Good morning everyone. Today is Tuesday April 29th. We will begin today's meeting with three proclamations. I'd like to note for everyone that we've changed the order of today's proclamation. So we're going to be starting with the building safety month and then recognizing Earth month and our final proclamation this morning is Holocaust Remembrance Day Yamaha Shoah. So I would first like to turn this over now to Council Member Natalie Fanny Gonzalez. And I think that County exec is here for our Proclamation Recognizing Building Safety Month. And I think we had a, oh, and excuse me, Council Member Bailcom. Maya Paz. Oh, and it's Econ. All right, it is the Econ committee. It does say that here. So I have Council Member Natalie Fanny Gonzalez, Council Member Bacum, and Council Member Glass. Good morning, everyone. Again, my name is Natalie Fanny Gonzalez and my Council Member, I love holding this mic. I feel like I'm gonna sing. My name is Natalie Fanny Gonzalez and the chair of the Economic Development Committee. And once again, we have or annual proclamation. This is regarding safety. Making sure of buildings are safe for people to live, for people to work. And it's also a great honor to do this with a kind executive Mark L. Rich. I going to pass the mic to him and then we'll read the proclamation. This is another really good example of the work we're doing in Montgomery County. Building safety is critical for all of us. It actually matters. We've adopted new building codes. We worked with homeowners. I was glad to see we're doing free home deck inspections. No penalty if you didn't have a permit to get the deck in the first place. Because you'd rather people be safe, because then get penalized. And if you don't come out, then you don't learn something, then you don't, nobody benefits. So this work is important. It takes a lot of commitment to it. You've got to be willing to get down and dirty and make sure that, you know, things you can't see easily. You have to be able to see. You need people who are really principled about the work. You know, you cannot let things slide because sometimes the building will slide, which will not be good outcome. And so we really rely on the work these folks do. They sometimes refer to as first preventors. Before you have to respond to somebody, the best antidote is to prevent things. And they prevent things from happening that we know could happen. All you have to do is think about those buildings, those higher rises and floor to us, because they were not properly inspected and were not properly built. They wind up collapsing. They're not the only ones that this happens to us. So it really makes a difference to work these folks. There's a, I'm really happy to be here. I'm really proud of the team that does this work and I also want to say that we've gotten a lot better comments from the building sector on our permitting department. And you know, this is all part of that, I think we're taking this to a level of how do we help people get to the right place rather than how do we catch people not getting to the right place and I think it's been a big difference in how permitting operates now so I'm happy to be here this morning join Natalie and this. I would like to also invite the director of DPS Mr. Zabak, if you can share a few words about the amazing work you're doing with your team. Absolutely. Thank you, Councilmember Franekozalis. I want to thank for some foremost our county executive Mark Elrich, all of the council for letting us use this platform, which we so much cherish. Building safety month is just really a month where we resonate our message on safety. safety and that's paramount to what we do. It's our mission to ensure the protection of our citizens, of our residents, to make sure our homes, schools, businesses are safe year-round. And you know, we highlighted during Building Safety Month, but I always say this, it's 365. And that's our charge and we will continue making Montgomery County the safest place. And it's not just DPS, it's a collective. We have our colleagues here from Fire Rescue, DHA, HHS, even the emergency management. We view permits, we inspect, but we also respond to emergencies. We want to continue making this county the safest it can be. And again, it's all part of the prevention, making sure that people are aware of how to make their places safe. You know, early this month unfortunately, many of us saw the unfortunate we talk about collapses, the county executive just mentioned. We all saw the collapse in Dominican Republic where a roof collapsed in the nightclub, right? 200 fatalities. We don't want to see that kind of stuff in our government counter anywhere. And so that's really the core of what we do. We do a lot of things, but it's pretty clear. We're here to make sure that our residents and our businesses are safe. We adopt building codes. The ancient Babylonian code, I don't know if you familiar with the code of Hammurabi, negligence, they would basically charge the builder if there was somebody who had died or was a fatality from that collapse. We've evolved quite a bit about building codes, but we're really more resilient and sustainable in our codes, but we're consistent and we try to maintain the safest codes here in Montgomery County. Every two to three years, we update our codes. And we just want to continue on that mission and making this county the safest it can be. So we thank you all and please stay on our podcast and we will continue to do our outreach to make sure this county is the safest it can be. Thank you. Thank you so much. Also when I recognize the Department of Transportation, they do a lot of great work in making sure that everybody keeps is working together to keep our community safe. And I just kind of remind folks that we have DPS coming to the to the economic development committee pretty soon. And this is a reminder of the amazing work that they do to keep Montgomery County safe. With that, my friends, we're going to read the proclamation with the county executive and members of the economic development committee. I have with me, council members, Marilyn Balkan and Evan Glass. You can perhaps hold this one. We can go one by one. I'm gonna kick it off and then we'll follow. The county council of Montgomery County Maryland Proclamation, where ass Montgomery County Maryland recognizes that a growth and strength depend on the safety and essential role that are homes, buildings, and infrastructure play in everyday life and when disaster strike and. Whereas our confidence in the resilience of these buildings is achieved through dedication of vigilant guardians, including building safety and fire prevention officials, architects, engineers, builders, tradespeople, design professionals, laborers, plumbers, and others in the construction industry who work year round to ensure safe and sustainable construction of buildings and. Whereas staff of the Montgomery County Department of Permitting Services works with other county departments including Fire and Rescue Services, Housing and Community Affairs, and the Department of Transportation to ensure that the built environment represents the county's modern building codes and standards to protect us in the buildings where we live, work, and play. And. Whereas building safety months sponsored by the International Code Council highlights the critical role of modern building codes and code officials in safeguarding the public from fires and natural disasters such as hurricanes, snowstorms, tornadoes, wildfires, floods, and earthquakes while ensuring safe, sustainable buildings essential to our prosperity. And... Game on! The theme for building safety month 2025 encourages us all to get involved in risk awareness about building safety and sustainability and a personal local and global scale. And whereas, in observance of building safety months each year, people worldwide are encouraged to commit to improving building safety, resileance and economic investment while recognizing the essential service provided by local and state building departments, fill agencies in five prevention bureaus in protecting lives and property. Now therefore bid resolve the county executive Mark Owers and the Economic Development Committee and the entire county council of Montgomery County Maryland. Hereby proclaim May 2025 as building safety month in Montgomery County. We encourage our residents, businesses, and community organizations to join in raising awareness about building safety and its impact on the stronger, more resilient future for all. Presented on the 29th day of April 2025. Thank you. you Thank you everyone for being here for Thank you everyone for being here for the Proclamation Recognizing Building Safety Month. Our next Proclamation is Recognizing Earth Month by Montgomery County Council's Transportation Environment Committee. So Council Member is glass and welcome. Go on back down and everybody who's here for that proclamation can come up. I'm I am still waiting for you I'm sorry not to be so like I can I can I can I can Month. We are in the final week of Earth Month and you have the Transportation and Environment Committee here celebrating all the work that has been done and emphasizing all the work that continues to be done in order to meet our climate goals, which is zero climate emissions, zero carbon emissions by the year 2035. We got a lot of work to do, but we as a committee and as a council have been working overtime, especially over the last year, to make sure that we meet our climate goals. We have past the building energy performance standards regulations. We have, I'll let the council president speak about her efforts in that regard, but we have made sure that we reduce plastic waste, reduce waste stream in general, and make sure that we have more electrification and more support for electric vehicles. And so that is just a snippet of what the committee has done and I'll turn it over to Council President Kate Stewart. Great. Thank you very much. Chair Glass, I am so thrilled to be here and glad to be able to serve on the transportation and environment committee. As Chair Glass has said, we have done a great deal in the last few years. I'm very proud of the fact that we were able to pass the Bring Your Own Bag Bill, which will make sure that we are finally moving away from single use plastic bags and our work on that. And we know that that touches so many things on our public health as well as the beauty in our natural settings, in our streams, and other areas. And so this council has been really hard at work, but we can't do it alone. And this year's theme for Earth Month is our power, our planet, and that really talks about as moving towards electrification. But when I think of our power this is a representation of our power because no matter what legislation we pass no matter what regulations we do here in Montgomery County it is the advocates who push us to do this work it is the partners we have in the community that actually engage our residents, make sure they have the information and are doing this in partnership with us. And so I just want to say thank you to everyone who's here who does this work day in and day out because when we work on environmental issues, we are working on economic issues. We are working on equity. We are working on our quality of life here in Montgomery County. So thank you. Hi, Councilmember Balkan, and I'm so proud to be on the Transportation and Environment Committee. And we have been working very hard when we look at the environmental impact that we want to make sure that we're doing our fair share in the county, these are very complex issues when we often see conflicting priorities. And that's why the Transportation Environment Committee really works very hard to go through these issues. The building energy performance standards is a great example of taking our time to really look at these complex issues from all sides and coming up with meaningful regulation that will have an impact. And from the perspective of really making an impact, very proud we're going to have a ribbon cutting on the 6th District Police Station, which is our net zero police station. And we want to see more and more solar power being incorporated into all of our buildings in the county. And that's a great example. So when we talk about Earth Day, there's so many things that people want to do their fair share. So we know about things like turning off the lights when you leave the room, getting a programmable thermostat. One of the things that I'm going to challenge everybody to start thinking about is our use of AI. We don't really understand the enormous energy sap of AI. And so please just learn about it and think about it and and and we're gonna all get through this together So thank you so much for being here I'm gonna let director Manger catch his breath because he came in just at the right time But this is teamwork and partnership as was noted and we could let everybody introduce themselves in their organizations I'm Angie McCarthy and I'm the Maryland Conservation Advocate for Nature Forward Antoine Thompson greater was Washington Region Clean Cities Coalition. Lori McElvary, to Commonwealth Park Mobilization Environment Committee. Kent Sovine, Executive Director of Cheer in Long Branch. Hi there, Randy Drew with Clifton Park Baptist Church, which is one of the service consolidation hubs for the county. Bene Sapinta, I'm an environment on Leadership Development Program Director for CHI. Catch my breath as well. My name is Tanaya McDuffy. I am the Director of Communications for the Montgomery