Good morning, everybody. It is Monday, March 3rd. Welcome to the Transportation and Environment Committee. Today marks our first committee session on the FY26 capital budget and amendments to the FY25 to 30 CIP. The County Executive has recommended $1.75 billion for the transportation category of the six-year period from the FY 25 to 30 CIP. And this is a 19 and a half million dollar decrease from the previously approved budget of $1.77 billion. This budget includes 16 CIP projects that range from mass transit to roads, to pedestrian facilities, bikeways, bridges, and highway maintenance. We are going to have, I know, a robust discussion about one project in particular, Summit Avenue, that is not in this, but also we have to be ever more mindful of the amount of federal aid that these projects are being considered for these various projects as we watch what's happening down on Pennsylvania Avenue. But we'll get into each of those aspects as we go through. I'll turn it over to Mr. Kenney for any other points. Thank you. So yes, these 16 projects are the ones that the County Executive has transmitted with amendments. Fast majority of the transportation CIP remains unchanged. So we'll walk through today each of these projects, many of which have technical amendments, many of which have are just incorporating state or federal aid that has been awarded, although as you said, we'll get into that, the implications of that. And then a couple have sort of material changes to the scope and scale of the project that we'll highlight as we go through. The chart on page two of the packet highlights the how those, how the $1.75 billion transportation and CIP as amended by the January 5th Transmetal of the County Executive. How that breaks down by subcategory. So we'll, without, you know, going into that too much, we'll go through each of the changed projects in those subcategories. In the following section, I will note and to sort of tee this up whether we want to talk about this now or when it comes to individual projects that due to recent executive orders, pausing and rescinding some federal grants, awards and litigation challenging the legality of those orders. There's much uncertainty surrounding the federal aid funding programmed into the CIP, much is still unknown and there are, you know, this situation is changing daily, but MCDOT and OMB can speak to how the county is preparing for the impacts of these, this ongoing situation. Thank you for that, Mr. County. That is the headline and the boiler plate that is associated with every one of these projects. So we can talk about federal support for each of them as we go through each item. Sure. So another highlight or headline, are there, and I guess this gets us right into the start of these projects. There are two new projects, one in the bridge category that will get to a little later. But the first one is in the Mass Transit category or subcategory of the CIP and this is the Bus Rapid Transit Flash Howard County expansion. This committee discussed this particular item during its work session on February 10th via a supplemental appropriation that came over in advance as a request to discuss and approve in advance of the council's normal CIP and budget votes as a way to make sure that the county is getting out ahead on electric bus procurement which is what that $4.8 million was going towards. This committee recommended approval, which was then approved by the Council. So this project is approved. No action is required. But Council staff included a summary in the packet for the record. Unless there's any follow-up questions. Thank you for that. Since we did have that session about a month ago, are there any updates, Director Conklin? The principal update on this is that the Howard County version of the MOU has been signed in return. So that's advancing and we can move to have the project incorporated into the regional plan, which is a requirement for the grant signature. Again, as we'll talk about with many of these, we don't know the prognosis for grant signature. So work on executing this won't occur until we have a better sense from our colleagues at the Federal Transit Administration about whether these grants would be approved or not. So that's the main update for this, but otherwise it's consistent with what was shared. And the main aspect of that MOU is the reimbursements for our expenses? Yes, there are two elements, three elements to that. One is Howard County Capitol contribution to the purchase of the buses because the buses exceed the Federal Grant Award. The terms of the reimbursement by Howard County to Montgomery County for the operation of the service and a provision that provides for sharing of any component of state BRT fund revenues with Montgomery County on US 29 once this project is operational so that if Howard County becomes eligible for those funds they will share a portion of those with us until we've implemented the phase two projects referenced in the testimony in the packet. Thank you. Colleagues? A more welcome. Yes, thank you. Just confirming that so this is no additional bond capacity like many of these correct. Correct. There's no additional obligation of county resources in this project. Thank you. Great. We will support that. Thank you. So, the next project in this category is the bus stop improvements project. This provides for all the installation improvement maintenance of right on and metro bus bus stops in the county. There was a significant discussion last CIP about moving from what was the advertiser contract for funding this to county funding as that market has been volatile, but there's been no change in that. So since, but the amendment before the committee and before the council now is the programming of $560,000 in additional federal aid to develop vision zero standards for access, lighting and other safety improvements in and around bus stops. Director Constell, that is of this one is the same as the last known obligation of additional County funds and this is anticipation of a grant that has been awarded but not yet approved. So much like the last one we will not be expending the funds until that grant has approved. And if