Good afternoon. Welcome to the Economic Development Committee budget session. We have six items today, and we're going to start with the conference and visitors beer, beer, cancel the word, NDA. But before we kick it off, I need to have an, I need to make an announcement. I, and it's confusing because people see the item on the agenda and it says conference center. And people automatically assume that it's all about the married conference center and all the money goes there. And they don't think about this at MoCo at all. So I want to say that at front. Number two, it's just to be completely transparent. La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la conference center. And as you may know, the agreement with Merriott that is a 10-year contract, was recently signed by the county executive a few weeks ago. That agreement did not include a labor piece agreement, LPA. The county executive chose to sign an agreement without the LPA. Nothing to do with the county council the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the they contacted me as chair of the economic development committee. That's why. And the union contacted me because of the chair because of the chair. And I mean the opportunity to have the labor piece of women was doing this contract 10 year counter that is already signed by therets. So the opportunity is gone. That doesn't mean the mayor cannot do it if they want to, but we don't have a legal mechanism to push for that. And I end up the conversation yesterday telling the mayor and telling the union, I believe in labor organizing. I'm a strong supporter of workers rights. And I'm going to be working on legislation in the future to avoid these type of issues happening right now. The county has the mechanism to have LPA contracts only when it on the trash collections, that's it. And that was, that law was passed like many years ago, like a long time ago. So I just wanted to put that on the record just because I was contacted as Chair of Economic Development Committee. And with that, Mr. Ali, please kick us off. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, members of the Economic Development Committee. Yes, thank you for clarifying the name. It is the Conference of Visitors, Bureau of NDA, but we'll refer to them as visit Montgomery throughout this discussion. The County Executive has recommended an increase of $88,000 from the FY25 approved budget. And this includes $20,000 enhancement enhancement as well as the 3% inflationary adjustment. Council staff has also identified a potential reduction for discussion but has not recommending anything on that item just related to the unique funding structure of visit Montgomery. But we can get into that as we work through the packet. Just as a just an Orient folks section A shows the recommended FY26 budget compared to the approved FY25 budget. There's a background on the department in section C on page two and visit Montgomery does not receive an operating budget and equity tool analysis. I'll stop there and turn it over to visit Montgomery to provide some opening remarks. Good afternoon, Council Chair Fanny Gonzalez, Council Member Glass, Council Member Bacom. Thanks for allowing us have some time to respond to the staff packet today. I'm joined by three staff members, Maria Bordeaux, lead of strategy and business development, Latisha Engel, Senior Marketing Manager, Lee Calicut, Senior Decination Sales Manager, and also today with me is Matt Liver, Director of the Maryland Soccer Foundation, Maryland Soccerplex. He is also Chair of the Maryland Tourism Coalition Legislative Committee and advocates on behalf of the tourism industry at a local, state, and federal level. I want to point to page four of the packet. The fiscal year 2021 chart indicates an allocation from the hotel taxes of $1.6 million. But the county actually allocated to us the actual hotel tax collections, generated $488,000 that year, which is a decreased our budget of 71%. We had staff voluntary pay cuts and we had staff layoffs. We do not want to go backwards after a very dark time for our industry. Allow. Do you want to pull the slides up now? Okay, great. We were here meeting with the Econ Committee on January 23rd. I just want to revisit a couple of items. In fiscal year 24, $23 million was collected in hotel taxes. That was an 11% increase from fiscal year 23. Room night demand in calendar year 22 increase 29% calendar 23. Room night demand increased 15% and in 2024 it leveled off at a 2% increase but the reason the revenues were higher is that the hotels were driving hotel rates. Year-to-date occupancy is up about 1.3%, but revenue per available room is up 3.1%. The most recent data we have is 2023. We should have 2024 data soon. This is from our source source of economics. There was a 4.5% increase in day and overnight visitors to to the county from 22ats Initiative, the TASMakers Trail, support to the urban districts events throughout the year, show the progression upward of the day trip visitor. A 5.2% increase in visitor spending from 2022 to 2023, put us at $1.9 billion that was spent in the economy by visitors. There's over $589 million also generated in federal state local taxes from visitor spending. For every dollar spent in our from our $2.3 million budget we return $808. Let me briefly touch on organizational metrics. Our sales division has seen remarkable growth with bookings up 68% from fiscal year 19 to fiscal year 24. Those are bookings as a direct result of sales and business development staff in the marketplace. Not things that might come to the county that we don't see or we haven't touched, but people have come here because of our advertising efforts. On the marketing side we've tailored our advertising and communication strategy to better connect with travelers resulting in a 360 percent increase in our website traffic. I also want to point out the importance of sports tourism. We continue to support the events that are coming to the county. Also want to showcase that we have quite a few amateur and professional golf events coming in the future. My response to the question regarding impacts to our programming, if an amount less than $640 to $5,000 is approved. First, investment in our program provides a positive return. For every million dollars in hotel taxes generated by visitors, we receive $70,000, and the balance of $930,000 goes to the general fund. We have two basic pillars of our efforts, destination marketing, destination management. Over the last several years, the new funding has been allocated to destination management and the development of visitor experiences and providing support to promote and grow events in the county and the MoCoEATS brand. Enhance funding over the last four years. We are fully staffed. We have seven full-time employees. The funding we've received to maintain over the last four years has provided us with a much more aggressive marketing and sales strategy. We've added new research tools to better understand our customers and track our metrics. We implemented, implemented, and seasonal marketing and advertising campaigns to target consumer leisure travel during down times like the holidays. In calendar year 2024, the month of December through our holiday campaign occupancy in the hotel is about 5%. Our holiday campaign in 2023 occupancy was up 3.5%. The sales division has subscribed to a new prospecting tool that allows them to further prospect for customers and key markets. We've deployed staff and other marketing resources to further advance agritourism through the promotion of our self-guided tastemaker trail. We've engaged this fiscal year with a tour operator who's going to work with our team to develop a narrative driving tour of the tastemaker trail that can be marketed to groups. We launched our MoCoEats initiative during the pandemic that we've continued to evolve into a brand that is embraced by our residents and businesses. We successfully completed the MoCoEats Food and Beverage Showcase and Hospitality Conference. It took place this year, March 30 and 31, 93 vendors, 20 on a waiting list, 600 tickets sold. We had deceased our ticket sales. The consumer sentiment analysis for that event, 75% rated the event excellent, 8% very good. The marketing division can provide support and resources and marketing dollars to some of our partners to help them expand their events. A few of those events to reference are farm tour and harvest sale and heritage days. The marketing division's new research tool, Symphony, allows the staff to geoofence areas of the county and provide data to those districts or individual businesses. The next slide shows what and across the board cut of 28% would look like to our budget. Operating in personnel down 5%, marketing down 43%, advertising down 52%, research 71%, destination sales 38%. Marketing is inclusive of public relations, website development, photography, video development, mobile apps, agency fees for creative design, trade shows, and other support and sponsorships of events. Under Research we would cut critical mention subscription, which is our PR measuring tool and ripe, which is a hotel booking tool that provides insights on our travelers. I would not recommend we cut symphony because this is a new tool measures our outcomes. In sales and business development, we would cut any trade shows over the last two years and evaluate all the existing trade shows. We would also reduce sponsorship of trade shows and other events in the DMV in the Mid-Atlantic to help us elevate our county on a larger scale to the meeting professionals. I'll take any questions, thank you. Thank you so much, Ms. Rolf. Would you like to introduce yourself before we open it up? Sure, Matt Leverum, the Executive Director of the Maryland Soccerplex, as Kelly had mentioned. I'm also the Legislative Chair of the Maryland Tourism Coalition, so we're the statewide organization for tourism business in the state. I just want to add some state level stuff to what Kelly said just so you guys hear the same thing the state heard from me this year. So while a lot of her sticks up there about hotel rooms and hotel tax, it doesn't tell the full story. So it's not just heads and beds, it's food and belly, it's credit cards on countertops, it's gas and in cars. So there's a lot of industries that tourism touches. So that keeps a lot of businesses going in this economy right now that's really, really tough. Tourism in general across the state for every dollar we spend in tourism marketing. It returns $34 to the state and local governments. That saves Maryland tax players every household $1,027. So we're reducing the tax burden. because it's important to remember, tourism money is not Maryland money. It's someone else's state's money being spent here, which makes all of our families a lot happier when they get that tax built the end of the year. Some state numbers, we had 45.1 million visitors in 2023. They spent $20.5 billion in generated $2.4 billion in tax revenue. towards the industry, it includes 190,000 people in the state of Maryland. Looking at tourism as a holistic thing, it's also the front door for the state and county. It lets our county and our state express what our values are. It gets people to look at potentially moving here, it gets businesses to look at potentially moving here as well. And Kelly mentioned sports tourism side. That is the fastest growing segment of tourism in the US. We are also approaching the mega decade of sports. So we have three FIFA World Cup events. We have two rugby World Cup events. We have two Olympics in the US. Not to mention the US, 225th anniversary. So these are all mega events that we want to make sure that we can market to. These visitors that are coming in, while they're here for something else that bring them in the Maryland. Another important thing to remember about tourism funding, it's an investment, it's not an expense line. So we're always bringing in more money than we spend. And again, it's someone else's money, so we want to make sure to highlight that again. So it's important that we keep this money in the budget to allow us to do the job to bring more people here. So if we cut funding, it's going to be less people and it's going to trickle down to these businesses that will have less visitors. Can I, sorry, one last slide I do want to point your attention to and we can talk about this off budget season, but destination DC, this is a slide that shows you where we stack up in the region. So destination DC in fiscal year 22 added a tax that dedicated 100% to their budget. So they went from 30 million to 52 million dollars in a budget, which is great for us, right? Because we're on the border. We do know when to add another tax. Anathilis and Anarondal County receives county and city taxes. They get 17%. Prince William County has an 8% tax. 5% of that tax goes back to tourism. Not 5% of the total. We get 7% of the total. They get 5% of the 8%. Loudoun has an 8% tax, 3% of that is dedicated to tourism. Frederick County, 100% of their taxes for tourism. And Fairfax, 100% of the hotel taxes are reinvested to the DML. And note that Arlington is at the bottom of this grid, but they're in the middle of a new improvement district formula. And if implemented, we will be at the bottom and I do not want to be at the bottom. Thank you. Thank you so much for that piece of information. I think it's very useful, Ms. Groff. And thank you, Mr. Libre, for being here. This is economic development. And the reduction that you, the potential reduction that you see on the staff report is just because we did ask the staff to identify places where we could possibly have these reductions. That doesn't mean that we're going for it. But I want to thank Mr. Ali because he's just doing what we ask him to do. Not just on this item, but every single item that we have in our agenda. So I just want to pull that out there. It's not an attack on you. So before I open it up to committee members, Mr. Harmon Espah, any remarks that you would like to share? Thank you so much, Chair Franny Gonzalez, and members of the committee. for the name is Ken Hartman and Spada, Assistant Chief and Administrative Officer. I do want to say that we continue as a government to be impressed by the work of the Conference and Visitor Bureau visit MoCo. Especially in promoting not just Montgomery County for tourism, but promoting and supporting the industries that then support tourism. For those who went to the MoCo Eats Conference this year, it was probably one of the most impressive engagements with our local business community that I've seen in years. And we would like to engage with CVB more, not less. Montgomery County is the epicenter of the hospitality industry headquarters. one the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of more or not less with what they do as was said before getting people to visit here is the front door to getting them to think about living here and opening a business here. It's all tied together. As you said, Chair, Friend and Consoles, it's all part of economic development. Thank you. Yes, I wholeheartedly agree with your remarks and that more creates conference. Amazing work that you guys have done in Israel. We have, I mean, I talked about Mary a little minute ago and it's important to keep pushing for hospitality and the work that you guys are doing. I'm gonna start with Council Member Cells. Thank you Madam Chair. Does the hotel and motel revenue include Airbnb's as well? Yes, I've been told it does. Okay. All right. And the 20,000 for the influencers, how is that allocated to a particular project? So actually, Balaun, I have discussed this prior to the hearing. We are going to absorb that cost into our budget. There are fees associated with bringing influencers here between their travel and their time and the meals, and that's what the line item was there for. But we have discussed absorbing that into our regular budget. Okay, and then one last question regarding the item on page five. How are we evaluating the impact of tourism on our top sectors, the biotech, pharmaceutical, quantum? If at all. We're actually internally looking at that. There was a government conference actually that happened in the spring in the meeting planning world that we pulled from our budget because of the changes at the federal government level. So, what you'll see going forward is us being a little more strategic in other sectors like bio and pharma and corporate and association versus federal government. We all know for years we've been saying we need to diversify our economy. Well that holds true to what we're also trying to do strategically. Awesome. I look forward to hearing more. Thank you. That's all. And I want to clarify the STR side of that is short-term mental. So the state just passed a bill that will go and affect in 27, where they'll become a state collected tax through the controller's office. And it was negotiated with the short term rental companies. You'll probably actually see a higher return now because they will have you be able to track the data from the corporate level down to the state. So there's some things to work out on it still. It's not the perfect bill, but it will, it should on that side Thank you. We'll be tracking that bill then all right Thank you so much after we're done with remarks. We're gonna go back and go decision-point by the decision point Can you remember welcome? Okay, I don't know if that I'm speaking on the the overall amount. Okay, so I agree that this is an investment and I feel comfortable keeping the full amount in. The only question I had you answered is what are the other jurisdictions doing in terms of the amounts. I do think that we should put on the post budget list to look at if this is the new reality of funding more than 7%, which it has post pandemic, I think we need to just reopen that and look at do we change the revenue model in terms of changing it from a 7% to a different number or what, how do we make sure that this is sustainable and predictable for you all? So I'm very supportive of the county executives recommended budget for this item. But want to have a deeper discussion. So a year from now, three years from now, we're not in that position where somebody says, why are we giving them more than 7%. So let's try to remedy that. Excellent. I agree. So perhaps in the winter time, once we're done with this budget. Yes. Guess I'll remember last. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. If you could email that to us as well, I liked it and want to use some of the data that you included. I know it's in our packet but it was nicely designed in the PDF. So the conversation that was just brought up about funding, it sounds to me, my colleagues won't understand this, like the conversation we're having about parking lot districts in that it's a model that's been used for decades and it needs to be re-thunk, right? And Mr. Harmonist spot is nodding his head as well. So and that is something, this committee and the Teenie committee as well. So let's add rethinking this and PLDs for the committee after budget. Appreciate that. I am glad that you all spoke about the beforehand about the influencers and that you all absorbed that. I did have questions. I also do have a question about the inflationary adjustment. The 3% traditionally has been to nonprofit providers. Can you share what your business arrangements are that would require? Is that for the organization itself or for subcontractors? That just gets, it goes into our budget budget for staffing increases and the rest would be for any additional costs in our advertising marketing. Because you all are a 501. We are 501. So that's so direct. So it's direct. No, no, no, no. It was so simple, I missed it. The only other question I have or more of a statement, World Pride is about to begin. I know we talked about that before when you came to us earlier in the year. I've had lots of engagement with the folks down in Washington, D.C. And worked really hard to try and have an event at one of our wineries and breweries. But that didn't seem to happen, not because the will wasn't there, but because the facilities themselves needed a little more guarantee and certainty if they were gonna plan for something and adding an event to a long list within the DMV, did not provide them with the guarantee. We can talk offline. It's a little too late now to get it onto the calendar, but without naming names, we spoke to a bunch of wineries and breweries and said, hey, you wanna have a party? There's a lot of people in DC who would love to take an Uber or take the Metro and come on up and celebrate, but in order for them to plan, they needed a little more certainty of how many people this that night I couldn't guarantee any of that. But wanted to highlight the beauty that we have here and the good spirit that we have here. So more to come, more to think through in that regard. I support the budget as well and look forward to some of these follow-ups after. Before we vote, Councilmember Cells, a question? I'm glad Councilmember Glass brought that up because I just read that now the Strathmore is going to be taking over the world pride event. So it would be good to see what numbers result from all of the other amenities that they take advantage of and what sort of promotions. I don't know how or if you're working with Strathmore on providing additional information about amenities and otherwise for all of the people that are going to be visiting us for I don't even know how long they're planning if it's just a one day a weekend so I think that's an incredible opportunity for us to capitalize on. If you go to our website, you'll see on every page, World Pride link, our staffs engaging with the folks that are organizing events in DC. We've had a conversation with Council Member Glass and we're making sure that events that are happening in the county or on our website, which is the second and second most visited page on the website. So we're engaged in here to help anyway we can. We always love to see events like this come to our region because you see this automatic uptick in occupancy and spending. So it's always a good thing