County Green Bank. Big day for the Green Bank too and their brand new offices across the street which is exciting and we're going to be looking to the Green Bank to do a lot more work with building energy performance standards, especially with their funding that they received last year from the greenhouse gas reduction fund. Thank you Joe Biden. So now we'll have our director of department of environmental protection John Manger come and talk with us about all the work that he's leading on the executive side. Thank you thank you so much chair glass and I also want to thank council president Stewart and council member Valkham for their leadership on the transportation and environment committee. So on some level every day is Earth Day in Montgomery County. But in all seriousness, the superpower of this county is inclusive of our consistency when it comes to our climate and environmental work. So these are not normal times for climate and environmental work. I don't think that comes as news to anyone. but I think the amazing thing about what's happening right here, Montgomery County, thanks to the leadership we have, and thanks to the passion and dedication of the people who live, work, and play here, is that we are not letting up on our efforts to make sure we're protecting our environment. And I think that's really what we're all here to celebrate for, but it really all happens because of the work that the people in Montgomery County do every single day in partnership with the government. These are not problems we're gonna solve on our own as a government. This really takes all of us doing our part as council member Balcon was referring to. So so happy to be here and so grateful to the Transportation Environment Committee for making a time to celebrate Earth Month and Earth Day. Thanks, Chair Glass. Okay, now we will read the proclamation from the Montgomery County Council, whereas this year marks the 55th anniversary of Earth Day and Earth Month with 192 countries around the world calling for the protection of our air, oceans, soil, ecosystem, wildlife, and natural resources. And? Whereas, the theme for 2025 is our power, our planet, which invites everyone around the world to support the production of renewable energy and commit to tripling the global generation of clean electricity by 2030 and. Whereas renewable energy generates over 20% of all US electricity and in 2022 annual US renewable energy generation surpassed coal for the first time in history and. Whereas Montgomery County declared a climate emergency in 2017 and adopted a climate action plan in 2021 with the goal of an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2027 coming up very quickly and a 100% reduction by 2035. All 86 elements of the climate action plan are in progress and we are well on our way to meeting these goals. And? Whereas, Montgomery County continues to lead the way in sustainability with the zero emissions ride on buses powered by solar and hydrogen, building energy performance standards, and a myriad of programs and resources that help residents incorporate sustainability into their everyday lives and Where as tackling the climate crisis is within reach and will require communities businesses and governments to work together and implement aggressive strategies for a green future Now therefore be resolved that the County Council of Montgomery County Maryland here by commemorates Earth month 2025 and be it further resolved that all Montgomery County residents are empowered, engaged, and motivated to take action against climate change and reduce their own carbon footprint. Signed on this day by members of the T&E Committee. Thank you. You all right? We're going up. Yeah. Thank you. All right. All the best. All the best. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to proclamation is recognizing young Pashoua Holocaust Remembrance Day. And this will be done by Council members, Katz, Freetson and Glass. As I ask folks who are joining us today for this proclamation, you can make your way down here. And I just want to say, thank you so much to the members of our community. There was a really moving and wonderful event on Sunday to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day. And as my colleagues will speak to, this is ongoing work and very important that we continue it. And so thank you, everyone. Please all who were involved come on down on for this one. Well as they're joining us good morning everyone and thank you for being with us. I'm Sidney Katz, I'm the Council Member for the Third District. And it's my honor to present with Council Members Freightson and Glaz, a proclamation and recognition of Yom Hoshoa, also known as Holocaust Remembrance Day. In 1978, the U.S. Congress passed legislation introduced by Senator John Danesforth that declared April 28th, 29th, 1979 the anniversary of the American Liberation of the Dockchow Dockchow concentration camp in 1945 to be days of remembrance of victims of the Holocaust. This is a day observed annually to commemorate the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust until they honor the lives of the survivors and their families. Yamashoua reminds us of the horrors that Jews and other persecuted groups faced for labor, starvation, humiliation, and torture, which often resulted in death. It was systemic. Effort to wipe out an entire population from the face of the Earth. In today's world with rising anti-Semitism and other forms of hate-based violence, the observance of Yom Hoshou was more relevant than ever, serving as a reminder the dangers of unchecked hate and the need for collective action to prevent such atrocities from ever happening again. A few weeks ago we announced the county council with the county executive a $1.2 million grant and awards for hate crime prevention and security. The money will be used by nonprofit and faith-based organizations to enhance security and deter hate crimes. The county has launched a new hate bias incident complaint portal and telephone hotline to simplify the reporting of HATE and bias incidents. Reporting will help to track hate crimes and bias incidents, identify trends and develop better strategies to combat hate and bias. This past Sunday, as the council president mentioned, the Jewish community's relation council, also known as JCRC, returned to an in-person format to hold their 2025 community-wide Yom Hoshioqa Memoration at the Bender, JCC, of Greater Washington. I'd like to conclude my words, and I'm going to turn it over to Council Member Freightson and then Council Member Glayas. I would like to conclude my words, and I'm going to turn it over to Council Member Freightson and Council Member Glaes. I would like to conclude my words with a quote from Ely Waselle, who speaks not only to the horror of the Holocaust, but what we are going through today as well. The opposite of love is not hate. It's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness. It's in difference. The opposite of faith is not heresy. It's in difference. And the opposite of life is not death. It's in difference. Thank you. We stand here today with the Salam obligation as a county council, as a community to bear witness, to tell the stories, to retell the stories, to acknowledge the horrors of one of the darkest moments in human history. anti-Semitism, Jew hatred is on the rise as we are seeing the glorification of the atrocities of October 7th happening in far too many places as Holocaust denial is becoming more and more normalized. Moments like this are so critical. Never before in my lifetime has never again felt more urgent than it does right now. So I am humbled to be able to take part in this commemoration, to be able to to be here to hear the stories of survivors recognizing that their life, their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, the 2G and 3G and 4G, are the greatest act of defiance against the most horrific acts of evil and of hatred perpetrated against people. And so it is a privilege, it is an honor, it is a humbling obligation to be here today, to commemorate Yoam Hoshoa, to make sure that we commit with our collected memory and that we never forget the atrocities of the Holocaust and that we celebrate the act of defiance by their lives, by their joy, by their happiness, by their successes and by the fact that they are here with us today. The Nazis rose to power by spreading lies, spreading fear, and creating an us against them mentality that allowed them to commit atrocities. I fear that history is repeating itself. We know that right now under this administration, American citizens are being deported. People of color are having their rights withheld. Do process is being thrown under the rug. We have to commit ourselves to standing up for everyone, calling out injustice, unconstitutional acts, and indifference every time we see it. Because if we don't, history has told us what will happen when unchecked power tried to tear us apart, destroy families and rip children from their parents. The world is watching and we have to come together and say never forget. Thank you. I'm going to, I'm before we hear we hear from Debbie Miller from JCRC and Connie Liss who's on the Holocaust Survivor families. I'm going to ask if everyone could please introduce themselves. Just my name. I'm Connie Liss. Jonathan Liss. Debbie Burlin. Miriam Titel, Zaron. Robert Titel. Zella Shabba's son. Jacob Teddenbaum. I'm Andy Book with Lacey RC. Deborah Miller with the JCRC. Good morning. I'm Debra Miller, the Director of Government Relations for the JCRC of Greater Washington. And mostly, I want to thank Connie Liss and the other two Gs who are here with us today, second generation. And you've already heard from our esteemed council members how critical it is to not only condemn anti-semitism, but to educate people, to educate people about the Holocaust and to hear from people like Connie Liss, whose voices amplify how critically important it is to tell the story and to remember. And I also wanna thank the county council. Grateful that we work here and live here for people who understand the importance of education and tolerance and unfortunately condemnation when we see hate wherever it manifests itself. So the JCRC is grateful for the work and the commitment to combating anti-semitism. So thank you, council members, cats and glass and freeds and the council president Kate Stewart who also came as you heard to our gathering of more than 350 people on Monday. So thank you. Hello. First of all, thank you very much. This is an important opportunity to highlight memory. The memory of the Holocaust, the memory of those who didn't survive, those who did survive, and their families. For those of us with our very own personal stories, this is a public appreciation and a lifting up of our memories, a real lifting up, an important lifting up. A little bit of my history. My mother was a survivor of Auschwitz. She was there for three years. And my dad was a survivor of Dachau. When he got out of Dachau, he weighed at the most 70 pounds. He needed to be on an IV for months and was hospitalized for all that time. My mom was compelled, I don't know, with what strength, but she was compelled to tell her story over and over again. But my dad, until he reached old age, didn't talk about it very much. I think it scared him and he was worried it would scare us. But I'm proud to say that our family has taken on the responsibility of speaking up, telling their stories, a little bit of our stories. I talk about mom, as does my son Jonathan, who's here behind me, and our oldest son Brian talks about my dad. This is our commitment to memory, our our responsibility, but it is also yours and all of humanity's responsibility. It cannot, it should not, Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945, Jews were the primary target of the genocide. Six million were murdered. However, other ethnic and religious groups also were victimized and killed and. Whereas, we have a collective responsibility to those who perished, as well as those who survived, to educate current and future generations, and rededicate ourselves to teaching the history of the Holocaust and explaining its continued impact on the world. And those who survived the Holocaust are an inspiration to us all, and their descendants are living proof that love and hope can triumph over hate and violence. And... Whereas the Montgomery County Department of Police, 2024 annual report on bias incidents revealed the following. Out of 94 bias incidents involving religion, most of those were anti-Jewish in nature. 