it makes sense I could give a little bit an overview of the overall grant situation. Yes. So in the transportation capital improvement program we've identified 18 smaller federal grants that are embedded in individual projects and the Office of Grants Management on behalf of the County Executive for the entirety of the program is reviewing all grants but this is the ones that we've identified as the department. There are combination of earmarks and federal competitive grants and also some state administered programs using federal funds that are competitive grants as well. Those 18 of those total to about $67 million of funding in the CIP of the 18-6 are executed we are advancing work on those six. There's about $21 million in those six projects. We are not executing work on the ones that aren't yet approved, which is the remainder of that. There is one large grant for the 355 crossing project at the Medical Center Metro Station. It was just closed out. so that was $104 million, and that one is closed out and not subject to any amendments at this point. You've heard about the challenges with the federal policy on this, but there are other procedural challenges of getting TIP, which is the state in regional plan amendments executed, and there's been some additional federal involvement in that since the new administration has come on board and other requirements that are difficult to all get lined up to get to that approval step. So that's why there's a delay between the award and the approval. There are also two other large projects that are expected to have significant federal funding. One is the Vears Mill Road bus rapid transit project. That project has been rated by the Federal Transit Administration. We understand that that rating for funding is very favorable. But again, FTA is not signing or executing any new grants. There are two grants associated with that. One is an $8.1 million project development grant that we anticipate will get approved. That's to fund the design and construction early construction activities that are currently underway. And they are waiting on notice of award again for the small starts grant, which is 135 million is what we have programmed in the CIP. Again, we don't know what will happen on that. And it's also relying on $13 million from an approved grant for the Hydrogen Fuel Project for the bus procurement. On the $355 BRT project, the other large grant project we have, we've programmed $205 million in the CIP. And that project has entered project development with the Federal Transit Administration, but it isn't at the stage of grant award. We expect that to be sometime next year. And again, it's dependent upon the unfreezing of grant execution by the Federal Transit Administration. Most of the other exposures in the CIP are relatively small, kind of like what we just talked about with a $100,000 to million exposure, but we are not moving forward on any of those until those grants are approved. So that's the overall picture in the Transportation CIP for the Federal Funding Exposure. In those federal grant? One other thing. There is some other exposure to state program funds. So the federal funding flows in two streams. There's a discretionary stream, which most everything we're talking about here is in the discretionary pot. There are also formula funds that end up funding things like bridge renovations and bridge replacements that we haven't seen the same concern about those funding streams slow down. But in the overall environment of uncertainty, we don't have the confidence we might have had six months ago that all of those funding streams will continue on abated. Thank you. Are the grants that you identified are those all within the U.S. Department of Transportation? Yes. These are all United States Department of Transportation grants and we have not received any notices of any of these grants being rescinded or you you know, that they won't be approved. The only ones that I've heard of, like that, are the National Electric Vehicle Initiative Program, which is funding a rollout of vehicle charging, and that was largely executed by M.Dott. There may be others that they've made notice that those grants aren't going to be awarded, but we have not received any such notices on any of our grant awards. Another way to try and figure out the vulnerability for some of these grants. How long have they been open or how long have we been sitting on an acceptance letter essentially? That ranges from a month to maybe up to two years. And like I mentioned, there are challenges with getting these grants approved. For example, one of the oldest ones is an E. Cargo bike grant that we received in the first round of E. Mark Awards, which I think was 2022. We have not been able to identify by America compliant strategy for that grant, so we can't get all the way to execution. So that's some of the older ones or like that. Other ones, North Bethesda, Metro Entrance. We have not achieved all of the design and coordination steps with Wemata to be ready for award of that grant and there are two components. There's an earmark component that's a little bit older and then there's a build grant that was the award notification was two months ago. So there's one in that project stack that's probably two and a half years old and one that's two months old. Neither of them is finished yet. So there's a wide variety of date ranges in here but none of I don't think any of them are older than 2022. So since we've digressed a bit from the BRT on 29, colleagues have questions about the federal grant. I do, thank you. So you mentioned that if we don't get the grant, like as an example, the bus stop improvements and if we don't get that grant, we won't move forward with the improvements. But I would assume that there are some things in the budget where we're getting that are necessary and need to move forward and we are getting federal grants for. So if we don't get those, we still have to do them and we still have to with them. So at what point will you let us know and will we have to do some type of amendment at that point to make sure that the necessary things are happening? I wish I knew the answer to that. Most