because we get the compression. So fingers crossed, we get some compression. Thank you. Perfect, thank you. So we are going to go back to, sounds like without objection, we support the CAN executives budget. And you are going to take on the influencer's marketing campaign, you're going to, without that. So work them. Thank you so much for being here. We have a long agenda. So next, thank you for all your work. Thank you. Next, item number two is more Business Support Services NDA. And Mr. Ali, if you can please kick us off whenever you're ready. Thank you. Do you want me to just run to the packet for this one because there's really no. Yes, go ahead. Okay, so accounting executive is recommending an increase of $82,000 for the small business support services in D.A. And this includes about $50,000 in inflationary adjustments for service providers. And the rest is an increase to personnel cost because there are four FTEs in this NDA that are employed at the Business Center. The council staff does not have a breakdown of what the FY26 recommended amounts would be. and I'll get into that as I get into the packet. And so we were basically suggesting that until that is clarified, the Econ committee should sort of wait for that information to make a vote for full council. So just turning over to the packet, you can see the recommended budget amount on page two. Page two also has the background of the department. This is an NDA that basically exists to create a vehicle to provide funding to nonprofit service providers that have small business support services generally. These organizations have historically included groups like the Black Chamber of Commerce, the Latino Economic Development Corporation, the Black Collective, Women's Business Development through Ready, Iraq Development and other organizations as well. You can see on table two at the top of page three what the approved amount was for FY25. We also obtained information on how much was actually drawn down by each contractor in FY25, but what was left over. But we point out that we don't have the breakdown for the recommended amount for FY26 because for a few reasons that maybe it's just easier to sort of walk through the packet. So if we get to the bottom of page three, you see the increase. But the inflationary adjustment was basically applied to the overall operating expenses for the NDA. So there's personnel cost operating expenses. The operating expenses is the sum total of all the contracts. That sum total was increased by the inflationary adjustment. That would imply that every contract should receive their FY25 appropriation plus the inflationary amount. There was one contract that's not a non-profit provider, so that should have been removed from the original list and not received a 3% inflationary adjustment because that was the contract for the CRM system that the business center invested in last year and that's going to go on for five years. So there's a technical correction there. But also to the extent that the FY26 amounts have been confirmed, Council staff suggest the committee understand what the plan is because if it's not the same FY25 amount for exactly the same providers plus inflation, then at a minimum the technical change would be to recharacterize this enhancement as basically an increased cost for whatever the new proposal is for spending this funding. And so if there's any change to the dollar amount, then we would have to sort of discuss and address that here. So I can pause there if there are any questions about that. There's more information about the packets sort of explaining this situation. But basically the basic point is if you could confirm whether or not it's just an inflationary adjustment and if it's not, what is the plan for allocating the funding in this NDA and what's the justification for doing it in a new way? Another's an explanation. So Mr. Harmon Espaag, would you like to kick us off or miss Nadia Clute? Thank you chair Friend Lincoln's house and members of the committee for the record Ken Harmon is about a assistant chief administrative officer Well, I'll thank you so much for cute for keying up the the PowerPoint. I just have a few slides to share with you the first Okay The first slide puts puts and the phone change. So the first slide puts us in context of where we are. The six areas that we identified last year that County focuses on for economic development. This program is targeted towards funding these specialized resources for small businesses and entrepreneurs. So they support entrepreneur growth and they support small businesses that want to grow and thrive and answer basic questions, many of which have to do with their day-to-day survival. Next slide, please. In FY25 so far, through our eight partner organizations, which each offer a range of programs from cohorts to training to coaching. There have been 354 training sessions with 2,374 participants. There have been 23 peer cohorts. This is when you get a group of people together and they track through a program together. So not only are they establishing relationships with the coach and the trainer, but with each other that last. And then finally, the coaching sessions, these are people who come in and say, I have an issue. I need help. And we tracked 3,000, 34 business coaching sessions so far this year. This year's not over. And we have been meeting with all of our providers and also talking more generally about the direction of this program. We have had the same stable of partners for a while and in our meetings with them we've talked a great deal. I think we have agreement that there's a need for increased collaboration not only between these groups and with the county business center, but also with others who are out in this space who can add to this. Can I just say something very quickly? Just and I'm back in you up here. We have discussed in this committee the need of of partnering and using more of our local chambers. So this is about that and we have to have those conversations here at least twice Where and when I said local chambers I'm talking about the old knee chamber the German town Gatorsburg Silver Spring Kensington Whe, and so on. We're doing amazing work, yet they're not getting the support that we're giving to other groups. So there you go. Thank you so much, Chair Panic and Salas for that clarification and for your support. And as we move into the next fiscal year, we're really going to be focused on building this, what we call an ecosystem. You're going to hear ecosystem a lot whenever you talk about economic development. So if all these folks are doing services, what are we doing that's redundant that maybe a few should do and not all. We have a preference for more work in coaching and support for federal contractors. That's risen to the top of our stack. We have a cadre of folks who are members or our chambers who are saying, we need to reinvent ourselves. How do we do that? And so we'll be looking into doing that in the coming fiscal year. We've already started conversations on that. We want to do more peer cohorts and accelerator programs. And we're looking through the contracts to make sure we're not funding administration. We like to move the funds into actual services to businesses. And the other thing we've heard a lot of is the need for legal assistance to businesses, particularly retail. When we talk about the FY25 contracts, I think in the packet there's a chart of how much we have left to spend on some of these contracts. To be honest, some of this money is going to, all this money is encumbered in the contract with the provider. I would like to, if these partners are going to underspend and not spend it all, I would like to apply their balance forward in order to free up the funds that we need to engage to expand those partnerships, to ask who else is providing these services that need to be in the room, and the Chambers are a very valuable partner. And I've had conversations with Chambers about those federal contractors, who they're hearing from, who we're hearing from. They're not, I'm not talking about the big ones, but the little ones, the sole proprietorships and the smaller companies that now are having to rethink their business model. And moving forward, it's hard to give you a number for each contract because the contracts have not been settled for next year. But I'm here to tell you the full amount in the NDA, which is targeted towards small business and entrepreneurship, is needed to be able to pivot with our partners and with others through solicited contracts on filling the gaps that we see in our. Can you say that part again? So when you say so that is it. So basically all these chambers, for example, are going to be competing for this money. Is that how are you going to wish? How are you going to organize this? Personally, I would like to see proposals with metrics and partnerships. We're removing the eight that we have now, partnering, co-branding, collaboration, and anyone who comes into this space, we need to fit them in. And if there's an opportunity to brand with another entity who's here already, if there's an opportunity to do something new, I wanna see more than, we know this organization. So here's a contract. We like to make sure they're serious, make sure that they have a good model, and make sure that they're plugged in. And that will be managed by the Small Business Center with finance, I'm assuming, or okay. Okay. Are you done before I open it up? Okay, I'm gonna start with Council Member Lohl. Welcome. Thank you. So I support the Business Services team. I think the best bang for the buck are the staff, the business navigators. Those are the people who have the direct relationship with the small businesses. And what our small businesses need is they need somebody to hold their hand and help them with resources. So I think that when we look at how the total resources are going to be spent, I don't want to overlook that because I think that they do a phenomenal job with just four people and I know there was a transition there. We have Jane in the back still monitoring. So I just want to first before we start the conversation by saying, you know, I think that that's probably one of the most effective things that is happening for our small businesses are those navigators. So that said, I do, I chair, Fannie Gonzalez, started the conversation about how do other organizations get on this list? And I think that that's an important question, because I think that from the perspective of when we look at what other services we need, I don't think we know that because we don't have an assessment of what are the redundancies, what are the gaps, what actually are they doing and what are those metrics, right? Because we can't do everything for everyone. We don't have the money to do that. So just strategically, what are the most effective ways that we can interface with small businesses? And I think it's really important to underline small here. This is the Small Business Resource Center. And so I think that that's really important to just kind of have an understanding of before we go off and start selecting new partners, we have to really have a stronger vision of what specifically we're trying to do here and what those outcomes are. So that's the first question. I mean, the first comment. The other issue is, you know, the, I'm looking on page three, the drawdown versus the leftover amounts and we still have, you know, three months left. And my concern is that there's a race to spend this money that may not be spent in the most efficient way. So whatever happens between now and June 30th, I want to make sure that we're not just spending down money. That's important. I would support the rollover and if that's kind of that makes sense. And I think that that's probably it for now. I do think that that's probably it for now. I do think that from the perspective of metrics, and I support the coaching. I really support the peer cohorts. I think that's a, I've seen that in action personally and that works for entrepreneurs, it works for small business owners to have that collegiality. But I feel like we have to have a much better understanding of where the money is going. And then also I think what's important, and I've mentioned this, I think this is the third time, my third budget, the third time I've mentioned it, I'm gonna mention it is capacity, right? I think that it's great when somebody gets half a million dollars, but if they don't have the infrastructure and capacity to spend that money effectively, we're doing a disservice. So I think that whatever criteria we use for assessing partners, we have to look at capacity. So. Thank you so much, Council Member Bacchum. I agree with you 100% about the outcomes. We are creating a common set of metrics for everybody who's in this space. We want to, there are certain things we want to know. We want to have in our CRM as far as spend down. We have detailed reporting that's required because we buy services from them. We don't buy them going off and buying something that's not on the contract. We want to see the workshops, we want to see the coaching and we want to see the engagement with businesses, not just, and the contracts are not written to allow for suddenly a $50,000 expenditure of a new car, for example. And as far as capacity, that's foremost on my mind. I've met with some of them and in fact maybe this is something that the committee would want to consider in the future is bringing together folks who are in this space, not just our contractors, but others about what they're hearing in the business community. But what we do, we have heard the issue of capacity and we do know that that some are not going to have that capacity to do. So we've talked to them about applying whatever's not spent this year to next year, and then seeking out those partners, because there are other people in the space who are going to help fill that gap. And co-branding is a fantastic thing, right? You don't have to use your capacity, you just have to use your brand with the partner. Thank you. Before I pass them the floor to Councilmember Glass, can you clarify, at least in my view, we have supporting the Keanuq Securif's proposal and you have here on pitch three, the leftover funds for FY 25 and understanding what Council member Balcon mentioned I mean we still have two more months left for all these contractors What if they how are you tracking that like are you saying that right now you have almost $900,000 here under the leftover FY 25 column Let's's just say that by June 30th, that drops to I don't know, $400,000 or $200,000. Are you saying that that's the money that you would like to use for for for for expanding and having other folks compete for those funds? Break that down from me. me. I'm gonna ask my colleague Nadia to assist me, but I'll start with saying our preference is if we have encountered funds to expend those, before we move on to apply new funding into a contract. So if we're looking at FY26 contract for a certain set of services, that the first choice is to spend down the old appropriation, the old incumbrance first before new money comes into that contract. So that allows us to save on the FY 26 contracts and free up capacity for the greater ecosystem effort that we've all talked about. I was going to say Councilman Verley, but Mr. Erley, do you? No, no, no, not promoted. I just wanted to clarify also, so historically this NDA has indicated what contractors will receive what amount and that's what's total the total. This new approach is a departure from that, where there's a total amount that would be allocated to the NDA, and then the county executive staff after that appropriation is made would decide how those dollars are allocated. And to Mr. Hartman, the spot is point. There's no fund balance within the NDA. The money is incumbent under the contract for each contract, or so whatever is appropriated for FY26 is basically a full fund and then there's going to be a new decisions about how that's distributed to new or different contractors or same contractors in different amounts. So I just wanted to point that out. That is very helpful. Now it kind of hit already. So rolling over, I agree with that. Can someone remember glass? Glad I in the queue now, because that was gonna be my question. The allocation to FY25, who made those specific allocations? The council appropriated the NDA and the allocation. So many of these contracts have just continued over the years. They came in the door, they met with somebody, they talked to a committee, they got in. I know which former council members championed some of these programs. So yeah, a pivot is challenging, but we can get there. It's gonna take some time to make that bridge, to expand the universe, to make sure that we're getting what we need out of the contractors, that the performance and the collaboration is occurring, and that if there are other people who could provide services to our businesses, we ought to have a door open for them. So, if I'm hearing you correctly, last year for FY 25, the county executive sent the NDA over with specific line item attachments that we ended up approving. That's correct. It's in the packet from last year. You still look hesitant. No, I didn't have the last year's, but maybe it's in the packet. I haven't flipped down to it, but I just want to get my budget analyst to make sure. Yeah, really nice from the Office of Management and Budget. I was just going to add that those specific non-competitive contracts are included in the approved budget. If you look in the budget, in Section G is what you'll see them listed by name and by amount. Perfect response, right. Okay, so we approved the NDA that specified where the funds were going to go. And according to the packet, 53% of those funds have not been spent. And picking up on the points that have been shared, either it's because the capacity is lacking within the organizations to expend those funds or we've overallocated. And I'm not quite sure where that's not on the table. Rather than simply roll over and add to it, why not actually appropriate the funds that are being used at this point in time and find the cost savings that we know the council is actually looking for right now? Because by taking the cost savings, we're not reducing any programs. The costs are right here. I put that on the table, colleagues. And we do that because I honestly because we have talked about this. I want to make sure that we're moving forward to expanding the opportunities of creating partnerships with other groups and not just the same ones over and over again. So for us to do that, we need actual funding. So I, yeah, I'm just going to say that and I'll bust up the mic to Councilmember Sales. Thank you for the updates. I'm always referring my small businesses that inquire about different programs and services to this NDA. And, you know, the reason this was created was because our small businesses don't have access to the infrastructure that chambers do have. And so thinking about some of our small businesses who may not have qualified for some of the grants that were accessed by our larger businesses, I would prefer to create a grant fund of micro loans for our small businesses. We know that micro loans have created an incredible impact for our small businesses. We know that microloans have created an incredible impact for our small businesses. But for some of these businesses that have been in the pipeline for almost 10 years, and I think we need to have a broader discussion of what the vision is, how we're evaluating the needs, the gaps of these businesses. I mean, I go to a lot of the events that these businesses host. I don't know if you've ever gotten all of the contractors in a room to have an event and get their members in a event. I go to all of these things separately. And I hear from a lot of the contractors that there's so many stipulations for how they can spend their money, how many people they can hire and what the money is actually supposed to be used for. So I'm not sure how these contracts are written with regards to or the RFP is written for how the money can be spent, what it can and cannot be spent on, and then how we're evaluating success across all of these programs. What's the rubric that we're using to ensure that not just the contractor is providing these reports, but how are we evaluating member experience? If these are, you know, the people who are the middle grounds for communicating with the public and asking them, you know, connecting them to the resources they need, where are we gathering that information? If I may respond, good afternoon, Council Member Chair, Fannie Gensal is Council Member Glass, Council Member Malcolm and Sales. I'm now the occluded small business navigator, Actin Montgomery County Business Center Manager at this point. So I want to address some of the topics that you guys have mentioned. So over the last couple of weeks, we have taken the time to meet with the resource partners and identify what is what they are hearing from the business community that is a need of. At the same time, we have talked internally to identify from the business liations what have they identified that businesses are in need. So then we're collaborating and as we meet and identify and draft new contracts, we're making sure that the services outline with the current business needs. As you know, these contracts have been standing for many, many years and sometimes, you know, after COVID, since have changed for businesses. And we need these organizations to be able to adjust to the current needs of the business community. Some of the changes that we do plan on making when it comes to the contracts for this new fiscal year is to identify better metrics for these organizations. We wanna make sure that the funding that Montgomery County is allocating is going from Montgomery County businesses. When it comes to coaching, when it comes to networking, when it comes to cohorts and presentations. In addition to that, we are focusing on more of the cohort strategy and programming because that is a way that we can follow through from a business standpoint as