Good morning. It is Thursday, April 24th. Welcome to the Transportation and Environment Committee. We have a very packed schedule today. with I believe eight different items. Those items are, we'll start off with the budget for WSSC, then utilities, then the general services fleet, then DEP, then utilities, then the general services fleet, then DEP, then recycling and resource management within the solid waste collection and disposal funds, and that. And then the motor pool is in between. There's a lot of things. So let's just hop right into it. So right now we will have a review of the WSSC budget, the transportation and environment community has been having a lot of discussion about WSSC, about the CIP in particular and about the fees and charges. And this is again incredibly important in the context for this discussion is that in the fall the Council approved a spending control cap of 10.2 percent. The Prince George's Council approved a 9% spending cap and what WSSC is proposing is a middle ground which is is a 9.8% increase for FY 26. And I'll turn it over to Mr. Levchenko to walk us through the rest of the details. Sure, before we get into the nitty-gritty of the packet, W. Sissy Water does have a brief presentation that they also provided to the Prince George's Council earlier this month. So I thought it would be helpful for the committee to get that broader perspective directly from WSSE Water staff who are here today and they can also introduce themselves while they are before they present. Sounds great. Good morning, Chair Glass. President Stuart Constable, Mel Balcom. I am Renéitimides Moussara, the Chief Financial Officer of WSSC Water on behalf of our commissioners, our General Manager CEO, Keisha Powell, who's with us today. My team, H2O colleagues, will present to you our operating budget for 2026. I'm joined by Latisha Carolina Powell, who is our budget division manager. For FY 2026, we continue to utilize our outcome-based budgeting approach. The outcomes are protecting public health, increasing the use of pay-go, to fund capital projects, enhancing customer assistance programs, continuing our compliance with regulatory mandates, maintaining our triple-A, bond rating and continuing to make the required investment in our $9 billion asset portfolio, our contributing factors that allow us to address and achieve our budget priorities, which are maintaining compliance with the U.S. EPA regulatory mandates, leveraging external funds to supplement rate revenue, promoting environmental justice by ensuring equitable access to our services and programs, enhancing customer experience through education, affordability, reliability and trust, upgrading and modernizing critical infrastructure, and continuing to invest in Team H20. In summary, we are requesting a $1.833 billion budget for FY 2026. The operating budget of $1.136 billion is $116 million greater than FY 25, while the capital budget is $95 million less than that of FY 2025. So what does the budget do? It provides an 8.9 million or 14% increase to the customer assistance programs, provides funding for customer side led water service line replacement with the outcome based budgeting and focus on budget priorities. It achieves mission critical goals, drives efficiencies in operations and improves service delivery. Key regulatory requirements are addressed, the lead and copper rule, the federal drinking water limits for PFAS, which are expected to go into place in 2029, and we're developing a comprehensive PFAS management strategy with this budget as well. The Safe Drinking Water Act requires that we adhere to the standards for contaminants in drinking water and the Clean Water Act sets quality standards and regulates the discharge of pollutants from point source and regulates the discharge of dredged and filled material into advance. The budget carries forward compensation improvements for team H2O to address stagnant wages, establish a living minimum wage and improve recruitment and retention to our workforce. It also ensures continued adherence to the financial metrics associated with our triple A credit rating. When it comes to how the funds are spent, it is important to first note that 55% of our costs are nondiscretionary. This category includes capital project funding, chemicals, biosolids holding, regional sewage, and heat light and power. The allocation of each dollar that we spend is as follows. 41 cents goes to debt service and pay bill, 34 cents to operations and maintenance, which includes facilities, pipe repair and replacement, road repair, customer assistance program funding, customer service, corporate finance and IT services, and the remaining 24 cents to team H2O for salaries, and wages, employee benefits, and training and workforce. Given the current volatility of policy and uncertainty in markets, we are monitoring the financial risks summarized on the slide. Operationally, we are preparing for unanticipated increases in costs and unplanned expenditures, looking at scenarios where deferrals may be needed, to be made to system repairs repairs and replacement as well as considering the impact of further declines in consumption and reduced access to external funds. Our key credit metrics will be subjected to stress testing and the different anticipated market conditions to ensure that we end up in a position to continue to meet the targets with the impacts of potential increases in customer delinquencies factored into this analysis. In the other category, we'll be analysing the policy impacts from federal, state and county actions and monitoring how high consumer or customer unemployment rates and other external factors change our short and long-term plans. The FY2026 operating budget invests in our workforce, strives to improve the internal and external stakeholder experience, continues our water quality track record, builds resiliency into our systems and operations, integrates diversity, equity and inclusion, and environmental justice into our procurement, EEO, and investing investment planning process, and increases financial assistance to our customers by $1.1 million of over FY 25 levels. The regional sewage disposal costs continue to increase on an annual basis, at a pace much higher than inflation. WSSC water pays for approximately 43% of the operating costs and we do not directly control this amount. You requested that we provide you an update when we received it, so the update to the regional surge disposal amount as follows. We received notification that the approved budget was $1.6 million greater than what we have in our proposed budget, so we will be looking to address this pressure early in FY 2026. Furthermore, we received a settlement invoice for $6.4 million related to FY 2024 activity that we need to partially absorb in our FY 25 budget. We have been increasing the pay go or pay as you go allocation over the years in alignment with the 2012 by infrastructure funding working group consultant report recommendations. Pego are operating dollars that are used to fund capital projects and it supplements our debt. Using Pego improves debt ratios, saves on debt, service costs, slows accumulation of long-term liabilities, helps some of the metrics needed to maintain our triple A rating and also helps lower future rate enhancements. As far as new funding requests, this budget includes $24.5 million, most of which were added through savings identified by the various departments. We have 77 new work year requests included in the FY 26 budget. 29 positions. Support. by the various departments. We have 77 new work year requests included in the FY 26 budget, 29 positions, support regulatory requirements, 20 positions, enhanced operations, and 28 positions are budget neutral, that is, converting contract positions to employees. 23 of the 77 work years have been budgeted for six months to allow us to fit them within the requested enhancement rate. This slide highlights some of the same service rising costs that have been absorbed in the 26 proposed budget. These are non-disgressionary spending items that we are required to fund. The big front numbers represent the increase for FY25 and the small front numbers represent the 5-year average increase. The budget for chemicals had a year over year increase of 6%, heat light in power 7%, blue planes, it was 9%, but now it should be approximately 10%, and health insurance 18%. When looking at how these increases compared to the 5-year averages, chemicals were 6.8%, and heat light in power 0.4% less than the 5-year average, whereas increases in blue planes and health insurance budgets were 1.4% and 12.5% greater than the 5-year average. So this shows that we must be prepared for this cost volatility in the current and future budgets. Here we present the sources and uses of of the FY26 $1.33 billion operating budget by major category. Increases and decreases are illustrated on the graphs on the right-hand side of the scroll. When it comes to customer assistance and community benefits, the FY26 budget continues our commitment to affordability with a $1.1 million or 14% increase in the customer assistance programs. Promise pay increased by $330,000. The water fund by $250,000 and we have $525,000 available for a new assistance program. Other items under the affordability and financial viability priorities are the customer assistance program. Other items under the affordability and financial viability priorities are the customer assistance program subsidy enhancement, the plumbing repair assistance program. This is administered by Habitat for Humanity and will help eligible customers repair water leaks that contributes to high bills. There is the continuation of the cap discounts that exempt eligible customers from registered serve charges, provides waivers of the Bay Restoration fee and late fees allowing flexible payments of up to 48 months and provides annual water leak inspection. As it relates to delivering for our customers, as noted earlier, we have more than $8.9 million in financial assistance. This $228 million allocated to upgrade aging and failing water and soil mains, $3 million to increase fire hydrants, inspections to get us closer to AWWA compliance, $5 million for the expansion of the laboratory to ensure that we are ready to conduct the PFAS monitoring and our largest single contribution to customers, nearly $34 million to pay for the replacement of private side or customer owned lead water service lines. Here we highlight four water bill assistance programs available to our customers. Promise Pay allows customers to sign up for affordable and flexible interest free payments. Our customer assistance program, Waste Fixed Fees and provides annual plumbing inspections. The water fund allows eligible customers to receive up to $500 per year to apply towards their bills. And the pipe emergency repair program provides a loan of up to $10,000 to finance the repair replacement or diagnosis of water or sewer on property service lines. Furthermore, at the beginning of March, we launched to get current 2.0, which provides a 50% bill credit for payment of full-dilumquind amounts% credit of late. Payment charges and turnoff fees or a 25% bill credit for a 50% payment of the delinquent amount and completion of a six year payment plan. We support the economic output of our two counties because 43% of our workforce lives in the service area. In FY24, our work contributed $133 million to 177 businesses in Montgomery and Prince George's counties of which $88 million was to local, minority and women-owned businesses. When it comes to our revenue enhancement, as discussed earlier, we presented 12.2% base-case revenue in our and women-owned businesses. When it comes to our revenue enhancement, as discussed earlier, we presented 12.2% base-case revenue enhancement using the same service budget needs. Montgomery County Council passed the resolution supporting a 10.2% revenue enhancement, and Plains-Stroerdges County supported a 9% revenue enhancement, was we were formulating the proposed budget to identify increases in non-weight revenue and were able to reduce that top level by 0.4%. And so the budget we formulated and presented to the counties for approval is at the 9.8% revenue enhancement rate. The impact of the revenue enhancement on our customer build is displayed here. The 9.8% translates into an increase of $8.80 per month, $26.41 per quarter, and $105.64 per year. The average quarterly water insurable for a three person household using 145 gallons per day will be $295.86. This amount of $295.86 is significantly less than the average quarterly bill from PEPCO, which comes in at $472.74, and that for cellular phone service, which comes in at $423. Over the last 25 years, our cumulative bill impact has been below that of our regional peers, and the amount only reached the point of being higher than the CPI index in 2025. This is our six-year model that we plan on building the future budgets around. You can see that the increased Pego allocation aligns with the 2012 by county recommendation discussed in the early fiscal management slide and there are subsequent decreases in new debt issuance after 2027 along with measured increases to debt service. The long term, the FY 2026 and future annual revenue enhancement amounts from the long term fiscal model result in us meeting our financial metrics for each year meaning that we an alignment with the credit agency requirements to maintain uptripply rating under this model. This concludes our presentation, and I am available for any questions. Thank you very much, Mr. Misara, for that presentation. Anything else you all want to present right now? You're good. Mr. Rufanko? Sure. So you've got a sort of a big picture of the overall WSSE water budget. I was going to go through my packet and pick out some particular areas of focus for the committee to consider today. Some of which you heard already in passing, but I think we want to return to some of those. Just, in terms of the overall picture of the budget, page three of the memo breaks out the major categories for WSSC's water spending, the approved and proposed. That's where you see the $1.14 billion proposal, as well as the increases in the staffing. Notably there, I think you see the increases are, while you have increases in all the areas, the two big areas are in the souring wages, which we can talk about a little bit, and also in the all other category. You have a significant increase in regional sewage disposal, which is noted here, that does not include some of the additional or recent information that you heard in the presentation based on the actuals. This is based on projections from some months ago. So they do have some additional costs. They have to absorb in that that we can talk about. The other other costs, it's important to note in there, the biggest increase in there is in Pego. It's about a $43 million increase. As mentioned to help with the financial metrics and get us closer to where Pego was envisioned when they went from 20 year to 30 year debt about a decade ago. Without the Pego, the other category is actually only seeing about a 4.5% increase. So it's very important to keep that in mind and there are some other charts in the packet break that out. So from staff's perspective, the areas where there could be some adjustment, For instance, to meet some of that additional regional sewage disposal cost, or perhaps if the rate increase does not stay at the 9.8 if the two counties agree on a different rate increase, then the areas where there might be some opportunity would be either in some of the enhanced positions that are noted or perhaps there could be some marginal adjustment to Pego, although we're trying to continue that upward trend in Pego to try to accommodate that whatever the rate increases that the council's agreed to. I did want to note just on page five of the packet. In the county government packets, the each department does get a review by our office of racial equity and social justice. Those reviews do not apply to outside agencies. However, WCC Water does have a section in its proposed budget dealing with both racial equity, social justice issues and affordability issues. So I've noted in the packet for your reading enjoyment later, a lot of comprehensive information in there about where things stand with regard to customer affordability, their small and local minority business programs, rate increase history, their customer assistance programs, that's all included in that section. So just as a note, but you're not seeing what you see with county government departments. In terms of the spending control limits mentioned earlier, those are summarized on page six of the packet. And you have the main highlight, which was the maximum average rate increase, where we have the 10.2% that this council recommended back in early November. The Prince George's Council was at 9 and the proposals at 9.8. The executive, by the way, we haven't talked about the executive recommendations yet at this point. The executive was recommended approval of the WSSE Water Budget as proposed, and that includes the rate increases assumed for volumetric rates and the fixed fees, and also the expenditures assumed in the budget. The long-range financial plan is also included in the packet. We had a lot of discussion about this in the spending control limits process. In past years, what's tended to happen is the base case that the council's review in the fall tends to get trimmed back by the councils. And then what's approved in the spring tends to be closer to that lower level. And then a new long range financial plan has to be established for the upcoming year. And so from WSSE Water's perspective, it becomes a bit of a changing process every year. There in 10, of course, would be to try to focus on what the 9.8% would provide and try to work with that in a multi-year basis. The challenge, of course, is that the councils are approving the budget on an annual basis, and we can't commit to future rate increases. So that's sort of one challenge with this process. But at least the Long Range Financial Plan does