, it's our PowerPoint slide 11. And so I kind of just. Did you pull that one? Thanks. Okay. So. that one thanks okay so those are the five positions then look like it's that one because you know what you're talking about is the other employees right to the next page go to next page yes okay here. Okay. Here is kind of high level. You press your button, please, because you're not on. Thanks. Apologize. So on this slide, just kind of give the high level the revenue assumption and the, what is the project expenditure. So for the adjustment for existing staff, it is about 1.5 million and plus the additional five, five hundred, it's just for FI 26. It's just about two million. It's collapsed costs. Okay. And so the 1.4, which is the adjustments like wage and step adjustments for the existing employees, which also is required to come out of this licensing fees fund. Correct. Because it covered our staff currently working for licensing, co-inforcement, or co-reensualization and I'm going to show the end of it. In the calculation of the fee structure, you were thinking about both of these numbers, which is why in that, when you look at 2 million versus 23 that's not an outrageous gap. That's a reasonable gap I think. So the question is you have to pay for the adjustments to existing staff. If it didn't come from these fees it would have to come out of the general fund. It has come from somewhere, right? Okay, so I just think how it had my understanding of it is different now that this seems like it's not that unreasonable. The communication part aside, but that you're going to get 2.3 million dollars next year to cover two million dollars in expenses. Is that a fair characterization? Right, and we also factor in trying not to increase the fee again. Right. Well, that was going to be my second line of questioning, because I was looking at the fees over time. You wanted a little buffer so that you don't have to increase it every year, because under the old model, or under your current authority, another thing I wanted to say at the beginning, you guys set the fees. We don't set it. to write me about the COC fee. It's not, I didn't say anything. It's the executive side that sets it. And... the fees. We don't set it. So if everyone has been writing me about the COC fee, it's not, I didn't set anything. It's the count, it's the executive side that sets it. And we have a, we can deny it or not in 60 days and all that stuff with method two regulation. But so you tried to put a little extra in there so that you could have a little fun balance and that you didn't have to raise the fee. How long do you think under these proposed fees, which are above, this is the best chart in the packet here because you got the fees and the cost at the bottom? How long do you think you can keep them at that rate under with your best estimate? A couple of years. You've also got to add in the indirect cost. When you go to a fund, you have to pay for the indirect cost. Right now, DUCA has the fees in the general fund, and if there's a shortfall, the general fund covers it. That's another set of, I guess, analysis that we could provide to you to see what is the delta between what the fee collected revenues are versus what Is in after 1.452 that's the indirect cost that's the personnel costs of the existing no the general fund goes to cover things Oh, sorry the indirect cost goes to cover things like services from the county attorney or in B finance is 20% of a fund. Got it. We've got to factor that in as well. Yeah, that would be good to see too, but that would put the number higher. Yes. They would be higher than 2 million. So in the light of that, I'm fine with the fees. It seems like you just, I agree on the communication points. It would have been good to know this prior to the budget because we'd like to move a little fat, you know, have more information coming in. But it seems like a reasonable approach to make sure that the existing staff salary increases indirect costs in new staff would be paid out of the licensing fees and there's not a big delta here. So I'm fine with the decision we made last year to increase the fees in a staggered way, which was a compromise. I don't think we should try to do anything on the fly this year. I mean, I think we should get all that information and we can come back to a session would be my recommendation to the Ph.P. committee to go over it, but I wouldn't, I don't think we should try to take these much needed positions off or given that they would be funded out of these fees. That would be kind of where I am And just to add on table four on page 11 you see the history of the fees going back to five two thousand So you'll see how long entry has roughly stayed or seen and you know I will just know we're we're changing the rules here I mean we're changing what we were talking about what these these were going to go towards. Because the indirect costs is not a new cost. So the idea of the fee increasing to cover the increased costs for the new position, for enhanced services, you're taking away from the baseline. It's not like then the general fund will go down as a result and they'll pay less on their property tax bill. They're going to pay the same amount of that. Plus, they're going to pay the fee on top. So I think we got to be honest about what intellectually here of what we're talking about is included and what we're talking about isn't. This is where I was saying on the enterprise fund or not, either it covers the full cost of everything or it covers the additional cost. It can't do both because that's an unreasonable expectation. So, and if we had gone with an enterprise fund, it would have done the same thing. It would have covered the indirect cost. It would have covered all our expenses just like the ... I understand that could have been done over time, which is what we talked about, a phasing it in over time. It was never the expectation that the enterprise fund was going to be built with a reserve immediately. I mean, that would send a shock to this— That's one of the things we found out. We're not legally allowed to phase it in. It has to be all at once. And so it has to be immediately self-supporting. Again, a conversation that I think would have been more helpful to have. I'm not supportive of the fees. I don't agree the the math that was used earlier, it's even if you take the highest dynamic, which I don't I don't necessarily agree with the charging for the existing staff dynamic, because that's not a new and enhanced service. That's a general fund dynamic. That's the cost of the labor agreements that whether we fund new positions or not, they're gonna have to pay. No matter what, we made those commitments. We're gonna pay those commitments, period full stop. So I don't agree with that, but even if you were to assume that, you're charging 4.6 million over two years Because it's 2.3 million times two and if there are more units the number will be higher But I'm not sure there will be more units. So 4.6 and the costs are 1.3 555 plus a little less than 700. So it's not the way that it was framework. The gap is the 2 million and the 2.3. It really is because you're charging for something that you're not paying for fully in the first year and then you're charging again for that. So there's a gap that's baked in. So to be clear, we presented this fee structure last year and we discussed this last year in the budget and the fee increases that we were talking about aren't changed at all from last year and they're paying for the direct and indirect costs just as they were done last year. And so I apologize for like communication on this being part of what we're constrained by is that the decision was made to make this part of the budget and we are not allowed to discuss that. I mean, that is something that's handled by OMB. That's a poll. I mean, in fairness, I don't necessarily agree with that. There's a policy decision of whether it's a restricted fund or an enterprise fund. It's not a, you know, what gets funded and what doesn't get funded and at what amount, which is really what, understandably, is an internal decision, which, you know, we get criticized a lot. For our level of transparency, I will say the council is infinitely more transparent than the executive branch has evidence here today, but that notwithstanding, those are two different things. I wasn't expecting you to tell us what your DHCA budget amount was going to be or what positions the county executive was going to recommend funding, but making a policy decision on enterprise fund versus a restrictive fund when we had a conversation about it prior to the budget dropping and finding out that you were going in a different direction. I don't think it's an unreasonable concern. The other point that I have is if we are putting certain things on and making a question of whether or not we fund them, if we don't fund them, the fee shouldn't go up. So this is the issue. Like, even last year, I'm still not quite sure I'm following. Last year, we didn't fund every present. We've provided more funding for more positions in DHCA than just about any other department, including, frankly, even MCPS.EP and DHA have been two of the most well-funded added positions of the last few years of any department. But if we don't fund all of these, the fees are still be proposed to go up. So there isn't a direct tie here. Right. But again, this was all discussed last year. This was, we had been asked by the committee and by the county executive last year to prepare for a switch to an enterprise fund or something similar. And that was the basis for the request for these fees for that. So again, the short-term rental fees, that two-stage fee increase is to pay for existing positions that have already been hired. And so if that fee increase doesn't go through, then we don't have adequate funding for those positions. For those existing positions that are sitting in our office right now. of what of the fees are going towards positions that were funded in last year's budget and what of the fees are to go to positions that are new? The short-term rental goes toward the short-term rental fee increase goes towards all that just for those five positions. That's the second part of just those five positions. The multifamily fee that goes toward, the fee increase that was proposed last year and split into two parts is to pay for the four positions that are there. We haven't talked about the COC yet. The four positions that are recognized. We're in fund delights here. So half the money from last year, the fee increase covered what? It covered an incremental step in us moving to be self-supporting, an incremental step in for us to be self-supporting. And then the second half of the fee increase is the second stage of us becoming self-supporting, plus adding these positions. But how does it not change what those numbers are based on those positions, whether or not they're fund or not? Well, that's the insane thing. If the input changes, the output should change. That's how math works. But this was... I'm just trying to understand how somehow in this case, whether or not we fund the positions, it doesn't matter because the two-year phase-in stays the same. That doesn't make sense. If you decided not to fund these four positions, minus the COC position, we haven't talked about yet, Then we could reduce the fee increase. We would have to, we could reduce, we have kind of three options. We could go forward, as we talked about last year, hire these positions and become self-supporting. Second option is we could reduce the fee increase that have been proposed for this year, become self-supporting, but not hire those five positions, or some fraction of those, or we could not go through with the second half of the fee increase. We wouldn't be able to hire the positions, and we wouldn't be self-supporting. It doesn't seem like you're going to be self-supporting either way at this point. Because we just talked about, I mean, it just seems to me next year we're going to have another set of indirect costs. It's not going to be just about new positions that we're talking about. We're changing, you know, when you change the denominator, you know, it makes the numerator worth a lot less. But that's true. And that's what is happening here. That's true for DPS and any enterprise fund or any other restricted fund. There are increases to compensation costs and indirect costs each year. Yeah, if we had the conversation earlier in the year, I would say, you know what, it sounds like we're not ready to do an enterprise fund or a restricted fund that juice doesn't seem worth a squeeze. It seems like we're gonna get massive fee increases that have already begun in this budget and are only gonna get worse moving forward and it's going to be a major, major problem. And I don't see the benefit of what I had originally thought when we had talked about this, of making the case to the public of, listen, you're arguing and complaining that you want more inspectors, for instance, because the inspections aren't happening fast enough, which is bad for residents and it's bad for property owners. We can raise the fees, but that will get more inspectors and now we're talking about something different. Now we're talking about this is supposed to cover all of DHCA or a big chunk of DHCA was mentioned earlier with you know a different department that does different stuff and that should be included in here and then the indirect cost of the county attorney which is already paid for out of property taxes and 20% of that should be included in it. And that should be included in here. And then the indirect cost of the county attorney, which is already paid for out of property taxes, and 20% of that should be included in it. And now all of a sudden, you've changed what the initial case was that we were trying to make to the public to make the argument for why your department should get a ton more new positions. And how we're going to pay for it. With all due respect, this is what's required of whether it's an enterprise fund a lot of people are going to be going to be able to be able to do so. And I'm going to say that we are going to have a lot of more new positions and how we're going to pay for all due respect. This is what's required of brothers in enterprise fund or any other restricted fund. Right. And that's what I'm saying is it doesn't sound like that is the right approach. Okay. But this is what we talked about last year. What we talked about last year, it was phasing in, moving to an enterprise fund. There was never the discussion of how much more you were planning to charge and that you thought that other things besides added positions, which is exclusively what we talked about last year, we're going to be required to be covered. That's it. We did. Hold on. We did talk about these fees. These numbers were the same numbers. I said this seat. And these were the numbers. I