Good morning everyone we are here to continue our ongoing discussion and deliberation over the FY26 operating budget and amendments as presented by the county executive. We have four items that we will be discussing today and we will begin with our office of human rights. If everybody who's here for that panel could come forward, Director Stowe and team. Thank you so much for coming, Director Stowe, since this is your first time before the committee discussing the operating budget, I'll just turn it over to you to make some opening comments and then we'll go through the packet. Thank you so much, Chairman and members of the committee. Let me sidebar just again thank you for your accommodation on last week and I really appreciate that. This year's, the polls budget, hits the various points of our needs for 2026. We are trying to go through some restructuring in terms of just how we do the business of our office. And we made some real progress, we believe, and how we are processing our cases through the system. Very, very excited about some new procedural things we've done as result of our OIG report. And again, I say that we're able to benefit from that sort of deep dive, battle organization, and we come away being better for having looked at some of those issues and concerns that were raised. And so as we've done above that, we think we're in a good position now to go to the next level of our evolution in terms of not only processing cases more timely, but also did them some of the other issues that are part of the process. And we need to always remember that there was another process. You just cannot continue to, in fact, to try to deal with cases and so forth and so on. You've got to have an education outreach component. And so we're hoping to be able to combine those two things that allow us to have the best position possible. So we submit to you again for the committee's purposes, a budget that is, again, pretty consistent with what done the pass in terms terms of also another numbers and sales and dollars and cents as well as again positions. Wonderful thank you director Stowe and we of course are joined by my colleagues on the committee councilmember sales and luteke thank you both for being here Miss Singleton we will turn it over to you to see this up and walk us through this packet. Good afternoon chair Almanaz and Council Members Lutki and Sales. So you have before you the packet for the Office of Human Rights, I'll go through the executive summary and the issues for the committee. The County Executive recommends an increase of $27,532 or a 1.3% increase from the FY25 approved operating budget for the Office of Human Rights. The increases recommended for the Office of Human Rights consists entirely of compensation adjustments and non-discussionary operating expenses. The operating budget equity tool analysis for the Office of Human Rights demonstrated commitments in each area of the government alliance on race and equity or the gear framework. And the council staff is not identified any potential reductions for committee consideration. With respect to the FY26 recommended budget, the general fund FY26 recommended budget by the county executive is $2,145,485. With personnel costs of $1,834,296, an increase of 5% with the staffing of 11 persons. Then the operating cost of 311,187, which is actually a decrease of 16.2 percent a change from the FY25 approved budget. You also have information at C for the department background and then the operating budget to equity analysis, which I think you know by now, is no longer a numerical score, but it is a modified SWOT analysis of strengths and opportunities. And the SWOT analysis for the office of human rights indicates that responses demonstrated commitments in each area of the Gare framework with particular emphasis on activities related to training training and professional development of its staff focused on racial equity and social justice related topics. As mentioned in the previous year operating budget equity tool analysis of the office, the department is well positioned to make meaningful impacts on redressing discrimination in the county, which is evidenced by its mission. The opportunities, ORSJ, or ESJ, believes that as such, the dedicated support and use of the budget resources for the work of ORH, would go a long way towards creating an inclusive county, and this will enable the development of effective internal partnerships, track systems and communications and engagement mechanisms which will help the Office of Human Rights to deliver on its commitments to advancing racial equity and social justice. And the full analysis is on circles six and seven. With respect to the budget discussion items, that's E. Again, the increase of a 1.3% from of 27,532 or 1.3% increase from the FY25 budget and that is outlined there. And then the council staff did not identify any potential reductions for committee consideration. Thank you Miss Singleton. It's a modest increase, which I think is pretty straightforward, but if we could just get a quick update director Stowe on vacancies, I know that you are close to making some offers and finalizing those positions if you could just in real time tell us where that stands. In fact, we did have the two openings and we didn't make offers. You may not know this but let me make sure it was clear that we did an internal posting this last time around for positions. And we were able then to secure one of those positions as a promotional opportunity for one of our own employees. And then the other opening went out to then the general notice for those who fact applied. We were unsuccessful, however, getting either one of the persons we had a first choice and an alternate choice, both, you know, turn a job down, per example. So let when it started again and so when the process now working with shared services and human resources to get that process back on board the finalizing the actual ask in terms of the information necessary for that process and hopefully by the end of next week we'll have all in place to begin the process again. But this time we'll cast a larger net. And I hope would be then that from all of our folks. Unfortunately, who out there from the federal sector may be again ideal candidates that might want to apply and bring the prerequisite skills set to the table. So that's what we are right now. Thank you. I appreciate that update. Yeah. The world obviously has changed. We've heard anecdotally from the Office of Human Resources that there have been significant increases in the number of interest and applications across the board and all sectors. I would think that the Office of Human Rights in particular may be an attractive option for a number of federal employees who worked in potentially EEO offices or other central offices that were eliminated. So I would encourage you all, as you always have, to work with the Office of Human Resources. I know there are some job fairs coming up and having the team represented at those fairs probably make some sense. Because again, it's I think a wonderful opportunity for a number of really dedicated professional individuals. Colleagues, did you have any questions? Just a few questions. Okay. Council Member Sales followed by Council Member Lee. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Director Stowe. The Chairman took my question, because I wanted to make sure that with the increase you were able to still meet the needs as we discussed in the last meeting. And so I didn't know if these opportunities fell through because of the salaries that were being offered or was it another aspect? In one case, we don't know. I did not share why they chose not to accept the position. And again remember these are internal employees to Montgomery County and the second person was because of salary. I think that was some unrealistic expectations coming into the interview. And as we stated with our colleagues in this area, the job script is very about what the amount of money is, the targeted act, and what the actual pay range is going to begin, so there's no mystery about that. So persons who end up applying, and then, for whatever reason, get to the end of the process, and they don't feel that is what they need. We still have it it at a real loss as a why they didn't go through the process. It's certainly wasting our time and their time and everybody is in between. So the issue is that we've got to find a person who wants to do this work. Yes. And maybe he and she then would be again satisfied if they come and they apply all the information that they need in order to make a decision applied for first place is there. Yes. And then I would say then the process that petitioned then to be able to say yes in the first place is there. Yes. And then I would say at the end of the process that the petition then to be able to say yes or no to what we have to offer. But we find ourselves very competitive. It just seems to be again so far. Not the right persons have applied. Okay. And so, did you say that the position is no longer advertised? Are you making any changes? We are. We are. position is no longer advertised? Are you making any changes? We are. It's no longer advertised. We have to close that particular requisition. We're now opening a new requisition with new information. We want to be a little more strategic now because what you all said is very, very true. With the attack on DEI, we believe there's a lot of folks out there, an EEO, that may very well have an interest and be very skill set wise already prepositioned for this kind of work. And we're hopeful that would put that in place and we had tried to put things in place in mind again suggesting that it needs to meet our needs today. For instance, persons might need to be more have linguistic skills, particularly those within our English or second language community, Spanish specifically. So so we try to make sure we again have the right mix in terms of what we're asking the person in terms of your skills. Okay, and it's two positions. That's correct. Okay, all right. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Mellipi. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Stowe. I just want to thank you for all the work that has been done this spring to sort of put into place new strategies and new things and working on getting your new hires in place. You know, the work is going to increase because of the fact that there is no alternative realistically at this point, right, based on what's going on at the federal that. And I think that's a good opportunity for me to be able to do that. And I think that's a good opportunity to be able to do that. And I think that's a good opportunity to be able to do that. And I think that's a good opportunity to be able to do that. And I think that's a good opportunity to do that. And I think that's a good concur with both the staff and the executives recommendation. Thank you very much. All right, so we move on to the second item on the to walk us through the packet. All right. Good afternoon, everyone. Today is the second committee session for our Department of Health and Human Services Children's and Family Service area. And this session will focus on our admin for Children's and Families Program area, our child welfare services and the Office of eligibility and support services. I'll just note that we have a final Children's and Families Services area committee meeting on Friday, May 2, which will cover early care and education with the Education and Culture Committee. Overall, the county executive recommends an increase of about $12.9 million or a 10.2% increase from the FY25 approved budget for the entire service area of DHHS's Children, Youth and Family Service Area. All programmatic and staffing enhancements were reviewed either on the prior joint education and culture HHS meeting on school-based services or on this upcoming Friday meeting on early care and education. However, the executives recommended budget does include two recommended reductions for child welfare services and the Office of Elegibility and Support Services and both relating to leveraging state funding instead of county general funds. So we can review that further as well. I do want to note that our leadership team here has a presentation for the committee to further discuss the different service areas, the program areas within today's session as well as we have the executive director for the tree house here as well to answer any additional questions and provide an update there. So I'll turn it over to our team. The team could have introduced themselves because several of you are going to probably touch several points. That'd be great. So I'll start off good afternoon, HHS Chair, Alvano's, Council Member Luki and Council Member Sales. I am James Bridgers, Dr. James Bridgers, Director of the Department of Health and Human Services. Good afternoon, Dr. Oscar Mesa, social, so should I say this is Office of Montgomery County. Hello, good afternoon. Lori Garbeckino, acting chief for Children, Youth and Families. Deborah Lambert from the Office of Management and Budget. Charlie Rigg in the executive director of the Triass Child Advocacy Center. All right, so I'll get us started here this afternoon. So what we'll have is just a quick presentation of some of our children, youth and family services that we haven't already discussed yet so far. So within CIF, our vision for CIF is really what our name states. We are here to serve our children, youth, and families and to provide them with the services and support they need to thrive and also enable our communities to thrive as well. In CIF, we really think of our services under two bucket items. So we have our school and community-based services, which includes our positive youth development, our early childhood services, and our child adolescent and school-based services. And we also have our second bucket, our social services, which will dive into a little bit more today, which includes our child welfare services, and our offices of eligibility and support services. So just a quick overview in terms of CYF operations. In FY25, we had 63 new hires and a total of 104 contracts. And within the Chief's Office, we completed our strategic planning, which really allowed all of our different programs and leaders to come together and strategically align on the work that we do to ensure that we can are working together jointly also with other agencies and community members in the county. In FY26, we're today we're looking to hire 26 new positions and we have a projected number of six new contracts that will be coming into CIF. And