provide a snapshot of where things stand now based on the best information that WSSC water has. The Long Range Financial Plan that's included in the budget does presume the proposed CIP and the impacts of that in terms of debt service and all the implications for operating budget impacts associated with that. It also does assume increases in more what we would call normal increases in regional sewage disposal costs and inflationary type increases in all of these other cost areas. So it's and it also is looking at the financial metrics that you that were referenced earlier and trying to make sure that those metrics are achieved or improved at least over the six-year period. And as you did hear earlier, just one positive note, WCC Water, does have the highest bond rating available from the three rating agencies. So a few years ago they were on a notice from I think it was Moody's, a Fitch, with regard to a negative outlook. That negative outlook was removed and so they're on firmer ground now going forward without that negative outlook. We will quickly on the revenue side, page 9 of the packet. What I present here is the revenues as they would look without any rate increase or increase in fixed fees. And fortunately, there has been some positive activity in the base budget or base revenues, if you will. if you will. So they are seeing some increase in revenues just from rate activity, if you will, where people fall within the tiers for usage and some of the other fees that they collect. Overall, that's about a $25 million increase that it's equivalent. It's about a 2.5% increase overall and that helps marginally reduce the rate impact needed going forward when we look at expenditures. And those, oh, and real quick on page 10 of the packet, and you heard this earlier, despite some of that positive revenue, we are still seeing per capita water usage declining over time. I have a chart on page 10 that highlights that going back about 20 years, and basically through both passive water consumption or water savings through improved water devices, as well as conscious energy conservation, we are seeing per capita production by WSSE down significantly from 20 years ago. That's positive from an environmental standpoint, of course, but it does create some challenges financially given that that's by far volumetric revenue is by far their largest revenue source. So going forward that means that they're generally not going to benefit much for instance the equivalent would be on the county side. If our accessible base increases in the county, then you collect more revenue per the tax rate. The equivalent on their side is that they're having a declining accessible base in a set in a way. So that creates challenges in terms of where do they offset that. About eight years ago, we did have a significant change in the fixed fees. We created the infrastructure investment fee and also recalibrated the account maintenance fee because the fixed fees do create a little bit more stability. The rate structure itself was revised from its old structure where you paid at the highest tier to now where residents pay, residents non-residential pay through the tiers. So that also had an impact on revenues going forward. With that, I'll turn it to page 11 of the packet where the expenditures are summarized. And I noted earlier that we had some positive revenue activity. So you can see overall the expenditures are increasing about 11.8%. But the rate increase requirement is under this is 9.8%. That's the budget is balanced at the 9.8%. And that's because of that slightly increase in revenue, slight increase in revenue that we see. As I mentioned, the big numbers in this budget, Pego, by far the biggest $42.4 million, really driven by the financial metrics and trying to make sure the debt service financial metrics in particular stay within the ranges that the rating agencies want to see. So this increase in 26 is followed by other increases beyond that in the Long Range Financial Plan. So that's a major foundation of this budget going forward. The other big area noted was in sour and wages. We had a significant number of position increases last couple of years. So some of this is really absorbing the annualizations of those positions being inserted into the budget. You also have compensation increases just like the two counties do in terms of coales and merit pay. That's built into this. And then you have the new positions, the 77 new positions that are referenced. And the portion of those are cost neutral contract positions converting to in-house. We also have, as you heard, positions needed to increase our regulatory compliance effort, and then additional positions for enhanced operations. So those two areas, the Pego and the Siring Wage areas, are the largest increases we're seeing in this budget for FY26. And given that, my guess is that's likely if adjustments are needed to this budget to get to a lower rate increase or to cover some of those regional sewage disposal costs, those areas will probably be looked at first to see that impact going forward. The other major area of costs in here is what we call the all other costs. Pego is normally in there, but I broke that out because it's such a big number. But the chart on page 15 breaks out the major categories there, and you have a lot of ups downs in those areas. You did hear specifically about the significant increase in healthcare costs and the employee benefit section, so that's a big increase here. You also have some increases in their vehicle fleet turnover and in some in contract areas and chemicals, things like that. But these are, I would say, are more routine increases from year to year and there may be some adjustments possible here in deferrals once again if they need to get to a lower percentage increase. The debt service is increasing although not perhaps as large as it has in past years Partly, that's because of the increases we've had in Pego over time. They've also recalibrated their CIP a bit. So the CIP going forward is a little bit lower than it was previously. So the debt service impact, which moves slowly over time, given the long, you know, debt service intervals, is a relatively marginal increase this year. I mentioned earlier the regional sewage disposal costs. Those are broken out on page 16 of the packet. And some of the areas where DC water has identified increases that are within the areas of cost that are shared by the wholesale customers including WSSC water. So we can talk more about that if you're interested. The other areas are relatively small. Heat light and power. So it's a significant increase in heat light and power and we are seeing pressure on kilowatt hour rates going forward. We have heard a lot of discussion about how those rates are going to be going up significantly for customers. Well, they'll be going up for WSSE water as well as part of that. I think with that I will, oh, I'm sorry, forgot one significant area that the committee will need to discuss today. In addition to the volumetric and fixed fee rate increase that the committee and the council will need to settle on, we also have FY26 system development charges. For the first time in decades,SSC water is recommending an increase in that charge of 2.5 percent increase, which basically represents a CPI equivalent increase. The long range financial plan does assume that CPI increases would continue in future years going forward across the next six years. However, the councils approve the SDC annually. So as with rates, what the council would be deciding this year is FY26, and then can revisit that issue next year whether it wants to continue those increases. Those increases are needed because of projected gaps between revenues and expenditures in the SDC fund. It is a separate distinct fund intended to have growth, pay for growth going forward. And WCC Water has had some significant projects funded with SDC over time. Those projects are actually declining a bit in the six-year period, but the revenues do need to catch up. So WCC water is recommending that. That would help ensure that the fund stays positive across the six-year period. And once again, we can look at that again next year as well. With that, I'll turn it back to the committee. If there's other areas you want to dig deeper into. Thank you very much, Mr. Lovchenko, for that thorough review. And thank you, WSSC, for the good presentation. Ultimately, again, this is all about safe and clean drinking water and making sure that our residents have access to it and are healthy. And it has been a challenging year regarding WSSC in the budgets, given the differences between Montgomery County and Prince George's County, but you appear to have landed in the middle, and I want to express my appreciation for coming in under our ceiling, which is a good thing. I supported a lower ceiling and you've come under what the council and the executive approved. So that is a good step. And also, Mr. Wolfchenko, I just want to highlight something that you wrote in the staff packet on page 8, which bears repeating that, quote, As noted in past years, over the past 20 years, water and sewer utilities nationwide have experienced higher increases than other sectors. Likely, the result of aging infrastructure as well as enhanced environmental requirements over time and flat water consumption trends. So, environmental sustainability, newer buildings and codes and pipes and the cost of just doing business. That is the confluence of this decision. And so I feel comfortable approving all the recommendations, the three recommendations, the fixed fee increase, the development charge, and then the overall proposed budget. Colleagues, Councilmember Stewart. Thank you. I just had one question I wanted to go back to on page 15, table six, under the truck an automobile. Because that's a $6 million increase and I know it's about regarding overdue vehicles and purchases and sometimes those things get pushed out. But one of the questions I have is given the volatility we are facing right now with tariffs on tariffs off, what that may do to, you know, the purchasing of vehicles and and everything, has there been any reconsideration of that category? And is there any room for possibly pushing off some of those purchases into the future, given just the volatility in the marketplace right now? So Councilmember Stewart for the current year, what lesson learned from last year? We now'll have a lot of off-the-lot purchases, because when we try to deal with the manufacturers directly, they will delay, so we didn't get the allocation we needed in that first year. So for the period 25, and I believe going to partial 26, that has been addressed. It's the period from the 26 out that the team is looking at and trying to see what the impacts of the tariffs will be once they actually settle. Because right now we're just running analysis and things are changing on a daily weekly basis. So depending on where we finally land, that assessment will be made saying that is it, is the cost differential worth us replacing it all can you live with the fleet that we have, and then push it out once things stabilize. So that's an ongoing analysis that's actively being looked at. Great, thank you. Dr. Patten, did you want to, General Manager Powell, did you want to say something? I'll just add that part of the assessment is operational impacts in order for our crews to get to emergencies, we've got to have the heavy equipment purchases. So we've made smaller vehicle purchases to get inspection staff, meter readers, et cetera around. We have a five year plan. So we can make adjustments to that. But we just had a recent all-hands meeting actually at ourathe, at our Gathe, there's Burv Depot, and they express concerns about the sharing of heavy equipment and gaps in coverage to make sure that all of the crews are covered, especially since we have a 24-7 operation. So, that will be one of the categories as the CFO said, we will assess we're looking at the impacts. We had there was a conversation going on earlier about just the what we see as the impacts of increased tariffs and what that will do so that may delay some purchases but we will be very clear about the specific needs and things that we cannot delay going forward. Thank you very much. I'm supportive of what has been put forward. Thank you. Tell us about them. Yes, thank you. I am supportive as well. I think that when we met in the fall, WSSC did a great presentation in terms of the significant need. And I appreciate that chairs bringing up the point about costs are going up for all kinds of reasons. But aging infrastructure is one of those things that we just can't ignore. Similarly, advanced technology, one of the things I would love to see is the monthly billing. So I think it's important to just bring this up in terms of we're having a much bigger discussion about fees and taxing and the impact that it has on our community, but this is a necessary increase if we want to continue having safe clean water. I do have one question and it's just about the interplay between Pego debt service, bond capacity. And so do you have a long range goal as to what you would like that debt service to be? It's currently around 33%. Is there a specific goal in mind of where you want that to get to? Yes, Councilor Mavolkum In the base on the 2012 analysis, we had incremental increases, but because of the delay, the increases that we're putting in now, are increasing exponentially. The target was, I believe, we have our financial advisor reviewing our plan as well. They're recommending 20 to 25% of the CIP come from Pego. It's still under analysis because we want to make sure that it's sustainable. What we don't want to do is come back and then have a right shock or a revenue shock. We want to make sure that whatever we're recommending we slow the growth, our will under our limit for our debt capacity, But what we don't want to do is create a burden today that we're paying off over time and then that impacts what we can do with the other operations. So it's something that's still under analysis. We'll be able to come back. I think the report is due in about 60 days. So we're able to provide input once we've had a full analysis and settled on the new target and make sure that that target is embedded into the long term plan going forward. Okay. Yeah, I appreciate seeing that perhaps in the fall when we start the discussion again. You're the first one, you're the first agency that we look at in the future budget. But I think that that's, it's really an important discussion about when we see these large pay go numbers and the impact that it has on future debt service. So I would appreciate that. Yeah, I will note, historically when the spending control on its process was first established, the goal was to try to keep debt service below 40% of their overall budget. And they're well below that now, partly because the financial metrics have changed over time and that debt service, the 40% would not meet any of the metrics. Similar with fund balance. Fund balance used to have be much lower. And that worked from a fund balance policy, but it did not work from the policies of these financial metrics. So the fund balance has gone up over time and the Pego requirement has gone up over time. Really because of those debt service ratios that were mentioned earlier, even though years ago we would be well within the metrics that we had initially put together for the spending control limits process. Great. Thank you, Tanaqaweks, for their good questions. Yes, we will revisit this conversation soon enough in the fall, as we always do, but sounds like we are all in support of this. So without objection, we'll support the WSS budget. Your Director Powell. I didn't mean to interrupt you with my look but we already approved it. You can continue now if you are. Thank goodness. I said the CFL has on his lucky socks today. But I just wanted to thank you, Chair Glass, President and Council Member Malcolm, for your deliberations through this process. And to just say that this has been a long process. And your constituents may not see all of the questions that you ask in the background. And the discussions that happen offline, the suggestions, the requests, those things help to provide guidance. And it is not just a blanket. To get to this point, took a lot of work and a lot of consideration by this body. And I just wanted to thank you for that and acknowledge and also to thank Mr. Lushenko for his analysis. This has been going on since August to get to this point for next year's budget. So just thank you for that. Thank you very much, Ms. Powell. And also I see Commissioner Bayonet back there. So thank you. Thank you to our commissioners and to all of your staff as well. So that item is approved. The next item on our agenda today is taking up the Utilities Non-Departmental Account. And we will bring up Director Dice and the DGS team and Mr. Mr. Media, turn it over to you. Thank you. Good morning. The first item before you is the Utilities NDA account of budget. This is the budget that pays for the county's Utilities cost essentially as well as some other costs which we'll go into. We have 526, exactly as recommending a funding level of 42.3 million, which is increase of 5.2 million or 14% or FY25 level. The increases are driven by three components. One is the 2.4 million dollar increase for lease payments to establish and maintain the county's resiliency hubs and microgrid facilities. Another 2.2 million is related to increases for utility costs, for purchase of electricity, natural gas, water and sewage. And then another 540,000 is related to increased solar race charges, which are being driven by rate increases by DEP, as well as based on the square footage of county facilities. As we open more facilities, we pay higher charges as well. So I'll stop there. See if there's any questions before we dive deeper. Thank you, Director Dice, to you and your team. Thank you for all the work regarding energy resilience here within county facilities. The, the monies that we use are here in the packet. Can you talk