understand. We talked about the numbers. And just what I'm talking about, we're talking about two different things. If we're moving, if we're making a policy decision on the restricted fund, and what you're sharing is what the restricted fund means, what I'm saying is we have a decision on the positions. Last year, if you're doing a restricted fund, or you're doing an enterprise fund, and you don't fund the positions, you wouldn't have to charge the fee. The fee increase would not be the same. It would change. There's a disconnect here of whether or not we fund the positions and the fees staying the same. That's part of the dynamic here. Well, you just acknowledge that if the positions weren't funded, the fees would go down. We would not increase them as much as you mean. Right. And so that goes back to the three choices. you know, like if there's not the desire for the department's programs to be self-supporting, then we do not, and instead, for, you know, to continue for more money coming out of the general fund, then we don't need to increase fees as much. Also, if we don't want to move to be self-supporting, then we could move to, if we're going to bring on new staff, we could just go with increasing fees to pay for whichever staff the council is willing to. What adjustments have any were made to the fees last year based on not all the positions being funded? Do you mean what amount do we increase the fees last year? Yeah, I mean, I'm saying if the commitment is well, obviously we would lower the fees to the requisite amount, based on the fact that not every position was funded, if I, you know, if we heard from council staff properly and if my recollection is accurate, every single position wasn't funded. That the fees were based off of and some of these positions are the same positions that are coming back. So what I'm saying is that's not obviously the case. It's not how it worked last year unless I'm mistaken. Oh. The increased fees for this year reduced the need for general fund. And so that's different. This is the point that I'm making is like that is a different standard. That is different than what we talked about last year. There was never a discussion to say how much is the offset from the general fund or not. I'm not saying it's an illegitimate thing to do. I'm just saying that isn't a conversation that happened last year. And it does matter what the assumption is of what this is expected to cover and what it's not expected to cover. I mean, that's a very important aspect to what you're doing if you're moving into an enterprise fund or a strict fund or whatever the case may be, which you ignore. So we have a couple decision points here. I think it would be very helpful for us to get, you know, as a follow-up, the information that Miss Salem shared earlier, which I think speaks to what all of us are talking about, even if we have some disagreements on where that is of what that would be. I think the three choices that were laid out by Director Bruton that would give some context to how those choices could be determined. So I think at the very least that would be very helpful. We do have to make a decision on the positions themselves, and with the decide whether or not we're prepared to make those decisions or decisions on the fee themselves. So I mean, those are the two pieces. Councillor O'Brien. Yeah, so I think a couple things. I think it would be hard to make a decision about that without having the information. I would like to have that first from my perspective. Also, just when we spoke last year, I think the general idea, my general idea, I realized that people can have, be in the same room, have the same conversation, have totally different ideas about what happens. I acknowledge that. But was that any time you're moving to an enterprise like self-sustained, just going to use the word self-sustaining because we're not doing enterprise, but where you're paying for the service through fees of what the service is. In this case, more inspections, more service, more code inspections, more approvals, more quickly, which is what the whole goal was to agree. That money, that was the inspections that were happening prior to that switch, that money whoever was doing them was coming out of the general fund. So anytime you would switch, there would be relief in the general fund. That's just how it operates. Now, how you use that relief in the discussion about that, because presumably you said, who, okay, I got $2 million more, and you did something with it, or someone did something with it in the concept, OMB did something with it in the context of the whole budget, right? Because the money came, is that fair statement? It's a fair statement, but it's also true that during our analysis, trying to figure out which of the fund structures to go towards, we figured out that the general fund was already paying for some of the DHCA expenditures. So I think that if we come back and we give you an analysis of what that delta is, then there'll be a better understanding of why the fees that were approved last year, even though the positions were not approved with them, still covered expenditures that DHCA should have been paying forward licensing fees by King from the General. And that was the point I was making earlier, and you can have a disagreement with that, but if you're moving a whole set of work and whether whether the right things are in that set of work or not, that's a fair conversation. I assume that some level of work related to this, things that were covered by licensing people who were doing those fee inspections and everything, there would be a shift, not just the new positions, but there would be some current shift. You know, we didn't talk about it that way as much last year and that is something that should have happened but I but there would be some current shift. You know, we didn't talk about it that way as much last year, and that is something that should have happened. But I kind of just accepted that there are some set of people that aren't new positions that are doing this work because we're already paying for it, that will move over to this new system, and that we're shifting the burden about who pays for it. You know, again, it's a one big pie, we all pray the budget comes from a lot of places to Councilmember Freeds' point earlier, but that we were intentionally saying... You know, again, it's a one big pie. We all pray probably the budget comes from a lot of places to councilmember Friedens point earlier, but that we were intentionally saying people want better service. These fees haven't, you know, aren't necessarily giving us what we need. We want to switch them and we're going to switch who pays for these set of services. Right? So, yeah, I'm not a, I think I'm not against that. That's what we decided to do last year. The question is, is the juice worst the squeeze? Should we keep paying for it from the general fund? Or should it be self-sustained? How much of that burden should be shifted to fees? We're leaving pressure on the general fund. I think there's an argument that some should. The question is how much? and I think we'll need that information to see how much we're willing to do. So, all right. Yeah, the issue on some of this is it is different than permitting, and the reason why I viewed it differently and how we talked about it is permitting is generating a lot more revenue. And so the ability of permitting to be self-sustaining and generating enough revenue to cover the cost of that personnel is a different scenario. So the idea that DHCA would be totally self-sustaining and certain elements of it is a different reasonableness standard here. The idea from what I had viewed the conversation to be all sitting in the same room was the additive piece here was to say, okay, we want to add more. We don't have the capacity that the general fund is never going to be able to cover the ads. If we want to add, we need to have an enterprise fund or some type of restricted fund, some type of self-esteem fund to fund the add-ons. Because it'd be much easier, I had suggested a mention enterprise fund even earlier than that. Because my point was it's much easier to make the case to people. They have to pay higher fees, but they're getting an enhanced service as a result. If you're making the argument of, oh, no, no, no, it's not necessarily an enhanced service, a small piece of your fee goes to an enhanced service. but the bulk of the fee increase actually goes to just cover the other stuff so that the general fund can be relieved to fund unrelated services to you. All of a sudden, it makes it a much more murky and much more difficult argument to make. And it does take away from the benefit of the enterprise fund in the standpoint of the message to the end payer to say you're paying this and it goes directly to the person you're speaking to, directly to the person who shows up at your door, directly to the person at the other end of the phone call. That's a different dynamic and it is different in DAC and I do think it's not reasonable given the work that DACA does to expect that same dynamic when it just doesn't generate that level of revenue. That's the conversation that we should have had because I think your expectation, at least my expectations, were different in that sense. And the idea that we don't have positions, but we have fees, but now the fees cover other things. And I think this is where, to Councilor and Funding and Z Councilor Pfondigan's office point the you know what we have here is a failure to communicate and you know I think that is a key part of the problem. Having said that we do have some decision points here we have the positions I would separate as four positions to start because I do think I think the COC position and the COC fees are a separate category. To not add further confusion to this conversation, I think we separate that out. So I'll just open it up and see if we can, are there any questions on those four positions we did here? From the department that the priorities are the top two, the manager three, and the specialist two, we heard from councilmember Jolando and interest and the other two positions as well, all the positions together. I just, just highlighting kind of what we've heard. And then there is a question of, I mean, right now to be honest with you, everything is coming out of the general fund and the revenue is just going into the general support for the department. It's your left pocket or your right pocket. So I do think your information will help us to understand what the revenue impact would be, but I'm not sure it's necessarily, we'll have to weigh that and see. You know, if it is fully covered, then maybe certain things wouldn't have to be on the reclust versus, you know, not on the reclust. I think that's a question that we would have to raise to full counsel. Maybe we could come back and address the list. Yeah. Any revenue changes from the executive's recommended budget would show up on the reclust as well. So it would be a decline in resources. Any positions added to the reckless if approved would be addition to resources. So it would be captured in the reckless. Both do not have any. The only thing that's being assessed here is subtraction. The traction revenues would be in the reckless. Yeah. There's no news. Positions being subtracted or shifted to the reckless would also be a reduction. Yes. Just for clarification, because right now everything that submitted is under the general fund structure, right? And so if the revenue that makes under a judgment, it would be steer within the general fund framework. It would impact the general fund revenues. Yes, yes. It's the MSD on the expenditures side. Right. All right. Well, I think it would be helpful to look at what the fees would be for each of these positions and what, you know, as was noted, didn't happen last year. It potentially could happen this year, certainly after this conversation, it sounds like it would. What would that look like? Because I do think that is a discussion. You know, we're essentially giving policy guidance on the fees. We're not deciding the fees. It's not really what we do. We give guidance of the direction of the fees and the positions here I think should play a role on that of what ultimately funds. So I think if you can share that information with us and I think the decision on, you know, Do we do we want to add all four positions as a question one and then two, do we want to have the information on if we don't add a position, what impact that would have on each fee? Because I think, you know, and I think those are two separate questions because if one as maybe we don't need all these four positions, maybe focus on two or use something along those lines, that's a different question than if you fund it, what would the fee be? Let me turn to Councillor O'Brien and then Councillor O'Brien's office. We spent a lot on the fees and we haven't spent in there, rightfully so we haven't spent any time on just the positions and what they would do and how they would enhance service. So I'd like to spend a couple of minutes on that. If you just want to run through them or go backwards and talk about the two that have been potentially suggested to not be prioritized as trying you know, as trying to achieve savings. I am very concerned, you know, we had people, you know, crying, testifying to us a couple weeks ago about the ability to have their homes be habitable and be inspected and something to change. So the code enforcement and the landlord tenant to me are just as important. I know you said the the other two are are super important. I think you probably I don't put words in your mouth at that because you can't do the work of that's required if you don't get those. But I'd like to allow just at least a brief explanation of each of them and what they would actually do and how they would reduce caseload and you know that kind of thing. Thank you very much. We'll start with Miss Salem Sheik and discuss the two licensing positions. And then we'll move to Miss Robinson who can discuss the code position proposed and then will. Sorry. To discuss the addition to the Office of Landlord Teterfair. So great. Very honored to have a license in my division. So I think I really appreciate the current program manager, Tiffany Johnson, who are leading the team, but licensing program in DSEA is the only program currently don't have the appropriate MLS position. And so whatever her workload responsibility is really beyond the job classification. So we want to make sure that the program is truly equitable with other programs that we currently have. And part of the other big reason is the licensing basically is the corner storm of what the CSC is doing because we are licensing with us to set everything up to correct to begin with. So for instance, like this month, Tiffany and her team are doing the annual rental survey. Again, we're collecting