to what was the point of a start for a business when they initiated that cohort was the end result. And then also these organizations are able to follow through with these businesses. So we can see a steady grow year, two, years, three, year, four. That would be the end result. In addition to that, we are incorporating requests in these resource partners to ask for surveys. So we want to get direct feedback from the businesses, how they feel that the county and these resource partners are servicing. Because we have heard misinformation from some business owners that are like, hey, what happy with the service that this organization is providing? And hey, I might not be getting the necessary response. So we want to get information directly from the business owners. And in addition to that, the business center does plan on issuing a survey on a yearly basis to businesses that we have access to through the CRN system, as well as share that survey with our resource partners, so that we can also identify better needs and better support for businesses in the future fiscal year. When it comes to grants and loans, we have first identified that the business community needs more education when it comes to funding and accessing that information and how to manage their own business financial. So I see before we proceed with providing additional funding programs just to provide loans to businesses, we need to make sure that that educational piece is incorporated to that and that's one of the discussions that we we're having with our resource partners to make sure that they can provide that educational piece. As far as when it comes to the invoicing and billing and what is remaining from this organization, some of these organizations bill us every three months, six months or yearly. So it's not necessarily that all these funds won't be used by these organizations. I think, as Ken has mentioned, we have identified that there would be some leftover from these from few organizations that might not be able to use because they do not have the capacity. So how are we allocating to distributing those funds to either carrying it for the new fiscal year so that frees up funding for fiscal year 26 so that it can be open for other organizations to have a chance to also provide services to the business community? Thank you for those responses. It would have been nice to see how much money if any was left over in last fiscal year 2024 and how much was rolled over. So I'd like to see that information and you know I used to sit on the board of of nonprofit Montgomery. And that was the coordinating entity for all the nonprofits in Montgomery County. As the coordinating one stop shop for all of our businesses, are you doing any programming to, you said that they need access to financial management. Is that something that you are creating, that you're bringing in banks, or are you doing any professional development for these businesses, or are you, I'm just trying to understand are you just allocating grants? No, so the plan is to involve our resource partners as an example, the Latino Economic Development Center as part of the ideas that they have brought up for the new fiscal year is to involve that financial program in too. So they would be using the money that you give them to share their resources with all of the contractors and businesses. Like is there a budget outside of these eight contractors that the small business NDA receives to coordinate services? Can you please clarify your question? because the, you know, approved budget is 1.6, 1.6 million. So of that 1.6 million, what does the small business navigator, the four folks, what do you all, I'm trying to, so that's the 600,000 is for personnel. But what are the operating costs that you all are doing to? No, that's personnel is the 617,000 is personnel costs. But it doesn't talk about operating costs for the small business, NDA. Yes, some of the things that we do so myself as a business navigator and the business liaisons what we focus on is an identify in talking with businesses doing the case management to identify if they want to or have a need to apply for a loan or they might need to apply for a purple line grant and how do they go about that. That is a lot of what we are doing. At the same time, we leverage the resource partners that we have to provide that additional support. As an example, with the Small Business Development Center, they facilitate and work with businesses to to identify how to put together a business plan so a business can apply for a loan, for acquisition, for expansion, for purchasing equipment. And that's how we leverage and partner the resource partners that we have to. So, Councilmember Sales, while the team doesn't run a coaching session, when they engage with businesses and hear what the issues are, they make the referrals and then they follow up after the fact with the service provider and with the business. So these folks are also our go-to entities when a business does need support. That's where the referral goes. Yeah, it just sounds reactive. If we have an understanding of what our small businesses needs are, we should have a more formalized plan. And like I said, you know, you all run eight contracts and I don't think I've ever seen these eight entities in a room together with their members, the contractors, to just have opportunities to learn from each other. I mean knowledge sharing is priceless. And so I'm just trying to understand, you know, I know we'll have more time after budget, but it would be helpful to better understand how you all are formalizing services and not just doing one-offs, but creating a schedule for the needs and services that these businesses demand. And if we're doing it in-house or referring them outside to another resource. So I think once you get an understanding of what the needs are, then you can better plan because right now you're just giving grants and making referrals. And so that's, if we're talking about cutting funds and budgets, I just want to ensure that you all are fully utilizing everything that you have to serve these communities. I appreciate that Council Member Sales. That's our thinking too. We want to make sure that we're not when someone does something well like the Black Collective and the Amber program. That's a model to send people to not to replicate over here and do something different. And if we can do more Amber cohorts, that's where our funding should go. Because that program has shown amazing success. Thank you. Great. I think actually think that we're on the same page here. And I thank you for all the responses that you just gave. I think as part of the decision point, if we are going to agree on the rollover strategy that was addressed, I don't think that this is just my personal view. I don't think there were an opposition right now in not just in Montgomery County, but in the nation that we cannot support businesses. I think we need to do more and I don't feel comfortable just taking a reduction. Right now, I feel like the Australia of rolling over and see how we can evolve this. Makes sense to me with the compromise that we're gonna have to be meeting more often. Seeing how we're gonna evolve was being happening for all these years with this, with this NDA and see how we're going to be using the leftover, the rollover money to increase competition and support from, again, local chambers, just to name one partner in general, to help us really strengthen and support entrepreneurs in Montgomery County. So I feel comfortable doing that, but that's just me, if Mr. Ali, so the decision point would be the setting on that, right? Is there something else? If we're gonna agree with the county's secondest proposal on the rollover seat of the money that we're... Excuse me, a point of clarification on rollover. With this NDA, these funds, if they're not expended in the fiscal year, they basically will revert back to the general fund. The way to hold those would just be too uncomfortable. So I just want to point out. Which is what I thought that's what we are in your contracts. Exactly. That's exactly what I understood from Mr. Can. Yeah. So just to clarify what would happen then is that there would be a total amount that's allocated to the Small Business Services NDA but there would be no vendors listed on Section G and then as they enter into those contracts contracts, they would have to send over Section G amendments. But it also raises the question of what do you characterize the increase this year? Because it's not an inflationary adjustment to non-profit service providers because it's, you know, we don't know if it's going to be the same people receiving that amount of money plus inflation. So what is the number? What should it be? How would you characterize it? Great question. I'm hoping the Gen Executive's team can answer that. If... Sorry, I was just consulted with my analyst. So I hear this, I hear you, Mr. Ali, that if the final amounts are not set yet and we have an increment and if we're going to reallocate, I feel I need to re-consult with OMB if it's something that we can be more targeted for. because if we've based this on last year's amounts and maybe FY26 contracts will be different. And if we bring on new folks, there's no need for an increment for new contracts. If you allow us to come back with a proposal on that, on where that number should be. Yes we're definitely going to have to come back and put everything in writing. And I think if we, because I think we're going to have to have a conversation too, we can come back on the May 2nd. We have an item on May 2nd. We can add another item on the agenda so we can pick this one up and finish there. Councilional welcome. Yes, thank you. So I think that we need to have clarification of the technicality of rollover and combrans and how that works for FY 25. Like, and then from the 26th perspective. And I understand that this leftover is, we don't know what the leftover amount is going to be on June 30th, right? So I appreciate that we would either save, we would would either that money would go back to the general fund or or we it's it's encumbered and it goes to the same or the same entity and then we just give the entity less money but I I think there's two pieces to that. One is that the amount of leftover would be deducted but also the issue of if we have over incombered, we would give them less money and then subtract the rollover. So if, for instance, I don't want to pick one because I don't want to say a name out loud, but if A, you know, if if contractor A was given a half a million dollars and they only spent 300,000, we wouldn't give them 500,000 again and subtract the 200. We should give them 300,000 and subtract, and roll over, subtract the 200. So I think that that, I mean, I just want to make sure that we do that. Yes, please. Okay. So I'm an agreement with you. The technicalities of the budget making process don't necessarily align with the words, but I agree with the intent, but I got to come back to the central point that I am confused about the budget requesting an increase when 53% of those grants have not been expended, right? And so I am concerned about that. I would support an NDA being written that allows for flexibility within the agency, within the department. I personally don't think, and this is my opinion, I don't think it should require council approval because then it becomes just like a grant process. We're trying to get away from that. We're trying to get away from the council approving every line item going to a nonprofit and that would only be the same thing in another name. So I believe that the executive branch should be able to use their information to make those decisions. But here you picked up on this or you mentioned this point, Councilor Mbaockum earlier. I am also concerned about a run on Amazon.com and tshirtprint.org in the remaining two months Where all these organizations are gonna have the best swag to give around because that ain't the intent of it Can we get confirmation that that's not gonna happen? Unless Miss Clude a minor sending is buying t shirts and swag is not contracts. Yeah, it is not. And I am taking the time to review each of the invoices that we get from our resource partners. And they won't have that opportunity. It's a lot for presentations and coaching and spreadsheets and making sure businesses and what cross check and hey, did this business actually get assistance or not? Good. I'm glad we got that out loud. I appreciate the approach will continue the conversation. Let me second. Let's just table this onto my second. Okay? Because I honestly don't think we're ready to make any decisions right now with all the questions that were left. And do you have one last thing? Yeah, so the three and a half percent inflationary adjustment, it's not tied to personnel salaries. It's tied to the entire NDA in addition to the salaries. I know, it's a customer, it's actually just applied to the operating expenses, not to the personnel cost. Okay. Okay. And so are we voting on that? Are we tabling that? Okay. Councilmember, Chair, can I just clarify the request that it can be prepared. We can all be prepared for the second. So So to the extent that they will propose a new approach for how they spend or how they will decide the contractors for the total amount that's allocated to the NDA, they need to demonstrate what that total would be, which could be 1.7 million, could be 2 million, won't put about whatever the number is, and then the idea is that they would not necessarily recommend those contractors at this point, but would explain the process by which they would allocate that money in the future. Yes, and they need to compete. I mean, that's the whole point. We cannot continue to give funds to groups, just because we did it 10 years ago, and that's earmarking particular companies, and that's just wrong. They need to compete. Just like nonprofits compete for grants in the county, they need to compete for this one. But do you have another comment? Last one. Last one. I agree with that. I think that we need to rigor in terms of who gets what money. I don't know. I think that there's a lot of work that needs to be done before then in terms of what is the strategic goal of this pot of money. right? The evolution of this money was not a strategic look at what are our gaps and redundancies and so I think that when we come back I mean we're talking two days right? So I know I know I just want to set expectation I'm not looking for that, but that has to happen before we just continue to give out $1.7 million. So thank you for that. Thank you for that. And again, after we're done with the budget, whatever decision we make on May 2nd, we're going to have to seriously have more sessions on this strategy on this issue. With that, my friends, we're going to move to item number three, the BioHop and DA. That one better be quick. Well, let's see. It's all based on your responses. So, Mr. Ali, can you please kick us off? Sure thing. We have some slides also. The county executive is recommending an increase of, you know, $17,000 for the BioHub Maryland and Montgomery County NDA. This is a 3% inflationary increase that's also part more codified in the MOU for a five-year agreement to support operating expenses at the BioHub. Perfect. If you game, please injuries yourself. And can you turn on the mic, please? Thank you. Yes, sorry about that. Madam Chair and members of the committee, I'm Kelly Schultz. I'm the CEO of the Maryland Tech Council. It's an honor to be in front of you today to talk about what we consider to be a great success at this point in time for BioHub Maryland. We are very appreciative to the county executive and to the council for offering us the opportunity to expand an industry in Montgomery County and to support the workforce in Montgomery County and across the state as we move forward. As you know, we opened our doors. Many of you were there in October for our ribbon cutting, our grand opening. And since October, we have had several training programs. But I think the most important part of the story that we will get into and my colleague, Michelle, we'll go through some of our slides. Is the other opportunities that we weren't necessarily aware that would be coming to us with the opening of BioHub Maryland and the recognition that Montgomery County would be getting from this. There was an article in site selection magazine talking specifically about biohub Maryland, the specific curriculum, the hybrid curriculum that we have from Dublin and how that impacts the choices that industry makes when they're coming here, not just for the retention, but also for the expansion of businesses. And having sat in seats of in government, dealing with both workforce development and economic development, I would say that you cannot have one without the other. And it is as important for us to be able to create the talent of the future as it is for us to keep Montgomery County on the map of the life science corridor that we have right now and being able to utilize our space for both of those types of initiatives has become increasingly real to us and we can walk through some of where we are with that. So we're happy to answer any questions but Michelle Farone is going to go through the slide presentation so thank you so much. Hi, thank you. Thanks. I'm really going to focus on this this part about the key partnerships that we've had. We've partnered since I've talked to you last in October. We've partnered with Montgomery College on their career fair for displaced workers a month ago and offered those displaced workers complimentary courses to upskill reskill. We've signed an agreement with WorkSource Montgomery to host three more master classes this year and going into the next year. We will host another cohort of veterans and run into an intro to biopharmaclast that can lead to a masterclass for the veterans. Also through the earned grant, we will continue to train underrepresented and upskilled demographics from Montgomery County. We signed an agreement with Booy State University who will invest in sending four cohorts this summer for one week of training to the bio hub. During this week week, the students will explore upstream processing and sell culture topics, enhance on training that compliments obviously the foundation that they have. Alexandria Real Estate has invested a portion of their community scholarships to give to students graduating from high school that would like an alternative education path rather than the four year degree. The students will attend a six weeks training program at the BioHub, and these courses are a combination of lectures and hands-on training followed by other six weeks programs to a tennis series of cohorts and short courses in specific areas. Industries also showing their support for the program. We received numerous equipment and consumable contributions from our members, AstraZeneca, ABL, MaxSight, Amgen, BainBio, MacroGenix, again, Fisher and Emergent. So there's been a lot of buzz going on since we opened our doors in since January and we're really excited about it. Yes please. This is the exciting part. As of March 30th we've had 80 trainees have a completed biohub courses 41 of them being from Montgomery County. By the end of FY 25 we project 210 total graduates with a capacity to train up to or more than 200 students per year based on demand. The 80 trainees attended introduction to biopharmor manufacturing short courses. Each class was four hours of instruction including lectures and hands on. It took attendees through the basics of manufacturing as well as some impactful trends in the industry such as single use technologies being utilized in the sector. Some of the attendees ranged from C-sweets to BD to HR to scientists. We hosted three courses dedicated to college students. Students came from American University, Frederick Community College, UMD, Montgomery, MCC, Hood, and UMBC. The balance of the classes that we have scheduled for through May through June, consists of more bi-informaturing courses, short courses on upstream, academic student cohorts, work source Montgomery masterclass cohorts, off site, employee training at industry partner sites, a Thermo and Macrogenics workshop on upstream advantage and earned grant recipients. Next one, thank you. While we're looking ahead to FY 29, over we are looking to see 1,700 individuals who are projected to complete biohub training and anticipate a 25% year over year growth. This growth reflects a strong and sustained impact on workforce development among Montgomery County. And on this side on slide three, you'll see biohub aligns with the county's mission to grow local businesses and support residents by training both new and existing workforce constituents. As demand increases, we anticipate growth in partnerships and funding, which will enable us to expand staffing, particularly trainers over time. The next slide please. I wanted to talk a little bit about the the Nibers curriculum. Nibers curriculum is globally recognized and developed in partnership with leaders like Pfizer, AMGEN, and Johnson and Johnson. Meaning our residents will be trained with the exact skills employers need ready to work on day one. They have over 183 lectures and 170 practicals from which biohub Maryland can choose from since we licensed the curriculum. The core curriculum is refreshed annually, keeping pace with evolving technologies, regulatory changes, and next generation therapies. This ensures our workforce stays relevant in a fast-moving industry. It is also highly customized employees, highly customizable for employers, so they can tailor for their specific roles that they need. Nibers curriculum is faster, it's scalable, it's sustainable, and it's trusted. We take our partnership very seriously with Nibers. We have ongoing biweekly project meetings, bioannual steering committee meetings, curriculum transfers and updates. We have trained the trainers. They've come to our facility more than two or three times and we have conversations with their clients as well that are doing some of the work over at Nibbert that they might want to come over