This meeting is being recorded. Good morning and welcome to budget. This is the council's first fiscal year 2026 capital budget work session. The preceding this morning is a hybrid meeting which is being conducted in person and via WebEx teleconference. The public may view through live stream available through the county council website. I will now do a roll call of our council members, Dr. Jones. Good morning everyone. Good morning, Miss hopefully, here. From rescue, we'll take a quick break and go to Agb, Grick Cultural Preservation, Water and Seward. And hopefully hit all of those before lunch, is that right? OK. All right, what? OK. Okay. Okay. If we could have police come up you wanted to give free for marks or not. Okay. No, I think we're good. We're going to take a little bit of your time this morning. We don't have a whole lot I think for capital, but we'll be back in a couple weeks, though, and I'll definitely give you my full. Okay. All right. The order that we have this morning is beginning with you, Dr. Jones, the Miss Rick, the Miss Young, Mr. Youngman, followed by me, we'll rotate through that moving up one person every work session. But today you're up first, Dr. Jones. Good morning, chief and deputy chiefs and all the good folks in the in the real this morning. I have no specific questions. I think maybe follow up on Q&A, but I've had conversations earlier. So I don't need to rehash those today. I always just want to thank you for all that you do. And I'm looking forward to continuing to work with you. Thank. Ms. Big B. Thank you, Chief. I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the electrical vehicle lot and just sort of, I have the capacity of a lot is three to five vehicles. So is it the whole lot for three to five vehicles? Yes, so the lot is for storage evidence and storage storage should have vehicle be impounded not towed, but impounded for investigative purposes. Thank you. I was rating it more for fleet and so that's why I was so confused. But for evidence in storage this makes a lot more sense. So thank you for giving the details beneath the page. Miss Young. Good morning, gentlemen. Always a pleasure to see you both and anybody else who happens to be here with you today, you do have a very small capital budget, and that actually concerns me. As you well know, I am a huge advocate of creating a Central Police Station. And I am sorry to see that there's not any planning money, there's nothing. And I am, so I have a number of questions about that. Whether or not there are still any plans whatsoever to have a central police station. I know that you all looked at that in the past, and I don't, this may be a tough question to answer, I admit. But there might be somebody else here in the room who does know that you all looked at that in the past and I don't, this may be a tough question to answer I admit. But there might be somebody else here in the room who does know. But I'm, how many square feet were you looking at in your previous plan when you were thinking about creating the central headquarters? Do you remember? That's why I said it may be a tie. I know I'm just like here you go see if you can remember that number but yeah anything you could share would be helpful. I don't have that information in front of me but we're happy to get it to you. We are looking although there's nothing in the budget for us we are still having meetings and conversations. It is something that we're going to have to do down the road. But we understand the fiscal climate right now and we understand what's happening in the world. So we want to try to just utilize the money for the things that are extremely necessary for us to have. The vehicles, you know, I think most people know I was in the Fire Marshal's office for a while, so I'm very familiar with how these vehicles catch fire. Certain ways to extinguish them. Your normal ways, and I'm not going to the fire department here, they can talk way better than I can, but it's not your normal fire that you can just put water out and it goes out. So we're really focusing on public safety. But you're right, that is something that we're going to have to look at. We are outgrowing our space. We previously in our budget, we had money aside for planning and looking. But we're still having those conversations, but we don't have any money right now. Nor do I think it's a priority right now for us to spend money on the planning until we really identify exactly what we need in an area. The mall was nice enough to give us a space down there so we can put our officers down there, some of our cops folks that are going to be working there and also the new beat. So we will have a footprint or a presence there. But I also want to look in the future of the real estate that the county already owns, and possibly we can do something like that. But at one point, it's a small, that's your question. It is a larger footprint. It's not something that's going to be very small. How many square feet do you have now over at the Oracle building? Major, would you know that? I know how much we pay for it. I'm not quite sure this is where it foot. Yeah, I don't have that information right now. I saw Zach, Zach Zach you're in the audience I will be asking you that same question. Yes He's looking around. Oh, that's not me. I know that's you So I will be looking around to ask you how many square feet is in the Oracle building right now that is being leased out by our police department for their central office headquarters to the extent that we call it that. And if you know it now, I would love to hear the answer if you can find it quickly in your computer. Or else. Is that Jen over there who always seems to know the answers as well? Yeah. So how far did you get in the planning when you were looking at this originally? I think we had a plan drawn up. We identified like who, what facets of the police department were gonna be housed in there. Obviously it was all open to determination, but we had a pre-plan drawn. And that's where most of the money went too, is to have the plan drawn up of what something like that would look like. So how much was spent on getting the plan started up? I don't have that information. Was that in the capital budget or was that in the operational budget? I don't have that information. I would say it would be in probably our budget. I don't think it would be a capital project. But these folks out here could probably speak better to that than I. Okay. Zach, also put that on your list of things that I'll be asking you. Yes, so I'm trying to help you out here. You know, I'm trying to figure out how can we get, you know, five years left, I understand, on the Oracle lease, which means either we pay millions of dollars again to re-up on that lease. We find a cheaper place and lease out in office somewhere else. But I think one of the issues that you all have had in the past is, where do we park vehicles? do you have any idea how many vehicles you need to park right now? So we have we've pushed out vehicles to most of all the officers. When I came on board we pushed them out to surrounding counties. So right now we don't have an abundance of vehicles just looking for a place to park. We have room at the Oracle that we do park some vehicles there. But most of the only vehicles that are not being utilized are like our specialty vehicles. And especially vehicles are parked throughout the county. That would be like the APC. That would be the Hosses Negotiations truck. Those type of vehicles. Okay, so you don't so having an extra large parking lot is not something that you really need to have right now. No. No. Okay, do you know how many people are housed at the Oracle? Do you have any idea 100 200? So I can tell you that myself and my staff are there. PIO is there with their staff. HR is there, human resources, and we have record section. We also have some miscellaneous folks from quality assurance. And we have meetings there. There's a training room, so we have meetings there. But I would say probably, it's probably between 75 to 100 people that are there and some of those individuals aren't there every day right so they're they're going throughout the county so the PIO depending where there's a press release I know tomorrow we have our award ceremony at night so I will be there thank you very much for being there but you know there are a lot of those folks from the field too. So although they're there, they may not be at that physical location all the time. Did you explore any spaces in downtown Columbia when you were looking to replace the station or replace the least space I guess is. I think we looked at a lot of locations. I know the location you're probably thinking about is the mall, we did look at the mall. I know you looked there, yeah. Look at the mall location. I mean my, I envision us having a footprint. I mean, it's gonna be the central district and it's gonna be, you know, Columbia area. That's what we're looking at. I envision having our footprint down there with a physical location. We have the Grimpler Building right now, which is... Columbia area, that's what we're looking at. I envision having our footprint down there with a physical location. We have the Grimpler building right now, which is in Columbia, obviously, it's right off the loop. We have our cop section out of there and we have the deputy chief of operations is out of there. Cop stands for something. Yeah. Yeah, yes. Just for the public, it is. It's our community pathway section. Okay. Yeah, it's the the bikes It's the individuals that ride the zero turns the pedal bikes And they're really out in the community on foot We also have our NCROs out of there which is our folks that are in the community they're doing community meetings and community group meetings and You know talking to individuals about crime things of of that nature, but our COP section which I coin COPS is more like an enforcement section, enforcement arm. And the Grimpler building isn't, I think we've talked about this before, it isn't a building that can easily be renovated to have more space. No, it's not large enough. It's not large enough. And it because of the way that it's cited, it isn't, it's not possible to make it bigger. That would probably, that question would probably be better handed to somebody else. I'm not sure about the specs, but I know when we look at it, it's not a feasible, it's not a feasible building for us to put a central district. Okay. If you had a central district, do you think you would put more beacops there? Do you would and have them leave out of a central station? So it wouldn't change the beats. There would be the same amount of police officers on a beat. There would be more police officers in Columbia because that's where they would park and they would come and congregate. But even this day and age, our officers don't go to the office and check in, they have briefings. They may have briefings here and there, but they're not briefings every single day. That's part of the reason why we have our cars out there. So right at the time the cars come in service, they're right in their beat. Is there's not an overlap of a half hour or even an hour changing our cars, changing our equipment. They can be in service and ready to go. You mean, can you ask maybe one more question and we'll go to Mr. Yanley? Okay. So, have you explored any other buildings right now in the downtown Columbia area for a potential new central station? So we've looked at other buildings. I don't know about exploration. Like we have a list of what may suit us, but I'm not sure if we've actually went there and looked at them. But there's a whole group looking at actually Captain Williams is the one he's looking at that. So, and I would be happy to meet with you offline, maybe with Captain Williams, and we could probably answer some of these questions a little better. I would be happy to meet with you and Captain Williams. That would be great. Thank you. Yep. Mr. Yaman. Following up on the one capital budget item. So $400,000 to build some impound lot or is it an inside, is it an indoor lot for electric vehicles? So, excuse me, it's going to be an out-ex here at the facility that is built specifically for the containment of a fire should have happened with an electric battery. So it's built to those particular specs. So it won't be. I'm kind of looking at the guys behind you. So we've got people parking these things in the garages of their houses all over the place. But in an outdoor lot, we need a $400,000 space. Some of the difference between someone parking a vehicle at their home versus at an end-pound facility is there's no monitoring associated with the end-pound facility outside of ours. So in order for us to ensure that there is no fire based upon the events that have occurred in the past. This facility will be built for containment. So this isn't just for the occasion that there might be a fire. This is because of the past experience. Right. The recent past experience people wanting to fire bomb cars. No, this is in reference to electric vehicles, combusting, if you will, or it's being said, being fire starting after a collision, or it being impounded. After a collision, it makes sense. So these vehicles are the reason for the spaces to have a space where the vehicles can be contained and isolated as opposed to and our current lot, where there would be no isolation or containment. Now as the fleet, the use of electric vehicles increases, like how do you increase that lot? Is it landlocked or can we just keep adding to it? No, so I think part of the issue too is we store all of our lots in one place, right? They have to be stored. If we seize a vehicle for whether it's seizure purposes or whether it's an ongoing investigation, it's in the same lot that's secured. If we put one of those vehicles in there and it spontaneously combusts, it'll wipe out all of those by the time fire suppression gets there. Again, I think they use foam. I would let them talk a little bit more on the specifics, but it's not a normal fire. The way the cars are made are the batteries are right under the car. like a grill, like a charcoal grill. You have charcoal underneath. You have air. The way the cars are made are the batteries are right under the car. Just like a grill, like a charcoal grill, you have charcoal underneath, you have air, the air comes up, it feeds the fire, and that contributes to these, you know, high really hot fires that burns with Teslas. The bigger concern is if we have a spontaneous combustion, one of those, that by the time it gets, by the time our fire department would get there and it would be suppressed, it would compromise the other evidentiary vehicles that are there. That's the big issue. Makes sense. Thanks. Can you say where this lot is? It's an existing lot. I don't know the exact location of where the new lot's gonna be. Okay. I believe they're looking down at Cokesville. I believe they're looking at Cokesville in a specific area to isolate an area to put that. Okay, and that's what I'm at. Like are we buying land? No. Land purchase part of 400,000? To my knowledge, the coaxville shop, like the BVW shop. So that's where we keep all the C's vehicles down there and a lot, and I believe that there's one portion of that that they're going to outfit, concrete it, build it. So if we put it there, if there's a fire, it'll be self-contained. Okay. I mean, it's probably just because this is your only item, and you could either go after the empowerment lot or like Miss Young did what's not in here and what we would have like to have seen. But it does stick out as kind of an extraordinary expense. If there's any like designs or this is what Baltimore County is doing and this is how much they spend on it. It sounds, I mean, it sounds bananas to me, but maybe that's just because this is your, this is the first budget I know, but and the first thing I looked at when I started preparing for this, is it just the batteries that's the problem? Well, it's the, it's the make up, the way the cars created, yeah, I mean, it's the huge batteries, it runs off batteries, so. Okay. And it's not like regular cars where you take the battery out. No. Okay. So, even the, we're right. We take the, so there, there is talks about being able to take the batteries out. The batteries are probably about the size of that desk. Okay. So, it's no size. Yeah. So, if you take them out and we talked about that, so we explored maybe possibly taking them out, but that's like taking the engine out of a car. And at some point these cars may or probably will go back to their owners. So what's the expense of taking the battery out? And then we have to put it back together. So we have had those conversations. OK, OK, and then the other way you could go if you didn't go after the half a million dollar, whatever that is. I'm glad to hear that we're not purchasing land for it. Is what's not in there and I share Deb's concerns with downtown Columbia, but also in Elkridge we have the temporary, I don't know what to call it, substation, right? In Green Valley Groster, which I think is great, and hopefully we'll be there until we get you permanently located as part of the community center. Is that part, and you're nodding yes, like that's going to happen, right? But same thing is I'm looking in the capital budget is there a nod to there will be an official police presence permanently in that new Alchords community center. So I was nodding my head because Wednesday, I think, is the grand opening. So I'm gonna be down there Wednesday for the grand opening. When we put a substation or a district in, that's physically a place for the officers to go. We still have presence in those places. I mean, there are beats, officers are there 24-7, all the time. We are, with the technology we have now, Most of the reports are written in the cars. I mean, they have automatic CAD dispatch that are coming into the cars. There's computers in there. You know, so when we talk about having a presence or having someone there, they're always there. Having a workstation or some place for individuals to go is a different story. But I'm optimistic that when we open up on Wednesday that, you know, that's, that's going to fill our need down there to have a permanent, I mean, I think that is permanent. I mean, that's a permanent place, but to have a larger substation there, um, you know, I'd be open to entertain that. I don't know if there's talks or any budget, any budget, any money in the capital budget for that or um... but yeah i think that we have a permanent footprint there with the satellite office that were opening up on wednesday okay any money in the capital budget for that or, but yeah, I think that we have a permanent footprint there with the satellite office that we're opening up on Wednesday. Okay. Okay. All right, thanks. Do you all want to do another lightning round? I think the last thing I'd say, so like if they're sort of, I know that you can get e-bike batteries that are a little less regulated, a little more sketch, and those also have some fire problems as well. But I don't know how often you guys are confiscating sketchy e-bikes. It feels like not as much of an issue as these damage EVs that can be. Now, I mean the electric vehicles, if you even Google just... Oh, no. I've as an electric vehicle owner, I am very aware of the robust ability and the challenges. And I even have, like I worry about storing my e-bike battery. Terrence busted me speeding in my e-bike the other day. The nice thing about the e-bike is that I can't really go over the speed limits. That's a big bonus for me. Well, I guess on the trails you can, but on the road. Now knowing that this is an impound lot and that these vehicles might be damaged or experiencing other challenges, I think that. And that you want to do the fire suppression. suppression, it's not just putting them in a chain link lot away from other things, you actually wanna build structures to prevent the spread of fire because they're very explosive. It's a lot of corrosive chemicals within these batteries. It's not just like your, you know, like, AA battery. I appreciate that. And, you know, I think that just to be clear, there are a few other things that are called out in this budget. But most of the things are things that we've been aware of, like the renovations and improvements to the criminal lab, like the listening place. for domestic violence in the Child Advocacy Center. Like we know that's been moving along. And so I appreciate those investments. It might not be as big and flashy as a whole new, a Taj Mac, what do you call the courthouse? That's a $400 million capital project. It's the Taj Mac courthouse. Taj McHort House, a Taj McStation. But I do appreciate your investments on some pretty core and critical elements. So now I look forward to talking more at the operating session. Thank you. Good. Back to Columbia. Okay. You mentioned the new police station in the mall. And I'm wondering if you can describe that. Is that rent-free? I imagine it is. Did we outfitted? Are we spending capital to outfitted? Are there actual police officers who hang out there in the office or is the office closed? And the police officers are hanging around in the mall, patrolling outside on the mall, the grounds around the mall, and you don't actually see a police officer in the new station. If you could explain how that's working and what if any capital expenses there are, that would be great. Sure. So, right now we have two extra patrol officers at the mall, plus we have other assets there and the cops section, the pathways, the cops individuals. So come May 1st, there's going to be a permanent beat at the mall. So the way it is now is you have the David. That's next week, this week. Yeah, next week. Yeah. So right now you have those resources there. So they're acting as, you know, they are permanent. It's going to change over to be permanent. So what will happen is the beat will the mall itself will be its own beat. So there will be an officer just assigned to the mall where before the mall was inside of a beat. So the officer responsible for the mall had other responsibilities too. Now he's just going to be there. So his he will be assigned at the mall. So whether it's you know walking around foot patrol driving around whatever comes out, he will be responsible for there. And it's working right now. So like, over the weekend, we had individuals that typically would do nuisance crimes. And by the time we got there, we wouldn't be able to find them or capture them. I mean, we had a shoplifter the other day, stole $100. And loss prevention was there. And we were there, so we were able to take care of it, because someone was there at the mall. We had an incident where there was two children that were... and loss prevention was there and we were there so we were able to take care of it because someone was there at the mall. We had an incident where there was two children that were left by themselves and because the officer was there, we were able to talk to the siblings and we may even bring charges up on the family members because they just left the kids there. So these things that are happening that typically, it would take us a while to get there. When I say a while maybe even like 10 minutes, which isn't a long time, they're there right now. So that officer will be working out of the satellite office. I don't want to say it's a station. It's more like a substation or satellite office. We're also going to house our CLOs there. CLOs. Yeah, the community liaison officer, which I said, NCROs, but the really CLOs. They're the individuals that are going out in the community doing, you know, teaching, talking about helping individuals from being scammed, like some of our elderly residents being scammed. They're the ones out there doing some of the parades and manning the booths and things of that nature. So they're going to have offices there. It'll probably be like, I think four, what four offices there. As far as where that money is coming from, I don't believe that's, again, that's maybe even the major could answer that. I'm pretty sure it's not a capital budget issue. The mall is going to provide us rent-free. They're not going to charge us for that. And I think we are going to use DTCS, and I don't want to talk for them, but I believe they're going to be able to run the computer cables and the computer networking that we need for there. So it's going to be extremely low cost for us. Again, most of our officers, well, all of our officers have laptops. I mean, they can work off a laptop. We may need a little bit of help with the networking again, but it should be fully functional. And my envision is that, you know, officers are going to be there during the day. Now, are they going to be going to community groups? Are they going to be walking around the mall? I mean, is it going to be man 24-7? No, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna have an individual just sit behind the desk there, but there will be someone at the mall all the time Thank you very much. You know that I think this is very important to our downtown Columbia area and I appreciate your efforts to addressing these issues directly. and I know that the mall management does as well. So this is, I think it's important to the community and it's important to the economic vibrancy of our downtown. So I'm really glad that you all are doing exactly what you're doing right now. So, I'm sorry, thank you. And I'm glad that it's not costing any money. So, win, win. We're saving that money for the central district. And you know I want that. Good answer, cheater. Mr. England, do you have any more questions? All right, I have just is I've already lost my voice whatever time it is. We just checked my office did. We didn't know about the grand opening at the substation. So if you would we would love to come. The community is really excited about that. Well, we'll make sure you get in vote. But I have no idea what our Wednesday looks like. It probably looks like our Monday. So I may not be able to go but we'll try and be there if we can because that's good stuff. Thank you. All right we're going to close out police then and invite our fire and rescue to join us. Thank you for Good morning, Chief. Good morning. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you for being here this morning. Before we started questions, if you were interested in giving us a brief wrap up of what you've been doing. Yes. We'd love to hear it. Yes. Good morning, Council Chair Walsh. Walsh, excuse me, and Council members. Thanks for opportunity to present Fire and Rescue's Capitol improvement projects for FY26 budget year. Now, CIPs remain the same with one minor exception of possible land acquisition for Mariusville Station 16, which will be, we move money to CIP 360 real estate planning and design project with a plan to add this project to our FY27 CIP request. Our project continue F-5960 systemic improvement which is ongoing project replace and renovate major building fixtures structures in our fire stations in the Public Safety Training Center plan address this potential for repairs and renovation of high traffic areas. We're hoping that this posture will not only lengthen the life of the building but enhance the quality of life for our personnel assigned to these work sites. We have a detailed list of projects. If you have any questions as far as those projects, we'll happy to answer those 5972 is our role fire protection program a system program a project Providing augment fire protection systems in rural area in the county outside of the water and sort of Plan service area to date We have told us 40 sisters. We have four tanks that will be installed by the end of this fiscal year. And then we have four tanks that are currently in engineering design phase for FY26. And we hope that we can have those completed by the end of FY26. Third project is 5973, which is the Public Safety Storage Facility, which is the old armory since taking possession in 2023. We work with build facilities in FY 24 and 25. The form work, including removal of a hazmat within the building, site demolition, such as removal of abandoned field tanks and two Ancillary buildings We've also utilized the building for some storage currently and we've also Added some of the network county network systems to the site. I'm happy to report a recent Design consultant mw studios came back with a new initial design for both fire headquarters and a logistics building that came back at 17.7 million with the headquarters being able to move our current headquarters from the lease building coming in at 5.9. We're currently working with facilities MW to bring that cost down of the logistics building, which we believe we can accomplish in our long-time CIP plan. So we're currently working the initial plan that they did was a 21-bay logistics building building we believe we can get that down to about 12 Being as though our apparatus a lot of times probably 40% of the time are rotating through maintenance PMs and things like that They basically took what we gave them of all of our equipment and they built you know the big a big building that we don't think we needed that big. So we're currently working with them to bring that down. 5-9-7-6 is North Columbia Fire Station. As we noted, Board of Education agreed to transfer to Land of Howard County. The state approved the current site for fire station. We're working to finalize the MOU with the school in the county. We had a meeting with the architect, an engineering team, and January. And the engineering team will be submitting actually today the ECP, which is an environmental concept plan for North Columbia today and that plan submission starts to schedule for the permit approval process. Lastly, it was 5.977, replaced with fire station 7. We conducted an initial feasibility study confirming that the 6.8-year property that we looked at at Cedar Lane was generally suitable for development. We shared that feasibility study. The one in talking with the owner, they only wanted to sell one point, I believe is 1.8 or so acres of that land, which we needed at least three or more for fire station. So right now we're working with real estate services facility to identify other possible sites for station seven. So that's my quick update and we'll ask and answer any questions that you all have. Thank you Chief. Dr Jones, do you have any questions for our fire and rescue services? Good morning. Yes, my only question had to do with the question replaced by our station seven. And you just spoke about that. So I have no further questions at this time. I'm going to send some follow up later. Thank you all as usual so much for what you do. And I'll just share briefly publicly when I shared this with the chief. A few months ago, there was a house fire about three doors down for me, early one morning, right, before I had as a kid from getting ready for school. As soon as I saw the fire and as soon as, you know, I could get my wits about myself. Literally, fire trucks were screaming up the street into the neighborhood on the back side of the neighborhood. It was an amazing thing to see. It almost seemed like a movie. Like there was like special effects. Like it wasn't really real, but it was really real. So kudos to all that you do. Thank you for putting yourself in harm's way for us to continue to be safe. and I'm just thank you for all you do. Thank you for putting yourself in arms. Way for us to continue to be safe and just thank you for all you do. Thank you, Doug. Mr. Ruby. Thank you. So just going back to the the BANACR station again because it sounds like North Columbia is settled moving forward, making progress. So the property owner for the the parcel that we were looking at is only interested in selling an amount that really isn't feasible for the fire station. So are we back to square one on that? Are we still looking at the Bannocker site? Are we looking for the current Bannocker site? Or are we looking at, I know there's so many parcels of land available that are more than three acres that would be suitable for a fire station. You guys never have trouble citing those. But, you know, even with all those headwinds and challenges, are we more looking towards the Bannocker site? That was the existing Bannocker site that I guess was the previous site before we started looking at this site or are we have we committed to moving away from that existing Bannaker site. So we're we're currently looking to at sites away from that site right now. I guess depending on what happens as far as our search with working with real estate services of facilities, if we have to pivot back to where the current site is or whatever but right now we're looking at a site away from the current site. Miss. Yeah. What other sites are you looking at right now? So we spent a lot of time at the Cedalane site. Uh-huh. And how much is that going to cost? Have you looked at my understanding it's going to be $7 million just to prepare the land there? Yeah, I would have to talk with. With Zach. Yeah, and thank you. There's more questions for you. Or so, Tay there, but even when our initial talks, it wasn't going to, where the owner was only going to look at one point, something acres wasn't going to be enough for that site anyway because not just the fire station, but the, as far as the driveway and things that getting from the fire station down to Cedar Lane would need more land than the they were willing to sell. So then that's off the table. Yes. That is off the table. Okay so I can tell all the people who live in the neighborhood behind that proposed site that it is off the table. Yes. Okay. I'll be happy about that. Whether or not we're happy about that, I don't know. You don't look like you're real happy about that Chief Winston. But I know that that neighborhood, I know Braperen, will be very happy about it. Okay. So there we go. What other sites are you even exploring now? So we I better I better know since it's in my district and I'm thinking okay, what neighborhood next do I need to prepare for this? So we're we spent a lot of time looking at that site. It was very hopeful for the site. Yes. Yes So right now I I can tell you any particular sites that we're looking at. It's kind of back to the drawing board in that sense. So we don't have any sites right now that I can give you. Could I add on to that? Yeah. So I think the proximity of the station is most critical to us. Looking at you've seen our heat maps in the past and where we think the best response locations would be. We know the existing Bannocker site is so close to station 14 in downtown Columbia that it kind of makes sense to push Bannock or West. So I think we still be looking in that general region if working with real estate services we can find an appropriate size parcel of land. But I mean looking at it operationally from a response perspective that makes the most sense to us to push Bannocker West a little bit away from station 14 if that makes sense. Well I'm not sure it does because I keep thinking about the Clarksville Fire Station and how close that is to all of, also, I mean, that's West. And seems like it would, Bannocker, my understanding is the difference between Mary, Weather, and Bannocker, is Mary, Weather has these big ladders in order to try and get into the taller buildings and the purpose of that Maryweather station was to make sure that they had that sort of apparatus since the idea was that they were going to be building multi-story buildings in downtown Columbia. And Chief Winston, you look like you're ready to respond to this. Please give me insight. Station seven has. Station seven has Bannocker. Right Bannocker house. Okay Bannocker has the ladders. Yes. Yes. All right. Then Maryweather. But Maryweather's right there under a tall building. So why wouldn't they? Yeah, but the size of the ladder trucks don't want to fit into the station. They won't fit into Maryweather. Oh my gosh. Right. Well, not originally they were supposed to actually build a station. Yeah. That's okay. Well, yeah. Okay. Okay, so we can't put Bannaker too far away if Bannaker is the station that can respond to these taller office buildings. I mean, Bannocker needs more or less to stay where they are. Right? I mean, when you say push Bannocker West, I'm like, you would think, I mean, Bannocker right now is perfectly positioned to be able to go to all of those tall buildings if they're the ones with the apparatus that can get into those tall buildings. Yeah, so I think as Chief Walla said, with Station 14, which is Maryweather coming in as a full-fledged station, if again, it was supposed to be a small strike station just for that, that Murray weather district area. And us getting a full-fledged station, ideally you wouldn't put two stations that close together as far as our better coverage area in the sense of what he's talking about our heat maps. And looking at our heat maps as to where strategically would be best to move another station to have full coverage in that Columbia area. Our dear was to kind of treat that triangular with North Columbia, pushing Bandicole out to West and then having to marry whether downtown that would kind of give us that triangular of the Columbia downtown area. And the latter would not be that far away from getting responded into downtown. Right now it's right there though. I mean that's a huge, I would think that's a huge advantage. It's right there. Sure. And I would say that, you know, obviously, if you look at, you know, it took us a while as far as North Columbia station and the re-looking at a relocation of station seven. So it probably will remain at station seven, will remain for a few years before we actually, you know, whatever if we found a partial or anything, it probably is going to take a while in that sense. So, you know, the station will still be operational as of right now. Yeah, I'm just trying to think of where out west it would make sense to push that with Clarksville being right there. I mean, you guys are the experts and it does, but it does sound very complicated. Yeah. But you're also putting the gas station back, the fuel station back in Bannaker.. So that was when we looked at that particular property because it was enough land that that was what we tried wanted to come into play. However, looking at other parcels if it may not be it may not come into play being able to put the fuel there if based on you's available and what type of size parcel we would be able to get. So you were thinking that you would move the fuel station to this new, more western fire lane. Right. But it's not going to be at Cedar Lane so I can tell the people right and Braveburn that it won't be there okay all right so now the un the we don't know where it's going to be what more Western fire station we can't plan for a fuel station there because we need one more quickly than an unlocatable right now fire station. I'm not quite understanding that question. So if the department was big enough, we need a new fuel station now. We will actually look to add a fuel site there. If we need one now, right? Is that, that's why we're putting it back at Bannocker? Or, Reed? Well, right now our apparatus have to go to wherever the other fuel sites are. And it's not just, I mean, the site at Bannocker was good, not just for us, but for our partners, police partners, other county vehicles. Look, I think it's a great place to have the fuel station. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not critical of it. I just wanna let you know Chief Winston. I'm just trying to understand it. That's all. Yeah, I think it makes sense. It's central just as you pointed out. And so that's I don't it looked like there was some thought maybe about expanding Bannaker renovating it in the capital budget. I don't know if that's part of the plan. So I think now just right now we're going to look for different parcels but in the future it may be that may come into play. That may be that may be what ends up happening. Yes. Okay. We're still a little up in the air with with future and how to proceed especially given the loss of the cedar lane property. Yes, because that was what three years exploring that potential. No, that was that was only year-to-half. Oh, year-and-a-half. It just about a year. It seems like three years. No. That was much shorter than you. Yes. Yes. Yes. As soon as they start contacting you, it does start, yeah. The time starts running. Yes. So, yeah. Okay. And then, my last question about Bannocker is, my understanding is that the station itself was designed by Frank Geary. Is that, do you know if that's, that is true? Okay. And so it has some special, at least, for the people who work there and the people who go by it every day. It does have, and the people who were originally, who originally moved to Columbia, it does have some special significance. And I hope that in whatever you plan to do with that station, that you keep that in to, you keep that in mind when you're considering any future renovations or expansion to that station. Yes. Station seven, especially to me is first station. I would come out of the academy first station. Yay! All right, I like that. So you have a place for that in your heart. Absolutely, absolutely. That's absolutely. And you know that it's a Frank Erie design station. Okay, that's excellent. I know there's a lot of sentimental. A lot of sentimental value. There is. I think for us looking at strategically, and again, with Station 14 coming on, as a full fledged station, ideally, you know, where we look at our heat maps and where we can provide the best response plan. We start looking elsewhere. And station 14 is the school board station. 14 is Mary weather. Okay. All right. It's hard for me to keep this all straight. Okay, and what is the station? 15, 15. No Columbia. Okay. That's not in Columbia, that's why it always confuses me. Okay. Okay. I know you guys call it that. But. I've had that too. Joel, let me know that. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Remember it started in North Columbia and then moved. Okay. Mr. Youngman, you have any questions for Firemaski? Good. Thank you. Remember it started in North Columbia and then moved. OK. Mr. Youngman, do you have any questions for Fire and Muskie? I do. I'm not even going to go on North Columbia, because it's clear they're not allowed to build. We want to build it where the population is, but they're not allowed to build it next to a neighborhood. And like, I mean, at some point, there's only so many three anchor parcels available. So good luck finding a place to put that. Unless it's on the current Bannocker site, because my recollection was that Mary Weather was just going to be a strike station and the Bannaker was, and how big is that property? That's big property, isn't it? Bannaker? Yeah. I think Bannaker is 2.7. Oh, I thought it was bigger than that. Just under the roof. Because they know that You need more, at least to the medical side. You need more, at least to the medical side, you need more vehicles. But anyway, so Mary Till, great school system, great, all that kind of helps get a little bit more response into sort of the doughnut hole in the middle of the county. But they're all still in excess of 10 minutes. I mean, I thought we were supposed to be at eight, you know, and if you build North, if you build school system and then you build some in Merrie'sville, you're certainly not going to build another one. And now you're still, you're still 10 minutes from like Buckskin Woods and those neighborhoods. It just doesn't seem like we keep building stations sort of around the donut hole, but never saying, I need to get response time into that dead area. So one of the areas, the future that we've looked at was in that island area. I mean obviously the call density is not necessarily there right now, but we know we want to improve the response times there. But I don't think Highland to, you know, like the friary or Buckskin Woods, I kind of use them as kind of the center of that, you know, that area. And it's just,. And it's just, if you know if Columbia certainly would improve the times there, coming to North Columbia and going up, going up, I just did it, it's 10 minutes and I know you guys can go faster, but probably not in an ambulance. You can only go so fast or you know, do we need a question? It will certainly be better than what it is right now. It will be better than what it is right now. But I think my concern is we make it a little bit better than it is and now there's no opportunity to actually make it what it should be because now we've added three or four stations and from an overall capacity standpoint, we have what we need so that system just, that situation just perpetuates itself. I've got a couple of ideas that I don't know if we've ever talked about and we can talk offline to a flying about them. But it really concerns me. And look, nobody wants a fire station out in the middle of a folly quarter either. I mean, I get it. But when you have heart attack, you want one. You know, your electric car catches on fire in your garage, you want one. And I mean, that's the tough thing with fire stations and whatnot is you want it when you need it. So yeah, so we'll talk about it later. I don't have any questions. And you gave us a briefing a couple weeks ago, and it sounds like you have made made progress even particularly on the so-called North Columbia site since we talked even so that's great news If we want to do another speed round. I'm looking at you Deb Do you have any more questions for fire rescue and Dr. Jones? I'm not going to include you in the second round unless you yell out something or send me a text So I'm So sure, not that I appreciate that. That's good plan. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the more the more expedient we can be the better, I think that everything's going smooth as far for the most part. I appreciate it. So I'm at the armory now. Okay. Which I drive by almost every day. It looks really cool. And it's nice to see the progress that you guys have made. And how much better the building itself looks. So thank you, county taxpayers, for, and for, to our general services administration for creating something that is pretty cool looking, I think. But I'm looking at how much it's going to cost for storage, which seemed like a lot of money for a storage project. Was it a million dollars to build storage? And I'm like, whoa, what are we putting gold plated shelves in there? What are we doing that is costing a million dollars to build a storage facility? So the storage facility would be a separate building out back of the property. And that's actually a logistics building to store all of our reserve apparatus. So it would, it would, is it the size then of the storage facility that that's you guys are all nodding that's why it's costing so much how big is the storage facility so in the design that they gave us they basically we gave them a plan of our headquarters and then all of our all of our reserve equipment and so based upon a design and they built it, they put a storage building of like 21 base. And we certainly know we don't need 21 base and we've worked to bring that building size down. We're looking at probably 12 bays. Obviously, we're storing right now a lot of our equipment, which the engine is $1 million. The latter truck is $2 million. And we don't want to have to store our equipment out in the elements so we want to get as much as our reserve equipment. And this is equipment you're not using? Yes, reserve equipment. Yes. How much reserve equipment do you have? Well, but approximately, I'll just note that about 50% of our reserve fleet is actually in service every day and it changes every day. So those units are rotating in and out of reserve based on frontline units going in for preventive maintenance out of service because they're broken they were in an accident so our reserve fleet we realized that they designed the building to fit everything we had we're never going to have all of our reserve units in a building we know that they're moving throughout the county rotating you want to speak more of that just as chief was saying, about 40 to 50% of our reserve apparatus fleet, and that includes ambulances, fire engines, tankers, ladder trucks are at specific stations throughout the county to backfill stuff that is, like Chief Wallace said, either in getting preventative maintenance, accident repair, emergency breakdowns. So we have worked with the office of the fire chief to scale the size of that building down. So you actually did scale it down? Yes, yes. You scaled it down and it's still 21 phase and a million. No, no, no, no. We're scaling it down from 21. Oh, okay. So we're working back, we're working with the design team to scale that out. Thank you guys for being thoughtful about that. Yes, too, we believe. And it has to fit within, you know, like our fourth, we have a six year plan if you look at the CIP projects. So we get about 4.5 from transfer tax. So we have to be able to fit that plan within the budget that we have. So we're looking to scale that building down. The bigger news for us they can house our headquarters, which will get us out of a current lease. We bill, right? Well, that is big news. So tell me about that. The Armory Storage Building is going to, how's your headquarters or how's that gonna work? So in the current design that we have, it can house our current headquarters, which would get us out of it. That's the existing armory building. They can renovate that to facilitate moving headquarters there. That's separate from the religious community. That's great, you guys will be so much closer to us. We can just drop over and say hi. Pop in for lunch any time. I love that. I love that. So how many people are in your existing headquarters? About 70 70 right now. 70. Where's the police when we need to talk to them? They could have moved into the armory building. Okay. All right. 