a lot of information. And so make sure all the licensing information for multi-family, single-family that we can collect information to set the correct information for us to make future policy decisions. Subsequently, when I come to her team also actively have to you know process all the application you know the different kind of housing type. And so currently we only got two Pogun Specialists focused on many different type. We have two new Pogun Specialists that was approved by Council that focused on short-term rental because we took over from HHS Assume that responsibility last four. So, so a lot of responsibility been added on this program and Quantically, we Because it's under staffing. We had to utilize the contractor and more than a decade this program had been utilized contractor. The challenge that we run into is staff have the constantly provide training to the contractor, but as you know, they come and go. So it's really another burden to the staff that they need to focus on their work, but also have to constantly provide training when we lost the contractor. So I think with proper staff and for licensing, it would really help the ACA to provide more services and we want to make sure, you know, during the annual survey period or the renewers, new year licensing, when the public may phone call to us, we can respond quickly. And without the body, it's very hard to do so. How much revenue would the positions generate? The revenue, I mean, the frame is revenue-generated positions. What's this? For licensing, I think it's about 8.9. It just, top of my head, because I just look at it. Just these two positions. No, no, not these two positions, the whole program, because they support each other. Right. And so. What would these two, you know, theoretically you add positions that are revenue generating, you have a target of how much you think they would generate? I. Because if we have positions that are supposed to generate revenue that don't, then they're not really revenue-generated positions. Right, so we... They're generating revenue that don't, then they're not really revenue-generated positions. Right. So we generate a revenue than they should be revenue-neutral or positive, right? We have some kind of backlog. And I can provide that additional information for you once I have a chance to talk to. Oh, OK. Thank you, Scott. We actually included in our slide information. I thought I saw that's what I was looking for. I'm sorry. I called a number running flying through my head. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Call for an answer. Yeah. It doesn't send to like after. Maybe the yesterday. So the turns it went seems to be. Yeah. So. Yeah, so we would assume we can with two this two position we should be able to go after a lot of on licenses a unit and so hopefully that would generate more revenue that's safe. On average, close to 1,000 times average, because of different housing types, some of them are 100-something. And if you just look at the multi-family, 76, so you're talking about additional. Are you looking based on this slide? Where are we looking right now? The 14 the last bullet point Okay, so nine almost just nine hundred and forty nine units have been added without follow-up That's right. So if we have to be made there by getting to them All right, and theoretically nine hundred forty nine you could have those in a spreadsheet and figure out what type of unit they are and spit out if you collected from half, from 25%, from 75%. And you'd have some sense of how much revenue these positions are going to generate. In Italy, right now, this is a general fund. I will say that this is the missing part of the conversation before. The licensing ones are a little bit easier because those actually do generate revenue. Some of these other, like, inspections don't necessarily generate revenue, which makes this concept of their self-supporting the unrealistic aspect from my perspective. That was the disconnect. But these ones are actually a little bit easier, in order to quantify. So can you follow up with us on what your projection would be for revenue on these two positions? And I would just add off, if I could, all four. I mean, in the sense that we have given tools, it's a little longer process, but you got the circuit court authority. And I'd like if you get a code enforcement, and they're not doing what they're supposed to do. Obviously, that takes a longer time. But if you have that or other ideas of how those positions generate revenue, maybe you do or don't. Yeah, that's fine. I just want to be realistic of it. Unless you found something on the first day of the fiscal year, unless you get it done in less than a year, which I doubt the county oftentimes gets their $500 fine or $1,000 whatever the case may be, unless the license is a little bit different. Once you're caught for needing a license, there isn't like a legal proceeding. So that seems a little bit easier. I mean, I agree with you if there is information on that. I just want to make sure it's realistic information based on the timeline that that was shared. We might not like the timeline, but we do have to project our revenues based on what the reality is. Yeah, I will say there are three revenue sources, potential sources for increased revenues. One, the last bullet point, there are always new rental units each year and trying to make sure that we're getting all of the properties fully licensed within the first year. The second is we have some range each year of several thousand unlicensed rental properties. And part of the reason that they remain unlicensed is we don't have the staff capacity to go after them. The third means for increased in revenue is because of the lack of staffing. We don't have adequate staffing to go through and do the notices of violation and citations for those folks who are not licensing or are not complying with the annual rent survey. Just the, it's taken us two years ramping up to try to be ready to actually handle the level of citations that comes from the annual rent survey because it costs several thousand dollars just to send out the citations because we're required to send them by certified mail. And so individuals have to process all of these things. And so we're leaving behind. And would that be included in the Manager 2 and the Manager 1 positions the Mitt Port for Code Enforcement and the complaint processes for ALTA? Are you more referring to different revenue sources for the Manager 3 and the Specialist 2? Though Manager 3 specialist two. Those ones I told I think I'm trying to help you here. In terms of those two positions at least, it might be hard to believe based on the earlier conversation. But I think you can make your case a little bit better here. I think it's going to be, you know, it's general fun. But it will be an easier case to make if these are revenue generating positions to fund them in a tough budget, which is not included. That calculation is not even included in the enterprise fund or the restricted fund it didn't seem like, which I'm not sure why. Like to me, that would have, you would have been leading with that. We're planning on adding these positions. Here's how much money we think they're going to generate. That will go in. That's part of what will not cause the fees to go up, because the good actors pay the nominal cost up front. But then it's the bad actors that have to pay the fees that are going to increase that will allow us to smooth out and not have to increase over time. But make that case and show that and show your work so we understand how you came up with it. Councillor Verjuano is asking for the other two positions. I just want to make sure I was understanding because those were a little harder to figure out the revenue if there actually is any. But if there is and it's within a fiscal year, I think that would be relevant for us to know and happy to hear about those two positions if you wanna share. I could speak to the revenue issues, but as far as the needs and demands, go ahead Ms. Reff. Yeah, either way, if you wanna start with the why it's necessary, and then go why to you for revenue. Why don we do that. Good afternoon. So with code enforcement as you all know with the rent stabilization bill coming in it affected code enforcement and it changed the way we did business as far as requested inspections. He's before with the trouble that risk properties there was really no penalty other than us going to court issuing citations. Now that these properties can't raise their rent, we are getting a large, we will have a property arrest. They're requesting inspections sooner than their normal one year or two year inspections. And so because they want to come off the list. And what would happen with that is we begin to get calls where we don't have someone that can route those calls to say. So myself and one of my other program managers, we had to go through the list of over 150 properties to talk to them, meet with them, go through the scheduling process of getting them into the schedule, getting these inspections done, and then being able to analyze these new inspections and being able to go through the corrective action plans and the quarterly. Of course, because before the corrective action plans that were coming in, no one was reviewing them. And so now we're reviewing all of them to make sure that based on the violations that we're seeing that they're addressing the problems at the property. So going through these plans it's taking a lot and we're you know it's backlogged especially our multi-family team. What's the backlog now? As far as getting out the inspections. So we're almost through the end of the fiscal year and we still have over a hundred properties to go but it's just, we haven't, you know, a lot of the designations are in the process of changing now, since we've done the re-inspections. But it's just, you know, people are calling saying, hey, I want a new inspection, or I want to know where I stand. What is my property show? Am I still troubled? Am I still at risk? How, you know, when are you going to change my designation? And so this position would work specifically on that, making sure that there are more of compliance, scheduling, making sure that the violations issued are correct. So it's not deemed properties that shouldn't. It would review all the inspection reports that the inspectors go out to do. So we can look at the analysis to see whether they're low medium or high and if there's errors we can remove it before the properties are notified. And that's the reason why we were requesting this position. So it's not just for the the renter it's also for the landlord. It's for both. It's for both. If there's wants to once they get me off the list so I can raise my rent this year because I've done better or get off the list. Correct. It's for both parties because the landlords are engaged now. They want to come off the list. They are doing a better job with getting things, but they want those inspections and then they want their results and then they want, you know, so we have to go out and do those. It will serve both parties, it will serve the community. I will say that the landlord advocates have really strongly requested adding staff to help with the additional processes that Ms. Robinson described that we have to go through in order to speed up the reinspections once that they are determined to be at risk or troubled. And it's the coordination required of code is profound, it's incredibly complicated. And this adds another level of complexity on top of it. On top of just the normal annual buy and annual and and the annual inspections that we do and the complete based inspections. And so, yes, everybody wants, you know, people to have more staff to help facilitate this moving quicker. And to get to the revenue aspect of this, we through the register published recommended regulatory changes through the trouble that had risk property law. And one of the changes was an alteration in the fees for repeat inspections. And so it's still covered that you're still get a free inspection if you're asking for a new inspection to inspect you to say, hey, I've corrected everything, get me off the list. One's free. First of all, you did come back to the committee and you did explain it to us. And that was not under double secret probation where you weren't apparently allowed to share and consult with us under strict orders. It was a good idea. C-A-O and kind of exactly. Communication. Yeah. It turns out, you know, we were, you know, we, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're having to be easy to deal with if you communicate with us. You're absolutely right. I mean, ultimately the communication issue, it is my department. So it was, it sets, it settles with me and you're absolutely right. I have monthly check-ins with each of you, and I should have found a way in order to discuss this as we were going and as we were being educated ourselves about the... check-ins with each of you and I should have found a way in order to discuss this as we were going and as we were being educated ourselves about these three different types of funds because I learned a lot. I mean you also clearly were receiving guidance not to share information with us from I don't think it was considered. I don't want to be unfair to you either of you're trying to do your job and we all have bosses. Yeah. So I get that to note that regulation has not gone through the castle yet. It will be coming forward this summer. But we were a consultant. My point was as it was being developed, some of the aspects of it were shared with us and presented to us. We had a conversation about it, which I think was helpful. And it was public. and I think it gave stakeholders also – we do hear from folks on all sides of that dynamic who want inspections to happen. So I acknowledge that. Can we talk about the last position? And then we just want to make sure you're done with how this is generating. Because I see on here it says, you know, the second bullet, it will support ensuring the reinspection fees. I think you were getting there. The first one's free, but the follow-ups are not. Yes. And so say, for example, somebody says, hey, we fixed everything. Come back and reinspect us. You know, we have to do, you know, like it's trouble properly. we have to do 100% re-inspection, depending on the size of the property, that can take three or four days if you're on the size of the property, that can take, you know, three or four days if you're talking about some of the biggest properties. And if we go back and find out that they still qualify as trouble, then as we go back and do progressive reinspections, then it, the cost escalate, the per unit cost escalates. You could have a projection of how many reinspections think are realistic and how often you think they'll happen. We understand these are going to be projections, but I think that