to us about the monies that we have saved because of our our grid system? Well, thank you very, David Dysdirector, Department of General Services. I love to talk about this. That although consumption is gone up because we've added new facilities, although commodity costs in the private sector from utilities have gone up, we have fixed fees because of our microgrid projects. We can fix that commodity rate. So while our volume of square footage conditioned and power goes up, number of facilities goes up. Our consumption rate is gone down. And it's because of these excellent measures that the team of the folks that are sitting at this table and a number of folks out there scratching their heads thinking how can we be more creative. This county bus is the first of its kind solar powered bus maintenance depot. Another one is under construction right now. In next month we're going to open the only second net zero public safety facility in the country and that is the six district police station. We're in the process of working to convert other facilities to net zero and for the public's benefit it means that the site generates all the power it consumes. We've established resiliency hubs. The first resiliency hub on an equity-based consideration is the Scottland neighborhood recreation center. It's become the prototype for what we're going to be doing at all the other similar centers so that those neighborhoods can enjoy resiliency and times of power outages. So this is, that's on a building side. On the fleet side, the depot that's under development right now for microgrid will also include hydrogen generation as we are aggressively pursuing the conversion of our transit fleet from diesel and natural gas to electric, whether it's battery electric or hydrogen electric. Right now we have approximately 38 electric buses in the inventory. By the end of this year we'll have over 80 by the end of next year we'll have about 150. So we continue to aggressively expand the conversion of the fleet, meeting the climate goals that are set before us. Honestly, if you'd asked me five years ago, we're going to get there out of scratch my head. But you've got a tremendous group of folks working in general services in DOT and elsewhere to commit themselves to achieving these goals. So I can't praise them enough. Great. Thank you for that. Call us. Yeah. No, I would just say thank you and I think we don't talk about this holistically enough and I will say and I know this happens to councilmember Balkham with her daughter but my daughter who goes to school at Boston University was actually in a class where they highlighted a lot of this work that we're doing here. And so sometimes I think when we're so close to it here in Montgomery County and we do have high expectations for this work when we step back or hear from folks outside of the county and that we're being used as the model is really important to lift up so I just want to say thank you for that work. You're welcome and it's because we're committed to it but it's fun. We enjoyed it and we don't brag well. We're too busy doing the stuff to sit back and on our laurels but these facilities and initiatives have received international attention and recognition. So the residents of Montgomery County have every reason to be proud of their government. You may not break well, but as a mom, we do break well. And so I appreciate it. My daughter was at a conference. She lives in London, but she was at a conference. And Montgomery County popped up on the screen and it was a fun moment for her. Fantastic. Let's keep going. So going a little bit more into each of the cost increases. The first item is page two of your packet item 1.1. This again is the microgrid payments and resiliency hubs. This is essentially a 30 year lease that began at FY22 as we employ more projects and more facilities that these payments do increase. So the costs of the lease program are increasing based on us deploying, increasing the scope of the project. The second item, 1.2 is the utility commodity cost escalation of 2.2 million. There's a lot of data in the back on the pack that I won't get into, but essentially our since FY21, our electricity usage has remained steady for the most part. Electricity accounts for almost 63% of the utilities and the aid budgets, so it's the bulk of the budget. At the same time, e-writ costs have gone up significantly since FY21. We have inflationary factors pushing the cost of, you know, the cost of kilowatt hours up. Essentially, although we're not using much more electricity, even though we're opening new buildings, we are paying much more for the electricity we are using. And so that's essentially driving the cost increase in the utilities NDA. And then the third item is the solar waste charges. Again, because of the fee increases being proposed by the EP for next year, DGS anticipates higher solid waste charges for their facilities. This is a base on a straightforward calculation of square footage times a unit price. So that cost increase is significant 60% over the current budget year. Finally, I do have some potential reductions for the committee's consideration. As we recall last year, we did the Council will approve $10 million and you're telling us in the A to cure a structural deficit. And so any reductions today should keep that in mind that we have kind of screwed up the budget for the NDA. Nonetheless, there are some options ranging from 1% decrease to 10% decrease in the event that the committee would want to consider. And that would save anywhere from $200,000 to $9,000 in the act of 526 budget to $2.7 million. And again, it's just open consideration. But there is a risk, of course, if the savings are materialized, the bills will still be paid and we may end a risk of ending the budget with a deficit. But that's very discussion. You preempted my question. So thank you. Director Dice. Yeah, I wanted to actually congratulate the committee on its work from last year. Because in that correction, based upon final fiscal quarter projections, we're going to come in about $150,000 within $150,000 of the estimate and the budget for last year, which is why I would encourage it and not mess with it this year. You guys did a great job, chewing it up. We've talked about the stuff that's going on in the past, writing that ship has done well, and I think we'd be wise to stay the course. Appreciate that over the last two years that this, the three of us have served in this committee, we've been trying to write the ship and make sure that there's truth in budgeting and we don't play games and I think we'll stay the course. I presume? Yeah, we will stay the course. Infatically stay the course. So, but director, I thank. And so, you set up within $150,000 of the whole budget. It's a hundred. I'm sure when you offer synergy and sustainability, it's about 171 is current projection following the third quarter. So, we're a little bit over, but we're within a half percent. Very good. Thank you. Oh,, sorry. Oh, Gary now an office management budget. I just also want to express our thanks to this committee for helping us to write size the utilities budget last year. As we stated, we are coming in very close. I do want to caveat that with that, this is DGS's projections not been vetted by OMB yet but you will be receiving the quarterly analysis in a couple of weeks and we do very very very very very very close to the target. We're all the same team here. Let's appreciate that that was good good. So without it, yeah go ahead come some more welcome. Just one you know we're we're going to talk about the solid waste charge at the end of the, at the number eight somewhere along this journey. So if that changes, I would assume that this cost would change as well. Thank you. There you go. For shadowing. So without objection, we will support the utilities, non-departmental account NDA. Thank you Now on to Item number three This is the FR26 operating budget for fleet management systems turn it back over to you, Mr. Mayor Okay item number three. So this is the fleet this is to it before you for this item is the fleet's operating budget, as well as one new CIP project that was amended rather an existing CIP project that was amended in March for this year. For the fleet's operating budget, the executive is recommending a funding level of 116 million, which is essentially an increase of 13.7 million or 13.4% from the FY25 approved operating budget. As a reminder, this budget is an internal service fund. It collects revenues in the form of chargebacks to other funds and departments, including both tax supported and non-tax supported. Historically tax supported chargebacks have been around 95% for analysis, we've assumed 90%. I'm gonna remainder of the chargebacks goes towards non-tax supported funds. So any reductions or additions would be along those ratios roughly. In terms of enhancements and staffing changes, the recommended budget includes adding four new positions to support the apprenticeship program, with FY26 costs of $285,000. There's also the enhancement of one-time funds of 120,000 Friday key support services. And finally, there's an enhancement of 9.7 million for future fleet replacements. I will note that the 9.7 million is being paid through the fund balance in this international service fund. It is not new chargebacks are being passed forward in the 26 budget. So whether or not any changes there would not affect the tax support and not tax support and split. And this replacements have been ongoing for several years. There is essentially a backlog of over a thousand vehicles that need to be replaced. They've approached another useful life. And so those replacements are part of the long-term strategy for this fund. Beyond that, there are a number of increases to maintain same service levels. These include contractually contract increases being driven by essentially maintaining the same service levels. They include 2.4 million for the transit bus service lane contract, 650,000 for the light duty fleet maintenance contract. As you may recall last year, we did enter into a new contract with a new contractor to maintain the light duty fleet. And this increases essentially, I believe, right sizing the scope of work. There's $241,000 fuel tank console upgrades, 65,000 electric bus telematics, 16,000 for IT system server upgrades, 50,000 for oil, a 382,000 or three percent of the patient management for non-profit contract providers. There is a reduction of a million dollars in the fuel budget and we'll talk a little bit more about that down the line, as well as a million dollar reduction for one-time add-ins that were funded this year, but no longer needed for 26. These include shop lift replacements and one-time purchase of vehicles. And finally, other adjustments were related to compensation and other required operating expenses. Stop there. Thank you. DGS, can you talk to us about the Apprentice Program? Yes, I'd be delighted to. We have, as the committee will call on prior discussions, routinely run into a difficulty of keeping and maintaining a mechanic workforce. And at the same time, challenges in a diversification, the workforce, it's very male dominated and we've actually tried to introduce the career field to female candidates and others. So we found that the best way to generate a steady inflow of positions is to an apprenticeship program. provides a career path for those that are not choosing college. In fact, it can also provide a career path through those who did choose college. And now wanna actually get work in this area. So the apprenticeship program has proven a smashing success, Mr. Mia, captured some of the statistics on page five of your packet that since its inception, we've had 19 mechanic technicians come in, 16 have been retained. That is exactly the intent of the program. Bring people in, train them up, Mr. Calvin Jones, our fleet managers here with us. His staff has done a superb job of creating a curriculum, building custom training tools and equipment. So that we bring these folks in, they're an apprentice for a year. They get into the job stream and have careers. Our mechanics are given promotions and advancement based upon their technical training and certification. This does all of that. They can come in as an apprentice and essentially graduate as a journeyman. The program in fleet has been so successful. We're replicating it in our facilities because like fleet mechanics, finding electrical HVAC mechanics, electricians and plumbers is very, very difficult, over 60% of the master electricians working today are past retirement age. That's a real problem. Plus, we need to see schools investing in these sorts of honorable trades. So creating a stream, we're working with Montgomery County Schools and Montgomery College to do this, and creating a stream where we can have an influx of young folks coming in and staying with us for years. So the apprentice program is a result of us building it. We've had to utilize existing resources. Currently some of the positions dedicated for apprentices are actually full-time mechanic positions. And while I've just sat here over the last few minutes and heralded the benefits of the apprenticeship program, there's no substitute for experienced mechanics. mechanics and typically when someone is in the apprenticeship program, they recently graduated from it. They're pairing up with another mechanic who's supervising their work and bringing them along. That still creates a deficiency in our ability to meet federally mandated preventant maintenance routines and other necessary actions. still having those full-time mechanics is essential. This budget proposal helps us put back into and fill those full-time mechanics and yet still advance the apprenticeship program at the same time. Thank you for that description and highlighting that 19 had been hired through the program and 16 are full time county employees now. That is a great rate of return, quite frankly. And Mr. Jones, just a cool question for you. Can you elaborate on who these 19 people are? Are they Montgomery County residents? Have they gone through, you know, Edison school or just fill it out a little bit more. Certainly Calvin Jones, the Vision Chief Fleet Management Services. Most of the candidates that come from Thomas Edison High School, we do public outreach with them twice a year to meet with them, look to discuss their to sell our program basically. And we looked to leverage them most of the time to bring to bring in our candidates. One of the challenges that we run into from a from a zero-emission standpoint is that there's no place to hire like say a zero-emissions technician right. So in order to align with the council's goal, in the county schools, from an environmental standpoint, it's really necessary for us to build to build and develop those folks in house. So as part of the reason is David alluded to with the development of curriculum and things of that nature becomes essential. So we went out, as we say, we go out into the community, we try to get folks in, we have open houses to recruit folks, and we highlight the apprenticeship program in order to do that. I love it, and I love the fact that we're seeing the investment in MCPS and in Edison continuing to grow. And that is the holistic approach that we'd like to see. So congratulations. Thank you. Do you have have a question? No, I just think it's terrific and I'm looking for yes. Great. Great. We're a Deputy Director, DGS. One thing I'd like to also highlight, we now have a full-time person who is looking at the development of our apprenticeship program, specifically in getting it certified. Because once you're certified with the state of Maryland, you can apply for grants and that helps with training and obviously helps offset our operating budgets. I just want to point that out. We are aggressively seeking that certification on both the fleet and facilities. Taking it to the next level. That's great. So when that happens, that's a bragging moment, okay? Yeah. Because we are really trying, we go out and ask employers to take on our students and to do this exact thing, and apprenticeship programs are so important. So, when that happens, we need to shout it from the rooftop and ask some of our other employers to do the same. I want to shift to another item and it's the IT support services. Can you elaborate a little bit more on that $120,000 request? Certainly. This is a one time to procure services for the implementing the asset works. If you'll recall, there are discussions here and certainly a geo committee regarding the implementation of a system that will finally enable us to identify and track our infrastructure, building systems, components, parts. And so we asset works as the name of the system. We've installed that and it's been in functional use of facilities and starting to provide us, frankly, what is somewhat alarming statistics. We knew that we'd get this and they'll be more to come on that. This was also then translating the same system over into fleet management. The system that we've had there is old and showing its age. And it'll be a very effective to have all of the county's capital assets under the roof of one operating system. And frankly, the fleet management system is quite good and enables us to do a lot of things. So this is a one time charge to implement that. So you're saying one time charge, but it sounds like it's an ongoing need. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So then how do you square those two? Well, we have, asset works is supported by a team now. And Mr. Jones has got staff being trained in asset works at the same time. But this is the loading, the training, and all of those things, the brings current staff up to speed. What would the ongoing expenses be in the next fiscal year and beyond. So beyond the only ongoing expenses would be for the system itself, but that would probably be in the DGS budget, already included in DGS budget, I believe, in the central budget. So I'd like to offer a maintenance cost. Yeah, that's it because the biggest issue right now for the $120,000000 dollars is the development the development and training of staff and the changing over to the system. So right now we already we currently have a fleet management system but it's no longer supported. It's a legacy system no longer supported and so the big thing will be to change over. So some of the business practices will change a little bit training and developing staff to be able to work on a new system and things of that nature. So that's basically what the increase is for. So to summarize, we already have staff managing IT activities and we already have built into our current budget, software maintenance costs. It'll just be with a different system. So we're not anticipating a net change in ongoing software maintenance costs and subscription fees, because it'll just be replacing one system with another system. So that's why that's not captured here. This is an item that we hadn't intended to revisit in future years. We felt that for this year is very important to provide the funding to set up the system correctly to set up DGS for success with the system. And then we'll be reevaluating the needs as we go forward in future years, but this is a one time cost for 526 right now. So it's one time cost to set up the system and train. And then the ongoing expenses would be in the DGS budget, which would be a government operations committee within their portfolio, is that correct? That's correct. Okay. Is there something that you all have taken up over there? No, it wasn't. No, it was not in their budget. It's not as it's not high. It's just part of our administrative activities. Okay. Okay. Without objection. Okay. Okay. Without objection. Okay. And then fuel costs, if you want to talk about that, Mr. Mayor. Sure. So the packet on starting on page six has some historical data on fuel costs. As the committee is aware, these fuel costs are highly volatile. The price of oil changes rapidly based on current events and news. For FY26, however, the DGS and the executive are recommending a million dollar reduction in the fuel budget going down from 14.6 in the base 25 budget to 13.6. This again is reflective of their beliefs that the price of oil will remain low for the upcoming year. And so that reduction is included in the recommended budget. I have included some additional options for the committee to consider, essentially looking at further reductions of 1 to 10 percent. As a rule of thumb, as I mentioned before, any 1 percent reduction, for example, would save 123,000, which 90 percent of that would truerue to tax-supported funds. Most of those tax-supported funds are either the general fund or the mass transit fund. So the exact calculations differ based on each individual budget in the recommended budget. OMB and DGS will have to rerun those calculations, but that's roughly the savings we could realize in tax-supp. So again, it's all in the table five. The on page six, that shows the different options and impacts. I appreciate the staff recommendations, but I think we talked about the utility of the utilities budget being as it is, and I feel more comfortable going with the budget recommendations as are. Perfect. I hear my colleagues agreeing so we'll stick to the proposed budget there. But thank you for staff recommendations. One final item is the CIP amendment. The county executive is amended the County Fleet Electrical Vehicle Charging Station CIP project. It originally had at 750,000 FY25 FY25, the funding of which was current revenue. For FY26, the amendment includes a $3.909 million and FY26 and that funding would come from the motor pool fund from the fund balance as well. So it's not new appropriations. It's really just the fund balance being appropriated for this purpose. The exact list of projects in 25 and 26 are include on page 7. You'll see the county facilities where the charging stations would be installed. Historically in the past, the charging stations at the county has installed has come from the DGS operating budget or the fleet operating budget. And so for next year, it'll be fun if you see that. Okay. Without objection, most of the support that as well. And beyond that, just a little update on the fund balance for the Motorpool Fund, even with the increased use of fleet replacements in 26 and the CIP project, the fund is projecting an era in fund balance of 25.8 million. That's a significant number, but it is being planned for future fleet replacements as well. So there's a plan to use up those fun balances we go forward. Going back to the question that Councillor Resturra asked earlier, just about the ongoing trade wars and procurement of vehicles. How is that going into your thinking? Yeah, it's right now's so early in the process, it's very difficult to ascertain what the actual impacts will be. For some of the manufacturers, they have inventory that's already in the pipeline. It's not affected by the threat of tariffs currently. And in some cases, they're even offering discounts. So we plan to continue to monitor the situation on a continuous basis. One thing I do want to note is that on a light duty side, on the administrative side, we've leveraged purchasing use vehicles where available for electrification because of the increased appreciation of electric vehicles in the resale market actually benefits us in a way that it would normally benefit a normal consumer or someone who may own it as a first vehicle. So, it was the first owner. So, we plan on leveraging those things in order to try to manage the impacts of the prospective tariffs. If I can add anecdotally to what Mr. Jones just said, since our administrative fleet does not get the wear and tear quite to the same degree that the public safety fleet does, we can safely purchase good quality lake model used vehicles. And I was coming to work about a year ago and heard on the news that the chief executive of a large car rental company was dismissed because he had over-invested the fleet change over to electric vehicles and no one was running them. And so they had dismissed him and now had thousands of electric vehicles on their hands what to do with. So I came into the office called Mr. Jones and said let's get them. So we got some 30 or so, 35 electric cars at about 60% of what would be the otherwise market cost. So these are the types of creative actions we're taking, not only to maximize our spend of the public funds, but also to meet our climate goals, which are still very aggressive and we've got a large fleet to switch over. And I will ask what was the national dealer that you bought them from? I think it was enterprise. It hurts. It hurts. Great. Thank you. So just to add to what Kalton told you, if you are expecting inflation in the future, it makes sense to buy what you can now. I want to notify you OMB is working with the GES to potentially accelerate some of those replacements and spend on some of that fund balance we have to take advantage of any offers we have from dealers or other opportunities. Thank you. Yes, thank you. I think that's certainly a great idea. So for the for 25 FY 25 there were 277 vehicles, I guess roughly budgeted. Are you have you been able to purchase all of those for 2025? Are you still in the process? So for 2025, we're still in the process of purchasing vehicles. Some of the some of the vehicle manufacturers, so basically it's usually governed by order dates when we can order vehicles. And so we're still in the process of buying some of them. As Gary alluded to, or as Mr. Nelvin alluded to, that we're in the process of increasing the number of vehicles that we'll end up purchasing not realize this you just can't pick up the phone and call a Chevy dealer and say, I need 100 cars. So we try and get our orders in. The advancement of these phones will enable us to go in and get a prominent place in line. One of the big challenges in recent years has been the supply chain. We had the funds to purchase trucks and cars, but the inventory just wasn't there. So this will help us to get ahead of that. I do have one last question. We have a number of other items we have to get to in the agenda. But with regard to the DHHS mobile crisis, that program already is strained because there are not enough social workers to support the DHHS crisis outreach team. So what will the procurement of the how will the procurement of those vehicles which are very much needed actually be utilized if there is already a strained program? We would have to check with DHHS on this and we could back to you but I do believe they have employees who are in need of vehicles and those positions were funded previously but the vehicles were not. Right. And just to accentuate that point, the mobile crisis outreach team has been fully funded. It has been hard to hire social workers to realize the goal, right? And we hear about it all the time with regards to first responders and emergency needs. And so just wanting to make sure that if we do this investment which is needed that we're actually able to utilize them as intended. So I have some firsthand experience because I did it right along with our crisis team and I heard from some of the folks who are working right now that some of the vehicles that they do work with, they do need to be upgraded because they can't when they get into the car, they don't have the maps capability and that's difficult for them because it's a crisis team that's going out. They're going to different locations quickly and the night I was out with them, they had to just use their phone because there wasn't in the car. They had the map thing which makes it a little bit more difficult. And so agree that we need to continue looking at this but from firsthand experience of the vehicles we do have out there, they're old. They're pretty old. And given that number of our crisis teams are going out late at night, sometimes in not great weather and everything, to be able to make sure that they have safe vehicles that I know you make sure they're safe, but also provide the capability for the navigational system, I think is important. So it sounds like, thank you for that. Thank you for going out and seeing firsthand. So it sounds like there were replacement vehicles, not adding to the size of the fleet. No. These are new vehicles. These are new vehicles. Some antical difference, I think, right? New vehicles replace older vehicles. These are adding to the fleet. We do have a vehicle retirement program going on as we get among the vehicles that are listed here and this increase in funding will include more vehicles for. A prioritization is public safety and health. If you just drive around, you're at the bottom of the list. So, police and public health get the prioritization as they will under this. So the HHS vehicles have been approved and so we're in the process of purchasing new vehicles. They were originally operating out of a pool out of their pool vehicle. So to your point, the newer vehicles will be updated, will have updated systems so they'll be able to effectively do their jobs. So thank you. So this is in addition to those that have already been funded. So just guessing actually a multiple NDA, have multiple NDA is a general fund dollars, usually one time dollars to buy new expanded, they're expanding the fleet, not replacing it one to one, but adding new vehicles to the fleet. And these are one time costs, because in the following year, the fleet budget will budget for replacements as going forward. So for FY26, there's five new vehicles that are being added to the HHS fleet, essentially for the mobile crisis teams. Right now, of course, they're using existing vehicles, which availability and quality differs by case by case. So 190,000 of the 1.39 million will be used to buy those five new vehicles for DHS. The remaining 1.2 billion in that budget is the third tranche of 20 vehicles for sheriffs. Collected bargaining several years ago had called for buying 60 vehicles, 20 each per year for three years. And so that 1.2 million FY26 remaining 1.2 million is for sheriff. And the equipment to outfit those vehicles is being budgeted in sheriff's operating budget. So that's the motor pool. Indie it's great. Adding fleets, adding new vehicles to expand the fleet as we add more positions, more functions, more programs. Understood. If I could just clarify this, DHHS request for the record. These are five positions that were added in previous budgets where the positions were funded, but those positions were positions that required a vehicle for each individual. And those vehicles were not funded in a prior budget. So now we're adding the funding for the vehicles. And I believe HHS has been using motor vehicles from fleet in the meantime. Understood. Okay, thank you. Thank you for all of the clarifying lots of different moving parts, literally. So without objection, we'll support that. Great. Thank you, DGS. So now we're moving from the transportation over to the environment side of our portfolio, starting a conversation and review that was supposed to be had about a week and a half ago. That were, that we had to, unfortunately, delay due to facilities issues, but invite the DEP team, come on up. This next item is a series of items that we're grouping together on the agenda items 5 through 7, which are the FY26 operating budget amendments to the FY25 to 30 CIP program with a number of amendments that I will have Mr. Lovchenko walk us through. The first portion of this discussion, and there's one packet for items five, 6, and 7, just to be clear. The first discussion is focusing on the DEP budget funded with general fund and the water quality protection fund. So those two areas. The recycling resource management is a separate packet that we'll get to later. And then also the climate change planning NDA, which is also general fund supported, is also included in this packet before you here. So those three items combined are in this one packet. Regarding the DED budget overall for those items, those two items, page three of the memo summarizes the expenditure trends for the general fund and the Water Card Protection Fund on Table One. The general fund portion, which is significantly smaller than the Water Card Protection Fund, is seeing a very modest increase this year. Basically a lot of technical adjustments. There are no recommended service enhancements. You may recall in the 25 proposed or recommended budget last year, there were some enhancements that eventually were put on the council's reconciliation list and were not ultimately approved. So DEP's budget was basically a same service as budget last year with technical adjustments. And that's pretty much what has been recommended by the executive this year for the general fund portion of the budget. So what you're seeing and I know you'd have to go to the executive's recommended budget section for the general fund. What you're seeing are, for instance, FY26 compensation adjustments. So to the degree that Council approves the recommended compensation adjustment or something different. That would affect all departments including the DEP General Fund. You have annualizations of personnel costs from prior years. You have some lapse adjustments. Pretty much almost every year OMB does an analysis of lapse for departments and makes adjustments those that spread out to the departments. You also have central service charges like risk management and motor pool and printing and mail and things like that. So those kinds of changes each year are more technical and just are continuing what the department does in the current year into the next year. You also do have some staff funding reassignments because DEP does have multiple funds as they do some relatively minor reorganizations or higher new staff that may be doing different assignments. staff may be charged differently in the upcoming year between the various funds. And so that is also accounted for in these budgets. But really for the DEP General Fund budget, we're not seeing significant increases. There are two the degree, if the council needed to go back and find adjustments, you know, for instance, if we are looking to reduce overall spending across the budgets. In the general fun side, you're probably going to have to focus on some of their ongoing operating expense initiatives. Those are summarized on page seven of the packet. And you'll see pretty much there's three buckets, mostly within what we would call the climate change arena, including the clean energy programs, the building and transportation programs, and then the equitable inclusive climate engagement. So these are areas ongoing expenses for these, but to the degree there were cuts needed, my suggestion would be that if we identify what that level of cut needed to be, we would ask DEP to go back to these operating expense areas and see if they could reallocate spending in those areas. Staff is not recommending that at this time, since we don't have a target reduction, if you will, for the DEP General Fund. It's going up only marginally. The changes that you are seeing are actually noted on page six of the packet and are adjustments that are needed in order to just continue operations as they are. So from the general fund perspective, staff does not have a lot to go over this year because there isn't much change. Great. Thank you. Thank you for that. So as you noted, there is not a whole lot of change, but I have a few questions about some of the new expenditures. And so I appreciate it, Director Munger, and your team. And there's a cobalt smucker as well. Questions about some of the climate communication and broad scale communications. There is the $148,000 for climate communication and public engagement and then a $230,000 for broad scale communication and stakeholder engagement. Ms. Holosmacher, can you? That's in the NDA. Yeah, sorry. I'm jumping ahead. Oh, okay, yeah, I didn't know a few questions about the general-known DEP budget. No. Okay, because yeah, yeah, let's keep going. Oh, okay. I was jumping ahead. Yeah, regarding the NDA, I did want to mention that the The NDA is recommended at the same level as approved. However, last year, the council approved some consulting