53 of those incidents involved anti-Israel language or imagery, and seven vandalism incidents involving a swastika. And? Whereas the Council awarded $1.2 million in grant funding in the FY25 nonprofit security grant program to help protect their countyprofit and faith-based organizations that have experienced or at high risk of experiencing hate crimes and... Whereas the county recently launched a new Haton-Bias Incident complaint portal in a telephone hotline where residents can report a hate bias incident either online or by by calling the counties 311 call center. Reporting incidents will help Montgomery County track trends and hate based incidents and better support our communities and whereas on Sunday, April 27th, 2025, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington hosted a community widewide Holocaust Remembrance Commemoration, Yam Hoshowa, to honor the lives of the six million Jews and the survivors and liberators among us and to call to mind their courage forbearance and strength. Now therefore be it resolved that the County Council of Montgomery County, Maryland, hereby recognizes Tuesday, April 29, 2025, as Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yamashoua, in Montgomery County, and be it further resolved that all residents are urged to recommit themselves to not bear silent witness to injustice and to always remain vigilant to the principles of a just society and it's signed today by Council President Kate Stewart and we three council members. Thank you very much. Thank you. you you I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to on to general business. Madam Clerk, will you please share today's announcements? Thank you, Madame President. Agenda item three, the introduction of expedited bill 1225, has been removed from today's agenda. Thank you. Thank you. There are no minutes for approval this week, so we will move on to agenda item one. And I think we have a few minutes before 945 for our public hearing time. I guess when we have three placomations we actually go through them pretty efficiently. So we'll just take a break for about five minutes and then we'll start the public hearing at 9.45. All right, it is now 9.45 and so we will turn now to item 1 on our agenda, which is a public hearing on Bill 11-25 child care coordination amendments. this bill would eliminate. The child care and early education officer eliminate the early childhood coordinating council and generally amend the code relating to early childhood care and education. A committee work session will be scheduled for a later date. Those wishing to submit material for the council's considerations should do so by the close of business on May 8, 2025. As a reminder of our public hearing testimony and guidelines, your comments must be limited to issues relevant to the public hearing topic for which you are testifying and are appropriate for a public meeting. You will hear a tone when your time is up and we appreciate everyone abiding by their a lot of time. We have one speaker today, Laura Joromi. If you want to come on up, Laura, you're ready you can start. Good morning my name is Laura Joromi and I serve as the Manager of Strategic Initiatives for the Children's Opportunity Alliance. The Children's Opportunity Alliance wanted the opportunity to share on the record that we agree with the recommendation to eliminate the early childhood coordinating council or the EEEE triple C, which is one aspect of the legislation being discussed today. The Alliance, as the county's designated early care and education coordinating entity, has a duty that reads, The entity must seek advice from the members of the EEEE, while the entity develops final recommendations for realigning existing county committees and advisory groups that provide input into the early care and education system. In early 2023, we made efforts to make good on this duty. We issued a survey to all current and former members of the EEEEEEEE. We facilitated discussion at a monthly meeting of the EEEEEEE and we formed a small group to discuss all the feedback received and make a final recommendation on the next step. The group ultimately heard feedback that the EEE was made up of a group of early care and education stakeholders that were close to the delivery of the programs and services and understood how to meet the needs of the populations being served. and that there is still a need for the coming together of a group of this type of leader to assess and inform recommendations for improving the ECE system. We drafted a written recommendation that we brought to our board in September of 2023. At the time, we recommended that the EEE triple C continue to exist, but that it be refreshed and realigned to meet the new landscape with several changes, including shifting the responsibility of staffing the group from the Department of Health and Human Services or DHHS to COA. As a new nonprofit, there were quite a few questions about what role the board would play in approving this decision and was referred to the board's governance committee. In the months that followed through conversations with our board members at DHHS, they determined that given the nature of the E-Triple C legislation, it would be cleaner to eliminate the E-Triple C entirely through the legislative process, and then to have COA create our advisory body anew. DHHS in the County Executive would take the lead on requesting amendments to the E-Triple C legislation, and there was no longer a need for us to submit our written recommendation. This decision by DHHS made sense and will ultimately yield a similar result as we intended. And the requested amendments have made their way to you at a good time for us. Now that we have finalized our common agenda, we have greater clarity on the role that a new advisory body within our alliance could play in the system. In June, we will be launching a common agenda steering committee and while while we are still in the process of recruiting members for this group our goal is to have it represent the diversity of the EC system and retain the people who are out there doing the hard work in delivering programs and services much like the members of the E-Tribal C. This group will be responsible for providing oversight over the full breadth of the Common Agenda and will have representation from and and communication to the Alliance's board which will continue to serve as the ultimate decision making body. So thank you in advance for approving the legislation that is before you today. Thank you so much and thank you for being here this morning. Those are all the speakers we have for this public hearing. Thank you for sharing your feedback on the item. The public hearing is now closed. We will now move on to item 2A. And that is a work section and action on the FY26 operating budget for compensation and benefits for all, excuse me, agencies. The government operations and fiscal policy committee met on April 21st to discuss compensation and benefits for all agencies and make made recommendations that are in your packet. So we will first turn to the council staff who will walk us through the compensation and benefit for all agencies and then we'll walk through the recommendations from the government operations committee. And then we will turn to item 2B, which is looking at the negotiated collective bargaining agreements. And I just wanna say it is a pleasure to look out and see all the yellow and orange shirts and see all our representatives here from our unions. And thank you for joining us today. Mr. Howard, I will turn it over to you. Great, thank you very much. And so what Mr. Trump and I will do is briefly walk through the, well as briefly as we can, walk through the Geo committee staff report. So the full council has hearing all the same information related to compensation and benefits. And then obviously turn it back for questions and discussion. And we have with us representatives from the Office of Labor Relations and Office of Management and Budget to answer more specific and detailed questions. So to begin with, I'm going to start on page two of the attached staff report and noting that the total FY26 compensation cost recommended in the executive's March 14th operating budget total $4.7 billion, which is a 9.5% increase over F by 25. And as a reminder for the county government, the council will review and make decisions on the proposed collective bargaining agreements, as the council president mentioned, as well as the other compensation costs not part of the agreements. For the outside agencies, MCPS, Montgomery College and Park and Planning, final decisions on their proposed compensation and benefits adjustments will be made by their respective governing boards based on the final budget allocations approved by the council. And so with that, I'll turn it over to Mr. Trump to get us going. Yep, so we are gonna, as we did in jail, we're gonna walk quickly through the provisions of the contracts and the negotiated agreements and for the agreements for nonrepresented employees starting with pay adjustments. Turn your attention to page three, a little bit of context for pay adjustments. We're all very much aware of the layoffs happening to federal workers. Our note that the Tribal Administration is proposing a pay freeze for remaining federal government employees, so there's unlikely to be any pay adjustments for those employees. At the state level, the general assembly recently approved a 1% GWA. We're going to use the term GWA general wage adjustment, a 1% GWA enough FY26 for state employees for For the county government, starting with general wage adjustments for the fraternal order of police FOP, the executive recommends a 4.85% GWA for the upcoming fiscal year. And we note that the GWA for FOP members is a good bit higher than that for other bargaining units. When we ask the executive for an explanation, you'll see that the text and the italics on the bottom of the page three. The key point here is the executive thought it was important to keep the starting salaries for county police officers at the same level as anorundal county police department, so that those two jurisdictions would have the highest starting salaries for police officers in the region. For firefighters, IFF, the recommendation is a 3.25% GWA and for McGio and nonrepresented employees a recommendation of 3% GWAs. A bit in the middle of page four on the comparison of general wage adjustments and inflation. The table three you'll see has a history of general wage adjustments over the past decade. You'll note that for the 12-month period ending in January 2025, the CPI for the DC area was at about 2.7 percent, so all the GWAs recommended would exceed that amount. And in fact, in recent years, the GWAs to county government have for the most part exceeded the rate of inflation. Moving to page five, the service increments. This, the executive recommends that for employees who are not at top of grade, a service increment of 3.5% for most employees. For the management leadership service, the MLS and the PLS, they do not receive service increments, but the executive has included in his budget funding of about $1.5 million tax supported for performance paying freezes for MLS and PLS members in lieu of service increments. The executive's budget also includes funding for longevity increments, following the schedule that you'll see on table four on the bottom of page 5. On page 6, this year there are fewer miscellaneous sort of odds and end page adjustments than there I have been in previous years, but we do note three of them in the packet. The first is for personal patrol vehicle border expansion, just a note about that. Some police officers receive a PPV, a personal patrol vehicle that that under the current collective bargaining agreement they are allowed to drive up to 10 miles beyond the county borders. The executives in new agreement with the FOP would increase that PPV limit to 20 miles. OMB estimates that the cost of that would be about $593,000 in the upcoming fiscal year and that's based on estimates of miles driven and cost per mile. There are also recommended increases in the K9 officer shift differential and an increase in the field officer pay differential. Moving on to page seven, the cost of pay adjustments, they're summarized in table five. And the table shows the cost both for all funds, that means tax supported and non-tax supported and just tax supported funds. And we also show the data for the FY26 budget and the annualized costs. And the annualized cost, that is the 12 month cost regardless of when the pay increase takes effect. We'll note that unlike previous years, all of the GWAs recommended by the executive this year would take effect in the beginning of the fiscal year. So that very much minimizes the amount of annualized costs that will roll over into future years. But you'll see in the totals on the bottom of page 6, total budget, total cost in FY26 of $50 million, about $41 million tax supported, and then the annualized cost of $55.5 million, which of total cost tax supported annualized cost is about $45 million. Moving on to page 8. So the executive recommends county government tax supported compensation costs that are 7.1% above the FY25 level. And it's important to note that this increase would be the third consecutive year of compensation costs growing at a rate greater than 7%. No recommended budget in the past previous decade included compensation costs, growth greater than 5%. Now we've been talking a lot about pay, but pay is just one element of compensation costs. Two other important factors are the cost of employee benefits and the size of the workforce. I'll draw your attention to the pie chart on page 8, and in that you'll see that the increase in benefit costs this year is actually greater in a dollar amount than the increase for pay adjustments. And a bit more about that later. But moving on to the top of page 9, the other key factor in compensation costs is the size of the workforce. As you'll see in table six, the executive budget includes 155 and additional full-time equivalents, then in FY25 and that's a 1.4% increase. Moving on to other agencies, the school system has approved contracts with 3.25% general age adjustments for all represented employees and service increments that are mostly in the range of about 3.5%. Montgomery College has about a $9.2 million placeholder for compensation enhancements. They do have an agreement with the AAUP for 1.5%, plus a fixed dollar amount, pay increase, and something new since this packet came out. The board just this week, the Board of