here to the United States and work with us. And lastly, you'll see here that this is a slide that shows some of the lectures that are offered through the Nibbert curriculum, the BioHub licenses. There is something for everybody in the curriculum. Again, the Nibor curriculum, we do have a license and we're ready to continue this project and we're really excited about the 80 that we've already put through the program in the last six months. Thanks, Bo. Thank you. Thank you for that presentation. Before I turn it for questions, that's the can executive team will like to add anything. I saw so you know, I still need to understand how many people are actually hired after they go to the straining because I couldn't find anything on that. That yes, so maybe that would like would you like me to address that? Yes. How many people are actually being hired after going through the training? Yeah. So there are people that are being hired going through the training. We don't have the nest. We don't have all of the data on that because we are not, let's say, similar to WorkSource Montgomery where they are a connector to the industry. Our job is to train them and to be able to give them access to our industry partners. So we don't necessarily track except for, let's say, an earn grant. So once we start doing the earn grant, that's when we would track those very specific qualitative and quantitative type details. That's a problem. I think that I know we've talked about that being a question that we have because that is in our metrics going. It is. Going forward, up, not only upscaling, but also new hires. And I think so we can work more offline, but the impact of the funding is viewed to be how many new hires as well as the upskilling. And so we'll work with that offline. We have seen progress since the team was here in March. The partnerships with WorkSource Montgomery and Ern and the cohorts that have gone through there were all have all occurred since since our leaders here were here in March and we expect that we have shared that the that the numbers that have been shared are are a minimum and we expected to be a maximum but they are on a trajectory of growth in our metrics I think in our MOU is a, I'm fairly certain how many are hired. I will say anecdotally, I did speak with WorkSource Montgomery on their initial cohorts, and WorkSource Montgomery is starting to track some of those, and some of those are taking. They aren't immediate hires. Like council member Balcom met several students who had just been through training. And a couple of those were hired pretty quickly. And a couple as of my last conversation with WorkSource Montgomery was still in the search. Thank you for that. I hate to put you in the spot, but Mr. Anthony Ferris from WorkSource Montgomery, do you you have any, anything that you can share regarding tracking? How are you tracking folks who they're sending to you and see how they're gonna, they're being employed? And also it's not just being employed, how long are they gonna be employed in that particular company? That's the information that we need to know because we're investing money here. Anything that you can add to the conversation because I know I heard that you want to take this offline but anything that you can provide will be really helpful. Sure, so good afternoon Anthony Featherstone, Executive Director for Work, Social and Garmy. So I can't speak to every training cohort through the Maryland Tech Council only through the cohorts where we refer in sponsor. We have a process where each participant gets assigned a case manager. And similar to many of our other programs, we work with them intensively from a case management standpoint, a job placement standpoint. And we track them for 12 months post employment after they exit our program. And so for the cohorts that Michelle and Kelly mentioned, the biomass to classes with WorkSource Montgomery, each of those individuals will be tracked so we can record their employment status retention over six months, retention over 12 months. what the earnings are are will track the education or credential attainments so we can report out on those cohorts that we we partner with MTC on. Well that's very helpful. I thank you. Thank God you were here. Well in Madam Chair, may I just expand on that and so thank you Anthony for that. They have been tremendous partners of us. A similar process for that is required also for the earned grant. So, BioHub is a recipient of, and if you're not familiar with Ernest, the Employment Advancement right now program through the Department of Labor and their requirement and their expectation is at least 85% higher rate for those students that are going through those courses as well. And so that would be the expectations that we have similar to the county. So it's 80% of participants, that's it. The average earned program in the state of Maryland. Well, so overall they have about an 85% higher rate through all of their training programs that they have through urn. So as being urn grant recipients then we are required to also follow those same types of metrics tracking that is delivered and processed through the Department of Labor. Very helpful. Thank you for that. Of course. Before I open enough for questions, Mr. Hanman. Thank you so much Chair Franny Gonzalez and members of the committee. I wanna take us back to when we started, when we made this investment, we, the executive and the council, we were looking at attracting key assets to Montgomery County that supported our strategic industry. Last year, you also funded the Henry Jackson Foundation Incubator and there's ongoing support for the Emerson Maryland Institute for Health Computing. Because these are assets we believe belong here because this is where this industry is. We do have, this is a very relevant conversation because we do have this investment with the Maryland Tech Council. In our MOU we do have reporting that that's required. It's not lost to me that they've been in operation for six months. And yes, we need, I'm working with Kelly and the team. We believe that they have laid out a strategic plan for engaging not just with potential employees and people who are seeking training, but companies here in Montgomery County that want to utilize this training. And it's not just Montgomery County, it's Maryland and the region. This is the only center in the region where you can receive this training. So leveraging off of all that, we're working very closely and now Judy is especially to ensure that we continue to see this trend upwards And a return on our investment Excellent. Thank you, Mr. Harmonis-Bada. I'm gonna open it up for questions Councilmember sales Thank you for the updates See that that's that's why we need a lot of resources and we are looking closely at this budget. So you know on page 14 I don't know when the questions were provided to the bio hub and when you responded, but PDF page 14 circle eight mentions that you know of the 80 students only one has secured a job. We are aware of yes ma'am. Yes yes and so when I look at a budget of over a half a million dollars, and I'm seeing that, you know, 80 students have are not even Montgomery County students. So let's say 40 out of those students. And I think you're estimating 105 by the end of the fiscal year. Those don't seem like good returns on the investments we're making. I'm not sure how this Niberk curriculum was decided upon how long it's licensed for, given that we're the only region that's offering this training. I'm just trying to understand, you know, what was the initial cost? And, you know, I'm sure you went through an extensive process, but now we have this. I'm just not sure how, if it's because of our marketing to the local businesses, the biotech businesses, if this curriculum is what, they are expecting from the trainees that are graduating, are there skills appropriate enough for the jobs that are awaiting them? And are we identifying jobs beforehand? Cause I saw a lot of programming. I don't know how you go through that whole slide over two days and four days of training. So I'm just trying to understand how we decided on the Nibert curriculum. And if there's any room to explore alternatives, are we just stuck with this curriculum for the students? And is this a correlation to the outcomes with them finding employment? Of course. No, I think that Montgomery County, and you should all be very proud that the neighborhood curriculum is in here, that is in Montgomery County, and it's being utilized for this purpose, because it really is the global standard. Niberd is an organization that was set up through the Irish government a couple of decades ago through their academic programs and their government programs in order to be able to get them to create a biotech industry in Ireland which they didn't have. So it was a very concerted effort. Since that period of time, as we know, the biotech community has really flourished and expanded in Ireland, and the Nibert curriculum has become the global standard. They have several global partners, Nibert has. The BioHub in Maryland is one. Texas is one. There are two centers in Canada. There's one in Korea, and there's I think one in Germany right so that they're expanding their global partnership where we benefit in Maryland is that those industry leaders from across this country have been going to Dublin to get trained and to send their workforce to get trained. And now they don't have to do that because there are global partners here that have the licensed curriculum. If it's one thing that I'm really really secure with, it is the curriculum and the number of practicals and lessons and certifications that come out of it because that really does give a catalog as we talk about the upskilling as well, right? So you have one of our great industry partners that's gonna have a ribbon cutting next week and they're gonna be talking to us about different types of skills that they need, maybe not entry level, but as they start to open their doors and they start to populate, let's make sure that we have somebody there that's ready to train on a lot of different levels, the 177 practicums that are listed on that. So I guess the point is we're not necessarily choosing which curriculum is being taught. As we see our partners that are having openings, then they have a catalog of courses that they can say, these are the ones that we need in order to be able to individually train those 8, 10, 12 individuals that they might have openings for. So that's how that works. Um, just to reference the, the one employed at this point in time and the way that we market. I am very comfortable like I said, marketing of the curriculum. That is a positive without a shadow of a doubt for what we have here in Maryland as one of our assets now in Maryland. The other part is a lot of these folks, the number of people that we brought in to train, are not just necessarily those individuals that may be coming from coming from WorkSource Montgomery or from Earn, that is opening up our marketing opportunity to the entire industry. So now we have industries and college students that are coming to be aware of what we have so that we can continue our trajectory and our trend of more students being trained in the future. After six months, I'm pretty proud that we've had people come through to be able to see what we have to offer and how to move forward with that. I'll also say it is the intention of the Maryland Tech Council and Biohub Maryland to be self-sustaining at a point in time in the future. We've been open for six months and we're so grateful for all of you that you've been able to do. But in order for us to be self-sustaining, we have to get over this hurdle, and we have to be able to open our doors to lots of different industries so that they know what we're capable of, and they know that we're here in order to be able to advance all of the different partnerships and opportunities that we've created a very short period of time. So I know that Anthony, Mr. Featherstone mentioned that he follows participants for a year after they finish a program. Are you staying with these students, these 80 students for a year after to ensure that they are navigating opportunities that align with their newly found skill set. That will be a part of our of our path to be clear not every one of the 80 students are on a job search criteria right now, right? So some of them may be upskilling. Some of them may be just exploring. But yes, keeping track and keeping them within our biohub system is definitely a part of what we do. Is there a wait list for anyone who wants to participate? There are actually. Oh, sorry, can I? The classes that we had the last few months, we posted them on the website and we were asking for registrations and this wasn't the master class and this wasn't the earned rent but these were the other ones for upskillers. They actually, I say sold off but they all closed within probably a half a day and there were four or five classes that we posted one day. And there are a wait list for that. Okay, thank you. Thank you so much for that. And before I pass on my two council member glass, we're gonna have to have another work session and coordinate with a Gannick Secrives team when it's the right time, especially in the area of tracking for jobs and everything that we just discussed. Council member glass. Thank you, thank you for the conversation. I support this and wanna have a conversation later this fall because particularly with the state of the federal government and the proximity to the federal research hubs, which is why we are the third largest life sciences hub in the country. Let's make no mistake about it. It's because of the smart people, the investment, but our proximity to the federal installations. I think this, this organization, may be a canary in the coal mine in the partnerships that you have with the private sector, the workforce that are interested currently. Let's have a conversation so that we can hear what you're hearing and maybe it doesn't even warrant a full briefing but some report of some sort because you are the eyes and ears and the front lines of this work and we are all very closely following how the world is changing around us particularly with this work.. So if you have additional thoughts, I will open them. Well, Councilman Glass, thank you. At the Maryland Tech Council, we feel like all of our members and you all know, all of our members are very diverse. We are tech agnostic. You know, we love life sciences and biotech, but we have cyber and IT and energy tech and so many different aspects to innovation in this state and in this country. And so many of them are struggling with so many different things that are happening both at the federal and the state level right now. And we always like to promote that Maryland has all of these great assets, many of them federal at this point in time. We can't depend or count on that. Members can't. We can't. We have to be able to create assets and resources to give people, business owners, industry, the need to be here, right? They need to want to be here because of, because of very specific and individualized services that we may offer that are unique from any other state. And we're running out of options with that in my humble opinion, and we have to be able to put together those resources and assets and those investments, dare I say, together so that it creates this package where people know that Maryland and Montgomery County specifically are places to be. I'll just close by saying thank you and that is the broader conversation that we're having today even within the last item that we took up. As things continue evolving as needs change, we need to adapt to that. And the biggest problem that we are facing here in Montgomery County is recognizing those resources you alluded to are quickly going away and how much can we as a county sustain it and which ones, which programs should we continue investing in. Bigger conversation but we're on the same point here. Thank you. Thank you. Last comment in question from Council Member Balkan. So thank you. I've support this budget request And I just wanted to, it hasn't come up yet. This is the second year of a five year MOU. We've made a commitment because we feel strongly that this is what our community needs. And so, I appreciate all the work that you've done in the very short period of time. I mean, we forget that this, you just opened within this fiscal year. And so I appreciate all the work that's done. And I do look forward to the discussion about the tracking. And I think it's an important point that you made not every participant is looking for a job. So we need to track their initial goal first before we track what they're, whether they've achieved that goal. Of course, we want to see the jobs numbers, but also the upskilling and even retention. So the more you have relationships with employers, I've always envisioned this where you have a relationship with an employer who sends you a cohort every six months and that's a retention aspect. And so I think we're in a really great space given that you just started in the fall. So I appreciate and I appreciate having that conversation. And to council member glass's point of being eyes and ears, I think it's really important that you communicate any concerns that you have, whether it's through the County Executive's office, probably that you can call any of us at any time, you know that. But I think that just you being part of our ecosystem, I know that this is a Maryland-wide, a statewide program, but from but you are a local asset and being part of our local ecosystem is important. So thank you. And we're 2.8 miles away, so happy to be here whenever you need. Thank you. Thank you for that. We look forward to work session in the future to follow the data. And with that objection, we're going to set the countyic Secretary's recommendation. Thank you so much for coming here today. We're going to quickly move forward. And Mr. Anthony, feathers from Thank You for coming. I know we have another item before you. So now we're going to go for item number four, Department of Permitting Services. If the team can please come up front. Mr. Ali, if you can kick us off, thank you so much. Sounds good. Thank you. So yes, this is the FY26 recommended budget for permitting services. The county executive is recommending an increase of $2.9 million from the FY25 approved budget for this department. Just to note, it is an enterprise fund and so there are no general fund enhancements or changes that are implicated in this budget. So just to point that out. The recommended increase includes $309,000 in staffing enhancements in the form of three new positions. You can see on the cover page, they was 108,000 for a senior permitting services specialist, 107,000 for a new program manager position, and 93,000 for administrative specialist position. And then there's also 2.5 million for compensation adjustments and $158,000 in increased operating expenses that don't have any service impacts. The operating budget equity tool analysis for DPS demonstrates a thoughtful, states that DPS demonstrates a thoughtful, comprehensive, and strategic approach to allocating resources in ways that bolster the department's capacity for community engagement and small business support, create opportunities for targeted staff, education, and professional development, support the review and adaptation of existing policies, practices, systems to better collect demographic information, and identify and address potential inequities and disproportionalities in its work. And council staff is not identified any potential reductions for the committee consideration. There are no slides, so you want to just go through the packet and get to the first position point or okay. So you can see the recommended FY26 budget on the top of page two. There is a description of the department and the five divisions contained within it, pages two and three, and a full summary of the OBEAT analysis on pages three, four, and five. Starting on page six you you can see the table with the recommended changes. Section E shows those three positions and then the other increased costs. And I can just turn to the first decision point, which is an enhancement for the senior permitting services specialist position within the commercial building and construction division. There's a description of what the position would do. It's to help with plan review, support the climate action plan, and reduce turnaround time and support some of the initiatives that they've indicated. Before I stop, I'll just mention there is a discussion about the fund balance policies and some of these decisions reflect your suggestions last year about how they work to reduce that fund balance. If you want to wait for that discussion or if you want to just have a quick overview Since one of our members stepped out. Why don't we have the Because I don't want to my start making decisions without having the full council here, the full committee here. Mr. if the director would like to share any remarks or any theme regard regarding the budget, oh no never mind we're fully here. But we can start with the with the fund if you want. We can do that. I'll just briefly point out what's in here and then they can sort of speak to it. This is just a follow up on last year. You did reduce the fund balance reserve level to 30%. They've also invested in their IT upgrade. They are investing in new positions as well. And in fact, that has reduced their fund balance. And FY26, they're estimating to end at 35.