we will also be transitioning the Youth Safety Initiative within the Chief's Office in CIF. And I will turn it over to Dr. Bridges to discuss a little bit more on Youth Safety. Thank you, Ms. Garibere-Queen. Dr. Davis normally would be here, but she's out today. She had a death in a family and she's celebrating in the life of our 106-year-old grandmother. God bless her. So she passed and we just, several of us just left the services. But in a nutshell, rather than looking at the slides, I just want to give you some points that she sent us on Saturday. Specifically, there is a need for you safety in the county. There are four points that the team and Ms. Kelly Humana should be joining us, so should Council have any additional questions. I will call her up to answer those specific questions. But there is a lack of unified data source. I had a conversation with Dr. Taylor this morning just about the interoperability of the data systems that the research showed as a result of our Youth Safety Initiative. There's a lot of work in this space that we need to consider that we need to strategically think about from the county's visionary standpoint. And while there are many resources available, folks don't know how to find them, just like a website. They don't know how to reach them, don't know how to get educated on the services, and our partners. And I know through this, why is I, you've saved the initiative that I will call it, we've been having a lot of conversations. So we need to implement interagency client coordination services, which is what we've been doing working with collaboration council and all of our community partners. We've had conversations with non-profit Montgomery to look at how they could support this effort. Again, looking at a data dashboard that's meaningful that that folks understand what those short-term and those long-term outcomes may be. To catalog, present, make known, well-known, publish those safe spaces. We found through the research that youth in the county don't know where to go. And it's just not the recreation center. What are those partners? Recmo club 480, many of the things that we have in place now are really accessible but there are many other resources outside and we need to make a catalog so they didn't get access. And again to really work with, not only the council but the executive branch to look at those. The creation of a youth resiliency steering committee, we talked about committee's and outreach and having a coordinated effort across the county. And so those are some of the areas that Dr. Davis asked me to highlight over this afternoon. So I won't read the slides. I think you understand where we need to go with this and the recommendation that the county executive put forth. Eventually, we need to really talk about maybe having a dedicated resource space for this. It will reside in our children, you can family, but maybe an investment in office of you safety and resilience. I'll stop there and any questions by Council. All right. So in our next segment, we are gonna talk about social services. Yeah, just hold on. Just one second, I think we had a couple of questions specifically about this portion of the presentation. Council Member Leuky. Thank you so much. Yes, specifically about the Youth Safety Initiative. In terms of the MCPS and obviously critical to this whole intersectionality relationship on this initiative, what conversations have happened or where does the behavioral health services coordinator for MCPS, and school safety coordinator for MCPS fit into this since in particular for the behavioral health services coordinator by law, they are required to connect the students and or their families to wrap around services, to type some things they need. They're supposed to be that triage or for that. So they would be a critical part to what you're talking about. And I wanted to know where they would fit in with all of that. So thank you, Council Member Leukey, for that, for the specificity and the details out of wait for Ms. Monter to get here. But I can tell you that in the conversations and the work groups and the planning sessions that we've had there's a triangulation of those services and really looking internally with not only our children, youth and families but our behavioral health and looking at our linkages to learning and our school based health and wellness centers and those mental health care, the mental health care that we can provide and support with our Montgomery County Public School partners. So there is ongoing conversations about that and thinking more importantly about best practices. How can we really use a lessons learned? We know that there are a lot of challenges coming out of COVID. And so that was the baseline of our assumption to look at the services that we needed to implement and put together and strategically think about in crafting a vision. So along with MCPS and our other partners and collaboration council, those are some of the strategies that I know that I'm familiar with. And then maybe some granular detail and I can follow up if Miss Alana comes but those are the working understandings that I'm aware of. And I apologize because I know the name is behavioral health services coordinator, except that the things that they're supposed to help focus on go well beyond that. So it's like tutoring services, job assistance, housing insecurity, right? All the magic things, childcare. And so it's so much more beyond just the behavioral health space. Yet it's all those things that impact your your overall behavioral health and wellness. So yeah, I'd be happy to chat with you further about that offline as always. And and you know, eager to help with anything related to a youth resiliency steering committee. Thank you, Matt. Welcome to the youth safety steering committee. Yes. So start by, please of course, extend our condolences to Dr. Davis and her family. I know she's written extensively about her grandmother. And so I'm sorry to hear of her passing, but what a life well lived, my goodness, what a trailblazer in so many ways. So just a couple of thoughts, I'm not really sure if there's a question in there. And by the way, we're joined by Council Member Mink. Thank you so much. And of course, as always, Council Member Mink, just let me know if you want to chime in on any of this. So the data collection issue, I mean, I've been around a long time, It's been an issue for a long time. And it's Ebton Flood at one point where I felt like we were the closest to aligning the efforts of the executive branch in our school system. There were some MOUs written. There were some agreements established. You may have seen them or have had access to them. And we were able to, not perfectly perfectly but mostly crack the nut and ensuring we adhere to all the standards of confidentiality which are real and raw and important but also acknowledge that we all have a role to play here and each of its bits and pieces of information that we would all benefit from having so that we weren't flying what sometimes feels as though we're flying blind. So, I would just, and it really at the end of the day, it sounds basic, but it's so true. You just have to have people who are like completely dedicated to this and around long enough to be able to both implement and then see it through. because often what happens in the transition of administrations is you get really far down the road, people change, and you got to start all over again. And that's frustrating. So I appreciate the effort, acknowledge its importance, would love to follow up and have a joint session with our colleagues in education culture specifically around data sharing and collection. And it's probably and won't just be MCPS and HHS. Housing probably needs to be included in that conversation and other, especially our community-based organizations that would love to be able to provide input and feedback. But that's something particularly now with things as complex as they are. This is the time for us to really refine and organize our work. I see you wanna comment, Dr. Bridgers. Sure. I am just nodding 100% in agreement, but just to add to that we've had public safety involved in other agencies, their environmental factors that folks really don't understand about you safety and having the access and having those culturally appropriate spaces. And so agree there needs to be a conversation, a work session, joint work session to really go through some of the outcomes and the predictive measures that we've had in place. I know Dr. Mintz also wanted to make a few comments, but that's definitely the direction because in my observation over time, we started, we stopped, we no longer can say COVID got in the way, our kids are. We need to have a plan. So. Great. I'll just mention this too. For obvious reasons there are heightened sensitivities over data sharing and collection. So further refining this and making sure it's tight is really important for our community for many many reasons. Council member sales. Thank you, Mr. Bridgers, Director, Bridgers and team. Just following up on some of the concerns raised from last year and seeing what your progress is regarding the child welfare services intake team, scheduling all medical examinations and wellness checks for every child taken out of their home. How are we doing with meeting this goal? How many examinations have we done this fiscal year? In Council Member Sales, think Dr. Minto will be presenting on that right now. Oh good. Okay. Okay. And then are you also presenting on the mental health collaborations, stakeholder engagement? Have those been solidified? I will pull my senior administrator Lisa to join me later. Okay. It was right. Okay. I'll wait to get those responses. Thank you. Good transition. So we can move on to the next part of the presentation. Yeah, of course. All right. In this segment, we're going to be talking about child welfare and office of legibility and support services. to major programs in children, youth and family services mostly state funded programs and do get a lot of directives or the authority from from the state. So first let's cover child welfare services and the mission of child welfare services consistently is committed to the safety and wellbeing and permanency of children in Montgomery County. And we do this work through our guiding principles with highest value of child safety and family stability and maintaining children with their families and that's our key goal. Families can better take care of the children more than government could do so. So our focus is always about reunification, family first and that's where we actually focus. A couple of programs that we run through in child welfare is start without intake team and conduct an assessment and investigate and see, is there there before we would act on anything? And we do all more on family preservation before we start thinking about foster care. Best slide. And we're gonna talk about fewer accomplishments for child welfare. In FY24, running to 25, we achieved 36% permanency from permanency to guidancehip. There was an increase in case closing in permanency through custody and guardianship. And then for youth age and out, we had a decrease of 16%. And this 16% really represented like last year 2014 we had 12 youth that aged out and this year we had 10 So it's really a good progress and in FY 25 we finalized 33 Adoptions Which was really a good celebration council member looky, thank you for joining us. It was really a wonderful celebration to see how we would to reunite kids with the new families. And it was just an amazing celebration. We had folks from the state, from the 20 surface, from the kind executive surface and the council to join us. And it was really a beautiful celebration that we had. We also increased the kenship homes from 10 new approved one to 39 new approved ones. That's about 299 percent increase. Our goal is to focus more on kinship care than anything else. As I mentioned earlier on, families and relatives can take care of their families more than we could do so. And our goal is to be able to provide the support, the assistance, and the guidance so that you know the right families are taking care of families and the kids are in good hands. In addition to some of us, we also had almost 50% of youth who are currently placed in homescending and reciting in Kinship Homes. 51 Kinship Homes with 99 youth that were placed in these homes. And that is amazing. Since we started this Kinship initiative, it's been our big agenda to be able to kind of drive this home so that you know, kids are reunited with the right folks. One of the greatest successes that we also had is our partnership with University of Shady Grove to be able to kind of revamp our recruitment processes. We do have the title for E, which every year we do get students from University of Maryland. Once all, we get two people, which really doesn't really help to be able to kind of reduce your vacancy. But we really conducted this initiative with partnership and collaboration with the University of Shady Girls to be able to kind of create this fellowship program and we provided stipend for students 40,000 or so for two years, 20,000 a year. And just this year, we were able to have seven students that graduated, which is really helping us with our vacancies. It's a win-win situation for us, right? We were able to use the stipend to be able to kind of help students for them to be able to graduate, and they're done, they will provide us with two years service. And it's just an amazing partnership that we have with our investors at Shady Grove. Next slide, please. And as we look into FY26, We are going to still continue to increase the number of children, 0 to 18, place in a cane of fictive cane care, home from 25% to 50% over the next five years. We can do it incrementally and our goal is to be able to continue to do outreach and and partner with other folks that we have to put a lot of resources in place to make this happen. You can just leave the case in the hands of anyone. So our goal is to be able to provide the resources, the support, and the guidance in terms of how they can really support this case as they come to your home. Because it could be an uncle taking, a nephew. And those are the kind of things that we are talking about. Some of us were raised by grandmothers. And that's an example of it. Is a grandmother have the right tools to be able to do that? And our goal is to be able to provide those resources and then to be able to educate and then to let them grow. I used one of my two of my daughters as an example. My Mexican friend, the