Trustees approved an agreement with SCIU with pay adjustments in the 3.8 to 3.9%. The contract with AFSCME, the Board of Trustees of the College, is not approved as of today. Similarly, with park and planning, the commission has not yet completed their negotiations with McGeeo, and they also have an FOP unit that represents their park police officers. WSSC also has a placeholder of about $13 million for salary enhancements. So that summarizes the pay increases. In terms of retirement benefits, we're in the middle of page 10, and remind you that for the county government, there are three different retirement plans, depending on the type of employee that's represented a group and their date of hire. But the defined benefit, the pension plan known as the employee's retirement system, is by far the most costly plan. Costing about $71 million tax supported in the recommended budget. The defined contribution plan, the RSP would have about a $20 million tax supported cost in this upcoming fiscal year. And the cash balance plan known as the grip guaranteed retirement income plan would have about a $12 million increase in this $12 million cost in this year's budget. We noted before the change in benefit costs, it is worth noting that the total retirement costs will be growing at about 18 percent if the executive's budget is approved. Primarily driven by pension costs and that's primarily a function of the pension plan enhancements that went into effect in the cat past couple of years plus higher than anticipated salary increases. There's a table on the bottom of page eight that shows the disparity in costs between the different plans. Moving on to page 12, retirement in MCPS is an issue that's been in the news in anapolis the past few weeks. Just as a reminder, the retirement system for MCPS has two components. There's the local plan, which is the core pension benefit for employees who are not in the state teachers plan. And also MCPS offers a supplemental pension benefit for all employees, both teaching and non-teaching positions. And a reminder that MCPS is the sole school system in the state to provide a pension supplement. The cost for that local plan is about $94 million in the upcoming fiscal year. Regarding the state plan back over a decade ago in 2012, the state shifted a good portion of the cost of the loan as the normal pension cost to the counties. Under that formula, the cost MCPS would have paid this year would have been about $75 million into the state plan. But as you're all aware, the General Assembly recently shifted additional unfundedly liability costs to the counties. And that's going to be about another $20 million on the book's trip for MCPS. And I'll note that a lot of the talk has been about the shift to school systems to K through 12 school systems, but the college's compensation cost will also be increased by about a million dollars because of this state shift. There's information on the pension funded ratios on pages 12 and 13 showing how much of assets that have been accrued to cover liabilities. We do note again the effect of the recent unfunded liability from pension enhancements and unanticipated salary increases and what that did to the counties pension fund. That being said, the county's pension fund is in better standing than the other agencies. And we particularly noted some concern about the WSSC plan. And with that, I'll turn it to Mr. Howard. Great. So now we are on page 14, and we'll talk about group insurance. So we'll begin with group insurance for active employees and on table 10. You can see the FY26 costs of $586.3 million, which are a 13.3% increase in tax afforded costs over FY25 with most of the costs occurring in county government and MCPS. I did want to know three different changes in the MCPS group insurance plan and structure for FY26 that are impacting the budget. First is MCPS that include $ include $40 million to address their structural deficit in their group insurance plan, which the Council and the E&C Committee has discussed over the past couple of fiscal years in multiple different work sessions. They did include some cost savings from a management, from prescription management and GLP-1 prescription utilization that will be phased in over a couple years because of course health plans work on the calendar year as opposed to fiscal year. So NCPS expects savings about 8.3 million and FY26 and then 10.8 million and FY27 when this is changes fully annualized. And then the third piece is that MCPS and the, sorry, the board and MCPS employee associations agreed to a cost share shift, which will be implemented over two years, a 1% shift per year. The table on page 11 shows the different cost shares at the current rates and what the cost shares would be after the shift is fully phased in. But in total MCPS estimates, the savings of this cost share shift are 2.9 million and FY26, 8.1 million and FY28 and 10.2 million and FY, sorry, 8.1 million and FY27, and then 10.2 million and FY28 when the cost share changes are fully annualized. The next section we want to talk about is group insurance for retirees or what we commonly refer to as OPEP. And as a reminder, there's two components to group insurance for retirees that current pay as you go funding for the current year cost, as well as the pre-funding that goes to the OPEP Trust. On page 16, Table 12 shows the FY26 recommended pay as you go funding by agency, which is $105.2 million, or a 12.6% increase over FY25. And this is primarily coming from the MCPS costs as they're trying to address their fund balance deficits. For county government in the OPEC pre-funding, there is a recommendation from the executive to use 13.5 million in funds from the OPEC Trust to pay for current year retiree health costs in FY26. And this is consistent with the OPEC funding policy that the council adopted in December of 2023. Also want to note that the MCPS group insurance cost share shift will also apply to retirees as well. And so table 13 shows what the cost share will be over the course of two years for those retirees. For OPEP prefunding on page 17, the executive recommends $60.8 million, which is a 2.9% decrease over FY25. And this funding amount is based on updated actuarial valuations. We also include updated information on the current funded ratio of the OPEB Trust for each agency and that is shown on table 15. I'm happy to answer any questions about that. And then the last piece on group insurance on page 18, we show the agency group insurance fund status. And in December 2003, the council approved a policy of a 5% fund balance for each agency group insurance fund. And so table 16 shows where each agency stands at the end of FY 24 and also shows some projections for the future years. the county government is in FY 24 with a 1.2% fund balance. MCPS ended FY 24 with a deficit in both of their active employee and retiree fund balances. And again, these have been discussed by the council before and it relates to cost of group insurance. Healthcare costs essentially claims costs exceeding at a rate that was higher than anticipated and projected when the agencies set their rates for each calendar year. I did want to note on page 19 MCPS did provide some projections for future years as was requested by the ENC committee back in October where they show with the additions that they're planning to make in FY26 and FY27, they anticipate being back to a positive fund balance by FY28. I'll turn it over to Mr. Trunk. So we had noted before the outside role that employee benefit costs had on compensation costs increased particularly in the county government. So we wanted to share with you a little bit additional information on the bottom of page 19. For both MCPS and the county government, when you look at total compensation costs, about 26% of that is for employee benefits. And of all the numbers, the one that jumps out the most is for retirement in the county government, where expended truths are up by about 69% over the past three years. If you turn your attention to page 20 there's a table in the county government, where expended to us are up by about 69% over the past three years. If you turn your attention to page 20, there's a table in a chart that shows the data for the county government. And again, the key driver for the retirement is unfunded liability and salary increases. Page 21 has similar information for MCPS, and we'll note that this data is prior to the tension shift that occurred in Annapolis. On page 22, we introduced the topic of the March 2021 Council adopted resolution establishing a compensation sustainability policy. And the policy states in part that as a means to preserve long-term budgets of sustainability, the annual growth rate of total compensation costs should be similar to the annual growth rate of tax-supported revenues. So of course, it's a comparison of how fast our compensation growth is happening versus the dollars that are coming in to support them. If you look at the chart on page 23, you'll see that for the FY26, the executive's budget includes a 7.1% growth and tax support compensation cost, which is a rate double the projected six-year revenue growth rate of 3.5%. And so if the intent of this compensation sustainability policy is to align paying benefits with available resources, you'll see that there's a bit or more than a bit of a lack of alignment. We do have a table on the top of page 20 that compares the cost growth rates projected at the rate recommended by the CE first FY26 versus how it would grow if it grew at the projected rate of revenue growth. and you can see a quite substantial gap. The summary message is that the compensation spending pattern recommended does produce a sustainability challenge. Recording trend of this sort makes it difficult. If the dollar is going out, it's going out to see the dollar is coming, and it will make it difficult to meet future spending priorities, including spending for pay adjustments without necessitating or raising revenues. The next section is about four counts, four compensation, NDAs, non-departmental counts. The information here is pretty straightforward. The budgets are very straightforward. These NDAs are just tools for budgeting for employee benefits. So we'll move on to page 26 and we'll just summarize the next few pages. This is the administrative costs for the different retirement plans, the deferred compensation plan and for the consolidated retirement entirely health benefits trust and the federal and the federal and the federal and the federal and the federal and the federal and the federal and the federal and the federal and the federal and the federal and the federal and the federal and the federal and the federal and the federal and are required by the law, by the county code. So the executive did submit a proposed FY26 Non-Marit-Selry Schedule for Executive Branch appointees, and Council staff created a proposed Legislative Branch Schedule update to align with the proposal that was submitted by the Executive Branch. Just as a reminder, these are just the salary scales that are set for these non-marrow appointees, essentially the minimums and maximums. Actual decisions on pay adjustments given to these employees are at the discretion of the executive for the executive branch appointees and at the discretion of the council for council appointees. So the executive branch schedule does recommend an increase to the scale for each category of 10%. Again, the minz and maxes for each scale. There had been no previous changes to the Executive Branch scale in FY25. And for the Legislative Branch schedule, we made adjustments to align with what was done for the Executive Branch scale when the scale for the Legislative Branch was first created. created components aligned with different components of the Executive Scale, and the Council has maintained that over the past few years each year. And so the three different bands of the Legislative Branch Scale are changed to aligned with the Executive Scale. We include information on pages 29 and 30 on the most recent personnel management data that we have for each agency, which, and we do a little bit of a summary of some common characteristics, so you can kind of compare some of the staffing characteristics across the agencies, happy to answer any questions on that. And then the last piece is we did include some potential reductions for the Geo Committee's consideration, and those are on page 31. We did provide some options for what it would look like if the council wanted to provide a reduced general wage adjustment compared to what was requested by the executive and the agencies. Table 26 shows that if there was a 1% GWA reduction for all employee groups, there would be tax-supported savings approximately $33 million. And if all employee groups were provided with a 2% GWA, there would be tax-supported savings of about $41.5 million. Option number two that we provided would be the savings associated with eliminating funding for service and longevity increments in FY26, and that would provide savings of approximately $55 million. And the third option would be to change the group insurance, cost share split for county government, similar to MCPS, as MCPS has done to do an additional shift in of 1% each in FY26 and FY27, and that would result in ultimate savings of about 4.1 million in FY28. And the turning back to the very beginning of the staff report, the Geo committee did recommend 3-0 unanimously on to approve the pay adjustments outside of the collective bargaining agreements, to approve the group insurance costs for both active