of the grants that we've got have been to enhance programs that we were already doing like the bus stop improvements. There's a base level of effort using bond funds as Mr. Kenny referenced that is the physical improvements and this was a way to try to improve our execution of that. We can bring those to you at some point where we say these grants aren't going to occur, but I don't know when that is. I don't know whether that's six weeks, six months, or a year from now when that would happen. But do we, but I'm assuming that we also have grants from the federal government for things that are in the baseline or no? Not many. Okay. And most of those are formula fund flow through grants. So the largest of them would be the right on operating assistance, which is a component of FTA capital budget funding to M.M.TA that then is granted to us by M.DOT, but that's not a discretionary grant. That's formula funds that are then distributed. So the vast majority of things that are in our base budget are of that nature, not discretionary. Great. Thank you. I'm different. Great. So, bus stop improvements, I said BRT. Can you remind us, as we talked about it, last year, what the metrics or analysis will be for which bus stops and which areas get this improvement? Sure. So you'll recall there was an inspector general review of the bus stop improvement program that we talked with you about maybe three or four months ago. That consultant work is continuing, excuse me, to look at the prioritization of the improvements in that program. We are continuing to advance areas where there's high ridership, right-of-way availability and constructability are in place. And that's what we'll continue to do until that overall process is in place. There is a number of those bus stops that are in areas of prescriptive right-of-way and the property owners not cooperative with allowing us to make additional improvements and those are falling back in that program. Thank you. So, not hearing any additional comments on the bus stop improvements, we'll support that item. Thank you. The next project is the North Bethesda Metro Station Northern Entrance. As many of you know, the access to this station is currently limited to the southern end of the platform. So this station entrance is related to a planned development on Wilmotta-owned land around the intersection of Old Georgetown Road and Maryland 355, the RR Phil Pike. Several elements of this project remain in flux. Neither are yet reflected in this amendment. It's because we'll model it. So first we'll model is waiting, has not yet announced their development partner. And so the scope and scale of the project will be impacted by who that development partner is, what their scope and scale, four development is and what their contributions are. And also, Womato was recently awarded a federal raise grant to supplement the county funding. Our MCDOT was recently awarded the raise grant to supplement the county funding. And the grant approval process within USDOT has been delayed. Not sure if we'll not have MC2TS any recent updates on that but as last we've talked it had been delayed and not yet resolved. So the this amendment that is currently before the committee is a five in the incorporation of five million dollars in federal aid that has already been awarded via a 2024 congressional earmark and includes a funding adjustment based on an updated schedule from Womada, but those two other elements we would anticipate another amendment coming somewhere down the line to reflect those developments. I'm trying to over to District Council member, if you have any. No, I'm just, I'm glad we got the grant. And I'm hoping that we'll continue to move forward with this project and that, you know, one model will continue on, it has its own process. And I just appreciate all the work of the department moving this forward. I'll note that the day that that award was provided was a really good day in North Bethesda with Senators Carden and Van Hollen and Randy Clark and everyone from Womada and the Council on the County Executive. So just to put a fine point on that item, the $5 million has been received or is is it, okay. So the big check was, was not the actual conveyance of the $5 million. No, that was not. The earmark is provided for in law. So we have treated that differently than the raise grant, which is a USDOT administered program. And we felt more confident moving forward with the programming of the earmark and the capital budget for the county than the other grant, which requires the USDOT signature on it. Well, they both do, but one is USDOT's discretion. This is not. Sure. I think that's a smart strategy to differentiate the two. I would argue that historically, Congressional approved spending stands on its own. We all know that's a little suspect these days, but it isn't a different class than the raise grant. So, glad you classified it differently. So, we'll support that. Thank you. That concludes the mass transit subcategory moving on to the roads projects. There are three projects with amendments. The first is the Goshen Road South project for which there is a broader plan for Gotion Road for a reconstruction with additional capacity elements, but the current improvements programmed into the CIP are some smaller scale capacity building spot improvements. These are expected to be planned to develop in FY28 and 29 and designed in FY30 and construction costs will be programmed thereafter. This particular amendment incorporates a $845,000 federal earmark received in FY24, programming it into the project. Thank you, Congressman Trone. Not hearing any of the comments, we'll support that. Great. The next project is the highway noise abatement. This is normally a fairly small $5,000 a year level of effort project. This amendment is programming in a $250,000 state aid element to conduct a noise abatement study for the intersection of the Intercounty connector and the New Hampshire Avenue. Director Conflin. This is a state-awarded grant, not a federal grant, so a different flavor. And residents have raised concerns about noise generated by two bridges near this interchange that create a drum-like effect when