would be helpful for us to know for situational awareness. I think that does cover that point, which I appreciate us honing it on. Let's move to the Ulta position. I'm Zach Patton. I'm the rental housing division chief that oversees ALTA and rent stabilization. So the Office of Landlord tenant affairs program manager position is really meant to help us do some things that we currently don't do or don't do as well as we could and then also to expand the our ability to do things at a broader scale. If you could go oh you already have a pull up. Great. So I wanted to point as context to the first line of this table here that shows the average monthly landlord tenant cases filed and you can see in fiscal year 20 and 21 we were getting between 50 and 60 cases a month in In fiscal year 22 and 23 between landlady-lady-lady-lady-lady-lady-lady-lady-lady-lady-lady-lady-lady-lady-lady-lady-lady-lady-lady-lady-lady-lady-lady-lady-lady-lady-lady-lady-lady-lady-lady-lady-lady-lady-lady-lady-lady-lady-lady-lady-lady-lady- in the 100 cases a month. During that time, our staffing for Ulta has increased by two positions. And if you think about the number of investigators, that's the 10 positions that we have now are inclusive of both. The manager of the Office of landlord-tenant affairs, as well as one investigator who really focuses much of her time on the homelessness prevention and relocation assistance role that multiplies supporting condemnations, relocation assistance in the case of condemnations, case management and referrals in coordination with DHHS on eviction prevention, homelessness prevention. So that really leaves eight investigators who are working on these cases, right? So on the right-hand side of the slide here, you can see some of the responsibilities that we are envisioning for this program manager that includes allowing us to conduct additional outreach, community outreach, so attending events and working with members of the community organizations in the Ulta's educational capacity and awareness building capacity to try to make people tenants and landlords Landlord engagement is Especially something that we want to build out within this aware of their Rights and obligations Responsibilities Facilitating partnerships between DHCA and community-based organizations and landlords. We currently manage over a million dollars, as you know, of tenant services contracts. These are the ones with renters, lions, kaza, hip, ledc, and Maryland legal aid. Those are currently managed by multiple staff across DHCA. And so the idea here would be to consolidate those, the management of those contracts so that we could do this in a more effective way, both in terms of monitoring, programming, and improving efficiency in the administration of these contracts, because as you can imagine, if you're doing, if you have multiple people doing, you know, the same job in multiple ways it creates inefficiencies that we think we can improve on there. There have been a number of changes to chapter 29 and other parts of the code and regulations over the last few years. And as a result, we are a little bit behind on updating our educational materials for both tenants and landlords. And so that is something that we are hoping this position would really be able to take the lead on making sure those are up to date. We're working right now on translations into additional languages to make those more accessible as well. And so this person could oversee the production, translation, publication of all these materials, as well as envision new materials that we don't currently have even older versions of that we could add that could hopefully head off some of those complaints before they happened, because people would be more aware of their rights and responsibilities. Going along with some of those changes in 29, we have been adapting to new laws, regulations, requirements, coordination needs and so forth within the Office of Landlord Intenate Affairs Most recently we've been talking with the Office of Consumer Protection, which is a department that we haven't had much interaction with historically. And so this position could help support building those partnerships and support for new initiatives that the office would be taking on to adapt to changes in legislation and regulation and or changes in the environment that we might want the office to adapt to. And then lastly, something that we'd like to improve on is really supporting the management of our cases and monitoring of our cases. one of the things that we really don't do as good a job as we should currently, is trying to look for patterns across cases to say we're receiving a lot of complaints. And also, code enforcement is really active in this building. What's going on here should we be thinking about about more proactive engagement of this landlord or the tenant association, maybe to get in front of these issues so that they don't end up inflating our cases and code enforcement's cases, and so that kind of monitoring analysis role is another kind of enhancement that we're envisioning for this program manager position. Some of these responsibilities historically have been more distributed across the existing investigators, you know, like outreach activities will send an investigator to a community event to talk about what the Office of Landlord-Tenative Affairs does, how tenants and landlords can submit complaints to mediate disputes and so forth. As our case loads have increased, that has become less and less possible because those investigators are really stretched then responding to demand from complainants and trying to mediate cases. We've also seen an increase in complexity of the cases that we've been investigating, and so that they've become more time consuming. And so some of this is about consolidating some of those responsibilities that have historically been distributed because we can't afford to handle those in a distributed way at this point. So that's like the quick overview but happy to respond to any questions. I appreciate this. Probably goes about saying what we should probably ask. It doesn't seem like there's any revenue impact here. No. It was important to ask. I think I know the answer. Indirected best. This position is more about improving service delivery. One of the biggest underlying issues to Mr.. Pat, was saying is that when folks come for mediation dispute resolution information to Ulta, one of their biggest concerns is timeliness. And given the significant increase that we're seeing, that, you know, previous years and that we're experiencing this year and expect to increase is the timeliness of responses, the timeliness of case resolutions. And so we're not just, we're looking to unburden the inspectors, or the, sorry, the investigators from some of their responsibilities by transferring them to this, But we're not just relying on additional staffing. We also have our IT department working or a pites section working on an automated case management or automated case assignment and management system to try to facilitate this without adding additional staff for that. And so we're trying, as Mr. Pat mentioned, we're trying a variety of ways to improve the quickness of response but also the quality of service delivery because it's the quality of service delivery that really matters to the folks who are getting the landlords and tenants who are getting in touch with Ulta. Appreciate it. I get it. I understand what you're trying to do. I do put this kind of in a different category than the other requests. This is a nice to have. Would improve services. Would consolidate. Would take a little bit of burden off of a number of other folks. I think the other ones are top two or absolute revenue generating that are people who aren't paying in and should. And we don't have time to make sure that they're doing that. We have code enforcement and not able to ensure that folks who have made the improvements are getting credit for it and folks who haven't are appropriately being pushed to do it in a reasonable way, both the carrot and the stick, actually, in that dynamic. So I just, from my own perspective, I will note. I think it's kind of a different category. It's not to say not all worthwhile, but in a limited situation, I would put that in a different category there. Councilor Fonding-Gazalus. Can we start voting on what? If you want to make a recommendation or if we're not ready, we want to get the information on the revenue, we can just ask that that be presented to full council too, which would be an option if we don't. So that will be... Yeah, I would like to be. I will be. I will be. I will be. I will be. I will be. I will be. I will be. I will be. I will be. I will be. I will be. I will be. I will be. I will be. I will be. I will be. I will be. I will be. budget as presented but then put the last one on the reckless. If we are for keeping it in, I still want the information on the revenue but definitely. and then add in the budget as presented, but then put the last one on the request. If we're keeping it in, I still want the information on the revenue, but definitely. I think the four, my personal view is the fourth position, program manager one. I think that can wait till next year. Are you just saying not even put it on the list? Yeah, I was willing to let the council discuss it, but I think it's okay. I, I, okay. reduction. I would say it was I would say it was I would say it was I would say it was I would say it was I would say it was I would say it was I would say it was I would say it was I would say it was I would say it was I would say it was I would say it was I would say it was I would say it was I would say it was I would say it was I would say it was I would say it was I would say it was I would say it was I as a reduction like I would say it was I'm happy to put it for us it was going the list and we were just discuss it as a reduction just saying they're More pressing priority. I think that's what you said. Yeah, yeah So we can include the first three as recommended and then the old-up program manager on the reckless Yeah, here's the caveat of as recommended if I'm going to go along with this. I want the revenue picture and I also want to know what the fee increase would change to without the fourth position. So if we funded the three position without the fourth position and then what the fee would be if we did or didn't do each position. And I do think you should calculate and consider whether particularly the top two, whether where the revenue goes. Because if I'm not mistaken here, unless these positions are expected to generate combined less than $200,000, then there shouldn't need to be a fee increase for those two positions, whether they're funded or not. I you may say we have to keep the fee increased to a certain level based on what was funded last year, in order to our needs. There's a number of calculations that you're going to have to make and present. Or if it's a portion of that in the first year but then once it fully ramps up in the out year, I think there's a few different scenarios. But I would want the committee recommendation to consider the fee increase is aligned with those positions and just for us to say that you know these are all three seen as revenue generating to various degrees. We need to see how much revenue they're actually generating and they don't have to, I'm not sure that they're going to fully cover and then understand if there is a break on the fee increases that the council can give guys. We won't make a decision today on that because we need the information on that. Right, and I mean, I think just to make sure I'm hearing you, I'd like to include them. I'm comfortable with what I have today that they're needed and that they will generate revenue. The question of how much, I want the information, but I'm personally comfortable having them in. Either way, I do think it should be presented to the council, and we should be aware of it. And to someone wants to have a additional discussion for council fine, but I'm not withholding my, I think we can move forward today, in my view. And but I would like the information. I do think it's important. And I would also like you to consider the reduction in light of the – because if we're not going forward with the fourth position, to come back with what would the reduced fee increase be in light of all that, I do think that's important too. And the fee increases – have you calculated any of the revenue that is coming in in terms of the fees? Or was that not really part of the calculation? So when we project for FI26, how much of the revenue coming in? We basically, you know, take the FI24 actual and then project FI25 in terms of to calculate how much would I be for FI-26, especially based on the assumption for how many units by different housing type is going to inquire. So I mean, I can go back to recalculate if I understand council members as proposal correctly. So basically, if it's just going to look at for a position that, you know, category, for position three, position two, position, what would that fee increase directly is going to support? Those positions, that's one proposal. The other one would be for additional revenue that could generate with those positions in place. If they say licensee and the poker manager, if they would approve for FI26, what would that additional revenue could be generated? Because what would be- We're not running a business, but if we were running a business and you were deciding whether to bring a salesperson on board, which is a revenue generating position. So just to simplify this conversation a little bit, which I have participated in over complicating. You would look at and say, okay, how much, you know, it takes time to ramp up a salesperson, they have to learn the territory, they have to make the relationship, but eventually you have a projection and you're like, okay, if I pay this person X salary, how much money do I think they're going to generate for the business? If they're not not going to generate enough money to cover their salary for the business, then they're not a revenue generating physician. They're a revenue losing because they could have... I think they're going to generate for the business. If they're not going to generate enough money to cover their salary for the business, then they're not a revenue-generating position. They're a revenue losing position. They could have value. There's different positions. You know, an accountant is not a revenue-generated position. But it's a very important position in a business or a controller or, you know, et cetera. So I think that is the question. I think that'll make the case stronger and allow us to understand it. And I think knowing right off the top what the fee increase may or may not change, what the department is saying based on the fourth position not being funded, because that's the decision we're making here. And then what if any