70 people. I'm just kidding. But I see that the the police are are gonna be using some storage too in this storage facility at the Armory Building. Is that correct? It said something about that. No, originally when the project has changed. Yes, exactly. Originally it was a combined but then it changed. All right, because you scaled it back. And you said we don't need all that. No, it changed, it changed a while back. It changed a while back. It was a combined storage facility and then it just became a fire project. Okay, so when do you guys think you'll be, this project will be done and you'll be moving in so we can come over and say hi. So our current lease was a 10-year lease with two five-year renewals. We moved in our headquarters in November of 2018. So the 10-year lease is up in 2028 so that's kind of a goal. We're going to also speak back with the building owner to see if instead of doing two, five-year renewals, we could do just one-year renewals until we possibly get out of that building and get into the armory, and new headquarters. That sounds great. So you guys will be in a building that we own. And we don't have to pay a lease. We're getting rid of another lease. You'll be close by. We can come visit you, come by and get a hopefully there's a kitchen at this fire station. I hope there is. We can come by and get dinner. I know, but there's also a isn't there's fire. There's a isn't there a fire apparatus. There are two no no fire apparatus. But in the logistics building, there'll be fire apparatus, but we'll make sure you get lunch. We can just walk over to fire station two. We'll have a cut. I've always wanted to go to a fire station and have one of these great meals that it looks like they're always preparing on TV. Now, I don't know if they actually happen in real life, but yeah. They do. Okay. We have amazing cooks and- That's right. So I'm looking forward to that. So we got the fuel iron. Got that figured out. You guys are moving and we're saving money on a lease. That's wonderful. Oh, my last question was about rural fire protection. So you mentioned, I think it was in our budget book, that these new fire suppression tanks cost around $330,000 per tank. Correct? Yes. And I noticed I was counting how many of these we generally put in each year. So it looked like the most that we ever put in was for in a year. I take it back. In 2009, we put in five. That was the most that was ever put in. And then, mostly it's four, three, one, yeah, two. And you mentioned that the plan is to put in 4 this year, which I found surprising, and that you had plans already for 4 more for the following year. So that's what, around 1.3 million, right? And I'm wondering, do you have, because it seems like the biggest problem has been whether you have the land to put these tanks for this fire suppression and that that's been a real problem in the past is getting acquiring that land. So can you tell me whether or not you have the land acquisition for the four that are going in this year and for the four that are being planned right now for the following year? You were waiting for that. Okay. All right, this is your thing. All right. We work in partnership with DPW Utility Design. And as you stated, I've been on this project since 2008. Oh, so you are that you know this inside and out. Not necessarily yet. Still learning. But in the the beginning we used we had we utilized a lot of the like county property, county property, working with the school board and wrecking parks and as we've slowly utilized up those spaces now we're working with HOAs and stuff like that which does cause us to have to do a little more price increase to purchase the land. We try to make sure we have a good agreement prior to entering it so they don't go back and forth and then ultimately change their minds. One thing that was done I think in 2019 the law changed that for developers 10 houses are more in the rural area than municipal does require a piece of property to be set aside In this current batch that's getting ready to be built will be easement number one So that's kind of a show from the developers. Yes, excellent and then see that law made a difference I'm glad and then the next batch that the chief talked about in FY 26 we have the second piece of ground which, which will be the West friendship area that will be the second easement that will use that as well. So as these developments come on that are ten or more, hopefully this will kind of take care of that land problem. We do get a lot of easements. We do get a lot of HOAs that will donate us, they want the sisters. I would think so. Where the increased cost comes in is then you have to go back. You might have to do a change of land use whether it was you know ag preserve or whatever different categories for conservation. You have to account for that. So you don't have to go through zoning for that you? You do. And that's where some of the increased cost comes back because they have to go back to the original site development plans and do red line myelars on them. They can just do a red line. OK. And that's where some of the increased cost comes in, even when somebody gives us the land. And that also shows us. That's our own department. Well, what she's saying is talking about also explain sometimes how this goes and goes and goes very slow crawl And then all of a sudden you got three or four tanks within a period of a month and a half being and starting in your back to that kind of drug. I don't like calling it a drag, but it's a slow crawl to get into installation because of the process is what we have to do with all the signatures and whatnot. Okay, so if I'm reading this correctly, you have $11,150,000. And is that what I'm looking at? Expenditures, prior appropriation, putting in another 500. Is that? Yeah, so some of that we would have to actually check with DPWC what is actually spent or what is obligated. Some of that may be obligated and some may be unspent. Okay. Yeah, I was thinking if we're doing a max of four year at 330 that it seems like that's a lot to have in this budget even going forward, especially if we're having a tough time financially that we might wanna look at it doing this more on a yearly basis knowing that generally the max we're getting is four of these. But anyway, it was just a thought that I had. And then my last question on this is you would probably be the expert on this too. The whole insurance thing that is going on with us. I I read these two letters, but I didn't really understand them. So we have the two letters from the insurance industry, I guess, that talks about what ISO to Calvain Ball regarding the Howard County FPSA. And if you could just, are we, is this helping our community with their insurance as well so that when they're trying to get fire insurance, hazard insurance for their homes, this gives them a better rate as a result because we have these suppression tanks in do we have a good rating I was having a hard time finding that yes So the last time we did a an ISO review I was part of the team that went through the last ISO process It takes about a year to complete that and then get everything through the ISO Organization to then give you your ratings the last time we it done, we were a three in the metro area, a five in the rural area, and that's based on a scale of one being the best rating you can get up to a 10. So we were at a three and a five, and then when we went through the last process, just recently, we improved our rating to a two in the metro area and a four in the rural area. We believe that the addition of fire station 14 and fire station 12 helped us in the metro area, as well as improvements to apparatus, our reserve fleets gotten better. They count all of that kind of stuff, training that's been done by career and volunteer members of the department. We got a lot better at record keeping, so we did the department took a lot of things from the last ISO review and made improvements which enabled us to improve our ISO rating this time. To get to the two. Yeah, so now it's to be more than ten because anybody that lives more than five drive miles from a fire station is automatically a ten for Insurance purposes. So that's where Waterloo helped a lot We had somebody call and they didn't even know and it was an insurance agent He said I see this closest stations as savage or elk rage And I'm like looking at the address you have station 12. That's about two miles away And he's like, oh, that's great. He knew what that meant. So that's really helped in that scenario. All right. So. And one, one talk, you look at sitting by apartments, get that class one rating because they have fire stations on every page. OK. One is not unattainable for us in the Metro. There's still a lot of work we'd have to do to get there. but I think it is achievable within the next five-year cycle that we do the ISO review. Wow. Not making any promises, but that's what we're striving towards always improving that rating. And the four is every five miles, is that what the rural area is? The rural is four, and that's basically just because of, you know, drive times as Council Member Youngman talked about as well as fire suppression systems. The cisterns absolutely help having tankers that carry water help. So we had we had made improvements in that over the last five year period as well. And even even the the cisterns a lot of times residents will call and ask about the closest water source. That's the questions that they get from their insurance, their insurers. And so, adding these systems, certainly, you know, and their systems are 30,000? Yeah, that's great. So, if you, I was looking at the map of, well, the chart of where they all are, done a great job, by the way. That's really impressive. How many of these we have out there in District 5? It is, I really appreciate that. How many, in the best of all worlds, how many more would we need to add? So in the original work group that Chief LePore was a part of, we identified 100. So it's a long term, this is a long-term project. And we're quite there. Yeah, we identified 100. I mean, that's a lofty goal, but we'll continue to work through it. This is a long term, be a long-term project. But we'll continue to work through that process. But in that, that original work group,, they worked really hard and they identified probably 100 sites that would be ideal for sisters. And what the chief is talking, our reference into the number, it was like 102 total, but we took the non-general number. What did you think? What did you think that he wouldn't be able to give you that number? the county up into one square mile blocks out anything that's not serviced by the municipal water supply. And that's how the number came up. Then we developed a priority travel distance to the closest fire station population density proximity to the closest known water source, whether that's a stream upon a swimming pool, a sister, that's private, because there is a few of those out there. So that's how that number became the reality that we work off of today. Okay, yeah, you do have a little ways to go. I'm looking at this list. All right, but thank you guys for working so hard in this project and making sure that District 5 residents are safe and not just making sure that just keep working on it. I can see that that's what you've been doing and really appreciate that. So yeah, great job. Thank you. Mr. Irvingman, do you have any more questions? No. Okay. I don't have any other. So thank you for spending some time with us this morning. Thank you. Thanks for your rescue. I think we'll go right to agricultural preserve. Miss Navy. We're going to skip that break so we can make up sometime. Good morning. Welcome. Good. I don't if you wanted to proceed with any kind of overview of what you've been doing. We'd love to hear it. Good morning. Joy Levy, program administrator here along with Mary Kendall, DPC Deputy Director, to talk about G-O-164, which is the new Agricultural Land Preservation Program Capital Project that was established this time last year. A 164 serves as a continuation of 163, which is in the process of being closed. The 15 million in new funding we requested last year is in 164, along with the unspent funds from 163. And we currently have about 1.95 million left out of the 50 million in spending authority that was approved by Council in 2013. The IPRES program settled on the 86 Aper dayil Day property on January 23rd and big picture since the program began 41 years ago. The county has purchased Ag easements on 173 properties totaling about 16,140 acres. If you include mouth, the State program acquisitions in there and also the easements dedicated to the IPRES program through the subdivision process. Our grand total is about 293 easements encompassing about 23,310 acres. And the 67-acre Harrison farm is the next property in the pipeline. It should be coming to council within the next couple of months. The Harrison property is immediately adjacent to the day property and received Ag Board approval on January 27th of this year. And we're currently in the process of working with several other potential applicants. Nice, thank you. We'll begin questions with you, Dr. Jones. Okay, and then we'll move to Ms. Wigby. Thank you. Just looking at some of the target properties. And I think this is a function of the code. So that's why I wanted to ask about it. So you kind of pull out the RC and RR, DEO options that meet the criteria and are looking good. And I know that in recent years, we've redone our scoring sheet to make it more accessible for farms in the east to qualify, that there are sort of like Garmin Farm. There are some farms on the eastern side of the county that would meet some of our criteria that we're hopeful would choose to utilize the program but may not. And so I guess I was just wondering how we can get some more of the Eastern properties engaged. Well, so as you mentioned, the RCMAR have generally been the target, even though we don't specifically target. But yes, I mean, that's the vast majority of the properties are in those two zoning districts. The, you know, any of the properties that are in other zoning districts that would meet the basic criteria. So the minimum acreage requirement has been reduced over time to where it's now the 20 acres. But anybody that would meet the basic criteria, size and soils, and have development potential would be eligible. I think that the scoring system, as it stands, is, you know, it's more, I don't know, we've talked about, I know there are some larger properties in the east, but that would be kind of fit into the current scoring system More so than some of the previous discussions about like going for you know like smaller bright like micro Yeah, so I mean any of those properties would be Be eligible. Miss. Yes. Miss. You have a pursuit of those properties. Are there any properties at all outside of District 5? That are currently better have ever been brought into the AgPres program. There's, yeah, there's, um, um, we visited, um, uh, uh, yes, thank you. Thank you. For, yeah. Whenever. Yeah. So there's one. I think there's one more. There's one. There's, I mean, I don't have the, I don't have the, my list of all easements by, um, Council District, but I, but I can get that for you. Yeah, I'd love to see that because I don't have that. Yeah, that's not part of what we received, so that would be helpful to know how many properties there are outside of District 5. Yeah, I think the uncommitted list had the un-council districts, but in terms of what's already in the district. Yeah, the uncommitted list did have, does have that. And they're all, and they're all District 5. Oh wait, there's one. Here's four. It's a few fours. OK. few fours and then the rest five. I guess I was looking at the uncommitted in RC and RR. That was all district five. Okay. And then there's a few in RR, just RR that are district four. Are you pursuing any of those district four farms? I mean, when you get new, when you get somebody to agree to this, don't you have conversations with them beforehand or do you let them know that they're eligible? How do you start that process? Generally, we send out a letter to the uncommitted folks. Just every soften to say, hey, the program is open, accepting applications. When the terms change last year, we sent out a letter to announce that. I mean, so we don't specifically target properties and kind of go after an easement on a particular property. It's, you know, it's all like here we are. And if somebody's interested, then they come. I talked to people about the different options. You know, there's the county program, there's the state program, there's dedicated, all the tools in the box, explain the differences between the program and what's available. Different people have different needs in terms of how the easements are, the value of the easement is determined, how the people are paid, differs between the programs. So there's a lot of discussion with folks that are interested in preserving their land and one way or another. Do you send that letter out every year that says, hey, don't forget about us. We sent the letter out last year. We're sending it out again. Maybe this is the time. Maybe now you're really thinking about moving. And maybe before you move, you want to do this. Yeah, I mean, I think it seems like what the folks that we have gotten interest from in more recent times have been in situations. you know, the program has been around for a long time. People are aware of us, but particularly situations where the property may have been under one family or person's ownership for a long time, and then the property transfers. And so that new owner may not be aware of the program at all. So several, like in the last handful of years, properties have come in that way. So yeah, I mean, we do send the letter out on a regular basis. So let people know that their programs open and available and that they are at least from our basic analysis eligible. When somebody buys a piece of property that's under AgPres, wouldn't they know that? Wouldn't they have to know that? Do they better? I was going to say. Yeah, I'm talking about properties that have come into the program. When I was just mentioning where somebody, there's a transfer of the land, and somebody who has owned it for a long time and hasn't been interested in press. And then somebody new buys it. And then they are interested. And they have come into the program. So that was the scenario. Oh, okay. But yes, I mean, you know, part of, generally part of somebody's due diligence, you know, and a lot of, you know, the real estate agent community is, you know, pretty aware that there's a lot of land under easements. So for properties that are already in the program, yes, most people are aware. They just often need some guidance as to what does it mean? What does it mean to be possibly buying a property under usement in terms of the rights that are retained and permitted use is not that good stuff? So the original goal was to preserve 40% of all the agricultural land, correct? That goal has kind of changed around over time. What's the goal now? Well, I mean, there's, so there was the, like, in the plan, in general plan, you know, it was like 30,000, but that was kind of combined of AgPres and other preserves, if I'm not mistaken. That's correct. That goal was all preserved land in the county to try to achieve that. All preserved land. Not just ag press. Not just ag press, right? OK. Under some sort of environmental conservation easement. OK. How close are we to that goal? Do you know? I'd have to get back to get back to you on that. I would yeah I'd like to I'd love to know that I don't remember seeing that in the general plan although it might have been that was 365 pages so That might not be something I would be able to remember at this point I think maybe what you might refer to I mean there's like state goals of like 30 by 30 and 40 by 40 in terms of, you know, thousands of acres by 2030 by 2040. So, but when you mentioned, when you mentioned 40%, I didn't know if that's where that was coming from, but I think in the count, just on the county level, 30,000 has been the number that overall that... 30,000 acres. Yeah, that we have shot for. And how close are we to getting? Well, just Ag Presalone is over 23. So, 23,000. So, I, there, so we can double check that for you, but I'm pretty sure between AgPres and all the other types of easements there's a significant amount of environmental preservation parcels in the county as well. That would push us over the 30,000 I think. Hmm. And is that might that be close to 40 percent? I, I, I, I land. Yeah. Yeah. I might be close. OK, get that number. Yeah, which is great. If that's, we're heading there. Yeah. Go ahead. I might have one more question after this. Mr. Enman. Back to the question about a program to properly, to open up the program and to properly score the smaller parcels in the East. Has the ag board taken that on yet? Or they, like the first step was, like everybody acknowledged the current scoring system didn't work, really, for smaller parcels in the East east and I thought that they were going to come up with a proposal. They did not. James Aller is here. He wanted to speak about Agward stuff but in general there was a fairly recent update to the scoring but it wasn't oriented towards amending it to be suitable for the east. It was just to kind of beef up and update the scoring for the... Because the housing densities just so much higher in the east you know 40 grand of acres not gonna get you there and David you're right that was the concern is that because of the value of the land in the east, you know, 40 graded acres not going to get you there. And David, you're right, that was the concern is that because of the value of the land in the east, that wasn't addressed yet. What they were addressing, they looked at the flexibility of the program and they were concerned, they did talk about it but they haven't addressed that at this point. And I think some of the concern is just what we said in the East, the property value and the development rights are development potential is pretty high. So to be able to, I think that's why we're not attracting so many in the East because they're retaining it because of the value of it and how it runs, I guess, with the general plan of what's designated for what. So, okay. Thanks. So, does that mean it's kind of dead right now, the egg board? I would say it's dead right now. We just had a change in chair. So, I think that would be something they would probably consider in this next year. Because they're looking at a few items on the agenda that do relate to, you know, they have talked about some scoring things. Is it in Kathy's and Jerry's and she is. Yeah, she is. She would be a personality aspect to her. Absolutely being in the East. So that's why I say I, that could be a very, that could be a possibility. Okay, because yeah, I mean, I was told at least, you know, wait for the new general plan and then we'll undertake that. And that is now passed and we're still not undertaking it. So, I mean, I think I'm hearing some interest among a number of us on the council to do that. So if there's something that we should be doing to initiate that, I'm just really happy to, you know, call Kathy and ask her and let her know, you know, it sounds like you have some allies in that regard. But I think it's important and I think I think we could find senses from the general plan that say so and figure out a way to fund at least the best of what's available. That's really my, I mean, that's my question as well. Do you have any more questions, Ms. Rathie? No, it was just, it was really following up on that, really, I think, because I think, given the makeup of the ag board and their priorities, I totally understand why this is not, you know, for most of them has not been at the top of their list and something that may be more of a council priority because we're sitting sort of back here seeing everything in the general plan. But if it's helpful for the board to get a letter from us, just saying, please consider this as you undertake your duties. I think that many of us would be willing to sign on to that. Just so that all the members, I think sometimes, you know, I think it's good to go to Kathy, we good relationships with her, I think she'll hear us, but then also it gives her that support to say like, no, this isn't just me in the east as the new chair. You know, like this is a real county priority. I think a letter would be okay. Okay.. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. on the office of the thing. Thank you very much. It is so beautiful out there. And I do want to encourage the public to go out to that beautiful area, take advantage of the park that's out there. Walk around the land. It is open to the public and it is super, super nice and a great way to get your mind off of things that you don't want to be thinking about. So yeah, that's in the office house is also wonderful with all the sunshine just streaming in. So, so jealous. Okay. I have to admit it is great office. It is, you know, not big, but really. You can have a satellite office out there. Could I? I think James, I think James actually offered that to me when I'm like, when I'm salivating over all the sun bursting through the windows, but yeah, it was very nice. Yeah. Yeah, what? I know. look at all the sun bursting through the Bannocker room and through the north facing offices of the county council and the beautiful CVG room and our wonderful conference areas there's just no windows anywhere yeah so yeah anyway anyway, that's why among other things were jealous. But just the park land around there again, please, you know, Howard County residents enjoy, go out there and enjoy it right across from the fairgrounds or just up the road. That's exactly. A little bit from the fairgrounds. So you'll see it. There's a nice little sign there. And we are definitely working that direction you'll see the summer more vents and stuff so hopefully you guys will be pleased with what we're doing. That'll be great yes bands and food trucks and yeah things for the kids yeah that'll be yes looking forward to that. Excellent. Mr. Irgun Irma, you don't have any questions to you. Okay, thank you, Agriculture Preservation. Thank you. Next up, we have DPW Water Projects, and then sewer projects. Good morning. Do you have someone else coming with you? Uh-huh. I have a quick presentation that covers, and I water and sewer but also the general county. Zach Holland back is here. If we want to do that all together but I see that agenda has that for the afternoon. It does but what? Yes ma'am. Yeah I think that's fine if you just do them all. I don't see why we would object to. to. I'm just making sure that you'll see the whole thing that you won't miss. Okay. All right. Yeah. No go ahead and do that. Okay. Are we ready? Okay, thank you, Council Chair Walsh, Vice Chair Jones and members of the Council. Joseph Cabeta here representing the Department of Public Works. Our wonderful team. Next to me, BWG for Engineering, Daniel Davis, you all know. And Zach Holland-Back Deputy, BWG for facilities. And then we have a few folks that are in the audience also John C. Fried and Sue Voice, as well as members of the team that are online to answer any detailed questions. So quick look through our FY26 highlights, starting with the sewer project S6602. This slide just shows you some of the completed as well as ongoing projects at the little Patuxent water reclamation plant. The pictures that you see on the top right is the rehab of our ultraviolet disinfection system that is substantially complete and has an impact on our quality of water being discharged. And then below that is the replacement of our motor control center for the treatment plan that was put in back in the 80s so it was in need of updating. Next slide. plan that was put in back in the 80s. So it was in need of updating. Next slide. These list of projects are part of what we're requesting in FY26, at the tune of just a little bit north of $20 million. The key project to highlight here in this list is the power substation number three. Because we are at the plant at a very low-lying position and in the floodplain to make sure that we harden that key asset for the plant, we are undertaking a project to not just replace the substation but also elevate it and harden it against the climate impact. So after this, the next few slides are going to be focused on general county projects starting with the non-conquered facility, the very first in the county, that we're asking for 500,000 for FY 26 with the balance to be made up with DHCD funding. So as you're aware, this is going to be located off of US 1 and will house vulnerable citizens in non-congregate rooms. And then the next slide, another new project is the scale house replacement in the Alpharage landfill. This, the pictures that you see highlight some of the disrepair. It's been around for quite a while, so we'll be replacing the building itself as well as installing new scales on the ingress, ingress and to the exit to manage the capacity better. Next slide is the, I hope you just finished talking about the agricultural center, where this is the new space that will have the Office of Ag co-located with the extension as well as the Reconparks Natural Resources Division in West friendship. It's on property that the county owns and the funding request for FY 26 is for $1 million for design. The Elkridge Community Center, this was initially initiated or funded in FY 25. The request for FY 26 is 25 million in large part to accommodate the addition of the 50 plus center to the community center and Elkridge and we are pursuing a lead gold certification for this and expect a break round in next year. And then the East Columbia canopies, the next few slides are for the most part completed projects to highlight really quickly Canapes at these Columbia that are making an impact in terms of energy usage. And this is the detention center. The bottom right is the before and the top right is after. And then the mental health unit is substantially complete. There are some additional items to do, but that's substantially complete for now. and then the mental health unit is substantially complete. There are some additional items to do, but that's substantially complete for now. And then at Downtown Eligat City, we have the expansion of the Tyber Park, as well as the rebuild of the Kaplan Center. And we are Kaplan, we expect to have open this summer. Next slide, the North Laurel pool addition, we're about 50% complete right now. And then the systemic program, 365, will be used to find some of the renovation at 9755 production woods and again, some of the components are the changing stations and restrooms. And then this is the old courthouse, what we expect to have open later this year is the AAPI Cultural Center, as well as the Center for the Arts. And then in subsequent years we'll have the Roving Radish and Shared Kitchen also ready to operate. And so this is some of the renditions and this is the picture of what it may look like now today. So progress and that's all I have. Thank you, Director Cabinni. Do we have Opal? Michelle. All right, Mr. B, you want to start us off on questions please? On water, we're going to do water. Where are you going to go? I will not ask any general county questions because that's in the afternoon. Correct. Got it. Okay. Then I'm pretty good on water. So no questions? Not a good Ms. Young. All right. Longfellow. We made a request to try and you may have already responded. I know you responded once. I don't know if you've met. You're meeting with the longfellow community tonight, correct? That is correct. And there's been a concern about where to place the equipment during the long fellow water main replacement and I have you looked at trying to place it somewhere else is there movement on that front. Yes we have looked at trying to place it elsewhere And like you said, we do have a meeting tonight to update the community on the project in general. We are not looking to put it where we originally were looking at the process of our own budget in the county. Thank you, Daniel. Thank you. I really appreciate that. That's a good answer. Okay. Thank you. Yes. All right. Zach off topic. Did you figure out how many square feet the police have right now? Ed Orkel. Orkel is currently 29,500 gross square feet. 29,500. And do you remember how much we have it? Well this is kind of on topic. Okay but it is general county, it is general county, the Patuxent Woods space that we are redoing? Oh, 9-7555. Yes. Let me look that up. I don't have that off the top of my head. I think it's a hundred thousand square feet total but we don't have the whole building yet. Okay, but I could be wrong. I know I've asked that question a few times. I should be in my brain by now. Okay, so thank you, thank you, thank you again for Longfellow, and I'm glad that project is being replaced. Now, and I've asked this question a few times too over the years. The Clarksville elevated water tank. We don't have land for it, but we do definitely need that. I remember Jim Irvents telling us how much we needed that Daniel. I remember that. We got to get that Clarks smell tank, okay? But we don't have land for it. And land is only getting more expensive here in Howard County. It seems to me like we should be pursuing that ASAP and there should be a budget item in here for the pursuit of land. So that we don't end up spending twice as much for it as what we should be spending. Any thoughts about that? Well, currently the project is funded not to begin until I think it's FY27. Right, I know. I know, but we've got to have land to make it begin exactly and we're only in 25 so you know we right and in that project I think it started way back in like FY 22 24 so it was even before that right so yeah I remember Jim talking about yeah it has a long history of from when it started and when the actual need was to be put forward. I mean obviously we could look at it from a department standpoint of moving money forward into another FY year to talk about land acquisition. We could do that but the plan is not to do anything until FY27 didn't construction what happened after that. Zach, do you think that's a good plan? I'll just say, shouldn't we be acquiring land now so that it won't be as expensive a year from now? Two years from now. I mean, do we do that? Don't we do that? Isn't that why we have general services now? We can, I think what I would like to do is get with the engineering team to understand the history a little better and see if that's something that we can expedite. Well, actually this might be a good time to ask since we do have a general services department are how do you all work together then with like the other departments. Do you do you go to them and say hey this looks like a project that you're going to be doing in the next year or two shouldn't we be looking for the land right now when and then suggest that that goes into the budget. How is that operating? Looks like you're ready to respond to. So the project, even if facilities, which was formerly in DPW, it's currently is, but moving to Department General Services, facilities does not have a role in a DPW, water and sewer capital project that's outside of that particular fund. So it's not something that facilities would normally be brought into. This is a different kind of project. This is a water and sewer capital enterprise fund project. So it's not something that facilities get involved with. It's all money though. I mean, it's all money eventually that we have to pay for a piece of land. It is true. If I could maybe elaborate on that. So as far as I think to your question, I think it was more about how will this work, these types of engagements. And so we don't anticipate there to be that much difference in terms of how we engage with the real estate services division. That's going to be part of DGS as well as facilities if they do have a role. You know, identifying the capital need, let's say, on the water sewer side. And if it has a real estate purchase need along with it, then we would engage with the team like we always do and identify priorities in terms of what to pursue and how to pursue it. Okay. Did you find that square footage at the Patuxon Woods Building? Thank you. What is it? Patuxon Woods, 97.55 is 98,000. Don't worry, now it was close, 97.55. Well, 97.55 is the address. It's a cleaner. 98,000 square feet. 98,000. Approximately half is vacant. That was close. All right. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Renman. Yeah. Oh, wait. Yeah. Yes. No, actually going back to the Clarksville tower. That has some relationship to the Ericsson community coming in right I mean is that Does that have to be in before we move 1200 new home owners or Good question. No, okay All right, thanks. All right now to you. Yeah, I just wanted to touch in on the lead service line inventory and sort of our approach on that, how we're getting our list of what we have to mitigate and then how we're going to mitigate it. So in Deputy Daniel or we have our WD chief Craig Daley who is overseeing that can elaborate or expound but So we we are currently the Identification of the inventory of of led lines is a continuous process We we were compliant with EPA regs and supplying them what we know to date as of October of 2024 So currently there are no led lines our system, and we'll continue to do the investigations. A lot of the desktop study has already happened. So what's remaining would be utilizing some technology, or in other cases actually pod-holing and disturbing the earth so we can actually see what's underneath the ground to see if some of these lines are led or what material they are. I had the assumption that because of when most of our lines went in that most of them would not have led involved, but then I saw the budget item, I thought, maybe that assumption's totally wrong. So if you have a moment to school me, I'd appreciate it. given the age of our system, you're correct that most of our stuff wouldn't fall in today, particularly category, but that knowledge isn't enough to satisfy the criteria that's put forth by the Round and Department environment. So we have to physically verify the ones that we are known about, unsure about. And so is MDE giving us this loan to then do that work? Are it a lower interest or? So the grants that you see now are the beginning of that capital project are, there's a grant to help us with some of the verification. There is no money actively right now from a grant standpoint or any other kind of loan far as it's actually doing the work if we actually work to find something. This is all 40 exploration of trying to determine where we sit. But the problem is, but we would imagine even though the state's requirements to do this, we have to do the work that the state is asking us to do but we don't't anticipate that there will be a ton of additional work for us to do beyond the inventory. Right. It's the hope. Yeah, that is the whole part. There are a lot of unknowns. So we'll hold out until we can actually verify because the private side of the system is really the challenge. All right. Thank you. Miss Young. So I have a couple questions about the pumping station. There is a pumping upgrades, a project that upgrades a pump station in downtown Columbia Which pump station is that is the one on Cedar Lane? No, the one on Cedar Lane is the new one. This is the right. I'm like, oh my gosh. That's brand new. Okay, that makes me feel better already. All right, okay. So this is the Columbia Pumpensation, which is near, I believe, the Bannaker Fire Station? Everything's over there. Yeah, hot bit of activity from this morning, huh? It is, I know. Where is that? Is it behind the Bannaker? Yeah, kind of right behind it next to it, kind of. You really don't see it, but it's there. I don't think I've ever seen it. I don't think I've ever noticed it. Yeah. It's the actual... Yeah, kind of right behind it next to it, kind of. You really don't see it, but it's there. I don't think I've ever seen it. I don't think I've ever noticed it. Yeah. It's the actually, it predates the Cedar Station. So it's the one that was there and serving that zone before we built the Cedar Station. So it's under station. So what do we need to do? And is this as a result of all the new people that have moved into downtown Columbia? Well, it doesn't really have a lot to do with downtown Columbia in this sense. Okay. It's really for people we call the 630 West Zone, which is a little bit further away, hidden closer to the Clarksville. That particular water zone doesn't have water storage tank. So Cedar. Yes, we were just talking about that. We're we. Yes, we are. See all these things are touching. So Cedar Lane is the pumping station that feeds that zone. This is a redundant pump station for the same zone. And since you don't have a water storage tank, you don't want to put all your eggs in one basket. So you want to have multiple pump stations. I remember at one point going upstairs and seeing the water pump station and water storage tank map. I guess it was what, what at that point maybe five years ago, we thought we would need. Do you still have a copy of that map? I would love to see that today and see where we're at in terms of fulfilling that master plan. I guess it was the master water plan, right? Correct. Yes. Yeah, the master plan is being updated right now. It's done on a triangular basis. And it's actually being updated right now. But there's the existing map to shows all the different pump stations and needs throughout the county. OK. Yeah. I'd love to see that. And then when do you think the new one will be updated? I believe it's a one year process from start to finish in planning. So this time next year it should be complete I believe. Okay. I will check and let you know. We make sure that we get a chance to meet on that when it's when it's updated so that we can review what was done in the, you know, what we suggested in the past and what we're, what the new master plan is suggesting now. I think it's important to know that. Certainly the master plan in itself comes before the council. Oh, good. All right. I mean, remember that. Okay. That'll be helpful. All right. Thank you. Land. Land. Land. I'm guessing no more questions from you, Mr. Yemen, and none from me. I don't have any more, either. Okay. The guys are doing a great job. We get our water. People like it. Okay. It's getting more expensive. That's not good. not good, but otherwise everything else looks really great. Thank you. People like it. Okay. It's getting more expensive. That's not good. But every otherwise everything else looks really great All right, you want to do sewer then? You saw this line. Sure. Already. Let's do sewer Miss Bigby I know you have questions for this Because I do. I do. Because it's essential to a functioning society, we cannot function without functioning sewers. So everybody should be appreciating this item. Put that out there. But I was really glad to see some of the projects at Lopatexan. Obviously, there are definitely some elements that have been replaced over the years that We're installed in the 70s and 80s so it's good to see you guys kind of working through them but I was especially glad to see the elevation from the floodplain for the electrical because I know that's kind of been on the list for a while in terms of how to mitigate its location to the river and stream there. But I mean, honestly, I don't have a ton because you guys keep chipping away if they'll work there. So I just really have appreciation to share. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Miss Yun. Why aren. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. year, losing 4.1 million programmed in FY25. The Deep Run, Shallow Run Interceptor, no new funding this year, losing 8.5 million. And the Maryland 108 pump station outfall improvements, no new funding this year, losing 33.8 million. Am I reading that correctly? Did it move to other places? And I'm not seeing the other places that it moved to? Do we not need the money? Which I'm sure that that's not true. Okay, so the answer to those questions are? So for the interceptor projects, they're very large projects. they have different needs as far as where they are in their development. Some are in design, some are, most of them are already designed. It gets to be about the real estate and acquiring the easement needed to move forward with the work, which we have been trying to do for quite some time. And if you can imagine from a standpoint of when these things were originally put in in the 1970s and perhaps 60s How can it look a whole lot different than it does right now and trying to get easement in people's backyards and things like that And through other private property owners that are abutting up to the existing sewer lines is a difficult challenge So instead of asking for money for a project that you know you can't go into construction in FY26, you defer it further along the line to do other work that you know that you can get done. So that's why you see things like that where we're not asking for money. Well, that's a very reasonable explanation, but concerning, assuming that we do need these new interceptors. And so do we have a plan for how we're going to obtain this land? We're chipping away at it every day. We're better today than what we were at this time when we had this conversation last year before, right? You know, if you look at the number of easements, I mean, in some of these particular projects, we need over 100 different easements. And so 100 different individuals that you're working with trying to get through easements through forest kind of, so all these different kind of things in order to make these projects a reality. We're better today than what we have been and we're close. Some of them are starting, started in particular areas. We look at a sewer in the sector, It could be 10 miles long, and the project is broken up into different contracts, maybe four or five different contracts. So you do the lower end first, and you keep working your way up the line. Huh. And are you doing that right? Have you done one where you're doing? You've done partial. You've done it. Correct. You have. We're actually had one under construction right now near the Dorsey Pumping Station so starting at the bottom and working away up. Wow. Don't these people realize how important it is to as they need to just meet Miss Rigby. She could come over. She could just you should just bring her to their door and she could explain to them about how important for a functioning world we need. I'll bring the jars. We need sewers. Yes, yes, I think she could be your spokesperson. I think we should, yeah. Would you mind that? Well, definitely add that to our toolbox. Okay, all right. Yeah, you should, really. Yeah, that is concerning. And the pump station outfall improvements. What's going on with that? So that was the 108 pump stations? Yeah, 108, the Arlem. The project is close to going to construction. We were just kind of coordinating a few things related to the work that's going to be in the intersection of I believe it's hold on to our, no, we're 108. I'm on Route 40. All right. We're on're on 108 don't I was gonna say please don't tell me they're gonna Dig up 108 again. That's really gonna make me sad. Yeah. Yep. So the run away pump and station Which the it's S6285 Maryland 108 pump station outfall improvements Is that bringing about? 6285, Maryland 108, pump station outfall improvements. Is that bringing a bell? S6, 2. Did you say that number again? S6285. 6285. OK. Is that the limit's zeroed out, though? Yes. Yes, this is zeroing sewer. So we're going to have to do that. We're going to have to do that. We're going to have to do that. We're going to have to do that. We're going to have to do that. It didn't necessarily have to do with some public works in the sense of water and sewer. It was more so some related work that had to do with work that was being done to strengthen the Elicocity and the Flood Plane. Oh, so it wouldn't be in this, even if there was more work to be done, it wouldn't be in this project. Correct. It would be in the, in the, everything that goes on with Ellicod City. Right. Yeah, they believe it's called the T-1 pi. Okay. All right. And then I guess my last question here is that there's a, these, a lot of these sewer projects are showing a $20,000 to $60,000 cost increase. And I'm just wondering if you could, let me, I know that there are a lot of things that are costing more, but I'm wondering, if there's anything you're seeing in particular that is costing more, What's the trend that you're seeing right now? I think the trend is really that all the materials are costing more and also the labor. It's been a study in client, in client of those particular things, material and labor are costing more. And so it impacts the work when we bid it out. So every time we go to bit out a project, we try to put together an estimate that's reflective of the current climate before you go to bit it. So which materials are there particular materials that are costing more? Or just everything? Just everything. Just everything. Everything costs more. If you're using iron, the steel costs more. If you're using plastic, the raw materials make the plastic cost more. The fuels cost more, the labor costs more. When we do water main project, for example, the valves cost more. They're imported sometimes. I was going to ask you that if you're looking at how tariffs might impact any of the things that we're also, you think they will. Yeah, you're not in your heads. How much, which things do you think will be most impactful? Basically, what Daniel just mentioned, if you're looking at steel, concrete, lumber, things like that are tariff sensitive, but it's really hard to predict, right? Are you seeing any of those things yet or not yet? I'm not sure if we have specific examples but I think just in general when bids are generally coming higher than they might have been this time last year. So it's hard to attribute that to just normal inflation or you know, the scare of tariffs or things of that sort. Mm-hmm. And for labor, what do you see as the increased cost in labor right now? In general, 5%, 10%. Is it hourly rates? Is it what people are bidding on the projects and saying that they're paying people what? It's it's hard from our vantage point to actually Say what it is, but you just some anecdotally know that health insurance has gone up There's space that contractors need for doing doing their work for their overall overhead is going up We see the same thing with consultants overhead goes up. So anytime you look at a situation where health cost goes up, it goes up for everybody. It's not just exclusive to any one particular thing. It hits everybody. So and that all works into the big prices that you see. Okay. Thank you. That was very informative. I appreciate that. Mr. Young. No sewer questions. The project S6285 that's unhauled for T1 pond. So the premises that T1 pond will be constructed and then the interceptor will be replaced? I know what we're trying to coordinate is if the T1Pont is constructed where it's kind of currently being looked at, the sewer line needs to be relocated. Okay. So that's the challenge. It's not that there's anything wrong with that particular sewer. It's if you look at where the T1Pont has to go to do it in order to do its job, it seems to be at the same place where the sewer already is. Because it's in the waterway. Okay, so that would, so you're saying those costs now are being moved over to a, there's a discussion going on. Okay. You know, sometimes some portion of it can be related to that T1 pine work. Some of can be related back to the sewer in itself It's a betterment of the sewer so we're working with I mean, I mean, we're all DPW But we're working to figure out where those particular cost Lay okay, and this is still and the read the 108 thing is what was throwing me off It's because it's like an overflow. So the root 108 pumping station was this a root 108 and 29. This is the discharge side of that pumping station. So after when it goes and pumps, it pumps into this line that eventually goes down that type, and that's how the two are related. OK. OK. Thanks. So if you look at it from a standpoint the pump in station when it pumps is gonna pump out somewhere This is that line is pumping into okay And then what where does it go from there though? I'm always thinking it's going up to to the treatment plant now Right Correct, right. So this is the pump in station to the verse flow from the treatment plant over to the potassium Okay, all right. Okay. That's is the compensation to the VIRT's flow from the treatment plant over to the Patapsco. Okay. All right. That's what the rhythm says. Okay. Do you have more, you didn't have any questions before? Miss, do you have any more questions? I don't think so. We Looking to see what. I was looking at the routine sewer extension program. And the project status list, completed projects from FY24. The project is getting 625,000 in funding for FY26 that includes planning and construction funds. And I was wondering what project is being planned constructed. So right now there isn't a project identified for the routine sewer extension program. So this