%, and by FY28, they would be below this recommended policy level. And in fact, the fee study that was presented last year did suggest that they would naturally be attrition because the expenditures outweigh revenues going forward. And you're starting to see the impact of that, which could suggest trigger a fee increase. They have the ability to marginally increase those fees, but they're likely to issue another fee study to comprehensively adjust those and then work to bring that fund balance and keep it at 30% going forward. So that's the packet. Now, thank you for that background. Director, any remarks that you would like to share before we start voting here? Sure. Madam Chair, Phoenix Z Azales, Council Member Glass, Malcolm and Sales. We appreciate as always the opportunity to come and speak before you. And just update you. We're happy that we had scheduled this pre-budget session just to kind of give an overview of what's been happening, accomplishing over the last few months. We're still continuing along that path, continuous improvement. As you know, our focus is always on, you know, how can we, how can we continue to facilitate, you know, we, we, we are a unique department in that our focus is on economic development as evidenced by us, you know, coming to the Econ committee, but we also share that unique responsibility, safety. And so we were that had, we strike that balance. So, but all of our processes are set up to be conducive to both. You know, how can we align ourselves with ensuring that we're doing things safely in the county, well at the same time, maintaining the posture for economic development and continuously enhancing. We have positioned ourselves with the right people. We have the right resources. We talk about our vacancies and we're in a good position. We're looking at, you know, mentioned the fund balance. That's always a challenge. And we're constantly looking at our revenues. Revenues are slightly down this year as we talk about the last session. And we're watchful of that, monitoring that and tracking it every month. Because that obviously impacts the decisions that we make, you know, surrounding processes and even hiring to an extent. But I think we're in a good position, and we're staying laser focused on process improvement. That never changes. So we've begun the process, I mentioned our strategic plan. That's well underway, and we hope to that actually by the end of the calendar year and that will really contribute to assisting in DPS accomplishing its goals in serving the county to the fullest. We talked about even the last session, one of the bigger challenges you probably heard is the review time frames and that that, again, is our constant focus. We're happy to have, you know, put in the right pieces in place. We actually have a new hire within the division. John Catlett was just hired, and that's an instrumental hire for the department. He firmly served as the director of Alexandria. We were very pleased to have him, and he's already making a difference in our commercial division. So, we're really looking forward, you know, along the lines of process improvement. And technology, again, another constant. We're happy to have just completed the upgrade on our E-plant system, the RFP, which we've dwelled on. contract we anticipate finalizing by the end of the fiscal year, which means finally we can start seeing some of the fruits of that labor with our new system, potentially a soft launch at the end of the year, but definitely by the beginning of the following calendar year. But again, those are the things that you'll start to see in terms of, you know, really improving and allowing our stakeholders to see the difference and improvement is that, you know, have started over the last couple of years, but they'll see that comes in fruition with some of that stuff. We mentioned the grant. I don't know if I want to get into that. You all see what's happening on the, on the federal side with, you know, those allocations. But we're still moving forward with that. There is some tie-in with our fund balance, but we're working that out with Officer Grant's management and I'm remaining optimistic that we will successfully carry those out as anticipated. And customer service, again, that's the big color for us. Probably the first thing when I came in for my confirmation of you customer service and nothing's changing along those fronts. We want to maintain, change our culture to be the very best in terms of customer service. If you call, we actually put out a customer bill of rights, in fact, next week. You know, do you know that the city of Toronto has reached out to us? Canada, that is, because they have found out about our customer Bill of Rights and they want us to explain how we were able to do that. So we're proud of that, but we know we have a lot of work to do. But we don't want it to just be talking points. We want it to be evident in our work. And so again, we're just continuing to do the things. And with these enhancement requests, they're just small pieces that allow us to get position to optimize and do our best to serve our stakeholders. Thank you so much for your remarks, director Subokon, and I'm a witness that your department has been there as a district and a member from me every time we have issues or challenges with different businesses, faith institutions, as we recently discussed. You have been there, and I know you're focused on improving the culture within the department. So I wanna to thank you for that and welcome to our friend from Alexandria. Thank you for deciding to work in Montgomery County. I look forward to see you shine and see you work in Montgomery County. So with that, the fact that Council staff doesn't have a single, hasn't identified a single thing to reduce. There's a lot of value. I mean, you didn't put anything on part to the previous items. So that's a good thing. Well, why don't we go over the three positions that you mentioned on the staff report? If we can proceed to that. Sure. So the first position is on page six. Senior permitting service is specialist for $109,000 approximately. This person would be located in the commercial building construction division and help turn around times on plan reviews and support some of the additional requirements to the's action plan poses on DPS. If I may, we're really sensitive in this climate. It's always a touchy thing to ask for new enhancement requests when things are not as ideal economy-, but we really truly feel that these are necessary. And this particular one, it's essentially a program manager to our commercial division, which is really our biggest division in terms of the economy. And what we found is the managers within the division really get bogged down in the administrative tasks. And when you talk about the plan review workflow, a lot of the managers get tied up with a lot of different responsibilities. And the critical one when those permit applications come in is assigning those tasks to our staff. So allowing this individual to come in and be able to take that burden off of the managers, that program, this program managers will alleviate that. And really the important thing is allow a quick turnaround. That's really the objective is to get quick turnaround within the commercial division. We feel like this is the panacea again. Sensitive to enhancement requests, but I gave in and said yes, I believe that this will greatly assist us and accomplishing our goals to quicker to time, quicker to review turnaround for a plan review. So that's what that request is. I guess we'll never glass. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for the presentation and the explanation. So I have an alternative solution. Instead of appropriating $108,000 and $800, $108,000 and $842 for a new staff member to help manage the process. Why don't we streamline the process? Well, it's a great question. I mean, we're constantly refining the process overall across all divisions, but for this particular one, it was articulated and convinced that this particular position would allow us to really hit those targets in terms of a plan for commercial with the resources that we have dedicated, currently with our managers, a program manager would greatly assist, not only just, you know, that's not their only role in, you know, the signing the task, but, you know, a multitude of other responsibilities that would culminate in quicker time frames. So by all means, we are exploring overall streamline. That never changes. Every day is an exercise and streamline the process. But it was determined that this could be a tenable means of accomplishing quickly, more quickly, of reduction in time frame. Sure. I agree with that statement that this is the easier path to take. Higher somebody to help manage the workflow rather than take a longer period of time to rethink the workflow. I've long been advocating for rethinking the way DPS operates. Your predecessor, as I understood it, had worked with the county executive to try and find some streamlining, and I'm not quite sure anything ever came of it. Can you share with us any streamlining that is being discussed internally? Well, first and foremost, the systems, that is the thing that we point to primarily in terms of getting a more efficient process across the board for permitting. And I know we've talked about it with the previous system that was proposed and And now that that was terminated and we're now moving towards this new system. We feel like the system itself inherently will be the streamlining measure that creates the opportunities elsewhere. But it starts with having that inherently efficient system. We've been working with the system for the past X number of years, decades, and now it's time to get up to date with and get current with an efficient system that allows our stakeholders to more easily navigate the permitting process and allows our staff to help facilitate. Some of the chicken or the egg predicament that we're in as I hear it. Somewhat. But again, in every division, it's been an exercise and examining. And that's a big part of the strategic plan. What are the additional things that perhaps we haven't been exploring in terms of process optimization? So I appreciate that. I appreciate the work that you all are doing. We are in contact. My office is in contact with you as people come to me with what seemed like small little things. To me, that were created a long time ago that might be outdated for the year 2025. So there is a through line here and I understand the request that's made. I'm not going to support it because I think there's more overarching work that needs to be done to achieve the same goal without adding FTEs and money to the budget. Thank you for that. Why don't we actually finish with the other two positions? And so we can see everything as a whole. That will be great. Second one. The second position, 1.2 is the new program manager position, also within the commercial building construction division. This position will assist with day-to-day operations, this facilitated administrative workflow tasks, and facilitate the different processes that they provide their clients. Once again, we turn back to the commercial construction division, and this one, this position primarily augments our plan review staff with an electrical reviewer. This is a more focused position, the electrical plan review. So we mentioned this contributes to climate change obviously with the forthcoming electrification requirements that have been codified, and part of the law that's in effect, we definitely see the benefit of having an additional, because we have been, as we touched on the last session, working with somewhat of delays in certain areas, and this was one of the areas electrical. We want to remedy that by showing up on the plan review side. Our managers have been very vocal. We haven't made changes over the years, but it was decided that this particular year having that additional person. Particularly, when you make changes like that with the, like such as the decarbonization bill, you have to, you know, bolster your staff or at least be set up to, to successfully carry that out. Otherwise, as I've probably touched on before, what you, what I found is you have staff really half of ministering and not doing what was originally intended in terms of the goal of the law or the code. And so we don't wanna be selective and enforced in that or carrying it out just because we don't have the resources and having that electrical position in place, we feel like will allow us to be in position to successfully carry it out as it's intended. Can we, thank you for that, I think that covers the position. Can we again just remind folks that this, even if we take a, we're not talking about the general fund here, we're talking about the fund within DPS, which is separate. So I just want to make sure that's highlighted in this discussion. So good afternoon, Nissan with Azidh. Thank you, Council members. So two positions, the two positions one was program manager and again these all will help in the streamlining. By the way, a question was asked about the streamlining or what we have done about the work processes. We have done a lot. One thing that I can tell you right off the bat is the cross-training we have done. Right now in our right away section, land development. So we had a section that would just do sediment control, the stone water. We had another group of people that would do right away. anything that's in the public right away with your pavement, with your concrete sidewalk, everything that's in the public right away. So what we did, we cross-strain and we take some times to do the cross-straining by the way. We have asked all of our division to look within the division and see how they can improve the processes if they can do a streamlined. So cross-training is across all the divisions in DPS because of the cross-training right now. So if a lot of plans are coming and we have to deal with the stone water and issues like that and we are not able to do it in a timely manner, we are able to utilize our other people, other plan reviewers that are doing other function. So we don't want to be just a specializing one thing. We want to be to a point that we can do other things just to do one thing because Montgomery County, I agree with you, Mr. Glass, it's we are very specializing a lot of stuff. So we want to expand right. And believe me, we're not asking for this position just for the sake of asking it. Also, we are inspectors. The same thing is streamlining for them to be able to do many functions in the field, not just to be specific to sediment control. We are training them to be able to do other things. So what we want, ideally, right now, in Inspector Go on the same construction side, we do will do the inspection of a stormwater settlement control. Another inspector from DPS will go and do inspection of the right of it, the concrete, the asphalt and all that. We want to get to a point and we will within the next six months, one inspector will go to the side. So this is the saving that you're looking about carbonization and everything that we are talking about. So that goes in line. And for this position is for electrical. Again, this is the bill that was passed by the council a few years ago, 1322. And as part of the fiscal impact, we ask, you know, we said we're going to be needing this position. So it's not like we are coming at the last minute asking for this. I came that covers the point very well. I appreciate that explanation. If I may add, I mean, again, I traditionally very cautious when it comes to, because I understand managers, the reliance on additional FTEs. and in most cases, I say, no, let's figure out a way. In this situation, having seen, each week, when you start seeing the accumulation of overtime, current staff using overtime to deal with it, that's putting a bandaid on an issue that's very significant. And the volume of work that comes in, we're not, you know, we're not a small jurisdiction. We deal with heavy volume and we don't want our folks burnt out and morale. We want to make sure that we have adequate resources, not obligations to ensure that they have adequate tools to do what they need to do, and also make sure that we serve our stakeholders with, again, the objective is to ensure timely plan review so that we can contribute, as we're supposed to, to a vibrant economic situation here. And so that's why I feel like this is probably a, this is appropriate in my opinion. Thank you for that. And before we get, can we please talk about that their position now so we can. Sure, just briefly, it's 1.3, it's 93,000 for administrative specialists for outreach. Turn it over to DPSF to explain. So again, you know, in terms of the pillars for DPS, the focus engagement, you know, we talk a lot about customer service and all the great things that we've been envisioning and are actually executing, but you have to be strong on the engagement side. We want people to understand what the process entails. We want them to understand. We want to be proactive in going out to the neighborhood associations, to all of the events, using our podcasts and in other modes of engagement. But we've only really have one dedicated person who shares a multisood responsibility, that's how communication manages. And when you look at the other departments that have a sufficient staff, we feel like having a second person to assist and help us meet those goals would make a tremendous difference in doing the outreach for the Department. Thank you for that. Also, I want to thank you again for being with me in all the multiple outreach events that I have done. Everything I say, hey, come, you always say yes. So thank you for that. I felt I had to say that right now. And again, this is not affecting the general fund. This is the DPS fund. And I wish you had included in your presentations the slides that you, you know, remember we had a work session, I think it was last year when we talked about the delays and the backlog and all that will have been helpful helpful. Now, unless you have the data with you, tell us what's the backlog in some of these cases. So we can have a better picture of why this is a need right now. I think it was a few months ago and we went over our numbers and we were lagging behind. So again, this position will help with us catching up. So I'm glad to report zoning-wise, we were like our initial review, we were hitting like a run in the 40s of 50s, we are up in the 80s now. So our goal to review, permit that comes in for its five business days, and like I'm saying, we were missing that we were in the 40s. Now we are in the high 80s. So we are reaching those goals. It's drastic improvement or intake, or intake, which is when they come in to make the application. And it's, we have our targeted goal is two days to accept the plans and everything. So the review, the sooner you start, the sooner you can finish. So again, we have improved from 70s, 80s. We have gone into the 90s. Sounds like you don't need positions. No. You're not helping your face. It's again, this is, so you didn't get commercial, commercial-wise, we are hitting in the 40s. That's what you need to say. Really need to improve. And it's on the dashboard. You can go to the website and you'll see. So John being here, that he's got his marching orders, and we are really lucky to have him on board. And if you give us some time, hopefully, by next year we are here, we're going to have a lot of better news to share with you guys. Hi. Thank you so much for that presentation. Those are the only items that we need to vote on, right? There's also these ink. a lot of better news to share with you guys. Thank you so much for that presentation. Those are the only items that we need to vote on, right? There's also these increased cost with no service impacts like mail and things like that. So that's right. So I'm gonna open it up. I am gonna agree with this staff just because it doesn't affect the general fund. That's where I think. But I'm gonna pass the mic to, I'm going to ask Guest on the Bible first. So thank you. It doesn't affect the general fund, but it does affect fees and fund balance. So it's not free money, it's money. And so, so I think the discussion of the fund balance and where we are with fund balance is important and particularly when we look at the next item of increased cost, the increased cost on page 7, table 3. I'm kind of torn in terms of the positions. I think that it's we have been asking DPS to get rid of the backlog. We've been asking. So in one in one respect, I do support increase staffing with the high, high, high expectation that there is specific improvement in getting these permits out the door and permits and inspections and those types of things. So I think having these positions specifically tied to improvement in metrics is really important. The question would be do we need all three positions at this point in time when we are having this budgetary impact?. Again, not the general fund, but not free money. So I don't know if we want to support to put one on the reckless. I don't, I'm kind of, I do support increasing staff staff for DPS. It's just a matter of whether we need three staff at this point in time. If we decide to have, do we have only two and then the third one going to the right list, which are the two most important ones that you want to fight for? That's also a question. Perhaps do you have the answer now? In terms of priorities, I would lean towards the technical positions, the two program managers within commercial. If you were to ask about the two of it, the two of the three. So this position, really one is a plan reviewer. I mean program manager, I think it's maybe you guys are thinking we are hiring a manager. This is a grade 25. It's like a field supervisor. That's really what we are talking about. And the other one is a plan reviewer. It's a specialist. So I agree with the director, the two technical, or we see it really as a mission critical. The person that would reach healthy, I think the outreach is, you know, we have a great outreach person, Ms. Sonja Burke. That does a wonderful, but it's just, she's just one person and if and you guys see her on all the events, all the all the news that goes out, all three just, she's there one person. She carries everything, she takes them, she brings them, she does, I mean, she's on top of everything and also the website. But what this person we are trying to hire for her, it's a requirement is you must speak Spanish. That's where we need the help. When we are coming to your meeting, Ms. Gonzalez, we didn't have one. So I remember how to translate. You were doing the translation for us as you were standing there. So