impacts the others would have and whether the revenue assumption is baked into the fee assumptions. And if it's not, then it should be and it should be adjusted accordingly. All right. Agreed. All right. Contents is. All right. So just to recap, the Manager 3 for LNR the program specials to for LNR and the program manager to for cone enforcement would be approved by the committee pending or condition upon receiving the information discussed and then the program manager one for Ulta would be placed in the reclist Okay, great. All right. Let's go to the COC position and the COC fees. Do you want to describe? Here's what I would ask to try to bring this in for a landing. Could you explain this position and what its purpose is going to be and explain what the capacity is and the changes as a result of Gathersburg bowing out of the COC. Gathersburg decided to opt in. They weren't happy. They don't like how things are working. And so they have now opted out. And that's a fairly substantial body of work in terms of common ownership communities. And is this position still necessary in light of that? What impact does that have? Let's talk about it. Sure. I can start off with the explanation of what the position is going to do. Miss Salem, if you look at page 16 of the PowerPoint packet, we had provided There are four tables there and those four tables deal with with Gatherer's Burg in and Gatherer's Burg without. Should show the differences in the reduction and existing fees. So the- Sorry, say that again. I was cross-talking. Oh, no, that's okay. No problem. It's your meeting. We're just here to help. So what I'll do first is I'll go through the intent of the position, what the positions role would be, and then regarding the fees and what they would pay for. Missailant can go through that. On page 16 of the PowerPoint packet we gave you, there are four tables, and they give different scenarios, two scenarios with Gathershipberg in and two scenarios with Gathersberg without Gathersberg. And the reason we did that is we haven't received like the final, final signed off. This is the end of the thing, but we know it's gonna happen. We're just covering all bases. I think I could say it's a pretty strong authority based on everything that all of us have heard from the city of Gathersburg that it is happening and you should prepare. Yeah. So yeah, we're ready for that. So the program manager to position, this is one, this is a position that we discussed last year in conjunction with the creation of the revolving fund for at risk common ownership communities. The council was very kind in creating that revolving loan fund. It's $10 million over, it brought in over a period of six, five or six years. And we've already got the first round of applicants. And we've already made conditional commitments to two of those, which will use up 1 million of the 1.23 million that we had initially been allotted. And we already have, I think it's at least seven other applicants that we're working with. And we have no worries that we'll be able to spend the FY26 round of money with that. And so the original impetus for this position was twofold. One, to be the person who is responsible for managing the application process for the revolving loan fund. And it's the application process is more complicated than just receiving applications because this loan fund application process is set up to not be kind of like you apply and it's a thumbs up or a thumbs down. We expect almost all applications to not meet the criteria when they come in. Part of the carrot of this loan fund and the requirements is to get these at-risk common ownership communities to improve their condo fee or other types of fee, HOA fee collection to improve doing replacement reserve studies, saving for their replacement reserve fund, all of those kinds of things. And so this position would work with those communities that are applying, they help them get to the point that they're ready to receive. Also, the second portion of this is to provide those similar kinds of services more broadly, because we want to be a bit more proactive to try to help common ownership communities before they get to a place where they are at risk of failure. And last year I mentioned the community down in Florida that had collapsed a few years ago and things like that. As communities, as commonership communities come to our attention, as common ownership communities come to our attention, they're having governance, you know, they might have a board failure or that they are not putting money into their replacement reserve fund. We all know that's kind of what gets folks to, you know, big problems. You know, you have like a roof that needs replacing or a garage that's at risk of collapse and you didn't put money in your replacement reserve fund, you're at risk of the whole condo going belly up. And so to find those and to, I mean right now the commoners, office commonership communities provides a range of trainings, you know, like creating base standards for the knowledge for board members as they come in. And we require it every three years as sort of a refresher. And through the commission, we also provide dispute resolution services, but we don't have someone as we're finding communities that are not running as they're supposed to to intervene and to provide them technical assistance on how to fix the problems, get back on the right track and provide them a guide. And so it's one person, that's a lot of stuff, but it's a key function that we don't currently have kind of staffing for. And so again, kind of getting out there and getting ahead of things, but then also managing this fund, which is already, you know, we already have a good response, say, and we're already, you know, like making commitments for the money. So that's the basic happening. That's there. He questions about. Okay. So that's for the position, the capacity. What does the capacity look like without Gather's bird? Do you want to, oh, sorry. Do you want to go through? You have the fiscal stuff, which is one part of it, but the other part of it is, you know, the how much James and the Joe's, so to speak, you know, what is the capacity of, in the bandwidth of the department in light of the fact that a large part of the county that was part of this and has a lot of common ownership communities is now no longer part of it? What's the projected loss and revenue for? No, not well, revenues part of it. You have the chart and I saw that. The second part of it is just bandwidth. If we go from a customer base of 200,000, and now we go to a customer base of 180,000, or whatever that should change the bandwidth of the people that you need to deal with the complaints and to deal with the mediation and to staff the proceedings at the COC. I mean, something's got to give here, right? What are. I need to speak. He can speak better to the kind of the rate, the capacity and the rate of new dispute resolutions or investigations that are requested. Good afternoon, committee members. Thank you, Ramones, for the office of the common ownership community. So, indeed, City of the Gate as of April 27th, I believe, is no longer participating with the county's office of common ownership communities. In our numbers, based on the licensing registration, that would equate to about 87 common ownership that would fall off the participating common ownership preens amongst 12 54, 1222. 87 common ownership communities that would fall off the participating common ownership greeners amongst 12 54 12254 So if we do a little quick math of 1254 minus 87 the remaining of its through a significant volume 7% but how much I mean not all common ownership communities are created equally in terms of the capacity needs, right? I mean, you have... I'm sorry. I said 1,200. I said 1,200. 7,500 is that what? 10,000 units. The actual units, residential units, right? Total is 155,000 residential units within common ownership communities. Right. My point is a subdivision that's a common ownership community that was built in the 1990s is a common ownership community. That's different than a condo building that was built in the 50s. The likelihood there is there's going to be some fierce debates over the speed at which you fix the maintenance needs in the building and the assessment requirements and the capital reserve needs, you know, the amount of work that that creates. So, you know, I think the numbers matter here, but I think the realistic aspect, most of the work that we do in terms of providing services, it's not to everybody that disproportionate amount of work goes to a small group of folks who have significant needs, legitimate significant needs, but significant needs. That's not clear to me in terms of what that looks like in Gatorsburg versus the rest of the county and what the needs are. I'll just say from my perspective, I think the the fee increase is not able to be handled at all. I wouldn't support it and want a signal that I don't think we should move forward with it as a county. It's not our exclusive decision here, but I'll just note that we already increased it a lot. So 30% increase previously from 5 to 650 and the amount of cost that that puts on, because it's not really a per unit cost, what it really is an association cost. And when you add that to the fact that we're trying to help the stress communities, there a real disconnect here, some of the most important affordable home ownership opportunities in the county. We're adding to the distress significantly here, potentially, and then we might add a position to help to address the distress. And that just seems like a little bit of a disconnect. I think the position is nice if we can do it, but in light of the fact that if we don't increase the fee, I think that might be unrealistic in fairness. But I would yield to you on that. I feel strongly about the fee not going up. I don't feel so strongly about the position in terms of whether or not it could be absorbed without the fee increase. So we can provide you with, so the fee increase as with the other fee increases we had talked about were predicated on making the Office of Common Ownership Community Self-Sustaining. And so if we don't try to make the Office of Common Ownership Community Self-Sustaining, we could let you know what the fee increase would be just to create the one new position. Yeah, I just be clear. I don't think there should be any fee increase personally. And I don't think that we should think that the common ownership community is gonna be soft-sustaining. It doesn't generate revenue. In that sense, it's never gonna be soft-sustaining. The question is how much are we, the question is, are we going to extract enough out of common ownership communities to provide enough benefit to help them? My concern is we're going to put communities into distress and then try to create positions to help them get out of distress. And I'd rather just avoid putting them in distress in the first place. And these fees are significant. I mean, for a multi-family condo building, an older multi-family condo building, and this could be tens of thousands of dollars for one of the huge buildings that we have a lot of. I mean, the fees are significant per unit if you have hundreds of units. If possible, what I can do is you know, provide another update in terms of the revenue projection. Right here we have like you know two different scenarios is increased to $8 or versus the other one's $10. If possible, I can also do another projection over the six year fiscal timeframe and saying that without any fee increases, maintain the same level. If we would like to add another position because Pogren's read needed to give you a sense of how that would look like from the revenue versus the expenditure projection. Will that be helpful? Yeah, I mean, I think the information would be helpful. I still feel the same way about the fee increase, right? I just think it's going to be very difficult for these are some of the more at risk affordable homeownership. What I'm saying is not increase the fee. And so re- Yeah, I think that information would definitely be helpful. And I would really appreciate I'm sure all colleagues would appreciate that. Councilor Funningh Azals. I'm just going to say very quickly, I shared with that director, written that I've been working in meeting with a group of folks who they created their own nonprofit on these folks that own condominiums, and the situation is bad, especially for condo owners who are elderly, and some folks have no idea of how to work with their association. Some folks have told me that they are afraid and that's their word of their property manager. It's a lot going on. So I share that to say that I do agree with that position. I know I understand the need of it. Now the fees, a different question, especially when we're talking about condominiums that are already, I mean, I have seen condos in my district that the condo fee is like $1300 just the condo fee, okay, $1300 for $1300 for somebody who's already retired on a fixed income level, plus all the fees at the stay level too, that we're not even talking about those. So on the fees, there is no way, and with a chair here, on that particular point, that there's no way I can agree on increasing those fees right now at this very moment. But if we do go ahead and go ahead for the position so that money will come from the general fund, Is that, do I, am I getting that right? If we don't do the fees, but do the position? If we don't do the fee increase and just do the position, there might be a part. This should be sufficient funding in 26, starting in 27, there would be an impact on general fund. Unless we were to increase the fee then. So for 26, I think it'd be okay. You'll hear. I just don't feel comfortable about increasing fees right now at all, but I do want to have the position. That's what I'm seeing right now. So just a quick question on that. There's an ongoing cost, potentially. Yes. Would we put that on the rec last? if we're cutting off the ra, I just wanna put it up on the notes, it's council over drawn to. If the committee did not support the revenue increase from the fee increase, that would be a reduction through general fund in terms of revenues. And then if they were to, at the position, it would be. It essentially would be an, I mean, I think it fairness to the colleagues. If we were to do that, what I think the most appropriate thing to do would be to signal we don't want the fee increase. That's a revenue reduction. And then we would be adding to the rec list out of the general fund because it's an ongoing general fund. And then you could share with us information to say perhaps this has no general fund cost the first year because there's sufficient reserves from the fee increase from last year or whatever the case may be. And we could weigh that at full council. The revenue impact would be 540,000 less in 26 from from not increasing the