Everyone and welcome to the session of the Montgomery County Council. This morning we begin with two presentations. The first is commemorating and celebrating Jewish American Heritage Month by the County Council. I'll come down and be joined by Council members, glass, cats, and Freetson and anybody who's here for that proclamation, please come up and then other council members can join us as well. So the first proclamation is Jewish-American Heritage Month. I'll go now. I'm going to go to the next floor. I'm going to go to the next floor. I'm going to go to the next floor. I'm going to go to the next floor. I'm going to go to the next floor. I'm going to go to the next floor. I'm going to go to the next floor. I'm going to go to the next floor. I'm going to go to the next floor. I'm going to go to the next floor. My apologies, everyone. It's only Tuesday of a long week. So, anyway, I'm just so glad that we're all here today to recognize Jewish-American Heritage Month. As you all know, last Tuesday we recognized Holocaust Remembrance Day and it was a solemn day where here at the council we joined together to remember and honor the six million Jews who were murdered during the Holocaust and those who survived. And today, we want to come together because it's important that we celebrate Jewish American heritage as well as have those solemn moments because the contributions of our Jewish community community is so great here in Montgomery County. Here in Montgomery County we have the largest Jewish population in the state and we are very proud of that. And we want to celebrate these moments because our Jewish community contributes so much through education, our nonprofits, through social justice activity, and is through the Jewish values of repairing and charity that we really need right now in our community and throughout the world. And so today, we want to lift up our Jewish-American community and celebrate, and I'm just so glad we are joined by so many people here in our community who do such great work. And I'm going to turn it over now to Councilmember Freetson, Glass, and Katz to say a few remarks, and then we have some speakers. Thank you. Thank you, President Stewart. It is an honor to be here to celebrate Jewish-American heritage month. Last week, as noted, we commemorated Yomashoua. We spoke about the darkest chapter of the Jewish experience. And it's important as we acknowledge and commemorate and ensure that we instill that as part of our collective memory, that we also uplift the brightest moments of the Jewish experience. And we talk about not just a story of surviving some of the worst atrocities that we have seen in human history, but of thriving in our country, in our county, and in our community. We like to talk a lot about some of the famous stories Gustavav Braun and Old Bay Seasoning for those keeping score. Old Bay Seasoning is certified kosher. The shellfish it goes on, not so much. We can talk about the successes of a community that has grown from just about 200 families after World War II to over 100,000 Jewish residents in Montgomery County comprising 10% of our population. And we could talk about the business and the charity and some of the other successes that we have seen in academia and in law, but I think it's most important to talk about how our Jewish community in Montgomery County has been a core part of the social safety net of living out Montgomery County values and living out Jewish values each and every day. The Jewish Social Service Agency, the Jewish Council for the Aging, the Jewish Community Center, the Jewish Coalition Against Domestic Abuse, Main Street Connect, the Now McComb, which used to be the Jewish Foundation from Group Homes, there is not a single area of our community and our county in the nonprofit social service sector that the Jewish community hasn't been a leading part of over the last 70 years in Montgomery County. And that is a great source of pride for me as a Jewish Montgomery County lifelong resident. And it should be a great source of pride for all of us. So today we lift up and we talk about the light of the Jewish community a time of growing anti-Semitism. The best way to fight it and combat it is to ensure that we are uplifting the greatest contributions and the successes of the Jewish community here in Montgomery County and throughout our country. I just want to thank everybody who is joining us today for Jewish American Heritage Month because not only are we standing here in solidarity but we will continue standing with every member of our community because those are our Jewish values. as we stood up during the civil rights struggle, just as we have stood up over other struggles and fights for equality that have focused on other individuals, of other religions, of other countries, we will continue standing up here in Montgomery County to make sure we remain a safe and welcoming place for everybody and we will continue fighting for equal rights and civil rights for every resident because as we celebrate Jewish American Heritage Month, we will continue fighting for everybody. So thank you. Well, good morning. I mentioned upstairs that I really should have learned years ago to not follow my colleagues when because they've said it all, though I'm going to say a little bit. Good morning. I mentioned upstairs that I really should have learned years ago to not follow my colleagues, because they've said it all, though I'm going to say a little bit more. Andrew mentioned Gustaf Braun from Old Bay. I actually knew him. And so, and his 96-year-old son, 95, 96-year-old son, is still living. Ralph, he was friendly with my animals. But you know, and it was also noted, it's hard to believe that in the 20s, 1920, my grandparents came to Gathesburg in 1918. But in 1920, that era, there were so few Jewish people living here because there was covenants on land that said you couldn sell to them. Now, ultimately, obviously, there was a lot of land that was bought and the population changed. But that's really my family's lifetime. In my lifetime, and I mentioned this upstairs as well, it's hard to believe, schools integrated in Montgomery County in 1956 in the up county when I was in first grade. It's hard to believe where we were really in a horrible situation, but where we were and where we are today. We have a lot of ways, we have a lot of way more ways to go forward, but we have come a long way in that hundred years. We just need to do so much more. Andrew mentioned this as well. It's about 105 Jewish people that now live in Montgomery County. And of course, the perseverance, hope, and faith of the Jewish community has reminded us of the tragedies of the Jewish people live on. But the Jewish community needs all communities, just like every other community. I always say a community is a family. The Jewish community needs all communities to stand together, to make certain that our neighbors and our families and our friends remain strong because when we were talking about this Yom Hoshoa of the Holocaust, when you started listening to people who lived through that, you realize we're not that far from where we were then to where we are now. We need to be very very very careful. We need to celebrate, but we need to remember. Thank you very much. Thank you so much to my colleagues for those words. And we have many members of the Jewish-American community with us today. And we want to be joined now by Rabbi Glazeraser who's going to share a few words with us. Thank you. I'm very honored and delighted to be here today on the occasion of the Council recognizing Jewish-American Heritage Month and to have a chance to be here with so many of my colleagues and the Jewish community's partners in this community. As a representative of Orkodash congregation, the oldest Jewish institution in Montgomery County, I am also delighted to share it. There is no way I could list all the Jewish organizations, institutions, and synagogues that now exist in this amazing and diverse community of Montgomery County. Rao Moshe Finestein once wrote in 1984, on reaching the shores of the United States, Jews found a safe haven. The rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights have allowed us the freedom to practice our religion without interference and to live in this republic in safety. A fundamental principle of Judaism is Hakerata Tove, recognizing benefits afforded us and giving expression to our appreciation. And we do appreciate our community on Montgomery County, Maryland and in the United States of America. Many years ago, I was at the council proclamation celebrating the faith communities and the interfaith work in Montgomery County, Maryland. And on the way out, a reporter, a television reporter put a microphone on my face and say, talk to me about anti-semitism. And I said, we certainly need to talk about anti-semitism, but today, I would love to talk about the way the faith communities are coming together to work together to create an amazing community here in Montgomery County. And he said, he looked at me, he paused. He paused again and he said, if you want to get quoted, talk about anti-semitism. And he walked away. Oi. Alright. We threw. and he walked away. Oi. We thrive in Montgomery County because we work together. And we do need to talk about, talk about anti-Semitism. And we need to work together to combat anti-Semitism. And we do that together. This incredible diverse community here in Montgomery County by coming together and working together we all support one another. This is not something that we can do on our own, none of us. Ibo Patel and Sacred Ground writes, where diversity is a fact, pluralism is an achievement. It means deliberate and positive engagement of diversity. It means building strong bonds between people from different backgrounds. And that is the gift we are given here in Montgomery County as the Jewish community comes together with other communities so that we can create the strongest, proudest, most significant force in America, which is a group of individuals who work together to build our community. George Washington wrote a letter to the Hebrew congregation in Newport, Rhode Island in 1790. It is now no more that integration is spoken of as if it, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily, the government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution, no assistance requires only that they live under its protection and should demean themselves as good citizens and giving it on all occasions their effectual support. We understand that that's an aspirational comment. We have not achieved a country that gives to bigotry no sanction and to persecution no assistance. But it is an aspiration and it is an aspiration for all of us. May the continuing in that letter, may the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths and make us all in our several locations useful here. And it's own due time and way everlastingly happy. Thank you, Rabbi Galasia. You know, as we were thinking about today, the proclamation for Jewish American Heritage Month, as Rabbi said, or Kurdish is one of our oldest Jewish communities here in Montgomery County. So we need to look at the history, but we also need to look at the present and the future. And so it's so important that we have Samuel here who is a senior at Kennedy High School. And he is here to share some words. He is an ambassador for JCRC of Greater Washington's student to student program and he's going to provide some remarks for us this morning. Hi, my name is Samuel Pickup, C. Christensen. I'm a senior at John F. Kennedy High School. And last year and this year I've've been a group leader and stirring committee member of the JCRC, which is the Jewish Community Relations Council, student-to-student peer education program. So what we do is we go into different schools and different communities within Montgomery County and also in DC and Virginia to basically provide presentations about what it's like to be a Jewish teen in Montgomery County. So we're not going to necessarily talk about politics or talk about different ideological divides, but rather just share our experiences in our day-to-day lives about what it's like to be a Jewish teen. For me personally, I've done a lot of work with the Board of Education in Montgomery County, as well as different administrative bodies to work to provide more Jewish education, not education about Jewish laws and practices, but rather education about Jewish successes throughout history, like so many people before me have said today. A lot of things that we see in curricula in education really revolve around the Holocaust. And like we said before, it is so incredibly important to commemorate this and recognize it. But it's also so incredibly important to talk about all of our successes so that we don't get sort of stuck in the muck of being victims. So much of what we do at the JCRC and what we do within our education system is to teach people about number one, the unknown, which is so, so important. And number two, about the successes of different groups of people throughout the entirety of history. And I am very proud to say that me and one of my very good friends Eliza Bevington worked pretty closely with some of the social studies curricula personnel within Montgomery County to sort of rebuild the social studies curricula within elementary school, middle school and high school to include more Jewish education, not just about the Holocaust. Because from my experience and from the experience of many of my peers, people tend to be afraid of what they don't know. So the best way to uplift the Jewish community and really talk about our successes as a cohesive group of people is to teach people what they don't know and allow them to understand that we are a wonderful amazing community with so many different assets that make us who we are today. Thank you. Thank you so much Sam for those words and for all you're doing and to JCRC for your work. I also want to recognize that we have representatives here from Senator Van Hollen's office, Congressman Raskin's office, and thank them for all their work they're doing for our community and for our country. We also have the Mayor of Kensington and here at Tracey Ferman and Laura Stewart on Board of Education and just want to thank everyone who came out today to really celebrate Jewish American Heritage Month and with that we will now read the proclamation. All right. All right. I will start. Whereas Jewish American Heritage Month originated in 1980 when Congress passed a resolution which authorized the President of the United States to issue a proclamation designated April 21 to to, 1980 as Jewish Heritage Week. And... Whereas, since 2007, every U.S. President has issued proclamations for Jewish American Heritage Month, encouraging all Americans to learn about Jewish heritage and the contributions of Jewish Americans to the United States and. Whereas the American Jewish community dates back to 1654 when a group of 23 Jews fleeing persecution at the hands of Portuguese in acquisition in Brazil found refuge in New Amsterdam. Now part of New York City. Today the American Jewish community has grown to approximately 7.6 million people, which represents more than 2% of the total US population. And... Whereas the story of America was written in part by Jewish Americans who, through their words and actions, embraced the opportunity and responsibility of citizenship and civic engagement. Jewish Americans continue to guide our country's progress as scientists and teachers, doctors and lawyers, public servants, and non-profit leaders and whereas over the past three hundred and seventy years the Jewish Americans have contributed to their communities and to this nation as loyal and patriotic citizens. The American Jewish community has proudly served in uniform, in elected office and and on our nation's highest courts. And... Whereas the state of the state of According to the largest Jewish population in the state, with 45% of Maryland's Jewish residents living in our community. According to the Burman Jewish data bank, Montgomery County's Jewish residents make up 10% of our population, with 105,400 residents. Additionally, the Washington metropolitan area is home to the third largest Jewish population in the United States. And... Whereas for generations, the story of the Jewish people have been recognized as one of resilience, faith, and hope in the face of adversity, prejudice, and persecution, and... Whereas now, American Jews are feeling vulnerable amidst a rise in anti-semitism. The American Jewish Committee's State of Antisemitism in America 2024 report revealed that 91 percent of American Jews find that anti-semitism in the United States has increased in the last five years with one third saying they have been the personal target of anti-Semitism either in person or virtually at least once over the last year. Sadly, we have seen arise in anti-Semitism in Montgomery County as well. And? Whereas hate has no home in our community, and we stand in solidarity with our Jewish residents to combat anti-Semitism, discrimination, and acts of violence, and recommit ourselves to doing everything we can to help eliminate all types of discrimination and prejudices. And... We're as in Montgomery County, our diversity is our strength and Jewish American Heritage Month is a time when the culture and history of Jewish Americans is celebrated and their sacrifices and contributions to our nation, state and county are honored and uplifted. Now therefore be it resolved that the County Council of Montgomery County Maryland proclaims May 2025 as Jewish American Heritage Month presented on the sixth day of May in the year 2025. Thank you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Thank you again for everyone who is here for our Jewish American Heritage Month Proclamation. Next we have a Proclamation Recognizing Public Safety Appreciation Day by the Council's Public Safety Committee with the County Executive. And I'll turn it over to the Chair of the Public Safety Committee, Council member for cats. I'll stand next to you. You know what I should drive you. Yeah. I know what you're going to do. I'll show you. Okay. This is a day that you don't want to call somebody chief because everybody comes down. I mean, it's like calling mom in a grocery store. We're all good. We're getting down here. Well, the Public Safety Committee is pleased to recognize Public Safety Appreciation Day and quite candidly it needs to be every day in Montgomery County. On this day, we pay tribute and express their gratitude to all public safety professionals, firefighters, police officers, paramedics, dispatchers, emergency management teams, corrections and countless others who work tirelessly to keep our community safe. A safe community is important as it always, as it allows their families, friends, and neighbors to live work, worship, play, and thrive in a community. A career in public safety is a calling that demands great sacrifice. They work long hours and in difficult conditions. Moreover every day, they and their families share in that sacrifice to protect the people of our county. When flooding devastates parts of Kentucky, Montgomery County's public safety professionals joined Maryland TSC, where's one. They worked around the clock helping the rescue, to help to rescue stranded Kentucky residents from high waters and assisting other emergency workers to help those in need. A few members of the TSC force came across a house fire and jumped into action to rescue the family in pets, as well as to control the scene until local firefighters arrived. Close to the home, our innovative drone is first responders program, has transformed how we protect our residents. The program uses unmanned aircraft systems to respign to 911 calls for service. The live video feed provides by the drone, provided by the drones, helps officers assess the situation and develop an appropriate response. Since the program launched in 2023, more than 2,000 flights have taken place. The program now covers downtown Silver Spring, Wheaton, Glen on Gathususburg, Montgomery Village, and Bethesda. Every day they go, first responders go above and beyond whether it's a paramedic, comforting a Frightened Family patient, a 911 dispatcher calmly guiding a caller through a crisis where a police officer's compassionately deescalating a tent situation. These moments often unseen define your untiring service. The council will continue to work hard to provide support and resources for you to do your jobs effectively. In closing, I would like to thank you for your unwavering service and the many ways you protect us every day. You answer the call of duty at all hours of the day and night. We appreciate your many, we appreciate your many, we appreciate your many, we appreciate your many, we appreciate your many, we appreciate your many, we appreciate your many, we appreciate your many, we appreciate your many, we appreciate your many, we appreciate your many, we appreciate your many, we appreciate your many, we appreciate your many, we appreciate your many, we appreciate your many, we appreciate your many, we appreciate your many, we appreciate your many, we appreciate your many, we appreciate your many, we appreciate your many, we at all hours of the day and night. We appreciate your many, we appreciate you more than words can ever express. What I'm going to do is ASC other members of the Public Safety Committee, Councilmember Luki and Mink, and I'm doing that in alphabetical order. I want you to know. It to come forward in N. Mollace accounting executive to say a few words and then we're gonna read a proclamation. You didn't know that we were just joking during the last proclamation because it's K L M and so we know the Public Safety Committee kind of goes in a certain order, not just for public safety related things, but that's just how we are alphabetically. So thank you. Thank you. There you go. Thank you. Thank you. It is a wonderful day to be able to celebrate our public safety professionals. And I know that many of us attended last week, there were public safety awards last week, honoring so many wonderful heroes within our county, but there's so many stories that don't even get told. And that's just all in a day's work, right? And I think it's really important that particularly now, when we're sitting in a landscape the federal federal level there's a a bunch of cuts reduction, slashing and abandonment of certain public safety priorities, right? Like violence prevention, like supporting victims of crime. These are things we value and we're going to continue valuing here in Montgomery County and Everyone standing up here behind me and everyone that they lead in their daily work Believes in those things and believes in continuing consistently delivering top-notch results for our residents and those who come to visit Montgomery County And that that gives me immense pride. The level of compassionate, coordinated, community-based care and service that these folks provide is outstanding. And I've had the benefit of working with groups all over the state of Maryland. And even before I came to serve on the council I always had a deep appreciation and affection for the level of work that is performed here in Montgomery County and their willingness to serve in other capacities as council member cats mentioned they volunteer and they serve with our task force one that goes out and assists other places. Well these folks, these professionals who are up here with me today also benefit the state as a whole in a great way by serving on different public bodies, boards and commissions and providing invaluable expertise to inform the work of those bodies. So I am incredibly proud of all you do. I'm incredibly proud of the various innovative things that our different departments bring. Council member Katz already touched on our drone is first responder program. We have our real time intelligence center or Arctic. We have our Sheriff's Office collaboration with the Family Justice Center. We have, oh, she's laying down now. But we have one of our court therapy dogs here as well. We have our mobile crisis team. We have mobile med within MCFRS. And we have our blended career and volunteer fire service that collaborate to bring the best forward every day. We have our emergency call center professionals. And I want you to think about these folks not just in the amazing work they do, but my ask of the public is to remember that they are people just like you, just like me. And that these days are long and hard and stressful. And I want you to visualize what they have to do and what they have to bring to the table and what they have to see day in and day out in the performance of their duties and then Remember to say thank you and remember to say I get it. You're human too All right with that I celebrate you all and thank you all for coming today. There are a lot of different ways in which Montgomery County is a leader in the public safety sphere so many different ways and You know, we've talked about the crisis center about how you know as an integral part of our public safety infrastructure We have civilians we have social have social workers, we have peer counselors, in addition to our police force and our fire safety and EMS, that we really take a holistic approach here in Montgomery County and serve as an example for so many other jurisdictions. But as things are unfolding at the federal level, there are other ways that are on my mind quite a lot about ways in which Montgomery County is a leader in this space. You know, we are seeing in other jurisdictions where there are police forces, local and state who are working with ICE to go after residents for immigration purposes for folks who have not committed crimes. And we are seeing, I just read a new story just recently, about not in this area, but about a resident who was hesitant to call 911 when having a medical emergency, because they're a Spanish-speaking family. And so now they're scared to call 911 where they live. And I was thinking about rabbi glaciers words about how in moments like this, we make it through by being united, by all standing together, by functioning as a team with shared values, and having policies that echo those values. And that is what we're doing here in Montgomery County, as a matter of our values and as a matter of policy. And for that, I'm also so grateful to be here in Montgomery County with the folks that we have in our leadership positions in public safety and on the ground. We know that our residents can safely call 911 for help and for service. We know that truly all residents are here to be served. It's not everywhere that you can have, you know, just not too long ago. We had some fire rescue professionals who had worked with a tenant association to put together CPR classes just in the lobby as folks are coming into and out of their apartment complex. One of the most diverse complexes in my district, people speaking all different languages and they were stopping to learn CPR and to get to know their fire rescue teams who serve them. And there were teens who speak several different languages who are now interested in learning more about how as a young person to get involved in that career track. So it's really exciting and benefits the community in so many different ways. And this is just, the right way to be and I thank you all very much for your service and for your values. So I can take away the first page of what I'm going to say because it's pretty much been said. Look, I really appreciate the work that our public safety people do. It is an amazing job and it's a lot of agencies. I will read the list of agencies because it's not just the police department, the fire and rescue, which you all think of, but it's the sheriff's office, the state's attorney's office, the department of corrections and rehabilitation, officer emergency management and homeland security, emergency communications and street outreach network network that all is The complex that we consider public safety and the work they do for our community. I think is well-recognized. It is That heart not easy in these times to talk about a police department being great. This department has been really great They have really stood up in the challenges we face we figured out a way to go forward and they've been innovators. You know, a lot of times we think of the innovation comes from the government. The police are continually looking for ways to make them more effective and give them the tools and we've been willing to give them the tools because they can demonstrate that with the tools we give them, they're able to make your community safer. So it's good to have that kind of initiative taken by the department and good to have officers who are thinking about how do we make this better. And I think that's true for all of our departments. We, they work really hard. They come whenever they're called, during COVID, they get to stay home and work on their computers and do Zoom meetings every once in a while. There is no Zoom in firefighting, there's no Zoom in policing. You got to be there. And so our folks have always been there. I just want to express my really deep appreciation for what we've gotten to and the fact that we all have the strength to stand together and work together and to make a difference for the residents of the county. And people are noticing the down-ticking crime. People are aware that places that they were not comfortable in before, they're more comfortable now. And that's one of the most important things we can do for people is enhance their sense of security. So thank you. Please join me to read this and Mark. Sort of a new dance. Whereas Montgomery County is proud to recognize air over 4100 dedicated public safety professionals including the not limited to those those who serve in Montgomery County Police Department Fire and Rescue Service, State's Attorney's Office Department of Correction and Rehabilitation, Sheriff's Office Office of Emergency Management, and Homeland Security, Emergency Communications, and the Street Outreach Network, who are dedicated to serving and protecting our community and. Whereas our public safety personnel were tirelessly to ensure the safety and well-being of all our residents by responding to emergencies, maintaining order preventing crime while facing dangerous and stressful situations and. Whereas these dedicated public servants deserve to be be commended and honored for their courage, professionalism, efforts, and sacrifices, made 24 hours a day, seven days a week to protect our community and. Whereas, residents can show support by helping organizations that serve public safety professionals and their families, as well as attending events that honor these hardworking individuals and? Whereas public safety appreciation day is an opportunity to bring our public safety employees together to thank them for their selflessness and dedication to improving the safety and well-being of others. Now therefore, it'd be a resolve the County Executive Mark L. Rich, the Public Safety Committee, and the entire County Council of Montgomery County, Maryland, hereby recognize Public Safety Appreciation Day, presented today and signed by County Executive L. Rich and Council President Stuart. Thank you all very, very much for everything you do. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. All right. Thank you to everyone who joined us this morning for our two proclamations. Now we'll move on to general business. There are no announcements today, so we'll move on to the approval of minutes, the minutes from April 1st, 7th, 8th, and 9th Council sessions and June 12th, 2024. Great Senate, a master plan Area Tour have been circulated to Council members for review. Are there any objections to approving these minutes? Seeing none, these minutes stand approved. Next, we have our legislative day 12. There is one bill for introduction today that is bill 13-25. Licensing and regulations generally, picnics, dances, suarays, and other entertainment. Amendments, the lead co-sponsors are council members, Lukey and Freetson, I'll first turn to council member Lukey for comments. I'm laughing because I put a piece of bag all in my mouth. And I'm also giggling because you giggled when you said suara. And really, I did not bring this bill forward simply because I wanted to have a bill that had the word suara in the title. Yes, thank you. We like to say suara. Anyway, we have had some challenges here in my district, and Councilmember Freetzens' district, and let's be clear, even if we are able to resolve individual problems in a given piece of time, and I'm grateful for the, in this case, the action of our federal partners in my district, in particular, on this issue. but sometimes something that we have decided is unlawful or illegal has a remedy that isn't sufficient enough to deter the conduct. And that's the landscape we find ourselves in here, which is to say these commercial parties for profit at private homes, there's already law here that prevents that or says that that is unlawful and it must require permitting of different kinds. These folks aren't getting permitted and there's no reason for them to do so when the stick is not nearly big enough to deter the conduct, which brings in a lot of money. And so this was a carefully crafted step to try to make sure that we are taking significant action to deter that conduct by increasing the fine for such conduct from $500 to $5,000. We added a zero. That is a significant hit and we'll make you think twice before you are engaging in this kind of conduct. And I am very appreciative to, and I'm going to get it right today, I did have coffee, Mr. Ergors-Lach for his assistance in working through this and making sure we tweaked it enough to fit the need. I want to thank also our county attorney's office for their ongoing collaboration on these issues, the police department, who had worked with me so well in the situation in my district. And with that, I want to turn it over to my co-sponsor, Council Member Freetzin. Well, thank you to Council Member Luki for your leadership. Thank you to Mr. Gorsalek and the county attorney. And thank you to delegate Linda Foley, who's been a really significant champion for these issues. The reality is we have a law that has been on the books that has tried to stop these type of unlicensed commercial promoted parties but haven't worked. And the reality has been these promoted commercial events that are at times sexually explicit. One promoted is the wet dreams party in my district where over a thousand people paid to attend with full-on bottle service and other activities turning a home into a promoted nightclub in the middle of a residential community causing all kinds of disruption and the reality is the punishment that we had on the books, $500 fine didn't come close to preventing the behavior. Because the upside to carrying out these parties was so financially lucrative that paying the minuscule fines really didn't mean a whole lot. And so what we've tried to do here is to carefully tailor a legislative measure to ensure that we're actually providing the tools needed for our enforcement efforts to work so that we prevent things that shouldn't happen, prevent things that we've said we won't allow to happen, but unfortunately based on the law that we had on the books, the dangerous and disruptive activities did not match the negative impacts that they were creating with the punishments that we had on the book. So this is about safety and well-being among Montgomery County families. It's about addressing something that we have tried to stop, but have not successfully been able to so. And this is an effort to make sure that we are responding to what has been an obvious need in our community. So really appreciate us moving forward with this and just think it will be an effective tool for our public safety professionals and enforcement teams to be able to address something that we have tried, but up to this point have not been successful in addressing because our legislative measure was not meeting the need of our community. Great. Before I turn to my colleagues, Mr. Gorzilek, do you have anything to add regarding the introduction of the Council? Yeah, I'll just briefly elaborate a little bit on sort of how the bill functions. So bill 1325 would first, it would clarify that a party is included in the list within 30-1 of the Montgomery County code, which includes picking extensive Suarez and other entertainment as a prohibited activity when it is done for profit. The second thing that the bill does is that when that prohibited activity occurs as residential property, it increases the fine from its presently actually, the 30-1, the fine is actually $25. This bill, their statute actually comes from 1916 and has not been updated since 1965. And so it's sort of an acronym to say, because not even set forth as a class A violation within the county code, it predates that section of the code. So it clarifies that it is a class A violation and sets the fine at $5,000, which is the maximum authorized civil penalty under the state enabling legislation for enforcement of a civil penalty. The section also highlights three or enumerates three sections of the code, 31B5, which deals with noise level and noise disturbance violations, 59316, which deals with commercial activity, pool rental alcohol service, and entertainment venue unpermitted in the zone, as well as 59, 3, 5, 10, which is the failure to obtain necessary conditionally use approval to operate outdoor recreation entertainment facility or operation of a prohibited indoor recreation and entertainment facility. And for each of those three violations, when they occur within the same occurrence, as the 30-1 violation at residential property, defines for each of those three violations when they occur within the same occurrence as the 30-1 violation at residential property, the fines for each of those three violations would also be increased to $5,000 each. Perfect. Thank you for that. Council member Abunas. Thank you. Appreciate my colleagues for introducing this. I'm very familiar with this issue. This actually used to be an occurring problem within county and municipal buildings from people who would rent properties, misrepresenting what the event was and then causing all sorts of havoc within the community. And so this was addressed at the county and municipal level. It makes all the sense in the world to extend it to our community level as well. And I think this will definitely help. I'd like to be listed as a co-sponsor. Thank you. Council member, welcome. Thank you. I'd like to be listed as a co-sponsor as well. Yep, and we had this issue at the municipal level. So Mr. Gorsett, could you list me as a co-sponsor as well? That would be great. All right. Not seeing any other, oh, council member glass. Snuck in. I thought council member cats. municipal level so Mr. Gorsett could you list me as a co-sponsor as well? That'd be great. All right. Not seeing any other... Oh, Council Member Glass. It's nuking. I thought Council Member Katz was in the queue. I'd like to be a list of the co-sponsor. All right and Council Member Katz is now in the queue. Thank you. I was introduced by Council Member Glaz. Yes. And I'd also like to be a co-sponsor. Great. Terrific. Thank you very much for that. This bill is now introduced. The council will now sit as the district council for the introduction of zoning text amendment 25-06. Vehicle service filling station, lease sponsors are council members, Mink, Freetzen and council vice president, Jawondo. A public hearing is scheduled for June 10th, 2025 at 130 p.m. Mr. Dew, I will turn it over to you. Good morning. So currently in the zoning ordinance, a filling station that dispenses at least 3.6 million galleries per year must be 500 feet from certain uses, residences, recreation and entertainment, environmental areas. What this this CTA will do is clarify that you measure from the fuel dispenser rather than the lot line or the canopy or any other part of the lot. The CTA will also clarify that if a residence or other use is built within that 500 feet after the filling station is approved, the filling station will not become a non-conforming use because if it did that would mean that it could not expand. Terrific. So you know when wanting to speak this ETA is now introduced. The second item for the district council's consideration is introduction and action on a resolution to extend the deadline for council action on local map amendment h-156 regarding the property located at 7501-7515 standard place 7519 standard place 7529 standard place and 7609 to 7623 standard place This place in Plat Book 118 as Plat number 13905. Move it to July 20. and I'm going to move to the next slide. I'm going to move to the next slide. I'm going to move to the next slide. I'm going to move to the next slide. I'm going to move to the next slide. I'm going to move to the next slide. I'm going to move to the next slide. I'm going to move to the next slide. I'm going to move to the next slide. I'm going to move to the next to issue a resolution and opinion due to one being on recess when that timeline comes and of course being very busy with budget. The idea here was to extend till the last date before the August recess, which of course does not mean that you have to wait till then to take up the LMA, but the resolution will give you that extra time to work on it. Terrific. So now I will entertain a motion to adopt this resolution. Do I have a motion? Council Member Balkham, Moose, Council Member Freetson, a second. All those in favor, please raise your hand. And that is unanimous. Thank you very much. Mr. Nidoo. Next item number three is the consent calendar. I will entertain a motion to approve the consent calendar. Council vice president Jouwando moved. Council member Freetz in second. All those in favor, please raise your hand. And that is unanimous. We are now moving on to item number four. And this includes our our work sessions on the FY 26 operating budget and amendments, the FY 25 to 30 capital improvements program as we did with the budget work sessions yesterday. If the council agrees with the committee's recommended reductions or we will take a straw vote to recommend approval as recommended by the committee. If a new reduction or addition is recommended by by the council, we will note it and finalize that budget during the reconciliation process. As a reminder, all reductions and additions are tracked against the executive's March 14 recommended operating budget and we did get a bunch of amendments sent over on April 24th that if the committees did not have the opportunity to take up, we will take up as a full council. The first item we are doing is the Office of the Inspector General, thank you Ms. Lamarzy for being here. The government operations and fiscal policy committee met and reviewed the budget for the Inspector General's office. as always we noted the excellent work and how fortunate we are here in Montgomery County to have a strong Inspector General's Office. And we did place one item. I read the request for an additional FTE for an investigator to the Education oversight division on the reconciliation list. I'll turn over to Ms. Lamarcy to talk about the work she's done, and particularly in the education oversight division. One of the reasons that the committee voted unanimously to put this on the reconciliation list is as we've been talking about the type budget that we are facing and as we noted yesterday, the impacts if we do have to have saving plans in the near future, really carefully thinking about the addition of any new FTEs at this point and the potential of waiting until mid-year when we know more about the fiscal situation. And so that was the decision of the committee to places on the reconciliation list. But I'd like to turn over to Miss Lamarci if she'd like to add anything. Sure. Good morning. Thank you for having me. I'm always happy to see all of you. I appreciate your continued support of our office. included as the council president said in the executive's recommended budget was one position to add to our education oversight division. It is not my whole ask. I had a much bigger ask and you have all asked me many times what my when I think I'll get to capacity. I am not there yet for sure. But our education oversight division is responsible for handling all of the hotline calls that come into our office related to MCPS and the college. They do investigations. Every call that comes in does require some sort of work on it. We do need to follow up. We need to talk to people. We may need to make a recommendation, a referral. We may open a full investigation. It is work that takes time. And the division also is responsible for proactive reviews of the processes, procedures, programs within education programs. So, at MCPS at the college. So far far in fiscal year 25, we've received 323 complaints on the hotline, a third of which are related to MCPS. And I've told you before over the past two years, our office has really been careful to start and scope out the amount of work that we think needs to be done at MCPS. We've identified areas where we want to look and help to strengthen their processes, their procedures. Those proactive reviews and audits are critical to our office meeting, our mission, to increase efficiencies in county government funded programs. That is how we deter and detect fraud, waste and abuse. That is how we strengthen programs, identify deficiencies, try to stop problems from happening again or happening in the first place. The added position in the education oversight division is going to let us to continue to do that. This year I really made the decision that we couldn't wait on this proactive work anymore. And I had to detail two other folks from a different unit in my office to handle some of these proactive reviews. For the first time we have three open proactive reviews at MCPS. And as you all know, education funding takes up a good chunk of the budget. Currently in my office, I have 14 people looking at county government. I have four looking at education. It's a big difference at this point for us. I am immensely grateful for the support that the council continues to give to our office as we have built our audit function in the last five years as we have built out our education oversight function. But as I told the committee members, investing in positions in our office is a high rate of return to this county. That we have identified and reported on over $21 million in questionable costs in fiscal year 24 and 25. We noted $19,000 in theft, and in just this fiscal year, 25, we identified over $600,000 in missed opportunities to collect revenues and fees. And I was so, it's apropos that I'm here when that bill was just introduced because short-term rentals was a project that we did. And in that 600,000 is only about 125,000 of estimated missed registration fees. It's not counting the Miss Tax revenue that the county could have collected. So my 600,000 numbers are very conservative at this point for this year. The programs that we've looked at in the last two years are valued at over $300 million. You are not getting that service, that return, from probably most any of the offices. So I fully understand the constraints on the budget and the challenges that come, but our taxpayers, our community stakeholders, the members here, they deserve objective, independent, and thorough oversight for the billions of dollars that are spent, and that is what our office provides. And I simply ask for your continued consideration of the value that we add to this county as you are making decisions about the budget, and I'm happy to take any questions that you have. Thank you very much, Ms. Lamarzy, Councillor Vice President Joondo. Well, good to see you, Ms. Lamarzy, and we continue to be thankful for you and your team's work. It is an investment, the three and a half million going to four, hopefully this year, that we invest in your office is money well spent and we appreciate all the work you've done. I personally as Chair of the Education Committee was happy to hear that they're half the budget, but one third of the complaints. So that's actually not bad. But you do underscore that they are half the budget. And when we gave you that function, you need staff to go and look into things and work as a partner with the board and with us and with them and with the system. So I'm very supportive of these increases and appreciate the committee. To add this one investigator, I did want to ask, could you give us a sense of, what would that, the case load, based on the last few years, what do you think that this person will have? I never know exactly how many complaints will come in. And what type they will be, or what they will lead to, or require. So that's always the unknown. In the work plan, we always have to account for the unknown. It is our expectation that everyone on staff is able to complete two proactive reviews about in a year. It's some take longer. Audits, of course, under yellow book take way longer. But you know, that's where we hope to get. I've tried lots of different configurations configurations I've tried putting more people on one project to see if we can drive it more quickly or Spread it out Have one person only handle complaints for a while It's always work in progress. We're in government. We're public employees We all have to be creative and think out of the box and how to stretch the public dollar. So I'm always working to do that. It's hard for me to give you an exact number of what it looks like. Well, I appreciate that. I know and I know this is a small increase, but a needed one and one that I'll add value. So thank you very much for all your work. I just want to clarify to make sure we're all the committee's recommendation is actually not to move forward with this position. So there are council members who would like to actually overturn the committee's recommendation. We need a motion and a second and a vote to do that. We can wait till we hear from other council members, but just wanted to clarify that was the committee's recommendation. Council member Freetzin. Appreciate it. Well, first of all, I've said before I'll say again that our only currency in public life is public trust and your office and you at the head of it are really at the center of that public trust, ensuring that the taxpayer dollars that we're investing are being handled in a responsible and appropriate way. Of all the things that I have done on the council, I think the efforts to expand the role of the Office of Inspector General and improve and enhance our ethics laws, I think are some of the most important, and the thing that I am most proud of and that I have seen the greatest clear, documentable benefit from, the work that you have done has just been tremendous. And you have shown us what can happen with the right level of investment. I understand the tough dynamics, and we have expanded the office quite a lot. We also have put a lot of pressure on you. So I will yield to the will of colleagues of where we go. But any support that we provide your office, we have proven that to be a very wise and important investment. And I think that is true. In this budget, it will be true in every budget. And I just really appreciate the work that you have done and the fact that you have demonstrated to us the value in the type of oversight that our residents and taxpayers expect. And we point to you a lot when people ask, what are we doing and how are we dealing with a seven and a half billion dollar budget? What are we doing to hold the dollars accountable in MCPS and in the county government? And we turned to you and we say our Office of Inspector General is doing better work than has ever been done before as we have doubled and tripled down on providing the type of oversight that we expect and that we know that our residents and taxpayers expect. So I appreciate that. I am always here to support in any way that I can. Obviously we always face some difficult budget challenges and questions, but I will just say, as I said before that any additional investment that we can make and any expansion in personnel or resources that we've provided you have paid back to the county many fold over so appreciate that. Thank you, Council member Mink Thank you. I was on I was on a call last night. I like many other council members, I'm sure. Making calls as fast as I can to people who have been lobbying for various budget items to lay out for them what we're looking at in actually now in terms of revenue expenditures. Because these conversations are really important. Until we know how much revenue we have until we know whether we're doing an income tax. It's hard to know You know, it's hard to really put meaning behind some of these conversations because this, some of these might be just totally out of the question budget wise and some of them might not. But I'm bringing this up because what they said was so interesting. It was a call with the minority health programs and, you programs and we kind of went through the budget and they all of them concluded that they were in support of chipping and more and doing an income tax and all of them asked that as part of that in this next year of work that we double down on accountability and transparency with those dollars, that we look for ways in which money can be saved throughout the government and including MCPS, which is half of our budget. And so, which I think is very fair and they said to me, what are you going to do? We are willing to chip in more and we believe that, you know, our members are willing to chip in more, but what are you all going to do to ensure that those dollars are well spent? So those words are really ringing in my ears right now and I'm seeing this as a high priority and certainly something that we should be moving forward with if it's something that we're able to afford, which of course again depends on how much revenue we have. But for me this is looking like a really high priority because we're finding savings here and we're also finding that accountability and transparency that taxpayers are asking for. Thank you. All right. So we have a committee recommendation. Do I have a motion to override the committee's recommendation at this point? Councillor Ming, did you want to? Can you talk about the process of once we decide whether or not we're moving forward with a tax of the process of potentially bringing back some leasing for conversation. Well, I think as we looked at with what we're where we are right now, even if we were to move forward with an income tax increase, even the retroactive, we need to cut that is clear from what is before us. And so we have been dedicated throughout this process to being very clear to our departments and our agencies what is at stake in this budget. If the body today would like to hold off on a decision on the inspector general we can we can do that but we cannot do that for every department and agency because we have made a commitment that even though these are tough conversations that we would have as much of them as we can throughout this process. And so we've been very clear to the Inspector General how much we value the work of the organization, but the committee discussed this yesterday. We are looking at very uncertain times right now, and if we have savings plans potentially in furloughs and other things coming up in the next year, seriously looking at adding FTEs is something we need to do. So if it's, the body would like to hold off on this and keep this as a reduction, we can do that. But the committee's unanimous recommendation was to add this to the reduction and have this as a reduction to the county's executive's March budget. Certainly. Well, I certainly understand all that and I appreciate the tough work of the committee as we've each been doing in all of our committees. And I understand I'm here in the will of the body and the will of the committee. putting out there that I think that this is an important one for us to keep in mind as we forward. The amount of cuts that we're going to have to make if we do a retroactive tax versus doing a non-retractive tax versus doing no tax are extremely different. And so the conversation shifts when we look at our priorities. So if it's motion, I'll support it, but sensing the will of the body, I won't make the motion at this time. All right, well we have a committee recommendation. Before us now, all those in favor of the committee recommendation, please raise your hand. And that is unanimous. And Ms. Lamarzy, as I said before, and as our finance department told us yesterday, we will know a lot more about the economic and fiscal situation that we are facing this fall. And so as you know, we always love to have you at audit and government operations and keeping track of the number of complaints you get in personnel. So we hope this is an ongoing conversation and not an end to it. So just thank you so much for your work. All right. Thank you. We will now move on to public libraries and I'll turn it over to the chair of the Education and Culture Committee. Thank you, Madam President. Welcome down our great libraries team and our new-ish director. I feel like that should be a show, new-ish. I like I like the ish that it shows but I have a lot of them. So I'm pleased to share and I see we have Mr. Ambinders well that the committee the NC committee unanimously recommended approval of the county executives proposed FY26 operating budget for Montgomery County Public Libraries. And it was totaling 54.9 million, excuse me, and a 4% increase over last year, as well as both CIP amendments. And I'll just say this budget, this is a lean, mean, educating machine. This is our public libraries.. They address some community demand that's been on the rise and alternative to our director momentarily. But the target its increases in this budget will help the collections, particularly the world languages collection as where we've seen a very big demand on that. And that's 153,000 to expand world languages, which was included in the county executive's budget, which we concurred with so that residents can access materials and languages they speak at home and then a hundred and twenty one thousand to maintain current levels of digital access which continues to rise which now comprises around 65% of all library access is online through hoopla and other services. I will say we had a discussion in committee that you can only check out five things at a time for the entire month, and that was a reduction from 10, and there's accessibility and other concerns whereas you can check out much more if you go physically to the library. So this isn't everything that we would want or based on demand, but it is where we are. I wanna just commend MCPL for their continued work around racial equity and outreach and training and programming. And we also supported at the same session, a $20,000 edition in state aid for the Clarksburg Library and a $1.15 million reduction in the 21st Century Library Enhancement Project that we were assured that MCPL can adjust that downwards without compromising modernization efforts. So with that I'll turn it over to Mr. Ambiter, see if I missed anything or what's the lifting thing up. Nothing bad, thank you. All right. Miss like to say it from? Well good afternoon and thank you council member gewanda. Hello to all the council members And I would just like to say it's officially six months Been an exciting onboarding process and I would like to thank you for your continued support As well as the county Executive Office and his team and our community members been very welcoming to me and it's been definitely an enlightening experience in the last six months so thank you again. I'm pleased to share with you a year-over-year update on the performance and impact of MCPL. The data reflects a strong and sustained growth across all major service areas. Highlighting, I'll continue success in connecting with community from increased poke. a strong and sustained growth across all major service areas. Highlighting our continued success in connecting with community from increased program attendance and rising digital resource uses to hire, in-person foot traffic. A growing number of library card holders, it is clear that MCPR remains a vital evolving resources for residents across the county. Just going to share a couple KPIs, our program attendance and engagement. The public's enthusiasm for library programming has increased and reached unprecedented levels in FR24. We hosted 9,860 programs, a 46% increase in FR23. And we've nearly matched that as of April with 9,855,000 programs with over 250,000 attendees. The number of library cards continue to grow. We are seeing approximately 57,525 new cards in both formats, print, and digital. Our digital offerings continue to also see dramatic growth in FY24. Our community members checked out 3.7 million in e-resources compared to 2.8 million in the previous year and on what we're on track to exceed that number with 3.26 this fiscal year. Physical material circulation also continues to see small gains as of April we've circulated 6.3 million dollars, million items so far. These figures reflect a sustained demand for print and physical media alongside digital formats, reinforcing our communities, commitment, and love for the library. For FY 25, we made a decision to shift our fiscal resources from print about 20% to digital to support the demand experiencing a slight seven percent decrease in circulation. For traffic, it is continued to trend upward. We have already seen 306 million visitors in April with Rockville, Wheaton, Germantown, and Gathusburg being the highly most visited library systems. The upward trends across nearly every metric, attendance, collection use, and foot traffic speaks to our effectiveness and connecting with our communities. And we want to thank you for your continued support of our work in our mission. Happy to take any questions. Turn it back to Madam President. Thank you. Thank you very much. I want to see if Council Member Mink or liaison for libraries would like to say anything. Sure. Yeah. Just really appreciate the work of our libraries, of course, and just wanted to note that these are relatively small investments for a huge return on those investments for so many of our residents. The digital materials, I think it's really important to make sure that everybody hears that this doesn't even bring us back to where we want to be, to be able to, in fact, would you like to speak to that? How many books folks are able to check out and what this gets us? Sure. Thank you for mentioning it. Unfortunately, we had to reduce the number of items that our community members can check out, the digital platform, Hoopla, from 10 check out some months to five. And what our budget enhancement where we question is just to sustain that current level, not to increase back to 10. Right, so obviously we would like to do more, but we are where we are, and it's important, obviously that we at least be able to maintain that five, and then the World Languages collection, incredibly important as we have so many people who speak many different languages who we're attracting to our libraries with community events, with library-sponsored events, with new partnerships and collaborations that are being that are being stood up and as those folks go into the library collections to check things out we need to make sure that we don't just have like old knockoff Disney magazines that are there for them it's just it's not appropriate so I'm really appreciate the work that you all did to put the budget together and look forward to moving it forward. Hey, terrific. Council member, last. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you for the presentation. I got hoopla and flipster on my phone. And so know the value of those programs. And just curious, you had noted that the software, the subscription was going from 10 down to 5. What percentage of library users utilize these different software and even more specifically how many max out, how many regularly take out 10? Thank you for that question. I'm going to ask my collection management manager to answer that one. So the 10 was about, it's a few thousand every month we're getting hitting the max and now we're now those same users are hitting the five and we're getting emails about it a lot. We have tried to drive our traffic to our other surfaces, like an overdrive as well, but honestly, they're not truly comparable surfaces. The hoopla has a lot of older materials that we may not have in print, so it actually fills a gap in our collection. I had someone asking for Regency Romance as the other day, and that's not something we typically buy in overdrive because they're just not as available. But boy, Hoopla has done a great job of curating that collection. So I've referred a customer there. Hoopla, in addition also has modern music. That's where you get your Taylor Swift fix. They also have video and TV shows. You can binge pass your great courses there. So we have a lot of hallmark movies at Christmas time. Oh my goodness. So there's a lot of things that are available in hoopla on demand instantly so that if you've already, if you can't get that book, you're waiting for, unhold with Overdrive, it's an on-demand service and it's right there ready to go. So it really is, it all bends our collection in a really positive way to provide more materials and more options for our customers. Appreciate that. Again, that's why it's on my phone because I'm not going to tell you which Taylor Swift album I'm listening to. That's on Pandora. But I appreciate that and recognizing these are important programs and softwares and resentries. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Sale. Thank you and congratulations on six months. I just wanted to find out if there are any programs to encourage summer reading. And if you can share a bit about that. Absolutely. I'm going to ask Patrick from the Interim Assistant Director to share what we're doing for summer reading. Thank you so much for the question. So we are preparing for summer reading to start up our early registration begins May 15th and in support of that we're going to going to have kickoff celebrations at three of the branches, one up county, one mid-county, and one down county on separate dates, right after the end of school so people can come out and celebrate. We've been playing around with our format for that for the past couple of years. We used to have one big kickoff here in Rockville, then we tried six in the different regions, the regional managers of our stall. So now we're going to do three and try and concentrate that. So we're really looking forward to starting those up and I think it's gonna be an awesome program this year. So are there goals for the kids? Are there, what are the, yeah. Yeah, there's three goals similar to the previous years they're gonna pass through each one and we're working with partners in the community to celebrate art. And for each one we've got a partner that our friends the library Montgomery County is going to support as we get people through that gate. Oh well please share the information with us we all have news letters and want to encourage literacy across the community so thank you. We'll do thank you. Great so I'll go first I want to say thank you, director Graham, and the whole team. It's been terrific. I'm very excited about all of the things happening in our libraries. And I can say that even just seeing the announcements and the programming that's going on and how you all are responding to this time is just so incredible. And I know before you had a lot on your plates, but the fact that you are making sure our libraries are not just a place people go for books and music and movies and TV shows, but to also access resources. It is a community space and just thank you for really leaning into that and expanding it during your short time here already. And I'll end here in the entire team. I think the, you know, the World Language Collection has noted in our packet. Thank you. Has been on the list for the library and I'm glad the committee recommended it this year because I can't think of a better time to really move forward with this. As we're seeing so many things under attack in our communities, making sure that our residents have the resources in multiple languages is so important. I did have a question on the digital materials. I guess I'm curious if we have Libby, and we're talking about hoop hoopla and we're leaning into expanding the hoopla. Do we keep Libby or is there like how do they work together? Absolutely. Yes, we keep both. I think they support and compliment each other but unfortunately with Libby there's a weight and there's a whole. With Hooplet, it is instantaneous. And that's kind of why we're seeing a huge uptick in that. And I would also like to think, we're just seeing our usage rise just because the instability of what's happening in our country. And as our community members are looking at options for their disposable income, they rely more and more on the public libraries to meet some of those needs. And I think, hopefully with the entertainment, the music is definitely a valuable resource right now. Great, well I do have a living on my phone too. So I'm gonna have to get a hoopla. All right, not seeing any other questions or comments. We have a recommendation from the Education and Culture Committee. All those in favor of the committee's recommendation. Please raise your hand. And that is unanimous. Thank you all for all your great work. Appreciate it. All right, next we have Montgomery College. Thank you. Wow. You know what it was there. Thank you. All right. as folks are getting situated, I'm going to turn it over to our care of the Education and Culture Committee to go through the committee's recommendations. All right. Thank you so much and welcome to our Montgomery College team. The committee met and recommended approval of and unanimously of the college's budget at the maintenance of effort level, which we very appreciative of, of $148.4 million in county dollars' support. That's consistent with last year's budget in aligned with the colleges and count executives request. I'll continue to say Montgomery College continues to submit Fiscaly Responsible budgets which we're thankful for that maintain essential services. There is one outlier here that the committee did not take up because the information was after we met or was a little confusion around it. The states decision to shift some pension cost to the college. I will underscore that the college is not proposing any new programs or positions. Compensation was held at 4%. And so I'll let others speak to this, but it would be my view that because there was a shift of pension from the state, it's a same services budget that we would put the $1 million increase in required pension contributions that were previously covered by the state on the reconciliation list. So that was the recommendation from the committee. And with the president's permission, I'll ask Dr. Williams to add anything. Sure. Welcome Dr. Williams. It was on, usually it's on. So thank you, thank you, Vice President Duwanda. Thank you, President. Still a good morning. I'll council member, it's always great to be with you. I will be brief. I know your agenda is is full and you have many, many challenging decisions ahead of you. So, but it's always a pleasure to thank you not only for your support of Montgomery College, but what you do day in and day out to ensure that we have a thriving county. So thank you, thank you very much also when I say thanks to Mr. Doug Proudi and the OMB team for their work as well. I will be brief just a few words and try not to be repetitive. Our RFI 26 budget is pretty simple and straightforward request. We strive to be excellent partners and we will continue to do that. It does kind of three key things that we have for you. Maximize existing resources as you heard. The Board of Trustees approved the budget that did not request any new county funds. And the MLE increases for Montgomery College since 2020 have really been minimal focusing on opportunities that were being advanced by the council or the executive, the Ignite Hub and ECEE. Secondly, it demonstrates fiscal prudence. The budget contains, as you heard, no new programs, no new staffing, and it does create an opportunity for fair, reasonable increases to our collective bargaining unit members. And thirdly, I will share, it maintains affordability. And I think all of you know that we are less than half the price of of college park. So our tuition remains flat with this budget. So something that we are very very concerned about, especially during these ever evolving times, accessibility is extremely important to us. It always has been and it will remain. So I thank you, Mr. Vice President, for your comments about the pension costs. We did not initially, as you heard, we did not ask the county for new dollars. We did not anticipate this shift to the counties and we appreciate your deep understanding of taking us up this recurring cost up within our budget as we do think that is important for all some faculty and staff to have that level of assurance, right? This faculty and staff who were able to stand up a job fair for displaced federal scientists in less than a month, right? The faculty and staff who produce the talent that you heard from in your public hearings by the employers, right? That economic and workforce impact that creates that 1.4 billion dollar return on investment that your community's college produces, right? And as I said, we are the community's college and we have been for almost 80 years. We'll be 80 next year. Yes, well, you'll be invited. 1946 were octogenarians, but we are going strong. We are, yes, yes indeed. And we will continue to be the community's college for 80 years and more. So again, thank you for your support. Thank you for everything you do day in and day out to support Montgomery College. We know that you have difficult decisions ahead of you and we know that you will always always be supportive and make the decisions needed to ensure that your Community's college thrives. So thank you very much. Thank you and I just neglected to mention one other Committee recommendation Councilor Aronaz had put forward a proposal on a collective impact institute that I was supportive of last year along with Council member Make and we voted 3 reduced the number, it was 550. We reduced the 350 to give it a better shot and put that on the reconciliation list. So I just wanted to, obviously we have a lot of challenges and opportunities in our community and Montgomery College as the top 1% community college in the country. So you're number 10 out of 1,000. That's in the top 1%. I find different ways to say how great you are that you would be a perfect place to have a collective impact institute solving some of the greatest challenges and taking advantage of the opportunities in our community. So that was the recommendation Madam President. Great. Thank you, Councilmember Mink. Thank you. Yes. On the question of the pension shift, I think that, you know, we come out here every year and we note how efficient you all are with the dollars that we give you. And, you know, you have, in all fairness, developed that reputation based on what we have seen in front of us, the value that you consistently provide to our community every year. You come back and you manage to keep cost low for our students, you have a growing population and growing services with a relatively slowly growing budget. It's really remarkable, you're a great place to spend our dollars. You used your fund balance last year to help balance the budget, which was so appreciated by all of us. And if ever there was a time, I think, to try to ensure that you reserve some of that flexibility in your budget as we look at what our community is facing this year. And how many people are going to be turning to Montgomery College who weren't necessarily anticipating doing that? We're already seeing that happen. We're already hearing those conversations on the ground. I am so grateful that we have such an excellent academic resource for higher education that we know that our community members can turn to. But we know that you're going to be seeing increases that are related to the federal layoffs that are happening and the difficult fiscal times that our community is entering. And so, you know, I think it's very much appropriate for us to at least put on the reconciliation list and hopefully be able to move through the county covering that pension shift difference for you all. So I'll make the motion for us to go with option one and put that amount onto the reconciliation list. I have a motion from Council Member Mink and a second from Councillor Vice President Joando. Any other discussion of the amendment to the committee's recommendation that we have before us to put the slightly over a million dollars in the pension cost on the addition's portion of our reconciliation list. Seeing no, all those in favor of adding that to the reconciliation list, please raise your hand and that is unanimous. Any other questions for Montgomery College, Dr. Williams? No. Well, thank you for being here just to clarify as we're going through our process. As you saw when you were here earlier, we are to the extent we can taking votes, hand votes, straw votes on the reductions. Given the number of additions and the budget, Council Member Mink said as we're also doing the push and pulls with revenues, we are not taking votes on the additions at this time, but it will be on the reconciliation list as an addition. Okay. Thank you very much and thank you for all your work. Thank you, thank you, thank you Council President thank you Council members. Thank you. Our next item is our Montgomery County Public Schools and today we are getting a briefing on all the work the multiple work sessions that the Education and Culture Committee had and were glad to be joined by this this superintendant, Julie Yang, the President of the Board of Education, and others, and I know we have other board members here. Thank you for joining us today and all of your work, and I will turn it over to the Chair of the Education and Culture Committee, Council Vice President Joando. Thank you so much, and. We see Grace Rivera-Avan, Rita Montoya, and I'm sure Laura Stewart, who was here from multiple events to this. Stay for lunch, too, if you want. Yeah. And we're not paid. Yeah, exactly. I'm happy for lunch. There's no prepared lunch, but you're welcome to stay. We got breakfast. No lunch. And welcome to Board President Yang and Dr. Taylor. I'm just going to make a couple comments and then with President's permission turn it over to the Board President and the superintendent. So we had four work sessions on MCPS's budget. And last week, the Education and Culture Committee unanimously voted to recommend full funding for the FY26 operating MCPS operating budget. So just for context, that would mean we're supporting option one in the packet. And I want to thank Mr. Proudy and Mr. Cummings for their work through these multiple sessions and I'll ask them if I miss anything. And that would be the county executives amended level. And so which fully funds the board of education's request and accounts for the pension cost shift from the state, which we just obviously talked about that. They shifted from Montgomery College, but another 19 and a half million plus for MCPS and pension cost that was not anticipated and not, or might have been anticipated, but, didn't happen. We haven't paid for that in previous top previous years. And just for further context and I know the superintendent will talk about this. We went through in those four budget sessions in addition to our 30 other sessions over the last year. All of the cost drivers and things related to student achievement, safety, our emergent multilingual students who have grown almost 40% in the last decade are students with disabilities, which there's 23,000 of, and up nearly 20% in referrals over the last two years just to and and are more than 600 newly arrived refugee students just this last year alone. And so while enrollment has stayed relatively flat, we've had dramatic increases in these populations. All kids can learn it just requires more resources and that's's what a lot of this budget is about. So 688 new special ed positions in this budget, 47 new English language development teachers, 52 new security guards, all things we've heard a ton about from our community over the last year. And whether it be schools like Bethesda, Chevy Chase or Kennedy where parents have said we need more security guards and we need more safety or cases where we've seen folks saying, I need my special education classroom to be staffed appropriately. Our kids and teachers that have asked for that. So I'm very pleased and wanna thank my colleagues on the committee for coming to an anonymous recommendation. I'm also very pleased with what's happened at the school system and the boards work in their partnership to give us everything we asked for. As far as data, I've been calling the budget from the school system a HUD one because it's literally long and you can, it has every line item that you can go through and it's ordered really well. We haven't had that level of depth and transparency in a while and I'm proud that we've gone in that direction. I think Miss McWire and team as well for her help in doing that. So with that, it was unanimous recommendation. I know we'll get into the issues today but I wanted to give the opportunity for President Yang and Superintendent Taylor to make some comments. Good morning, good morning. Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here. Good morning Chair Stewart and all the council members. So thank you again for the opportunities to speak. I think Committee Chair, Joe, do you want to sum up our budget very well. I want to thank all of you in this process so far with the work in the committee and our conversation. You have been a step fast partners in our collective effort to build a more stronger and promising future for our 160,000 students in the county. This budget has one guiding principle that is every student in Montgomery County deserve a work-class education. And it's presented not as a wishless but as a careful crafted plan in addressing some ongoing needs and some evolving needs of the school system. And we fully, we are fully aware of the financial challenges the county faced. And during this process, we have a committed approach to financial responsibility. So the key priority, Chair Joana, I have mentioned, one of the is to addressing the needs of special education and students who are emerging multilinegal learners. The second thing is to reading a math and we have put in effort to address the opportunity gap and make sure that we can increase the achievement for our students. Third thing is every student, every teacher and employee deserve to work in a well-maintained facility. And this budget address some maintenance issues that we face. And lastly, about competitive salaries. It's not just compensation is to value the work of the people who shake the future of our students. So having said all of that, the conversation has been really constructive and the questions have been very thoughtful. And we are here again and thanking you for your leadership. We are truly fortunate to be living in Montgomery County. Look forward to our conversation. Thank you President Yang and thank you President Stewart, Vice President Joando and members of the county council. I'm pleased to be with you today to discuss the school systems FY26 budget ask especially as the first time superintendent in front of you for this budget request. The budget process in Montgomery County is a long one. I submitted my budget recommendation to the Board of Education back on December 18th. As we know all too well, much has changed not only in our region but the state and the nation and in the intervening months as well. We're sensitive to that. Please know that we understand the difficult circumstances that you're facing in this moment as you're in your roles as county council members. Speaking from my role as the superintendent and for the board members in their roles, the core building blocks of this budget request have not changed because our needs are our needs. Here's what we know. There are significant fiscal holes that need to be filled to address issues that have built up over the last several years in MCPS. In a sense, we have several fiscal vegetables. This is the last time I'll use this. I'm out of for our promise. To eat this broccoli budget that may be unpleasant at times, but they are necessary for our survival. Whether it be the employee benefits plan, salary laps, safety and security, or building maintenance, they are real crisis points that must be addressed in order for our school district to remain solvent, effective and efficient. One of our biggest cost drivers is tied to enrollment and we know that while our enrollment in MCPS tends to trend relatively flat, especially over the last few years, the overarching trend does disguise the increases within our student body that are impacting some of our cost drivers. The number of students with disabilities is rapidly increasing. The number of students experiencing poverty is increasing. 14% over the last few years, which means that nearly half of the MCPS students are living in poverty. This is maybe not what a lot of people think when they think of MCPS. And the number of emergent multilingual learners is also increasing. This is our fastest growing student population. All of these student groups require additional support, well beyond the model previously funded to support MCPS. And this explains a lot. It gives me no pleasure to tell you that we know our academic performance has been poor. We must meet our minimum staffing goals and organize the district to support schools to see improved results. We must invest to see improved results. To see this turnaround, we must have adequate, high quality staff and keep them. We know that recruiting and retaining a high quality workforce means providing competitive wages and strong benefits. We know that we must maintain our facilities, address the repair backlogs, and provide a safe and inclusive learning environment for all staff and students in order to be successful. I'm grateful to be preaching to the choir because you see all of these issues firsthand in your email inboxes and in the conversations that you have with constituents on a regular basis. You forward them to us to respond. And I'm grateful for that partnership. It means a lot. Our FY26 operating budget request was and is designed to put us on the path to meeting those needs. And these needs have not changed. If anything, these needs are amplified when times are tight, not the other way around. As tough as things are, I'm also pleased to tell you that it's not all gloom and doom. We have begun to address many of the issues that I've illuminated and with your help help and with the help of our partners, we're definitely on the path to success. Our education associations have stepped up in a major way to do their part to help correct the employee benefits plan crisis. We have also established internal controls to cut spending and to better control our contract management as we reign in some of that spending. And we have had a much better year in terms of staff morale and focus on academic performance. Things are looking up in MCPS and with your help I know that we can achieve even more of our shared goals together. I'll button this up by saying that we know that each of you supports MCPS. We know that each of you values our educators, staff, and has the shared vision of excellence in public education in Montgomery County, and that you see MCPS as a major asset in this community. I am so grateful for your partnership. The Board of Education is grateful for your partnership. It's been a pleasure to work with you and to serve you especially during this budget season and even though it is a tough budget season. And we look forward to the discussions today. And thank you. Thank you, Dr. Taylor and Taylor and more President Yang and I would just see if Mr. Proudi has anything. I think it would be helpful with the President's permission to go through just the main drivers and what we talked about and talk about some of the main drivers in the budget just high level. Yeah, glad to thank you. I also want to point out that there is one committee recommendation on the reconciliation list, which was not mentioned previously. The tech mod reduction from the county executives budget of $1.098 million is on the reconciliation list. Yeah, and tech mod, that's the keeping the laptops and all the devices up to date. It's not a nice to have. It's something that has to happen, but it was not included in, it was a reduction in the Canex Actors budget. And so we unanimously put the million dollars back on to the right. So we issues. Thank you. Thank you. Yep. So I just wanted to review the work sessions that we did with the Education and Culture Committee, focus on a number of different items, including kind of contribution, blueprint and community schools, those are items that are continuing to progress, maintenance of effort, continuation in terms of racial equity and social justice work within the system focused on as mentioned previously special education of much of my Linguel learners and the new cross functional teams that the school system is going to be using to help improve performance and to get support closer to schools also focused on contractual obligations and compensation benefits and then finally talked about tech mod and and a number of budgetary increases that had not been discussed previously. There's as noted, there is a summary document that is really helpful to you in terms of the different levels of spending or different categories of spending in the school system. And the superintendent has indicated that those are labeled purposely. So the discretionary blueprint and nondiscretionary categories are there for you to be able to glean what the school system is deemed appropriate. So I want to take a moment also to thank MCPS for their work with us. A lot of good information was provided and I want to thank Ms. Cummings in particular for doing a great job on all the packets that we put together for the committee and for the council. Thank you. Thank you, council member sales. Thank you to the Education and Culture Committee for the recommendation. I too agree with option number one. one. You know, I understand we are in difficult fiscal circumstances with an uncertain economic outlook more so than ever we must approach every line item with scrutiny as the risk of failing to balance our budget with care is real and significant. You know as we are tasked with being good stewards of our local economy, our job isn't just to make cuts. It's also to ensure that our children are the last to feel them. For my fellow parents who raised or taught kids during the pandemic, we know what it was like. No matter what conditions we were facing from the learning laws, mental health crises and opioid epidemic, which were all overwhelming and have left lasting impacts on our children, our educators, our community and our economy. We have children who are still dealing with unprecedented loss, isolation, but we have educators who ensured our kids came first. And ensuring they had what they needed to thrive must be our top priority now. This is the outlook we should take when it comes to funding our education system. I have members on the Economic Development Committee and every single conversation comes back to if our children are not doing well, our economy will feel that impact. We have to support fully funding our education system. I appreciate Dr. Taylor, President Yang and the entire Board of Education MCPS, the work that you have done