mother, we didn't want to take care of my two children and that was amazing. And I have to date, the first communion and baptism were all done by my Mexican friend, grandmother. And that's such a great partnership that we do have. And the kids go to this family and I'm very excited about the love and how much I'd be welcome in this family. In the next few years too, we're also looking into increasing our permanency through re-indication and adoption and guidance ship within 24 months of HR's entry into care. Our goal is to increase that from 30% to 50%. Lisa, with our team, I've done a lot of partnership with our human resource to be able to reduce our vacancies and then to you to have other strategies to bring in new folks. We've been able to partner with our folks at other jurisdictions to kind of listen to them about some of the successes that they are making in terms of really recruiting folks. So our goal for the next year is to really focus more on how do we really reduce the vacancy for case carrying staff. And the reason why I mentioned that is these are hard to fill positions and it's not just in Montgomery County, it's across the state. I talked to my colleagues at the state, talked to the secretary and other folks. If that any strategies please share so that we cannot doubt that. But I think we've also become pioneers in terms of how we are doing this and the system that we set in place, Lisa did bringing a researcher to really talk about this, how we can really get some support from even folks to have retired, can they help us 24 hours? Can they support us with 16 hours? So we're using these strategies to be able to kind of get support, to be able to help with this case carrying positions. Any questions on the chat with her before I move to? Oh yes, yes.? Councillor Mellik. Just want to say thank you to Dr. Mensa and to highlight how much I love coming to adoption day. I am adopted and Secretary Lopez was there and it was just a beautiful, wonderful celebration of all the families and children who were present. And thank you for all the efforts on trying to expand the use of the Kinship Care model, which is also incredibly important. So thank you. Councilor Murciels. Yes. So thank you for the updates. Just had a question about the supportive resources that are available to those going through the kinship adoptions and what percentage of the Children that are placed are still like what's the percentage of continuation or? All right. I'll pass it on to my colleague Lisa. Okay. Good afternoon. I'm Lisa Merkin. I'm the senior administrator which I'll offer services. Thank you. So let me start. I think it was two questions. So in terms of supportive services, we rely greatly and heavily on our community partners, nonprofits, other behavioral health services, community supports, family preservation supports to help those families because it's really just not a short sprint. It's really the marathon in making sure that families have stability, safety, and permanence. So that is part of our social workers job is to really connect families to the services that they need or that we think that they may need down the road. Okay. And how many of the families that you're placing in whether it's the kinship care or the other temporary households are still there or are they back in foster care? So we have at any given month the number ranges a little bit but as of March we have 330 youth in an out of home placement. So that is a group home residential treatment center, a licensed foster home or a kin provider. So all of those kids remain in or youth remain in care until the court closes. There are child and need of assistance case. At that point they exit care so to speak. That doesn't mean that their services could continue in the community, but their service provision in child welfare services ends. Oh, okay. I just want to, I guess a better question is just how many young people are staying, you know, in their new homes versus those going back to foster care. Do we have a percentage? So in terms of recidivism, is that the question? So we in Montgomery County, although I don't have the number in front of me, we have a very, very low percentage of recidivism. We spend a lot of time and as Dr. Mensa mentioned, in terms of length of stay, our length of stay in a foster care out of home placement ranges between 31 and 32 months, because we spend a lot of time to make sure that that placement, whatever it is, is stable and ready for us to close that case. Less than 1% comes back in through the front door of child welfare for either an investigation or another foster care placement. Okay. And what's the case load for the case workers working these cases? I think it might be part of the packet. I apologize. I don't have any front of me. There is a different number if you're an assessment or investigation versus family preservation worker and it out of home, which is a foster care social worker. I apologize, I don't have enough on to me. Sure, so I'll state those numbers. It's on page six of the package, Council Member Sales, out of home, 11 number of case loads, pointing time in home family preservation, five in child protective services, 11. Okay. Thank you. All right. I think we can continue. All right. We are going to continue with Office of Allegibility and Support Services, properly known as OESS. So the Office of eligibility and support services known as OESS, envisions, and thriving, equitable, community where all individuals and families have meaningful access to the resources and support that they need to be able to be self-sufficient in the community. And repeatedly, and I'm going to have to underscore this, what OES has asked repeatedly is determining legibility. Determining eligibility. I always don't say case management, but the determined eligibility, and in most cases, the legibility is determined and it is passed on to some others in the department to be able to case manage. So when we're looking for OESS, think about legibility determination. Am I going to be determined for my supplemental nutrition assistant program? Is it temporary cash assistant? Is it expedited SNAP or is it medical assistant at that time? So one of the eligibility is determined when it comes to the management that I get insurance I was supposed to get that would come back to OESS. So I just wanted to kind of make that clarification. Key programs in OESS includes temporary cash assistant for needy family It's we call TANF, probably known as TCA right now. We do have supplemented additional assistance program and then we also have a spirited SNAP. We have temporary disability to adults and we also have the long-term care and then medical care. Next slide please. So some of the achievements in OES says we want to talk about FY25, what do we need to do so far? About two years ago, the state of Maryland was about second to last when it came to compliance. And Montgomery County was part of the tradition that kind of drove the compliance level down. As I speak to you today, Maryland is number one in terms of compliance. It has to do with a lot of teamwork, a lot of collaboration, a lot of partnership with the staff and a lot of partnership with the Secretary, the DHS Secretary, Secretary Lopez with a lot of creative ideas in terms of how we can do this with the executive director for a family investment administration in order to look into some of the action planes in terms of how we can do this with the executive director for Family Investment Administration in order to look into some of the action plans in terms of how we can meet these compliance. And as we speak today, Maryland is number one, and Montgomery County is excelling in terms of compliance. When it comes to application processing timeliness, a red determination, we are talking about the state of Maryland is at the CS level right now, which is really great. And all of these things happened right after the pandemic. A lot of the rules and regulations were all relaxed. And as a result of that, we were in violation. And we really had to work hard to get here and that speaks volumes about the leadership and the partnership with the staff to be able to get as over here. In F-25, F-25, OES says, later counties, community, digital, community, and network. What it is is they have about five over 500 participants on the digital platform where they have a conversation in terms of the outreach and resources that folks need in the community. And if you invited folks like recreation, public health, and other team members to be able to come and speak about what is going on in the various areas and the resources that they have to be able to kind of provide that to the constituent that we set. And that has been amazing. One day I joined and I was thrilled what is going on. Over 500 people one time just really looking for resources to be able to provide support to our community and that's really an amazing thing. About two, three years ago we had really a big challenge with our labor and we had to really work hard with Dr. Bridges and Mark Harge and our union folks in labor in terms of how do we work with staff. We would come up with a great partnership about our labor management board in terms of how we would be able to support the staff. Out of that came this that we call the process improvement committee pick and it's made up of about 50% or 70% staff and with key leadership to be able to provide support to the staff and what you do is to be able to do process improvement into every single process that the staff are performing to be able to figure out and see how best can we really support our constituents how best can we really support the clients that are coming to our doors? Out of that is what really resulted to our ability to be able to meet compliance because creativity doesn't come from leadership. It comes from the staff that do the work on a day today basis. And it's been an amazing thing that Office of Religious Belidian support staff been able to partner with the staff. There's also the Community Connect Portal. We heard about the Community Connect Portal last year and the whole goal was to see how can we really, really use this portal to be able to benefit our constituents. So in FY25, we would bring programs like care for kids, senior dental and working parents assistant into this portal. So it's like one stop shop and then to kind of make accessibility really seamless for folks that are coming through our doors. And in F425 there's also there was also this a paid program. And this PACE program is a model of K that is centered around, they believe that it is better for the well-being of seniors with chronic K to be saved in the community that they live in that institution. So the idea behind this concept was for seniors over 55 or more that are eligible for nursing home type of care to be able to get into a community where they can really, the community can provide support for them. Evolve my senior as an administrator can I use this analogy. Take it like your Kaiser, right? That you do have adult medical decade in addition to it. That is how we see it. So OESS was able to partner with Trinity Care in Gatesburg to be able to kind of open up one of the centers over there. I think it's about the fourth one in the county also. There are about 151 pace programs in 32 states and the whole goal is to be able to provide the social determinants of health for these folks once they are there so that they could be supported. And it doesn't matter what it's Medicare care, what are social services that they need, what are transportation that they need, that they could really get these services at the same place. In FY 26 we are looking to reduce the number of initial residents in Montgomery County by 2026. How do we do that? We do that to a lot of the outreach work that we do. We do that by really accompanying a lot about open enrollment, how do we really increase our accessibility, so that folks really know about the services that we provide. We also looking to improve the working participation rate by 15%. The working participation rate is, folks that are on TCA, are supposed to really have what participation. To see, are they really doing some type of job training so that, you know, they can really come off public assistance to be able to get a job that really pays well. And our goal is to be able to increase that by 15%. We also going to continue to increase the application process in time and reduce the error rates that we have because these programs, as I mentioned, are state-driven and the state serves as an authority for it. So our goal to be able to meet complaint is very critical in terms of how funding will not be cut or will be reduced. So our goal is to always meet compliance or even go over the compliance level. We're also gonna deepen our community connection by we have a partnership with Elstek Holdis that we meet a recorder to be able to talk about What are some of the challenges that you are facing in order to be able to provide support for our constituents. And then we're also going to do that through leveraging technology using the community portal, using the eligible in the enrollment system to be able to do all of that. And we also, of its ability and support services in FY24 and 26 really revamped their training processes and enhance their onboarding process. Um, in the past, a staff will come in and will take about, um, 26 weeks before the go through the end up, um, finishing number training because they'll go through state training and then they will come back and do Montgomery County training. Having this training institution is really helped a lot to be able to kind of educate the staff and then it's really reduced the number of people that will come in and don't even meet probation. So if somebody's not meeting probation, we take them back to the training center for them to be educated the game and then to be able to provide the support that they need so that we can retain this because it takes forever to able to get one staff in. So when we get them, we don't want them to go back. So we're going to be able to provide all the resources that is needed to be able to retain these staff. And I think I'll pause here for any questions that you may have for obviously whether you support services. Thank you so much, Dr. So just a couple of technical things. I don't know if you noticed, but the presentation cut off and it's very difficult to follow and read. So moving forward, I would just encourage you to consolidate and use fewer words so we can, you know, as a subject matter, because you did such a beautiful job in