fee. Yeah, I mean, so it's not just for this position. It would be in that cost. Councillor. Yeah. I just wanted to expound a little bit more about the position that was at hand here today, which is we talked a little bit about the operations, the current operations of the CCOC and the Office of the Common Ownership Communities. That isn't change. It's really finding the right individual. The reason why this program has really rolled out and it's a popular program. It's a demanding program from Common Ownership Communities and it's all been received favorably from the nine applicants that Scott mentioned earlier. But it's been due to a lot of additional effort on my part, the rest of my staff, which is a small staff of five, and a consultant contractor that we have in place has paid a key role helping through this process. The moment we don't have that key contract with that individual or any individual, it could impair the current activities of this program here. So our goal is to find the gaps, I think I've got to find the gaps right now and start to address those gaps and I understand it ties in to funding and I'll let the council make that determination. But the need is there. Just to touch on some of the comments that you raised, we're seeing those comments come during this program here. And one of the things that they're intrigued about is how this program here may allow some financial We're seeing those comments come during this program here. And one of the things that they're intrigued about is how this program here may allow some financial reliefs that they can avoid a possible special assessments, which is sometimes a lump sum amount of thousands and thousands of dollars, right? If you're just getting a loan that you're paying it off over several amount of years, it's still a small impact on your COC budget But it's not a similar impact to handing out $15,000 or whatever it is to address these critical repairs. So also address the, not all common ownership communities are equal, that's 100% correct. A 1950 common ownership building, high rights building is probably, it's probably totally different than a brand new homonist association up the street, totally different responsibilities. So a lot of that stuff is also being identified through this program to figure out where some of those needs are. And yes, we're seeing a lot of the age and infrastructure communities that are participating or interested in this particular program. So the knee is there, it's real, it's not going anywhere. The fact that we're the first county, the only county that has provided this financial relief, says a lot about the county and the leadership here. It's just keeping this program alive and efficient. So I just wanted to add a little bit about the need for the program manager. I appreciate that and thank you. I think I want to reiterate concern for community members who have written in and agreeing, COCs are very different. I thank you for bringing that up in HOA. It's a lot different than the American Offend Mark, you know, where I have friends that have lived and lived. And you also raise that, you know, look, it's a good thing that we have a CIP, $10 million, revolving loan fund to help people fix things. And you need to help managing it and addressing some of the distress that you see in the communities. So I also entered the conversation today skeptical about the fee increase for those reasons, but also supportive of the position because it's a great program and we need to make sure people can have access to it. Even if you have a ride or a great program and people can't get to it, it doesn't mean anything. I think about that in the rent stabilization context. Don't know what your rights are and you can't enforce them. It almost doesn't exist. So, in this case, in the case of actual resources, right? And in that case, it's saving money. What is the thought process? I want to hear you articulate why you think this fee increase, if you do, is necessary or not as burdensome as, I think all of us feel that it could be on certain common ownership communities. Sure. This year, as last year, we were made aware that given the difficult budget times, that the more we could find revenue sources to pay for the positions that would be viewed better as making another ask from the general fund when there are issues with the county economy, the Maryland economy, and then the added complications of what's going on with the fund. You wanted to try to get a position like this one that is needed, but find money to do so. Exactly. And so the fee was partially based on that, but partially based as we talked about earlier, about trying to follow the premature to make different programs in the department self-supporting. And if we're not moving toward that, then we don't need as much of the fee increase. And Ms. Salem can do the analysis to see if with existing projected revenues in FY26, if we can, if it would pay for this position or what difference, you know, that might be. And so with those kind of, you know, if there's a different paradigm we're looking at that we're not looking to self-support and that it's possible that the general fund could pay for some of this, if existing revenues don't, then that would significantly reduce the need for increasing the fees. As for the second part of your question about why do we charge these fees and what's the importance of this? So the fee is the per unit fee, which is $6.50 now, which is about price of a cup of coffee. Sorry, thinking about the commercials we've all seen late at night. It might be low. Yeah, well, it depends on where you drink coffee. I don't drink it't drink it at all. So I'm like, I don't drink coffee. Not tin since, like, in the old movies. I'm not a guest guy, because I, my coffee didn't cost that much. Yeah. The celeb says, yeah, I don't even know. I don't drink coffee. So I don't know. Right. It pays for all of the training that the Office of Common Ownership Community does. they have to train every new board member. And every three years, every three years, every continuing board member needs to go through all that. There's also like broader, more like informing common ownership communities, educating them through the newsletter, bringing up different, for example, there was a federal law that was really important, that was going to impose drastic fine unless every single board member went through this really invasive, like income and identity certification process. That's been put on hold now, but it's like educating everybody in the community about what goes on with that. But then one of the biggest functions is other office-commonership communities is supporting the commission and the adjudication process. And so that's meant, you know, like supporting the volunteers, making sure trying to work with the volunteers, we have complicated relationships among volunteers at times, so it's managing complicated things. But it's also trying to serve the contending parties, because part of this and what Colta, the Commissioner on Landlord Gender Affairs does, is try to provide a means of investigation and dispute resolution outside of courts. because we all know that that's incredibly expensive. And without this, many people wouldn't even have the chance at dispute resolution, because they just can't afford a lawyer to go and handle these kinds of things. So that said, adding in the functions that I was talking about earlier, trying to intervene, to try to help communities that are becoming more at risk. I will say that in my time working for nonprofits in the district, I worked with lots of common hardship communities, mostly limited equity co-ops, who are, you know, kind of usually more further on the low income side than most condos. And I always found that I believe, truly believe that what we're talking about less than a cup of coffee a year is well worth it for having those existing services because whether it's a limited-equip-low income limited-equip-low income or or high income fancy new condo, everybody has board problems. Everybody has leadership continuity problems. Everybody has problems with their management company. Everybody gets into issues where like Don C. side was Florida, where you have a board that's not doing their due diligence, they're not doing their replacement reserve studies, they're not putting the money in to their replacement reserve fund. And so common ownership communities are great in that it provides many people access to ownership when costs are so high for town homes or single family home ownership, but they are complex communities. And it's very hard like I've been on you know my board. I was the president of a homeowners association. I was president of a tenant association. Now I've been for eight years on my condo board. And it is not easy. But in front of punishment? Yeah it is not, it's like people mean to serve, but it's not easy. It's a volunteer position. Well, I saw a lot of a combination of community two and people asked me whether or not I would be willing to serve on the board. I chair the committee that oversees a common ownership community. Some would think I have a synergy here. A connection. I always tell them I did not have the political skills or the stomach to serve on a common ownership community board. I ran for county council instead of doing that because that is way too hard of a job, way too challenging. And I have no interest in that. I give anybody, including you, Director Routin, a lot of credit every time I see you around the neighborhood. I wonder if you just came from a common ownership community meeting and I should buy you that cup of coffee just to do the – I'll just know, you know, I think the common ownership community residents view very differently what a cup of coffee sounds like to them. And I do think this is not really a per-unit cost to an individual homeowner. It's not how it's seen and that's not really how it's received. But it really is, is a per unit cost to the association, that they have to gulp down along with their reserve requirements that we have placed on them, which are important and ultimately are to protect them from defaulting and from more catastrophic issues, but have serious costs, the special assessments they might have to do, and the point made earlier, there are units in Bethesda within walking distance of where I live,, in some of the most expensive areas that provide home ownership opportunities at very reasonable costs in some of the most expensive places. However, those units have significant fees and assessments because they're old buildings. And so adding on to those costs, but you're some of our most important ones. We need to be really sensitive to that. So I don't think we need to make this a revenue supporting enterprise. I just don't think that's realistic. I don't think it's even particularly fair when you talk about somebody who lives in a co-op or a condo having to pay for their county government services or someone who lives in a single family home really doesn't. I don't think that's a standard that we hold them to. I think it's a different dynamic when you're talking about the business relationship between a landlord and a tenant and licensing fees and other dynamics. I do think that is a different scenario. And I think we should personally signal that we're not funding the fee increase. We can revisit it next year, see where things are, understand what the needs are, and decide what's reasonable and appropriate. We just increased the 30 percent. This would be almost a 70 percent increase on top of the 30 percent increase to be a multi-year increase of 100 percent. That is hard to justify. It's way more than this position. The fee increases half a million dollars. The position is far less than that, so I don't think we can justify it that way. I think separately the position is reasonable and should be decided in the context of the other budget decisions that we're making. There's real value to what we're trying to do in the multi-year effort and all the really important work. And I think including that on the reckless as a general fund item for our consideration is reasonable and worth. Well, I do think providing us the information in the interim would be helpful. That's at least where I would be personally, but I want to open it up to colleagues. Let me turn it to council staff first and then I'll turn it to council. I didn't know I had unturned it, but yes, but go ahead, go ahead, I want to hear what you want. Just want to add some additional context. There is a projected fund balance in the COC fee fund of 630,000 per July first. So that would more than offset any. How much was it? 630,000 per July first. So that would more than offset any. How much was it? 630,000. So that. Yeah, so this could be covered. I think the question is revenue impact. And so whether or not realistically, it should be on the record list or not. Because there's an ongoing expense that doesn't have revenue associated with it. But let me turn it to colleagues. Yeah, that was going to be one of my questions. So appreciate the answer, appreciate the need for it. Also I still have concerns about doing the back-to-back increase in light of that. It is a service that's needed for sure and required, as was mentioned by your staff. So if it's an ongoing, if we have funding for it, I'd like it to just be included as it already is in the budget. And with the understanding that obviously every year we do a budget, and if the funding is not there, and you propose it to put next year to bring it out of the general fund, it's not there. Or it is, depending on the decisions the county executive makes. So I would be comfortable just including it, the position given that we know it's not going to have a budgetary impact this year and then revisiting the conversation next year. I think that's fair to do. And then we'll we need to see the information obviously that's right miss Salem, the they're not raised the fee this year. Is it a term position? It's a term fund. I mean, it's a revolving fund, but we could revisit that too. Is it possible to do it as a term position? We can look at that because once you hire somebody, obviously you can't let them go the next year. So we can look at making this a term position, see what that will look like, and get back to you on that. Because I think if it was a term position, then it really is within the fund. I mean, then I think we are being intellectually honest here. I think the challenge concern that I have is if we funded either we're creating a structural deficit that we know we're making at OR, we're presupposing a fee increase in the out years that I don't think I'm prepared to agree to at this point. So I mean, this could be covered for multiple years within the fund box. We could look at doing a three year or five year term position. Three years sounds great. Yeah, why don't we, can we recommend a three year term