employees and retirees, as well as the OPEC prefunding to improve the FY26 allocations for retirement and to approve the FY26 County government compensation related NDAs. I'll turn it back to the Council President. Thank you so much. First, I'll see before we get to the action items that are on page one and two of the packet. Does anybody have any clarifying questions or questions for our staff? Okay, not seeing any. As Mr. Howard just said, if you look at pages one and two of the packet, we have a government operations and fiscal policy committee recommendation. It was unanimous for the FY26 pay adjustments outside of collective bargaining the FY26 group insurance, the FY26 allocations for retirement and the FY26 county government compensation related NDAs. Any questions on that or no? So we have, oh, Council Member Batham. No questions or comments or hold off. Sure, you have comments now and we just remember we also then turned to the collective bargaining agreement. So now's great. Great. Okay, thanks. Just thank you for staff for the excellent package and taking a very complex scenario and making it more understandable. And before I make comments, I want to thank everyone in the room for all the work that you do and I appreciate the time and energy that went into creating these contracts and coming up with this compensation structure. The council has a fiduciary responsibility to approve a balanced budget that will make sure that we have the necessary services for our community without overburdening our residents with taxes and fees. And at this point in the budgetary process, I don't see how that's going to happen. We were presented first with a property tax increase that the community overwhelmingly rejected as many of my colleagues also rejected. We're now faced with the income tax increase to cover the cost, the increasing cost of county services. And we know that this is a very difficult time in our state and in our nation. And we hear from constituents all the time about how tight money is. We know that many families in our community are maxed out. They're at their very limit. and a common refrain from our residents is that the county needs to tighten our belts and live within our means. What is most frustrating about the budgetary process is that once this compensation decision is made today, there is very little discretionary cost that left to cut. And we've been working through committee structures, and we're really just nibbling around the edges. And as a body, collectively, cognitively, we know what we need to do. We have a policy in place to preserve long-term budget sustainability by confirming that our annual growth rate of compensation is similar to our annual growth rate of tax-supported revenues. This is my third budget, and every budget we have simply ignored that policy. And so I, it's just a frustrating place to be in. I know how hard our employees work. I know that we need to support our first responders, our fire police. We need to be competitive and recruiting our teachers. This process is not sustainable. We have it right here in the packet that says that this process isn't sustainable. I will honor the contracts. I know that this is a long process that our unions have negotiated in good faith throughout that long process. We don't get to weigh in on that respectfully, and there's a reason that we don't stick our nose in that. But there's been a mismatch of what our means are and what we're providing in the contracts. So I just needed to say that, and we're gonna be faced with how are we going to fund all the services that are necessary, and at the same time not overburdening our residents with increased taxes and fees. We are faced with the second proposed tax increase in the three years that I've been here. And so I want to have a longer conversation when we come, when we're faced with this again next year, We're going to be in the same place that we are in next year that we need to look at how we can write this. I'm very intrigued by the cost share of health benefits. When we look at this compensation, health benefits, and we know that just from our personal experience in our own lives and in our family's lives, health insurance is just, there is no end to the increase in health insurance. We need to look at that, and I encourage the representatives in the room to think about how we're going to do that. So no great lightning bolt here, I just felt that I needed to say that. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Alvinus. Thank you. So I'm not going to bury the lead. I support these labor-negotiated contracts. A lot of work went into them. A lot of work is done as a result of them. We need to continue to recruit and retain the best and brightest public officials here in our community. And I think we've done that and have established that for generations. I have a great deal of respect as all of my colleagues do for all of our brothers, sisters, and labor. But I very much appreciate and want to recognize what council member Balthham just said. We can see the writing on the wall and what's on the horizon. We are very likely to hit double digit unemployment for our region and our community sometime within the next year. For every one federal government job we lose, we lose two private sector jobs to go along with it. That's been established by our Council of Governments. And that obviously has a significant cascading impact on our county. We will debate in short order the possibility of an increase in income taxes. But when we have double digit unemployment that obviously means there are fewer people drawing in income for us to be able to produce that revenue. Our property tax assessments have been at record highs and have been going up faster than any of us could have ever anticipated, which is what has helped sustain our overall government operations despite these challenging fiscal times. But in the not too distant past between fiscal years 2007 and 2008, property assessed values actually went down. And there is strong evidence that property assessed values are leveling off, and I fear that as we hit double-digit unemployment, and as we hit the full impact of the reductions that are being made at the federal level, come to fruition, that that will increase our property tax values and assessment. And as we know, our recordation taxes, although we significant increase the rate at which we receive recordation taxes, we're seeing overall there are not as many transactions going on, particularly in the commercial real estate space. And that will likely remain true for the distant future. So that will likely mean not just challenging, but extremely challenging budgets on the horizon. And so the decisions that we make today will have a repercussion on our ability to adjust to those adjustments and those challenges that I fear the worst, but it's not being a Debbie Downer. It's just reflecting the reality of the current situation we find ourselves in, and we have to have our eyes wide open about that. Having said that, I, as I've shared many times before, have been through these challenging times before and our brothers and sisters in labor during those challenging times were strong partners in making adjustments as necessary to reflect the reality that's on the ground. And I'm confident that we will continue that partnership and alliance if and when the worst case scenario has come to fruition. And we will have to face a stark reality. I've referred to this budget, and I heard the governor refer to this budget also as sort of a to be continued budget because we are still feeling the full ramifications of what's happening at the federal level which are changing every day. I mean they're talking about moving entire federal branch agencies out of our region, entire federal branch agencies and moving them to other states. Think about how catastrophic that will be. So these are challenging times. I very much appreciate the work of our of our government operations committee once again, led so ably by our chair. Come. So these are challenging times. I very much appreciate the work of our government operations committee once again led so ably by our chair council president Stewart. I look forward to the ongoing conversations and partnership, but I felt it was important to make those comments and back up a lot of what councilmember Balkan was saying. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Lass. Thank you very much, Madam President. I just wanna say thank you to all of you in this room for helping make Montgomery County a wonderful place to live, work, and raise a family. At a time when national leaders are demonizing, demoralizing, and dismissing federal workers, we appreciate you. We thank you, and we're with you. Okay, not seeing any other comments for the moment. We have before us again a government operations and fiscal policy committee recommendation on the four components of the compensation and benefits for all agencies. We're gonna take a vote on it today to indicate council's intent as we proceed through our budget work sessions. So all those in favor of the committee's recommendation, please raise your hand. And that is unanimous. All right, thank you, Mr. Howard and Mr. Trumpka. Next, we will now move on to the collective bargaining agreements and item 2B. Again, these include the work sessions, work sessions and action to indicate the council's intent to approve the three collective bargaining agreements for the county unions. And we're going to begin with the first one is the bargaining unit with municipal and county government employees UFCW local 1994 for fiscal year 2026 and Miss Wellens has joined us at the table. I'll turn it over to you. Great. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you. And good morning, Council members. The GO committee unanimously recommended the approval of three resolutions, one for each collective bargaining, the one with, of course, with MacGio, one with IAFF and one with the fraternal order of police, the FOP. Those resolutions recommended by the Go committee appear in the staff packet at circles 164 and 95 respectively. Mr. Trumpka, Abelie, summarized the major components of each collective bargaining agreement, including the General wage adjustments, the service agreements, the longevity increments, increases in special pay, and the extension of the personal patrol vehicle program. I'll just note the one additional item that's contained in the the resolutions for FOP relates to the issuance of equipment and there were some negotiated alterations to the equipment for affecting FY26. Those can be seen at circle 108 of the package. It's under Appendix. I have the FOP agreement and see those changes. It's about the fiscal impact is about $80,000. And also included within your packet, you can see in addition to the resolutions for each agreement, you can see the presentation memo from the county executive, the fiscal impact summary, the proposed salary schedules, the amendments for each collective bargaining agreement that affect the fiscal year, then also just to note, especially for the public, if you would like to review the collective bargaining agreements in total, those are available on the Office of Legislative, excuse me, the Office of Labor Relations website and links are provided in the packet. There's also at Circle 1 you can see there's a chart specifying with you know going through each agreement and I don't know if you want the vote to be on each agreement separately but but it goes through all of the provisions that the Go committee has unanimously recommended approval. Thank you. Great, thank you very much, Ms. Mullins. And yes, Ms. Harling and Ms. Johnson, thank you for being here from our office of labor relations, anything to add on the collective bargaining agreement. So no, just that we thank you for your time and we're happy to answer any questions you may have. All right. Before I call the vote, does anyone have any comments or questions? Council member sales. Yes, just briefly. I just wanted to thank my colleagues, OMB department leaders and Council staff for all their work on this budget, especially our contracts. As Council Member Blas mentioned, this is a time where we need to show our public servants that they are valued by local government. And this is what these contracts show amid all of the federal uncertainty of our federal workers, we are becoming the blueprint for how to show that we value our workers. And I just thank my colleagues for their support. I know things are difficult, but these services should not dwindle and our respect and how we value our workers should not falter because of this. And so I just want to thank everyone for supporting this budget. Thank you. Thank you. I just want to say thank you to everyone as we said last week when the Government Operations and Physical Policy Committee. Review this. We know we are in tough times. And. I just want to say thank you to everyone as we said last week when the government operations of the fiscal policy committee reviewed this. We know we are in tough times and we will have a tough year and probably a couple of years ahead of us. And as we need to look to the future and potential adjustments, just looking forward to doing that in partnership with all of you because we know here no matter what happens at the national level, we work to remain true to our values and that includes supporting our employees and ensuring that you are all treated with dignity and respect. And again, I appreciate my colleagues raising the challenges we have because these are very