numerating and illustrating in your public comments. Just tough to track. But so, and we will obviously, as we always do, have follow-up sessions to check on where we are with the benchmarks that have been laid forward to see how you are are doing to achieve that 15% goal and some of the other goals that you've enumerated, which I certainly appreciate. And I think let's get back to the packet and see how the budget recommendations align to what Dr. Mensage just mentioned. And I also, we have the executive director from Treehouse here too, who was here to provide a brief update on that services as well. Great. I will take up a lot of your time and thank you Council members. I just wanted to provide an update. Last year, your support made a significant boost to the quantity and scope of services that were're able to provide at the tree house. In brief, some of the accomplishments we were able to make this year virtually eliminated the wait list for children needing trauma therapy. We developed the HOPE program, which is having a direct and immediate impact on families and schools by helping children with problematic sexual behaviors. We now conduct over 90% of all forensic interviews in the entire county at the tree house and some months that's higher than that. We have held close to three dozen informational and training sessions for various partner agencies and organizations, including MCPS Elementary, Middle and High school counselors and social workers, CPS treatment section supervisors, officers at the MC Montgomery County Police Academy, the custody evaluators for the Montgomery County Circuit Court, a Montgomery County chapter of the American Association of Pediatricians, and other civic and philanthropic organizations. Most importantly, I think, and significantly for me, is we've expanded our criteria for referrals and services to include not only victims of physical and sexual abuse, but also victims, children who are victims of assault and other trauma-inducing circumstances. So the ultimate goal is that the treehouse becomes the resources for any children that have experienced trauma in the county. Our goals for 2026, FY26 include institutionalized our training and outreach to include a child abuse prevention education program for families in the county. We're adding additional family advocates to better meet the increased needs of our caregivers of the children that we serve. Along the lines of what we were talking about earlier with the foster program, we are looking to expand our transitional trauma therapy program to include working with foster children during their reunification process. And then finally, as always, trying to diversify and increase our income sources to focus on private foundations and corporate support this year as well. So I would like to acknowledge all of our MDT partners, that's our multidisciplinary team partners, the MCPD Special Victims Investigation Division, the Montgomery County State's Attorney's Office, MCPS this year. And as a side note, we are the only jurisdiction in the state of Maryland in one of the very few in the country that include the school system as part of our MDT partners. And nationally, that scene is sort of best practices. in the country that include the school system as part of our MDT partners and nationally that's seen as sort of best practices. And a special thanks to Dr. Bridgers, DHHS staff, and especially Lisa Merkin and her incredibly hardworking team and child welfare services without whom we would not be in existence. So just want to thank you for your support and let you know we continue to move forward. Thank you. All right. So moving through the packet, you'll see at the top of page two that gives you a nice summary table for the entire service area for children, youth and families. And while they spoke on the vacancies within the sections discussed today, I did want to note that one vacancy is is for the new chief of Children's Youth and Families and that DHS expects to transmit that appointment soon for the Council's review. Next looking forward on page four you can see a description of all of the areas within Children's Youth and Families and then on pages five through seven we have the updates that the DHS team just provided. So looking at the budget discussion items, as I as mentioned, both are recommended reductions relating to transfers to state funding or leveraging state funding. The first is $42,000 reduction for post adoption services as referral services are available from the state. As noted in page eight it states that the state and Montgomery County both separately contracted out post-adoption services with similar scopes, including webinars, book bundles, and clinical services. However, DHHS now plans to utilize the Maryland Department of Human Services post-adoption services contracts through the partner organizations of Center for Adoption Support and Education and Adoptions Together. And the Child Welfare Services Team notes that the recommended $42,000 reduction in county funding will translate to just approximately eight local families being referred through to the state's program. And the remaining county funding dollars is $208,000 in DATHS. I don't have any questions regarding this line item. That's when we're sales. No, not this line item, but I thought my questions that I asked before you did your presentation. We're going to be answered and they weren't. So do you want me to re-ask the question? Yes, please. I'll ask the question in. All right. So the question was about the... Let me go back up. Okay, I was asking about the, I know you said you hired a full-time forensic interviewer. And so I know that there were, you were seeking mental health organizations to ensure that those experienced trauma who were on the wait list when we last met were being taken care of, but I didn't know what the status of those relationships were. So whoever you established relationships to refer the clients to mental health services. So if you Council member sales so last year the tree houses the one who hired the who created the position of full-time forensic interviewer. Okay. It was a shared position in child welfare services that was you know contracted contracted and then eliminated. And so in doing that, what we've done, and partially it's having the full time person and with the flexibility to work with organizations like, agencies like the police as well. Out beyond child welfare services, that's why in my earlier comments, we're now doing 90 plus percent of all forensic interviews in the county. At the TRIAS, are conducted at the TRIAS house on the... Well, these are the medical examinations, wellness checks, and then the mental health. So I don't expect our police officers are doing these. Well, they were actually conducting their own forensic interviews as well as that part of it often. But as far as the medical exam, we have been working with the intake team for child welfare services to conduct the medical exams for all children removed at the tree house. Right now, they still occasionally have their own pediatrician. They will be conducted there, but we are available and we're seeing an increase in those children coming to the tree house, either immediately or off or seeing increasingly as after they go through their own pediatrician sometimes, they will be referred then back to the tree house. So we are providing an increased number of those. So it's at a hundred percent you're seeing all or not not all of them yet. So how many have been requested and how many have we completed? That's good question. I don't have that as numbers in front of me but I can certainly follow. And that's the question that I asked last year as well. And so I would hope that you know a year later we would have more hard numbers about this very important aspect of your role. So, you know, a lot of the work that you do is to, you know, why clients come to treehouse? I mean, overwhelmingly, it shows sexual abuse is the reason. And so it's important for me to understand who on this list are we not seeing and who's waiting to be seen. I mean in sexual abuse cases, time is of the essence. And so what have we done over the past year to establish relationships with medical providers to ensure that we're not lapsing? Because if we're lapsing in time of victims, how are we ensuring the integrity of the evidence that needs to be collected? And so I... Yeah, well, that's a good question. There's two things, I'll answer this in a couple of ways. One, we have our own in-house board certified, our child abuse pediatrician. One of only, she just, Dr. Schuchat, some of you know, just recertified this year her board. She's one of only 456 in the country. I'm glad for that. I just wanna know who isn't being seen, for the people that are seeking to be seen and evaluated who is falling through the cracks and who's on the wait list. Well, for medical, everybody that is referred to the trials is being seen. There is no wait list. Okay, so it's 100%. 100% of those that are referred. Okay. I guess I misinterpreted your question of those that are referred to the trials 100% of being seen. All the medical evaluation. All the medical evaluation. Okay. And longage checks. Yes, absolutely. Okay. When I said they're not all referred some go to their own pediatrician and then come to us that that's not checks. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. When I said they're not all referred, some go to their own pediatrician. And then comes up. That's was my, sorry about that. As far as mental health, I think I mentioned in the, I know I mentioned in our questions previously, if you look over the last couple of years, last year, for instance, we were averaging, we were averaging double digits for both English and Spanish-speaking children. This year we have held, we eliminated the waiting list entirely until last month, I think, and we have single digits five and two children, I think, respectively, language on the waiting list and the waiting time that waiting list is a matter of weeks, two or three weeks now rather than months. I will, so that was the sort of my update and thank you because of that extra position, we had eliminated one position to create the interview, this DHS and the council generously helped fund that additional mental health position in which helped eliminate our waiting list. In addition, we're also continually training our therapists in additional modalities. So we have expanded the types of therapy we offer, which broadens the number of children that are now being seen at the tree house. Okay. All right. Thank you for those updates. All right. For the record, there is additional information on circle page 33 related to the tree house wait list. Okay. The second item for budget discussion is 348,478,000 dollar reduction for the summer electronic benefit transfer or EBT summer and winter school break children's food program as DHHS will be leveraging fully funding from the state. In 2024 the state transitioned from that summer EBT program to Sunbugs expanding eligibility and awards where Sunbugs provides approximately $40 a month for the months of June, July and August for each each eligible student. And that does not require a local match. So the executive's recommendation reflects that state is fully funding the Sunbuck's program now. And for your record from June to September 2024 about $88,000 or about $89,000 unique students receive Sunbuck benefits, totaling over $10.6 million. And you'll see the Sunbuck's eligibility requirements listed here on the on the top of the service is available for the winter break week, where previously the EBT program also provided about $10 for each student at that time. Thank you. Team DHHS opportunity to speak on various services also available for the winter break week, where previously the EBT program also provided about $10 for each student at that time. Thank you. Team. Thank you. So, Sunbox started as a summer snap. And that was in 2019. This took kind of give a little background on that. And when this program started, the whole state we saved only 3,923 people and only four jurisdictions participated. I'm going to be counting a few other ones. And the budget for that was only 200,000 dollars. So Governor Moore came into play and then he was like, wait a minute, with this initiative about ending childhood poverty and hunger, right? And then why don't we really revamp this process and hence we came up with the Samasana Sunbox initiative. And in 2024, we saved over 600 and 5000 people across the entire state with zero dollars. When we started this whole project, Montgomery County was coming up with a lot of money to be able to much. So we didn't have much in 2019. There was no no my we had a match in 2019 2020. We had a match all the way down to 2021. And now take if this is not funded, we are kids are going to be fine because June, July, August they're gonna going to receive $40 a month each, which is more than the summer snap that folks were receiving only $100 through the summer month and the winter month. Yeah. So it's more money in the hands of their families and then also we are seven more children. And it's such an amazing initiative. And we're coming out with $0. Thank you. All right. And for the record, we'll note that the presentation from DHHS will also be available for the public and the council in the appropriate formatting, where I think there's a little issue with this computer. Great. Thank you all very much. We now move on to our services to end and prevent homelessness. Yeah, good idea. I'll just let director Hong come and get situated. Excuse me. All right. Welcome, chief, thank you so much for your continued leadership. We had a couple of follow-up items from our last conversation. Ms. Clemens Johnson, I will turn it over to you to see this one up. Thank you, Chair Arvarnals. So this discussion will be on the services to end and prevent homelessness FY26 operating budget. Chief Hong has prepared some slides in a reaction to the public, the joint committee we had, I'm trying to remember the date, but last week. So you all asked a few questions regarding numbers, data, and statistics, and so she has provided that information. So we will start with the PowerPoint if that's okay. That's great. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. For the record, I'm Christine Hwang. I'm the chief of services to end in prevent homelessness with the Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services. And before I start, I just wanted to thank all of you for your involvement in all the work that we do and your desire to understand what we do and how it impacts the families and households that we serve. And I also want to thank my staff team. They're here. We have Denise Anderson here who has been doing a phenomenal job with our family services as well as a number of our other team members and they really have been so adaptable in moving forward with new initiatives such as the short-term housing and resolution program, which I know we'll talk a bit about, and also our amazing community partners, really. They do an incredible job just providing the direct services, and I want to acknowledge everything that they do, because all of the work during the pandemic and since in supporting our families and individuals through the fallout of the pandemic has really been so challenging and they have such tenacity and compassion in how they do the work and so I want to thank them as well as well as the people with lived experience that represent the work so articulately as they share how homelessness has impacted them and housing instability. So I want to thank all of the members of our community that support this work. So from the joint PHP and HHS committee session last Monday, there were, you had raised a question council member, Almarnaz, about the current state of eviction. So I wanted to start with that slide first. So here you can see in the different numbers we have here represented as the darker orange color is the number of eviction rits received over the past three fiscal years and including FY25 year to date, you can see that the number of risks is increasing. And then also the number of actual evictions executed while it's a relatively small percentage of the number of evictions. Those are two are increasing. And over the four fiscal years between FY22 and even just year to datedate FY25, we've seen a 99% increase in evictions executed. So there is part of the driver of the significant increase in homelessness amongst families and individuals that we're seeing. Now I had mentioned that the Sheriff's Office is only able to execute a certain number of evictions and that is because of the size of their team. We understand this. We're actually very glad that there is a limit to the number they can evict. You can see in the green line there that then the total number of evictions executed as a proportion of the RITs received is less. You can see it's decreasing, but that's just to illustrate the point that there is some limits, but nonetheless, the number of evictions executed has been steadily increasing, starting in FY22 to FY25. So that's our eviction data there. Should I pause here to see if there are questions about that? It was in response to the PHP HHS committee question that I wanted to go over that, if you all. Sure, Tantzmer, Luke. Thank you. And I appreciate the chart. I did go and pull some of the state data, right? Because as I mentioned, and what I think is interesting, I was looking at the statewide total numbers and by type of claim, by type of eviction. And then I looked at a couple of counties. So I looked at Montgomery Howard, Prince George's, and Baltimore City. And what I found was that the percentage of cases resulting in eviction were almost identical for all of the jurisdictions. So for all of them, the total percentage based on total warrants issued and then the amount that resulted in eviction were all at 15% except for Baltimore cities, which was 16%. But then there's wide variability in the percentage of the population who are subject to warrants for eviction. And Montgomery counties was 1.7%. Howard's was two. The statewide number was 4%. Prince George's was 5%. Baltimore cities was 10%. And what I can't get information on right now or haven't been able to, and I should just say me, I should say my wonderful team member, Caroline Davenport, calling around to say, how much funding and what are the ways that funding is utilized to help prevent evictions, right? So we can really get to what's working, what's not working, how much is being invested here, how much is being invested in neighboring jurisdictions, understanding we have population variability, right? Because we're the largest jurisdiction, but also, you know, while it's, no evictions are good or pleasant, right? I'm still, it's good to see that it's such an overall small percentage of our population. We still have work to do. So we want to make sure we're doing the work in the most targeted, efficient ways possible. And I wanted to know, you know, sort of with the data chart you put up in the slide deck, you know, you noted the increased total number, but the total amount of them, are you still seeing them being consistent in the total amount that end up resulting in a as it expresses a percentage. I think I'm following your question. The percentage of evictions executed of the RITS, that that appears to be going down, but that's because as I said, the number of RITS being issued is clearly going up, but then the sheriffs or office are only able to execute so many. And what I should say also is that I think our work is effective as far as the outreach done prior to the eviction being executed. And that is the three partners that do the outreach to all of those who get the red and white notice that they're being given resources to connect them to the HHS staff housing stabilization services where they can get that financial assistance, where they can, where our workers can help communicate with the landlord, you know, to pay down a rear just or to become, to come up with a relocation plan. So I think that what we do in Montgomery County is effective. And the coordination with the Sheriff's Office has really been, I think it's really improving the way that we are able to show the Sheriff's Office that the work that Seth does in preventing evictions alleviates a lot of the evictions they need to do because if they know that we're working with households on a plan, whether it be to help pay off our rearages or come up with a relocation plan, then they know that they don't likely have to do that eviction, which saves them time and saves, of course course the household, the trauma of going through that. And I think that's where we want to be. And they have been a wonderful partner and I want to acknowledge Dr. Earl Stoddard for making that such a strong partnership over this past year. Where in our collaboration, we saw at the enclave, we were able to prevent nearly all the evictions of the refugees that were identified there facing eviction. That was the community-based partnership and with the state, the Maryland Office of Refugees and the Siles and with the Sheriff's Office. So we worked together and we were able to prevent most of those evictions, nearly all of them, though there were a handful that did occur. So, and back to the points I was making last week when we were talking about this with the Joint Committee. And I understand and appreciate that outreach that goes on once there's the red or the white card and gotten the notice. Yes. I have had a constituent case in my district where individuals partner passed away. And they were able to, you know, there were two incomes, and now there's just one. And they were able to scrape together to pay a rep, but they don't know what they're going to do for Metty. And so they know they need help. They know there's a problem. They know this was, you know, an unforeseen circumstance, and they're trying to address it and be proactive. But of course, there's no smart yet, right? And so they can't get help. And they did reach out to the county, but they were told, no, it's not time yet. And that's that's where I'm having the most discomfort, right? Because while it's not time yet. And that's that's where I'm having the most discomfort, right? Because while it's great that we're ultimately able to prevent those evictions, as I said down at the bottom of the funnel, by then you've already traveled all this distance, right? And that's a lot to unpack and that creates other unwellness and that creates other problems, right? For those families, for those individuals, for the county. So like, what could we do, especially if someone's able to verify, provide verifiable information? Too safe to say, look, this is the situation I'm in. I need some stabilization support, and I may need relocation services, right? Because now my living circumstance has changed, and I am needing help. What can we do to better address those situations topside before that slide into the descent that no one wants to be in? Yeah, and I appreciate you raising that because that's exactly where we want to be. We want to be in a place where a family household does not have to have an eviction filing on them to receive services from them. The challenge here is that when you look at the number of even just rits received and this is not even counting the number of late rent notices, that's when the eviction filing starts after there have been a number of late rent missed rent, and then the landlord can file, start the eviction filing process. Late rent notices, the beginning of the first court summons, there are an average of 40,000 of those. So the challenge is it's a sheer workload challenge. We would need to be set up as a system to handle that kind of demand. We're not currently and we are in the midst of developing our strategic plan going forward to prevent and end homelessness. And that is something I would like to discuss because our system is making it necessary to have an eviction filing. And that's a big problem. So again, I appreciate you raising that. Yeah. And I certainly appreciate if there's 40,000 that that's a very tough number to be able to do proactive outreach on. But in the case where the person is doing the outreach to you, yes, that's a different story. And so perhaps there's some happy medium there that could be figured out where the individual, where the family is proactively reaching out and has that verifiable information, is there a way we can do some things we'd not forcing them to wait until we have a worse situation. That's what I'm not expecting you to answer that today, but that's what I'm asking for us to get to because you're right, 40,000 Zola, but we should be able to find workable solutions and find a way to get to yes so that we are saving that person, that family, from further, you know, decline. And we want to help. Agreed. Agreed. We want to see that happen as well. We'd be happy to talk further with you. Thank you. I'm going to turn over to Member Seals. Did you, Council Member Seals, you okay? I'll turn over to Council Member Mankin just one second, but I wanted to make one point really quick. So we discussed the milestone of recently of the strategic plan that was laid forward. In large part, thanks to the leadership of Council Member Levin Thal and partnership with the Department of Health and Human Services when he was the chair of this committee. And we had some, that was a nationally recognized effort. And it reflected the need that was on the ground at that time, along with all of the stakeholders and the state funding and the federal funding. And at that time, we had strong federal partners who really believed in this work and it was extraordinary. And I want to just pick up what you just discuss, chief, which is the need obviously and you've discussed this before, the need to update that plan reflective of our current reality. We have to be able to walk into gum at the same time, address the immediate and growing needs of residents who are in crisis with that number growing by the day, you know, based on what's happening in our area, but also be mindful of needing to have a definitive plan in place so that we're not just putting fingers and dikes, but doing things in a more systemic way that often lead to policy change that isn't just at the local level but at the state level as well. So all of these things have to happen at the same time. I have a lot of confidence in you and your team. And I also have a lot of confidence in the nonprofit organizations and stakeholders who are in this space. This budget before us presents another step forward, another clear indication by this executive who I've said publicly before, I think the enhancement and the deepening of our social safety net under his leadership will be among his greatest legacies. And this is further evidence of that. We know we need to do more, but we also want to make sure that we do it in a way that is strategic, that does reflect our current reality, but also addresses the urgency and pressing need. It's a broad comment, I know, but we will be having numerous joint committee sessions moving forward along with PHP as we continue to tackle these really pressing challenges, but Councilmember Mink, I turn over to you. Thank you. I associate myself with the comments of both of my colleagues and those pressing points. And I think as, you know, as Councilmember Ludke alluded to, the earlier that we're able to get that investment out there, the return on that. There's obviously from the human perspective, there's an enormous return. But even just from the fiscal perspective, there's a huge return there in a number of ways also. And so I know that you all have worked to try to back that up over a period of time. And so now they need the red and white. Our residents need the red and white notice. But it had been later in the process before. And as we back it up, now the pool of applicants expands. And now that's where the additional budget comes from. But again, that budget number overall, when we look at the cost of somebody being evicted or even getting that far down the line, costs are increasing in other places as well. So it's a stalacate dance as, you know, as Chair Alburn was noted. This is, but I think, but we have seen those cases too. In fact, much like the one that Councilor Ralukey described, we have a case right now, a resident who was diagnosed with with cancer and they are now suddenly on one income and it seems like they continue to be on one income and you know and we're having to just watch this slide and again everybody knowing where it's where it's going and like they're in touch with the county and but we are limited by the eligibility restrictions that are on there. And again I understand of course where they are and that you all would like to loosen them as well but it's a funding question. In this case I think that the resource that we do have right now that is for this group of people who aren't able to get access. These funds in particular are through the Connections program with Interfaith works. And they've been somebody who I know that our office has referred people there. I