position? Let us know if there's any issues on your end before we get to full council. But the committee recommendation will be a three year term position funded out of the fund balance, which has more than sufficient resources to do that and know a recommendation from the committee for no COC fee increase so it would stay steady at the 650. And that also gives you time to over the next three years to think about if there needs to be future fee increases talk about it how a lot of discussion or not. But yeah, that's good. Okay. Okay. Okay. Just going back on the revenue, as I understand, there's no formal committee vote on the revenue piece, correct? At this point in time, or what do you mean? No, we want no fee increase. On the COC piece? On the COC piece, okay. And, very clearly. And then on the run, our direct signaling is no fee increase. And then on the rental licensing fee and the short term rental registration fee, what's the committee vote? So the short term rental licensing fee is not dependent and really tied to the new positions. No, it pay for the positions, it's the pay for the positions, the five positions that have already been funded. Yeah, so my view on that, just because we, that is the one thing that we actually didn't speak to. I actually think we did agree to that last year. It would be my view. We did fund this business. We did talk extensively about short-term rents, so that is why we did it. I would be comfortable moving forward with that fee increase, understanding that we already have the added positions, that we have to pay for those positions to change that in some way would have a operational impact, including on encumbered positions with people in them and work that is already being done. I think that's different than the new positions that are coming back. So let's, so agreeing on short-term rentals, where rejecting COC fee increase, in terms of the signal from the committee, that it's not our formal decision of the make. It's our job to signal and have budget assumptions based on that. The position is a three-year term for COC funded out of the fund balance. And then the other fees, I think we are deferring the decision on those fees based on the information that we receive, including if the three positions are funded, the fourth position isn't, and you assume the revenue what the fee increase would potentially be. And then the full council will make that decision accordingly. Is that reflective of the- But signaling we want those three positions to afford it. Correct. Yep. Right. So let's. and then the full council will make that decision accordingly. Is that reflective of the fore? But signaling we want those three positions to move forward. Correct. Yep. Right, so we'll include the three positions in the budget. And then we'll take the fourth position, the, yeah, the program manager won for Ulta as a reduction. Okay? That wraps up General Fund. All right. Grand Fund, no decision points there. As I mentioned, slight revenue decrease and a shift of FTEs to general fund and HIF to cover some limitations on how much personal cost can be charged to grants. So no decision points on the Grand Fund. On the Housing Initiative Fund, really the only decision point is the home buyer assistance program. The executive is recommending a $1,509,000 increase for the down payment assistance fund. There's currently $4 million in the base budget, so the total level would be $5,509,000. Of that $1.509, $509,000 is actually for two contract, two nonprofit contracts that would administer home buying, counseling and other services for prospective home buyers. So the down payment assistance fund itself would get a million of the 1.5 million and the rest would be for contracts. Councillor Murrath, finding it's ours. I have a rolling with that. I think that money should be straight to the people. Done. You should not be going to any contractor to do anything. The funds that were allocated last year for the first time home buyer, I mean that money was gone in a few months. Gone. I just don't think this is a year where we need to have a special help to find people to file for this type of assistant programs. I just think we just need to move that in place in the first time home buyer program directly and give it to the people. That's my view. Councilor Gerard? Yeah, just a little bit of information on who's, who's, what's that contract been used for now and who's, who do you anticipate it? Were you anticipated doing in the function of it? To, I agree we want money in people, we want people in homes and we want to help them with the assistance. Obviously you feel that this helps. So in some way, otherwise you wouldn't propose it. So can you just explain why you think this is necessary as opposed to giving the money directly as the other portion is? Sure. So our original idea with this is that the county prior to the pandemic paid contractors to provide homeownership counseling and then we ended those contracts during the pandemic and we haven't returned to that. Surrounding jurisdictions especially the district of Columbia provide funding to to organizations to provide expert of ownership counseling. And this is not just pre-purchase counseling. What we envision is pre-purchase counseling as well as post-purchase counseling. Post-purchase counseling, many people think of as just for closure prevention. But part of what these contracts would do would be to provide post purchase counseling to help homeowners deal with ongoing issues that they're having. You know, even though you're a single family homeowner, you kind of need to have your own replacement reserve fund. You need to, you know, like to save. How do you deal with contractors? How do you deal with home equities, home equity loans, a variety of things. And usually these kinds of post purchase counseling efforts are targeted towards folks who are first-time home buyers to try to increase their success at maintaining their home as an asset for their family over the long run. And so that was our original intent with this. Miss Cross can talk to what we were proposing for the two particular organizations. I like financial literacy kind of in prevention work. Correct, absolutely. So I'm providing a lot more of that. Basically, we have a lot of data from both of the individuals, but they are both of the entities, but they're not consistent in the information that they provide, so I can't compare apples to apples. But I will say that both of them will be providing financial literacy through 24 financial capability workshops, pre-purchase counseling sessions, that actually will help get some of our down payment assistance programs into the hands of some of the minority groups that we know are not being or a little underserved, I'd say, with some of our down payment assistance programs, because those are the things that these entities provide. That was going to be my question, because if you know how to navigate and get the money, it's a little, sometimes it can be a little, not easy, but you know how to get there. Some of these programs, they help people navigate. They might not know how to get there. OK. And do you have demographic stuff on the one bucket versus the other, you know, for example, like 5,500 and 9,000. So 5,000,000 goes to just getting the money out. And then 509,000 goes to helping people understand and then access and potentially get some money themselves as well. Correct. They had specific requests based on their staffing costs and the staff to cover those programs that they are missing as. Who are the entities? The Latino Economic Development Center and HIPP Housing Initiative Partnership. Yeah, I mean, I think that's, I want to see the breakdown of our 5 million of who it goes to and if I had evidence, which you're alluding to, that people that come through this assistance are more diverse, lowering people who are more underserved getting access. I understand why we would do that. I would want to see that that's what's happening. So if you could show that, if it is, like you're saying it is, I'd be comfortable leaving it in there. But I understand the point for sure, but I think we're trying to balance a couple things here. Thank you, Councillor for finding a cell. You telling me that you're not able to reach certain communities is telling me that we don't do a good job with all the money that we put in this county on communications, on outreach, on a whole bunch of stuff that we're already paying for? You telling me that you need another contract to do something that we're supposed to be doing right now? is telling me that we're very inefficient to the things that we're supposed to do already. So I will not, even if it's in the two groups that you were mentioning here, I know them very well. I will not support this. The money needs to go to the people, especially nowadays, when folks are struggling and we need to be more active and more intentional about getting money out, then that's the problem of government. Red tape everywhere. I appreciate the intention. I do not agree with it. So. I agree with Councilor Funninghansol as I think we should put the money into the direct assistance. We're even going to provide this. These programs aren't our programs. We are, you know, we work with other entities to handle these programs already. This is H.O.C. and the state program that we work in conjunction with them. I think it's our job to do the outreach. I will say I appreciate where that's coming from. I really think, you know, I'm comfortable with the idea that we've just spent a half a million dollars hiring contractors to reach the people that we need. Now, the technical assistance piece of it, I think that's a different question. And I think, you know, looking at that for future is something I would be open to. I do think having more data and thinking through who's qualifying and who's not and how this is going to work and having us better understand what these programs will until I think would be helpful but I think for the time being getting as much of this support to as many people as possible as quickly as possible. When we know we aren't keeping up with the needs and we doubled this program and it was expended halfway through the year still, basically. It was expended in less than six months. And what happens is there's so much more need that eventually people realize that the funds are expended and they just stop applying because they get the news of, don't bother, there's no funds left. You have to wait till next year. If you want to come into the lay, delay their home purchase or maybe they've missed out on the home purchase because they couldn't compete. We heard about earlier the less traditional, historically underrepresented communities, BIPOC farmers, and the issue that they often have competing with a land purchase when somebody else is showing up to the table with cash and they're showing up with an amalgamation of financing and maybe some public support through the Office of Ag or Marbicco or some other entity and they can't compete because it takes too long. And so, you know, the tech analysis is important, but I think the actual funding support is the most critical. So I agree I think we should move the funding over. Councilmember Donda. Appreciate the conversation. And I think for this one, just so our staffs, I'll be on the other side of just a two one on that. And the reason being that I just would want to see that I still would like to see the data going into full council, if you can produce, Ms. Cross, could you produce that? Yes, and I have one of the two entities data has, well, no, I take that back, it's broken out by different classes. So I will give you- Yeah, just get it. And what I'm looking for just to be clear is, in the context of this funding decision, what of the money we got rid of last year? Obviously, there's a ton of need for this. You know, I'm glad we doubled it and we need to increase it. And this is good that we are increasing it, which is what part of this is. this would be more than last year either way, is just how the contracts that we have had, because these would be continued contracts. No, these two would be brand news. These would be brand new for the homeownership. We have rental contracts with them, okay. You provide no funding for homeownership. Got it, okay, so the data you'd be providing me is just on the breakdown of who we funded last year through the 25,000 homeownership first time home buyer. Right. So that's the down payment assistance program which we do have that data. This is homeownership counseling would be new agreements with these two vendors to assist so that we can continue so that they can continue to provide the services to the county residents. Okay. I think one way of looking at something you were getting at earlier about an equity issue. I work with homeownership assistance programs a lot with nonprofits in the district of Columbia and their home purchase assistance program. And one of the major justifications for these types of homerorship assistance, technical assistance programs, was an equity issue. Because as you mentioned earlier, the more sophisticated you are, the more experienced you are with these sorts of things, the more you're capable of filling out the forms and work you know, working on this in the funds. Yeah, and doing those kinds of things, you're going to have an easier process getting through. Part of the technical assistance is about training folks, you know, who may never have lived in a, you know, like a home ownership unit didn't have that experience with a younger, getting them to help fix their credit to, you know, involved in that. Because most families have an app or aspiration to own their own home. With that, I understand that the contending priorities, like absolutely, we could use 1.5 million versus 1 million and get that out the door to help families. I also understand the impetus in this community and others to provide technical assistance to help folks be home ownership ready. They're both very valid concerns. Okay, well yeah, I just, I think we need both and it's a question of how you wanna help people and what's the best way. And so I'll stick with my position. Thank you. Sounds like a two to one vote. Casual funding is ours. Something else. And there are plenty of profits in the area that are really doing this double work. Let me just put that out there. Technical work. This is nothing new. So that's what I'm so against it. The other thing I would say, I want to add more money. I want to put in the reckless for the down payment assistance to add, we said $8 million to add at least three more in trenches to the reckless. Yes, yes, to the reckless, maybe half a million in trenches for each one of them. And let the council decide, because this is how you create wealth, right? Especially among people who have never have bought a home, right? This is something important that we as a county need