in ensuring transparency and accountability throughout this process. I know will continue and I appreciate your collaboration to creatively reduce inefficiencies, reduce turnover in critical paraprofessional roles and put essential staff in closer contact with our students. Most of all, I appreciate the MCPS staff who across the board from our veteran teachers, our school principals, paraprofessionals, bus drivers, custodian. Everyone that comes in contact with our students also accepted a greater cost burden when their health care benefits to invest in our kids. Now we must meet them halfway. Since the pandemic, we have seen small but noticeable gains in literacy and math, but we are still too far behind from where we need to be. Now is not the time to halt that progress. And again, we all know that this is a difficult season. We're going to be making tough decisions, but we have to be also making smart budgeting decisions and avoid making cuts on the backs of our students and hard working educators and school staff who care for them and prepare them for an uncertain economic future. As a member of the Economic Development Committee, I look forward to discussing this item with my colleagues and ensure that we all come to the understanding that we must fully fund this budget. Thank you. Councilmember Fanning-Azales. Thank you so much, ma'am President. Can thank you for your work. I'm also a parent with two kids in MCPS and I love our school. I love our teachers and I am very proud of the work that we're doing here together. So I want to start with that. And I have seen the transformation. No, fastest is a one, but as that you have brought to the school system, Dr. Taylor, since you arrived, I can see the changes. So that's a good thing. So thank you. A couple of questions. Can you please go over the, so there's one of the proposals is 55 full-time security staff. And you have a breakdown between middle schools, high schools, and elementary school. And I think the highest one, and I couldn't find the really in the report, the highest proposal is for the mentors schools. Is that right? Can you please talk about that and why that is? Now, I have more questions. I just want to start with that. If staff or maybe NCPS, whichever, wants to take on. I'm happy to start. Please do. Sure. So there's 55 additional security assistance, and they'd be assigned on the basis of incident reports. There are no current security assistance at elementary schools. And so 52, thank you very much. It's 52 security assistance, that's 55. So they'd be assigned on the basis of the incident reports, and I'm sure as the people will be going to the lab with them this but the idea is that they will go to where they are most needed and it's anticipated that because there are currently none in elementary schools that a number would be assigned to there. So 35 just for elementary schools assigned based on need. You're right. Thank you. And I'd love to talk about this because this is something that we've discussed individually, actually all of us have discussed individually and has been something that's bubbled up in each of your communities and with constituents as a major priority. But it's also giving a little bit of a foreshadowing to budgets in the future as well. This is by no means solving our safety and security challenges and MCPS. This is a budget item that you will see time and time again for the next several years. This is a first iteration of a budget initiative to try to make some headway with a model that might provide more safety and security throughout the district. One of the reasons that we wanted to make an infusion in elementary school in particular and we do have needs at the secondary level as well, substantial needs at our high schools and middle schools and to try to find that right balance of how many security assistance per student body, per square foot, and that sort of thing using those metrics is that our elementary schools from time to time do require some service. And whether that's the first point of contact with law enforcement, whether that's taking a look at the building itself, whether it is reviewing the campus and whether or not there's a visitor on campus who doesn't belong there, having a security assistance that are close by and that can be deployed to multiple schools makes a huge difference. Many of our elementary schools are in walking distance to other elementary schools. They are very close by. And so having a geographic alignment of some of our security assistance can go a long way. That even though a security assistant may be stationed at one school, right down the street they could also be on call to meet the needs at another school if needed. And so, okay, so that's what elementary elementary schools what about middle schools? All right, because if I'm not mistaken, it's 10 security officers from middle schools that that's in that vision of what we have right now. Correct. And seven at the high school level. And what we're trying to do is balance based on square footage and also on student population. So, you know, some building footprints might be bigger than others and may have more student body right now to the largest high schools in the state of Maryland on Montgomery County, Walter Johnson, and Montgomery Blair. Clearly, they have different and more needs at some of those schools just because of the campus and student management needs. So we're trying to account for that a little bit. Okay, thank you for that. I just want to add to that, the board has four priorities every year. Safety and security is one of our top priority. And this is ongoing effort every year. We are trying to do something. Last year, were more camera in store using grand money and this is a good move for showing up the personnel in that regard. Thank you for that. And alongside that conversation on, and I've got to say this, I'm about to say, actually I have said it before. I have been in, I have attended some of the sessions by the education and culture committee. Some of these issues are now solved just with money and having more security. They're solved by really changing the culture of the school. It's about having principles, and we have had a one on one on this. Principles for truly engaging the staff, the teachers, the students, the families so they can feel welcome. So I have high expectations on you guys to improve the academic performance and just you know the culture of the school of having kids wanting to be in school and do well. And I really need to see some type of performance metrics that you are doing targeting your principles. I have to because you are asking me for more funds. I'm asking you show me the, you know, D was the word show me the performance metrics. So I don't know. I want to see the, the actual, because otherwise it's like what am I doing? And what's the most important thing that we're getting the calls on the one who gets stopped in the supermarket. Now people know who I am, which is scary. Telling me complaining about the schools and I don't like to be, I don't like to use sound bite Well, I'm not on this I'm not a member of the school board. That doesn't work for me. I We are a partnership here and in happening schools. You know this I am Constantly in many schools in my district. I was at Odessa, Shenanoo to the night 30 p.m on Friday. Yes, I have no social life. And I, I'm telling you, I, I need to see changes and principles are key. And that's when you are cannot, like I feel so limited here and I need to see teachers wanting to be in the school because they have respect of their principal. If there is no respect among students and principals, kids are seeing all that. They pick up all these things and I hear it all the time. And I saw me your help and also that's something that I needed to get off my chest but I need I need action. I need to see the data on performance and in having a good measure is also the amount of clubs kids having their especially in their high schools and middle school because that doesn't indicate or the kids want to be there engaged with their teachers and you have a teacher being the sponsor of the club and so on. I see in school in my district where there is barely any activity and that's the school that has low performance. That tells you a lot, okay? Don needs to change now. The other thing I want to say, we just had, I think it was last week, a PHP with education and culture, joined, that was last week, joined committee session and we talked about the after-school programs like EBB and so on, I love EBB. Love it. But also in our program, my calendar, we're gonna have to have a follow-up work session on them, not just them, but all the after-school programs after budget, because there has to be better alignment and communication between MCPS and what's happening with all the nonprofits and folks coming in because we do need to identify kids who should be part of these programs. We're not signing up, okay? That's a problem. And there has to be some type of, you know, alignment in performance and having the principles being more engaged with these after school programs because it has lead to academic performance and the culture of changing, you know, how the idea of kids wanting to be in school instead of keeping class and do things that they should not be doing. So all I need to be together and we're not there yet. We're really, there's a lot of work that we need to be doing on this. I'm going to leave it there. Thank you. Thank you so much. Councilmember Glass. Thank you. Thank you to MCPS for the thoughtful conversation, not only during the budget, but over the last year, because what a difference a year makes. And I appreciate the increased collaboration and the increased transparency. And in previous years, I think when we've had these conversations and the budget was presented, there was a bit of skepticism among the elected officials in Rockville about the request. And I do not think that's the case this year. And that is because of the increased collaboration as I noted and the transparency that has been provided. We still need the state to change the state law to require greater levels of transparency. Don't get me wrong, but progress is being made, and I very much appreciate that. And so the questions, the two questions I have are not about the veracity of the need. It's just to figure out the mechanics of the budget. And the first question is about the employee benefit plan, which currently is about $40 million, and I think in the out years next year, it's supposed to go up to $60 million. And I want to first state my appreciation for the educators who stepped up when asked to support the employee's benefit plan as other county workers across the board do. So thank you for that. But what is the plan moving forward to address that structural issue? Because last year we had an emergency supplemental. I don't know if that is in the plans this year, but we're clearly taking up the FY26 budget. So eyes wide open and want to hear your thoughts on that. Well thank you councilmember glass and not to overly validate your concerns of the past but this is one of those situations that we should have never found ourselves in and this is a catastrophe of our own making and now that we're in hole, the first rule of holes is to stop digging. And then to start filling back into the hole, I do want Ivana, Fanzo, Windsor, RCFO to go over some of the numbers so that there's clarity over exactly how bad it is, because I think it's a little worse than what you're portraying to our benefit. But it is incumbent on us because we do have to be solvent that we do need a plan to fill that in completely and be back in the black within 36 months. We do have that in place. That is because of negotiations with our associations and because they gave up ground to make that happen. That is the blessing of having great partners and folks that want to work with you to solve problems. Once they're aware of the problem, they stepped up to the plate, they wanted to help. And so I'll pass it over to Miss Alfonso, Windsor to go over the hard of what where we're going to be in each year of the next couple of years. Good afternoon. So yes, unfortunately, you know, we are projecting this year that we are going to be potentially in a $75 million deficit in our employee benefit plan. and that applies to both retirees and active. We have worked on a three-year plan to get us back on the positive. Next year, thankfully, when we came together with our employee associations, we came up with different strategies. The VECA strategy was actually back in July when they agreed to join the Prudent RX program, which provided some savings for this year, which is one of the reasons that we're not in a bigger deficit. The second piece is through the negotiations that cost share, we're doing enhance care management, which they have agreed to, and it's a bigger portion of our savings moving forward. They agreed on the GLP-1 drugs utilization in managed care for that as well. So the result of all those negotiations is really going to take approximately two or three years to see the full impact because they don't come into effect until January. And then because of the annualization, you'll see the full impact in FY27, FY28. So by next year, like Dr. Taylor mentioned, it stopped the bleeding right. We're not going to be in a worst shape than we are this year. Last year when we ended this year, we were in a $40 million deficit this year. We're in a 75 because we already started in a deficit. So next year we're stopping the bleeding. We're actually hoping that we're going to be a little bit below, you know, the 75 million dollar deficit next year. By the following year we're going to be approximately 22 million dollars in the deficit and then by the following year we're going to be in the positive by about 10 million dollars. So to conclude I do want to note something that is important because it does impact our ongoing operations. And it is a little bit, we're playing the hand that we were dealt the best we could under the circumstances is the impact that it has on day-to-day cash flows and our ability to operate. So that's going to be kind of the ongoing issue and the ongoing conversation that we have over the next 24 months until we shift over back to the black, is that cash flows are going to continue to be strained and a problem. Thank you for articulating the path ahead over the next two or three fiscal years and again thank you to our educational partners for stepping up and recognizing that we're all in this together and something had to change in order to make these accommodations. The other question I have that has been brought to me by multiple people is regarding the 688 positions, which are not all new, they're repurposed, right? And I don't think people quite understand that. Because the question that's been coming to me is, there's a shortage of teachers in MCPS and in Maryland and quite frankly across the country. So how are we going to hire all those teachers? But again, we know many of them are repurposed. So can you elaborate a little bit more? Absolutely. And as Vice President Joando likes to call it, the HUD-1 statement, it's narrow a little bit in our table 1A because we aren't able to encapsulate all of the details. So people have to drill down a little bit through exhibit. So any chance that we have to illuminate this, I welcome that. Of the 688 special education positions that we're moving, some of which into full time from part time 500 of which are paraprofessional positions the balance our classroom positions of the 500 pair of positions 360 are actually part time positions that are currently in our workforce that we would be moving to full-time benefit of positions. Part of this is a retention strategy. They are in our highest-need classrooms assigned as part-time. This is also one of our highest-churn positions because it is one of our hardest to fill difficult positions and when a full-time position becomes available, the very well-qualified hardworking individual then moves into the full-time position for their own financial stability. And we lose somebody who's critical to meeting the needs in a difficult placement. In terms of finding 160 teacher positions, we hire over 1,000 positions a year. That is not a typical for us. It is something that we have gotten used to. There is a national teacher shortage. There is a certainly a targeted area for special education and oddly enough grade school in the younger grades is becoming more and more of a challenge. And unfortunately for the state of Maryland, we are one of the toughest school districts to compete with because we do offer a competitive wage, particularly later on in years of experience. So our target audience that we attract is actually well experienced teachers from other districts. Now this is a huge problem and it's noteworthy to bring this to the community's attention because our recruitment strategy has shifted over the last couple decades. We're no longer successful at recruiting the four-year bachelor's degree graduate from College Park coming into the education workforce because that well is starting to dry up because very few people are going into the education workforce at least not in the numbers that they used to and so there is a national teacher shortage and so really this is bad for Maryland but good from Montgomery County that we are still a very desirable work work location that people want to be a part of Montgomery County public schools, but it does come at the disadvantage of other localities in the state. Last school year, I should say this current school year, we started the school year at 99.5% staffed in special education. So filling the vacancies seems to be less of a hurdle as making sure that once we have hired great staff that we have a strategy to retain them. And the part that really scares us is where we're gonna be in 15 years when we don't have an educator workforce that's coming to college to backfill. That really is a trouble spot for us and something that we probably need to collectively spend some time as a community talking about how we want to encourage people to go into the educator workforce. Glad you elaborated on that. And so again, the bottom line is that while it appears that there are 688 new positions by the average observer, it's really only 160 that are new because the powers are basically going from part time to full time. So 166 that are new classrooms, teacher positions, and 140 that are para positions, but yes, the majority of which are in fact part time transitioning to full time. And during public hearings and visiting the classroom and talking with others, we know how hard the part-time para positions are, where they're working multiple jobs. And the security and the time of the classroom is difficult at best. So fully supportive of that, again, I appreciate the budget that you have put forward. I absolutely understand the need, and we have to do that because this is a course correction moment. And appreciate the openness and the vision for putting us further on that course to make sure not only our students have the resources that they need, but that our educators continue wanting to work and come to Montgomery County. And so let's keep talking about this. Let's keep working with our state lawmakers as changes come down the road. And at full council yet, we haven't even talked about the blueprint. I know the committee did, right? So we don't need to necessarily bring that back up, but more work to do. So thank you. And on your note of transparency, Councilmember Glass, we appreciate that your advocacy. For us, it actually helped us when we are more transparent system, we made our decision better, we evaluate our program better, and we build trust in the community, which makes us more effective. So thank you. Thank you, Council Member Ming. Thank you. I think that the course correction moment is as well said, that is absolutely where we are right now. And it's interesting having conversations out in the public because the conversations this year versus conversations last year and the year prior, word is getting out about that. And that is giving me a lot of optimism. The parents of the families of students who are in MCPS right now, of course, they're seeing it firsthand. They're closest up. So it's getting to them the quickest. And that's what they're telling me. There's a lot of optimism there. There's excitement. And there is a lot of asking for us to fund the full budget and faith that those dollars are going to places that they really want them to go. And concern about if you don't get all those dollars, what's going to be cut? Because now that we know where every dollar is going, and it's also important what would those cuts look like? It could really be that, because you're asking really for a baseline kind of course correction here. And then members of the public who have, maybe their kids are long out of NCPS, or they're not as directly connected, the word is starting to trick a lot to them also. I'm hearing that there's more transparency. I'm here, and that's so Montgomery County, right? Of course. There you go. But, you know, we are on that path to regaining the reputation of excellence that we have long prided ourselves on here in Montgomery County. That has been core to attracting, you know, families, businesses that really it's part of our economic development infrastructure in that way, as well as obviously our workforce development, ensuring that our young people are prepared and able to be, you know, contributing members of the community working in spaces that excite them. We're on the path, and we can see it, and we can feel it, and that is very exciting. And, you know, this is a moment that it falls on us to make sure that we invest in continuing to make sure that you can stay on that path. I think that also the point that Councilmember Fanny Gonzalez raised was a really important one, the importance of principles and leadership in the schools to changing the academic performance and culture and the role that they play. And so I wanted to give you a minute to talk about the cross-functional teams and whatever else you want to say about that. But being able to have clear expectations, the consistent support to follow through the partnership and also the accountability piece to be able to really see those changes and support our administrators as they do that. You have a plan for that and I wanted to give you a moment to speak about that. Thank you. President Yang and her colleagues have made it abundantly clear to me that we need to be able to measure our progress moving forward. And they've made it clear to me about the need for us to make MCPS a hospitable school community for all learners. They've made it clear to me about the need for us to make MCPS a hospitable school community for all learners. They've made it clear to me that we need to become the best school system in America. And I think it's important that the council hold us accountable to those actions. And I want to give you an artifact in which you can hold us accountable. We are in the process of revising our strategic plan for the next five years and not to give away all of our fun secrets, but there will be a scorecard in which you can measure us against school climate, that you can measure us against performance, and the rallying cry of four or more stars on the Maryland State Report Card is a great way to measure our success as we move along. Because candidly, only half of our schools have four or more stars measured by the Maryland State Report Card, we believe that all of them should be, and that in order for all of our kids to have access to a great education, that that needs to be the minimum expectation in Montgomery County. And so we are in the process of defining that minimum expectation. So I actually look forward to you having a chance to benchmark us against that progress and for you to follow along with us as we march towards that goal. You mentioned our cross-functional teams and this was something else that the Board of Education was very clear about which is our need to return to our fundamentals in terms of focusing on what what is happening in the classroom. And trying to get our resources back to supporting the classroom activity as the primary focus and core business model of the school system. I feel like we're doing that. What we are doing is deploying our central office staff to regional clusters so that they can provide direct, work shoulder to shoulder with classroom teachers. We're not doing everything. We don't have cross-functional teams supporting social studies, science, and physical education, at least not yet. What we do have are focusing on critical areas that we need to see turned around right away. Things like literacy, mathematics, special education, emergent multilingual learners. Those supports need to be put in place immediately and we need to have folks deployed so that there's extra resources and support from the central level. So I know that President Yang wants to add to that. Yes, so I think this is how he supports. I think this is the artifact of how a board and a superintendent should work. The board decides on what the superintendent can carry out the operation of how and when. So one of the board's principal has always been shortened the distance between the central office and our classrooms, so that we are all in for for the kids that things can happen effectively. I think Dr. Taylor has to bring it can now have illustrated the how and so we are very excited to try this and I have great hope and confidence in what you will be. That's right thank you and I'll note also on the central office point that as part of this, putting together this broccoli budget and also reorganizing in a way that ensures that we're prioritizing what's on the ground in our schools, that central staff has been very much trimmed down and paired down. And that's not easy to do. And everybody's not going to be happy about all of that certainly but as you noted this is part of your plan and strategy to ensure that you're maximizing resources on the ground in our schools and and I think that's important for the public to know that you're working very hard to do that as well as difficult as it is as that's something that has certainly been called for you know we're definitely we're definitely seeing that. I wanted to give you a moment also to just say a little bit more about tech mods since that is a line item now that's on our reconciliation list. We have a large technology footprint. We're a big organization. We have over 20,000 full-time employees and a total of 30,000 employees servicing 160,000 students. We are no longer a one device to one child school district, making sure that our technology footprint meets our organization's needs is a challenge. challenge we have a lot of different software to operate the school system not necessarily because we want wanna go super tech heavy or we think that it's the best thing but out of necessity to operate in today's world, there are some hard realities to that and the need to make sure that we have adequate data privacy and cybersecurity are not just suggestions, there are requirements that have laws that back them up is critically important. Maintaining our technology infrastructure, it's a big deal. And this is a tough hit that we are giving up a little bit of ground in our tech modernization. But given where we are as an organization, we know that there are sacrifices and push and pull. And know that as we look ahead, that technology needs to be a bigger part of our conversation, and we need to have something that's a little bit more sustainable. And maybe there's a conversation to be had about where those funds belong operating versus CIP. And, you know, we just know that we're biting off a lot in this budget right now, and that we can do the right thing and give a little bit of wiggle room to council, although I know it's not a huge amount of wiggle room, but a little bit of wiggle room and saying, we'll revisit that topic another day. Great, thank you. And I just want to appreciate also broadly the that you have provided us and with the entire public with a spreadsheet that details the line items of the plan for how these funds are going to be spent. That you know the public can go on to the NCPS website and view it and can click through to get details on each of the line items which puts us in the position of being able to as we think about our budget decisions in front of us to really know exactly what giving less to MCPS would mean and for us to take this moment now to ask if there are line items that seem like maybe this could go. What would that look like to ask questions about that? And it sounds like certainly where I'm at and we've had of course the whole year to go through these pieces and then especially focused on the line items themselves over the last four sessions in the committee. But to see that there is no fluff. There really is. You're calling it a broccoli budget, and we can see for ourselves that there truly is no fluff, and there's nothing in the couch cushions, and each of these dollars is going to be spent for a really critical purpose. I think that maybe nowhere else, do we see the proof, the evidence of that in then in the negotiations that happened with the labor unions, with your labor partners here. Obviously, for a number of years, it has been a conversation or their ways in which they would be willing to kind of take a hit and to give up some of their benefits. And of course, that's a tough ask. I mean, we're facing a similar question here with the income tax, right? Are folks willing to chip in a little more at this moment to ensure that we as a county have what we need? And we saw your union partners come to the table and say, we believe in how you're going to spend these dollars. And we need it so badly that we will take dollars out of our own pockets. Because functionally, that is going to be what it is. Their benefits plan is going to take dollars out of pockets in some places. And folks still have the option to buy into the services that they need. But it's a big ask that they did not have to say yes to and have not said yes to. And so I think the proof is in the pudding with that that they so believe in the importance of this budget, in the transparency and the accountability of how those dollars are going to be spent, and that they need it for their workplace to be a place that's going to be functional for them and for their students that they are willing to take the hits. And so, you know, they have come to the table. They have definitely done their part. MCPS and the board. You