dollars that were considered one time in nature. So for an apples to apples, you know, budget comparison, the one time funds would be removed in the FY26 budget, and then if they're added back, that would be considered an enhancement. So that's what I think Chair Glass was referring to for the climate change NDA. We do have, I'm just looking for the, yeah, on page 13 of the packet, We break out how you get to the FYI 26 total, the $718,000. That number is the same as 25, but the communication piece that Chair Glass mentioned, the 230,000. The way it was framed last year was that this would be initial work and that it could well lead to other work, but that it was being considered one time. So with that framed, I think now we can ask the Department or ask the climate officer to speak to the work intended for that in FY26. There we go. Thank you. Thank you, Chairglass. Sarah, Cobal, Smoker, Climate Change Officer. So to address your question, so to briefly for context, the climate change planning and DA is intended to be instrumental in accelerating climate action or initiating inter-departmental coordination and climate action that would be difficult to fund or slow down to fund by any one budget. And so that ongoing work differs from year to year. Some examples from the past year were funding the Good Food Purchasing Program where DEP facilitated the Department of Corrections to do a life cycle analysis of its food purchasing and make recommendations for more sustainable and just purchasing that they're going to get the recommendations and intend to implement so that's one example Another example to get to your question is the Climate Smart campaign that was launched this past year So we heard a lot of feedback that residents didn't know where to start or there was county resources for climate action in a lot of different places but they weren't consolidating one place and so climate smart gives 15 easy everyday actions. Residents can take to be more climate smart in their day-to-day lives and also connects them to county county resources to do it It's sort of is an umbrella to departmental programs and actions so the that sort of goes under the non 200 additional 3230,000 that we did use some consultant support We also use a lot of internal resources. We're using largely internal resources going forward. So for example, all the Earth Day activities related to climate smart. We have used internal print shop and design to get it ready for the Earth Day we needed. So there's ongoing coordinated climate communication to pull together and make more effective departmental climate communication actions programs. The separately, the pilot of broad scale data-driven behavior change is intended to look at information we need to change residents behavior in key areas in the climate action plan, and then get data and information that departments can use in their ongoing communications. So our initial pilot is focusing on transportation mode shift, and the pilot is underway. the additional funds next year would be be intended to scale up and implement right. the pilot is underway. The additional funds next year would be intended to scale up and implement recommendations of that and then also analyze it. We have indication from DOT that this will be data information that is well timed right now because they've completed right on reimagined. And so we have, you know, sort of general information about what residents are looking for and much more targeted specific information piloting on specific bus lines will help supplement that and make communication go more effective. So that's the difference between the two buckets of communication. Everything you just outlined, I support and agree with. The questions I have is how about, how do we go about further achieving those goals? And let me continue where you left off, right? Talking about the Department of Transportation and right on reimagined and mode shift. We absolutely want to get people out of single occupancy vehicles and get them into public transportation. This committee is fully supportive of it. I've been supportive of it for decades. I am skeptical as to whether or not these particular funds are necessary to do that because as we will be discussing next week, the county executive has proposed free ride on in this budget. There is nothing better for publicity than to say buses are free than to tell people to get into a bus. I don't think we need to add more money for publicity and marketing when everyone will know and it will be in every media that our buses are free and you'll hear all of us sing into the hills about it. And so I don't think it's necessary to use money to promote that good deed and good will. And so I have questions right about the utility there. The other aspect regarding the climate needs and residents asking about switching over to becoming more greener and utilizing more efficient items at their disposal, we, this committee, spent a year working to get BEPS regulations passed. And part of that meant bringing on $68 million from the Greenhouse Caps reduction fund. In our conversations and my conversations with the Green Bank and Director Munger and I think Ms. Cole Smucker, the three of us will be at a conference tomorrow talking about the Green Bank and how Montgomery County residents can go green. I think the green bank is the vehicle to do that with the $68 million that they are going to be using to disseminate information to the entire county. I don't think that this one NDA in the amount that it is is the necessary vehicle for it. I think there's redundancy in effort because we have such a big chunk of funds for the green bank with probably the biggest climate goal that we're all working towards. And I'm extremely proud of this committee for doing a year-long work to get the council to unanimously support building energy performance standards. And so there is a vehicle to drive that. I think these, the goals set forth within these two items are absolutely worthy. They are being achieved. They're being achieved in other budgetary ways. And so as I look at this whole budget, I am skeptical. I am dubious of any fee and tax increases, which means we need to find other cost savings. And because there are budgetary items that speak to these areas, I would like to put these on the reckless for broader communication, for broader conversation with our colleagues to see if they agree. I assume that they agree with the goals, but as someone who is skeptical of any revenue enhancements above what we've already generated, we need to find cost savings. And so I'm gonna motion to put these on the reckless. Seconded by Councilmember Stewart. Just to clarify, on page 13 of the packet, are you referring to both the 148,000 and the 230? Yes. Okay. So seconded by Councilmember Stewart. Did you have the question? Okay. in terms of, for some, understand, okay. So seconded by Councilman Mr. Dominguez. Yeah, so in terms of, I first of all understand absolutely this a type budget year and that's where you see mostly continuing services and climate change. Again, absolutely understand that the Council intended the pilot to be one time. I would ask you to separate the 230,000 and the 148 because the climate NDA is, you know, and this goes to what I was saying in beginning, the climate NDA is flexible and implementing. This is, you know, generally how it's intended where, you know, opportunities arise. So a couple of more examples from the past year, the climate NDA funded an electric vehicle study that analyzed 30,000 sites for electric vehicle chargers as prioritizing the sites and analyzing the feasibility of the top 20 so that we are well poised to leverage public and private dollars when they arise. So these sorts of opportunities where departments want to do things to accelerate climate change and it's not necessarily in their budget. It's not a significantly none of these are in the millions of dollars but it provides the flexibility and I think the proof is in the results that since 2021 with the council's leadership we have started 78 of the 86 actions in the climate action plan and significant, made significant progress on on complete of the 55. So again, absolutely understand the pilot, but on the base climate NDA, I would respectfully request reconsidering. So yes, we'll parse out those two. Absolutely. And again, I want to triple down on everything you said. Everything is spot on. Those are things that we have worked very hard towards moving forward as we continue pushing towards those goals. I continue to believe there are other avenues to achieving them. Namely as we work towards energy efficiency and making sure that everybody in Montgomery County can tap into funds for upgrading retrofitting their buildings. That is exactly what the VEPS regulation is to support. And that is exactly what the $68 million that the Green Bank has gotten and will be using the $68 million from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. That's what they're going to be using it for. There's a huge pot of money to work towards those goals. And so it is not to say that this work will not be done. It is absolutely going to be done. I just believe this to be redundant and outside side of separate from that work. And then again, with regard to the transportation and DOT, the best publicity is coming from the Department of Transportation and RIDON. Everybody will know about it. And from a communication perspective, we don't need to spend one penny to market something that everybody is going to know about. And so that's, again, I want all of those things to happen. I don't want taxes to increase. I want us to be efficient in our tax dollars, and I want the green bank to fully utilize the $68 million that the federal government has already given them. So, Councillor Mournestor. Thank you. I just had a couple of questions. When is the pilot scheduled to be complete? We've had a bit of a delay since the pilot is being run out of PIO and has changes in PIO. There's been a bit of a delay we're getting an updated schedule. So we're now anticipating the spring. This spring. No. No. Okay. So I think that just, again, fully supportive of this work and all the work that you're doing, we would not have, okay, the one-time funds last year if we hadn't. But just given the budget constraints we have right now, I think it's wise to, like, let the pilot finish and actually get the recommendations, look at what's happening with free ride on, and then at another point, come back to us. Now I don't like mid-year self-limitals, so I'm not saying, but I actually think that's the wisest thing really to do because we will have more information in which to say, how does this fit into the overall plan of what the Green Bank is doing, what we're doing on BEPS and we have the results. It is one of the reasons why we funded this as one time last year. So I just think we need to get it. In terms of the 148, the way that we're trying to structure our process this year is that we want to be 100% transparent in terms of what gets on the reduction list, the reconciliation list. If you want to provide us with more information, provide our colleagues with that as we're having conversations. So, you know, we have the recommendation from this committee will go to the full council, the full council will review the committee recommendations on that. So there are opportunities to continue this conversation on what you all see, the need, particularly for the 148. Absolutely. and again, the climate end day is flexible, so we can certainly look at allocating less for communication. I can say that, you know, everything I hear from departments and public and advocates is that that coordinated communication that doesn't land in any one department, there's a real need for it, and it is, you know, sometimes a heavy lift because everything is set up within the department's per chair glass's point. But I think, I think zeroing it out, you know, would miss out on some of the progress we've made like climate smart in pulling together a lot of separate departmental communication. And but again, understood it's a type of budget year, happy to provide more information. The one thing I just briefly note is that my understanding from DOT is that studies have shown that free fares are really important for equity, but don't move the needle on mode shift without something specific additional intervention, because generally if can afford to have a car which is what we're trying to do mode shift get folks out of their individual cars the cost of public transportation is in cost for prohibitive. So another reason for the timing of the pilot is to take advantage of all the publicity that chair glass is saying with potentially get free hopefully free fares. And then also move the needle on mode shift, which the free fares itself from the studies that DOT shared with me won't do. But again, understood to take budget year, just explaining that, that thinking behind it. And so I appreciate you elaborating on that. We will be talking about transportation demand management at some point in time, which is exactly the point that you're raising. And so again, there are a lot of these conversations that are happening outside of this immediate budget because there is a regulation that is before the council right now and has been about how we do that that mode shift and it is transportation demand management and it is a bill that a law that was passed in 2018 and still hasn't been implemented because of various reasons and so it is part of a bigger conversation that we are going to have and perhaps we pick this back up then. For that one point. Thank you. I have a, if I may. Yes, please. Richard, also management and budget. I want to talk about the 148 that's in the base. Demand for money within the NDA, which is not that much. It's like minus the two, 30, I think it's 488,000, something like that. It's not a lot of money demand for from departments very high so even if the direction of council is what that one forty eight is going to be spent on is not best because someone else can do that. There's a lot of other things like departments want to do that that one forty eight could be spent that of course could extend to to the 230 Also, I just wanted to say demand for that money is very high So even if you don't like that one thing there's a lot of other stuff that I would say this is why we're having these Conversations and so before it comes to full council of OMB and wants to send a memo to that effect so that when the full council reviews we can take that into consideration. Yes, thank you. And I will add that, well let me ask the geochairs. Did you already have a conversation about the PIOs and communication? We have not. Okay. This is yet another aspect where there's nearly two dozen, fifteen to twenty PIOs within the county. And if we're talking about communication and coordinated communication, it would be my preference actually to rethink the PIO area where we might have somebody on dedicated staff to do this, whether it's rethinking or combining forces within DEP and DOT, thinking about other ways to do that communication, we do have a built-in government department focused on communication. And so if that communication and coordination is not working, that's yet another conversation that needs to be had to figure out how to do this work. Thank you. I just wanted to add just a technical aspect of the when we approve one time funding, we look at that in the context of the entire budget and the revenues that we have to spend and some revenues we have are one time revenue versus full time versus ongoing sustainability. So I think that looking at the 230 specifically as a new enhancement is the appropriate thing to do. So thank you. Okay. Mr. O'Chanko. Yeah, just what I'm hearing is that the committee is supporting both those items being on the reconciliation list, but that they're open to the executive branch offering up some different tranches within those or alternative or more details to how that might be assessed. Yes. And we can back for a full council consideration. That can be brought up at the council for discussion. Yeah, I'm happy to reconsider allocating to other demands as Mr. Harris said. Again, there's trying to demand on it, so if it's not towards communication, happy to reallocate. Thank you. I appreciate my colleagues and I appreciate all of you engaging, right? Because we are all in support of these. We've been making incredible progress. And there are things outside of these two line items that are doing that work. I'm going to elevate again $68 million from the Green Bank to do some of this work. And the Department of Transportation who wants to make buses free doing this work. And so there's a broader conversation about communication that we can engage in. But look forward to a revised proposal for future consideration. Thank you, Ms. Colmo Smucker. Mr. Olcchenko. All right, so the last item within this package is the Watercoorda Protection Fund. There the county executive is recommending a, so let me get to my numbers here. Yeah, there the executive is recommending a 9.4% increase in that in the fund. That's summarized on page three of the packet. But the details of what's in that increase are shown on, let me see, page eight of the packet. So this lays out basically how you get to the $3.4 million change from FYI-25 to FYI-26. And what staffs try to do in this chart is, careful use of the verbs. So you see the first several items are ads. And so those ads are enhancement ads. Those are something that we will talk about a little bit more further down. But the rest of those items are really same services type of issues. A lot of what we see in the Water Cartier Protection Fund is inspections and maintenance of various stormwater management facilities. And the inventory goes up substantially over time, or has gone up substantially over time. So the costs for those services to do the same thing, basically you're doing currently next year also goes up. So you see a lot of that. Also you're seeing a lot of the other cross-departmental type