to continue to invest. So I will move to add that into the reckless in trenches. So you're saying, so we already decided, I just want to separate out there. So we decided two to one to move the money that was proposed to the contract, which is slightly over a half a million dollars, $500,000, and include that in the first time home buyer program split as evenly, you know, that's how we normally would do it. And then you're proposing $500,000 tranches to add to the reckless for consideration by the full council, and that would be split proportionately by the two programs too. And just for clarification, we're talking about the McCaffHF and the MHP, the two non-employee down payment assistance programs. Yes. Okay. Yes. Yep. Okay. This would be if approval would show up as the increase in the general fund trust for the HIF, which would then go towards the down payment assistance fund. Exactly. Just to clarify, because I think that's an important point. Sometimes when we're talking about the heath, it's a reallocation within the heath. It sounds like the recommendation is for a new, new resources, which would be a general fund expense. Okay, I will support that. And I'll just note and, I'll turn it to Councilmember Joanda, Council Vice President, excuse me, Joanda. If there's an equity issue with programs that we're running, then we need to fix the equity issue. It's a fault. And I think that's an important issue. Obviously, something that we need to be really focused on and mindful of. We spent a lot of time trying to be intentional about our work. We have constant need for improvement. But that data will be, to me, an indication of the work that we need to be doing. That we should be doing with our partners through these two programs. And if there are data dynamics that prove that we have real equity challenges, that we need to address, that we should be addressing them internally, and I don't think that the technical assistance will solve that problem. It may be a way to deal with the symptom, but not the root cause of the issues. And I do think we should address the root cause if there is an issue. But I think that data is essential, regardless of what decision we make, and will be really helpful for us to understand, how is the program working, who's it helping, and are we fulfilling what we have committed to in the intentionality of our work. So I just wanted to say that. I think it's really important. And regardless of the decision we make, that data is something that the committee really would like to say and I think will be helpful for us to ask. Vice President Treunah. Yeah, and just to be clear, Ms. Cross, you're going to be able to get that prior to budget. Correct. Yes, I should. I have. You have it. You'll just have to put it together and send it over. Okay, great. And I, it seemed like the technical assistance was an effort to try to address even, you know, whether you know there's an issue or not, but you try to knowing historically there's an issue to try to get at that equity issue. We can disagree about where it should happen or how it should happen. I think it needs to happen everywhere, you know, right? And so, but I agree with Yeah, and I think we need more homeownership. It's the biggest way to build wealth and attack the racial wealth gap. And so it's why we've been increasing this from year to year and the executive increased again. And if we want to, if we can find the funds, they increase it some more. I would love to increase it some more. So happy to support putting that on the the reckless I will say you know like you know we we fund things we've got to fund things the money's got to come from somewhere and you know so just something to keep in mind but but happy to support putting the the tranches on on there and and just so on clear mr. Mia the 509 would go as a reduction and or how would that be listed it's in the heath it would we would have to track it internally it's not a general fund right so so in that sense that shouldn't go in the reckless no we're we're taking heath funding and we're shifting it from one place in the heath to another it's up we would adjust the he to just be happening. But as far as how you'd list it, you just say the decision to how that hip rate money was spent would go instead of going to technical assistance and counseling. What stayed for down here would all be for down the grocery list is still the same. We just decided to buy mushrooms instead of broccoli. I mean, we're not adding funding. I just say 5.5 is within the hit right now. But the 2.5 that you propose to add would have to be a general trans trans trans. That's separate. That's going to be on the reconciliation list as a general fund transfer, which will have revenue impact. Yes. We will have to come up with a cut or a revenue pool for those funds and the council will have to make the decision. That's the context that is going to be important here. But the 500,000 for the technical assistance that is existing funding that's in the half that we are recommending to the full council and if the council approves it will be moved you know to go directly to first time home by our purchases and not technical We would need an amendment on the on the non-competitive contract list to remove those two contracts so that that's a change the executive would have to submit to us. Oh well there's going to be a lot of changes. We passed the budget so just add that to the list. Yeah and you might maybe yeah and so they've submitted I'm assuming in the negotiation in the process leading up to the budget recommendation or the switch they had proposals of what they wanted to do and all that. Is that included in our packet? Not the list. The list of contracts was include on Circle 22. So the list the amount is going to Latino Economic Development Corporation and Housing Initiative. Yeah, I would love to just see what those services were going to be. You describe some of them if there's something you could provide in addition. Yeah, I can actually submit the requests. That would be great. Awesome. Thank you. Just one update on the packet. The packet stated that up to 25,000 would be providing closing costs assistance and down payment assistance. Miss Cross is working on an MOU with the state to increase at the 35,000. So there would be more available per prospective purchaser than previously. It's more in line with the prices of the houses that are being purchased with these loans. It would mean less overall. You're people. You're a house. You're having impacts. Yes. All the more reason why we need more money. Exactly. To keep up. OK. Do we want to talk about that? We have a 3-0 thing. We have a 2-1 recommendation on the first part, with some additional information coming and we have a three-nothingoth date. We have a two-to-one recommendation on the first part, with some additional information coming, and we have a three-noth date recommendation on the reckless piece. Wanna talk about workforce housing fund at this point? Yeah, I'll just quickly say, there have been a lot of conversations about the workforce housing fund, some really productive and constructive conversations with DHCA, which I very much appreciated, staff with DHCA, which I have appreciated. We've had some internal conversations with council staff. I'm not sure that it's ready to make a formal proposal here, but I do think there are some challenges, some of which are being worked out, some of which are aligned with some of the changes in the MPDU improvements and adjustments, which there's an opportunity to address in some of which are just thinking differently and more creatively and in a way that we haven't previously. Stand by on that, but appreciate and just wanted to acknowledge the ongoing conversations that we're having. And I think we'll get to a place where we can land the plane and do something that is meaningful, even if it's a pilot type of dynamic to see how well it works and to work together with the department to figure out how to make that happen. There is a huge need. I don't think we focused on it enough. I think there's a broad acknowledgement of that. We've done subsidized housing and deeply subsidized housing. We do a lot of market rate focused. We haven't really honed in on how the government at the local level, at the county level, plays a role in the middle of the donut hole, so to speak. And I think there's an opportunity to really think through how to do that. And I think really our economy is depending on that, because that's really the folks in the middle class who are losing the workers who are powering the economy, the employers who are screaming at the top of their lungs that they're struggling to address these issues. We've seen the governors talked about it, the Comptroller has had it, and her state of the economy report, we're seeing it in regional economic analyses. So just appreciate the ongoing work, and we'll get there. And I appreciate it, customer fighting in the house. I agree with everything that Chair mentioned. On another topic, but it's involving the HIF. We received a letter for the Montgomery House in partnership recently and it's a request. I might maybe, Steph wants to talk about this. So it's a late-breaking request for $200,000 in assistance for MHP. So I'm not sure if DHC has had a chance to review it. Okay, so it is pretty late. We haven't received that. So as the department, the department has not received it? No. Not directly. No, I've not. I learned about it first thing this morning, but I haven't reviewed anything or heard anything. Okay. Do you want to highlight the issue? To be honest, we see that this morning as well. So basically what they sent to us is that they are seeking an allocation of $200,000 from the FY25 House Initiative Fund to help restore funding for a community life educational program at one of their centers. So it's basically they have a childcare center in one of their properties and they need funding to keep up that center. And we came in very late, very, very late. And I feel pretty bad for them because I do want to help them. It's ensuring that the children who are low income who live in these properties have safe places to be and it's basically an early childhood education program slash elementary middle school after school program that they have in their properties in very need of funding $200,000 and they were thinking about getting funding from the housing initiative fund from this. Does that work as I can? Does the department have a view or position or a million bunch of questions? I'm curious to know did they lose funding for this or? I think I don't know the details, but at being in their center they do a wonderful job by day they are short and So why don't we do this what if I forward because honestly I thought you had the letter Why don't I send you the letter now or stuff can send in the letter and if it may be maybe Full cancel or I just I guess one here's what I would suggest based you're chairing, if you make sure the department had, I think we need to take some guidance here from the department. Yeah. It's my personal view. I am a huge believer in all the work that MHP does. I have partnered with MHP on a myriad of issues have structured entire county programs based on the advice. In fact, based on their suggestion, we just passed a state law that was signed by the governor earlier this week because of the partnership that I am very proud that this committee is very proud that this county is very proud to have with MHP. So I'm extremely sympathetic to the incredible work that they do and the services that they provide. And I think this is an increasing need that we have for our affordable housing providers to provide the services and how we structure that. It hasn't traditionally been the focus. It's been how do we preserve the units at a certain rental amount or how do we build the units at a certain restricted rent dynamic. It hasn't been of what are the ongoing services in a community? So if we can make sure the department has it, has some time to digest and to think through, perhaps as a direct conversation with the organization, and then come back with a recommendation to us that can be shared with the full council, and if there is something for us to take up at that point to consider We can take it up as a full council and just say it was mentioned at committee, but we didn't have the opportunity and all the details the Department wasn't able to weigh in at that time and since then you know, this is where we are if it's ready at that point and There is a recommendation from the department. Does that seem reasonable? I could just say yeah,'re happy to, you know, once we, thank you for sending the information to us. Once we review it, we're happy, you know, like if there's an existing child care program, an early education program that we can help save, you know, absolutely. I guess the first question, I'm sure that's what Pofen was agitated about, is figuring out which type of fund is eligible. I don't know if a child care program is eligible for HIF funding versus home or CDBG or general fund. We just have to figure out what we're able to spend money on to preserve that program. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right. So that seems reasonable. Thanks for raising it and bringing it up. Thank you to the department for following up on it and we'll get information back from you and some some feedback and guidance based on your recommendation and then we can decide if it's ready for consideration by the full council could be considered. And if it's not, we can take it up at the appropriate time. OK, just two last items. CIP amendments, pretty straightforward. The countywide facade easement has 500,000 state aid in 25. Those funds will be spent in 26 on four projects, each receiving 125,000 each. And the list of all the projects that are planned through this CIP is on circle 25, as well as on the slide deck up there. Page 21 on the slide deck sounds good. All right no concerns or issues or comments or questions from colleagues. And the final CIP amendment is the great program. The final CIP is the Affordable Housing Acquisition Preservation Program CIP, this is the main revolving loan facility for affordable housing development loans. The executive is recommending 75 million taxable bonds in FY26. The debt service will be covered by the HIF and that's capped in the HIF recommended budget as well. There's a pipeline report attached which shows the current loans programs that are going out, but otherwise we really know issues on from staff's perspective on this project amendment. Okay. Sounds good. Appreciate it. All right. With that, I believe we are adjourned. Thanks for the time and happy weekend. Happy Friday. It's almost 5'30". Thanks for the time and happy weekend, happy Friday. It's almost 5.30. I believe we are adjourned. Thanks for the time and happy weekend, happy Friday. It's almost 5'30".