challenging times. But what we do best here here in Montgomery County is during challenging times. We come together and we meet those challenging times together. And today is a day to move forward with these collective bargaining agreements to support all of those who help keep Montgomery County moving. So with that, we will take them one by one because I think the clerk would appreciate if I did it that way So we have a government I will take the MacGeeo collective bargaining agreement first We have a unanimous government operations and fiscal policy committee Recommendation all those in favor of the MacGeeo collective bargaining agreement. Please raise your hands and that is unanim. Next we will move on to the IAFF, our Montgomery County Career Firefighters Association, and we have a government operations and fiscal policy committee recommendation to approve this collective bargaining agreement. All those in favor, please raise your hand. Thank you, that is unanimous. And the last agreement for consideration is the collective bargaining agreement with the paternal order of police, Montgomery County, lodge 35, government operation, physical policy committee, recommends approval, all those in favor, please raise your hand. And that is unanimous. So the collective bargaining agreement sets. Thank you. Again, thank you to everyone who is here today all of the hard work that went into negotiating these agreements and thank you to our council staff and our office of labor relations. Thank you very much. We'll now move on to legislative day 11 and as the clerk previously announced, item three has been removed from today's agenda. So we're moving on to item four. Item four is action on expedited bill 2-25, taxation payments in lieu of taxes, affordable housing amendments. This bill was enacted by Council on April 8th, 2025, and vetoed by the County Executive on April 21st, 2025. The Council is considering action to override the County Executive's veto. Before getting into Council comments, I'll ask if there's a motion to approve expedite bill 2-25 overriding the County executive's veto. So, a council member, Natalie Fenneganzalis moved, council member Luki second, and now we'll turn it over to council members for questions and comments. First, I have council member Jawando. Thank you so much. I held back on the previous item, but congrats to our Employees and thank you for your service and work As many of you know I've often taken the view that once the body passes a bill that I should respect the Council's vote and to override a subsequent veto Even if I was on the losing side of the original vote. This is an exception to that rule. After weeks of study, the math of this proposition simply isn't mapping. In my view, it is fiscally irresponsible for the county to override this veto, because this extremely broad bill does not have the appropriate fiscal guardrails to protect the county, especially given our last conversation. I'm concerned that there still may not even be a common understanding about how broadly the bill was written and who it applies to. Just yesterday, thanks to our great council staff, which is notably after the bill has was passed in den vetoed Council staff provided council members a list of 17 properties that would currently qualify for the pilot Notably all of these buildings were assessed property taxes in 2024 Tonling more than three million dollars Taxes that would likely rise after these billions these buildings are redeveloped and which would be abated by this bill. A few other observations about that list. First, it appears to be incomplete. For example, it doesn't appear to include the URW 2000 square foot Sears Building at Montgomery Mall, which has been vacant for more than five years. Notably, expedited bill 225 was specifically amended to ensure that Montgomery Mall and Wheaton Mall, both owned by this company, would qualify for the pilot following the advocacy of URW's Council, who testified at the public hearing for the bill. The list also does not appear to account for properties that may be eligible for the pilot due to the bill being made retroactive in committee during the legislative process, which is an analysis planning completed at my request. Those are not on the list. Second, this bill also doesn't include the buildings that are soon to be vacant, which would also qualify for the bill. For example, when Geico moves its corporate headquarters to downtown Bethesda next year in 2026, it's a 26-year property in friendship heights that it currently is, inhabiting one of the most desirable and expensive properties in the region. Well, that include a vacant office building along with mostly green space. The Geico property was confirmed at a previous meeting of the council by council staff that it would be covered by the pilot before we passed the bill, even though most of the property is beautiful empty land. Finally when this of 17 properties is likely, while it's incomplete, it also underlines the point that this pilot focused on incentivizing the conversion of existing vacant or chronically vacant buildings, which has been stated as the purpose. That goal would have been, would produce a much narrower and much less expensive build than what was actually passed. This distinction actually appears to be confusing to many. Indeed, the economic impact statement concluded that there are approximately 15 office buildings in the county where his conversion is deemed feasible. That's a quote. This statement simply does not capture the reality that this pilot, as passed, will apply to buildings that become vacant during the 10 years that it is in place. And as the bill was written, of course, it would have applied in perpetuity But thankfully we limited that I agree with the premise as I stated before that it makes sense to incentivize the conversion or disposition of chronically vacant buildings that serve no possible office purpose And are in our weighing down our community, but this is not that bill This is significantly than that. Indeed, I hope it's clear to my colleagues into the public that this pilot will actually incentivize making office buildings vacant. At a time when all major corporations and governments are making their employees come back to the office. This is not only about the scourge of chronically vacant buildings. Again, the list was 17, even if it was missing a few. This is much broader than that. Developers are rational actors. So they will, and I know they will, because they already are making moves, choose to build any future multifamily development, even ones that they already plan to do, in the next 10 years in a way that allows them to take advantage of this extremely generous pilot. For a building of 200 units, somewhere between $25 and $30 million was estimated by finance. This is why I offered an amendment to successfully remove retail from this ETA, so we weren't going to incentivize the tear down of retail, because that would have gotten a really perverse incentive in place to drive out mom and pop and smaller businesses. To be clear, owners would make these buildings vacant and probably will by increasing rents, for example. The list didn't approach the other buildings that are maybe 65% vacant. And that one tenant, we're incentivizing that one tenant's lease not to be renewed so that they can take advantage of this pilot. There also seems to be a perception and even public messaging by some that this is focused on retrofitting, which is the expensive component of vacant buildings, like adding bathrooms, kitchens, changing the buildings to fit a new purpose. It's not. It's broader than that. This covers if you knock down a building and build something new. So it's significantly broader than the expensive part of retrofitting. It also brings up environmental and waste issues and is very different from the converting existing buildings use which has been touted as what we're doing here. This pilot has also been sold as something that will make something more affordable, accessible or attainable to our residents. But a 20 year, 100% property tax exemption for a 2.5% gain in affordability, Moving from the 15% that's already required under law to the 17.5%. I don't know of a more expensive 2.5% of affordable housing in the history of this county. The rest of the housing will be market rate and out of reach for the vast majority of our residents. It will not address affordability, and it's unclear if it will even actually incentivize more housing at all, as I said earlier. Besides my deep substance and concerns about this bill, I'm disappointed in the process. While the Econ Committee focused a significant amount of time on the concept of office conversions, the bill itself, and its potential impacts has raced through the council in about a month. Residents have noticed as evidenced by the correspondence and calls to our office in the pleading and the frustration with the council to slow down and listen. I don't understand why we would not want to buter understand the fiscal implications of this bill, even if contested and consider whether to apply fiscal guardrails to the bill, like DC has done with its analogous programs. Many residents are also mystified why we would be giving a broad blanket giveaway to developers just as many folks in our communities as was discussed are losing their jobs and are struggling to meet ends meet. County Executive has also raised some points about this bill that are worth talking about. We already have the authority to do a pilot. There's huge pilots that are already taking place. We should make sure it's a good deal to residents. I'm not against doing something, as has been said, or doing nothing. This is not that choice. This is about doing something that's responsible and something that's notally responsible. We need to do it in a smart way with guard whales, with more affordability and more control for the county for a generation. I urge my colleagues to sustain the veto, step back for better data and craft a sharper, fairer tool that meets the needs of housing equity, fiscal goals, and without leaving a structural deficit for future councils to fill on the backs of our residents. Thank you. Councilmember Mink. Thank you. I have really gone back and forth a lot on this one. I support, I strongly support the goal of incentivizing office to residential conversions, given that we have major office vacancies and a dire need for more residential development. The perfect should also not be the enemy of the good. And my previous vote reflected both of those sentiments. It is why I voted in favor of the bill. Yet as I expressed at that time, I had major concerns about the structure of this incentive. And since that vote, my concerns have increased rather than decreased as a result of my own research and as constituents have reached out echoing some of those exact same concerns. One developer's pursue projects. They of course do in-depth analyses of the costs and benefits of different projects in different places. They do the math to make their decision. This bill, 20 years of no property taxes will no doubt affect those calculations. And if it causes developers who would have done a project in Virginia or DC to instead come and do an office conversion in Montgomery County, that is a huge win. That is of course the goal. And of course, as if this bill moves forward, which I expect that it will, that is very much what I hope to see a lot of. My concern is if this incentive causes developers who would have otherwise done a different residential project in Montgomery County, if the math that they do in light of this bill causes them to instead do an office conversion in order to take advantage of the tax abatement, then that is a huge loss. For every project that represents such a shift that is 20 years of foregone property taxes that we would otherwise have received for no gain in our housing goals. A pattern of shifts could be really devastating to our revenue stream at a time when we need all the help we can get in our revenue stream. I spoke to one of our nonprofit developer partners who thinks that this may occur. Compounding this concern is the amendment to grant this abatement retroactively to projects that are already in the works. should be working to avoid that, not creating a direct pathway for it. I appreciate the 10-year sunset that was suggested by Councilmember Sales and approved by the committee. It creates an escape hatch in case we are seeing these problems. However, I still think that 10 years is waiting too long given that projects are opting into 20 years of tax abatements. Again, I support the goals of this bill. My fervent hope is that it generates new projects without cutting into property tax-producing projects that would have otherwise occurred. But the questions for which we still don't have clear answers or relatively near-term escape hatches in this time of desperately tight budgets as we just discussed. This balance does not feel like one that I'm able to stand by at this point and so for that reason I will be voting to sustain the veto. Councillor Marraff is Alice. Thank you so much, Madam President. I'm going to keep it short and sweet because we've been talking about this issue since 2023 in the Economic Development Committee. 