traffic hits it. So once the state-grant award is approved in its final form and the county can access those funds. We'll advance study to see if there's any noise mitigation techniques that can be applied to those bridges or near those bridges to reduce the impact on those communities. Much like the federal process, the state process to get the grants awarded is running on a one to three year time frame between when the legislature provides the money. And when the county receives a final approved grant agreement from the Maryland Department of General Services. So there are some substantial delays between when the funds are provided by the legislature. And when we're able to use them, we have been conservative in many of these programs and not advancing expenditures until those grants have been approved. Some of them we have moved forward, like bus rapid transit design, we've been moving forward. Other ones where we're a little, they've occurred in later years when we've had a better understanding of this timeframe. We have not necessarily moved forward with the work until we're more confident that the grant funds will be approved in their final form. I'll thank Districts 14 and 19. I presume who led on this effort given that intersection. What is the ultimate goal there with the quarter of a million dollars to study, then should there be a solution identified infrastructure built around it? Yes, and it's our anticipation that the Maryland Transportation Authority would be the implementing agency for any noise mitigation within their right of way or on their road. That's what I was hoping you would say. That's our state would then build it. Okay. They're not county facilities generating the noise and it shouldn't be the county's responsibility to mitigate that noise. Right. Thank you. No objection? Thank you. The next project, the Summit Avenue extension. I know this is a project that the committee and obviously MCTOT are very familiar with. I'll give a brief recap of the summary of the project and recent developments for. So this project provides for the extension of Summit Avenue in Kensington from Pliers Mill Road to Farragut Road, Improvement of Farragut Road, and Reconfiguration of the intersection of Connecticut Avenue and University Boulevard in Farragut Road. The amendment recommended by the executive would delay all $31.4 million in project expenditures and funding beyond 2030 to create GeoBond capacity elsewhere in the CIP. In a public hearing testimony before the council, Kensington Mayor Tracy Ferman testified in favor of restoring the Summit Avenue extension to its approved schedule. It's a project that Kensington has advocated strongly for quite a long time. And in a letter transmitted to the Council, the planning board also expressed its unanimous support for the project. Emphasizing that the project is needed to create a multimodal street grid as recommended in Thrive 2050. Followers of this committee will recognize this conversation as one that's familiar from last year's CIP, in which the County Executive also recommended deferring the project out beyond six years and the council through reconfiguring and making reductions in deferrals elsewhere. And the CIP was able to bring it back into the six-year period, which is reflected in the chart next to, in the first row, the FY25 to 30 approved. That's the project schedule, as it is proceeding currently, if without this proposed amendment. Thank you, Mr. Kenney. This is a conversation that we've had. It's ground talk day again. This committee and as long as I've been on this committee have supported this project which is one of the only shovel ready projects that hit all of our targets of building housing and economic development. Appreciate Mayor Furman and Councilmember Krimmonds for being here and for their advocacy. I'll turn it over to the district council member to keep the drive in the point. Yeah, so I think the Towne Kensington did an excellent job of laying out the reasons why last year. This council added it back to the CIP and I very much appreciate all the work that's being done at the town in Kensington on this. As Chair Glass said, this is ready to go and everyone has done their homework on it. We have an Urban Land Institute Technical Assistance Panel report that said that the future vision of some and avenue extension needs to look beyond the project as traffic alleviation strategy and consider the greater opportunities to create a more walkable neighborhood that bridges Kengar and the town at Kensington. The planning board, as Chair Glass said, has also recommended moving forward with this project. The town at Kensington has met with affordable housing partners who say, quote, this looks like it checks all the boxes for us to build affordable housing here. In addition to that, the Town of Kensington has stepped up again and said that given the potential economic development and housing potential here, the Town Council has expressed strong support of donating their existing public works facility to the project and that It was appraised at half a million dollars So as the letter goes on to say there are a lot of Benefits to this project it has been Mr. Can you said many years? Decades that this has been discussed I I think it's time for us to move forward with this project and I'd like our committee to consider putting this back in the CIP understanding the challenges and a lot of the unknowns we have. But when we have a project in front of us that checks all the boxes, that we have a town council that's stepping up and donating land. I think we should really consider moving forward with a project that of this nature. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, so we went over this project in great detail last year and we, the committee unanimously moved it forward and the full council moved it forward. And so I'm really disappointed to see that it was taken out again this year. I agree with the district council member on this. Thank you for articulating all the reasons that we know this project is worthwhile. Building on the point that Councilmember Bauchem noted last year when the CIP was presented, there were a number of projects that had been in for years, if not at least a decade, that were pulled out. This was the one project we were able to salvage and to see it being taken out yet again when it is shovel ready, when it does meet our housing and economic development goals. When the town, the municipality is coming to the table with a more than generous offer of support. Director Conclan, why? Yeah. I understand the perspective of the committee. It's relatively clear from your comments, but I think it's important to share what the executives views on this were. First and foremost, it's an enormous consumer of bond capacity at $31.5 million. It's one of the largest single projects in the transportation portfolio. And I think that brought additional attention to it. Secondly, a lot of that expenditure is for right-of-way acquisition, which if there were a ripe redevelopment opportunity and property assembly, that land might be achieved through dedication rather than through purchase by the county, so that was a major consideration. For the executive, in the review of the materials provided by the town, he didn't see that that redevelopment was ripe. There definitely is an opportunity with underutilized land, but it didn't appear that it was ready to go with a committed partner or anything along those lines. So that had some influence on this recommendation. And there was concern about the effectiveness of this transportation mitigation for Connecticut Avenue with the connection being at the University of Connecticut intersection, which is a very complicated point, to have that interchange. And also, which traffic flows might be diverted to reduce the pressure? Connecticut Avenue, we're not particularly evident from the earlier planning studies. And in fact, this had not been the recommended alternative of DOT in those earlier planning studies for that reason. All of that being said, the principal reason is the $31 million of bond capacity here, and it not appearing at 3-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2- Director, of course I don't want to say thank you to Director Conkland and your team for meeting with the town of Kensington and going through this in the fall when we got word that this may be taken out of the CIP. I appreciate your time. And I think when we had that meeting, even though we made disagree on some of these other points, I think we all agreed this was beyond a traffic alleviation strategy that it had been talked about in the past. And so I feel like we moved there. I think it's, I think we view this project very differently than the county executive does. And I think given the commitment of the town and the surrounding community to move forward in the many pieces of this. And honestly, given where we are with some of these other projects, calling into question the federal funding we may get and how we're able to move forward with them, I think we need to seriously consider what we can do this year to move forward summer to F and keep it something in the CIP for it. Thank you. So I'm looking at the PDF on circle 10 and Director Conkland, the point you raised about acquisition costs. So according to the PDF, nearly two thirds of the project costs are land acquisition. Could you reiterate the county executive's position in that the hope is that some of that is provided or aside from acquisition what's the wishful thinking? No, that if there were indeed a right redevelopment opportunity here with a somebody involved who is assembling this land and bringing forward a development application, there's the potential that much of that needed land could be attained through the entitlement process and dedication of the right of way, rather than the county having to acquire the right of way. In other projects that the department works on and the executive branch in total, how are these projects brought forward? And it seems like a straightforward question, but it's multi-layered in the sense that the town has engaged stakeholders, affordable housing providers. Yet they can't sign the deal, which it sounds like is being required because they don't have the resources to acquire the property. And it seems like it's a catch-22. There's a wide variety of experience with the availability of land. So in Greenfield development, for example, observation drive, which this committee has talked about before, oftentimes the right of way has been dedicated years if not decades prior through redevelopment, or there's active redevelopment planned for a larger parcel at the time. So we expect dedication of large portions of right-of-way and other projects where we're working in developed areas the county needs to acquire all of the right-of-way. We've seen that on 355 for bike projects in Carcisburg as well use the same geography as an example where the property was already developed it wasn't contemplated that additional facilities would be added to to the right of way there, so the counties had to acquire it. In this case where redevelopment seems to be the motivation, you would likely need to see some assembly of those parcels by a third party, whether that's the town of Kensington, less likely, or a motivated developer more likely. And then when they brought a development application for a plan of subdivision to the planning department, there would be a discussion about how their proposed plan was meeting the master plan objectives. The master plan objectives obviously include this road, as you've heard, from the testimony before you. So there would be a discussion of what dedication of right-of-way would be provided so that that application could be approved. That's what that conversation is about. In this case, the right of way is not available. It's fragmented among a number of property owners to have a coherent development plan and to deliver the right of way that property needs to be assembled in some fashion. Or as projected here, the county would need to acquire that right of way, leaving smaller fragments of other property that may or may not be redeveloped afterwards. So I thank you, Director Conclan. I appreciate that. And I think this is a, we're touching on a bigger issue here, because we talk about