of issues, compensation adjustment, chargebacks in the Watercoord Protection Fund, Stormdrain Work in DOT is funded out of the Water Court of Protection Fund. So is that CIP and operating budget increases, that hits the fund that shows up here. Park and planning has water quality efforts funded out of the Water Court of Protection Fund in both parks and in the planning department side. So those chargebacks are shown here. And then finance recall that the water protection charge is on the property tax bill. So there is a charge back to finance. And then the Office of Agriculture also has initiatives. So all those combined are adding a significant portion to the budget this year. And then you have some of these other more routine items. personnel cost adjustments, annualization, things like that. There is a 3% inflationary adjustment for nonprofits that you will see across county government in different departments. So then there's some puts antics as you go through it. I think what the committee should really focus on for today is really the ads. And those are noted in table four on the same page. And the first, the biggest of the ads has to do with the amended bag fee law. With the substantial change made to the bag fee, there is an inevitable need for education and outreach, both to the community in terms of utilizing reusable bags and also the business community in terms of implementing the revised charge. This was included in the fiscal impact statement for the bill, so it's not a surprise, but it is something that is included in the Water Coverage Quality Protection Fund budget this year. There's also significant demand for the Clean Water Montgomery grants that the requests far exceed the budget for that, so DEP has asked for additional funding for that. Once again, it's an ad, it's an enhancement, so that's why it's on this chart. There's also an additional position requested for the maintenance compliance program. This would be an inspector that goes out when they identify a problem with a privately owned facility. that inspector would then follow up multiple times with the property owner to make sure that those problems are fixed in a more timely manner than if you don't have a new position to spread across a growing number of facilities. And then there's some internship support and administrative services support also noted as an ad. I will note all these enhancements combined about $600,000 is equivalent to about $1.65 on the Water Quality Protection Charge, E-R-U rate. Now the charge this year is recommended to go up by I believe believe, $10.50. So, it's, let me try to find that. That's correct. Okay. So, about $1.65 of that is for these ads. And that fee, and the fiscal plan for the Water Car Protection Fund, assumes that level of increase, which is about a 7% increase or so, that it assumes that level of increase across the six years. And partly that's because we are seeing additional debt-related costs on the capital side. You've already seen some of the charge back costs from DOT and agriculture finance and parking planning. So over time, it is expected that those expenditures are going to increase in that fund. So the primary revenue source for this fund is the Watercoart Protection Charge EURU rate, which is paid by property owners on their property tax bill. The bag fee law also does provide some revenue to the fund. It's unclear how the new fee will impact revenues. There could be different puts and takes there. So that number is pretty close to, or is assumed to be pretty close for now until we have more experience with that. So really the area that could fund additional expenditures really is the charge itself. So that 1050 increases what the executive's recommended. It includes once again the dollar 65 for these different initiatives. And I will say if you take out the bag fee outreach which was presumed, then you're down to $350,000, which is maybe about $1 on the charge. So with that in mind, staff is comfortable with the executive recommendation at this point. I think there could be some marginal adjustment to the rate if the committee is interested in doing that. But it's not going to be a big reduction. Okay. Obviously, I think we do need to do focus on the bag fee outreach and that is the biggest of the enhancements. Great. Thank you, Mr. Lovechenko. Yeah. Council Member Stewart. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Lovechenko. I just, I did have some questions about, obviously, as my bill. I swear. questions about obviously is my bill. I said what? And but even when we did get the fiscal impact statement, I did have questions at that time because I know that DEP had after the Inspector General report hired someone to start the outreach to the businesses and to start doing some of this work. So you know, obviously I am supportive of it because I moved the bill forward but I just didn't know, again, just looking at this type budget if we revisited that 250 if there was any cost savings involved in that. So just wanted to, you know, I'm packaged that 250 a little bit more. Sure, thank you for the question, Council President. So, you know, I think I think a big part of the rationale here on outreach as Mr. Lovchenko noted is that this is this is a different law and there's a few critical components which may are additional outreach both to the business community and to residents. So as you well know, it includes a bag band. It's also switching to paper. It changes the tax structure and it includes importantly exclusions for certain populations. So just to unpack that a little bit, when we talk about supporting businesses as they make this transition, we're talking about many of these are smaller businesses and we're also talking about changes that may need to be made to the point of sale systems which they use to actually process the transactions. So it's a large number of businesses and it's also a complicated change that may require software and systems changes for those businesses. Also, I just want to flag that this is not an ongoing cost. This is a, the cost is represented in this budget. It is for this year. It would go down next year and then phase out in 2028. And so that's on the business side. And then in terms of outreach to the public, I want to underscore that our outreach would importantly focus on persons that are low income and people with disabilities to make sure that we're explaining this transition and what it means for them. So while we have been doing outreach work under the existing law, this new law has a lot of significant opportunities but also implementation considerations that are going to merit an increased level of outreach. I really appreciate that breakdown director Manger and I hope my colleagues will support keeping this in the budget and not adding it to the reconciliation list. Thank you. Just to clarify, because it's water quarter protection fund dollars, it would not go on the reconciliation list per se. It would be a decision by the council, whether to include it or not in the budget, and then the charge would be adjusted accordingly. Thank you for that discussion. It really helped. So I think that I fully support the 250. And I appreciate your emphasis on the outreach to businesses because this is the one, when we had the discussion of the bag tags, it was one of the, one of my concerns, is that very often, particularly for small businesses, the first time they know that they're not complying with the law is when they've been dinged that they aren't complying with the law. That's the first time that they've ever even heard of the law. So I just really appreciate that. I do have a question about the additional position and just wondering if you've included that in your lab's calculation, assuming they're not going to be hired on July 1. Hi. again, Rich Harris, Office of Management and Budget. The position, sorry, which position are you asking about? In the new, there's a new position. A new position in fiscal 2016. Yeah, right. That like all new positions. Well, almost all new positions are assumed to be laps for three months just the time it takes to hire them. Thank you. What's this one just confirming? Thank you. Doesn't seem like there are any other comments. Director Munger, do you want to speak to these items in in general? Thank you, Chair Glass. John Munger, Director of DEP. Still John Manger, Director of DEP. Still, John. The only thing I'd like to add is that across all of our programs, even in type budget years, we're really proud that we're maximizing existing resources to advance our important missions. So we've highlighted a few of these examples. I think when we talk about the water quality protection charge, it's also important to talk about how strategic we are and making sure we're focusing on how we're particularly supporting equity across these programs. So for example, when we talk about the types of grants we work on in coordination with congregations, we plan to direct 70% of our outreach and education projects in engagement focuses with underserved communities. So, you know, I think our water quality protection programs in particular, although we work on this across our entire department, are incredibly focused in really specific ways on making sure these programs are supporting our equity emphasis areas. So we thank the Council for your leadership and support on these issues. Thank you. Thank you to you and your team as well. The budget, over the last number of years, there have been fits and starts with the DEP budget itself. And so the accommodations and the requests that you've made and with the understanding and appreciate Councillor Mournestore asking about the bag fee and the need for that recognizing we appropriated funds and the fun end when the bill was passed but the ongoing need is there to communicate with everybody especially the businesses which makes a lot of sense. So not hearing any objections on these. I think that is it, Mr. Elfchenko, for this? Yeah, just to clarify. Given that discussion on the budget side, the assumption going forward is that the committee is supportive of the water quality protection charge ERI rate as recommended by the executive. That will be a separate action in mid-May by resolution. Yeah. And as you know, if that, let me just ask one more question and it's about the grants. Clearly, the need is there and we want to support all the community organizations. This additional $150,000, how many more organizations do we expect to be able to get support for the stream cleanups and all the other good work that they do. Sure, I'm gonna turn to my colleague, Amy Stevens to provide some more specifics who runs, does a terrific job running our Watershed Restoration Division. She does. Thank you. Thank you, good morning, Amy Stevens, Chief of the Watershed Restoration Division. So we see about an average of $50,000 per grant that we issue. should get us three more grants dedicated to this work. And in the, we continue to see up increase in these requests for grants by nonprofits around the county. So we believe this will help support additional implementation and outreach and education. Is this to enhance some of the operations already underway or are we going to include more water sheds for for local cleanup? It would be more. It would be more work. It would be more grants being being able to be issued within the year. Good. Yeah. Thank you. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you for this. So without objection, we'll support all of our recommendations with the items five through seven. And then that brings us to agenda item 8, which is the FR-26 operating budget for the Department of Environmental Protection, Recycling, and Resource Management Division, the Solid Waste Collection and Disposal Funds, which include the Solid Waste Service Charges, and the FY25 to 30 amended CIP for the material recycling and biological treatment facility. And this might be the last item on today's agenda, but I think it's probably the biggest item on today's agenda. And the FY26 proposal is a steep increase in DEP's solid waste budget. And it is driven largely by short-term maintenance at the resource recovery facility and also early investments to support long-term waste management infrastructure. Really important goals. And at the same time, we're seeing the service charge increase sharply, especially for small businesses, for multifamily properties and for homeowners. And those fees will change as proposed from $631 to $1,430 for small businesses, and $310 to $419 for single family homes as proposed. And so it's important to look at the long term proposal for what these funds are to support, but we also have to look at it in the context of today. In addition to the various tax proposals that have been requested, the other fees outside of this that have been proposed, and some of the largest items in this budget appear to go towards short-term repairs for the incinerator, the amount of about $35 million, and about $12 million pre-construction costs. And I know there are amendments that have been proposed that we can get to in a few moments. But there's a lot to digest here. And I suspect we will not have enough time today to talk about it all. But we're going to get as far as we can in this conversation. We've allocated time at a future hearing, I believe next week or the week thereafter, to continue the discussion. But this is a very meaty topic with a lot of important decision points for the future of Montgomery County and the future of voice management. Let me turn it over to Mr. Lovchenko for any over overarching views. Yeah and page three of the packet has a summary chart of the two funds. This is the collection fund and the disposal fund. As you said there are a lot of issues and we do have a second meeting schedule from May 1st for any follow-up items. So keep that in mind. But there are some things I think we can hopefully settle on today so that they don't have to sort of wait for some of these other issues. And just to summarize on the cost side of things, as you can see with the collection fund and the disposal fund, the collection fund is far smaller and a bit simpler to work through. The collection fund itself has recommended increase 5.3%. But really, the dominating expenditure in that fund are the residential refuse collection contracts. And those are recommended to increase about $827,000 and basically to continue the services that they're currently providing. With that, if you were to take that number out of the collection fund cost difference. It's actually down slightly because of some technical adjustments in the fund. There are no enhancements noted in the Solid Waste Collection Fund. And given that, staff feels that on the collection side of things at least, staff's comfortable recommending approval of the collection fund as recommended by the executive. Okay. Now the disposal funds, much bigger, a lot more issues there. So we do want to talk more about that. We do. That has, if you look on page six of the packet, the budget change chart, the one that we've seen on several budgets today. This breaks out basically the $43.6 million increase assumed in the Solid Waste Disposal Fund operating budget. And once again, all of these costs, none of them, you notice, none of them have the verb add or enhance. They are all increased cost or other types of charges. But obviously what sticks out is the first item, the increased cost resource recovery facility. That is the short-term capital work that Chair Glass referenced in his earlier statements, the $35.5 million. That would also be followed on in FY27 by another $29 million in costs. And the intent of that is to ensure that the facility can operate safely and effectively under permit for the next five plus years under the contract extension. Now that's not the only increase. You do have other items here, particularly out of the out of county hall disposal is also increasing. This is based on contract cost increases, both for non-processable waste that has to be sent out of county It does not burn well at the incinerator so it goes out of county. And also the ash disposal from the incinerator, we're seeing cost increases in that. So that's the other, it's albeit much smaller than the RF cost increase. It's still a significant increase overall on the budget. And then you have some other costs increases on the, I mentioned the collection contract increases. On the disposal side, we have the residential recycling contract costs. That's countywide and we're seeing some increase in that as well. And then you have what I would argue a bit more marginal increases over time. The debt service issue is what it is as we have debt service costs building in the fiscal plan. They do have to be accommodated in the operating budget. And then you have a number of other more incremental costs we can talk about. But the other costs that you're not seeing here that does affect the solid waste charges, you referenced this earlier as well. The MRBT-CIP amendment, this is the new processing method, the executive is supporting as a amended project. The initial pre-construction work would be funded with current revenue in the Solid Waste disposal fund. So, though it doesn't show up in the operating budget, it's hitting the same source of funding that the Solid Waste charges support. So, that $12 million increase that was referenced in FY26, that adds on to the costs here, the $43.4 million increase. So that $43.6 plus the $12 million is what the solid waste charges then have to accommodate within their fiscal plan. And then those costs, there are also assumed to be $12 million in costs in 27 and in 28. So that project is included in this packet for discussion because it's all part of the same universe of charges. So sort of with that in mind, the challenge going forward is we have a lot of moving parts. We have the broader issue of the council and the executive agreeing on what the long term disposal method will be for the county. The executive for a number of years has indicated his support from moving away from the resource recovery facility. And