money that's being asked for in this fiscal year is kind of like replacing money that was spent in prior fiscal years. So if you look at the routine sewer extension program, this is a sister program for the water. If there's community that has a need for an extension of a sewer system, right? Maybe they've been a well-accepted for time, and we need to extend it. There's a criteria less than a dollar fee, so forth and so on. But when they come to us, we have to have funding in order to do those projects. So when we do one back in, for example, two years ago, or a year ago, it took funding away from the project. So every now and again, we add money into the project so that the money is there and the capability is there if the need comes. Otherwise, we would have to basically say to a group of constituents that we can't do your project for maybe 18 months, two years or something like that. Until we go through this process of asking for the money again to replenish. Or just money from one place to another. That happens in our county. Okay. Yeah. Okay. All right. But yeah. So I think that was it. And I do really appreciate. I would assume I have you to thank for this stand-alone Mr. Cabetti for the excellent written responses that we got this year to our questions. I thought they were great and gave me lots of information and I'm really appreciative of that. You're welcome thank you I can't take credit it. Zach Knight, who is the new chief of utility design division. Way to go, Zach Knight. He's on the call, so he's listening. So OK. Thank you, Zach. I like it when the questions are fully answered. Yes. It's nice. Thank you. Nice. I think that concludes and sewer. I think we should break now and come back at our regularly scheduled resume time, 1 o'clock, given some updates we got for General County C and we'll start with those. Thank you. OK, with you. OK, back. See you then. All right. We're resumed, uh, fair this afternoon's work session, budget session number one. And we are going to swap on the agenda, the technology projects the technology projects initially on our agenda were shown as the last item probably beginning sometime around 2 30 or 2 45 since they are only a lot at about 15 minutes we thought it made sense to have you guys go and and be done for the day with us and then we'll pick up with the general county C projects so So if you would like to go ahead, I know we have a presentation for you. Yes ma'am. All right. Please proceed. Maybe introduce yourselves first and then proceed. Absolutely. Good afternoon. My name is TJ Mayot. I'm the chief information officer for Harcouni and the director for the Department of Technology Communication Services. And with me is Sandra Tello, Deputy Director and financial wizard and online is John Eckerd, our other deputy. I do have a few slides to share. Isaiah, if you can bring those up please. Oh, there we go. So today I'll be talking to you about our FY26 Capital Budget Request. You have these, the first slide in your written materials so I don't need to go through everything, but I did want to provide a brief overview of some of the accomplishments that the team has done over the past fiscal year. Keep in mind that these are just highlights and just a few of the hundreds of efforts across the department. So it's always a good time to check in and show you the type of work that we do. I say you can go to the next slide. And here's our FY26 capital budget summary. Total of seven projects with a request of $11.6 million. I'll go through each and provide a brief overview and then see if there's any questions. So our first is our infrastructure upgrade. We are requesting $3.8 million to request end-of-life equipment. This covers our camera system. We have many cameras going into life, which are now becoming a, both a security and a stability concern. So we'll be replacing those. Increase storage, the needs of the county continue to increase on a storage perspective. So we'll be increasing that. Switchers, firewalls, and routers are all coming end of life. And we do plan this out over several several years so this is just a portion of the infrastructure that will be working on and our info blocks appliance and software which helps connect us to the internet and is one of our managed management services for a coordinate network so that's all under infrastructure upgrade. Next is radio enhancement. So this is our P25 radio that supports public safety. This is an ongoing project. It was initially begun last year, and we phase it out over several years to both help the team out and make sure there's no major budget impact. So it's another million dollars to continue the upgrade of our P25 public safety radio infrastructure. ERP, which is enterprise resource planning. We have $2 million request. One million of that will go towards our SAP S4HANA upgrade. This is a pretty big jump for our financial backbone of the county. This is the system that essentially all our finances run on and we're moving it to a cloud-based modern system that allows for a better user experience and reporting. An additional 1 million request is to replace the property tax system, which is currently in Munis. This effort has not yet kicked off and this will just be the very beginning stages of what will likely be a multi-year project. Under the public safety capital project, there are three efforts contain that $800,000 request. One is for CAD RMS interfaces, so CAD is our 9-1-1 computer-aided dispatch software. RMS is our record management software, and this is with two different systems now. We need to make sure they talk to each other. There's an upgrade to the inmate communication system for corrections, and $335,000 for a four-symmetrics platform, which is a police analytics platform to allow them to do better understanding of the type of data that they have. Under broadband, it's a $1 million request. Again, for infrastructure upgrade, that system is basically what connects us to the internet. It's what we use to provide broadband service to the school system and many of our community partners. That infrastructure overall is coming into life and we're phasing that project out over several years. This $1 million basically gets it off the ground. The Data Center project, which was begun last year, as you probably remember under TAO1 2025, all the funding of that was moved out to support the purchase of an office building, basically in keeping with the difficulty of the project and other priorities across the county, there's $0 request for that project, so that will remain at $0. And then we have a new project called Transform Concentrant Management. We seek to create a unified modern resident experience across all of Howard County digital properties. That's a very, I would say, exciting effort, very difficult. And it's beginning with replacing a cell. So a cell has a permitting and licensing software. So this $300,000 essentially covers the replacement of a cell and gives a landing spot to begin this unified constituent management experience. So that totals our $11.6 million request, and I am here for your questions. Thank you. Do we have, Dr. Jones, are you with us? Okay, I will start with you, Mr. B, please. Sure, so on the transformative constituent management system, with that, can you just sort of walk me through what you guys are envisioning for that, how the user experience is, but also, and by user experience, I mean the resident constituent experience, but then also how that will sort of be received and interacted with on the department side. Yes, absolutely. So from a constituent experience today, when you interact with Howard County digitally, you frequently have many different logons. You have different logons for a cell. You have a different logon for a pedox. You have a different logon for a munis. You have a different logon for any number of systems. Ideally, we create one portal, you log in once, and you're able to access all your services. Now that is a very forward leaning vision. We know that, so each one of those that I mentioned, not to mention the dozens of others that exist, would be a separate project to onboard the Monto single portal. So I deal with a cella coming end of life and it being such a kind of forward facing critical software is a great time to begin the process. So that's where we're starting with the cella. Now on the other side, yes, you're exactly right. You have a similarly split experience across the departments. So while there is a lot of great collaboration communication frequently comes out to either email or like walk across the hall and knock on your colleague's door to let them know something's coming in. So again, ideally we start moving to a system where when a resident submits, for example, a permit that goes through DILP to DPC, back to DILP, then to the zoning board, and then finally back up the door, ideally that's all done in one place. Again, very forward leaning, but you gotta start somewhere, and we're starting with us, Ella. Should I presume that next year, you'll go to Concentrant Management Services for Council and Executive? Are you volunteering? Part of it, honestly, is like there's two main things that we look at. One is the system's coming into life, or it's not meeting the needs, and it's a good time to replace it. And honestly, and Franklin Michelle can speak to this, a department or team that wants to work with us and is willing to make a change, because it will be a change. And we're going to walk through that. that. So and that's why again it's all was a good candidate. So when we have a willing or excited department that's kind of what we're targeting for this initial steps. Yeah, because I think that there's certainly a challenge when a resident reaches out and then sort of managing it like case work and trying to follow up and figure out, you know, where the next piece, because they usually reach out and it's not just one simple thing. There's usually, it's never several departments. Yeah, so, but then also making sure that, but then there's just more sharing of that information and people can kind of see what this constituents needs are or have been over the years. But I also, you know, I recognize that there's a limited resource limited environment. Yep. So. I think case management is a good way to think about it too, because ideally they come in and the case are managed for that constituent, that constituent can see all the different cases in one spot. Again, I can't promise you that that will be one of the outcomes of this next fiscal your project is a won't be but it is that we are laying the groundwork that will allow us to move in that direction. Okay great. And I can't promise you that that will be one of the outcomes of this next fiscal year project because it won't be. But we're laying the groundwork that will allow us to move in that direction. Okay. Great. Thank you. Ms. Yon. So I'm kind of curious, Ms. Riggby. What you're like, what you were envisioning here when you were talking about how this system like this could move us forward, council and county executive, sounds interesting. It sounds like a really wonderful idea. I have a very complicated matter that I'm dealing with right now. It started off with one department, then it went, then it expanded to another. And now it's with the third. And now just trying to keep everybody updated on everything that's happening with this one request is, and actually it'll probably go to a fourth. I'm thinking about it. And it's, are you thinking that this is something that could ultimately be done with our system? Have you seen it done anywhere else? Yeah, I mean, I certainly work with other databases and systems where you have almost like a constituent account and then your emails would be tagged to that person so you could see the string of emails. You'd be able to see the communications. You'd be able to sort of milestone it and say like this step is complete, this step is complete. What the status is, we're following up with the controllers off. So that, and then that way, whether they came in through your door or they came into the executive's door, to me, then we would have this ability to see sort of where they are in the process and what's been done. I mean, that would be my sort of my... So is that what you're thinking about doing? Yes. But just not for the council and the county executive. More that... I just started just here right now. No, I think that that's a really, really, really important place to start. Because we have so many of these. And a lot of issues come in and they'll send it to Council Mail, County Executive Office, an agency department, and it's like three people, a Council office and your office and Paul will all start. And the constituent doesn't let you know that now I'm already getting work like somebody else got back to me two days ago it's already in process this is what snap was supposed to be I yes so if I mean when you're done you may miss out mr. me as mentioned we've been actively working with his team for I don't know least two years, on a number of different things. One of which his team meets rather regularly with the district team on the constituent service management team and they've made some enhancements in that regard. We are on the list to tap in once they get the ASELA off. They're also, it will connect also to replacing our end of life, the legislative, one-line legislative system. So, all this will be connected into this. And then we have also been working with them on the Maryland Public Information Act request. So, we are, it's like a web and we are in that web and we again meet with his team every other week and talk about projects. So if there are specific concerns, please send them to us and we will raise them to Mr. Mayotte's team. Absolutely. Well, I thought that actually, Mr. Youngman just raised one of the best specific concerns that we have on a regular basis. If you can solve that one, that would be a miracle. So whether it's by communication or through electronic communication, but that is that's that's the tough one. Trying to keep everybody in the loop and or making sure that somebody didn't already respond in a way that totally undermined your own response, which can also happen because the communication is not occurring and we don't know what the other people are saying. So yeah. Would CMS have been on your on your list though because it's not it's not directly it's not an outside person using it right now. It's it's just us either on the council I mean, I understood that the administration used it as well and maybe that was even connected before we started, but right now it's very council manic district specific. There's no interaction even among the five of our offices let alone, you know, a resident being able to see the status. I mean, I jokingly say we should just use tellhoco because that actually is more transparent in terms of a running list of contacts and who it's been assigned to at least. Well, we're all three not in our hands. Everyone has, you know, like we can tell our constituent to look there, we can look there, we then have a name to call, like, but that is actually, to me, the telhoco would be the thing that we'd want to somehow align with what these guys are describing and that hopefully then does fit into your... We have talked to DWN and telhoco. And I'll say telhoco is one that when you look at it, the front facing is already so good. As you said, like there's no, don't break it, right more, like it's more getting in a workflow. And we'll definitely follow up on the contingent manager system. I'll follow up with Michelle directly. I can't. As you said, like there's no, don't break it right more, like it's more getting in a workflow. And we'll definitely follow up on the Consigian Management System. I can follow up with Michelle directly. I can't say when it was really originally instantiated because very deliberate not to have communications across the districts, they've very much wanted it siloed for good reason. But if we want to look at a different way of doing that, we can talk about that as well. I think it's a little less interdistrict and more inter-branch. Yep. Yep. different way of doing that we can talk about that as well. I mean, I think it's a little less inter-district and more inter-branch. Yep. Yep. And then the piece about Talhoko, it's like, imagine if someone could submit a constituent issue that way. And then we could all track it that. And by we all, I mean, like, the district that's trying to pay attention to it, the Can Executive's office that's trying to pay attention to it, the can executive's office is trying to pay attention to it and the department that ultimately needs to work with these individuals on it. Because I think it's, I mean, I'm looking at you guys because I don't want to be talking out of turn here, but I'm certainly am not trying to look in your constituent cases, I've got enough of my own. I'm sure I would spend a lot of time doing this. It's right through your constituent calls. Yeah, no. But a lot of times, though, we all fight, get contacted with something. Well, and then we have to all figure out who it is. Anybody who lives, whose responsibility it is and all that. But what Mr. Mayot brought up in what you're referring to is that we do need consensus from the council that it is shared because as he, Mr. Mayout mentioned that it was intentionally siloed because council did not, prior councils did not want to share. But they did tell that you're saying share amongst the council members as opposed to sharing between the county executives office and departments and the council members. I mean we're constantly sharing with the county executives office and the departments because very little of what people in our districts want can be resolved just by a council member, they call us to try and get us to advocate for them in the with the department or with the county executive's office. And I think I think everybody's made it very clear. We don't want to get into each other's constituent request. We all have enough of our own. So it isn't because I think it's a feeling of, oh, this is my constituent request. I don't want anybody else to see this. No, that's not. You're welcome to take any of our questions. You're welcome to take any of them. You want to become an expert on what's going on and with dumping in District 5, go ahead. Yeah, yeah. You don't want it. So, yeah, that's not an issue amongst us. And I don't think it would ever be an issue. I mean, future councils might think that it's a thing, but we can tell them that it won't be. Well, I think like the vision, the long term need, it's definitely heard. So something we continue to work on. I don't know where we are in the order process, so I'm going to ask another question. David? Do you have a- Thank you. Talking about this. OK, yeah, and that's my question is. So is there, you know, do you have a plan like how you. Talking about this. Okay. And that's my question is. So is there, you know, you have a plan like how you would accomplish this? Like there are X number of platforms and their life is X. So this is the expected timeline and cost over to, you know, because- Exactly. We're assessing the platforms now. We're seeing what's a fit. And again, like primary focus is on replacing a cell out from the next fiscal year, because at its end of life it has to be done. So assessing platforms, figuring out what's the best fit for that long-term vision. We don't want to box ourselves down. That's my concern, yeah. Right. So we don't want to do that. We're definitely looking at like flexible platforms that allow us to kind of do that long. And that's why we didn't call this replace the cello. That's why we call that transform precision management. Because by taking a higher level look, we will ideally move the county into a better place. You know using this opportunity for that long term vision. Okay, so when we come to this transform constituent management, you should have used bold in there as well, transformative bold constituent management. When we come back to this next year. You think we'll have that kind of plan? Like this is? Yes. Yes. OK. And I mean, it's Pago now. So I mean, I think that's a great wife and a great time to do it. I get it. But that's my concern. Yeah. Obviously. We only can use these two things. Because that's my concern too, Because then. Obviously. Obviously. Obviously. Obviously. Obviously. Obviously. Obviously. Obviously. Obviously. Obviously. Obviously. Obviously. Obviously. Obviously. Obviously. Obviously. Okay. Cool. All right. You want it? Go back. Yeah. So, and I don't know if this is just a formatting error. Because there are three different broadband projects. Yes. Yes. But in our book, it has the in-it mount Ida under CO338. When I'm assuming it should probably be under CO340. Uh, 40. Uh, well, no, because the county just purchased Monarch. Oh, do we just purchase Monarch? I don't believe so. We did. Oh, we did. Okay. All right. You're right. So my understanding was county, yeah. That's what's going on. Okay. When now it's county I guess. All right. Well, that clears that up and creates another question. Thanks. Okay. I think I'm going to ask that question now. I was going to say, I'm going to say, Oh, okay. Okay. I'm afraid it's not. No. What are we gonna do with the in-mount item? Yeah, that's more of a real estate service is. I bet Zach's still here. Look at him. He hasn't left yet. We keep having more questions for him. Yeah. Go ahead, Dan. Yeah, I do. I have a couple questions. Or I guess one is a complaint, but as long as you're here. Okay. But my first is a question and it's about your A1 pilot. What are you planning on? It says you have two pilots or I said one. Oh my God. A-I. See, that's what happens when you read the news too much. And then it gets in your head with somebody else that, right? I know. I know. Yeah. Okay, sorry. So, AI. One is basically to assess our essentially readiness from a technology perspective for AI. So, are we? Well, that's why we're doing a rating assessment. Because a lot is around data governance and protection. So you want to ensure that when you have an AI, large language model or anything in your environment that is not accessing information that shouldn't or giving other people access to information that they shouldn't. So a lot of it is making sure that your data is properly protected and organized. So that's really like the first step to ensure that we're safe. So if you wanted to say, for instance, answer a question that somebody was asking from the outside, and the question was something that someone in the government might think is not information that they want to give to somebody from the outside. And you just said, here's the AI question. What's going on with this particular project? That AI could get everything within the government realm on our computer system and synthesize it and put that in an answer. But we wouldn't, some people wouldn't be comfortable with having all of that information in a singular answer that then goes out to somebody in the public. Yes. Let's just take a contract, for example, because you're in the midst of contract negotiations. Okay. Let's say before it's actually finalized. All right. Because my own feeling is that contracts after their finalized should be public. But let's say you're in the midst of negotiations and somebody wants to know, what do you think you're going to pay that firm for X, Y, and C? And you want to say something like, well, the going rate and the going rate is between one in three million dollars. But you actually are further along in the negotiations and maybe you already know you're going to pay 2.2 million. AI could gather that information because it's already there. And somehow put that in an answer. Those are the types of things that I guess I'm just one of some examples because I don't know enough about AI to figure out what would and wouldn't work in a government setting. I've used it and gotten some really great results. I said, whoa, man, this is nice. Just saved me an hour and a half, but that's for outside things that don't require the kinds of information. the kinds of information. And obviously not in my government, my government issued a computer. Oh, so if you take a look at the counties, AI policy that we rolled out this year, that's okay to use a doing government computer, no problem there. But for like these efforts, this is just internally focused. So if it's on our network, it's not really generally accessible outside anyway. So this is more if we had an internal AI assistant making sure that someone, exactly as you said, wasn't able to access contracts they shouldn't have access to and that type of thing. So an example would be if we rolled out what's called Microsoft Co-Pilot, so some companies have already rolled that out, so it's like an internal AI assistant, and it can search internally, county information, right? Not externally. You could ask it, the horror stories that you hear are like, if you don't properly set up your data governance, it's accessing email inboxes that it shouldn't access, right? So we need to make sure all that's done exactly. So we need to make sure all that is in line and properly secured before we even think about having an internal AI system. So that's really what our pilots are focused on. Okay, and how long do you think it'll be before we might be able to use, everybody would be able to use AI. Yeah, so we are working directly with Microsoft on that. We were talking to them two weeks ago, I believe at this point, to help us build out that roadmap. Again, my primary concern first is the data governance and security. Because if you don't get that right, then it's never going to be right It's never gonna be right. Right, exactly. So we're remapping that with Microsoft now, and ideally we complete that in