this a lot, is like, when do we do the infrastructure to them, make sure we can do development or do you do the development and then do the it's like it is a chicken and egg issue and I think we need to step back when we have these opportunities to think about how we are going to partner as a county government with our local municipality with other stakeholders to make improvements to an area that has a great deal of potential. And I just think we're not doing that here. And by taking this out of the CIP, we are just basically taking it off the table and missing this opportunity. And I think keeping it in the CIP and having conversations with all the stakeholders, particularly the town of Kensington and what they're able to bring to the table and other folks, I think will help us move forward. But by just taking out of the CIP right now, we're basically saying we're not going to do anything here, which means we're losing a huge opportunity for local economic development, for housing, and the traffic is just going to stay the same way it is. So I would just say, like, I appreciate the background, everything, but I do think this is part of a larger conversation of how we think about development in Montgomery County, and and when we need to step up as a county government and talk about infrastructure. And not... development in Montgomery County and when we need to step up as a county government and talk about infrastructure and not let that fall solely on the private sector or in this case the municipality. Last thing I'll say on this because you're hearing all of our thoughts and don't want to belabor it anymore but has the, has the administration shared these thoughts with the town as they have engaged in their stakeholder outreach for redevelopment opportunities? I think we have in the previous discussions of this item before this committee and the council. In the last round, we were trying to understand more detail about the town's position and readiness to share that with the executive when he was considering what projects might be deferred in order to create capacity for whatever else is obviously not in the transportation program but whatever else is needed to be funded this course. We have not had that cycle and we have not yet got to a year where we're funded to work on this project So we haven't had detailed discussions about the project strategy yet that would happen, likely in the first year, that there's funds for us to begin working on it. Yes. So I think that's the point, right? Like, so the county has not had conversations with the town about how best to proceed because we haven't gotten to the place where we're dedicating funding for it, but yet the county exec's office is saying we're going to take it out of the CIP because we're not sure of the potential. So I think we need to keep it in the CIP and have the serious conversations with the town about how to plan for this moving forward. We called it chicken or the egg. I call it a catch 22. The town is caught on both ends. And I've been on this committee a number of years and know that this has been an ongoing issue. It seems to me that the administration just doesn't like the project. And if that's the fact, then that's just the broader position of the administration. But we need to continue working through this. And I know that the town is a willing partner. Not to belabor the conversation. I think Mr. Nalvin has something to add. If I could just provide some additional fiscal context, Gary Nalvin, of a management budget, we did see a reduction of impact taxes in this amended CIP versus last year's approve of about $70 million. Some of that's due to the economy. Some of that's due to Bill 1624 that reduced impact taxes by about $13 million over the six-year period. When we look at delaying these projects, this is a project that has not yet started implementation by DOT. It's not addressing a critical safety need. And it's a very costly project that is funded completely with county funding sources. So that's all to say, before you get to the merits of this project, those factors alone may get a candidate for deferral versus other projects in the CIP. The comments you shared appreciate them and they very well might be true to this day, but the issue of this project predates some of the statistics that you've shared. So both are true, but we still need to keep working through this because there's a shovel-ready project that will provide great many benefits. So you want to make a recommendation? Yes, I would like to make a recommendation for the committee to reconsider putting this back into the CIP. Yes. Great. Yeah, animals. Thank you. on to the pedestrian facilities and bikeways subcategory. The first project that's amended is the bikeway program minor projects. This project covers bicycle facilities that cost less than a million dollars. These are the smaller projects. This particular iteration includes the Brown Street Trail improvements in the Washington Grove Connector subprogram, a project that this committee talked about on its own last year. map of all all of the sub-projects under this project can be found on Circle Page 13. This particular amendment adds $150,000 to this project to complete design for an additional stretch of stormwater management work at the northern terminus of the Good Hope Road shared use project as requested by Montgomery Parks and DPS. Council staff recommends concurring. Councillor Bailton. Just a curiosity as to because we have a specific project the number eight the Good Hope Road share why not put that, add that money to that project? It's really just a curiosity. I may ask Mr. Mogu, is there Mr. Sheridan to comment on that? My understanding is the project was extended from its original scope. Hello, this is Dan Sheridan, MCDOT, Design Section Chief and Division Transportation Engineering. So yes, the original scope of the good hope shared use path was well underway when we got the request to do the extension and because it would fit it within the monetary framework of the by-ways minor program, that's why we put it there. Okay, thanks. Thank you, answers. You could've done it differently, but this was the