know that other council members have utilized those funds as well. But as of this point, in the fiscal year, that program is out of funds also. And so, but I do think, you know, there are questions about what does infrastructure look like down the line? We wanna make sure that there are funds who are available to people who again have a verifiable situation. And we know that we could, that we could provide that stop gap now and save a lot of expense and trauma and all those things that we know we're going to end up on your plate also You know should that be the the county who's covering that should that be our community partners like Interfaith works Should it be a combination? But I think there certainly is a agreement that we it makes the most sense for somebody to be holding that work for somebody to be doing that and to have the funds to be able to do that So I think right now the way the infrastructure is, is interfaith works is doing that. And they're doing that through their connections fund. I know that they receive referrals from HHS as well. That I know that you all are of course in coordination. And when somebody is a fit for the budget that HHS has, then those referrals can go in that direction as well. But I think that this is a question to think about of how much funding do we wanna make sure that we have for that connections program? Should there be more funding there? That's something that I think the HHS Committee I'm sure will dig into over time. But I think in terms of what the infrastructure looks like now, if we wanna add more funding there, that's probably the most direct route to go, would be to consider an increase there, which I know that they have been thinking about. But broad strokes, I just want to say that investments in this body of work are some of the most, I think, fiscally responsible investments that we as a county can be making, because whenever we don't stop someone before they get to that point of eviction, the repercussions are huge and touch nearly every county department. We think about how students are doing in school, the impact there, enormous. I mean, this is huge impacts in the public safety space. And so again, these are really, really good investments. And that's why we, you know, we, as a council and the county executive as well, saw fit to move that appropriation in December to invest in the space in the SHART program because and others, the rental assistance program and so on, because we were seeing of that very direct correlation with the emergency shelter motel budget, which is so much more expensive, as well as with the human impact. And we see these increase in the numbers here that you've presented, and that we're all seeing on the ground. That was money that was important for us to move as quickly as possible. And we know that we need that. It's going to be hopefully in this budget moving forward. But the needs are even higher now and accelerating faster than they were when we made that move in December. And so continuing to make sure that we're putting appropriate weight in this space is something that is, I think, very, very much needed now. And I think digging more into the connections program and how that dovetails with the work that Seth is doing and what the appropriate amount is there. Also, I think a really important thing to do and I appreciate Councillor Lutke for making those points. Thank you. Thank you. Just a quick comment and then a turnover of Council Member Sales. So appreciate the shout out regarding the great work that happened on the emergency that we saw before us within the enclave. Many of our offices got engaged with that issue, but none more than Council Member Minks Office as the District Council member. And I just want to credit her and her leadership. She's established a reputation for going very deep into issues in communities and it's refreshing and respected among her colleagues and further evidence of that is her participation in this discussion. So thank you very much, Council Member Mink. Council Member Sales. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And just piggybacking off of my colleagues' questions, you know, looking at the significant amount that we're spending on these motel costs and, you know, just doing some very quick calculations prior to the meeting. You know, 800,000 is being allocated for the motel costs. What is the average length of stay for the, for families? How many, we have we had mentions of how many families are being served, but how long I think 27 rooms. So we can get that information for you. I know that however anecdotally there are families stayed with us for, especially during the pandemic and as we're emerging for up to a year. And we label a household not label, but we highlight a household as a long stare when they're getting to six months to a year because that's really problematic. And there are many reasons for that, including how challenging it is for so many of the households who come to us with zero income to lease up and to find the stability they need. And for us to come in with the resources, they need to be successful in housing. And then in addition, if they have been evicted to then apply for housing, that eviction on their record to Council Member Ludke and Ming's point is a barrier. It creates a barrier for them to become rehoused. Landlords will not accept applications often times. And that's why the Sharp intervention is very powerful. And I want to acknowledge the full council for supporting that as well as our county executive because it gives landlords far fewer reasons to say no because we're saying we're going to provide 12 months of rents. And as a source of income, if you're going to say no, we need to know why because that's a full year worth of rent. So the length of stay in shelter and motels is problematic. And I want to acknowledge the family services team because as I shared with you last week that we were seeing a doubling in families according to the point in time count. And we saw similar numbers of family homelessness increasing over the past two fiscal years. And really the family services team has had to step up even though they really only had 4.5 full-time equivalents of case managers to serve up to 200 families. Some of that is 27 of the 200 when we We have been at 200 are at family shelters, but during the pandemic our largest shelter program for families became the motels. And we were not set up to provide the supportive services needed for those large number of families. If you think about our family shelters, they have 24 seven staff on site, case management, on, meals on site, all of those things are needed by families. At the motels, we have our family services team coming into provide case management, 4.5 full time equivalents. And what Seth ended up doing is we pulled in case management from our rapid rehousing team. So we've pulled in two rapidousing case managers to assist and then our housing stabilization team who would often do the diversion for those families will hang in and try to assist because it's such a deluge of families in our system. So that is part of the challenge here as well, which I wanted to name today as I reflect on our numbers and our continued increase in family homelessness. I think we have to acknowledge as a system that we simply have not been set up to meet the need that we suddenly saw over the pandemic and the growing need that we're seeing certainly this year and last year since I started SAP. I know we spoke briefly about this last year, but how are the, I guess, checks for safety going with the motels that we are contracted with? I know that given the difficult budget season, we talked about revenue generating positions and assessing any code violations to any of these partner motels. Where are we at with the checks? And I'm going to let my violations. Ms. Anderson, speak to this. Good afternoon. I'm Denise Anderson. I work with the families in our system. And I also manage the contracts for our hotels that we currently have five hotels that are under contract to provide overflow family shelter. So as we receive issues of concerns from the community, from our families that are placed there, I'm charged with following up with the hotels and ensuring that they are addressing whatever is brought up. I do cited this to the hotels as well and help connect them if there is a need for anything that needs to be addressed in terms of how they're providing services to our families. On the ground though, we have our homeless family team workers who are seeing the families at the hotel. So they're there on site as well to the families and be a bridge between the families and the hotel management to make sure that the families needs are met first and foremost and that any issues that arise are addressed promptly. Okay, so there are no outstanding issues that haven't been addressed? Not that I'm aware of. There are things that come up every year that we address with the hotels every year, without going into details, just things that we deal with as winter comes around and some of our friends are outside when they come inside. But there are things that the hotels are addressing on a regular basis in partnership with City of Gay Thruzburg or their appropriate locations. You have a hotel downtown silver spring. So how are you tracking and monitoring the issues and the resolutions closing out the issues and complaints? Following up directly with the management of the hotel and upper management if need be, as well as the families that are residing in the hotels. So you have a dashboard of the complaints and the closeouts of any violations or issues? We do not have a dashboard of that no. So how are you tracking it? Is it just within the case file of? It's actually mostly within, it's usually a back and forth email system that we have and if it comes up as an issue at the point of negotiating the contract at the end of the year, it comes up there as well. So we have one of our hotels that had a problem that was resolved and addressed and that becomes part of the record of their contract review. It would be helpful to get a better sense of what issues and violations are outstanding and how we're working towards closing those out and who is taking a little longer because we're paying market rent basically $2,500 a month for these families. And so they should be in suitable housing and it's a good opportunity for us to reflect on the contracts and where what the standards are of these rooms that they're staying in. Absolutely. Okay. With regards to the SHART program, how many of the SHART recipients return to the county seeking additional housing support within the year? I wonder if we should return to the county seeking additional housing support within the year. Sure, I wonder if we should return to the slides. And I do have a number of slides here about the number of clients and households in motels. Those go along with the information in the packet. Perhaps we can skip over those and go straight to the sharp data. And if I may be more. I'm sorry, I just wanted to step in really quickly before we move forward. You mentioned violations and concerns, so just, you know, for the record, there are no outstanding violations that I'm aware of, but there are concerns that are expressed by our guests one time to time. But there are no violations that are outstanding. I mean, it's hard to understand how you are confidently saying that since we don't have a means of tracking and evaluating close out. So I don't know. Thank you Councilmember Cells. We will develop a dashboard so you can have a more definitive representation of those violations any concerns I express by the client or the hotel so that if I understand what you're asking you can have a better picture if you will of what's going on in our space. Because we get constituent concerns of the standards and the environment of some of these hotels and we're not always privy to how they are being addressed and we're paying market rent for these facilities so we should know where our residents are saying with the amount of money that we're paying these hotels. Yes, I agree. And we do track constituent concerns. So I think we can incorporate it into our tracking system for constituent concerns. So including that adding it into that system that we've developed. Yes. So we can do that and be prepared with that. Yeah. And just for you, you know, wanting to, I guess we're going to talk about the sharp and you know how many people are returning or again Residivism for the sharp resources because that's another again a lot of money a year's worth and so I just want to ensure that while we are paying for a year of rental assistance or rent that we're not seeing recurring residents but we are having case management that ensures they are actually going on the road to self-sufficiency. So we're not seeing the regular recurrence of the same families and so I don't know if this presentation is going to I can just share that too. I just wanted to also... I was planning to share the sharp outcomes with you as well. But so our prior to launching into sharp targeted to families, we had piloted sharp during the pandemic with additional COVID money that we had received. And that was the compelling data that we had to propose using sharp to utilize our motel system last. I shouldn't even call it a motel system, but it's part of our, it's now become the largest part of our shelter system for families. So the retention rate for individuals or the, I'm sorry, the rate of return for individuals with sharp is 22%. However, with families, it's 3%. It's quite effective with families because oftentimes what they really need is they just need a subsidy to get back into housing. And housing is really, as a social determinant of health, is what's needed usually for a household to recover from their housing crisis and to just generally have better outcomes across the board. So the outcomes for families continues to be compelling and we will see as the families that we have housed continue to fare. So we'll gather, we'll continue collecting the data on the retention rate in their permanent housing. But you can see here in this slide. So since the special appropriation was approved by the council, and we received the funding in January, and there was process we had to work out in our system and some setbacks with landlords. But you can see that we housed increasingly more families every week starting from February 14th to last Friday, April, the last number should be April 25th. I need to put across this. Thank you. Thank you. I have the data here as well. So