we do expect to get a consultant report soon that is looking at alternatives to that that the council can dig into. Unfortunately, that's, it's late in the budget process. So we're in a position where we have to do some FY26 budget actions that maintain the council's flexibility, maintain the resources needed in the Solid Waste Disposal Fund, but also allow the council to have a more thoughtful discussion about these alternative disposal methods going forward and how it wants to move forward. And so that is a bit of the challenge here. The Solid Waste Service Charges appear on property tax bills and the property tax bills go out early at the end of this fiscal year for the calendar year. So we don't have an opportunity, mid-cycle, if you will, to change our mind about what we want the solid waste charges to be. So the council needs to decide what it wants to support as during this budget, and then we live with that for FY 26, and then revisit the charges next year. So that also factors into it, too. On the expenditure side, as I note in the packet, the council hasn't even been briefed on the MRBT alternative disposal method. As I mentioned, we hope to have a more forward discussion after budget on that. So it's difficult to imagine the council supporting a capital project to move forward with $36 million. Before it's had that discussion of where this fits within the alternatives and what the decision points are and how that process would be moving forward. So we'll have to decide how to deal with that CIP amendment as well as part of the FY25 through 30 CIP amendment process. So that's a moving part as well. So I think I've highlighted a lot of moving parts. I did want to give DEP a chance to talk as well. I know we did get some correspondence from the executive earlier today very much on point to the discussion we're having now. So I did want the director to talk a little about that. And also their perspective on the bigger picture of the 26 budget and where we need to end up at least initially until the council can revisit the the bigger picture. So thank you Mr. Lovchenko for framing the discussion. I think you did a great job of highlighting all the moving parts about the highlighting the information we have and the information we do not have. My understanding as you just noted and I alluded to earlier, there's more information that just came out this morning. I have not been able to look at it because I've been chairing this committee, but I'll turn it over to director Manger to share the breaking news with us. Thank you. Good morning, Chairglass, Council President Stewart and Council Member Valkong. We appreciate the opportunity to discuss the county executives recommended FY26 operating budget for recycling and resource management. That's a hot topic this year, but I just want to put this in context that every year the county processes hundreds of thousands of tons of waste and recyclables and we deliver dependable, reliable, and effective and environmentally responsible, solid waste and recycling service to meet the expectations of businesses and residents. The county executives recommend it butters as you know for FY26 includes funding that's necessary to keep the system operating safely and reliably. It includes increases in the system's benefit charge or SBC to reflect essential repairs at the resource recovery facility and DEP has provided the council with a document with additional background on the Solid Waste Enterprise Fund through which these projects are funded and the importance of sufficiently funding it through that fund and you'll find that material in your packet this morning. As you know, the contract with ReWorld for the operation of the RF was set to expire in April 2026, transitioning the county's MSW or municipal solid waste management system is very large and complicated in terms of a project. It requires careful consideration of alternatives and their impacts to residents, businesses, and the environment. And the county spent recent years, as was noted, collecting information to enable a data-driven decision on the path forward. To ensure continuity of operations, the county negotiated a limited five-year extension contract until April 2031, retaining the ability to terminate that contract early for convenience as in the original agreement. In order to extend the operation of the RF during this period, certain repairs are needed to keep the equipment running effectively. And while you have more information on this in your packet as well, just to give you a few examples, the county, the Waste Authority, and an independent third party engineering consultant reviewed the proposal list of projects and paired it down only to those projects that are critically necessary for the safe and reliable operation of the equipment. So this is not a wish list by any means. But to give you an example of what some of these look like, various boiler and water wall tubes are needed for safety and reliability. Auxiliary gas burner repairs are needed for emission control, bag house replating and duct replacement is needed for emission control and crane workers needed for reliability. I want to also note that we have an integrated solid waste management system in the county and some of these dollars are also dedicated for necessary repairs at the county's transfer station in Derwood. Approximately 5 million in the amended request would be for work at the transfer station. Generally coincides with an unprecedented budget situation in challenging economic times to temper the impact of these costs in FY26 and 27. The department's identified savings in FY25 that can be used to fund some of these costs and has worked to spread projects and associated costs out over a longer period. What does this mean? It means that for FY26, we've proposed an amended reduction of $7 million and that would also translate to $11.8 million in FY27 with $14 million shifted out to FY28. Through these actions, the increase in the SBC can be significantly curtailed in in FY26 and 27. The FY26 single family rate would be reduced from the originally recommended $407 per year to $396 per year. Again, that's an annual cost. The multifamily rate would be reduced from $39 to $34. And the medium category non-residential rate would be reduced from, and just as reminder when we're talking non-residential it's a formula based multiplier which is based on the volume of waste and square footage area but for the medium category it would be that multiplier of due reduced from 1,294 to 1,175 and as you noted this was work that the department's been working on over recent weeks and that information was transmitted to council this morning to the committee and your staffs. I want to note that as was mentioned a small portion of the recommended SPC reflects costs for the design of an alternative MSW management system. This system, known as materials, recovery and biological treatment, would extract recyclables from the waste stream to return to the market and also stabilize the remaining organic fraction in the waste stream thereby reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Bless you. This system was identified as the preferred alternative and the analysis of MSW system alternatives provided to the county because it ranked highest in terms of our ability to divert more waste and reduce our carbon footprint. As we briefed you on previously a shift to an alternative MSW system takes time and the initial design work for the system would need to commence in FY26 in order to secure this alternative system by the end of the current RF extension. The county remains committed to improvements in our MSW system and the department is open and continues to evaluate near-term improvements to our system. It's important to note that near-term solutions would not change the need for the FY 26 funding included in the CES recommended budget. The county's at a critical point in our effort to secure long-term, sustainable management of waste. It's a key component of our broader aiming for zero waste initiative, and we really appreciate the time this morning to present. We will continue to work with Council to decide on a pathway that continues to serve our residents and businesses here in Montgomery County. Look forward to addressing any questions. Thank you, Dr. If you have any. If we have any. Yes, wishful thinking. Appreciate that summary about the difficult task that lays ahead. Mr. Lovchenko, in framing this, talked about in analysis that is currently ongoing to be able to create a path forward. We do not have that analysis, which would be very beneficial to us before we start making investments to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. Can you share with us what the timeline is for that analysis when we will get it and what you expect it might say? Yes, thank you for the question. So we have provided preliminary briefing to the committee and staff based on the draft analysis. We're hoping the analysis will be finalized in the coming months, and we will certainly continue to share the information. But we do have a sense of some of the key parts of that analysis. And as I noted in my previous words, one of the primary takeaways of that analysis is that the preferred alternative system would be adding advanced waste processing technology which would allow us to significantly reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from our waste processing systems in addition to diverting significant amount of waste, but we will continue to, of course, share that information as the report is finalized with the committee. Do you know when we'll be able to get that report? Sure. We expect it will be finalized in the next month or two. So we're talking near term, but I also just want to note that importantly, that report is referring to long-term systems options that the county has at its disposal, which is a different issue than what is being requested and reflected in the FY26 budget, which primarily focuses on the need for continuity of services for our existing MSW system. So I just want to separate those two issues out for clarity. Correct. Two of the many moving parts moving, right? And so I just want to pick, I'll pick up on that last point. I had said in my opening comments that the fees that are being proposed for small businesses go from $631 to $1,400 and for residents from $310 to $419. The increase in those fees, can you parse out how those increases are being allocated to the point that was just raised? There are fees that need to go to the ongoing maintenance, and then there are fees that are going to the future planning for a facility. So elaborate or demystify where these fees are going. Exactly, yeah. No, you just turn it down. Sure, so yeah, just to put this in context, and I'm not sure what page of the packet. This is noted on, but I know it's in there. But for context, the amount of dollars that's included in the budget for the advance waste processing system, and it's not worth it to note that the funds are just to start planning and designing that system is $12 million. Thank you. And whereas the cost associated with the short-term repairs to the existing system as amended in the amendment that was provided, a hot off the press would be $28.5 million for FY26. So the news of the day while we've been in session is the originally requested $35 million for maintenance is going down to $28.5 million? That's correct for FY 26. Okay. So two questions come from that information. First, what happens if that $28.5 million is not allocated? Because the long term goal is to close that facility. And so let me ask the more important question, why are the investments being made to the tune of at least this year $28.5 million with tens of millions of dollars in years ahead if the plan is to close the facility within five years. Sure, thank you for the question. As I noted in my remarks, the types of projects that are included in the budget requests for this year are very much limited to those that are necessary to maintain reliable and safe operations of the facility and to ensure continuous processing of the county's trash stream. So these are the types of projects that failure to do so would risk would jeopardize our ability to fulfill this critical public service and and you know essentially would could lead to disruption and service that could be the precursor to health and environmental risks Should there there be a disruption in existing service? So the projects, and as I mentioned, an additional document is included in your packet, which explains how the list of projects was developed based on independent third-party engineering analysis, and how it was also negotiated. And then the hot news of the day, as you said, is that we've actually readjusted the schedule to relieve budget pressures in FY26. But just to put these in context, these are projects are only those that are critically necessary for the short term continuation of the existing waste system that we have in place. Last question for now before I open it up to colleagues. So the $28.5 million that is now being requested as of this morning. Last year, only $200,000 was requested. Why such an astronomical increase over one year if this has been an ongoing need and the will or interest to close the facility has existed for a very long time. Thank you for the question, Chair. So as you're aware, the committee that, excuse me, the county and with the assistance of technical consultants has been evaluating alternatives to the RF and continues to do so, and that includes analysis of the cost and timing needed to implement an alternative system. Transitioning the system, which manages approximately 600,000 tons of waste a year from across the county is a complex and multi-step project. During the period during which these options have an R being evaluated for obvious reasons, the county has avoided making repairs and replacements out of facility that would go beyond the immediate necessity for the short term continuation of the facility given the commitment to closure of the facility and transitioning to it as soon as possible. Thank you. I Member Powell. Thank you. Thank you for the discussion today, but thank you for being available for, we've been having this ongoing discussion for a while. It's a very complex decision and a monumental decision. And so we're not just discussing the now $28 million in operating in a $12 million or $36 million pop to the CIP. We're talking about what the county is going to do with its solid waste for the foreseeable future. And we still don't know how much it's going to cost. So when we look at the remedial repairs, So we're down to 28 for FY 26, but the cost is still $64 million. We're still going to spend $64 million on the remedial recovery. But we don't have any idea how much the MRBT is going to cost in the future. We know you're asking for $36 million, 12 over the next three years, but we don't have an idea of how much the system is going to cost. And to the point of, we should not be having this discussion about what we're going to do with our solid waste in the future, in the confines of annual budget deliberations. It's just not fair to – well, certainly we have been talking about it for a long time, but there are seven, eight others who haven't been involved in this conversation. And we're going to, whatever recommendation that we provide, we're going to ask our colleagues, sit on scene, to agree with us and believe us. And so it just puts us in a situation where we just don't have all the facts. And I know that you are perhaps as frustrated as we are about where we are. We should have been having the prior council should have been having this discussion for the past five years. The county executive made a claim that he was going to close the incinerator a long time ago. The day he made that promise was the day he should have started talking about how that was going to happen. So I'm terribly frustrated with where we are on that. But as Mr. L'Archango said, we need to make decisions. And so I do have a couple of questions that I'll just ask. The remedial work that has to be done. So the shift to the small shift to FY 25 dollars, is that going to impact, so that's not going to impact the fee? Is that correct? Okay. That's correct. Okay. And the shift to the 27 dollars or 28 dollars, we will be having this discussion again in FY28 for a potential increase. That's right. Okay. Just wanted to clarify that. And then chair asked about, you know, could some of this, could some of the remedial work not be done? I appreciate you're saying it's not a wish list. It's a, we have to do it if we, if we want to be safe. And I appreciate that. So part of this discussion that we've had ongoing is that reducing waste from the waste stream. So we haven't talked about that in this context. And so where are we with the composting facility and when will that happen? Sure, thank you for the question, council member and for your perspective. So I think of when we talk about our materials management system, there's a few different key categories. One is source reduction, so avoiding things from being in existence as trash in the first place. Thank you for your support of the bag law. That's a great example by avoiding those from coming into the stream of products in the first place. We avoid it from ending up in the trash stream. There's also a number of recycling programs that the county is already has in place and you mentioned an important one when we talk about food that we're really eager to expand. You know the money that's just to sort of put this in context and I will come back to your question. The category of money that we're talking about today is for the third bucket which is probably the the least fun to talk about, and it's what happens with all the waste that's left over at the end of all that. And so they're obviously all connected because the more that's in the first two categories, you know, you have the opportunity to keep things out of the ultimate disposal path. So as you know, we have a pilot in place right now for food scraps that were in the