have done your part in providing really a lot of transparency, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and the path to getting us where we need to be. And now it's time for the council to do our part. Thank you. Thank you. Did you want to speak again? Good morning, Veronica. Well, from OMB, I just want to offer clarification on the county executive decision on related to the technology modernization project. Traditionally, current revenue decisions in the CIP are taking within the context of the operating budget, which is done in March. In March, he tried to preserve as much capacity for the MCPS operating budget that he unfortunately, he couldn't restore these affordability and entry. Adjustment. Thank you and I appreciate the superintendent. Obviously acknowledging the tough budget season we have and that these are going to be ongoing issues that MCPS can revisit. So I appreciate that. Council Member Freeton. Thank you Madam President and thank you to our guest Dr. Taylor and President Yang and I see several school board members here Mr. Rivera-Oven and Ms. Montoya and Ms. Stewart and they are in the back. Appreciate all the work and all of the efforts and the time you've taken to meet with us. And I just want to start first of all by saying, you know, first of all, I applaud and appreciate the efforts at improving the fiscal stewardship of the school system, which has been an ongoing concern and frustration and added emphasis on greater transparency and accountability. You have heard from us beating the drum on that and we have seen improvements in that regard and I just want to express my appreciation for that and Dr. Taylor you deserve credit for that the board deserves credit for that I think we should share it in the partners deserve credit for that because there has been advocacy from your negotiating partners who have pushed you in that regard as well and our educators educators and our administrators and our support staff deserve credit for them pushing along with us to see greater accountability and transparency in that respect. And I also appreciate the efforts to tackle the special education issue, which has been a key focus that we can see in this budget. It's very clear that that is a major point of emphasis in an area that has been identified clearly as a priority in a longstanding problem that has not sufficiently and adequately been addressed. My question on that to start is should the funding be approved as part of this process? Do you have a timeline for when you think those positions will all be hired? Absolutely. There's a couple of cliffs that we are sensitive to. And prime hiring season is really in now. It's the month of May and June, and we do really have to conclude substantively where our hiring is primarily before July 1 mainly because we recruit from other localities. Again that's terrible for Maryland but great for us and there are deadlines in terms of someone being able to switch their contract status from another locality to our locality. So this is really the prime recruiting season. The other benchmarks really are right up until the first day of school, and that's when we're getting some folks that are out of state or fresh out of college or from other localities where they're moving to the area. And that's actually a pretty sizable number of positions that do fit into that category as well but really it is the month of May and June really being the hottest month where we spend the majority of our time hiring. So what we have in place by final budget adoption is usually what triggers where we're able to make some final offers and conclude hiring processes. I appreciate that. So by July, we'll have a sense of whether or not all those positions would have been hired. We'll have a very strong indicator and something to point in the direction as to, yes, this is happening or no, this is not happening. And there's always going to be fill in the month of July and into the early parts of August. And even to September in some cases, but although that's rare, and last year that was rare because we had such a high percentage of staff filled at the start of the school year. OK, thank you for that. And Dr. Taylor, I did want to appreciate your acknowled acknowledgement and commitment to improve results, which is something that I've heard you say multiple times. This afternoon and in recent weeks and months, too often, especially in recent years, the focus is too often been on the inputs as opposed to the outcomes in MCPS and that absolutely needs to change. And I'm hopeful that what I'm hearing from you is something that we will see the benefits of in the actual outcomes, but just talking about it to begin with is a step in a better direction. So I appreciate that. And given that, just wanna ask about the data on third grade reading. Obviously we know that up to third grade you learn how to read and once you get to third grade, you read to learn. And so if you don't read and half of our students based on the data disproportionately much lower among our students of color are reading at the third grade level at the end of third grade, which means that they're going to fall further and further behind each and every year after third grade and the opportunity gaps from there and the achievement outcomes from there get worse over time. That's one of the main reasons why we haven't seen anywhere close to the outcomes that we would we would expect. just wanted to better understand if you could explain within the budget what are the resources dedicated to that particular issue, how the school system and how your leadership team is addressing that. And specifically if you could speak to how you're looking at the Title I community schools that have lower class sizes are you know a key focus area that I know has been addressed if you could just talk specifically about the budget dynamics related to that issue the approach and what outcomes we should expect based on that. Well I don't disagree with council member Fannie Gonzalez when she said that sometimes you don't have to spend more money to generate positive outcomes. And this is one of those things where the resources to improve literacy have been already committed. And I give a lot of praise to the Board of Education for making some of the decisions prior to my arrival as superintendent that have really put us on a path to seeing some big success. I'm maybe less confident in mathematics. I'm happy to disclose to you that that continues to be an area of concern for us. But we are seeing some really promising results in K-12 in terms of literacy recovery that give us a lot of hope for the future and hope is not a very successful strategy, but our newly adopted literacy curriculum is because it is high quality curriculum materials that were conveyed through a very comprehensive professional learning approach and there's ongoing tweaking. No change is without a significant disruption. And so being sensitive to that significant disruption, we learn some really positive things this year in terms of how we can support students. And in part, this is kind of what drove our decision to deploy resources from central office to school clusters with our cross functional teams. And so even though this is not a new expenditure in the budget, it is a reallocation of existing resources to deploy folks out to the schools. What we've learned is that a lot of our classroom teachers felt like they could benefit greatly by having somebody working shoulder to shoulder with them, to model lessons, to talk through some of the trouble points in terms of scheduling and timing. The literacy curriculum that we adopted is very time consuming. It's very scripted to getting a lot accomplished in a short period of time, and you really have to have your game super tight as a teacher to getting it all in. Well, there's a lot of things that that tells us as school leaders, it tells us that we need to be a little bit more flexible about how we give educators time to work through some of those things. And we also need to give our educators resources so that they can implement with fidelity. None of that is going to happen on its own. It is going to have to be something that is directed and supported. And so if there's a shift in our strategy and our approach is that we've done step one and step two, which is that we've provided high quality curriculum materials and we've trained our folks on how to utilize that, but now we need to do the follow up, which is the support for ongoing innovation and development. That's the part that I hope that you're gonna see different. And if our K12 results are any indication, I think we're in store for a pretty dramatic turnaround in a really positive move for MCPS. And my expectation is that that cascades to other subject areas, not just literacy. Is there a specific target level over the next year, two years, five years that we should expect that will determine whether the curriculum and the strategy shift has been successful or not, whether it needs tweaking or changes. Hopefully when you close your eyes at night, you see stars. And the stars that I want you to see are the stars on the Maryland State Report Card because they're measuring not just achievement, but they're also measuring growth. That answer is going to be different for every campus. So a good way for us to take a look at that is where school is performing right now and what their report card growth looks like each year. And so we are expecting that our schools either maintain or grow every year on the Maryland State Park Park. Didn't happen this last year. Some grew, some went back. And so that's a great metric for the council to easily look very visibly, are we making progress, are we not making progress? Because it's gonna capture a lot of different domains, not just one domain. And I also want to thank you for that question. And the curriculum that we adopted was fully implemented this year. It's the first year. It is a sizable investment in terms of dollar and in terms of manpower. And there's a lot of training come with it. So part of the boss job is evaluation and oversight. So the programs will be put on evaluation cycle. So we will have implementation, evaluation, the first few years, and then we will have outcome evaluation. And that's how we do program evaluation. It's ongoing. Appreciate that. We'll look forward to continuing that conversation. The scorecard is encouraging metrics and outcomes. Just last question. I want to express my appreciation to the board for your focus on safety and security. Another area that appears that the budget focuses on the 52 additional 35 elementary school personnel to address those issues. I just wanted to get a sense of how does that work with the community engagement officers? Could you just explain how the board and how the school system are approaching that? And are you considering any changes to the CEO program given much of the concerns that have been raised to that vis-a-vis these additional security resources? Thank you so much for that question. Safety and security like we have discussed, we understand that school culture is important. Fully staff, school building is important in terms of safety and security, and also students know the expectations of their behavior. It's important and how we can support them and put in effective intervention. All these things come into play. Our security personnel and the collaboration with the County Police Department in our CEO program is an important part of our whole strategy and I will let the school system Dr. Taylor to illuminate more but these are all part of our puzzle and I think there are a lot of conversation as you say about CEO program. I think it's high time that we take a look at evaluating the effectiveness of the program. Absolutely. And to echo President Yang, I want to clarify some roles. Our CEOs and all law enforcement are there to do just that, to enforce the laws of the state of Maryland, the United States and Montgomery County. Our school security serve a very different function. They are there to make sure that student conduct and the school safety is in check. And so it's working in concert and working in collaborative ways that really helps with school administration, really helps to make a significant difference in terms of school safety. The council has maybe heard me say a few times and Mrs. Yang just said it as well, that the safest schools in our school system are the ones that are fully staffed with educators and staff members who are there and committed and stay here after year, and that there's stability in each of those school campuses. They're led by great principals because great teachers want to work for great principals. All of these are important ingredients and the recipe that creates successful schools. So those are the things that we're really attentive to climate and culture makes a huge difference. To your point, Council Member Freetzin, it really is time for us to evaluate the success of that program. We've had a good year. The year isn't over, but we've had a good year, not a great year, but we've had a good year. And with that good year, we've seen a decline in reports to law enforcement that's great but we are not at zero we certainly have had events that have had to involve law enforcement and they're scary as a parent it makes me unnerved as a school superintendent it makes me worried when our kids are involved in risk behaviors that are alarming. And so we always have to have a relationship with law enforcement. We have a great relationship with law enforcement. Chief Yamada is a fantastic law enforcement representative of county government and a great partner in the work that we do. But it is time for us to re-evaluate what our next steps need to be and how we can shore up safety. To Miss Yang's point, she alluded to this as well. If there's a theme for this spring in MCPS, the theme is raising expectations. Just last month, the board heard a report about regulations and changes that we're making on the academic side to raise expectations for grading and reporting. Later this week, the Board will be hearing a report about changes to our Studecoa of Conduct and an approach that we are trying to raise expectations for safety and conduct. All of this is done with our hearts open and with collaboration with our partners. Appreciate that. I think there's room for constantly re-evaluating effectiveness as I have heard. I'm all for raising expectations and certainly you've come with quite a significant ask and that comes with higher expectations. So appreciate that and I appreciated your comment earlier about avoiding catastrophes of your own making. There have been too many of those in recent years and we all need to be focused on ensuring that the catastrophes of your own making don't happen, that the planning occurs, and that the accountability and transparency exists. And none of that happens without an effective school board overseeing and doing its role and the county council. Playing our oversight role and having conversations like this one and many others to ensure that what we want, what we expect, the outcomes of the school system are providing our young people with the future that we all hope for them and that we have the support that we need for those who are providing it. So thank you so much and I will you back. Thank you, Councilman Brabinoffs. Thank you President Stewart. It's good to see everybody. Good morning. It's almost good afternoon. Thank you all for your continued leadership. I just want to make a few comments and then set some contextual comments just on the process and where we are with the budget. More for our thousands of people, maybe closer to dozens, watching it at home. But I want to begin by really acknowledging how proud I am to be part of the Education and Culture Committee. I have appreciated serving under the leadership of Chair Joondo, now Vice President Joondo. I've seen the evolution of that committee over the last six years. I think it's gotten better and better and better every year. And I think great strides have been made in the partnership and alliance between this body, the board, and certainly this new executive leadership over at MCPS. And I think this budget process in the last year has been among the smoothest because to the point of my colleagues that have been raised many times and it bears worth repeating, things have significantly improved, transparencies improved, communications improved, and I think all of us feel better about where we are just generally. So it was for those reasons that as we went through the budget process, it was clear to me that the recommendations that were made just as they have been in all of the corresponding executive branch agencies, I think have taken into account the reality on the ground. And you all are trying to write many past wrongs and doing it in real time at a time where, as you said, so well, Dr. Taylor and Chair Chair Yang that times are especially difficult for our families and we know they're going to be even more difficult in the months and years ahead for all the reasons we know. So that's why I felt comfortable supporting the recommendations laid forth by MCPS within the committee, but as is always the case, when we go through the budget process, we look at the committee work through the lens of that respective committee. But we as a body now during these next few weeks, have the opportunity to widen that lens to see the interests and the needs and the challenges and the opportunities facing all of the other executive branch agencies and sister county agencies before us. And so I felt confident in supporting what you recommended because of the work that went into it, because of the need that is happening. But it's the same reason why I felt confident in supporting many of the recommendations laid forth by our Department of Health and Human Services or Office of Human Rights, which also report to the HHS committee. And so we received yesterday a briefing that had been received by our government and operations committee that made clear to me that the proposal set forth by the county executive of an increase to the income taxes, setting aside whether or not it's appropriate to increase taxes in light of everything else that is facing our residents, is the number that was presented to us is less than a guesstimate because it does not take into account all of the information on the ground and what we know is likely going to change between now and the end of the fiscal year. That's $75 million whether we support the retroactive payments or not is not a real number because it does not take into account the number of people that have taken out buyouts. The ripple effect that's going to be happening to contractors and other businesses that rely on our federal government. It's only been 100 days of this administration. It feels like 100 years, but it's only been 100 days. And so the full impact of what lays before us is only now coming into focus. And so we have to, as a body, be very cautious in how we set forth this upcoming operating budget because of all of those moving pieces. So the next big domino that will fall from this body will be our decision as to whether or not we support the income tax increase or if there's some amendment to that income tax increase. Everything else will flow from that. And if we don't support it or significantly lower the projections, then we have a significant math problem because we will not be able to fully support all of the very legitimate Recommendations set forth by MCPS, let alone any of the other challenges any of their line items set forth by all of the other respective executive branch agencies. And I'll be candid. There are line items in our HHS's budget that to me from a policy perspective speaking for myself would be a higher priority than some of the policies set forth than some of the budget recommendations made by MCPS, even though all are important. We're going to be tackling things like food and nutrition. Whether or not we provide support to our primary care health clinics, because if kids aren't receiving and families aren't receiving that basic primary health care, then that's going to have a cascading impact that will impact the classroom and MCPS's operation as well. So as has been noted by all of my colleagues, yes, of course, we have difficult decisions to make. We have difficult decisions to make every year around this time. There are just so many unusual variables with this year's operating budget. And that's why I made the comment that I made in supporting unanimously the budget laid forth by MCPS as a committee that it came with an asterisk. Because once we know these other dominoes and how they fall, then this and everything else we discuss over the next few days is going to have to be revisited, as it always is, but in particular this year. So I just wanted to for purposes of everybody watching at home and to our stakeholders and brothers and sisters and labor, we want to just acknowledge that that's the reality of the situation we find ourselves in now. So I don't have any questions with regards to the operating budget because I asked them all in committee and you all did an outstanding job of answering them only to acknowledge today is another day in this budget process but we are far from over and we've got some difficult days and roads ahead. Thank you. I yield back to you, Madam President. Thank you, Council Member Luki. Thank you, Madam President. I'm sitting down and wanted to revisit after our discussion last week, where we came from and where we are now and us as a council, as a body, and certainly appreciating and expressing most sincere gratitude for the open pipeline of communication that has existed since you arrived. I'm greatly appreciative of that and and while Ms. McGuire is no longer here with us we greatly appreciate her work on behalf of the school system. We know you are in good hands. And, you know, looking back, saying every year, the council has increased the school system's budget. And this year is not going to be any different, right? We're going to have to make increases and substantial investments. And we're happy to do that because this is critically important work. And we've done that for years with estimates ranging anywhere from like 8.4% to 5% increases per year, depending on the year in the past five years, four years. Sorry. But I also know that we have to make a lot of decisions, where we're looking not just at a few things. And I do appreciate your focus on two big issues that are of paramount concern in reducing risk in the school system, in increasing positive climate in the school system and those are the school safety and the special education pieces, two pieces that are near and dear to me as a parent with four children in this school system. But that's just kind of the tip of the iceberg and I know that's a familiar metaphor but we have to look at that not just with respect to MCPS but with every department because we have to look at what's below the water in those base budgets too and I know this year was a big year for trying to dive into that within MCPS and certainly we have a lot more work to do across the board in all of our agencies. But I want to thank the board and thank you, Dr. Taylor, for your commitment and focus and focus on our educators and the work that gets delivered in the building, right? Because that's really important. I also wanted to highlight, because we've talked about this a bunch, and it's come up from colleagues here as well, and that is the school safety piece. And to be fair, some of the special education, dovetails not in school safety in the way that a lot of people think about it, but just in terms of maintaining the environment, making sure those students are safe, making sure our teachers, our educators, our paras are safe, and what we can do around that, and I appreciate that. I feel like there was this trend, you know, the school system sits in local parentalesis, we say, right? Under the law, you serve in that capacity when the children are under your care and custody during the school day. And in the coming out of the pandemic, we swung too far into permissive parenting, right? And nobody wants a dual sergeant, right? There's some helicopter parent. No, I don't want to get that either, right? But somewhere in there is that balance that is the right fit where consequences occur, but you're also growing and learning from them, right? Because this is an educational environment. This is a time of great cognitive development and growth emotionally, socially. And it's critically important for their success later as they, you know, as they launch from the nest, as we like to say, as I have two that are juniors right now. And so, you know, I wanted you to speak a little bit about that because I know you, we had the opportunity to talk about that but I do think that that's critically important. Absolutely young people are going to do silly things. And that's okay. It's our job absolutely to help with decision-making, to be teachers of decision-making, to expectations, but then to reinforce those expectations. It was interesting to watch the reaction of council when council member sales was giving her remarks. And she mentioned the pandemic and us collectively having to teach our children. And I could see the collective parental PTSD from... Yeah, yeah, it wasn't one of my finer moments. I think that there's a lot of those moments that we don't want to take back as parents and it definitely reinforces our belief that really well-trained high quality educators make a significant difference because they do. And it is great when our kids have that opportunity for socialization, but we have to be reinforcing the behaviors that we want and that we expect. And I'm going to be completely candid with anyone who asks and wants to talk about this, that we may have adjusted our expectations and may have fallen short in communicating what our expectations were to young people, which may have sent them some mixed messages about what was permissible and what wasn't permissible, and then we haven't always backed it up the way that we've needed to. I think you're gonna see a renewed focus on some really critical things, and things that you should feel really good about is that our kids are asking for these things. Yes, they are. Our kids are asking for more restorative justice. They're asking for some boundaries. They're asking for structure. They want safe schools. They want all of the things that we want and if that gives us a ray of hope then we have lot to be very proud of. Well, we're going to give it to them. We are going to give them a renewed emphasis on restorative justice and restorative approaches. We are going to give them firmer boundaries about what we expect. And we're going to clearly communicate what those boundaries look like. That is going to be a big shift. And I want to give away everything that the Board of Education is going to hear on Thursday, but our changes in regulation are going to definitely reaffirm council and this community's expectations for our young people. God bless you, and I think, and I'm very excited about all that, and thank you for giving me the preview you gave me when we met. I also, you know, want to make sure our teachers know that inside their building, right, because there's the board and their central office under your leadership and then there was each individual building and, you know, to my colleagues' comments about administrators, you know, summer newer, some have been around a long time, some have seen everything under the sun, but they may need some more support and reassurance from you all, but this is absolutely what needs to happen and you're backing them up in the decisions they're making. And also for our teachers to know that they're not going to be penalized for doing what they can read is what you've asked, even if that's a friction point, some for whatever reason, with an administrator who doesn't want a number in the column, if you will, or some other thing. At the end of the day, I feel like if we're all focused on the people, adults, children like, and their families in the buildings, and we take that very person-centered approach, we're going to have a very successful 2025, 2026 school year. And we've used the Titanic metaphor many times that you can't turn around the Titanic on a dime, you can't stop it and move it in a dime to go along with my iceberg from earlier. But you have been making that turn and making that transformation and I think it is being felt. And we just need more of that and that very strong message to come across so that everyone can approach that work in the buildings with the utmost confidence that we're doing right by our children or our professionals, our families. And can I add, I'm so loud excited about Thursday. I know, I want to know the details. Right. Out of our school systems, five core value, two of them, I think you just spoke about respect and relationship. As parents, we do that in our house school and as a school system, we need to do that. How we transfer that from a value to an operational level. So Thursday is must-see TV. All right. You heard it here first. Right, right, right. And I also want to speak a little bit to Council Member Albinar's comment. I really appreciate the difficult time we are in. Public education is, it's jeopardy right now. Every single day we are questioning me how do we view public education as a society how are we going to do public education collectively. And I also would like to say as a bowl of education we are are the advocate for our students and our school system. But we also understand we exist in the ecosystem of Montgomery County. That all anti-county agencies play a significant role in the standard of living in this county. It's never for or for us is Ann we are here together thank you thank you and thank you Madam President okay Councilmember Cass thank you very much Madam President I know you've heard me say many times that that a little bit that I know I learned from in the Montgomery County Public School system. One of the things that always impresses me is that I think you have around 160,000 students as that number. If you are a county in Maryland, you'd come in at number 11 of the 24. So that's your really, I mean you're not a city manager, but you're really a manager of a place where many of there, and even though we are comparing the Gumree County public schools to other places, it's not a fair comparison in many cases. And other places, Baltimore City, whatever, certainly have other issues beyond anything that we're looking at. So I think it's only fair that we look at