FY26, and then be able to roll out broader access to employees after that, but that is also, honestly, a budgetary question, because that comes at a cost. So we'll have to work on that from a budgetary perspective as well. Okay, and then my second observation is Windows 11. Upgraded users to Windows 11 providing improved design performance and productivity. I would have to say productivity. It would be, I'm not sure that my productivity has been enhanced with Windows 11. Now I like I consistently have to and I guess everybody else does to authenticate every time you get on that's not productive okay I'm just I understand but I just want to make sure we don't use that word productive because that can take, you know, depending on where your phone is, when you are, you know, actually entering into your computer. You may have to get up, walk in another room to get your phone so you can authenticate, so you can get on your computer. That's not productive. The other thing that's not productive is I have a work computer at home because I got tired of moving the two back and forth. So I used my council budget to buy a second computer. And every time I bring that computer in to make sure that it's got all of its proper settings. And it's been in the office and it reads everything that it needs to read. It automatically turns off my access to my at home printer. So then I will have to wait online to know how long to actually get somebody in your department to help me figure out how to get back to my printer and it's not productive. I'm just saying that word does not work with what has happened with Windows 11. Just real briefly on those. Those are less Windows 11 updates and more security updates. So I will say we did increase the amount of how often, how frequent you have to authenticate. And we did that as a direct response to the anerundal incident in which they were down for well over a month. And MFA is our number one MFA multi factor authentication. That's our number one defense against exactly what happened in an anerundal county. So I do want it is absolutely an inconvenience, absolutely. But it is also the most important thing we do from a security perspective. On the printer, that is also a security setting. It's printer. There was concern and there is concern about printing on home networks, especially with employees that have access to sensitive county data. And that is one of the balancing acts that we walk in a hybrid environment. I would love to have access to sensitive county data. I do not Understood and that's that's really something we can work with you on a per user basis Okay, thank you. That would be useful so that I don't have to deal with that every time and if it just So we're on the topic. I don't understand why like When you're when you're on an identified frequently used network at your own house. Like I get if I log in here or I log in at home, I shouldn't have to keep doing authentication. But if I try to log in on a network that is new to my computer, like it doesn't recognize that, then certainly all day long, that makes sense. Yeah, I will say that we have moved to a seven day frequency for MFA. Every place I've been besides this has been at least once a day, if not multi day, no matter what network you're on. And the biggest issue is passwords are easily compromised. So if your password is compromised, then that person logs on, it is able to access our network without MFA. It doesn't matter where you are or where they are, your accounts compromised and then onto our network. I will say like this is very important to me personally and very important, I think, to the county. And I do understand it is a user inconvenience. And I also have to put that to the end. I'm just saying productivity is not enhanced. That's all I'm saying. Security is productivity is. And then what happens if we need to do to let TJ sleep at night? That's very correct. Right. What happens if people don't have phones with an authenticator or app? I have a couple different options for those folks. Corrections friends, no, because they can't have their phones in corrections. So they either get a call or an email to authenticate. A call. That's a phone. You like a little bit. A little bit. Yeah, call. Yep. And that would be on their phone. You mean, they get a call from to another main line? Yes, to a desk phone. To a desk phone. They still have desk phones there. Because they can't have their cell phones in the environment, that corrections. I feel like the council's risk assessment for TJ just went up like a thousand times. Yeah, it did, it certainly did. I would like to say thank you for letting us in. Like're the prop were the problem You that we are clearly the problem. Yes, I haven't got a Fenticating I don't know that times a day. Thank you for bringing us into like 2010 we're still not we're not at all where the private sector is like I haven't been in the private sector in six years and We're nowhere close to where I mean we'd have like separate devices to connect. It's just not like we'll still align from Daniel on that one though every day better we are every day different for sure no and met like significantly better since you you know we have to do that so what happens if but also we have to stop talking about this because TJ only had 15 minutes and we have a world of C projects to get to. So if you have any more IT issues that you would like to discuss with. Okay, I do. I would like to do that. She missed the whole we had 15 minutes right. Yeah, do you snap tickets? Yeah, do you snap tickets? Um, he'll work out your printer. No, I have some more questions. You can't ask any more questions by your printer. I have some other global questions. Okay, we have like two more minutes on the subject. Yeah. Now I'll ask him later. I'll talk to him privately. Okay. Yeah, we somehow blew past our, we're already behind schedule and we only have one item. Well done, team. Sorry about that. No, it's interesting. I think it's interesting. Cristiana brought up a really, that was a very important thing. team. Sorry about that. No, it's interesting. I mean, I think to be interesting. Cristiana brought up a really, that was a very important thing. It was my fault. I'm the problem. No, I think you're not terrifying the problem in discussion. Okay, thank you. Thank you both. We appreciate very much what you do. Adjectives notwithstanding. I'm going to have to authenticate. That's fine. I do have a love-kate relationship. Who does it? Who's people don't do? I wonder if you, is there a few? All right. Director committee, we're ready for your continuation of DPW and the C sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Do we have five of us now Michelle or just four? Okay, all right. I'm sorry, Miss R Beager, you're getting like the double start. And my plan, oh wait, first I wanted to say, and would you give me the technical, the actual budget numbers? I know C0337 has been pulled out and scheduled for a separate day. I noticed in the addendum that we got this morning that it doesn't seem like we got any more C0337. So even if it had been scheduled for today, we wouldn't have been able to discuss it because my understanding is Director Cabeta. We don't have any information in response to pretty basic requests like what's the timeline and the spend on the various given projects comprising those what six or seven ongoing So-called safe and sound And apparently stormwater or sewer Realignments that may or may not all be part of that But we have a real deficit in terms of that one and then this morning we got got a request to move the, go ahead. C-0-319, which is the TIFF. And I don't know. Miss Jean, you've got the related projects. The related, I would like to, the downtown projects, I think the transit center. I feel like we're using the downtown Columbia and 337 to get to the level. We tried to. We tried to the last time. We didn't get to the water. Before the break, I tried to actually get those numbers. I mean, why is that mysterious? Like, what are the data? C0319 is the tax increment financing. And then there's another one for C0364, which is the new cultural center, A Toby's Rebuild. And then there is the, there was one thing about the transit center, which is also part of the downtown Columbia plan. I don't have the number for that one. Okay. It's in the right up somewhere. And the library, which is now got five million dollars in it. Transit Center C0353. And I don't know what the library is. All right. So we'll pull that library one out of Okay. I was just going to have us go in order and ask questions about whatever see projects we wanted rather than plow through numerically or any other way. Unless there's some. Okay. Okay, sure. I don't have any questions on that. Okay, sure Does anyone have any questions on that on congregate housing I Do have a couple I think I had a couple all right director some of could you please join us and we'll get we'll get your item discussed and off the list and then you can Letters three five three by leave us. I just found it. And new cultural centers, 364. So I guess the only real question I have for this one is more just confirmation that this is the site that where there was going to be a hotel but we had this opportunity to purchase the land and use those hotel plans in a reimagined way for county purposes. That is correct. Okay. And then it's really more for the public, but could you give a brief overview about why this project is important and why we're pursuing it? Sure. So there's been a full assessment of our planned end homelessness over the last year by the National Alliance to End Homelessness. And one of the recommendations was to add a night-by-night shelter to our planned end homelessness. We do have, of course, the Leole Adore Sea Day Resource Center, where formerly homeless and recently housed individuals can go for services, medical help with substance abuse, stopping smoking, laundry, things of that nature. And that center is very important to the community. But we also run as part of the plan and homelessness a code blue during the winter and cold weather shelter during the winter months. And I'll just have Rose go over a little bit about some of the numbers that we have with me, Rose Burton, Deputy Director, about some of the numbers we see during cold weather shelter and code blue and why it led to us thinking more about this night by night shelter Hit the button rose Thank you Kelly So what we typically see Annually we do our homeless point in time count and we're seeing the numbers beginning to tick up last year's numbers showed 132 homeless individuals that we were able to locate and visually verify that they were actually experiencing homelessness at that point in time. As those numbers continue to go up, we then have to compare our capacity in our current homeless response system. The grassroots shelter is being renovated and at most will have 88 beds. So 88 beds compared to 132 people at a moment in time that are experiencing homelessness demonstrates lack of capacity. In addition, we do cold weather shelter and code blue. Our cold weather shelter program is 20 households that are served, which then still does not get us to 132. And then when we're doing code blue, we end up without capacity having to do hoteling, which becomes exorbitantly expensive. Additionally, we do a year-around hoteling program, particularly for individuals with chronic illnesses, households with small children, when we don't have capacity in shelter that we do hoteling while we work to try to either free up. See households get housed out of shelter and then move those that are in hoteling into shelter from our comprehensive services. But you can see that layering the programming the way that we do gets to be expensive and we are not achieving the level of capacity that we need to meet the need in Howard County. Good afternoon. You've been very patiently waiting. I know. And I thought we had to ask you some questions. Given the amount of time you have already spent here, Kelly. I was working. Okay. All right. All right. Fair enough. I'm like, you deserve to have a couple of questions. Thank you. All right. So if you could just give an overview of how much we you think this will cost and how much we have spent so far, I guess we've bought the property. How much did the property cost? We have not acquired the property yet. We are still going through our study period, environmental reviews and things like that. There are federal dollars involved. And so there is a very long process. It's an eight step review process that you say eight. Eight step. That has to be completed. So, oh, wait a minute. It is, I just read some very concerning news about the pullback on funding for housing from our Department of Housing at the federal level? Would this have an impact on proceeding with this project? It would not. We have already received funding. Oh, okay. We've already received funding. But then we're there. We're there. We're there. Okay. So, how much of this is federal funding? The Department of Housing is contributing 1.757 million to this project in home American Rescue Plan dollars. That's home America Rescue Plan. That's the ARPA. That's correct. That's correct. What was that dollar amount, please? 1.757 million. Okay. I thought the budget book said 4.0. So then there is, she asked me federal and then there is housing dollars of 4.5 million. Go ahead. I mean the budget book says 4.077 million of American Rescue Plan Act funds were designed for this project under C0367. Yes, so then facilities has American Rescue Plan dollars up to that $4 million 50, $4 million 50 you said. So there's two sources of American Rescue Plan dollars. Some are housing, some are facilities. Oh, for that total of $4 million. OK. So it's $4 million federal. Yes, correct. Okay. And we have those funds. And we have those funds. We have those funds. In our rubby little ones. That's correct. Okay. And nobody can take that away from us. At this time. Okay. Correct. All right. no, no, no, no, no, we need to put it in a locked bank account. OK? All right. And then is that the full cost of this facility? Is that the funding that we need to take this from Step A to Z? It looks like it. It looks like it. That's what I thought. And so I just wasn't sure because it came up so fast. We had no really no knowledge that this was going to be happening until we saw the budget book. So that's why I'm like, oh, what's this? So I didn't even know that you guys were thinking about it. Did this go before the planning board? Yes it did. Yes it did. On February 20th. You could February 20th. Okay. It's always nice to give the council heads up that before. We move further so that we know when we're here that, you know, this is what you all were thinking about. And why are you doing this? And then I think my other concern was I saw someplace where it said that this facility is two miles from Leola Dorsey. Approxim't remember. Approximately. Approximately. And presumably, most of the people who would sleep here a singular night, well, maybe not most, but at least some of them would walk from the hotel to the day center, because that would be a place that they could hang out during the day. It seems like a long walk. There are bus service at both. Okay, so there'll be a bus that will take them back and forth. All right, so you already thought about that. Excellent, okay. Because I think I also saw that there wasn't a good connection like a sidewalk, like a walking connection, even if they wanted. The planning board did indicate that that was a need that they felt should be addressed with this project Okay, that must have been where I saw it and it was in planning for documents. Yeah, all right and And and look at this You've got mr. Cavetti right beside you writing that down need a sidewalk We'llola and Dursi and the new congregate setting. I like that. Okay, so hopefully we can think about that just in case people prefer to walk. That would be something to consider. And then how did I already, did I ask you how much the property will cost? I know you're still in. The property is under contract currently for 1.1 million. 1.1 million. And it's from the motel owner, right? The person who owns the land that intended to build a hotel or motel. Yes. Oh, they intended to build a hotel. There's not something there now. No, it is a vacant piece of land. Oh, it's just a vacant piece of land. Oh, that's even better so that we don't have to tear something down and or try and remake something into. Oh, okay. Where is the cost to acquire that, though, in the budget? That is in part of the $1.757 of home ARP. Okay. One of the stipulations of that funding was to acquire one of the allowed uses is acquire property to create non-congregate shelter as a result of coming out of COVID. Oh, okay. And so what? What does that mean non-congregate? Non-congregate means each room will have its own bathroom so that residents staying there do not have to share facilities as they, as was a challenge during COVID where we were instructed to provide nonconcregate shelter and the grassroots free town road shelter had to create separate bedrooms. They didn't want non-related people sharing a room. Now this facility, each bedroom will be similar to Leole Dorsi, the single efficiency apartments, not with a kitchenette, but each room will have its own bathroom. Okay, and that's what also exists at the... Where... At Leole Dorsi, the apartments, the 35 single efficiency apartments, each apartment has its own bathroom, but also a kitchenette. These will not have a kitchenette, but because this is just for spending the night. Leole Dorsi, the single efficiency apartments, people live there. And then what about at grassroots? Is there, I thought there was, so a grassroots in some of our expansion expansion efforts there has been bathrooms added to Allow for some non congregate spaces so that if there is someone who has a medical condition or something in need to space There is now a potential to do that But it's very limited because it is more Families together or they also do to unrelated single people together in a room. What is the average day in these places? Council member, the average stay at grassroots, I believe is about six months, and I will say that as a value for our community, when someone gets into grassroots, they don't exit until they exit to permanent housing. So you can imagine the number of barriers and challenges that the clients we see face, it can take time for them to get housed. In the meantime, we have other individuals that are waiting for housing, which then makes the non-congregate shelter a night-by-night shelter, which means you can come in day-by-day. So you get all your stuff out and you leave in the morning? Correct. What analysis did you all do to demonstrate that this spend is a more efficient use than hoteling people? Because I thought we heard pretty clearly from, was it Bridges, Elizabeth, Rodrick, who said she housed 100% of our homeless people during COVID in hotel rooms. Like we had done it. We had reached 100% or something. And so my question is why aren't we still doing that? Or what is the cost to continue doing that? The county would have to pick up without COVID relief coming from the federal government. But it seems to me like you have more, oh, what's the right word? You have more flexibility in terms of what the need is, or if it's cold out, or whatever it is, or if you have, for example, a motel close unexpectedly, because this story that you're talking about where people are housed for up to six months or even overnight, that did not materialize for any of the people that I was trying to help at Brown's Motel. There was an assistance with hoteling. No, I don't even know what you guys are describing because that didn't apply to 26 or, you know, five or so of those 26 that I was following closely still doesn't. And so it's hard for me to reconcile what you're describing here as solving the problem when I don't, to me that I agree, like six months is better. I don't welcome and now get out. Like to me that is a hotel. Like if that's what we're doing, then I think why don't we just use hotel as we need it. And if we need something better than that, then why aren't we providing more longer term stays with kitchenets This just seems like a a middle ground that maybe was convenient and seemed like a good you know a good idea, but I don't It's it sounds worrisome to me. I guess I would say right So again, we did an assessment of the system and this is one option of asserving this population is one option. We will still, if hoteling is still a better option, that it can still be done. But that is not, when they are under in a, I'm going to call it a program, a night by night shelter or in the free town road shelter, they are getting that intensive case management to help them find sustainable permanent housing. When they are in a hotel, it's harder to do that. We have to have street outreach or case workers or grassroots staff be going to the hotels, meeting with people. People can maybe say, not let them in the hotel room. It is more challenging to help those residents get on the path to being able to find permanent housing. So it is just another tool in the toolbox. It does not mean that it will eliminate hotel but again the home American Rescue Plan dollars that the department received, one of them, there's only four things that can be used for and one of the main is acquisition of non congregate shelter. In the event, I hope never happens again, of a COVID situation that we would then have an option. It was very challenging to house families with their own facilities during COVID. And again, it caused a lot of hotel expenses, hundreds of thousands of dollars of hotel expenses. Right, but that's still less than 4.7 and there's no operating costs in this budget either. That's what follows. This is what I'm asking is what cost benefit analysis you did to actually just continue with hoteling versus building. This seems very reactive to me. This seems like an opportunity came up and we figured out how to use some of the ARP money that otherwise we hadn't used since we received it in. Well, it was obligated in December of last year. It had to be obligated by December of last year. But we received it in. Well it was obligated in December of last year. It had to be obligated by December of last year. But we received it. I'm going to say 2023 maybe? Okay. I'm this seems reactive to me and and I'm glad it's being used for this because I've seen with my own eyes the need for it but I don't don't think it's solving the problem. Who's the owner of this property? The county. No. Who's the owner of this property? The county. No, who's the owner of this hotel property that we want to buy? The owner now? Yes. Mr. Salam, I don't know his first name, anything like that. And so he just called the county and was like, I have this land in this hotel plan I don't want to do. you want to buy it for me like how does that happen I Don't know how that came to to DPW I'd I'd invite Emily to provide some context Well, she's changing season glad you're talking about the operating cost. It's not in here great to use Yeah, look I don't want to I don't want to lose our per money that we can use to solve a problem. But there's operating cost money, it's not going to be our money, it's going to be taxpayer money. Like county taxpayer money to operate it, and that's where it could get upside down. All right, thank you. Yes, this is fun. Mr. Selim had worked with the county for the development of the property as a hotel. We've talked about escalating costs earlier today, due to escalating costs and some other factors. He approached the county to see if they were interested in purchasing the property. Okay, so he really did just call us. Yeah, he really, he called us and we circulated the property circulated the property. So he really did just call us. Yeah he really yeah he called us and yeah and we you know circulated the property for review within county agencies to see if there was any interest in acquisition. Okay I have one more question on this and I think we should go on to others is that there is another 1.5 reflected for next year that's additional to the 4.1 I don't I don't know why I can't understand the members' discussions on this. This shouldn't be this hard. So and then I'm playing out the wrong page because I already pulled it out because I was like, what are you guys talking about? I think we found the 4.1 which is reflected is 507-0 in this budget book. I'll just overlook that. But what's 1.5 next year that's also in this budget book, and that is presumably coming from pay as you go, but 500 plus 500 does not equal 1,500. What is going on with this page in my book? What is this? The 500 is the pay go monies for this year for the design. And then the 1.5 for this year for the design. And then the 1.5 million would be for the construction. But that's additional to the 4.1. That is in addition to the arpa dollars that Director Seminoe was talking about correct. Okay. But what's the 1.5 next year? The 1.5 fiscal 27 is for the construction. Okay. So you have 500 being requested in FY 26, pay go dollars and then 1.5 million being requested in FY 27, pay go dollars. Okay. So the 4.1 plus this 500. Okay. I'm walking away. I thought Deb asked you how much is this project cost and you said 4.1. But that's not what this budget book says. The budget book says the capital cost is 6.5. And maybe I should, I should call. Yes, I think 6.5 would be the total all-in cost for design and construction. All right, that's the whole conversation with Ms. Young earlier. I just did not understand. Okay, all right, I understand it now. Okay, apologize, I should have clarify. Thank you. There was some kind of time warp between, okay. All right, I think we should leave that now