2003. No one here has been rushing anything, but I'm just is going to say a couple things. One, numbers don't lie. People do. Okay? Yes, we're talking about a property tax abayment, but when people move in in this building, and let me go back and say, I have hosted many works, many like tango meetings, meetings with civic associations were hundreds of people have come, both in person and also virtually. Where we have explained, I have explained that this also means that not only having the conversion but also bills that will have to be teared down, because some of these obsolete buildings are not equipped to actually have, you know, the updates that you may have in certain buildings. You got to meet reality. When you have a conversion or a tear down, you know what happens? More people move in. And you know what happens when that happens? You have people paying income taxes. We have more people paying the Recordection Taxes. We have more people paying the old fees that you had to pay when these buildings are being redeveloped. So it's not just the property tax. It's more than that. I find this a very responsible way to move forward, especially looking at the challenging times that we're facing in our county, in our region, in our nation. Doing nothing is not an option. This is not a new is happening in other places across the nation. And we did put safeguards to say that we don't have that in place. It's a lie. Okay. And with that said, I'm proud of the work that the economic government committed it together with the staff. I'm proud of the work of all the people who participated in making this happen. And I'm proud of the vote that we took only a few days ago. We need more housing. And the fact that we're saying that we're having a minimum of 17.5%, minimum of 17.5%, it's very critical. So please understand also that increasing the supply is another way of meeting the housing crisis that we're facing. So we do need to have more housing. Use every single tool available that we have a county government to use to make things move forward. And with that, I am ready to override the county executive's veto. Thank you, Councillor Freizin. Thank you, Madam President. Echo the comments made by my colleague, which I really appreciate. We know that in addition to the detrimental effects upon communities and on adjacent businesses that vacant buildings result in reduced resources for the county. That's how commercial properties are assessed when we have properties that are 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 percent vacant, they pay dramatically less in property tax. They get reassessed. And the county is already losing quite a bit of potential revenue that we could otherwise receive. We have a vacancy challenge in this county that is not unique to Montgomery County. It is true across the region, but it is double and growing based on most recent numbers of what a healthy office market should be. Repurposing these buildings into residential opportunities will generate more revenue, not less. And it's a win-win for the county. It brings in housing that we need. It addresses the office vacancy that we have. It is a solution to the scourge on communities that vacant offices represent. If we acknowledge that we have a problem with office vacancy and a problem with a housing shortage, we can't just talk about it. We have to do something about it. Doing nothing is in a strategy. It's not a solution. And this is a solution that we have put forward. We had a robust debate. We made adjustments. We increased affordability. We limited the time frame. And we move forward. And the factor means that we do have to do things and it will work to get our economy growing in order to address the housing challenges that we face in order to take a serious look and make a significant impact on the office vacancies that have been discussed over and over again for multiple years at the Economic Development Committee and at the Council. And I think we need to be honest about the fact that we're fortunate if there are projects that are going to move forward. We're seeing projects stalling across the board in Montgomery County, not just related to these projects, but projects in general. Those numbers are getting worse, they're not getting better. And if there is a challenge that we should be avoiding more than anything else, it's in disinvestment in Montgomery County. It's an astagnating economy that we are going to have. Disinvestment is a race to the bottom. And if we don't do anything to address our office vacancies, then we are participating in that race to the bottom. I just want to acknowledge one other piece. The Geico property has come up repeatedly. The Geico property is zoned R60 and TDR. It is not eligible under this. And any suggestion otherwise is misinformation. It is not currently eligible. Most of the site is on the traditional R portion of the property. It is not eligible under this pilot. I just wanted to note that there are a lot of discussions happening with that particular property in the context of broader conversations about friendship heights, but that has been used repeatedly and it is not accurate to suggest that it is included in this pilot. Thank you, Madam President. I look forward to moving forward and making meaningful progress in both our housing challenges that we face and in the office vacancy issue that we have been trying to resolve for more than a year. Thank you, Councilmember Sales. Thank you, Madam President. And so just give me a few minutes. I believe in a community led policy making and have listened closely to the many voices participating in the process around this bill. Residents showed up. They testified and shared their overwhelming support and genuine concerns. These perspectives are essential and I do not take them lightly. After weighing all factors, I am voting to override the county executive's veto. I believe the urgency of our housing crisis demands action now. While I share the concerns expressed regarding the expedited process, it should never come at the cost of trust, transparency, or thoughtful decision making. Am I concerned about the pace at which we have moved? Yes. Had we taken more time to work through this bill, could we have achieved a better result? When that was enthusiastically supported by both our community members and the development community, maybe. This bill reflects essential steps toward addressing our county's growing housing needs. While no piece of legislation is perfect, this bill demonstrates real progress in balancing community needs and the realities of housing development. As a co-sponsor, I supported this bill because it moves us in the right direction toward more equitable and inclusive growth. As we wait for development to reach its full potential in the master plans we have approved as a body, this bill is another step toward quickly bringing more housing to the market for our residents. It shouldn't be and or. It should be and and not or. Acting now helps lay the foundation for how these plans will be implemented. Delaying this work would only prolong our residents' challenges, rising costs, limited options, and increased displacement pressure. I understand the concerns about the process, including calls for more time and transparency. I share those concerns and am committed to strengthening our work process moving forward as projects come into the pipeline. But we cannot ignore that this bill has undergone multiple public hearings, multiple amendments and work sessions. There has been real engagement and a broad coalition is ready to act now. By overriding this veto, we are choosing action over delay. We are affirming that the housing challenges in our county are urgent and require more than just words. They require bold steps. I ran to make living in our county more affordable. And as a member of the Economic Development and Health and Human Services Committee, I know all too well of our housing needs. Homelessness numbers are expected to double in the next fiscal year. My vote to override this veto supports Homelessness numbers are expected to double in the next fiscal year. My vote to override this veto supports addressing our growing office vacancies, our growing communities, housing needs, and ensures that no one is left behind in our county as we continue to grow. Thank you. Thank you next council member class. Thank you very much Madam President. I appreciate the conversation that we're having today. This has been a conversation we've been having for a long time about how to provide more housing for more people who want to live here. Our kids and our grandkids cannot afford to live in Montgomery County and it's getting increasingly harder for seniors, for working families, and our own county employees whose compensation we just increased. Governor Moore says that we need to build 96,000 units all across Maryland, and we have to do our part here in Montgomery County. And we are. Let's put this in bigger context. We spend $169 million between operating and capital budgets to build subsidized housing. Subsidized housing are what some people call affordable housing, but we have to center it. It's government subsidized housing. We spend $160 million in our budget to help build this much needed housing, which basically goes to families making between 60 and $80,000 a year, largely. There's a lot of need, there's a lot of money, and we need to do more. But I really want everyone to realize that our middle class is struggling to. What about a married couple? They're both teachers and MCPS. They both have graduate degrees, and they're both in their third year of teaching. They make a combined $167,000. And yet, they cannot afford to live in Montgomery County. Let's add to the list, what about our bus operators, our firefighters, our police officers, our nurses, they are finding it increasingly hard to live in Montgomery County. And so what do we do? We can't throw our hands up. This body has been working extremely hard to figure this out. And there's no silver bullet. When last year we talked about zoning, there were a lot of people who didn't want any zoning changes. A lot of those same people in their correspondence to me said, instead of making zoning changes, why don't you just convert those vacuist office buildings into housing? I got the volumes of emails. You know who you are, who emailed those thoughts to us, but they're not happening. And why are they not happening? Because it's not financially viable. So what did we do? We looked at where that's happening. The two largest jurisdictions that are converting the most number of offices to residential are the District of Columbia and Seattle. And so we looked at what they're doing and what they're doing is offering a 20-year pilot exactly what we are proposing today because it's working in those jurisdictions. It might not be producing enough housing but there is no single solution to produce enough housing. We need to continue providing different policies to tackle different aspects of this housing crisis. This is just one. And I also want to add one other element because there is some truth telling that is happening from the day. It has been noted that there are two buildings in Montgomery County that recently went from office to residential and that they did not need or receive any tax abatements. One of those buildings, the Elon does not have any moderately priced dwelling units in it. It was built without any affordable housing. That's not the model we're looking at. And the other building, the Octave, actually received a $4.1 million loan from the county. It was subsidized. The Department of Housing and Community Affairs gave them $4.1 million to complete their project because it was financially infeasible to make that office conversion. Full stop. That's what we're talking about. In order to do these projects, they need some level of assistance. Just like we provide assistance to biotech and life sciences companies to move to Montgomery County, just like we provide assistance for Fortune 500 companies like Marriott to stay in Montgomery County. If we want to prioritize housing, we need to help home builders. And yes, there will be 17.5% MPDUs. And yes, we will revisit it in 10 years. And yes, we're the legislative branch. We can revisit this whenever we want. Once we start building more housing, let's revisit it. We should. We should check and see how well it's doing. And if it's not doing well, well, we can abandon the program. We are the lawmakers. This is an important conversation. We have to do something because the Montgomery County that we currently live in, people cannot afford. And if there's one thing that we know, the best way to build housing that is affordable is by building more housing. Thank you Madam President. Thank you Councilmember Cats. Thank you very much Madam President. You know we need to deal with reality and And I do respect the county executive's thoughts and vice president Jouandil and council member Mink and whoever who think whose thoughts are that, and sincerely believe that this is not good legislation. Do I think this is the best legislation that we've ever come up with? I do not. But the cost of residential building, talking about reality, and other buildings is the cost of the land. And about one third of the price of the building is the land. When a developer buys a building with a building with the land, including that building, therefore the cost of the land is very high. We could pretend that our current system is working. It is not. Yes, we have a few developments that have occurred, but the reality is not enough. We can say we already have 15% so that 17 to half percent is not enough, additionally. The reality is that we're receiving in many cases 0%. We have a vacant building and it's been pointed out, I think it's worthwhile mentioning again, we've mentioned it