as of the 25th, we've housed 84 families. Thank you. 84 families. And that is at a rate of eight families on average per week and 32 families per month. This is with the collaboration of the family services team as well as our housing team, whose manager is here as well. And that is Beth Drogers, who's done a remarkable job just moving this forward with the other teams. And then also our housing stabilization team. Because as I said, we try to prevent the eviction of possible. and as we're watching what can be done, what we know oftentimes when a family isn't their housing crisis isn't able to be prevented and so we can immediately bring sharp in as soon as they enter the system and start working on a housing plan. So it's really been a collaboration across three the three major divisions in SAF and they have accomplished this along with the families. So we're very, very, the state of for us is very promising because at an average of 32 families a month we are now able to house families faster than they're entering the system. So let's go to the next slide and I can show that. Maybe the next slide after that, let's see. Here it is. Okay, so this is the inflow and outflow data for our family households. Inflow is simply the number of family households that enter, enter the shelter system per month and then outflow is the number that exit to permanent housing per month. You can see in the blue that's the inflow from last January 2024. I wanted to show that with the point in time. That's when the last point in time was done in 2024. So I wanted to go back a bit so you can see that the inflow for families is significant and the outflow, the number being housed in the gray columns is generally less. And that's a problem because that means that families are building up in our system. And this does not even include who's in our shelter system. This is who's entering and who's exiting. And the red line is the net increase. And generally it is a net increase. But then you start to see this is very hopeful. In February and March, you can see that the red line is dropping because we're housing families faster than they're entering the system. And this is how conceptually we get to so-called functional zero, we stay ahead of the inflow by housing more families than our entering, or at least at the same rate. And so this is really where we want to be and where we need to go with both our families and our individual households. So if we're able to stay there, meaning outpacing inflow, we can reach functional zero for families and we can stop the spending that we continue to see in our motels. And it is in that spirit that the County Executive proposed a significant decrease in the amount of funding for motels, because I think we can all agree that is not where we want to be spending our dollars. We want to spend the funds housing families. And so I really appreciate all of your support in doing that and the work continues. We have to keep doing this work. And I think just my last question, I didn't know if you wanted to go through any additional slots. and the work continues. We have to keep doing this work. And I think just my last question, I didn't know if you wanted to go through any additional slides. But just thinking about the long-term vision for keeping families housed and prioritizing stable housing. Is the department taking any steps to explore ways to reduce our reliability on this temporary housing, including I know that we talked about baby bonds because when I looked at the charts, I saw that the majority of unhoused or those experiencing housing and security are MCPS students. a lot of of our families and you know what are we doing now to ensure that we're not creating intergenerational housing and security but we are empowering the future home ownership or housing stability for this population. You know HHS oversees all of the wellness centers that are going into all of our schools. Are we prioritizing programs about fiscal management and security in these programs that we're offering and talking about pathways to home ownership in our health and wellness programs in addition to the mental health? Just looking at that data, it's like we have a fifth of our county's housing and secure population that goes through MCPS that we can touch and ensure that while we're addressing the immediate needs, we're also looking at the long-term opportunities to improve outcomes for this next generation of young people. Thank you Councilman for sales for that. Those are great comments. That's something that we need to consider looking at those in a generational gaps. Specifically, you know, we talk so much about some Medicare and mental health care, but what about the physical care that we have and looking at how folks understand the housing market and how to stay housed and some of those planning efforts. So again, more discussion is needed quite frankly. We need to sit down and really look at the housing challenges that we have or the unhousing challenges that we have in the community to develop a sound and strategic vision as Councilmember Alvernos noted earlier, there needs to be a revisit to the policy and the planning and so all of these are great. We're all taking co-beers notes and so all of these are great comments that we really need to sit down and consider and it has to be cost affordable. I mean, this is the change in the climate that we've been discussing at the Metropolitan Council of Government. So regionally, what does that mean? One of those migratory challenges that we have for folks coming here as well and what are the jurisdictions doing. Most of the jurisdictions, look at County to see what we're doing and so we need to have a plan in place a strategic plan in place that has vision and governance. Thank you. All right. Ms. Clemens Johnson, why don't we, how many more slides are there? I believe I believe there's a total of 15 slides. Okay. Have looked at five. Okay. If you want, I can do an abbreviated version. Let's see. Um, so the information about the, the total number of households and individuals in shelter, that's in the packet. I mean I do want you to I can I'm just not sure how we're doing. We're okay. I think the context is important as we discuss the budget deliberations. Okay. Maybe five, ten minutes. Okay. Okay. So this is the total number of people in our shelter system and I think what's interesting here, noteworthy here is that you have the children in yellow and you have adults in gray. And as you see the numbers increase, you can, as our family numbers increase, you can see that the number of children in our shelter system is increasing, which is intuitive, but it's also a problem. So this fiscal year, children make up 24% of the total number in our shelter system. And this is different from the points in time count, which is a snapshot of one night. This is those served cumulatively in our system. And we expect that the number of clients we serve this year will surpass the number we served last fiscal year. We would only need to serve 10 new clients each month in shelter to exceed FY24. And let me go to the next slide, so I can show you the inflow and outflow data for singles. So here you can see where we really continue to struggle to keep up with the inflow not it's not just families. It's also individuals and so you can see here that are in our inflow every month exceeds 10 per 10 individuals entering the system. So we will exceed our FY 23 numbers and that is consistent with our point in time count numbers which shows an overall 30.2% increase in homelessness overall. And we can go to the next slide. Just let me know if you have questions I can stop. But we can go to the next slide. So this is our adult only household and just to clarify, just to clarify the meaning of adult only households because our system serves based on families with minor children, so families. But there are some families that are adult only households but the vast majority of adult only households are individuals, so individual households here. And these are those served in our shelter system. You can, this is basically showing you the proportion of adult only households served in shelter, which is far larger than what you saw with families in motel. So most of the individuals we serve are in emergency shelter where all that support we talked about is there. The 24, 7 staff, the case management on-site, the meal on-site, and the meals. So this is just an indication of that. And also you can see that there was an increase in the number served between fiscal year 23 and 24 in our shelter system. This for me reflects also the increase in capacity, which the Council supported in providing a supplemental appropriation for us to increase the amount of hypothermia space that we provided in FY 24 and ongoing. Okay, go to the next slide. So these are the families being served in the shelter system and you can see here, it's different. The majority of families over the last four fiscal years are served in our motel system and this is an illustration of what I was saying earlier that during the pandemic our motels became our largest family shelter which is problematic when you consider all of the lack of support that is there and it's something for us to consider as a system because when there isn't support there are problems. Families come to us with many needs And in a hotel where there isn't the 24-hour supportive services, it's harder to one, realize the need is there on a daily basis and then respond to it. And you can also see in FY25 that the total number of families in our motels is larger than any of the preceding fiscal years. So again, an indication of the growing family homelessness. I can go to the next slide. This says very similarly what I said. This is the number of households in motels, families versus adult only households in FY24 because of our significant expenditure on motels, we decided to work to move all of the individuals out of the motels into emergency shelter and into housing and to stop using motels for COVID isolation. So in 2025, you can see where nearly all of those moved individuals served served were moved out of moved out of motels and currently today we have four adult only households in motels And those are first I think one of them is two of them are It's a family. It's just an adult only family Yeah, so that is that is our the information about the motels, but again, the darker blue line indicates more families served than in all previous fiscal years in the motels. Next, this was a slide indicating life experiences and vulnerabilities. Council member sales you had asked about some of this information in the joint PHP HHS meeting. And so I wanted to share this here. And you can see this is from the point in time count this year. The self-reported life experiences and vulnerabilities. And you can see there are a host of different things that different needs and issues that supportive services would help with. And that very much is the way we look at this data that we as a system need to meet the needs and provide the supports necessary for these households to resolve their housing crisis, but also to address these needs here. And this is for adult only households, and then the next slide is for family households. We can look at that as well. So here you can see that domestic violence continues to be a significant factor in the families who are experiencing homelessness. And again, we need to, as a system, come in with the support for those families to address the many concerns that come and the trauma that comes as a result of experiencing domestic violence and losing your housing as a result of it. So just wanted to share that with you in response to your question last week. And then we went over the sharp data. We also have the sharp demographics here of those we're serving. Again, well not again, I haven't mentioned in this presentation, but it's very clear the disproportionality amongst people of color and particularly families who are black and African-American, underscores the need for us to continue to have a racial equity lens and to work to address the racial disparities we see here. It will continue to be our resolve to address those and to work on a strategy to reduce those racial disparities. This we have looked at. And these are just numbers and I believe this is in your packet too of the numbers served in permanent supportive housing, both by numbers of people and also households. And I just wanted to share it with you because this is our primary intervention for serving households that have disabling conditions, both that are family households and adult only households. But you can see here clearly that our adult only households tend to have more disabilities as evidence by the lighter blue numbers. We tend to have many, many more adult only households that are assessed needing permanent supportive housing. And less so families. The other trend I wanted to indicate on the left with the yellow and gray numbers is that the number we've served in permanent supportive housing has decreased a bit over time. And I believe that is a reflection of the increasing rents because we do provide a rental subsidy with permanent supportive housing. And as rents have increased, that means with the same budget, we actually are not able to serve the same number of households, which is why that item is in the proposed budget for this year. The increased amount to its our HIP program and our housing initiative program. That is our largest permanent supportive housing program, which is locally funded, which for us means we have a lot of flexibility in who we decide to serve. I mean, obviously you have to meet criteria, but with regards to immigration status, other areas in which the federal government may choose to cut funding for permanent supportive housing, we can continue to prioritize those populations. I'm talking immigrant, the immigrant population as well as the trans population. We can choose to prioritize them in our locally funded housing, and that is why it remains a very, very important intervention for us. And then moving on to rapid rehousing, similarly, just wanted to share the numbers there. Of those we serve and that there's a progression over the past four fiscal years that the number we can serve has gradually gone down because of increasing rents. And with that, I believe that is all of my slides. Oh, there's one more. So I invite the community and all of you and your staff who have always been very supportive of our community wide meeting the Interagency Commission on Homelessness to join us on May 8th, to join the