because we have about 10,000 other C projects. And, okay. I'm sure we're not leaving it forever, Ms. Semino. I think we are. And I would, I mean to the extent you have it, I really do, I would like to see some analysis of the hotel being prohibitively expensive, because and actually,, yeah. Or an analysis of if, you know, between the hotel and the non-congregate setting space, and the non-congregate setting space, and something else we could potentially spend that ARPA money on that would provide people with a place to stay in who are in this space. As Ms. Wash just brought up the efficiency apartments, for example. Could we renovate that? Could we add on to that space and put more efficiency apart from center or something like that? Is there another way to spend that money that makes sense for Howard County that we don't then have to also include operating expenses because somebody's already there to do, is already in place for those operating expenses? I mean, I would say that kicking the people out in the morning is the part that kills me. That means you still have 20 homeless people the next day. Like, what? Some more long-term care would be, because that's your real, is that the big issue between the hotel model? You never need just one night. Like, oh, yeah, I'm going to be totally fine in one night. That's not how it happens. Because I think that could be a conversation about operations. Because if the space exists, I mean, you could even look at like some with a kitchenette and some without, because you ideally want to. Or even like a community kitchen downstairs, or some of you know. Communal kitchen, right? But just, it's the kind of, like, that's not solving a problem. That's just like the band-aid of it. Yeah. Yeah. I think that the property acquisition allows to have those kinds of greater conversations in terms of howaid of it. Yeah. But I think that the property acquisition allows to have those kinds of greater conversations in terms of how we approach it. Because I think it's a valid concern. I think, I also understand the sort of looking at the landscape of what we have in terms of services and that this is a whole at the moment and that there may be a different way that we want to approach it. All right. Thank you very much. You're stuck with us, Director Cavitti. What you can call new friends up. I want to talk scale house. I'll hear. Okay. Scale house. Okay. to the dump. Yeah. dump. Yeah. Phone of friends. Phone of friends. I don't know. I also as much as I love little protection, I also love the dump. So and very so I was wondering with the scale house so we are replacing the scales as well. On either side are And we're replacing the building in total. Correct. So one of the things that I've both heard from constituents and then also experienced myself when dropping off construction debris. It is hard to hear the folks on the other side, like the DPW folks. And what about doing it like a bank teller style where you have a microphone and like a drawer that comes out because sometimes I feel like I'm shouting at them. Like, thank you, last names, Rick B. Because I'm driving a large vehicle, but I'm behind large vehicles that have a lot of exhausts that exhausts getting in the scale house. It's like certainly present when I roll up after. So I can only imagine how that is for the workers. So I was hoping to get a better understanding of some of the improvements at the scale house and how that would improve the day to day experience of the folks in the scale house because I I know I'm a delight but I'm sure that I'm not. It's that the first improvements no mice and no bugs. Well, that's trying to get in some fresh air. Everything's going up right. Yeah, and then maybe some some HVAC situation inside where they can have modified air. But you want to tell us more about the scale house product because I was very excited to see this and I'm wondering, you know, really what improvements we can get to our workers in our community. Sure. I'll, I know Mark to look us on the call and Zach may have some details, but I would agree with you. I think, and I thank you for mentioning the comfort of the employees as well. The auditory issues are pretty challenging for our staff because they can't hear. It's really difficult for them, so it's a two-way thing. But there are definitely improvements internally, not just with the scales. So Zach, if you could maybe, Halle. I mean, all I'll say is that, you know, in this year I think that the money is for design. So I think all those are great ideas that can be reviewed and, you know, chewed on and incorporated into the design provided they meet the objective of the project. Did I send those questions to you with that? I guess I follow along. Yes, you feel free to do that, yes? I Yes, you feel free to do that. Yes Miss you Another follow-up question here for Alpha Ridge. We all love it somebody dared to call it a dump yesterday And I said oh no, that's our land fill you don't understand how we feel about that here. But I did, I thought that we were doing compost improvements out at our land fill. What happened to that? And we were gonna spend a million or two on that and then that's gone. And I love that compost pile. I just got to tell you. I'm glad that we're replacing the scale house but I thought that the next project was our composting. Is it gone forever? Where did it go? It is not gone forever. And how did the scale house getting in front of it. It's definitely not gone forever due to fiscal constraints you know we we had to limit the what we're allocating for FY26 but I believe we have 500,000 for CO299 and so that will likely go partly to the design of the the next phase of the compost facility As well as other needs that we have at the at the landfill like replacing Grindr pumps and other improvements that are needed Okay, so the composting plans will go forward So it's the design will go forward this year with the 500,000. We might be able to move forward with the design for the third phase of the compost facility. But there are because of fiscal constraints, we're not able to, I guess, move at the pace that we had wanted to or the in the sequence that we wanted to. So if you don't mind, if Mark to look us on the call, he can provide some more details on what we intend to use the $500,000 that we are requesting for in that question. I'd love to hear from Mark. afternoon. So the 25 budget we had planned on the funding for the second for the third phase, even which would be the last phase of the actual compost facility to do composting. And we have the design and we have to finalize something. And we are hoping that we can go to construction in FY26. However, that we were informed that we didn't have the budget to move forward. What's the projects, if not all the projects, at plan so, or paid for, by, you know, within the environmental service. And then we were formed that there was a Shrouding and the Environmental Service Fund fund and we wouldn't be able to find the construction of the compost facility. So we could use other forms of funds like Pago or Fonds. However, because of the late nature of us finding out that just wasn't available for us this year, for FY26. And so we make decisions, push the final expansion back. But it's not, Mark, how much do you anticipate it was going to cost after you did the design to finish that project? We were going to get a price because we had reduced the scope also to make it less expensive. So instead of doing 10 bonkers, we were going to do five. And then, so the design is going to change, then we were going to refurbish the pilot area so that we could use the pilot area to make up for the lack of capacity. So which would save us some money there is what. So we would have to get it. We were I think that it was going to be in the $5 million range. Okay. That's... So we would have to get it. We were thinking that it was going to be in the $5 million range. Okay, that's what I remember you saying last year. Yeah, and I remember looking at that with you out at the landfill. Yeah, so thank you for that update and sad news. Sad. Well, then. Do you have a question? Well, based on that, the budget books are off. Because the budget book says, begin construction of reduced scope of compost phase three. Which one number is this again? David, What number is it? Oh, 299. 299. And then complete, complete, compost facility build out. So now there's a half million dollars. Now it's been reduced from three million, but there's still a half million dollars in bonds in this project that supposedly to begin construction of this compost facility, which doesn't sound like it's happening. So what's the 500 that's still in there for? As I think the next question. Mr. Dilucca can you answer that please? I think that we may have because there was a relatively We may have to update the narrative, but, um, money is, you know, to the money was taken out and 500,000 was that and, and, um, that's five. So you think the narrative just didn't get updated when the budget sort of last minute change? No. After credit, now I realize that probably did not a big narrative. So what's the half million for? Let's in there now. So the half million, we have to always do spend some money, fixing things, having improvements and so on. We had nothing. We had nothing at the end of, we were told that we would have to defund it. So the defund tells me, I believe, is the source of data amongst us. And so, I don't have any. So the front source contains the model. So like 500,000. And chiptiles there's going to be things like we know that we're going to have to do. Well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, have to do well replacement as well, well replacement. Either at Alphabage and Newport, we need a compact that was needed for the other pieces down to it,, which we'll start. And there's a lot of conditions that we're not aware of. That's 100,000 could be used to afford a change order, hopefully, or the PIA change order. But here's an option for same condition. And then any money that would be left over, because we would be holding on to that other, the $100,000 for less, who would just hold the fund and put it aside for the next year, and then might be a budget, because we would request and we just be in a manner like me at my 27 budget. I would have this. Thanks. I'm sorry. And I jumped in, Edith Turn, too. You were asking questions. No, that's. I'm just jumping in now because it's my turn. And just one follow up. And that is, can you give us the cash flow model for environmental services? Well, we're going to, yeah. So we can see what's going on. Why there wasn't enough money. Yeah. Okay. I don't allegedly. Well, allegedly or not, I mean, we got, it's gonna be an operating budget we get today. Like, what? It's not as though that's the only source of funding. And I think Mr. DeLuca said that. We can't really understand you very clearly. Your voice is garbled, Mr. DeLuca, but just because the funding isn't there and environmental service is fun, doesn't mean you couldn't have used Pago. Like I don't know who's, you know, he's not, I mean, there are. Just because the funding isn't there and environmental service is fund doesn't mean you couldn't have used Pago like I don't know who's you know, he's I mean There are other sources and I thought the whole point of the compost was that eliminated some certain percentage or volume of Actual waste that we need to haul off or vary You know somewhere else that there's a cost associated with not being able to compost a certain amount, right? Presumably we weren't just building this to be cool or something. And there was some, you know, demonstrated need or savings or benefit that we aren't achieving now. So if all of those things still pie, it would have been my hope that we would get that funding from some other source if for whatever reason the cash flow on this fund isn't going the way we thought it would be. But like how does this affect the compost that gets collected from the waste bins, right, goes there. That's, it's all residential collected waste or what somebody themselves just brings to the landfill. Correct. Correct. So the bottom line is line is, you know, the answer to the original question was, this project is not dead. It's still a priority of the administration to complete the third phase so we can expand. We might be a little slower than we want it to be in terms of execution, but it's still a priority. Okay. Director Cavittie, it's zeroed out though. It's zeroed out right now. Not just this year, but I mean other than the half a million, it's zeroed out going forward. And the current administration only has more year here, right? We're going to have this conversation about this administration's budget. more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little these are the right costs for it. You know, it would make more sense almost if you were saying it's too expensive. It's not, you know, it's not meeting the projected cost benefit analysis. But to say we just don't have money out of this one fund to do this project. Does that mean that the green bin service areas is going to be static now? And so, until we increase capacity, like, where does that compost is existing facility without continued improvements match up to what we're able to collect at that place now? So we recently expanded, as you know, to a couple of TRZs. So I don't know specifically what the completion of the phase three would equate to in terms of additional TRZs, but until phase three is completed, then it's likely we would need to hold off on the expansion. Okay. So maybe my better question would be, is Phase 3 like some different process? So now it's organic or is Phase 3 just a bigger compost? It is capacity. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Any more questions on the landfill? Not the landfill. All right. I think. I'm positive. I'm positive. I mean, I mean, I want to'm not a landfill. I'm not a landfill. I'm not a landfill. I'm not a landfill. I'm not a landfill. I'm not a landfill. I'm not a landfill. I'm not a landfill. I'm not a landfill. I'm not a landfill. I'm okay and I'm trying to watch my phone for when he is but I'll get distracted by things like this is Miss Rigby do you want to start us off on a topic other than landfill or non-conquered housing? Those are my top two. I mean I do think we hit some good ones. I'm I think everyone's sad about compost. Everybody's sad. Even David. Mark's still, yes. And I think David is most sad. And I think David is most sad. Some of David's most sad about the reduced opportunities for methane diversion. And so we could really be reducing the amount of methane we're putting into. OK, next see project. OK, we're going to. Well, we had to have a little levity. No levity. A little levity. OK. I don't know where to go. Now, I'm happy to why don't we start in on the systemic renovations? Because I don't think we've received a breakdown. I think we've got this list on the purple page in our addendum. but it's just sort of has the high priority low priority. And so I can't really tell if this is is that like when you see this does that look like systemic renovations to you? Okay. Okay. This is a list of the project. That are in and getting it getting done this year or just part of that like ongoing list that you better every day. Certainly. So the list you have there is a list that we engage a third party consultant to assess our buildings and develop a list of required replacement, capital replacement projects which is extensively transferred maintenance program. And so that is a running list of projects that we need to complete. And then how does that relate to the systemic renovations project within? There's a portion of funding in the C0366 that we dedicate towards those projects annually. Okay. Thank you. And the document you're talking about is in our documents is attachment G, it's 11 pages. Yes. It's 11 pages. Okay. Thank you. Miss Young. I'll have Mr. Youngwink on next. I'm not going to lock it into a specific thing, but I mean just understand that the context in which we're talking is we have a spending affordability report that recommended like 25 million ish and Geobon borrowing this year and this budget has like 80. Nine of it is new money into this one project that's already got like 10 million dollars of unspent money in it. So what in the next 15 months are we going to use 18 to 20 million dollars on? It's a good question. And I'm guessing where we'll end up at the end of the fiscal year. I mean, we're at 16, too, as of February. It looks like we burn like seven or eight million a year. So as far as C0365, for the plan spent for FY26, some of the bigger line items would be the Patuxent Wood, the renovations to the Patuxent Woods. The County Council renovations, as well as elevator upgrades that we have in various government buildings. Now the Patuxent Woods renovations is like, describe what's happening there. So upon acquisition of the 97-55 Patuxent Woods building that we mentioned earlier would be a systemic or some planned renovations to that project, to that building to accommodate different county functions that would relocate there as well as some what would best be described as systemic maintenance work to the building that needs to be done that hasn't been done for the last couple of years. What do we think, what do you think you can spend there doing that? I think the overall getting the county staff in this bucket is somewhere around 800,000 and then there's a few hundred thousand more in other projects that we would need to undertake. Okay. So a million, let's call it. And then the county council renovations. We have 700,000 planned for that. Okay. And then elevators? The elevators are depending on what building it's at could cost us between two and 400,000 and elevator. How many think we have to do? We have one, two, three, four, five pending. Okay. So it's about three-ish million dollars, which wouldn't even eat up the appropriation that's already in there if you got no new dollars this year. There are several other projects within that overall program, of course, that you know add-out. I mean I'm just looking at and because I don't like forcing you guys to nickel and dot like the conversation we just had right this is we got a million buildings they got elevators we got you know people want to move it's just an ongoing thing so I look at a project capital project like this as what do we typically spend a year? You know, because it's just ongoing. Unless there's any one thing that's new, that's going to eat up a lot of money that we normally don't have, then the spend is usually kind of consistent. And if the spend is consistent this coming up, fiscal year, as it's been the last two years, we don't need new money. We don't need $9 million of bonds going into this project. Like there's enough money there already. And I don't want to cut you guys short, because I know you're just responding to stuff other people ask for. But it's going to be a question that I think the administration and budget is going to have to answer for in this year where we are spending way in excess of what we should be in Geo bonds. I think this is the biggest Geo bond number in this year's fiscal budget is in this project, not project, but number project, 365. So, you know, if you think we're missing something then follow up, shoot us. I mean, I think there's a request for a breakdown of what the money is going to be spent on in the portal, right? I will add that we've been really trying to focus on some of those longstanding projects and our deferred maintenance plan that I've been there for a while and we have a few roof replacement projects that we really need to execute within the next year or so as well that we're planning to do this summer. And look, I get it. It's like if I don't do the roof this year then I'm going to have damage to the building plus a roof next year. And we know that. We see that with the schools. But at the same time, you know, we really have to focus on what really needs to be done versus what can wait a year or two. We did provide a spend down in the portal to the response. Oh, I didn't see this. I didn't see that. Okay, so we'll look at that. So the the itemized list of projects do at the end of the day they do accumulate to roughly nine million dollars. Yeah, so if there's a spend down we'll look at it. So not just picking on you guys, everybody's, everybody that's getting Geo bonds this year is going to have to, I mean, we just spent 25 minutes or a half million dollars one, so okay, that's all. Okay, and Geo bonds, though, also does not, I don't know why, does spending affordability do with this? doesn't talk about the P3 payment at the courthouse and it doesn't talk about whatever with you if that yet has been extended it. What? I don't know why, dispending affordability, do with this. It doesn't talk about the P3 payment at the courthouse, and it doesn't talk about whatever with you if that yet has been extended. Well, I think it incorporates, I think that the debt carry on that stuff is part of the whole calculation of what can we afford to load on this year. So it's like the more you loaded on in previous years, it's like your own budget. And the debt payment is out of operating. It's not bonds. But the concept is, I mean, $10 million a year. Yeah, concept. As we know. We need to use our operating funds pay the debt service on bonds. There'd be no other way to pay it, but for up to. We don't want to become one of those governments where the largest single line item in the operating expense budget is debt service on bonds. No, we don't want that. Like our friends down the road. Not a positive way of dealing with tax payer money. I was going to save until operating questions about the master plan. I'm seeing it in these attachments as part of the cost. There's 150,000 for comprehensive master plan for hard counting office buildings. Our write-up says that it should be complete by mid-April of this year, which we are presently in. I'm supposed to ask about that at Capitol. I'm guessing from my prep materials on this. What's the status of that master plan? We have a, we are near completion of a space utilization study. So what we did is we took a look broadly at all of what I'll call the people buildings across the county. So these are our buildings that have a majority of administrative or personnel spaces. And we had our consultants look at those and how they're utilized. And so we are near completion of that effort. And it should be circulated soon. Okay, is it space utilization plan the same as a master plan? So that will become the basis for making, you know, drawing out, drawing out recommendations or determining next steps with the county's administrative real estate portfolio. Okay. What do you think? What's the timeline for that next step? Because I think the next step right is what we're looking for. Yeah, we're from our side. We'll be working with the administration over the next few weeks to review the consultants findings from the utilization study and to find those next steps. Okay. So for example the $150,000 it's identified in attachment E which I think is the spend down of this current fiscal year's systemic renovations. That is indicating that we expect to spend that. That's what's already been done as the space utilization or that's the next step. Space utilization is near completion. And we've spent a good portion of that 150,000 on that effort. Okay, so do you need more money from somewhere to do the next step or? Depending what comes out of it, then we will need some additional funding to develop that plan formalized document. Okay, is that additional funding somewhere else on a list? No, that would constitute that hundred and the remainder of that 150 that's on your mentioned. Okay. Okay, I mean I would, I know this, I think this is the first year that DGS will comment before us. Not with capital projects, right? Because, or will they, I don't know. Not with capital projects, right did the Farmer General Service will just have operating exist until as of July 1 so we are not putting them on the agenda then I suppose they should have a budget request for FY 26 oh because you'll exist in July exactly okay so so that's what I'm saying is that in operating DGS will be before us. That's correct. Okay, to talk about that next year. Correct. All right. I mean, I would request that as part of this master plan that we get to a place where we have building specific, you know, where it makes sense, building specific budget items. Like we chose to send one across. I I don't I think most of it is in 0365 But I thought we addressed this issue last year with that high-rage building the former Rockland Elementary School But we've got three different budget items with that one in it. It's gonna happen at Patuxent Woods. It's still happening at the circuit courthouse. It's like a riddle to find, you think, oh, I think I got all of it, and then you read the auditors analysis and you realize that I had completely overlooked this other bottom money. I just think to be square with ourselves and with our constituents about what the true costs of these buildings are, I don't think we'll ever know what the true cost of the new courthouse was because they did, you know, moving was over here and this was over there. Like, I would hope that there would be some consolidation of those costs now that we have a consolidated department looking at them and managing them, but I think that's kind of an ideally next year kind of thing. But that was one of my, the whole write up for this. I'm like, oh my gosh, it's these same projects again. Like each of these probably either should have had their own number by now or hopefully we'll never appear again in our budget book. But that's my question. You wanna? But like you, like let's say