Montgomery County Public Schools as Montgomery County Public Schools and not in some cases compare apples to oranges. When you were talking about the part-time employees that are gonna to be, do you know any, there's people who say, look, I can't go full-time. Do we know how many people would actually maybe do it? Council Member Katz, I can't thank you enough for that comment because I think that the context does matter, especially when you see these big budget numbers, it's hard to conceptualize it because as individuals we see these numbers and they are massive. As an organization and as a business entity, we're larger than bedbath and beyond at its peak. No, we certainly don't want to go in that direction, but peak. But we know we're happy then. Oh, sure. And go there. No, we go. We certainly don't want to go in that direction. But as an entity, you want to talk about a nationwide prolific chain and relative to the size and scope of what we provide. As a transportation entity, we're fairly significant larger than most municipalities. We're the largest restaurant chain in Montgomery County by the way, in case you're wondering, we have 211 locations and we serve lunch and breakfast. We also have more students accessing our federal free lunch program than the District of Columbia has students. Now a lot of people don't think about that when they think about Montgomery County. So when we think about it, we think in terms of that scope. So asking specifically about the number of our paraprofessionals and would they be willing, the overwhelming majority more than 9 out of 10 would take the full time position. These are some of our lowest wage positions to begin with. And we really see the need to create stability and some of those really high needs classrooms. And that's what's really motivating this change. This also comes along another budget line that we haven't spent a lot of time talking about but is critically important is what do we do in terms of position reclassifications? There's always a long list of requests for position reclassifications and a very short list of position reclassifications that actually go underway. Looking at our paraprofessionals was a big position reclassification and you won't be surprised at the outcome. The job responsibilities of our paraprofessionals range wildly. Things from administrative office tasks to tutoring activities, to toileting and even medical procedures. That's a pretty wide range. The group of paraprofessionals that we are talking about are on the far end of that range where they are performing medical procedures in many cases, performing toileting, dealing with extreme behaviors, and it really is a high needs group. So thank you for illuminating those ideas. Thank you. And I do want to say first off that I appreciate the Education and Cultural Committees recommendations. And I want to thank you and Council Member Freese, and I think was the first one to bring it up about safety and security in their schools. And I want to thank President Yang and you, Dr. Taylor, for your answers. This has been a tremendous concern for quite some time. And I do think that, and of course it causes an emotion. There are people that didn't want a police officer with a gun in a school. And then when there's the God for bids in this life, when you need a police officer, you need them to be well-resourced and have the ability to stop a horrible problem. So we need to have that good, honest, open conversation. I appreciate much of what my colleagues have commented today. I especially appreciate Councilmember Alvin Ozz's statements not only because he's sitting next to me and he can hit me, and maybe will, after I've finished saying this, but for pointing out that we need to continue to figure out what we can and can't do. This, we have air community right now is a hurting community. We have a lot of people with wealth, but we have a lot of people who don't have it. We have people who are to his point who don't have food on their table and how we are going to try to take more, quote unquote, money taxes from them. How are we going to do that? We can't do that. And then that whole thing for retroactive, here you lost your job and you're still gonna have to pay more tax and we are struggling. We really are. And that's not because we don't wanna do the right thing. It's because we don't know how to do the right thing. It is a huge problem. And to the points earlier, it's not your problem. It is our problem. We are here with you. We need to be with you. We need to figure this out. The only thing I can, and I'm going to end on this, I promise that I will be continuing to look at how we can succeed together. And that doesn't mean that everything that's on the table right now is going to be able to stay on the table. But it means that we're going to have to figure it out together and we can go forward. And there is a future and we're going to continue that future as we work through as a community. Thank you very much, Madam President. Thank you, Councillor Mourenbach. Thank you. I don't know if I'm last, but okay. I was going to say, you know, my comments have changed after every time somebody speaks because it's just a very complex. I first want to thank the Education and Culture Committee for the very diligent work that you've done throughout the whole year in pulling this together. Really, we all rely on your expertise, so thank you. And of course, thank you to the administration and to the board. You have always been so generous with your time, not only in discussions, but with our constituent services, we get calls all the time and we pass them along to you and it's been seamless. So I appreciate that. And I do think that we are in a much different place this year than we have been in the past couple years and so I appreciate the significant change in culture and the relationship between MCPS and the county and the council on so thank you for that I do I do want to pull up that Echo councilmember Ebernauss is so clearly framing the situation that we're in right now. There is no doubt that we all respect what you're doing and appreciate your ask. And so that's not in dispute. We just have to figure out how to make it all work together. So and also there's no doubt that you need additional funds but we were being asked to take a leap of faith in that that at this, it's going to make a change. This budget is going to make a change. This administration is going to make a change, where we've been at this precipice many times before and without the outcome. So I really appreciate the focus of my colleagues to say, you know, we really do need to see the outcomes. I understand that it's a catch 22 that without the funding, you're not going to be able to make those. So is this a self-fulfilling prophecy or a leap of faith? So I just wanted to mention that. When we spoke just recently, I asked the question of on a very regular basis, MCPS comes to the county to say, we have a new program, we're gonna revolutionize education, we've got this new idea, We need money to fund it. And that happens on a very regular basis. So my question to you was, what happens to all the old programs that didn't work? And how do you evaluate those programs? How do you evaluate? What is successful and what's not? And how do you reallocate those resources. So can you just touch on that? Well, hopefully this is going to be a regular occurrence in our Jawando HUD 1, is that what we're going to call this from now on, and our table 1A moving forward is that you see line where we are re-adjudicating the base every year. We are moving to a zero-base budget approach that is new for us and new for MCPS. The first version of this went very well. We definitely made some reductions and it is saying goodbye to the things that are proven ineffective. We do have a research and evaluation team that does have a regular cycle of program evaluation. They have a red, yellow, green rating system where they are recommending the continuation, the conditional continuation, and then the removal of programs and they do that on an annual basis. They bring that information to the board. Regularly, the board approves both the work plan and the outcomes that come from those recommendations. And it is something that we take very seriously. It is something that factored into this budget and will factor into future budgets because, hopefully what you see here and what we've represented to you is nothing new We we are now is not the time for new we would love to talk about new. We're not ready for that yet I don't think that our teachers plates can take it. I don't think that our principal capacity can take it and and financially as a community, I don't know that we can take it. I don't think that our principal capacity can take it and financially as a community, I don't know that we can take it. So as much as we would love to delve into that space and we would, and there's a lot of things that we could do, now is just not the time. So we really do need to pull back before we can take a step forward again. And I think that when we take a step forward, it needs to be in unison and there needs to be some agreement as to this is an area that we absolutely need to invest in and why. Thank you, I appreciate that. And so when you do evaluate those programs and you decide that they'll not go forward, I'm assuming there's some level of cost savings there, and how do you absorb that? Yes. And so what we would reflect that as is changes in the base budget, like you have this year. So we're showing a big negative number. And that would be a reduction in our base. Now, we would also factor that into any kind of switching costs that might also be involved too. Because sometimes when you switch a program, you might realize really big savings from cutting the program, but then an increase because you've got compensatory services to fill the gap. And what we would reflect is the net difference. Okay, thank you. Okay, Council Member, Germando. Thank you. Really appreciate the comments of my colleagues and I tried to just present the recommendation. I just wanna drill down on two things that I think are super important for our conversations going forward and what we're gonna do. Public education is one of the few things that we are required to fund. And this is an end. I couldn't agree with you more. This is an end. We have to take care of our community. That's why I love Montgomery County because we say we're not just going to do the things we're required to do. We're going to do the things our community needs. That being said, this is a huge community need, which we all agree about, and there is significant, there's a lot of stake in this budget. You mentioned that we're 99.5% staffed in special education. That's really not true. And in the sense that we are not staff at the levels we say say we are staffed in special education. We have positions filled, correct, that are allocated for people. But if you go to a special education classroom in elementary school across our, we're not where we need to be. Could you just talk about that and lay on to that the fact that our special education students and our emergent multilingual students were most of this budget is going to go our students who are doing the worst rephrase who don't have the opportunity to do their best because of that lack of staffing. So one way to look at our budget chain sheet or this table 1A, and it's divided into a handful of sections, revenue, changes to the base, non-descriptionary expenditures, blueprint, and then discretionary expenditures, the non-descriptionary expenditures might be things that we're not proud of that are gaps. That's a good way of thinking about it. And you've got a few things there like our employee benefits plan, our salary, lapse issues, our maintenance that we're trying to address. Special education, the ask in the number of positions and you bring up a really good point is not because we need 688 positions. It's because that is what our staffing standards and our guidelines actually call for right now and we're not fulfilling. So this is what we say we are actually staffing at, but we are not actually staffing at them. So the allocated positions are actually 688 FTEs off of what our projected staffing should be based on what our staffing guidelines are. So I say all that to say that this is a real embarrassment for us as a school system and why you get complaints about special education is because we are not actually staffing to the level that, and this is really what Councilmember Juwando is getting at, Vice President Juwando is getting at, is that we are not staffing fully to the level that, and this is really what council member Juando is getting at, vice president Juando is getting at, is that we are not staffing fully to the levels that we communicate to the public that we are staffing. So when we say a classroom is 20 to one, or we say a classroom is 10 to one, because it's a high-needs special education classroom, we are not actually doing that. And this is the difference. So also like Vice President Joando said, it's not really a choice whether or not we do special education. It really is, you just have to do special education, whether it's the individuals with disabilities education act or guidance from MSDE or parents who file suit in the Office of Civil Rights for noncompliance. This is something that we must do both because it's a moral imperative and it's also legal imperative and it's absolutely necessity if we want to give our kids a chance at success. Both in the special education classroom and in the general education classroom setting because it creates capacity. So that is what we're trying to do in terms of filling our needs. To answer your question very directly, of our classroom positions that are allocated for special education, yes, we are 99.5% filled at the start of the school year. That doesn't include specialist positions like OTPT speech pathologist in which we are not fully staffed, not even close. And I know you keep trying to recruit Mrs. Katz back. I was trying to get through one council meeting without- I said, I'm not sure you'd say it. Council member Katz's wife back to the workforce. I think that that's an offline conversation. But to that point, and the same story could be told, although to a much less degree with our emergent multilingual learners in making sure that there's transparency in what we say we're staffing versus what we're actually staffing. Right now we're not fulfilling that. And in order for us to really earn the trust of the community, it really would be for us to fulfill this particular part of the gadget. I appreciate that. And last thing, I'll just say in 30 seconds, the 18.6 that we put on the reconciliation list, similar to Montgomery College, was for the pension shift. But it would be a real cut if you had to absorb it. It would mean something else on that list, that HUD one that would have to go away. And I just want to make sure colleagues understand that in the light of transparency, and we're very appreciative of that, but when you understand that, that that's a fact. Yes, thank you. Madam President. Council Member Mink. Thank you. Apologies, everybody, for jumping back in the queue. But I did want to give you the opportunity to speak to. There are two budget lines under discretionary. And now discretionary, as you had said before, doesn't mean that these are all just like nice to have. These are not fluff. They are not. And we know that school-based safety, for example, is in there. These are pieces that are not necessarily mandated by law. But within that, there are two line items that are labeled as program enhancement. And that's the Kraya, and that's the blended online and distance learning expansion. And one of those hits close to home for me because I recently and on the hopefully tail end of a health scare with a kid that had me thinking, my kid might be entering this program and being aware of some of the really serious deficiencies in the spirit of transparency here that there have been in this area. I'm glad to know that this is a budget line here. We have a requirement to serve every student and we have some students for whom this is how they are able to access education. And so while it's under discretionary and it's called program enhancement, if you could speak to why this is that line is so necessary as well as the CREA. I'll do this very briefly for Council's benefit. What determines whether something is discretionary or non-discretionary, if it's non-discretionary either by law, statute, policy, or contract, it's a requirement. So we are fulfilling contractual requirements, laws, statutes, or policy to fulfill something if it is non-discretionary. If it's discretionary, no external body is telling us to do this. So for example, no one is requiring us to have security assistance in our schools. We choose to do this because we know it's the right thing to do. Similarly, we know that not every kid can access the general education setting. It is incumbent on us to create mechanisms to do that. We do so very minimally right now. We feel as though our students who cannot access the general curriculum in our regular education setting need to have some better options than the ones that we have right now. This is an approach to try and enhance that experience for our young people. And I'm going to give you a great example that's just going to absolutely break your hearts. But regrettably this is something that is a common occurrence when you have 160,000 kids. We have kids that are on an organ transplant list that cannot go into a regular comprehensive high school. We have students that have chronic illness that require medical attention constantly. That cannot go into a comprehensive school. So how do we meet their needs in a really rich and fulfilling way? We have to come up with programs that do that. We also have students that time out in public school and that quite literally because of life circumstances, whether it's through language acquisition or other things that happen in their lives, they cannot finish a high school on time and rather being a dropout and a drain to community resources, we can equip them with industry certifications and a GED. And we can do that through our career educational programs. The KRAA Plus program expands our KRAA program to include students who are not just EML students, but other students in our community who time out on high school. And this really gives them a ray of hope and some industry credentials so that they can be successful. No one is telling us to do that. No one is compelling us to do and to take this course, this is just the right thing to do from Montgomery County and for those kids. Thank you, appreciate that. And noting also that MCPS provides a vehicle that HHS uses. You all partner of course closely with HHS to deliver a lot of those critical services from healthcare, including mental health support to food on the ground. There are kids who take home food for the weekends. This NCPS has been a critical part of our delivery of those services. So appreciate your partnership in that. And I very much hope that we're able to fund this full budget request. Thank you. Great. Thank you. I'll wrap us up by extending my thanks first to Miss Afonso Windsor. I'm thank you. I know the employment benefits plan has been something that has been a real issue. We had to address that last year right around this time, which made our budget deliberations even more difficult last year and really just appreciate that there is a planning place moving forward. And it looks like we're really going to move forward on that. And I do want to thank our unions for stepping up on that as well because as Ms. Yang said, this is an end on all the things that we're doing. And I know our committee, our government operations committee looking at the county side as well on the employment benefit plans there. There's something we need to address for our fiscal sustainability moving forward. I do wanna thank our staff, Mr. Peridium, and his comings for excellent packets and staffing the EC Committee and working with MCPS through this budget. I think, you know, following along, the great committee sessions chaired by Council Vice President Joondo. It was really easy to follow along with your information and packets and appreciate that. And I do just want to echo what colleague said. This is such a difference of where we are today than where we have been in the past. And as I was saying to Council Vice President Joando, the thing that is so unsettling right now is I wish we weren't at this place where we are in the world right now because I feel like we've come so far with understanding the MCPS budget. You all working hard to kind of get us on the right track and yet there's so many unknowns we have and I appreciate council member Albinaz's comments earlier on this and you know because figure just figuring out even on our revenue side what we even have right now is a much more difficult question than we have faced in other budgets and so how do we prepare ourselves going into this year and making sure we can do all we can for our schools is going to be really important. Because it is clear the ask. I don't think, and I think you can see from the questions people asked here, it was very different this year than in prior years. But really thinking about how we piece this all together to set us up as a county in the best place possible for not just this year, but future years. And that's one of the things when we're looking at the revenue side. I just also want to bring up from our conversation yesterday is that the projected revenue we get from the income tax increase is less next year than it is this year. So it is really important that I know the number 75 million has been tossed out and council member Alvin Oz had mentioned this, that's like a little shaky ground on that estimate. But the estimate is that that would even be less next year. So I think we have to be really careful. As I think Dr. Taylor, as you said, when you're in a hole, you stop digging. And we need to be thinking about how we're funding this year's budget, as well as future years. But I do just want to extend my deepest thank you to all of you, to everyone who worked on this, because I know there are many people, and you all are doing your budget like we are year round and appreciate the collaboration and your time and as was said we're going to keep the conversation going over the next few days and into next week so thank you and I think with that we are going to recess until we return at 1.30 today. So thank you. Medicare and discussions and questions about health insurance. It also deals with like, you know, I don't know which which policy to get for my subscription, my prescriptions. So in that also, this anyone 65 and older, as well as adults under 65 who have the disability. So these are wonderful programs, really kind of providing a whole network of resources for our community. And then of course, where I'm here to talk about is our employment programs, our employment programs. And we have the Career Gateway, our Virtual 50 plus Employment Expos, our Career Tech Programming, and then of course our CSAT Program, which are Senior Community Employment Services Program. And so that is kind of a touch upon all of our programming and I would be happy to go into detail about our employment programs as well. All right. Thank you. Welcome. I'm not all about programming and I'd be happy to go into detail about our employment programs. All right. Thank you. Welcome back to the Montgomery County Council meeting. Item eight is a public hearing and action on a resolution to approve supplemental appropriation 25-73 to the FY 25 operating budget. Montgomery County Government Department of Transportation, transit services statewide transit innovation grant in the amount of $263,000. The source of the funds is a state grant. Council action is scheduled immediately following this hearing. There are no registered speakers for this hearing. The public hearing is now closed. We'll move on to the action portion of this item. Is there a motion to approve supplemental appropriation 25-73? Second. Council vice president, you want to move? Council member Kat seconded. All those in favor, please raise your hand. And those are, that is everyone. That is unanimous. Item 9 is a public hearing and action on a resolution to approve supplemental appropriation. 25-69 to the FY 25 operating budget, Montgomery County Government Department of Environmental Protection, Congressional Directorate Spending, Community Grant, Round 2 in the amount of a million dollars, a source of funding as a federal grant. Council action is scheduled immediately following this hearing. There are no registered speakers for this hearing. The public hearing is now closed. We will now move on to the action portion of this item. Is there a motion to approve supplemental appropriation 25-69? Council member Katzmoud, council member Luki seconded. All those in favor, please raise your hand. And that is unanimous. All right, now we're going to continue our review of the FY26 operating budget and amendments, the FY25 to 30 capital improvements, program CIP. The first item we have up is our climate change planning NDA. And I will turn it over to the chair of the education education and culture chair of the Transformation Environment Committee, Chair Glass. You got the E-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-Rth, the T and E committee took up the climate change planning non-departmental accounts. And there were two points of conversation in that account. One in that conversation. One was a $230,000 item to expand broad scale communications and stakeholder and resident engagement. The committee unanimously agreed to put that on the reconciliation list. And then there was a second item that was for $148,344 for climate communication and public engagement. And at the time, the committee put that on reconciliation, but we conflated the two communication items because of how it was in the packet. But we recognize how important the work that Ms. Kogel smucker is doing and that the latter item, the 148,344, is part of her base budget. And as long as we have had this position trying to coordinate county agencies and departments to address and mitigate the climate crisis that we are in. The last thing that we want to do is remove from the base budget because she and is doing excellent work in that coordinating effort. And so Madam President and to colleagues on behalf of the TNE committee, I'd like to, if the process is asking for unanimous consent or without objection that the 148,344 be taken off the reconciliation list and put back into the base budget, recognizing it was a committee error. I am not seeing any objections to that, so we will take that action. Great, thank you colleagues. Thank you, Ms. Cobal Smucker. And I'll turn it back over to the council president. Great, thank you. Mr. LeChenko, do you have anything else to add? Just to note that the 230,000 was added to the budget last year, and but it was added by the council as a one-time item. And so as part of the committee review this year, the committee treated it as a one-time item. Again, it's a consultant study and Ms. Cogel-Smucker can speak to the consultant study itself. But those dollars may be needed for follow-up work related to that, but the study itself is still going forward. So staff had suggested that it be treated as a one-time item for the reconciliation list. So, that's what Chair Glass mentioned. So, that can be discussed a little bit more here today. We have Ms. Muckert here to do that. But the other item, the 148,000, as Chair Glass mentioned, was in the base budget. It was not fully understood by the committee at the time, and staff will make that change based on the council's direction today. Great, thank you. Ms. Kogosmukka, I'll turn it over to you and I just thank you for your patience and to get an update, as has been said, the pilot was one time funding and I know it's still going on and so we'd love to get an update for you for the full council. Absolutely, thank you Madam President. And thank you so much, Chair Glass, for your leadership on the joint climate work that we are all doing and also on correcting that perhaps miscommunication. The absolute priority in ensuring that we can continue the progress that we have all been making together is having that flexible spending in the base budget. But to briefly speak to the enhancement, the, you know, behavior change is hard. And any part of government that tries to do behavior change, it doesn't come quickly, it doesn't come easily. Behavior change from county government as a whole has additional challenges. And so, the council funded a one time enhancement to the climate and DA to pilot behavior change. And so we're piloting in both in government, how does it work? Who is lead? Where does the work come out of? What is the baseline research we need? And that takes some time. We have landed with PIO as lead on this pilot. And we are focusing on mode shift from transportation because the climate action plan calls for 15% of what at the time were car trips to be switched to public transit trips. And for that to happen, people need to get out of their cars. And that is not the easiest of behavior change. And it's not behavior change that we have complete learning along. But it is behavior change that we have a really great baseline knowledge on with the right on Reamay's Imagine Study. And it is behavior change that we have the opportunity with the potential free fares and with all the changes in return to office to capitalize on attention and get targeted learnings that can be used to motivate that behavior change from residents. And what will happen with the pilot is we'll get the information and DOT will be able to use that in their ongoing departmental communications around RIDON. So I have an update which is that we, on the feedback of the T&E committee from the last session, which we really appreciate, we have, we have, it had been delayed and now there's an accelerate schedule so we will be completed by the end of the year and the county executive had put in an enhancement request for ongoing funds recognizing how important behavior changes. But I appreciate the concern from the committee that, you know, in a tight budget year waiting to see the results make sense and appreciate the invitation from the committee to come back to the council in future budget years with the request for enhancements once we have the results. So thank you. Great. And just to be clear, it's the end of the calendar year. Correct. Okay. Cool. We talk in