Ansania has to take off. She is, I mean, when you talk to her and when we are looking at it and the director alluded to it, there are other departments that have, and you know, they have a lot more than what we have only one person. If she walks away to them, sorry, I don't If she walks away today, I don't know who's going to do any of those stuff that. That will be a huge problem. Can you quickly, just because I'm looking at the time, talk about the issue that Councilmember Malcolm raised on the fees. Let's say that we approve this three positions. Let's just say that. When do you expect, because you did say that if you were to contemplate fee increases, you'll still need to have a study done. And how was the time frame for such thing to happen if the happens? Try to be quick on that. Yes, you know, we just completed a fee, comprehensive fee study a little over a year ago. It was focused on the fund balance, although we did touch on the benchmarking, looking at other jurisdictions. We didn't really find what others think in terms of the county's fees, where we need to be. We're not as high as many thought. But in terms of when we would want to be considering an increase, not right now. I know the report indicates circa 2028ish, and we're a few years off. I know we have the ability with using utilize in the fund stabilization factor, where we see it needs to be implemented, but I just don't see it at this juncture or anytime soon like five years No less than five you're teaming on Four four four four I just don't right now if you say these right now. I just know I was not the time Honestly, I'm not sure or something, but no at this time. Yeah, I agree probably for you I remember remember, you do a fierce study. There's got to be a reason. The reason we did it a year ago, two years ago, was because of the fond balance. We wanted to see our VR fees are comparable to other jurisdiction, which it was. And as a result of that, they came in and said our fund balance, which was 20%, it should be increased to 30% to be in line with all linkedin. All linkedin is also enterprise fund. And for us to be able, you know, if there are down times to be able to handle the situation. Thank you for that. Let me take temperature here with Com meeting members. Do you have a question? I got a few. Okay, go ahead. So I appreciate Councillor I'm raising the issue about the Enterprise Fund and the General Fund. She's exactly right and I appreciate a few. Okay, go ahead. So I appreciate Councilmember Balkham raising the issue about the enterprise fund and the general fund. She's exactly right. And I appreciate the chair diving into it a little bit more. The comment that was just made about fees being comparable, that might very well be true. And it's why Councilmember Balkham and I at last budget, last year, actually, throughout the idea of reducing fees because we had the balance. And clearly the balance is dwindling, it's being used, and it will dwindle quicker should these positions be hired, be adopted into the budget. But when we talk, as there's a lot of discussions right now about how Montgomery County is fairing compared to, let's just say Northern Virginia, fees might be comparable, but there's a lot outside that is put into the package of whether or not someone wants to do business here, whether someone wants to modernize a commercial office building, rehab a home, whatever the issue might be. So fees to fees are one metric, but it needs to be put in the totality of all the entire tech structure. So we don't always need that comparability. Streamlining, it was noted that staff have been working quicker and you're getting those numbers up. That's great. That is efficiency. It's not streamlining. It's working within the regulatory system, the personnel system, to make sure that the jobs are being done more expediently. The streamlining I'm talking about are the rules and regulations that we've adopted with very good reason. Very good reason 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 10 years ago, who knows when, but do they meet the moment of the year 2025? Making those types of changes brings about streamlining, which then also gets efficiency and other things as well. So we're speaking the same language, we're just starting at different ends of the book, right? And so I do have concerns about these positions. After hearing the department explain, I think it's the first one with regard to needing someone with a more specialized background for the electric, the electricity and all of the other climate action plan items that need to start being adopted. I would be in support of that, but I don't, I will not support the other two items. I understand the outreach. I understand what you're saying. I don't think that's necessarily the best way to communicate. We have so many other ways because if I'm thinking about it, I go to a lot of the same events that staff do. I see all the different tables that are there. I understand the importance of outreach, but what happens is someone might go up, ask a question and then it's referred to somebody else is not even there. And so the issue's not being solved there. And so again, as we talk about enterprise funds, streamlining and efficiencies, I'll support the senior permitting services specialist, but at this point, I cannot support the other two items. Council Member Tels, thank you for that. And thank you for the presentation. I may have overlooked this in the packet, but how many outreach events does the department currently participate in annually and how will this position increase outreach and engagement? So I don't have the number the numbers for you, but I can you know Provide you the numbers There are a lot of outreach we do outreach at leisure ward ward. We deal with minority women in business. I'm just thinking about the La Rishmaniya was over here. She would be sitting here and for the next hour, she will give you a list of laundry lists of all the events and outreach. There are just a few numbers that would be helpful and where we're having the defense And I'm sorry. No, I would put it in the hundreds. Yeah, technically, technically, if you look at the 300 deck inspections that we're about to perform, that's engagement. That's civic engagement. So you add that type of activity. So that part of the outreach. The building safety model building. Yes, she's involved with all of those things. We perform the 300 complimentary deck inspections for all our homeowners. I mean, that's a form of outreach, as well as, you know, connecting with our neighborhood associations, industry groups. It's, I'd put it in the hundreds. And if we are, you know, to be world class, we have to be communicating our message, conveying that message loud and clear and making it understood. I mean, we're doing a decent job, but I want to be great at it. Yeah. No, that's what I was hoping to hear. And you've already mentioned using the council member to translate during a meeting she was hosting. So if there are needs for diversifying the languages that are being spoken at these outreach and engagement events. That's certainly important. As one of the most diverse counties in the region, we need to ensure we're meeting all of our residents where they are and that's a recurring concern that comes up not just with DPS but MCPS and we have to make sure that we are meeting the needs in your budget obviously reflects room for adding some capacity. So I'm fully supportive of all of the positions and look forward to hearing updates. Thank you. Thank you for that. Look, I have already said it. I also want me full support of all three positions, but we need consensus here. So now I need to hear, I know Council Member Glass already mentioned, just one, the first one, the Senior Premoting Services Specialist. Yeah, let's vote on each other then. For the, for the, for the, for the first hand, for the first one, Senior Premoting Services Specialist, raise your hand if you're in agreement. That's all for us. For the second one, senior permitting services especially, raise your hand if you're in agreement. That's all four of us. For the second one, new program manager position. Raise your hand if you're in agreement. That's three out of four. And the last one, administrative specialist two for outreach. Raise your hand if you're in agreement. Two, we are, we have a God, I hate to say no. We're going to put it on the reckless. Let's just do that. Let's put the third one on the reckless and the other two. We're going to agree with the with exactly the kind of executives proposed budget. Is that fair? Okay. Can I just confirm the vote on that? Is it three is it zero or three to one? No, two. It was a tie. Oh, okay. Yeah, it was a tie because it's a tie. We're going to say we're going to place in the reckless. Got it. Okay. Sorry. Thank you. All right. Is that perfect? I don't need to vote on this item. I don't hear anything else. I think we're good. So, well, where are we going to talk about? Is there anything else I want to go on in this item? I don't hear anything else. I think we're good. So, well, where are we going to talk about that? Where are we going to talk about the fund balance? We did briefly and I think they're going to have to, do you have more questions about it? We feel free, please. So, yes, thank you. And I appreciate that we did talk briefly about it. I do have a question on table three, the 158, which is a tiny little amount given your full budget. But if we look at the individual items, they get a little bit bigger. So the laptops select electronic tables, the IT equipment, those are, I'm assuming those are one time. Yes. Who? So, every, I'm sorry. Yeah, those are technically enhancement requests are IT. And I think what you're seeing with the 154, the difference from the credits. Yeah. Right, so I guess what I want to say is that we're eliminating one time time items approved in FY 25, which when we did that, it was specifically because you had the fund balance. And that we had that discussion about the fund balance. I if these are one time, I think I would like to have them indicated this one time. So next year when we're looking at it, they would come out. I admit that I T I T I T I T I T I T I T I T I T I T I T laptops and electronic tablets. So these are usually on three to five years rotation. Yeah. So next year, this would be a decrease. So if we could indicate that as a way to have that. Yes, it would be. Yep, thank you. Good call. Yeah, I have a quick question there. Do you work with tabs? So is this basically funneled through tabs? Absolutely. Yes, everything. I just want to make it. OK, it's just one at a make sure. OK. So is this basically funneled through tabs? Absolutely. Yes, everything. Just wanted to make... Okay, just wanted to make sure. Okay. Oh yeah. We learned a lot. Well, that's why I'm asking. Right. I don't know what lessons needed to be learned in the past, but as long as you're aware. Yeah. Good. Yeah, I remember we used to go there a while back. Yeah. Please cause that a while back. But thank you so anything else, Ms. Rally. I see you tap in. Are you good? Beautiful. All right. Thank you so much for being here. We're going to move forward with the item number five, work source Montgomery NDA. If the team can please move forward. Ms. Rally, do you need a minute? Or are you OK? OK. See, I'm thinking of you. Thank you. I really appreciate it. You will. I haven't been drinking a lot of water so Do you want me to run through that? Okay, sounds good So the county executive is recommending an increase of two hundred and eighteen thousand dollars for work source funcarmory this year And this recommended increase includes a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in programmatic and staffing enhancements and then the three percent inflationary adjustment The recommended increase is $150,000 in programmatic and staffing enhancements and then the 3% in play scenario adjustment. The recommended increase is $100,000 to replace county funds for summarize that were previously supported with federal funds. And the $50,000 to increase county funds to, for support of full FTE at the MCCF or the correctional facility. You can see the budget summary on section A and page two, the description of the department on page two as well. There was a discussion about how federal funding is impacting work source Montgomery. You heard a little bit about that in March and there's some discussion to that in the packet as well, but it's not a decision point for the committee today. The decision points are what's in table 21 page three. Would you like me to just summarize those two before turning over to work source? Good. Sounds good. So the first one is just $100,000 for summarize. They will provide a stipend of $500. So the $100,000 would support a thousand students, no, sorry, 2,000 students. And so any reduction in increments of 500 would reduce a student. And so you could launch this and just reduces the number of students as long as you do it in increments of $500. So that's that option. And the second one is $50,000 because currently there's two and a half FTEs associated with supporting programming at the correctional facility, but it's hard to hire for that sort of half FTE in the way, you know, just given the, it's contracted out and so and it's sort of a difficult position. So either this position is enhanced so that there are three FTEs associated with the correctional facility or if it's not approved then there would just be two but there would never there would not be that half FTE that's difficult to fill. So those are the two options. Thank you so much for that report. I'm going to if we can have courses Montgomery please share your remarks and presentation that would be great. We'll get out to the committee as always great to be before you for the record. My name Anthony Feather. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. education services. Deputy Director for our Workforce Services Division. Good afternoon, my name is Sean Haddry and I'm the Deputy Director for Career Education Services. And so I bring you greetings from our Workforce Development Board. I know a few of them are watching online and I appreciate that amazing group of volunteers. The volunteers at the time to help move our Workforce System forward. Also, two, take a moment to thank the county executive and the county executive staff who worked with us throughout this budget process. Much as we did last year, before we turn to our request for FY26, just want to reflect for just a moment on FY25 in particular. some highlights from FY25. And so we are in year two for our Montgomery County Career Advising Program, better known as MOCOCAP. It is an innovative partnership between MCPS, Montgomery College University's at Shady Grove and Work Source Montgomery. But we're providing career coaching to all six through 12th graders. And so that job entails over 90,000 students, or right around 90,000 students who are receiving career coaching. And so to date, we have worked with over 60,000 students, 60,000 students through year two, where students are having a variety of touch points where they are learning a career language. They're claiming their themes, realistic investigative, artistic, social, and uprising in conventional, they're having conversations about their themes and about career coaching with their teachers, with their career coaches, they're having it with employers through our industry engagement program. And we think the coolest part of this program is that they're having with each other appear to appear conversations and so there are thousands of career management or career language touch points within this program and so really proud of this initiative just this past March we put on the wild event the World of Works event where we had over 180 employers interface with over 2,000 students on Montgomery College's campus to expand the world of work and opportunities that are available to them right here in Montgomery County once they graduate from MCPS. On the Workforce Services side, we're still operating many of our flagship programs like the sector connectors, where we are helping residents connect the training and employment in our target industries like biotechnology, information technology, healthcare, hospitality, construction, transportation. We're still operating our life program, launch a future employment, which is a program for 16 to 24-year-olds where you receive 14 weeks of an earn and learn experience that culminates in employment, apprenticeship, post-secondary education, military, enlistment, or a combination of any one of those options. We also opened our Empowerment Job Center, which is the Justice Impacted Only. Job Center, one of the only in the state of Maryland, where we work with returning citizens that that center opened in last April, April of 2024. And we're really proud of the work this happening happening there. But I think above all, we're proud of the impact that we've made as a workforce system. That's the Workforce Montgomery and all of our partners at the American Job Center through our community workforce network. We had an economic impact study done on our work in FY24 and we're going to continue to have that study done each year. So FY25 won't be available until the end of this year. But in FY24 we had over 3,000 folks or residents come through our doors seeking services. 63% of them left our doors with employment with an average wage of $54,000 per year. And that resulted in $100 million in annual wages for workforce participants. And so that translates to roughly about $7 million in income tax. Who knows how much sales tax and hopefully property tax because individuals are able to purchase homes. And so really proud of the impact that we see from the work of our workforce system as work, social, social, and all of our partners. And so looking ahead to FY26, still a ton of work to be done. We don't have a lot of innovations to bring before you on new things that we want to do or bring forth for next year. We want to continue to be who we are, sustain the programs and services and increase the efficacy of those programs and services. So we want that 63% placement rate to be higher next year. And we want to do it through our six priorities and that system building, community engagement, business engagement, talent pipelines, youth career education, and measurable impact. And so we want to sustain and continue to be effective in our normal scope. But we all know that these are not normal times. These are abnormal times when it comes to workforce because of what's happening at the federal level. And so that is requiring us to pivot and think differently and how we approach workforce because we've had multiple job fairs, we've had 1200 plus, 600 plus show up. We have federal workers and contractors that are showing up to our American job Center. And as you all know, just as well as I do, these are individuals that are highly skilled. Highly qualified have been highly compensated, have lots of education and credentials. And so we'll need and we have started to take a different approach to make sure that Reemployment happens as rapidly as possible and that federal workers and contractors who are affected know that the public workforce system and Montgomery counties here for them. And we have services that are relevant to them being re-employed really, really quickly. And so lastly, as you look at the request, I know it presents as $150,000 increase for programs, for WorkSource Montgomery. It essentially keeps us whole. Currently, we have three FTEs at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility, and those cost equal exactly what we requested for for next year, previously subsidized by ARPA funds, which are no longer. Then we've summarized over 2,000 students who applied for summarized opportunities. Generally there's about 1,000 slots available. We hope that the 100,000 has looked upon favorably so we don't have to make tough decisions when it comes to roughly 200 young folks at MCPS who want to jump into summarized opportunities and so with that I really appreciate all of your support you always pick up the phone you always take meetings we see you at a lot of our our events we always see you in the community and so I'm looking forward to continuing our work in FY 26 and I will pause it we're happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you so much for the presentation and for all your work. I think now more than ever, we need a strong works first Montgomery. I know each one of us is sending people to your offices as we speak. And you mentioned some of those situations when you're getting more folks from the from the Phil world who had been laid off at this point. So thank you for that. And all the work that you guys are doing, even the recent job there in April and dance, the spring, you guys were all there. And it was amazing to see. And it's one of the great reasons why Montgomery County is really a great place to be because people like you who are really engaging in doing all you can to really help. So thank you for that. I'm gonna now open it up for questions and comments from committee members who would like to start. You're good. That means that we are, does it mean? Oh, okay, I was right. I always got a question or four. Thank you. I echo the sentiments of the chair. Can you just share with us what you are seeing in real time as the federal government continues to fire our neighbors and dismiss members of our community? Who I know we are directing to you. You are stepping up, you are collaborating and partnering with other organizations and government agencies at the state level and county level. But shut a little light for all of us as to what you're seeing and what the needs actually are. So I'll start to respond and I'll pass it off to my colleague. We're seeing a few things. I think number one, there are a lot of individuals who have not been in the job market and searching before a job is a skill. And so an intensive level of services needed have had many conversations with individuals who have been impacted that have had really high level and technical