the agencies that move into the talks of what's, even if we captured those moving costs, Then there's a daisy chain of, okay, where did they move from? Now somebody's gonna move from where they are into that building and it just creates this cascade of costs. Well, not necessarily because if for example, the police who only need 29,000 square feet of our new, soon to be 100,000 square foot Patuxent Woods building of which I recognize we only are going to have half of it, 50,000 square feet that still gives them plenty of room. And then our lease is done. Nobody else has to move. Because we're giving up a lease of lease space. You're right. That's right. But like every time somebody moves in and out of a send of a loan. This needs to be given up. We need to be giving up lease space, moving into the building. But I still don't understand if we don't know who is moving into Patuxon Woods, and I think I've asked this question now about once every six weeks, whenever I see you, who's moving in, who's moving in? You know I'm going to ask it again. If we don't know who's moving in, how can we be spending a million dollars to build out that space? You build out space depending on the needs of the department and the people who are moving in there. If we were to say to the police and admittedly that would be a little difficult right now because they have a five year lease. But we could put some people in there. Actually, the rest of the building is least out for another five years, correct? The Patuxent Woods Building? The Gen knows this answer. There's negotiations right now for one tenant to remain for two years longer. Two. And then the other tenant, I believe, is approximately five years, but they may have. Is that 29,000 square feet? I had the numbers here before. OK, thank you. All right. I know. I'm just thinking this is, I mean, we could get rid of maybe three leases and give our police of almost central location with plenty of parking in Columbia. I mean, it just doesn't, I don't understand why. And we own the building. Sure to address your question about how about the million dollars and how do we know how to build out a space that we don't know who's moving into so we have building We have you know we've done a number of office renovations over the last few years of ascend and other buildings And so we have a pretty good handle on a per square footage Cost to renovate buildings for what we call sort of standard county office space. And so we've used that to factor on looking at the available space and assuming that the county could occupy x percentage of that. How many square feet can we renovate? And that's where we've come up with that number using the square footage cost. We don't have standard here. You know that, right, Zach? You know we're much below the standard here in the county council. So I guess it depends on whether or not you're moving in an office that actually does have standard square footage or one that doesn't. One that has more, I don't know, then standard. I mean, that just gets back to building out out a space that really is for and we could end up with two departments maybe two smaller departments could fit into one space in which case you might need two directors offices and two deputy directors offices. I mean I look it just seems like a lot of money to be moving forward on without knowing who's moving in there. Plenty of options. Before we leave systemic renovations. I think we should volunteer. Can that's a lot of square footage we can get? This would be right. You could ride your electric bike there every day. Especially if they make that they make that protection with access. So the. There you go. Suggesting that the county councilman will protect someone. Why not? It will be closer to me too. This is the headquarters of the African government. Well, we could come over here for meetings. Okay. Can I ask one like it is. I saw like HVAC on your list. We have had, I'll say of all the troubles we get. That's probably the number one elevator. So we. A bit of a little bit of a little bit of a I'm not sure if it's specific to. It doesn't look like it is. I saw like HVAC on your list. HVAC. Yeah, we have had, I'll say of all the troubles we get, that's probably the number one elevator. So we. Yes, me. Yes, me. Yes, me. Yes, me. Yes, me. Yes, me. Yes, me. Yes, me. Yes, me. Yes, me. Yes, me. Yes, me. Yes, me. Yes, me. Yes, me. Yes, me. Yes, me. Yes, me. Yes, me. Yes, me. Yes, me. Okay. It's not in line for a full refurbishment because of its age, but clearly it has a number of times when it's going to have to service that. It's not in line for a full refurbishment because of its age, but clearly it has a number of times when it's going out of service and our O&M team does track that and continues to work with the elevator maintenance team to address it. Okay. Okay. And then to the other Roger Carter, we have funding to construct an adult changing station as well as make some systemic Repairs to the shower area of plant. Oh, okay. I Wonder what I read Okay, I'll leave it All right, do you want to start the cycle with another one? I mean, I think I'm good, but now what we've moved off. There's not a ton of time. There's no systemic risk. Oh, hey, Dr. Jones, do you have a question? I just want to make sure I hear systemic renovations. We also that'll still on that. We can still be on that if you'd like to ask a question on that subject. Could you not have a question on systemic renovations? I just want to make sure that I found my face. Thank you. Thank you. All right, and we're picking a new topic. I have one more. I think it's kind of. We do one last round on systemic renovations. I'm not really related. Although it's a different type of question, we just had this energy savings plan go into effect. And I thought as long as you guys are here, if you're the right ones to ask this question of, because it's my understanding that a number of these buildings that are energy savings buildings that we're supposed to occur last week. One of them is the George Howard building. There's only one energy system in this building, so it's not like we have of us can be told to stay home and then the energy gets turned off in the half of the building where people are not occupying it. Ascend one, that was another building that was supposed to be an energy savings building by telling people to go home. So HR and Reckon Parks went home. Everybody else who rents out that building, the Board of Ed and the Department of Health, of course, are still gonna be there. So you can't turn off the energy from that building. I could go on, I'm not gonna go on, but I'm wondering, what is the energy from that building. I could go on, I'm not going to go on, but I'm wondering what is the energy savings from this program? I think it might be a little early. I don't have any numbers for you now, but we can work with the administration to get some numbers. I would love that. I would love that by, you know, the time we start our operating budget, because even though this is for 25, it's supposedly to save money this year, I guess, in order to make things better for our budget next year. And I so far can't even imagine what kind of energy savings that we are creating for us unless we own the whole building and don't rent anything out or don't open it up at all. I mean, surely there was some kind of analysis done before we came up with that plan, right? Thank you. Surely there was. Is there a huge determine which buildings to choose? So can I mean I know I know it's premature to see if that actually materialized But why can't we have whatever analysis compelled us to send out something that's like we're now Closing I'm not even we're not even closing. Yeah, we can't That one that's that one. Yeah, yes I'll work with administration. Okay, because that came right from the administration. You're. That one. Yeah. Yes. I'll work with the administration. OK. Because that came right from the administration, you're saying not from the beginning. Now, you guys didn't get involved in that at all? No, we were involved as in the Bureau of Facilities overseas, the O&M of the building. Right. Right. That's what made me think about it. I'm sure you wished I hadn't. That is what made me think about it. I'm like, you guys are in charge of all this. So I would like to know how much money we're saving. OK. I hadn't but that is what made me think about it. I'm like you guys are in charge of all this so I would like to know how much money we're saving Okay, and expected to save that's two parts. Yeah, well, you're still on that can I ask yeah part of that we Most of the county buildings have upgraded lighting right so we've got high-everage things So isn't isn't the bulk of this going to be in heating and air condition versus lighting. I you know the certainly most accounting buildings have LED lighting which is using a small amount of electricity compared to prior years but you know saving some power there. So there is HVAC as primary savings. There's probably a small plug load savings from all your devices charging that you've lived in. Like the other day jumped out of me. Like, it was, I mean, that does tell me you you not a lot of HVACs. Oh, right, right. Yeah, we're in like the break. Like I'd rather take an extra day in July, an extra day in August, an extra day in January. I know you have to, it's good to buffer it over. Like, you don't want to shut down for a day and have to fire it back up again. So bolting it onto when it's going to be a holiday weekend, anyway, makes no sense. but okay, I will get the numbers. Okay, and we skipped you, Mr. Rebete, and we're still on systemic renovation at your request. Thank you. Yeah, no, I was wondering about the George Howard Building Security updates, and if there are things that you would prefer to not share on video and streaming. That's fine. But if there are things that are, if you'll comfortable to share and that's fine as well but I just thought it'd be good to touch on those as they're included in systemic renovations. Yeah, I think there's a number of discussions that have been ongoing and perhaps maybe they should be brought to the council monthly meeting and discussed in a breakout. Yeah. Actually, that'd be a good idea. Yes. Yeah, let's do it tomorrow. it might be a certain plan that are law enforcement sensitive. We probably prefer not to broadcast. OK. Then maybe as part of the larger discussion tomorrow, that'd be good. Or wait, wait, wait, wait. Maybe we could do call for one part of our monthly meeting tomorrow to be administrative so we can close it. And then we can have that portion of the meeting in closed session. Okay, there are also tight timelines around tomorrow's meeting. I believe. We've been told that the thing is that 11 else. Okay. And then I just wanted to clarify on the building plan. So the space utilization, what we'll see when that process is complete is, these are the spaces we have, this is how we're utilizing them. And then that information would then be layered with, I would say, another assessment, which is like from the departments of where they are and where they want to go and what needs they think they'll have. And then we're going to take what we're going to get and what I'm imagining right now and blend the two together to make a plan on where those where they're going to go. That's exactly right. Great. If I could rope briefly for the security discussion regarding George Howard, I think it would be at least from our side, Preferred to push that out a month so that we can make sure we have all the right players able to be there. Tomorrow when we're meeting with the council it's really to look at the Banner Corrumb. So it's myself Sharon and one of our design consultants and not the security team. I'm not sure that I'm not saying they're not available but I don't know from sitting right here. So I really wanted to understand how the what we're getting, how it's sort of feeding into our expectations of where we are. We want to be how we're going to get there. You're absolutely right. So what we've done is basically what we've taken is, you know, the approved positions per each group that's in those buildings and number of seats in those buildings analyzed all that compared it to county standards and generated sort of how much space we have now we are effectively using in order to inform, you know, help us inform what we have available and will be in the near future looking at other other needs and layering that just like you described. And are we in this existing analysis that you're undergoing? Are we looking also at storage equipment fleet, those types of things? Or is it really more the human resources and how are we going to do human resources within the spaces? The first piece that we've looked at is really the people spaces, we'll call them. We've excluded the storage spaces or other sort of flex or warehouse spaces because those vary so drastically. But one of the recommendations may be that we undertake a sort of more detailed review of those spaces as well. But there's really no sort of county space standard that we can layer over those specialized spaces easily. So they're really sort of a one by one analysis of, you know, let's just say we have a fleet shop. Like what are the processes that they use to maintain vehicles? What are the things that they need to store and it varies so drastically from like say us in facilities and what we need to do in our, you know, warehouse spaces. So that's challenging. Plotilities, first facilities. Correct. And then even little protectants. I think there's some waste space down there because we were out of storage space. Correct. So that's why I ask because it is this factor. This is really in response to our sort of lease explorations And so, you know, making sure we have a handle on not just the people's storage, but making sure we have the equipment needs of those people in those spaces met. But I also can understand if that's part of the secondary analysis of like, this is where we are and this is where we want to be and this is what we have storage for today and this is what we think we're going to need in terms of storage five years ten years. The other part that we've captured now is parking availability and parking demand. Thank you. I think unfortunately one of unfortunately one of the biggest challenges we have is that we really don't have a lot of transit options between our buildings and so we have to account. Well we could, couldn't we? Well anything's possible enough time and money. So we have to account for essentially one one parking per person or in some cases from some departments who don't have taken vehicles to parking per person. Are you noting whether or not they use facilities or long existing transit routes because many governments do provide transit and transportation incentives to their employees to utilize those? I think we could certainly overlay our building locations on our TA service map, include that. Awesome, thank you. One last question. One facilities. Okay. You know, I love these kinds of information, Zach. Do you know, and I'm also looking at you, Jen. You may know. Emily, I'm sorry. The approximate number of people that we're looking to house in these buildings somewhere and the approximate amount of square footage that we have right now that we either own or lease. So the approximate number of county employees who have say a permanent office space? Well, I think we would have to, I think, yeah, I think we would have to look at who have a permanent office space because there are a lot of people who are just out in the field all the time, our police, utility workers. Yeah, I mean, I would recognize certainly that there are a goodly number of people who are not, who don't have an office space. So the approximate number of people who are assigned in office space, I guess I should say because there are some people who are teleworking so much that I don't know even giving them an office space may not be appropriate And then they have a approximate amount of square footage. I'm sorry. Yeah, so for the we looked at 14 all call it heavy people space buildings that and so that doesn't so for the 13 I'm like yeah, the building people who are overweight and living a building Marley people space excuse me for a favorite phrase that primarily people buildings administrative type building okay So 14 buildings where we have a lot of people. Correct. And so that those have 1243 assignable workspaces. 1243. In 14 buildings. Correct. That's a lot of buildings for that number of people. Okay. Total square footage of those I'd have to add up for you. Perhaps I can get back to you by the end of this meeting. That would be nice. Yeah. Yeah. That's just how the curiosity do happen. Do you know how many people are here in this building? George Howard Building. 300 ish. 300 ish. 300 ish. I can give another number. Are people who are supposed to be here, I guess, or, so that's three, you think about 300 people? So that's a quarter of the people. I think that's including League and Carol League and. Right. But that's not including North Columbia, right? Police station. I mean, North County, North Howard, whatever, the police station, over there. North District. The 1243 seats I meant. Yes, yes, yes, not including North District. Okay. Howard building, just Howard building has 65,000. Sorry, I'm not on the right page here. Let me total it up and I'll get you that. Give a nice Excel spreadsheet that shows all this that you can just share with me? It looks like you're looking at little sheets at the bottom. I'm just picturing what you're doing right now that I would love to have. We may have a summary spreadsheet that we can put together. That would be fine too. All right, Mr. Yemen, you have a C question. The only thing I want to add, I missed the security conversation, but I assume that when we see those projects, we're gonna see operating costs as well. Because I remember when the courthouse. We first got, yeah, like when we first took office, the sheriff's budget was increasing and tremendous amount because they had to man all those access points. Now we have a man-to-access point here, but if we're adding man-to-access points because of scanners, or magnetometers, whatever, then we need to know there's operating costs also. Sure. Makes sense. And today there's a 273 seats in the Howard Building. 273. Not counting the 401 in here. We could also put many people in here. We'll put some cuba horses in. Everybody work with your computer. Okay. We could get, you know, five back there. Right. That's true. We could also get, you know, those seats that have the little fold up desks. Okay. I actually have, I think I just have two more questions and all of C that we're supposed to get to today. The first one is from the analysis that our auditor legislative staff did. And it talks about, and maybe the answer has already come about and I just haven't seen it, but we've requested to know when the county expects to receive the remaining 131.8 million in unrecognized federal grant funding or where these funds have been like I don't truly even understand what that whole paragraph means but it sounded problematic. It's the very first paragraph underneath the top general county projects in our right up points of interest and starts with as of April 2 so again if there's an update. It's just the general, it's this general statement at the top of the general county projects, points of interest, the very first paragraph. As of April 2, there appears to be 206.3 million in unrecognized federal grant funding across all general county projects. of that unrecognized amount 74 comes from contingency fund what about the balance which is 131.8 million. What is this in the budget for? Well this is something that our our team puts together for us. Is that an answer? Yeah can I tell you you on that? Yes, is that Dr. Sun? Dr. Sun. Yeah, yeah, this is she. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, I know the question that you were referring to. We actually replied to the author's office saying that we're still working on that because it was pretty complex. The number shelter is not for the number showing there was not the right number to indicate truly what's applied but not received there. So that's including contingency found as you are know in prior year the contingency project was a place holder for potentially receiving federal runs or state grant in the middle of the year. So that part is really not tied to individual grants on that. So that one essentially really should be removed from this full calculation. And also in order to get to the, and also that amount including what's listed here, the reference dollar amount there also include the ones that actually get awarded but not dispersed yet because of timing because some of you get spending first then get reversed there. So we are understanding what's intended. We are working try to get the right number and explanation behind it. So that's still a working process on that But it's definitely much, much smaller than what's a number listed. They're currently referenced by your staff. So, but we're working on that. I will get that to you. It's pretty complex. We're not going to get 100% confirmation. But we'll get to do something on the critical variance there. Okay, so let's say potential discussion of that for our carry-all. See, that's coming up since it's apparently very complex and not yet explained. It's too complex, apparently. It's just plain to see. So then my last question, and I don't know where you guys are on this, but we are coming up on the close, is the Rockland Elementary, we have the one, I think it's C0, C0379 is the actual budget number. There aren't any, we're told, systemic renovation costs this year, C0365, but there is, not a lost one place, there is some other place where there are high-roage costs. No, I can't find them. What can you talk about? What's ongoing there? What's playing there? I know there's a list here. It talks about ADA and I don't know, maybe fire prevention. How much of that work is being done exclusively on the first floor versus throughout the building? Like a lot of these things that you're talking about doing seem like they would be building wide and we've got X classrooms full of our head start kids downstairs that probably would benefit from any of these improvements as well. So can you talk a little about that? Sure, absolutely. The fire protection upgrades will be for the entire building. Okay. So they will include the head start spaces and there will also be some plumbing renovations to the head start spaces as well. Okay. Are there improvements that won't include this? I guess it's the basement floor? Lower level. Lower level, okay. I mean they they're not intended to get a all-call it full renovation like it won't be painted or get new flooring or anything like that. OK. All right. But so other than maybe cosmetic is too kind, but other than cosmetics, any of the system-wide type stuff they benefit from as well. The lower level has already received split system air conditioning units. So they already have improved HVAC Above the art spaces above and beyond the art spaces that was done a while ago. Okay, so they have you know The art spaces right now have what's best described as a window shaker air conditioner And they have a sort of duckless split system that has much better controls Okay, those are the things that go right through the to the outside. Yeah, and then the lower level will get new lighting and sealing as part of that work to replace the sprinkler system or install the sprinkler system. Okay, and do you coordinate at that, like when they're not in school or how do you do that? Yes, they have some downtime over the summer that I believe they'll be going to another location to operate their program from. but yeah've been working with the team there to coordinate that Would you guys know if there's been any continued conversation with the school system about Their potential use of the the upper level for enhanced pre-K I'm not sure about the programming side. I would have to defer that to the administration. Administration. Okay. Same for you. Miss Ayaki. Okay. All right. We're going to go to Rigby next, but she's not here. Miss Young, do you have any more questions on C? And I think if we miss something just because we were out of time crunch, I think as long as we tell you by when, we can tack it on to what we've already reserved for C, which right now is about three categories. So if we would know by the end of this week, we can then notice the change in agenda. Okay, that question I asked about the federal funding was the only unanswered question that I noticed that wasn't answered in the addendum we received today, but we did receive some write-ups that maybe we didn't fully. It kind of late in the process., right now I don't have anything else on this, on this major list, just the things that I'd like to talk about on Monday. And I think it was good to see that so many of us were right on the same, you know, it was the same four or five projects that caught all of our attention. Yeah. Which is always a pleasant surprise. Well, I think at this point, we know each other and we know what to look for. And we know what we care about. All right. I don't want to adjourn us with Brighby gone. Oh, Dr. Jones has a question. Dr. Jones, do you have a question? Yes. No. I do not think you can. Oh yeah, okay. I can't do that. No, I'm not. I just set up my sword. Oh, she had another meeting. I- Dr. Jones, you have a question? Yes, no, I do not thank you. Oh, okay. I'm not upset. I'm not upset. Oh, she had another meeting. I appreciate that. Oh, okay. So then I'm not going to cut Kristiana out if we adjourn now. Okay. Okay, that ends our first work session. One, thanks very, very much for everyone in attendance.