before, when you have a vacant building it lowers the assessment of that building. The assessors come in and say, how much you rent are you getting and you don't get any rent. So therefore the assessment is much lower. Even if the building is rented the next week, they don't come back and change it. So we're getting a much lower tax for that property tax for that. The reality is that even when if when we abate property taxes, when people start to live there, they're going to pay income taxes. And that same person will shop in the area. And there's that thing called the velocity of the dollar. That person's dollar gets spent in a business next door and that person's in the business next door spends that dollar and their business next door and the dollars start to spend. We start to get a much better situation. This legislation is far from perfect but perfect is the enemy of the good. This legislation is an investment for our future and quite candidly we need to change things so we can have a better future. I will vote to favor the override. Thank you, Councillor Mellor Leuke. Thank you, Madam President. It was easy for me to second the motion to override the veto. And I concur with all of the many things that my colleagues who will join me in that vote have said. But I am concerned that there were some things that were said that might leave the public with the wrong impression. And so I just wanted to clear that up a little bit. And I want to think one of the lead sponsors, Councilmember Fanny Gonzalez, for emphasizing the level of discussion and detailed work. In fact, I had attended some of those economic development committee sessions on this topic that she led in her committee. All of the public outreach and engagement that we all engaged in over the past year. But what I wanted to double check with is that we do have council procedures for the introduction of bills. Is that correct, Mr. Ruggles? Or, or, or, oh, my goodness. I used to be so good a week ago. You got a little cocky. Of course, a lack. There you go. More cocked. That is correct there. The procedures for the intercourse. All right. Yes. So we followed the procedure in this particular instance. Yes. And all notices were publicly given. Yes. And the public had an opportunity to come and engage provide feedback on the bills at that time. Yes. And the council then subsequently took its vote in the forwarded time under the council's rules of procedure to pass this legislation. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Then don't want there to be any, any insinuation that something wasn't followed or that something wasn't done or that the public didn't have an opportunity to speak because the process is the same for every piece of legislation that is introduced in this body, whether it's introduced by me or whether it's introduced by any of the other 10 council members up here. And to imply that something was not followed or not appropriate notice given or that the the public didn't have the opportunity to weigh on this, is false, misleading, and breaks trust with public bodies like the county council and like the government. And we are not living in a time where we can afford to do that for bodies that are functioning, that are following the rules. And everybody up here knows that everybody is sitting in this room knows I love rules. And I love process and procedure. And that's why I'm taking the time to say these things right now because it is important to the public and we need to be honest with them. There was no violation in this particular case. The body deliberated, the body took action and we're going to take action today. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Councilmember Druondo. Appreciate it. I'll be brief so we can vote. Just want to address a few points that I think were made incorrectly in reference to my comments. I'll start with the last one. Never said that there was any improper or illegal process. I said that we rushed through it. There's bills I've introduced, and I've been on this body a while that have had their public hearing and some currently and they take a year to get a vote or more. We delayed the ZTA associated with this package in time to, because some council members requested behind the scenes that we should slow it down. That's part of the process. And I spoke to the substantive and not the actual legality, but how long we took. And there's that varies with different bills all the time. The other thing I'll say, and I was, I think, indirectly or maybe directly accused of lying or doing misinformation. So I have to address that because I don't do that and anyone who knows me knows that. When I asked at the two hour and 42 minute point of the April 8th session, our council staff, for example, the Geico property. If we're to move to a different headquarters, they will be vacant, they would be eligible under this, correct? Mr. Ali said at the time, I believe so, yes. Since that moment on April 8th, he has not told me or my staff that that was not a true or correct statement. Now, mistakes happen. And if the zoning is not that way, then that's good to know. Another, but I think it underscores my point that we should have taken the time to assess that out. We got the 17 properties that are eligible yesterday. That's my point on timing. But any suggestion, as was made, that I am deliberately peddling misinformation or lies I take offense to and is incorrect. I also went last point, the octave that was brought up by Councilmember Glass, illustrates my point perfectly. We've been told by nonprofit and other developers and by finance that this property tax abatement for a normal 200 unit property which the Octav is in that range would be 25 to 30 million dollars. We gave them 4.1 million in loan to make the property viable and to move forward. forward. That's my entire point. It's not don't do anything. It's that do it in a way that makes sense, that saves our money and that doesn't allow for an over usage of abatement when we have such, such pressing needs in our schools and other places. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, thank you very much. I'll just, member the last did you want to? Yeah, since we're talking about the outcave Octave and and I appreciate that last point by council member Joondo I Would argue that this legislation is exactly needed because of the misuse of the current policy that allowed the Octave to be built. The octave needed a $4.1 million subsidy, and it was built without MPD use. That will never happen again when this legislation becomes law, because this legislation requires 17.5% of moderately priced willing units. Thank you, Councilmember Glass. I know there have been over the last couple of months a number of properties mentioned and we could probably spend a whole nother couple of weeks just debating that but we will not today. I just want to say a couple of things on as the Council President and the person who presides over this body. I think very carefully about our process and when we schedule things. And the process for the Z to the company ZTI and I just want to make sure people are clear did move through and has been voted on by this body. In addition to that, we took up this bill, this pilot bill, because we did have not just the Economic Development Committee working on this issue for over a year, but this body, and particularly the Government Operations and Fiscal Policy Committee and the PHP Committee, worked on our growth and infrastructure policy and our impact tax policy in which we had these conversations. We did not have just one public hearing that is required under our procedures, but we had two public hearings on this. We had a joint committee meeting that represented our economic development committee as well as our government operations of fiscal policy committee that represented a majority of this body and I do want to thank council member sales for at that time in the committee meeting doing the work, how we do it in committee and digging deep into the amendments that needed to be made to make sure that we were moving this forward. So I just want to say I take very seriously the process we do here. I work with our staff who have been amazing in their analysis on this, as well as the county exec staff, the staff of the member representatives on this body and individual council members to look at how we can best function as a government and serve our public well. And I stand by the process we had for this bill. And I will say, as Hasman said, we are facing two crises right now, a housing crisis and a vacant property crisis in our commercial developments. When we took this bill up, we did so at a day where we voted on another ZTA to address the issue of what happens when we have vacant buildings and they have a negative impact on our local communities because it decreases the vibrancy. It decreases the revenue. This is not the only solution to these issues and these challenges that face us. But right now when there is so much chaos in the world being deliberately done to us, we need to move forward with stability and to make sure that people who want to undertake projects here in Montgomery County know that we are good partners and we want to see these projects move forward. And I can tell you I think probably anybody on this body as a mayor in a city that worked on pilot projects, I probably have the most experience working both with for profit and nonprofit developers on why these pilot projects are so important to do and why it's important actually to do them by right, because the financing is so difficult, and to make sure that they know this is something that they can guarantee for, they understand it, and then they can go and figure out the financing on these very complex projects, can make or break a project. And that I know for a fact, because I have seen it firsthand and worked with developers on these things. And so I feel incredibly confident in overriding this veto today and thank my colleagues. And with that we have a motion ahead. I will ask the Madam Clerk to please call the roll. Councilmember Lutki? Yes. Councilmember Lutuki votes yes. Council member Mink. No. Council member Mink votes no. Council member sales. Yes. Council member sales votes yes. Council member Freighton. Yes. Council member Freighton votes yes. Council member glass. Yes. Council member glass votes yes. Council member Katz. Yes. Council member Katz votes yes. Council member Albernos. Yes, Councilmember Albernos votes. Yes, Councilmember Founta González. Yes, Councilmember Founta González votes yes, Councilmember Balcom. Yes, Councilmember Balcom votes yes, Councilmember Joando. No, Councilmember Joando votes no, Councilmember Stewart. Yes, Councilmember Stewart votes yes. All right. Thank you everything. Everyone. Thank you to our staff who has worked on this. The council will now sit as the district council for agenda item number five. That's the introduction of zoning text amendment 25-05. Development standards, optional method, public benefits. The lead sponsor is the Planning Housing and Parks Committee, a public hearing is scheduled for June 10th, 2025 at 130 PM. I'll turn to chair Freedson to see if he has any comments. Yeah, I'll just briefly note that the council received a briefing on the work of the planning department related to the public benefits and the significant changes. a robust discussion in committee. This is the result of it. We said that this ultimately these sets of recommendations would need to be implemented. Through a zoning text amendment, I want to thank the planning staff and planning board for their work significantly on this and thank colleagues on the Planning Housing and Parks Committee. We're introducing this as a committee. The council members have been briefed on that. There's basically a question of are we getting public benefits that actually reflect our current public policies and where our expectations of the community currently are. This is a way to address that to ensure that we are doing it in a way that actually reflects our best priorities and that it's in a way that is more reflective of our current priorities as well. Oh, you'll to Miss Nendee if she has anything to add, but I just wanted to note that there's a public hearing as noted in June and we'll be taking this up in committee over the summer after the public hearing. I have nothing to add. Thank you. Great. Not seeing anyone else any of our colleagues who have anything to add. This CTA is introduced. Item six is the introduction of a resolution to increase county income tax rate. The lead sponsor is myself on behalf of the county executive. Last week we did receive a number of amendments to his budget that he sent us over on March 14th and one of them was for us to look at increasing the income tax rate. And so in order to do this, we need to pass a resolution. And so we're introducing that today. The public hearing is scheduled on May 13th, 2025 at 1.30 pm. But of course, the county council is always open to comments and emails and phone calls on things outside of the public hearing. It's not seeing anybody have any questions. This resolution is introduced. The last item on today's agenda is item number seven, the consent calendar. I'll entertain a motion to approve the consent calendar. Council member Balthamuse, Council member, Laurie and sales seconded all those in favor, please raise your hand. And that is unanimous. All right, this Council meeting is adjourned and I know there are a couple of committee sessions this afternoon as we continue on budget work. Thank you everyone.