positions that was hard for me to comprehend because I'm not, I don't have that same level of expertise. And so the conversation the request was, how do I turn these 25 years of experience in a very high level field into something that's translatable into the public sector, paper and how they articulate their skills and abilities. And so that's a high need, it's in high demand, and then also other small things. We mentioned our LinkedIn workshops and our free professional headshots that we started to offer under Jessica's leadership over the last month and change. Those are our services that are highly in demand. But I think that there are many needs, but that's what comes to mind off the top, is that how do I translate my public service experience into something that's palatable for private industry. But just leaves all of our programs, so I want to hand it off to her. Great. Thank you. Just adding to what Anthony said, we're seeing people who are uncertain about how to transition and where to go. And so needing to now familiarize themselves with different resources that are available, the services that we can provide, people are wondering what other opportunities can they now enter into. And so we're helping with being able to tell that story, being able to help them seek different types of opportunities and also being there to listen because sometimes the workshops can get pretty heavy when people are in there, finding themselves in a situation they didn't anticipate and so those are a lot of the things that we're seeing but we're seeing a lot of people eager to get back to work or find something before they run out of resources. I've been invited to a lot of different spaces where people have shared their stories with each other and with me. And the number of super smart and credibly talented people who have not put a resume together in 25 years and the technical nature of their job confounds many of us. And so I hear what you're saying, you are in a very unique position at this very unique time. And so while we're talking about the budget now continue engaging with us about any new ideas that you have, any new needs that our community has so that we can all band together and support our neighbors. Thank you. Thank you for that. And there is a supplemental that can executive send to us on the support for the failed workers looking forward to the hearing on that item. Can some member cells? Yes, I just had a quick question about the VLOA funding. I know that we talked about federal cuts. Have you assessed which services would be impacted by that reduction? And do we have a confirmation on what amount we can expect to what's going to be left, I guess? Yep. So in January when we came before you that had been a recent training and employment notice 10, there was released reflecting about a 10% cut in Maryland that those are purely projections. We know that Congress has started the process to figure out appropriations for this year, so we don't know with federal funding technically what we'll look like for next year. For the purpose of this exercise we've added flat level funding for FY26 but that number is highly likely to change as we get new information from Maryland Department of Labor as they get information from U.S. Department of Labor. And so the question is quality or quantity and both are necessary and both are highly regarded at WorkSource, Montgomery. So, depending on the cut, we will, you know, deploy a number of scenarios that we've already kind of gone through. We don't want to sacrifice quality for the sake of quantity. And so I will say that we do a great job leveraging resources. We are the fourth highest compensated board in the state of Maryland. And we serve the most amount of residents across many categories in the state of Maryland and so we've done a good job merging the two quality and quantity but one thing we don't want to sacrifice is when somebody comes through our doors and they have barriers and they need services on multiple fronts to sacrifice a level of quality and so we would look at the numbers and how many we target to serve each year to try to maintain a level of service for those that do enroll and come through our doors. Okay, thank you for that. And I noticed that the rise funding, you know, a lot of us had rise in terms in our office. Can you just speak to the impact and your experience with the program and just if you are even exploring alternative funding, if you know subsequent years we miss out on this funding, if you can talk to the importance of this program or your experience in return on investment. So I think summarizes an outstanding program. Almost every workforce area offers a summer employment program so that young folks can help bring their career focus into 2020 vision or figuring out what they want to do, what they don't want to do. That's equally as important when you're at that age and stage and so our experience with with summarized has been nothing but positive when it comes to feedback from employers feedback from students we've had young folks or youth that have participated with workforce Montgomery that have said they want to get on their local workforce development board when they go on to get into whatever you know career path they want get into. And so it brings a level of civic engagement as well based on who you do you summarize opportunity with. And so it's always a great experience when young folks can be hands on and intensive with local industry partners. And it also gives them a vision of opportunities that are here once they finish MCPS as we want them to know the opportunities that are here so that they know Montgomery County's an option when they are in their professional career. We're always in search of private funding and so we have secured a very, very small grant to the tune of $35,000 to help with youth work that we're going to leverage. And so we submit what we think is an aggressive two applications to private sources per month over the past year. But it's to support various initiatives throughout our six priorities. And so the answer to that question is yes, but we haven't received anything substantial or don't have anything substantial in the pipeline for future years. Okay, thank you. I know a lot of our organizations are having to figure out how to fund services that were funded by ARPA. And with this being one of the programs, I want to ensure that we prioritize it and fully fund it. We know that during the summer months our kids are more vulnerable to getting into trouble and while we have an opportunity to invest small dollar amounts to expose them to opportunities, I think is important to the work that we do. I had another question regarding the Department of Corrections and your relationship there. Do you know how many jobs we've placed are recently released members in. I know that there's been some job fairs at the Department of Corrections and so just wanted to better understand if we're tracking their job placements within six months after their release. So we have had a job here in the correctional facility for incarcerated individuals, many of which, so it's interesting when having that type of event inside the facility because what you're doing is you're exposing people to opportunities that they can pursue when they are released from incarceration. And so unless they are released into the community into Montgomery County and then continue on to work with us on our community-based program, it can be pretty challenging to track those particular placement numbers for those that are coming out of the facility. We can track those that are working with us in the community. And our adult placement numbers are pretty substantial. We overall, our placement rates for the adults that we're working with out of our center, out of our American job centers, we're averaging over a 70% placement rate for adults. So you don't have any data on any individuals you use? For the particular jail, we have maybe out of a handful that were released into us. We have one that we've tracked, employed past six months, but it's a handful of people that have been released to us. Because when they come out of MCCF, they can go to different places not necessarily in some Montgomery County. So the purpose of that job fair was really to not just introduce them to employers, but also training providers that they could take advantage of once they were released back into the community. Okay, and so if funding is reduced and staffing is limited to two full-time employees, what services or support would be scaled back? So currently we have a manager that is on site, we have an employment specialist and we have an instructor that conducts workshops. And so if we were to lose one of the FTE positions, we would just have to manage or scale the amount of people were able to serve. In the jail alone, in the last from July to December, we saw over 400 different people that we provide services to. Being as though we had three FTEs able to provide those services. And so we would just have to scale back a little bit in terms of how many people we could effectively serve, but we still would provide the services to those people inside of the jail. And it would be helpful to understand what the outcomes of those 400 interactions were. We just, we do have some outcomes in terms of how we serve the people in the jail. They are getting training, they're getting certifications. I believe our folks inside the jail out of that number that I shared with you, we had about 62 obtained some sort of credential or certificate in working with our staff inside of the jail. So we do track outcomes with the people that we're working with. Yeah, connecting them to jobs. Yes, ultimately what we would want to know and having those stats would be very helpful. And then my last question has work source discuss with the Department of Corrections and rehab the possibility of assisting with funding or staffing for the Job Support Center. Given their budget of $95 million, they may have money in their budget to absorb some of these costs. So historically, we have received the funding directly from Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in FY 24. There was a realignment of our NDA with the county, where that money was absorbed within our NDA to come directly from our NDA account. And so we haven't had those conversations since the transition. My turn to revisit. OK. And lastly, I just wanted to thank you and your team for joining us for the United and Service meetings, kicking us off for the first meeting to talk about our hiring practices and all of the opportunities that await some of our displaced workers. So thank you and Kudos to you and your team. Thank you so much for the presentation and I hear with objection we're going to support the panic secret proposal. Thank you for coming. Last item of the day. Alcohol, beverage and services. you you you I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Mr. Rain, kick us off. Sure. Just to note, our OMB analyst is double booked. So she will be down as soon as possible from the E&C session. OK. So we will do our best with that. So just as a matter of housekeeping, the items before you today are the FY26 Recommend Operating Budget for ABS, though, aka the liquor fund. We also have two CIP items for the committee's review, the ABS retail store refresh CIP, as well as the ABS conveyor system up with CIP. As a matter of housekeeping and process, consistent with previous budgets, the council has limited authority to change the ABS operating budget. This is based on a state of Maryland Attorney General opinion. The Council can make recommendations on the ABS budget, but the final decision are subject to authority of the County Executive. So any request or recommendation we make today, the County Executive would have to agree to the change and make a budget amendment. This does not apply to overall compensation benefit adjustments. ABS is a unionized workforce, and they are subject to those agreements, just like every other department that's unionized. On the expenditure side of LickrFund, the executive is recommending a total FY26 funding level of 77.9 million, which has increased about 3.3 million or 4.5% over the FY25 approved operating budget. The expenditures are fully supported by revenue collections, amounting to estimated $101.7 million, which is a decrease of $2.6 million or $2.5% over the FY25. And again, the liquor fund is a non-tech supported fund, so it is an enterprise fund with a fund-balanced policy applying to it. On the expenditure side, again, there are no programmatic or staffing changes. This is essentially a same services budget. The increases are primarily due to FY26 compensation adjustments, as well as prior FY25 compensation agreements rolling into FY26. There are, of course, some sexually managed expenses such as debt service transfers transfers, print and mail, risk management, motor pool, that's an additional $42,000 of increases. There are some minor staffing realignments, essentially converting positions from either full-time and part-time, or between those two. And finally, there are some required operating expensive related to IT, most notably $460,000 or so for Microsoft Office licenses that were previously being charged to the general fund, but are now due to a change in internal policy by the executive branch are being allocated to the liquor fund. On the revenue side, the 99% of the liquor funds revenues are from alcohol sales. These are the sales from both the retail and wholesale operations of ABS. That is expected, projected to decrease from 102.5 million to 99.8 million. And the other major revenue sources, liquor licenses sales, which is a project to remain flat for FY26. All of this leads to the general fund transfer, which is the big component of the liquor fund. For FY26, the transfer is 19.6 million, but that includes a component for indirect costs which are charged by the general fund. So that's a relatively fixed charge. That charge has gone up to $100,000 to $4.9 million. But the unreserved portion of the general fund transfer, the earnings transfer, as we call it, is 14.6 million, which is a decrease of almost 12 million or 45% from that fly 25 level. And so that's a big shift. And if we turn to, I just really kind of highlight the fiscal history. If we turn to page four of the pack on table one, this table kind of shows the history of expenditures, fund transfers to the general fund, and revenues from FY21 through 26 recommended budgets. We started with 21 because that's the first full year of COVID, so it gives you a sort of recency examination. But essentially what's happening, the big picture is that personal costs have grown significantly since FY21. Not due to necessarily personal additions, but really just compensation agreements rolling in. Other operating costs have remained roughly level, including debt service and capital outlays. And then revenues have remained relatively flat over the last five, six years, roughly around 101 million a year. So the earnings transfer, as you can see, has been 31, 35 million until this year. And what's missing from this table and will be corrected for the full council is the role of fund balance. The liquor fund carries a fund balance and I did some quick analysis and we'll have this displayed for the full council. The fund balance has been relatively high since FY21, starting at around FY22 began with about a $18 million fund balance, 23 began with 11.2 million, 24 24 began with $13.2 million. And 25 this year began with $8 million. And for 26, we're projecting a beginning fund miles of $2.4 million. So what's been happening is, the staff's opinion is that the fund balance has been cushioning the fund transfer until this year. And so as we go forward in time, and this is kind of evident in the six-year fiscal plan that the executive has sent over for ABS for liquor fund, which is on circle eight of the packet. You'll see, starting in 27 through 31, the journal fund transfer is expected to go up from 19.6 million in 26 to 20.3 million, finally getting to close to 26,3131. And so we're seeing how fun balance of the last couple of years has allowed for a pretty high amount of general fun transfer, but going forward that fun transfer will be limited, I believe. But again, more detail will be finding the full council packet after today's session, so we can kind of see a walkthrough of that of how fund transfers played a role. So I'll stop there and listen to any questions and we can dive deeper if need be on the operating budget. Thank you so much for that presentation. Let's have the, let's have you guys from the Alcovo Bridge Services, Kika Sof, Ms. Durbin. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Madam Chair and committee members, it's great to see you all, and I'm happy to be here. I don't know that I like that introduction, but we'll go on from here. Again, I'm the director of ABS, Kathy Durbin. I'm going to introduce Amy Saman from licensing regulation and education, Sean Peters, retail operations, Marty Udermall from administration, and introducing Scott McClure, who just started yesterday. It's doing a great job so far and I'm glad I came back. So happy to have him here. Welcome Scott. So I think for me, I like to talk about programs and I'm going to start there and have Marty's going to take a deeper dive into some of these other questions I'm sure you have about the budget. So I do want to say that it's very important for us to give anyone that is even considering applying for a liquor license in Montgomery County, a great big hug. It really is a service from start to finish. So we have a pre-licensing program for anybody that comes to the table and is interested in opening a business and sell alcohol in Montgomery County. The pre-licensing program walks them through, helps to educate them. We have an alert program, alcohol law, education and regulatory training that's free for anybody in the hospitality industry in Montgomery County in several languages. And we actually started the Spanish-speaking language, and I think it was almost 20 years. So it's like this is something that we've been working on for years. Cultural competency with alcohol is really important for us because alcohol is a drug. And we want people to understand how to keep their community safe, abide by the laws, and still have fun. So it's always a balance. I was listening to Robbie earlier and he was saying how permitting services is a balance between public safety and economics and we're the same way. It's really important for us to understand that this system was put in place to help keep communities safe. So once people get their license in there, approved by the Board of Licensed Commissioners, through the help of these trainings, and they always come prepared, the board knows when people haven't taken these trainings now, and they're free. They don't cost that you can take them as many times as you'd like. We walk the businesses through the whole life cycle of their license. We want to be with them if they decide to do something else. they decide to open a brewery, if they decide to work a partner with some co-create something differently on their menu. So we have a first year intervention program that those businesses are visited that first year, at least four times through an intervention, so that if they want to change what they're doing, because that first year is very dangerous in this business and the hospitality industry. So we really want to walk people through all of this. In the meantime, also educate them about ordering alcohol, how they get the alcohol. We have an ice store, we like to liken it a little bit to Amazon, but maybe it's not quite as professional, but it's a pretty cool system that we use. When there were supply chain issues during COVID, we were able to give them other products and ideas if that product wasn't available and they can look online and see those products that are like and similar. So we've grown all those spaces for them. The businesses also can go to the retail stores. So the retail store is an extension of the warehouse and so they can buy purchase wholesale prices at the retail stores, which is really helped to small businesses because at that point it's difficult for them sometimes to maybe they want to they want to serve a high end wine or a spirit but they can't afford to order the case and have it delivered. So delivery is free but the case is expensive. So we have it available to them at those stores. And so we really want to be a full service system for these businesses and we work really hard for it. This year we did open the R2D program up for the the spare-based ready-to-drink for beer wine stores, 8% and under, which is really the bulk of those items. High noon is I think the winner. And so there's lots of products out there. So these businesses, we have 160 businesses that have signed up since we started this a couple months ago. So that's just a little piece of what we're doing actually next year or next time we meet. I do want to have a full presentation to show you some of these things because they're very exciting and they bring the community and we want our stores and they are, it's happening as we speak. These stores are the hubs of those communities and they reflect every community. So I think that it's been a real pleasure and exciting to work with all the folks that are working in these stores and living in those communities. We also have a community business engagement program. So we visit every business besides the community outreach with licensing, visit every business, make sure they're getting the products they need, and we're doing everything we can for those businesses. I think that's all I'm going to stop there, and you can ask for the questions, but I just wanted to give you a snapshot. Thank you so much, Director. Durban, for your comments, and again, for the staff,. I mean, I gotta say the business of running liquor stores, it's still a challenge. I mean, I'm looking at, I know we're gonna look into the balance transfers during the full cancel session. So I really look forward to that conversation. but also