fiscal year's calendar years lots of times. And so coming back to us after the results to see, I think we'll know a lot more information at that time. I'm not seeing any questions or anything. So we have a recommendation from the T&E Committee for the reduction and then the overall budget for the climate change NDA. All those in favor of the committee recommendation, please raise your hand. And that is unanimous. Thank you so much. Great. Thank you. All right. Our next budget we're looking at is the Office of Grants Management. looking at the cost sharing grants. And we'll have Ms. Clemens Johnson and Ms. Director Murphy join us. And I just want to say before getting into this, when we had our government operations and physical policy committee meeting on this, we were on April 25th, we were joined by Senator Zucker, who was able to highlight for all of us the work that the Montgomery County delegation did in Annapolis and the money they were able to bring back for our community projects that the listing is in the packet. If folks want to take a look at it, the committee reviewed a number of projects. The county executive is recommending cost sharing expenditures for the Scotland AME Zion Church, the state aid to the Glen Echo Park Spanish Ballroom Project and matching for FY26 capital grants in the amount of $3 million. The committee all approved of those recommendations. In addition to that, because our committee has talked about and actually wrote a letter to the county executive asking for additional funds in this year's budget for more matching money for the capital grants that we get from the state. The committee did add three tranches, for a million dollars and two for $500,000. If as we're going through the budget, there was some flexibility there to add that. Knowing how hard our delegation works to get some of these projects for us and get the state money. We wanted to make sure that we had resources available here in the county to do as much matching as possible. Ms. Clemens Johnson, did I miss anything? No, I think you covered everything. Okay. Director Murphy, anything to add? Thank you. I'm Sue Conson, members. Rafael Pumerejo Murphy, Director of Office Grant Spanagement. So last night at midnight, the FY26 Caution and Capital Grant's Competition, Stage 1, where folks could get their hats in the ring on this. Everyone who applied had the State Award. That closed, and we've already done the administrative review, finally who's eligible, who's not. And so we do have a number total ask of how much our partners are asking for from the county. And so that adds up to roughly about 2.8 million. So that's where that, but however, that doesn't take into account previous fiscal years with their multi-year awards with those carrying over. So there is a shortfall of about $1.5 million within the FY26 ask, and then another 340 within the FY25 that would be pushed over. So those partners will be waiting until the appropriation then we'll have stage two. We'll do a full review of their, those submit and then we'll do a full review of their applications and then make awarding decisions based on whatever funds you appropriate. That's an incredibly helpful information to have very timely Council Vice President Joando. I just wanted to say briefly thank you for this to the Geo committee and to the County Executive staff 40 MCPS schools, 6 million bucks. That's great improvement. We just had a discussion about the infrastructure there. And obviously we're all, most of us are at Scotland. And that's just such an important project and piece of history. So just thank you for your work. And I know that's an, this is a labor of love the work you're doing in that office. So thank you for continual improvements. Thank you. All right. Not seeing any other items questions on the cost sharing since these are additions that we have on the reconciliation list will hold this for when we're reviewing that on the reconciliation list and see what we're able to do. We'll now move on to the overall Office of Grants Management. Budget, the committee recommendations was 3-0. It was unanimous to approve the executive's recommendation on the Office of Grants Management. We did have a very good discussion on just the federal landscape and I appreciate Director Murphy and all his work and his office's work on keeping track of that. There was a programmatic increase recommended of $100,000 to implement a centralized system for tracking approval and reporting of grant funding. We did ask for additional budget details, which folks can find on page two of the packet just to understand what was ongoing, what was the need for the initial implementation, but overall the committee recommended 304 for this budget to move forward. Ms. Clemens Johnson, anything to add? I'll just add that we did get additional budget information on the $100,000. So $69,600 consists of 600 hours of contractor at an hourly rate of 116 and the remaining balance of 30,000 is to use for yearly license fees for 100 users. Great. Director Murphy. Any dad? Just that these resources are going to be critical for us to defend the $300 million federal grants that we currently have. That's obviously a big number. We want to hold on to much of that as we can with the current administration, taking pot shots that are funding already. And if we can grow it, we would like to grow it, whether that's with state opportunities or federal opportunities that will still likely come down the pike. So we want to be prepared. It's going to be a continuing environment. My briefings have been out of date as I'm giving the briefings new information will come up so it's important that my team and then the county has the resources to make sure where is the really resilient as possible as the current administration tries to undermine federal grantees throughout the country. Thanks and the other part the other part of this, the other item is the Community Grants NDA that's on page two. And you can see continuation of the legacy renewals as well as a number of reductions being proposed by the Office of Grants Management. And just as a reminder, did as a council put in place the work group on community grants to take a look at how we're going to do this in the future and in particular how we're addressing the legacy grants the committee did spend time discussing the fact that we had requested from the county executive last year when we had the legacy grants to not do this once more, but it's deja vu all over again, as Yogi Barrow would say. We are, the committee is recommending the funding of the legacy grants, but hope through the work group that we can find a way forward on this. Ms. Clems Johnson, anything else on the community grants NDA? No, I will say the work group I believe we're going to try to start meeting this month to meet the deadlines. So look forward to working together with the department on that. Terrific. Director Murphy, anything to add? I did have one question on the notice of funding opportunity for the nonprofit incubators for FY 25. Will they be going out soon or have they gone out? They will be going out soon. We had two department programs, one of federal grant that we're putting out as a county grant and another one is a related program that's our funding. Those no-fos are being finished up now and as soon as those are done, we'll be pivoting that. But those will be the last programs that we put out for the fiscal year. So I want to get the departments money out first and get those competed just because there's some timing aspects with when the programs need to be in place and then we'll be putting those out. But right now we have a target of Friday for one of those nonprofit assistant programs and then mid-week next week once we can clear off everything else. But we have about six or seven grant competitions going on right now at various stages so we're working through those. Terrific council member sales. Thank you Madam President. Just had a question about the nonprofit technical assistance and management support grants. Notice that was they were underutilized. Did you have any information to share about that? And what steps you'll be taking to improve outreach and engagement? Sure. So the strategic vision for those was an assumption that we would have a different federal administration. And the way we justified those funds last year in the budget process was we were seeing unprecedented scented shift in the federal government where they are trying to pump as much money directly into our nonprofit partners as opposed to giving to the county or giving to the state and then leading us distribute the funds. So the idea behind those funds was let's prepare nonprofit partners to be able to go after these bigger, more complicated, more difficult to manage federal awards so they can tap into this flow of money coming down. The presidential election wasn't what we expected and so that whole strategy has obviously been turned on its head where we're seeing reductions in grants opportunities from the federal government across the board. And so the idea that there's going to be a lot of federal funding flowing directly to nonprofits is just not going to happen anytime soon. So we've had to repivot and rethink about how we are going to be utilizing those funds, what's the strategic purpose, and what we're landing on is a nonprofit resilience. How do we, instead of boosting our nonprofits to be able to expand and capture as much funding as possible, how do we make our nonprofits more resilience to survive the current environment, where they can hold onto or maintain the programs and the services that they have within the communities. So it's a complete 180 in terms of how we've had to rethink about that strategy. But once that gets put out, then we would, um, and a lot of the strategy is going to leave it up to the nonprofits themselves to tell us what, what do they need? What type of support do they need rather than kind of us figure top down, saying this for this. And so it'll be very open and the competition, but it'll be really, and two million It sounds like a lot really with the needs and the nonprofit community, that's not. So we're gonna have to be very targeted, very strategic about which nonprofits we choose to provide support to the other nonprofit community. So do you have a, I guess a vision for our priorities? If it's now going to be the nonprofits competing for these limited grants, how are you prioritizing which ones will be funded? How are we setting the priorities in vision for this office in the county? So a big part of it is, again, the change in federal environment. We have a lot of nonprofits that get a lot of federal funding and happen for a while. And so they provide services to our residents that we don't county tax dollars never go towards. And we just, those services are on way invisible because they don't show up in your budgets and all that. So as those services start to disappear or as there's additional challenges, maybe legal challenges that they need or other types of support that they need. It's those would be the ones that we would want to focus on. Just as you've prioritized, or you've put forward bills to prioritize hiring a federal and police or support for federal and police, I think we have to look at supporting the nonprofits who have been successful at gaining and bringing in federal funds to provide services to our residents. So that would be a priority there. So are you creating a scope for this part of money? Okay, correct. We call them. I don't want to be like a free for all. I want to make sure we're prioritizing like the highest needs for the community and not just because someone got their federal grants cut, but it's prioritizing what this community's priorities reflect. Absolutely. We have learned in past fiscal years that having a free-for-all grant competition does no good for anyone. No. And so it's that will be very targeted and also it's not necessarily going to be individual nonprofits competing for their funds but looking at the nonprofit service providers who can provide support to a broader range of rather nonprofit organizations. So there's only about a handful of, say, four or five organizations that I can think of that would probably even be, have that type of capacity and that knowledge. So we're expecting a more limited competition. And then with that range of funds, we can expand it over a time period for them to be providing a deeper, more sustained support. But again, I agree very targeted at what are the key needs, what are the things. Because again, even with $2 million, we can't fill every hole. No, thank you. Terrific, not seeing any other questions. We have the budget for the Office of Grants Management and the Community Grants NDA. All those in favor of the committee recommendations, please raise your hand. And that is unanimous. Thank you very much, Director Murphy. All right next we have the state property tax services, NDA. And this is something that came in from the end of the session in Annapolis. It is a cost sharing over almost $2.5 million. This is a non-discretionary. So, I'm just to add, do you want to take us through this? And I don't even know if we need to actually add this to the reckless because we have to do it. So I think it's, we're just, Mr. Howard, yeah. I think to be consistent, we do need data to the reckless, but we will note that it's a required expenditure. Okay. All right. So if we just want to walk through what this is and see if any council members have any questions. Thank you. Good afternoon. The State Property Tax Services NDA reimburses the state for three programs that support the property tax billing administration conducted by the Department of Finance. Those are the Montgomery County Homeowners Credit Supplement, the Homestead Credit Certification Program, and the County share of the cost of conducting property tax assessments by S.Dat. This NDA also funds the county's supplement enacted by Bill 2115 in 2016 to the State Renderers tax credit program. Originally, the executive recommended no change to this NDA and FY26, relative to FY25. However, the state's budget reconciliation and financing act shifted more of the responsibility for funding local SBAT offices from the state to counties. This act increased the county's portion of the cost share from 50% to 90% resulting in an increase as council presidents do or mentioned to the county of $2,461,254 and FY26. This amended budget figure was not available to the Geo committee at the time, the Geo committee was reviewing the other finance budgets and so so the committee determined that this item would be reviewed by full council instead. As Mr. Howard mentioned, if the council votes to approve this, it would be added to the reconciliation list with a council staff note that this is a required expenditure. Terrific. All right, anyone have any questions? not seeing any, then this is a required expenditure. All those in favor of putting this on the reconciliation list as an addition. Please raise your hand. And that is unanimous. And noting it's not really an option for us. So when you see it, think about that. Thank you very much for that. And the next budget we have is our Office of Legislative Oversight. This came to the Government Operations and Fiscal Policy Committee. One, we just want to express our thanks to the Office of Legislative Oversight and all their terrific work. I know that the director has requested a FTE this year, as you have done in prior years. And I'll have you speak to that in a moment, the committee, similar to the conversation we had with the Inspector General's office, did add the request from the Office of Legislative Oversight to the reconciliation list, understanding the difficult budget constraints we were facing right now, but I wanna turn to Mr. Sealar to talk about the position and the request. Thank you. So this is, yeah, I do recognize a difficult budget year we're in. Last year we had the same position. It was also on the reconciliation list and did not get through. We are still at the same staffing level. We were at when we had nine council members and before we were assigned environmental impact statements. That year when the council switch shifted from nine to 11 and we were given the assignment to do the environmental impact statements. I held off on requesting positions because I didn't know how much work it was going to be. And so you know again that one position is pretty much would be back to same service as we were with nine council members rather than the 11 members. The biggest difference I think this year and what we were able to do with the work plan is I was not able to do a supplement. So we did not do a supplemental work plan this year, which is something that when we add pro, the way that the office's work plan is established we get it approved in July. I like to have space to be able to add projects as they come up over the year sometime in November, December, January. In that time frame, we weren't able to do that this year, but again, the budget is what it is. And I'd appreciate the position. Thank you, Mr. Sealer. Thank you for, again, all your work. Are there any questions from council members? There is a committee recommendation to have this position as a reduction in the requested budget. All those in favor please raise your hand. And that is unanimous. Thank you Mr. Sealar and we hope to continue the conversation and have better news mid-year. you very much. Next, we have the Office of the County Council. Government Operations and Physical Policy Committee reviewed the request from the Office of the County Council. This request was for a same services budget for FY26. There was one addition that we put on the rec list from a request from Council Vice President Joando and Council Member Fannie Gonzalez to add funding for a feasibility study recommended by the sports tourism task force in the amount of $100,000, but otherwise this budget was pretty much the same. I don't know, Mr. Howard, if you want to speak to it. Nothing really to add other than to say thanks to the team as I told the Geo Committee. I'll take the council staff team both in council member offices and the central staff up against any any team of any department or agency we have here in the county. So I really appreciate all the work that they do. Terrific. Council of Fannie Gonzalez. Thank you so much, Madam President. I would like to uplift the item that Mr. Craig Howard just mentioned is the task force that this council committed to. That this council put together to analyze the sports industry, as you may know, the committee, the task role has been meeting every single month. They even have interns from Montgomery College. They're having a extremely active and they have three goals. One, collecting data on the sports that we don't have in Montgomery County. That's one. Number two, they are looking for, and this is what the money is for, actually. They're looking for a facility study with a partnership with the state of Maryland on the location for having a multi-use facility in Montgomery County. We talked about this in committee, as you'll know, every time we have a high school graduation, for example Those graduations don't happen in Montgomery County because we don't know half the space So and also we don't have a space to have competitions in their competitions in the county So this is thinking on that the other thing that we don't have in Montgomery County is a group that will actually Mark it all the amazing events that we have in Montgomery County, swing, swing teams meeting across the county, things happening in our parks department, in our Rex department, there's nobody actually getting the data in marketing or county because this is part, this sports industry is part of economic development. So anyway, so this request is really to support the work that this task force is doing and the beautiful thing is that they're going to be doing it with a state of Maryland in connection with that. I'm going to chair the mic with Council Vice President Yolombo. Just trying to follow the rules. Thank you very much. Councilmember Fenny Gonzalez, and it was a pleasure to do this memo with you. I am so excited about the students that have gone full-bore with this project, and they're using GIS maps and doing a whole bunch of stuff. And the fact that we can leverage some money from the Maryland Stadium Authority, I'm at the stage of life where I'm at a sports facility in some part of our country, like every weekend or every other weekend. And I know some of the folks up here know what we're talking about and dealing with that. And it pains me that it's very rarely in Montgomery County because unless you're doing a small tournament at the soccerplex which we love, we don't have that type of facility. This is a good investment because it's what we said we wanted to do and it could bring huge revenue and excitement and expand opportunities for our youth in the county. So I'm really happy the committee put it on and I hope we can fight to get it off because I think this little bit of money in addition to the County Council punching Punts and Above Its Weight, this money will actually lead hopefully to some really good things in the County down the line in a big new facility. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Almanaz. Thank you. I'll just be brief. So, appreciate Council Member Funnykins-Alles and Council Member Duwanda pushing this forward. We discussed this at length during a very long committee session. times are are tough, but I think having this survived to the next round for even a point of discussion is important in its own right. Because the timing of this is important, I'm sure all of you have been tracking the development of the new RFK stadium, which will include a very comprehensive sports and learning complex, which will be even more competition for trying to keep our kids local. So I think it's the timing's right for something like this. Thank you, and I'll just add that Council Member Albinaz, and I and Council Member Mink were at the sports hall, the Montgomery County Sports Hall of Fame induction this past weekend, I think talking a lot about our local sports champions and our unsung heroes you know we do a lot here in Montgomery County and looking at our facilities is really important so look forward to continuing this conversation. All right so we have an outstanding item on the County Council budget we will not be taking a hand vote on this one but we'll come back to that item as we go through the additions on the reconciliation item but thank you for the presentation of the budget. All right. Done now with government operations. The next couple of items are going to be transportation and environment items. The first is the FY26 transportation fees, charges and fares. And I'm going to turn it over to Chair of the Committee Council Member Glass. Thank you, Madam President. The Teenie Committee voted to support the executive's proposed changes for FY26 within the resolution on transportation fees, charges, and fares. Among those changes were making right on buses fair, free, all the time, creating a $10 a month parking permit for service providers and child care centers in parts of of the county, eliminating the daily max and lost ticket fees in the silver spring parking lot district and simplifying monthly parking permit rates in silver spring to make them $195 or less across all garages. There's a lot in there, but I want to pick up on the right on aspect, something that I've been talking about for a very long time, and while we have come to this position, it's through varied ways, and the Director of Conklin can talk about that as well. But as we in Montgomery County have continued to prioritize transit equity, it's important to meet people where they're at. And this budget and the many budgets before have included programs for housing assistance, food assistance, health assistance, childcare assistance. And now we're going to be providing transit assistance as well, making sure that we help people where they're at, which is literally at the bus stop, because the best indicator of economic success is not education. It is not jobs, but it's the access to education and jobs, which is transportation. And so I look forward to this discussion, and I yield back to you, Madam President you very much Mr. Kinney do you want to add anything or walk us through the packet? Sure nothing to add in terms of relevant changes to the resolution as proposed by the executive and recommended for approval by the committee. I will just note in the council in the committee packet, council staff included some fiscal analysis that MCDOT did on the various scenarios that we could go with in terms of right on fairs and the various fiscal components that going to zero fair has. And I just wanted to call it specifically probably the most notable fiscal component being the needed capital investments in the fair collection system that as a result of this would no longer need to be made providing some some short term fiscal relief and room in the CIP. That of course is partially offset, is offset then in the long term by reduced fair collection that we would get from collecting fairs as normal or with enforcement. So there are a lot of moving pieces here. We tried to summarize it as best as possible in the committee packet. Happy to get into as many details as you all would like. As the council would like in here. Okay. Thank you, Director Conklin, anything there? Well, I know the council has a busy agenda, so I won't rehash all of the discussion we had in committee, but it was summed up nicely in that the one-time large capital expenditure is really the item that sways the balance here that committee chaired at an excellent job summing up the benefits of a fair free program. There are benefits to collecting fairs as well. It has been a close race for a number of years about whether or not it was worth continuing to collect fairs. And at this point, the balance is tipped in favor of fair free given the policy objectives that are achieved and the savings that are realized unless we were to pursue an aggressive fair enforcement program which would have its own costs and own issues and that's not the recommendation that came from the executive nor the committee. Okay, thank you. I'll count some member, Auburnus. Thank you. So really appreciate the work of the committee on this and I'll just acknowledge that you know Councilmember Glass was one of the champions for helping to make right on free for youth at all times and this obviously is an extension of that. So I think on the surface absolutely support this but I do want to dig into the details. I know there had been some concerns made by our colleagues at Womata about the potential cascading impact of this policy decision I know was discussed at length in committee but would love to hear from you director Conklin on your response to that concern whether you share that concern and how we might mitigate that concern. Obviously, will Moda continues to be challenged as we know and I think all of us are brave. and how we might mitigate that concern. Obviously, Womada continues to be challenged as we know. And I think all of us are bracing ourselves for looming potential further reductions from our federal partners, who seemingly are no longer our partners in the way they were before, which will mean more of a burden on local jurisdictions. And I just wanted to get your comments on that. And then I have a second set of questions on a unrelated issue but related to this topic. Thank you for the question. Yes, and the council received and we received correspondence from Maryland Secretary Weed of Feld identifying some longer term concerns with the notion of fair free and those who are around having a differential policy in the region on fairs and potentially making it somewhat more confusing for passengers regarding payment to fair on some providers and not others. We have done a fair amount of research on this topic and the Alexandria transit system in this region has been fair free now for over a year and there have not been significant issues that have emerged with that. I do share that concern that over the longer time having a variety of different fair systems in the region isn't the best. And in the committee session, although there was some concern about how long it would take, we did discuss leaving the options open to continue discussion with our state partners and with Metro about a more consistent regional fair policy which would be a move away from this and require us to establish some new fair collection process or for investing the technology that we're deferring the investment on now. But at this time the merits of retaining the fair system did not seem to outweigh the costs of replacing the equipment needed for the fair system, particularly given the other policy benefits around increased access for those who need transit on a daily basis. So yes, that's a real issue and we should keep that in our thinking as we revisit the transit fair program whenever it's appropriate with the budget process that comes around each year. But on balance we could not justify the large expenditure needed based on those considerations alone. Thank you. I appreciate that. And, you know, as is always the case of policy and one department impacts other departments and agencies. So our libraries department, we have a increasingly unhoused population here in our community. And understandably, people are looking for safe, warm, or cool places to be able to spend their time in our libraries, as we've heard extensively, have had to increase security and provide stronger partnerships and alliances with our Department of Health and Human Services to ensure that residents who are accessing our public libraries just to have a safe place to be are receiving other ancillary services. I suspect, and this was discussed in the committee, that once we open up this opportunity for all residents, it is perfectly understandable that there will be residents who will choose to ride the ride on service just to stay cool or stay hot Which speaks to a broader issue in our society that we're trying to tackle in a myriad of different ways but operationally how do you anticipate us addressing those issues that may arise as a result? Thank you for that question too and there are two that. One, Mr. McLaughlin and his team have a procedure in place to deal with disruptive events that happen in the transit system, which they do happen, but nowhere near to the same extent, as we've seen in library and rec centers, mostly because if somebody becomes disruptive, the opportunity to leave is more obvious via the bus door. So it's not quite like a building facility. So one element is by increasing our activities from already established procedures with supervisors and road managers that respond to those events. And the second is in the budget recommendation from the executive, there's funding recommended for increased presence on buses by contractors that are there to encourage proper behavior on the vehicles or to help bus operators, particularly in lines or locations where we have a higher frequency of behavior that we wouldn't like to see on the buses to have those resources available. committee did not make a firm recommendation on that request of more information from us before that, but that was the other element of the management program we had proposed to deal with the issue you've identified. Got it. We always want to set up, this is a significant policy shift, an important one and the right one, but we want to make sure it's set up with fidelity. So I don't have a motion right now before us, but I would love to have further conversations later on down the road to talk through and make sure that we have those support structures in place so that this continues to be the high bar that's been set by right on, which is that it's a reliable service That's safe and that people can count on and that feels comfortable in every which way imaginable And we want to make sure that all of our writers Have the support that they need to ensure that we continue to set that bar high. So I appreciate and I know again This was discussed at length within committee, but thank you for responding to those questions. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Gilles. I appreciate Council Member Alpernau's questions and comments. He's spot on there that we need to ensure that right on remains safe and reliable for everybody. That is the goal. And in future budgets, it's incumbent upon this body to ensure that it has that proper funding. And I just wanna, I think it's important to elevate for everybody who hasn't read the packet, the public that can you talk about Director Conklen or Mr. McLaughlin, can you talk to the dwindling revenue that helped get this decision to be made? We certainly can. Before the pandemic, we had a high water mark of around $20 million a year collected in fair revenue. That has decreased over time. Obviously we didn't collect any revenue for two years when we operated fair free for public safety and public health reasons. Upon restoration of the fair, it was restored at $1 rather than two. So we projected that our fair recovery would be similar at $10 million instead of 20 based on having the rate. However, the habit of not paying had become ingrained. And we have a policy of not having our bus operators enforce collection of the fair, which actually just had an FTA event earlier. And there was a long discussion about driver assaults being related to fare enforcement activity, and how that's not recommended. And we've never had that program strongly in place. We had a little run at it before the pandemic, but again had an uptick in assault, so we didn't continue to pursue that. And since that time, with an assumption of $10 million fair revenue, I think it was FY 23 or 22 or 23, we have been collecting it about half our projection each year. So instead of 10, we collect five, instead of five, we collect two and a half. That's about where we are now, and we have a cost of collection that eats into that further, I think is around $750,000 of cost of collection. So we're realizing under $2 million a year in revenue. And again, the investment in the fair collection equipment is around a $20 plus million dollar investment. So you can see that by the time that equipment is no longer serviceable, we may have barely paid for it with the revenue we're collecting. I think that's really important context that nearly a decade ago 20% of the expenses were collected from from fairs and now that's less than 2%. And so the cost benefit analysis has been made and it's been determined by the county executive and supported by the committee to make fairs free. And so appreciate that. And then before I turn it back over for a vote or support, happy 50th anniversary to ride on. Thank you so much. It was a great event last Friday for those of you that were able to attend. Thank you. I'm not seeing any other questions or anything. This is the FY26 resolution on transportation fees, charges and fares and we have a recommendation from the committee. All those in favor, please raise your hand. Yes, okay, that is unanimous. Take it. All right. Next, we have the Mass Transit Fund FY26 operating budget. Thank you, Madam President. I don't know if anyone needs to come up. They're good. The T&E Committee supported most of the executives proposed budget changes for FY26 in the Mass Transit Fund. We approved amendments for several, several right on capital projects, including what 13 million in the Mass Transit Fund. We approved amendments for several right on capital projects, including $13.2 million, $13.2 million decrease over six years for the right on fleet, an $8.3 million decrease for fair equipment replacement, following the conversation we just had. And then changes to the BRT system, which I'll defer to staff to explain. And then the one thing that we did maintain funding for, despite being an open question mark, is extending the Flash bus service, the BRT on Colesville road, Route 29. There has been a plan to move that up to, extend it up to Howard County, but Howard County has not dotted all the T's and eyes across the T's and eyes. And so we're keeping that money as a placeholder so that when they get their portion of their funding, we can extend bus rapid transit from downtown Silver Spring to Columbia. I'll turn it back to you. Right, Mr. Kenney, can you join us? Add anything? I think that covers it. I can go into just slightly more detail on the BRT projects. The brief summary of the increases you see are largely to program additional funding received under the state bus rapid transit program. These are planning and design dollars for the Maryland 355 Central and Veer's Mill Road projects and then a large increase, $140 million increase for the Maryland 355 North and South project. This is the programming of state funding that has yet to be realized, but is sufficiently in the out years of the CIP. This is for the Opportunity Lanes project. So this is moving that funding into the out years along with the design and planning schedule of the Maryland 355 North and South project. And then as as Chair Gilles mentioned, the right on bus fleet and right on fair equipment replacement savings of about $21 million over the six years related to right on going fair free. Okay, French Conflict, anything to add? Not unless there are questions except for the council may remember in the opportunity lanes, American Legion Bridge I-495-270 project there had been a commitment from MDOT to provide a certain amount of funding associated with that project. That commitment was extended last year at the Transportation Planning Board, and we are actively working with them now to renegotiate those terms that be more consistent with the project that they might implement a few years from now. So the funding switches you see are moving those more prospective future funds into a longer term project and replacing those in more immediate projects with funds that are available in the shorter term. Okay. Mr. Cain, do you have any air? That provides a summary of the executive recommendations. I will note again, as we had mentioned in the previous item, the committee elected to place the zero-fair transit ambassadors item. This is the contracted services to implement and sort of advertise and smoothly implement the fair free system. Committee elected to place that item on the reconciliation list for reduction. So that is the one committee recommendation that differs from the executives recommended budget when it's a flycat. Yeah, and if we could just spend a time on that because I think we did receive additional information from DOT, which I appreciate, which is slightly different than how I feel like we discussed it in committee. And so- That's because accurate now. Okay, now it's accurate. Okay. So it's always good to ask follow up questions. That's why we do this process. So I don't know, director Conklin, If you all just want to kind of walk us through what would be covered under the zero-fair transit ambassadors? Film and Lockdown Division of Transit Services. Yeah, we did, we misspoke last week when we were talking to the committee. We were considering whether this would be operating or personnel cost. It is fully operating cost. This would be a contracted service. We would cover about three to four thousand of service hours a year, which is a very small percentage of the overall service hours. We would have staff and identifiable uniforms to provide a safety and security presence. They would not have enforcement rights or anything of that nature, but just to have that presence and to message that You're in your in public space behave accordingly Those are the sort of the clarifications that I think And I think Councilman you would also ask that we have performance measures there We will certainly have performance measures associated with this with this program a little bit on the context of this. When we were researching fair policies and fair free programs and other agencies, one of the issues that was identified as a potential uptick in anti-social behavior on transit vehicles, which we have some of today, but not to a large extent. And the best practice that many of those agencies identified was having this type of engagement, like I mentioned, at key transit centers and at locations where this behavior might display itself to try to encourage people to behave in an appropriate way in the public environment on these vehicles. So that was the idea here was to have a way in place other than the bus operator or radio for somebody to show up to help manage expectations and behavior on the vehicles given that there's no longer that perceived barrier of entry of having to pay a fair. So would this be similar to what Wemata did a couple of years ago when they had ambassadors on Metro? I'm not completely familiar with their program, but that's the general idea is that it's an ambassador type role, that it's not an enforcement role. It's not a law enforcement role. It's an encouragement role in the description of how to use the service and how to behave properly in the service. Yeah, I'm not familiar with the Metro's Ambassador Program, but as Director Cochran described, it is meant to be just an ambassador ship, but it's not meant to be an enforcement harm. It's a presence. I see. Councillor Oberlin-Liggy. Thank you. Yeah, just, totally understand the intent of this, but then I'm wondering, especially given what we've seen with some of our retail establishments who have, you know, those individuals there who are there, they're not, they can't, they don't actually have enforcement authority, but they're there to help deter, you know, undesirable behaviors in those cases, mostly shoplifting, but also there are people who come into those stores and disrupt the other customers and that kind of a thing. And it has not been effective at all. And so wondered in terms of the, if there are in other circumstances where a zero fair program has come to life, an uptick in those kind of undesirable or anti-social behaviors or in some of the cases with our younger folks riding transit or end or which we want them to do. Let me be clear, we want people to take public transit, but we also need it to be okay for everyone who's on board the modality. Knowing that what other unanticipated costs have you started to mill over are going to come with this aside from the need for the zero-fair ambassadors and then what else might be a cost to a different department, if you will, or to our municipal departments in having to manage situations. I want to say one thing about it and then hand it over to Ms. Peckett who did this research. We're not perceived as having a fair by a lot of customers now. So to a large extent we do not have the same exposure to this issue that other transit agencies may have had, where they've had a $2 fair and they had some more aggressive enforcement decided not to do it. But the concerns you identified is having it be an environment that everybody feels welcome in is precisely why this program is recommended. And there have been some other agencies where they have fair, free, in a vehicle type where the driver's not accessible. And the behavior, like a light rail vehicle where the driver's fully invisible to the customer's. Correct. Where the behavior in that vehicle is dramatically different than the behavior in a transit bus where the driver is open to the passengers and there's some eyes on the activity. So Miss Peckett can describe a little bit more about the research that's gone into that. I don't think we've identified a large anticipated need for additional services from additional agencies. But we already have engagement with law enforcement when we have disruptive behavior on vehicles and that may change modestly as a result of this, but this program was also intended to try to reduce the need to call in those other agencies that have their own missions. Ms. Peckett, you want to speak a little bit about the research? Yeah, I was just going to note quickly from a couple of the agencies that have also implemented fair free policy. So Alexandria specifically, one thing that they said you asked for other consequences is they had so much ridership, especially from students after school that they started having overcrowding on buses. And that wasn't necessarily a safety or security issue, but it was thinking about service, but having a presence to reinforce that behavior. And then others had cited some cited having more safety and security incidents because there were more people that perceived that before, that the bus was not free to them. And they recommended not just ambassadors, but having policies such as front door boarding only. So there was more. Or having a specific policy that said there was someone who physically can come on at the end of every bus line and ask people who are just remaining to deadheading to leave and having that not be the responsibility of the operator. And they also note that LA had said that they actually had customer perceptions that improved because they felt like when there was more people on the bus, people felt safer and there was more eyes on them. So we actually saw things across the board and I don't anticipate that there would be a huge safety and security issue here but we do want to recognize those best practices from our peers. Great. Thank you so much. I appreciate the explanations. Okay. Council Member Fanning and Salas. Thank you, President. Very quickly. Do we have data on how has the fair free program for young folks for students? If they're having any incidents and how that has been resolved, and this is just out of curiosity, my kids take the ride on by themselves and so proud. And no issues. And they love it when it's packed full of people, because that means their friends are also on the bus and it's just it makes sense but I wonder if there any lessons that we need to learn from that experience as we open it up to everybody which I'm very excited on. There have not been there has not been a spike in incidents however the data is challenging because we implemented that program at the beginning of FY20. By March of that year, all our services were free for about two and a half years due to the pandemic. When we returned, it was remained free, but so for the last three years, we have not seen a spike in incidents. Love it. The students, yeah. Thank you so much. Council Member Ming. Thanks. Question, a kind of general question. So Metro is implementing the Better Bus Initiative next month. How are you thinking about service impacts? Where we have been contacted by, contacted by at least one Consenture and so far who had her stop Eliminated and obviously, you know better bus the better bus initiative is understandable right there working to find efficiency So they can overall expand accessibility But you know, we also know that in Montgomery County where right on falls versus where Metro bus falls You know, it's not evenly distributed across the county There's differences on the east versus west side and and we are gonna have situations like the one that we've heard about where we do have service impacts Negative service impacts due to the better bus initiative. So is that something that you all are thinking about in your approach and with the budget that you have moving forward. I can kick us off and Mr. McLaughlin obviously has more detail. The right on service plan and plan changes for the end of June are closely coordinated with the Metro bus service changes. In fact there are some swapping of service in that to better align who's doing what where. There is also an effort to get the Metro bus trip planner to reflect to the right on service changes so that yes, a customer may be losing Metro bus service in a particular location, but it's highly likely that there's a right on service or other service available at that location. So that's all ongoing. There are not specific, there are going to be specific locations where stop elimination may affect a small number of customers, but it's pretty limited where those occur. Phil, you may want to talk a little bit more about your day-to-day interaction on that. Yeah, so Chris is right. We are in lockstep with Lomada on these specifically this particular service change, but all future service changes as well are plans. During the planning phase, we work closely with them to make sure that we weren't leaving huge gaps in service area within Montgomery County. One of the reference that you may council member make about someone losing service, that unfortunately will be a short term plan as we roll out other elements of ride on,agine. We will provide additional coverage up there. That'll just lag a little bit. But for the most part, there's not a whole lot of bus stops that will no longer be served. It may not be served by the bus route you're used to today. But there's not a whole lot of areas in the two plans where we don't provide some level of service. Great, thank you appreciate that. And I'll note also that right on his following up with the constituent directly at this point and really appreciate that. On the automated bustling enforcement pilot really opens up the possibilities for us. So that's really exciting. So that pilot program is being initiated via contract with Metro. They're putting up the capital costs. I understand to put the cameras into the buses that operate along those lines, right Georgia and then to university. Miss Pekka, it is again the architect of this program. So let her speak to it. Great. Thank you, council member Mink. Yes, so we would be working with Olmata and we're, we just got off the phone with them. That's what's a few minutes late today. So we're starting with Georgia Avenue. We have a sub fleet of 10 buses that would be operating just on Georgia. And so currently University Boulevard is not yet permanent, but they have insured us that with that sub fleet they'd be also be able to start enforcement on university. Should those lanes be made permanent and at the earliest if this funding is moved forward, it would probably be late fall of a start for that pilot and depending on how that pilot performs with the different hours we would look at future years. Great, thank you. And with Metro administering the program, what does that mean for the inclusion of ride on buses? that? Contractually we'd have to look at it separately. We've looked at both and originally we had looked at just using ride on buses, but Metros actually putting up a decent amount of the money they're paying, they're doing a lot of cost share for this. So the finances would look different, but after having the initial pilot and seeing how what our capture rate is in terms of violations that are valid and so forth, police has been working really nicely with with women with us on this we would have better information. what our capture rate is in terms of violations that are valid and so forth. Police has been working really nicely with with women with us on this. We would have better information on how those costs might apply to other parts of the county and ride on buses. Great. Appreciate that and look forward to outside a budget getting more details on everybody's role in that and how that's all being rolled up. But that's great to hear about all the collaboration. Thanks. Alright, not seeing any other questions or anything. Just to recap again on the first page of the Europe packet is the recommendations from the TNE committee and there is the recommendation to reduce the budget by the $250,000 for the zero-fair transit ambassadors. That is on the reconciliation list as a reduction. All those in favor of the committee recommendation, please raise your hand. And that is unanimous. Thank you very much. All right, we'll move on now to the Department of Transportation General Fund. And back to council member last. Thank, Madam President. The T&E Committee supported all of the executives proposed operating budget enhancements, which includes maintenance for subdivision roads for short term, for the expanded inspection of short term, short span bridges, pardon me. And also the operation and maintenance related to capital projects, new street lights on US 29. And just to clarify, there was confusion and concern by members of the public. The committee did not take up the non-recommended cuts. So put another way, we rejected notion of reducing the bike share program and we rejected any notion of road resurfacing reductions as well. There were some delays in some local bridges but other amendments on the positive where we approved $3 million in new funding to facilitate the reopening of White's Ferry. I'm sure we can get an update on that as well. We also increased the Bikeway Program minor projects so that we could have more complete pedestrian and bicycle improvements in part of Potomac then also technical funding minor as it is for storm drain support. That's pretty much it, Madam President. Thank you. Mr. Kenney, do you want to add anything to that? Yes, some minor enhancements to the operating budget. many or a number of CIP amendments as well that the committee reviewed after the CIP process that we went through in February and March. Many of these are recommendations by the executive to reflect a projected 27 million reduction, dollar reduction in the impact tax revenues, and a $13.7 million reduction in recreation tax revenues. So this resulted in several delays to certain projects to remain within spending affordability, the only project that for which that reflected a net decrease within the six-year period was the forest going past. Passage rate project, which actually increased its total project funding to reflect increased construction costs, but 22.8 million of which was moved out of the six-year period. So portion of the construction for that project still remains within the six-year period, and an portion is now out of the six year period. So portion of the construction for that project still remains within the six year period and an portion is now out of the six year period. Okay, Dr. Cochley, anything to add? I think it's been well summarized if there are any other questions I'm happy to answer them. Great. I see Council Member Baltham. Thank you. I mentioned this at the Teeny Committee, but I do want to just publicly thank the director and the team for all the work that's been done on White's Ferry. It's been a long discussion and the county has always been a stalwart in the negotiation. So I just wanted to publicly thank you for that. And then from the perspective of the budget at hand, road resurfacing is so important. We all know from the constituent calls that we get on a very daily basis about roads in our community. So I just wanted to live that up. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Friedzen. Yes, from the current district council member or the former district councilmember all white's fair I just want to express my appreciation as well director Conklin and the department have just been terrific partners the county has been here all along the town of Poolsville the Fair Access Committee Have been here all along or district 15 delegation and particularly delegate Fraser Hidalgo, he and I and the town of Poolsville were on Zoom calls during the pandemic New Year's Eve evening. I recall where we were on in 2020 talking about the early days of what has been a nightmare for the regional connectivity and the competitiveness and the economy that we have in the mobility for our residents and just appreciate the continued effort and work of the council and the executive and our state partners. And I very much hope this will help get us over the finish line and we'll put the needed pressure on the parties to come to the table and actually come up with a deal. I have continuously frustrated, even the recent comments that we've seen have been frustrating, but just want to acknowledge all the work that you have personally done and committed to this effort, which has been significant and is very much noticed and appreciated. And I really want to appreciate Council Member Balcombe for all of her work in carrying this baton forward. It's something that I wish had been handled prior to her taking on her district council member role, but I know all of us sharing that frustration as well. Thank you so much for that. And just to mention this is a real and significant incentive that's available for the two property owners to find a solution here. And we've committed to working with them in whatever way we can be helpful to encourage that to happen and have been scheduling discussions with them to try to bring a discussion to the table that something might work. And this action has reinitiated some discussions with partners in Virginia that hopefully will help bring this to a conclusion. But again, the chair asked if the message was well received. I said it was received, which I'll stand by. But we do hope that something comes of this in the next fiscal year, and we can have a ferry operating again. Yeah, there are modifying words that I would use as part of this ongoing saga, and well and good and positive. I would probably not be part of them. I will just note we have said all along is accounting that we were willing to put up a financial commitment in order to come to a resolution. That has been true from the absolute early days of this from the initial months that has now been caring over for years and years. It's now out there. There's now an actual dollar amount and it's up to the private parties to come together to make it happen. So thank you for that. I just want to acknowledge your direct involvement and significant work along the way. Thank you. Councilmember Fannie Gonzalez. Thank you so much. I just want to thank the committee for not approving the reductions for the bike share program and the road resurfacing. That's very important, but also can you please, a report, but can you please, on the record, give us an update on the forest grant pathway. I mean, that to the year delay that we have is really upsetting, but if you can please provide an update, that will be I mean there's been a preliminary design completed with a cost estimate of this and it's a very complex, the low-grade structure with a lot of fire and life safety elements to it and accessibility elements to it that have increased the price of the project. There were some development opportunities that appeared that they might happen at that location that I don't think are still progressing as we thought across the street from from the Metro station And the reason for the delay was the fiscal capacity that this project was consuming compared to Others in the program so that's that's the basic summary but the program remains Ready to re-initiate design when the funding schedule matches the current year. Thank you. Great, not seeing any other questions or comments. We have the Transportation General Fund FY26 operating budget before us. All those in favor of the committee's recommendation. Please raise your hand. And that is unanimous. The last item we have today is the parking district services FY26 operating budget. I'll turn it back again to Council Member Glass. Thank you, Madam President. The T&E committee unanimously recommends approval of the executives proposed budget changes to the parking lot districts and the only notable changes include $25,000 for enhancements at a parking and revenue control system within Bethesda and a nearly $66,000 shift that is associated with right on. And the department can explain that one a little bit more. Are you all back? Okay. Mr. Kenney and Director Conflin, whichever one whoever wants to jump in first. Sure. So I can provide quick summaries of those those two enhancements. The parking revenue control system in Bethesda this is for for the capital crescent garage in downtown Bethesda, bringing the only remaining gated garage in downtown Bethesda. This enhancement would keep it in compliance with the county's payment systems, pending a more lasting capital improvement. So this keeps us in compliance and the garage functioning for now. So this is $25,000. And then the second is a result of ride on going fair free. It's a result of that decision. So sort of a shifting of FTEs back and forth that results in a net .6 FTE and $65,000 addition to the parking lot districts fund. This is functionally same services, but keeps the counting room and revenue processing center functional with while removing the FTEs from the ride on side of it, since they'll no longer be utilizing that service. That's essentially, the counting was a shared function between parking and transit. It's shrinking some, but it can only shrink so much because there are requirements for number of eyes in the room when the counting is occurring. And that entire obligation is now shifted to parking from transit. Great. I'm not seeing any questions or comments on this budget. So all those in favor of the parking district services, FY26 operating budget committee recommendations. Please raise your hand. And that is unanimous. So thank you very much for everyone from DOT for joining us this afternoon. Thank you, Mr. Kinney. That is the last budget item we'll be reviewing today. And this meeting is now adjourned until tomorrow morning. We meet at 9.30 tomorrow morning, 9.30.