process of expanding and with council support. We're also evaluating options for constructing a dedicated organics facility in the county that would allow us to expand organics, organics, county wide instead of at the pilot phase. And you answered the question. I was then going to ask is the, when we look at the future, the MRBT, we're assuming that the countywide composting is going to happen and it's going to reduce a significant amount of waste, right? That's the assumption that you're making. These are all complimentary policies. So they each serve a different part of the system and any reductions from the first two categories, I described source reduction and recycling could lead to reductions. I think it's important that those volumes vary program by program and technology by technologies. So we want to make sure that we're making those decisions that are informed by accurate projections of other jurisdictions' experience with those programs. So we're counting for the appropriate volumes that we could anticipate being reduced by any given program. I appreciate that. So I think that it adds to the complexity of making sure that all of those streams are happening as you are proposing them to happen. And then, so if we separate the repairs with the future MRBT, the decisions that we have to make, we have to make the decision about the repairs. But that's separate in part from the decision about the CIP funding. When we haven't had any briefings about this system, we knew that we've had a full council briefing on closing the incinerator and the extension and I appreciate that and I don't and I think and that was certainly the right choice given where we were at that particular point in time. But we haven't had a briefing on what we're going to do long-term with our trash. And I feel like we're in a position where we're having to make decisions without full information. And I'll yield at this point in time. Thank you, Council Member Baklum. Council Mr. Stewart. Thank you. You'll hear a similar theme across it today, because it's just these are really hard decisions to make. And we started our session a number of hours ago, talking to WSSC about their fear and fear increase, which we all have said, is desperately needed just to get clean water to people. So these are basic necessities. We've talked about a number of other fees. We've unfortunately for Ms. Kogel-Schmucker looked at her budget with a fine tomb cone and was, you know, discussing whether or not to keep in or keep out $148,000, which in the grand scheme of our overall budget, is really not that much. But the reason we're doing this is because of where we are right now. And I think the frustration you hear here is that this could have been prevented or spread out. And I know that many of you, Kelly, you're brand new and even director Manger, this started before you, but it is so frustrating to have a county executive who has been talking about closing this incinerator for so many years and for this to land on us this year in such a huge way, given all the other things that we are looking at right now. And so I think that's the frustration you're hearing and why it's showing up as we're talking about other budgets and things that we may want to do and not to confuse what is a fund versus operating costs. But when people open their property tax bill, they're going to see all of these things go up at a time when our families are struggling. And to put this in the broader context, this morning, while we've been meeting, Moody's downgraded Washington DC in their bond rating. The reason they gave was because of the dependence of Washington DC on the federal workforce and their commercial vacancies. Montgomery County has the same threats. If we jeopardize or in jeopardy of a downgrade, that has repercussions for generations for us. So as we are thinking about how we're going to move forward, if we are downgraded, that increases how much we have to spend to borrow money and jeopardizes our plans in the future. So I just want to step back and put that into the overall context of what we're talking about here because each bit of our budget, all these bits and poles are so critical this year as we're thinking about it. And these repairs, direct amongers, as you said, are necessary for public health and safety and all of those things. And I don't think we're disagreeing with that. We're just so frustrated that this is where we are and what to keep the solvency in the fund to keep us doing the bare minimum. This is what we're faced with. And so I don't have a question, but I do have a request that's kind of outside the budget process. But I just think as we're whatever decisions we're going to be making moving forward, I would ask that the DEP, the chair's okay, that we get a monthly status report every month on where we are with this. Because we've been hearing about this report that we're supposed to be getting for months now. And we still don't have it. And we're not going to have it in time to make the decisions about the CIP and planning for the future. So that's going to get kicked, but we're going to have to make those decisions now. So sorry for the soap box, but I just think that I'd like to put that request in because I think we need to start putting in place ways in which we can keep informed of how things are moving forward so that this committee and this council can work in partnership with DEP so that we don't end up in the same place next year that we are putting in place the mechanisms we need the funding we need so that we can plan and move this forward without any more surprises to our residents. Thank you. I appreciate that and I also appreciate you, Council President, having the hearing that Council Member Balcombe alluded to so that everybody was on the same page, everybody could ask questions and quite frankly learn as much as possible but there's still much more to learn. And so I have three questions, three more questions before we wrap up because to the point that was just made, Councillor Mourn, welcome and I have a committee in an hour or so on the Economic Development Committee to make sure that our commercial real estate and business sector is able to continue moving forward despite the challenging times. Director Munger, in the original proposal and what you shared about the need to update and make repairs to the incinerator, before this briefing it was $35 million and now it's been amended to $28.5. What changed if the rationale was for short-term safety and now it's been reduced by $7.5 million, what's the rationale there? The only thing that's changed is the schedule. So is that to say that it's all amendable? No, with them in fact saying the contrary, the list of projects is unchanged and is still limited to the necessity of projects that are needed for the short-term operation of this facility. What we've done is essentially identified additional funds in FY25 based on revenue from electricity sales generation, so we could pay for some of those costs in FY25. And similarly, we were able to move some of the projects to later years, so the list of projects remains the same. It's just the order of the work that will allow for there to be an alleviation of rate impacts in FY 26 and FY 27. Okay. I'd like an itemized, itemized information about the breakdown that you just shared if there was found money in another department or another, another fund? Is that what you're saying? No. No. To be clear, let me take a step back here. So to be clear, we've essentially changed the order of projects that will allow us to pay for some of the work this year. And that's essentially because the revenues that the county receives from the sale of electricity fluctuate with the electricity market. So in some cases, although we budget for a certain amount of revenue from the sale of electricity, we may actually receive more revenue than initially budgeted. In this case, that allowed us to use some of that funds to avoid some of the costs that we thought would initially have to be included in the FY26 fund revenue. Okay. Next question. What happens if we do not approve those fees? The fee increases. Sure, so as we talked about it before, failure to fund these repairs and refurbishment's projects, risk the ability to operate our current waste system and jeopardize the ability to fulfill what's obviously a critical public service and raises potential concerns for human health and environmental risks that would result if those came to pass. So the fee increases that are being proposed and being earmarked for the incinerator repairs because it's going to a few different items but those that are being used in the immediate short term for the repairs you're saying are needed for the basic operation of that facility. That's correct. Okay. And last question for me this morning, those repairs you have requested come from fees. Can they come from general operating budget expenditures? Thanks for the question. Chair, that question goes beyond the FY26 budget and raises potential financial questions that should be discussed with the Department of Finance. I'll also note that additional information on that question was included in your packet and was developed by the Department and coordination with the Department of Finance. I will say there is a memo from the Department of Finance in our report, our packet today. And I think this goes to why I raised the issue of our bond rating and our financial institutions because we do have this fund and we need to make sure it's solvent and that this work is done and paid for through the fund because that is how it is set up. So our financial institutions will review that and look at that. And the reason I know about this is because it was the same reason why when we did the bring your own bag fee, we had to look at continuing the charge that we had with the bag fee because of the way the fund was set up for our storm border projects and other things. So I know the Department of Finance has provided that, but again, we need to think about this in the bigger context of other moving pieces of our budget and how our financial institutions are looking at Montgomery County. And so that's linked to that as well. Thank you. Dual hats, right? So important point to raise. And I just want to conclude by going back to the point that comes from a welcome noted. There are eight other members who are not following this as closely as we, because they are following their own committee portfol is extremely closely. Given the information we have, the questions we've asked, and the information that is still outstanding, I think the next step would be to have a full council conversation on this for the betterment of the entire body. And hopefully by then that we might have some more information. I will be able to better digest the amendments that just came in and follow up individually if I have more questions there. But I think we've gotten the information as much of the information that we're seeking now and now we need to have this broader conversation, as has been noted, about the future of waste management Montgomery County in the context of our bonding in the context of our fee structure in the greater context of additional taxes that are being proposed and might even change by tomorrow. I'm not sure but it would behoove the body to have a full conversation. Yes member Bobbi. Yes, thanks. Just one, I alone so one last question, last question for this morning. So the CIP for the MRBT, that's planning and that determination, has not been made that this is the way we're going, right? The MRBT. I mean, there's still questions in play as to whether that is the solution that we're going with. Thanks for the question, Council Member. So based on the analysis that's been completed to date, we understand that the advanced waste processing technologies that you're asking about provide significant, significant reductions to our carbon footprint, associated with the race treatment also would allow a staple significant materials out of the waste drain that have value. So that's why this is included as part of this dialogue is because we know that that the opportunity presented by these technologies is hugely significant when it comes to greening our waste strain. So I will say just to distinguish the council itself as a body has not weighed in on And what is the waste disposal path going to be for the next 20 or 30 years. There's, you know, we just, we just approved a solid waste management plan that noted that, you know, strategies are being looked at that may allow for the closure of the resource recovery facility, but there's no formal counsel position on that. And that raises some of these issues that you've been, you know, sort of inadvertently going in circles in it, you know, you can't avoid it, that go back to the RRF. I think DEP's made a very good case about what work needs to be done if the facility is going to be remaining open for the next five years. But what about the question of what if the council were to decide, well, we don't really like the RRF, but we don't like the other options either. So let's keep the RF open for the foreseeable future. Well, what does that do to the short-term improvements, if anything? Or alternatively, at the January briefing, some Council members asked DEP, is there a way to perhaps close the RF early to pursue some other interim initiative, though it'll allow for that? And I know that DEP is looking at that, but there's nothing before us. But if you were to close it early, presumably that would also allow for some of these costs to be avoided. Most likely they have had to be redirected to whatever new initiative you have. But that's what gets at the difficulty of saying, yes, let's approve the short-term improvements for the RF we know they're needed, because some of these other pieces are still moving. So the thank you. The purpose of my question was, if we funded, for instance, do we just fund 12 million in 26 and not 12, 12, 12? We had a briefing earlier this week that we have a Delta in the CIP budget that we need to fix. And so I just wanted to put that on the table, not be answered today but perhaps that's something we look at. Well, yeah, just to note, as Mr. Ort mentioned, we have the current revenue going towards that project is coming out of the Solid Waste Disposal Fund and the bonds presumably would down the line if we were to move forward with MRBT. So it has its own affordability issues within the Solid Waste Disposal Fund, but it's not a broader spending affordability issue with regard to general obligation bonds. But the second point you make though, what do we need to do for the MRBT project? That's going to be a council decision. What are they comfortable approving now, given we have not had a robust discussion about MRBT and whether the council even supports further planning work, much less moving into design and construction of something like that. So there are a range of things the council could do. They could approve it as recommended by the executive and move forward with some of the planning. There are off ramps in, they're looking at a design build operate type of model for this. So during the planning and design work, if the project as it's developing turns out to be far more expensive or less efficient than maybe the initial planning considered. Then it could be stopped, but you would have already spent a certain amount of money to get there. Alternatively, the council could choose to defer discussion of the amendment until after it's had more discussion of the bigger picture. That would slow things down a bit. You heard that that may have an impact in terms of having that work done or having the project ready to move by the time the incinerator would close at the end of its contract renewal. But I mean, the council could choose to wait on appropriating money to that project and assume that there is some delay in it. So those are all options that the council has now and it's a matter of what is the comfort level that the council has with all of this given where we are. I wanna thank you for the conversation because it is a really important conversation. And as you're hearing from us, it's a frustrating conversation to have to make these decisions in the confines of this budget when there is information that we do not yet have, but the decisions that we would be making today are decades-long commitments. And so I appreciate Council President Stewart agreeing to take this out to the full council whenever that time might be within the budget. Soon. And let's make sure we have as much information as possible to provide. And I encourage staff to reach out to the eight other council members to try to speak with them in advance of this conversation because we cannot bring everybody up to speed in the 60 to 90 minutes that would be allotted at a full council session. And so there's homework to be done but we got got to get it done. Just speaking of schedule, we do have the May 1 follow-up meeting on this topic. It sounds like you're saying skip that. Yeah, let's find. I think the committee has sufficiently had our conversation and now we need to bring the full council. And in terms of full council, typically the way the schedule works once we get through committee in early May, then that following week becomes all council all the time. I defer to the council president to determine the schedule. And I don't have it in front of me now. I will have to work with our clerk and others to figure out the schedule. So we will make it happen. We will make it happen. Yeah, we have alerted folks that we expect this issue to take up more time than it did last year, certainly. So this, along with several other key issues for the council this year will be worked into the full council schedule. And so Mr. Lovchenko and Director Manger, the homework assignment that you have is to reach out to the eight other council members to make sure that whenever the council president schedules this, there's sufficient time to get on their schedules for you to have these in-depth discussions. With that, thank you. We're adjourned.