the numbers for the, I'm at page seven the ABS retail store refresh C.I.P. and Again, looking at the business, you know, you have these C.I.P. Refresher is coming up, but then the sales really don't increase that much and I was spending money in places where there's no actual You're not gaining anything. You don't having a driving increase there. So I'm concerned about that. So perhaps if you can speak more on that, that will be great. Especially on looking at the ones coming up in FY26 and looking at the table four on page eight. When we do refreshers, mean, you got to, there has to be some revenue increase or anything. I will, I will start it and then I don't know either one of you want to chime in. But for me, it's not just about the money, it's about the community and having a safe place to go and the, I mean, it's overwhelming the community's reaction to these stores. We have you know tasting events where you can learn about the products and you can hear the stories now and it's a different it's an experience to go with these. The money's not going up in these stores right. I think some of them are. I think Montrose has we have have a couple of, okay, I'm gonna let the numbers people talk. Number zone lie. So go ahead. Yeah, it's Marty and my division chief. The numbers that we can't come up with right now is basically we're still in this post-COVID period. Our sales, the sales that are declining are really declining from inflated sales that we had during the COVID period. We do have slides, we have things that we can show you to show you that. But when we take a particular store, and again, we will take a cabin-john, and then we'll take Montrose. Montrose, up 4%, which we were expecting. We're hoping for six, but it's up 4%. And generally you want to wait two years after they've been open. They haven't been open for two years. But then we have Kevin John, 24%. I love the phone that I got you guys and say, look, but we closed the store for remodeling. It was very close to that store. So you just can't even compare that. That's apples and oranges. Because they picked up a lot of the traffic on that closed store, that WestBard. So we can give you those numbers, but it's probably going to be a year and a half out. Now how this was all done a long time ago with the previous administration was looking at Pennsylvania and that's where they were seeing the 6% and then 3 to 4, 6% first year, 3 to 4 in the following years. So that's where they came up with that. Okay. Okay. Councilmember Balkan. So after our last meeting when we really dive deep into the retail numbers, I met with staff. I met with Director Durban and staff and we talked about that there was a change that was made from the prior administer, the prior director. And I think that that's a very important, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it so when we look at the retail numbers, they, we're comparing apples and oranges, and so I don't know if you can concisely explain that because it does add to the story. Why didn't you pass this out to the other? There's one for you and then four for you. Ladies, good evening. Councilor. All right. Thank you. All right. Thank you. All right. Thank you. I can make an airplane. Show, show, test. I have been ill. So come on. Kind of here, but I'm kind of not. So what we're looking at here are how the previous administration wanted to look at the stores. They wanted to treat the stores as if they were a licensee. So they would charge the store the roughly 30% that they would charge a licensee when they're shipping them product. Now, up to before that point, and then when the new director came in, didn't want to look at it like that. These are extensions of our warehouse. We don't sell that product to our stores. It's a transfer like from one part of our inventory, warehouse into another. That's what it is. And it goes over at that cost. So what you're seeing on the top level is the way it used to be. And the big numbers, the big numbers, which you'll see is wholesale and retail on the top, that the total net income is 31 million. And the way that it was being done with the previous administration, hey, look, wholesale is great. I have retail's down, you know, you know, four million bucks. Look at all the red ink. Goes on the back too for the rest of the stores. Now, if you look down at the bottom part, this is just treating them as dispensaries as what they are. And you'll see where the total ABS is still 31 million. However, the host of the vision is being credited for the 19 million. And the retail vision is 26 million. And if you go across, you're not seeing too many reds except for Gathe's Bert, which is still relatively new. And if you look on the back, Pohl'sville, which has Pohl'sville has its problems. So, I don't think we have the that person there. Can I have an explain the other one? Yeah, I'm going to keep one there. You just want to meet like you know. Yeah, we got the thing for you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank be part of the report that everybody is watching as we speak for record keeping. So, so you know, please. So what you can see on the top part there with the net income of 31,300,000. How it was divvied up between wholesale and retail. And you see the retail, they've lost $4 million. Go across, you see all the stores that are quote-unquote losing money. You go on the back on the top line, you'll see some more. You see some stores with the red, but then like they're not making much money. Now when you don't charge that wholesale when you treat them as a dispenser is what they are that's where you're seeing down on the bottom where you take that 31 million now 19's being attributed to wholesale division and the retail division is 26 million and you see a whole bunch of black ink except for Gapesburg on the front, well it's living in a new store, a big store, and then pulls them on the back which as is problems. So that's the chain, that's how it was before and that's how she wants to treat it. What What had happened between retail and these folks are new to it, but there was just this competition with retail and wholesale you're charging us too much and we can't get it to, you know, we can't be, you know, our margins have to be so low to get it to our customers and now it guys there's one price. You know, we want to get it, that correct price to our customers and you know, how the director the thermos, he's like, look, there's one price. We want to get that correct price to our customers. And how the director of the government sees it, look, it's just one piece. And that's how we're going to treat it. How was treated? And that's going to treat it going forward. So that explains that. I inadvertently gave you something else. But it's a very, very good piece that transfer history from fiscal 15 and fiscal 24. Now, there's some red on there, and the rule of thumb is, don't take more than we make, or transfer more than we make, and you can do it for a year or two, but in the third year generally you're going to pay. If you look at 15 and 16, this net income, that is after the transfer. So, we drew out more and transfer of about 5 million, that, 4 million that year and 15 and the same thing happened in 16 and another million. And if you look at 17, right at the bottom, the 7474, that's force reduction in transfer. In other words, it gets called back. Okay? The reason it gets called back because in that third year you come up with a negative cash balance at the end of the year. And because of the bonds and what we require for the bonds, roughly $5 million, if we got between 1 and 3, you know, finding it's kind of let's go. However, if it's going to be a negative balance, it has to be corrected. And I mean, not just right up to 0, but right up to that $5 million. So that is what happens when you draw too much out in prior years. And if you can see, in 18, it was 1,800 bucks. And the next year in 19, they called back 1,700. Now, the county, the county. He says, well, it's like, wait. And they tried to coach me on that. It's just not working. So, now we're getting COVID years. These are the great years, 2021-22. And even into 23, if you can look at the sales numbers that are up there, there's a there's a big jump especially 22 and up and then 23 we look at 24 it's starting to get back down to normal. Now 25 through the first three quarters we think it's going to be down to around 304, which is kind of where it was, you know, fiscal year 20 and fiscal year 19. That's kind of way to kind of compare to is pre-COVID years. But when you have this drastic reduction of sales, it's going to be a drastic reduction in net income. The second component to it, and you guys have alluded to it, was expenditures. Our regular expenditures are pretty calm. It payroll in the last two years is going up 25%. That's $11 million. Okay. So it takes us a while to adjust to that. So it's this convergence of sales are pumping. Things are horrible. The sounds are getting back normal. And here's what I'll show you. This is from NAPCA. We did send it. I did. There you go. You're going to have to send it and also for the staff report for full cancel. You're going to have to simplify everything and explain. You have a lot of this. And especially when it comes to the transfer history and the CAP expenses that we have in the retail professors and what does that mean. Again, this is a business. We are in the business of alcohol. Whether we like it or not. I don't like it. But this is the business thing. I think I need to understand more the business process that you guys have and how that impacts our budget. What this would be showing you here is, from NAPCA, NAPCA is basically, it's 25% of the still spirits at NAPCA. They want to know what this is. NAPCA is national. National alcohol, beverage and control association. And roughly 25% of the United States is under control. And these are the liquor sales for them. And you see this green line, that's COVID. That was that big jump they're getting with COVID. The dotted line is usually, I mean that's your pretty straight up, you know, sales are going up each year type of thing. So what we're seeing is a correction, you know, downward towards the norm. So that's, you know, they do this at this meeting, discus down at the bottom. That's a trade up trade folks. distilled spirit scouts. Yeah. Those folks, you should be calm for you the bottom that's a trade up trade folks. This don't spirit scams. Yeah. Those folks, be calm folks. It's just getting back to normal before COVID. Now what's the new normal? Who knows? We don't know. And if our first, you know, at the third court analysis, it looks like our norm, at least for sales, are going right down to about 304, which is what we're hitting in fiscal year 20. So that might be the new norm. I don't know, it's pretty drastic. I mean, 316 down to 304, but then this area is going through things also, as you all well know. So it might be a little more than the rest of the country, just because of what we do in this area. So it's that, it's kind of the triple whammy. Yeah, we just took, yeah, we took too much for the last few years. And look, I don't blame us for taking it. We had big cash amounts that were sitting out there and we should take them. I don't begrudge OMB or us making decisions to do it because these are big transfer numbers we could do. $31 million, I mean, if you go from, let's say fiscal 80 or what, we'll go 90, 24 down up to $31, $7 million, pretty much two to two years in a row. And before that, again, going back to like the 19 piece, it's nice big chunks and we really could really raise it 23, 24, but, you know, it's coming back down. It's coming back down because we are transferring more than we're making. And that's the problem. Exactly. And we're not taking it. It's being taken. So when he says, we, it doesn't mean us personally. But I think the goal in the story behind this is how do we remain fiscally responsible for years to come and not go in this rollercoaster that's been going on for a very long time. So, the first thing you have to do is, if there's a problem, and then you move from there and try to figure out every year as you get better, how you maintain that balance. And I think that's where we have to go. That's internally what we're talking about is making those decisions. Now, we weren't prepared to pay as much money as we did this year for the incremental that were. I think they were doubled this year. Well, just in the last two years, 25% total or total personnel policy. We're talking all wages, right? So, okay, just making sure that it's said. Yes, I, also, I appreciate that you are recognizing that we do have a problem. And I, and I think there has to be a way to address that especially during the full cancel, cause our colleagues are not gonna spend as much time as we're spending right now when this comes to full cancel. So we're going to need all this information in writing so it could be part of the stuff report. And then we're going to have to have another work session and we work on the schedule and see how we can be working together to solve this problem, this huge transfers that we have. I'm going to open it up and we are in our authorities very limited on this issue. So let's just also keep that in mind. As we vote on this item that I think we have no choice and to say that we're going to accept the the county's Secrets recommendation with a caveat that we're going to have to have more explanation during full council and then having more work sessions with you guys on how we're going to be evolving this industry with Montgomery County. But if I can just have a little quick. So this budget doesn't reflect any reductions in operating costs, for example, which, like credit card fees we talked about two years ago, last year as well, could those be passed not to consumers, that's not reflected. So there are larger discussions we had about diversifying revenue streams or increasing cost of product, things like that, but that is not in this budget. And I didn't want to bring up it because I remember we talked about the credit card fees I think it was a long and no one. But it's going to have to be part of the discussion in the future. Because this... And I didn't want to bring up it because I remember we talked about the credit car fees and I was I think was a long enough one but it's going to have to be part of that discussion in the future because this is not sustainable right now. I'm not sure we have any say in the credit car fees. No. That's fine. Well we'll talk about a deep once we have another work session. But what is in front of buzz for you now, is what we have, that recommendation from the county executive. And do you have a comment? Yeah, just real quick. I appreciate the discussion and the review of the data. Just wanna have a baseline conversation, right? Because we understand the nature of this budget discussion and what role we have and the flexibility that is provided or not. The transfer to the general fund, as proposed in this budget, one was the last time a number that low. What was the last fiscal year? It's got to be pre-pandemic, right? Is it? Is it in that supplemental document? FY17. It's in the history you can see that by 17. It's 9.7 million FY17. So what was that fiscal year? 17. 17. So, yeah, the conversation that really needs to be had is a course correction. And the investments that have been made and the branding with an eye towards continued growth is not occurring. And we know it's not isolated to ABS, right? This is younger people are not drinking the same kind of alcoholic beverages that adults are. And particularly in a state like Maryland, it's the cannabis industry that is growing while the alcohol beverage industry is shrinking. Fact. And so how do we accommodate that reality? Bigger conversation than now, we understand the interplay between the operation that you run and how it affects the overall budget, how it affects our restaurants and hospitality, and how it affects our residents. And so outside of the budget, but you need to be thinking about what the future is for an industry that is not on the growth projection as it once was, reflected very sharply in the fact that this is the lowest transfer since FY17. To be continued, but yeah, Director Durbin. Thank you. So, I would say that one of the things that we're doing, there's lots of things that we're doing to address these issues. Low alcohol products are in our stores very easily available. No alcohol products are in our stores and they sell very well. No, I think alcohol free beer is doing really well in our local and our local manufacturers are selling them in our stores as well. We're also partnering with Visit Montgomery and other groups in the community to have products that really propel Montgomery County and talk about Montgomery County in our Maryland sections and our Montgomery County sections. Our local programs gone from $30,000 to $3 million. We have pockets where we're growing and we're doing a great job of it and we're putting those products on the shelf and they wouldn't be on another shelf. And they're good products so people are coming back for them. Are highly allocated program? The wrapped around the corner. The wrapped around the building. People want high premium products. So we're looking at those systems that are working, those programs that are working, and we're helping to build those programs as well. So it used to be just the blanket, alcohol. It's not any longer. It's really talking about programs and how we get that to our consumers, what they want, especially these low alcohol products and get people choices. Thank you. Thank you. No. With that, do you have any questions or you said for, do you have any questions? With respect to operating budget, no. Yeah, good. Okay. Would you have the two other CIPs? I can go through that. Yeah, good, good. Please. Okay. You mentioned the APS retail store refresh, that the executive is recommending a reduced scope and cost for the project to tune about 3.1 million over the six year period. This is primarily the reason for this is that the cost per store for each improvement has increased since COVID to 1.2 million. And the tenants portion of the cost are covered by landlords of the retail store. So their contributions have not kept up with construction cost increases. So because of fiscal constraints, the remodeling has been scaled back a bit. Before it was more like a Cadillac model, now it's more of a Chevrolet model. The average cost per unit projected is now per stores, now around 500 to 600 thousand per store. And really what that means is items such as wine libraries, coolers, tasting rooms are being scaled back. Instead, the refreshes will be more flooring, shelving, lighting, as well as reconfiguring checkout and queue lines to make the accessibility improvements there. But other than that, just to remind you on the CIP to councilless full authority to appropriate, as recommended, a lesser amount, greater amount, or no amount. And so the councilless have full authority on the CIP portion of these projects. And then with respect to the conveyor system upgrade CIP, that is merely a technical adjustment, no cost impact, just correcting the funding source for that project. I previously approved, had assumed short-term financing. The abandonment changes the long-term financing to align with the least term for the project. So it's a duration of 10-year lease to upgrade and maintain the conveyor system for the warehouse. So staff recommendations on both of those is to approve as recommended. I appreciate that the increased honest especially based on the comments I used to made. I honestly feel that I don't even want to prove any of it at all. It's just because we're facing a really challenging time. It's $3.1 million for the retail store refresh CIP. That's serious money right there. Well, that's just the degrees of 3.1. But the total... So yeah, there's the remaining fund in the project over six years is 10.3 million of which 7.3 is the contributions from the liquor fund. So FY25 is already appropriated. So what that really means is that there's about 6 million. 6 million. From FY26 to 30 in liquor fund contributions to the CIP for this project, that's coming out of liquor fund. And for FY 26, that amount is about 1.47 million. Yeah, it's on page 8 for those who are watching. I... Okay, what? Any comments? So I'm not in favor of doing nothing because our stores need to be I mean the stores need to be I don't know I don't know if we all have the same definition of refresh right I think that the stores need to be safe and clean. I do think that we need to think about whether we whether we want to do the full rebranding or not given is now the time to do that. I think we maybe we need to take a step back to look at the entire trajectory of what's going to happen in the next five years with alcohol. But I don't think that it's feasible or wise to not do anything because we are just like all of our other assets that we have. we need to make sure that they're clean and safe and welcoming and there is an equity issue of which stores are refreshed in which ones aren't. So those kinds of things are, I think, are still important. All right. Let me, let me just say that take my hesitation as warning that we really need to rethink how we're doing things within ABS and really move faster in terms of evolving the whole way we do business. At the end of the day, this is a business for Montgomery County and we need to really rethink. So Anna gonna push back on it, I'm just gonna say, I'm gonna agree with the county executive recommendation just to move us forward, but we really need to have more conversations on how we're gonna to be evolving facing the what we're facing right now today. Thank you. Does anybody else have any comments? No, with that we're going to accept the Khan Executive's recommendations and I look forward to a more detailed report for full cancel. Yes, thank you. I want you to learn more about what we're doing because we're very progressive. Well, thank you for that, director. Have a good day. Everyone this meeting has adjourned. Thank you.