decision. I really was just curious. Thank you. Great, not saying any objections. Thank you. So moving on to the Goethoop Roadshared Use Path project in question. This is a new 8 foot wide side path along the west side of Good Hope Road over 4,500 feet in length from windmill lane to rainboat drive and cloverly. The construction is underway of this project expected to be completed prior to the end of the fiscal year. The County Executive's amendment adds $350,000 in geobonds from the completed beach drive bridge project to complete construction of this project. This particular addition is within the scope of the original project within the project length. And the construction is essentially complete. We just need to close out the project and pay all the bills and we identified a surplus in the beach drive project to do that so that we didn't have to see conditional appropriation generally. Best news we've heard all morning. Yeah. Thank you. No objection. Thank you. Moving on to the Maryland 198 Sidewalk Improvements Project. This project was created to improve sidewalk along Maryland route 198, Sandy Spring Road in Burton'sville from Dino Drive to McNew Road. Since then the project has been modified to instead build a 10-foot wide side path along this stretch. Land use utility relocation and construction are expected to be completed by the end of the fiscal year. In the planning board's Transmitted Letter to the Council, they requested that the project's name be changed or reflect the change from a side walk to a side path. So while there's an amendment requesting, from the County Executive, a technical amendment switching Geo-Bonds and State Aid to reflect a State Grant Award, council staff, concur with that technical recommendation, but recommends changing the name of the project to Maryland 198, side path to reflect the new design. Council staff did here this morning from MCDOT that there are some issues with changing the name to, you know, the bond issuance for this project. So understanding this is a very technical change to the project. I wanted to turn it over to DOT. I hate having this sort of discussion, because it's really not particularly meaningful in the grand scheme of things. But the grant award is for sidewalk improvements. And we just get concerned that we start to diverge in names and then we all forget why and then wonder whether that is for this or for something else. So is our recommendation to not change the name? And secondly there's a fixed amount of funding allocated to that bond. The issuance of that 1.057 I don't not sure that yes, the 1 million dollars and we may not be able to complete the full scope and width with that $1 million. So that if we change the name and change the scope formally, we may need to come back to you for more money to complete a larger project than had been funded by the state general assembly. So it would be our recommendation to leave it alone. But again, this is not the most consequential thing we're talking about today. So share with us why the name change was proposed? Because what the current plan by the Planning Department calls for and actually what we would like to build is a side path. There was a desire to change the name of the project to side path. However, the bond allocation at the state level that funds this is called sidewalk improvements. So we would, for that reason, like to leave the name of the project alone so that we don't five years from now try to figure out whether the side path is the sidewalk that was funded by the state legislature. Are the proposed changes being made by the planning department? They've requested that change, yes. I'm inclined to keep the name as it is for continuity and clarity. Yeah. Yes. Okay, that's all three of us. The sidewalk stays. It's fantastic. We'll be 10 feet wide on a path. Right, five. Yes, great. Just remind us next year. Yeah. Maryland, 198 sidewalk improvements. It is. Thank you. So the next project is transportation improvements for schools. This is also a technical amendment accelerating $84,000 from FY25 into FY24 for this level of effort project. Great. Yeah. Great. Thank you. The next and final category, sorry, not final category. The next category, we'll talk about is the bridge subcategory of the CIP bridge projects starting off with the beach drive bridge. I'm noting this here not because it is going to, it's not a formal amendment. There's no project description form, but this is the project that had the GeoBonds pulled out to finish the Good Hope Road shared use path. So I wanted to note that here for due diligence. But following on to the bridge design project, this is a, this project serves as a transition stage for projects to get that are identified, that are the bridges that are identified for need of reconstruction to be designed and then brought to construction as a full CIP project. The amendment recommended by the executive adds $75,000 in recordation tax premium to support a state highway administration analysis for grade separation of Randolph Road and CSX Railroad tracks. So this would be an SHA project. This is the county's contribution. I'll say any comments? We'll support that. The Dennis Ave bridge replacement, this is a there's a technical change to this project switching funding from Geo bonds to federal aid to reflect an award received by the county and FY24. Construction of this project will begin in spring 25 of this year and be completed in fall of this year during which the project will be closed. The bridge will be closed. Thank you. The Garrett Park Road bridge is another one of these projects has another technical amendment from the County Executive to accelerate $4,000 from FY25 into FY24. Their project will be closed to traffic during construction from June of this year to August of this year And a temporary pedestrian bridge will be constructed over Rock Creek to maintain the high volume of pedestrian and bicycle traffic that use the bridge Council staff recommends concurring So I think we're all support that can you talk a little bit more director conc Conklan, about what's to come since it's going to be this upcoming summer? Yeah. Next summer. Oh, this summer, yeah, we're in March. Yeah. Time flies. Tomorrow. Yeah. So this is a bridge replacement project and yeah, we have summer closure for the construction. Yeah. Okay. And with, like, the exception of the, there's gonna be a temporary, because it's, you know, it's the main route of the Rock Creek bike path there. Is the community aware that this is common? This is like a different council member. We've had public meetings and public hearings, but it's been a while, so we can do an update prior to construction. I think it would be good because I also believe, and I was just double checking, I think the Grozner-Wayne Modestation is supposed to be close or repairs on the red line. I know they're doing, that's not, That's in 26. Okay. I was trying to check, okay. I just wanted to double check because I don't wanna have a repeat of what, a downtown solar spring summer. Yeah. Okay, is in 26, okay. That's great. Yeah, and I know this is technically in one district, but it impacts residents in another council member district. So I think making sure that we're both communicating to the residents that would be great. Thank you. Yeah. Given the lifeline that that bridge as small as it is has I think making sure triple checking that there are other transportation options as noted. Great. We'll support that. Thank you. And there were similar concerns received in public testimony about the Brink Road bridge closure and making sure that there's a community awareness. So this is an issue that affects a lot of these bridge projects. So thank you for bringing that up. The last thing in this bridge section is the second and final new project in this CIP. So this $1 million project provides for the rehabilitation of the existing Greg Road Bridge over Hollings River Tributary near Olme. The existing bridge was built in 1958. As we reach the end of its useful life, the new bridge will reuse the existing bridge abotments and clear roadway width within the same. But the width will remain the same. Construction will begin in FY26 and end in 27 During which the road and the bridge will be completely closed to vehicle traffic and traffic will be detoured Council staff recommends concurring Thank you Moving on to the highway maintenance subcategory. These are two projects, residential and rural, residential and rural road rehabilitation and resurfacing of residential and rural roads. The amendments themselves are technical in nature. The first for the rehabilitation project accelerating 1.05 million from FY25 into 24 and for the resurfacing project switching 7 million dollars between Geobonds and Geobond premiums. But council staff wish to highlight the conversation that this committee had last year around the backlog of repair on residential and rural roads that has been identified by the infrastructure maintenance task force. This is something that during last year's CIP review the committee expressed to have ongoing conversation about, so the council staff thought to bring it up here. This is the infrastructure maintenance task force sets an optimal $54.1 million in annual investment for the county in addition to a $780 million backlog of maintenance. The total investment for these roads in this CIP is about 22 million. So obviously this is subject to fiscal capacity and many other constraints. But since these projects came over as recommendations, as amendments, this update is important. I recall last year's lengthy conversation about this, and we'll ask district two council member, welcome to kick us off. Thank you. Well, first off, I agree with this and I'm not suggesting any change. I just think it's important to set expectation with our community about what we can and cannot do. And as I reading the packet and I know this cognitively, but the shock of $780 million backlog is just shocking. And I think that it's first off, thank you so much for Director Conklin and your team for the work that you do with our constituents. I would say that transportation and housing are the vie for the top two calls that we get from our constituents on a very daily basis. And my staff works very closely with your staff to try to address the concerns that we have that our constituents have. So I really thank you and appreciate all the work that you do. But in terms of setting realistic expectations, we know that there are roads that need improvement and the issue is the funding aspect. And so we can't put it all on you because we're the ones that provide the funding. So I just wanted to address that issue and just acknowledge this backlog and just make sure that we set expectations with our residents about what can and cannot be done. So thank you. I'm just offered that appreciate that partnership in addressing these questions when they come up. Given the level of funding that's in these programs, we are essentially treading water on the state of our transportation network in its condition. And we are, we do try to optimize the repair strategy so we get the most reward for the money that's invested. If in those conversations you're having, it's useful to talk through how the county analyzes and prioritizes the improvements we're happy to do that with community groups as those questions arise. Thank you. Great. Well, we'll accept that recommendation. Thank you. And that concludes the committee's review of the recommended amendments to the Transportation CIP. Thank you, Mr. Kennedy. Thank you, my colleagues and DOT staff, Director Conklin. Yeah. Final comment. Before we conclude formally, I do want to mention that we have seen some further reduction in fiscal capacity so you will be seeing some additional amendments transmitted with the operating budget in a couple weeks. So CIP amendment that will come with the operating budget. Yes. We may be revisiting a couple of these topics. Okay. On going conversation while we talk about the current amendments, but I know you're already hard at work talking about next year's CIP and particularly with Summadev or other things that there might be ideas about let's have those Conversations start as early as possible so everyone understands the rules of engagement Okay, thank you. Thank you. Thank you all. We're adjourned