campaign, which we've called Housing Together. This is our campaign to prevent and end homelessness in Montgomery County. We will be talking about updating our ICH strategic plan and everyone who attends will help us to set our new goals for ending homelessness. And you can see that picture is our last community-wide meeting. We always have a wonderful turnout of stakeholders, including people with lived experience, our partners, our county leadership, including your offices, as well as many others who support our work. So just want to invite all of you to join to be part of our strategic plan and to be part of our housing together campaign, which you already are part of. And with that, I will end and see if there are questions. Thanks, Chief Hong. We're hoping to make it on the 8th. We've got a hold on the budget calendar that day is a possible overflow. So obviously, we're all keeping our fingers crossed that we can participate in some level. Colleagues, did you have questions regarding the slides? Are we moving on to the specific budget line items? I think we can move on to the specific budget line items. Thank you, Chair Alvernos. We will start with page one of your budget. The county executive recommends an increase of 12.4 million or 25.3% increase from the FY25 approved operating budget for the services to end voted on today. I believe all of these items are actually just sustaining the supplemental that the that the council approved in this. Excuse me. There are four increases that will be that we will be discussing that will need to be voted on today I believe all of these items are actually just sustaining the supplemental that the That the council approved in December. Excuse me. In page one of your packet, we go through the budget chart and highlight the vacancies. As of April 1st, there were seven vacancies. Within SEF, the majority were in the prevention area of the program, including three social workers and one supervisory social work positions. The others are operating in support positions. There were five multi-program adjustments, which changes over 10%. The details are listed in their chart, but the two biggest ones are from an error. That was including sharp in that multi-program when the budget was being created. And then I'll also note that there are 7.29 positions, FTEs that were annualized at the Council approved last year that are showing in this multi-program adjustment for the rental assistance program. pages three, four, and five go over the 11 service areas of SAF and the description of their changes specifically in FTEs are outlined in the chart. Letter D starts with programmatic updates. I believe the committee has kind of gone into details on items 1 and 2. I will stop and see if there's questions, but if not, I can go to item three. Okay. Just one to highlight item number three, which were the three support specialists that were funded in FY25 for progress place. So those positions have been filled. They engage with individuals in experiencing unsheltered homelessness in the community. And with an individual seeking services at at progress plays especially in the parking lot. So the peer support specialist also says when the CIT police officer responds to situation involving individuals experience homelessness that are hesitant to engage with the police. So this paragraph really just talks about the type of supports that they are able to provide. I did want to highlight that as part of the FY26 recommended budget for the police, there were 15 FTEs recommended for security officers for progress plays that have been added to enhanced service responses and increased officer availability. The PES committee voted favorably for this item, so it will be heard by Council at a later date. Let her e begins our FY 26 budget discussion items. We will start with the largest, which is the short term housing and resolution program. Funding is requested to provide up to 12 months of rental assistance and navigation services to help households quickly resolve their housing crisis. This amount is $6,932, and $10. There is detail on your packet about the sharp, just a quick narrative about what the sharp program is, the background of how the Council and the committee weighed in on the sharp program and deciding to begin funding that as of January or whenever the program was implemented. And so the specific budget that was for SHARP was $1.1617,353 that was approved December 10th. So as noted earlier, the County Executive is recommending $6.9 million to support CHOP. In your packet, number eight goes over the CHOP appropriation of the dollar spent. It also includes the demographics of the household. And it states that the budgetate number of families that can be supported with the recommended funding for FY 26 is 208 families. It costs approximately 33, not approximately, it costs 33,291 annually to house a family in sharp paying 100% of the base rent. The majority of families do require the full 12 month support for the committee consideration staff recommends concurring with the county executive's recommendation. I think without objection. Okay, our next item is a Vickian prevention and rental assistance program to provide housing stabilization services for $2,946,932. This increase would annualize the amount approved for special appropriation 2542. It annualizes at a rate of 2.2 million for housing stabilization services and 735,168 for the rental assistance program. A lot of this data was gone over in the slide show, but I will say that the housing stabilization services prevention program aims to prevent residents from becoming unstable in their housing by offering 3,000 in financial assistance and short-term case management to connect them to the needed resources. Yeah, and I'm just going to make a quick comment. First, I want to send a shout out to some outstanding advocates that had the opportunity to meet with myself and a number of us to share their lived experiences and very powerfully advocate for an enhancement in many of these investments, which all are absolutely warranted. As we said at the beginning of the HHS committee sessions, there are a lot of moving pieces right now with regards to what the County Executive has amended as recently as last week. Income versus property tax, state impacts, federal impacts, and so this council led by a number of my colleagues, and again shout out to Council Member Mink, have demonstrated strong support and a partnership in alliance with the executive branch when as necessary to appropriate supplemental appropriations to ensure that we're addressing the needs that are on the ground. a very condensed budget process as we always do. But I just want to acknowledge the investments that have been made, the enhancements that have been proposed, and this will be to be continued as we go through this upcoming fiscal year. Once the dust settles from this budget process, we have more information, and we've shown, thanks to your wonderful presentation, that these investments make sense, they work, they are fiscally responsible in addition to being morally, completely responsible. So this will continue and just I wanted to assure folks that met with us individually that this is an ongoing part of the conversation and your presentation to us was extremely powerful and very much hurt. With that, a yield to you, Councilmember Luki. Thank you. Since we're talking about the RAP program, I just wanted to follow up, I had not asked this earlier, but in going through the data, I was flagging the zip codes that were most affected and wanted to see what might we be able to do where we know we have the highest concentration of housing instability. Thank you for that question. Yeah, I think that one of the things that we plan to do after our strategic plan is to do a gaps analysis that includes our prevention work. To my knowledge that hasn't been done with SAF for, I'm not aware of that being done. And a lot of the prevention work is cobbled together. Interface work says a number of you mentioned does excellent work. Council member Mink mentioned in the prevention space. There are many other partners that also had over time applied for community grants to provide emergency assistance, which in many ways is very preventive. And so what we need to do, because they provide slightly different supports and services amongst the different community partners, is we need to do that gaps analysis to evaluate. Where is the need, And are we doing what we need to do that gaps analysis to evaluate where are the where is the need and are we doing what we need to to meet the need I think that we could do better just based on what we see in our housing stabilization office but we also need to be consistent in what we offer interfaith works as a leader in that space and the other partners also need to be able to offer consistently across the system. Similar services, if not more, depending on what the need is in the area in which they're serving, there are some that are based down county, some that are based up county. And Interfaith Works is nicely situated in the middle. And so that gaps analysis will show to us, this is our goal, how we need to set up our system to meet the need most effectively. Not only gaps analysis will show to us this is our goal how we need to set up our system to meet the need most effectively not only amongst our community partners but in partnership with Housing Stabilization Services at Seth. Great thank you. Councilmember Seals. Thank you. I just had a quick question about the the R services since I noticed that the website stopped accepting applications in August of last year and now referrals are being, I guess, directed through 311. How are you accessing those referrals or how is 311 sharing those referrals with the appropriate department? Yeah, I can start with my response. Let me just check back to see if my colleague is here. Okay, let me start. So that is housing stabilization still. This is still housing stabilization. So you're correct, the emergency rental assistance program funding actually is federal COVID funding, which we then called the COVID rent relief program that portal did close. And we resumed our, what we had in place, the infrastructure, the benefits, the services before the pandemic, which is our housing stabilization team that provides the eviction prevention resources. And so people can access those services through a variety of ways. We try to model a no-wronged or approach so that can either be from their home on the phone by calling 311, which was, you know, to be able to access services from home was very valuable during the pandemic, obviously. And people sometimes want to come in person to talk to a case worker. And so we have our three regional offices in Silver Spring, Rockville, and Germantown where they can continue to access services in person. So it's really both either. And there is ongoing partnership between Seth and 311 to fine tune where when we receive feedback of any customer, any resident who has challenges accessing our services, it's a continual process of making sure that 311 knows exactly how to root people to us to access our services efficiently. I have heard some of the feedback so I know it's not perfect but it's a continual work to improve what we're doing. So are you, is someone in the department checking weekly or are you just receiving, you know, referrals monthly? Like how often are they transmitting these referrals? Oh, yeah, those get transmitted to us daily. It is so our housing stabilization team is not one of the 24 seven components of what SAF does. So it would be during a weekday that it would be transmitted. But yeah, do you know how many referrals you've received since that application portal closed in August? Oh goodness. I don't have that data today, but we can gather it. Yes, that would be helpful. Thank you. Great. Are you all gonna take a vote on 1.2? All right. it's out of objection. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Next item is 1.3 that starts at the bottom of page 10. This is a request to increase funding to maintain rapid rehousing program due to increased rents in the end of COVID era funding. The request is for $2 million. Rapid rehousing is an intervention program designed to help individuals and family to quickly exit homelessness and return to housing again in the community. The benefit may be renewed every 90 days subject to recertification of the household eligibility and they can receive a maximum amount to 24 months. Table 8 lays out the budget, the amount in the HIF and the operating and the DHHS operating budget to support the program. The average length of stay for households is over one year and three months, 460 days. The maximum length of stay is two years. For the committee's consideration, Council staff is recommending to concur with the county executives's recommendation. Without objection. Oh, council member Luky question. Just a question. I know right now that average length of stay is just a little over a year, right? Have you ever considered, because right now it's allowable up to 24 months. Have you thought about doing something where it's 12 months and then you're allowed to extend for a quarter, something like that to sort of triage the priorities there a little differently? Yes, and I should clarify that the majority of rapid rehousing programs are for 24 months. It's really one, it's a domestic violence program that is for the 12 months. And the way that the Rapid rehousing program works both, so it's operated mostly by partners, but Seth also operates some rapid rehousing is that the household's ability to take on the rent burden, gradually it assessed every three months Okay, so we are assessing when they're ready to graduate and Many households do need the full two years and as I said most of the programs are set up at two years So it is it is as person centered as we can make it and because we want we don't want to set those up for failure, we want them to succeed. And there are some households on fixed incomes where they may need a little bit of rental subsidy, even after they graduate. And so they are also eligible for the rental assistance program that provides the shallow subsidy. Gotcha. Okay, Thank you. Great. Excuse me. Our last item is 1.4 at the bottom of page 11. Replace ARPA funds with general funds to provide permanent supportive housing for 39 households referred to the Housing Initiative Program. The FY25 Housing Initiative Program budget is 13.1 million and is serving 452 households. This 1.2 million is recommended to be added to replace the funding which the program, 39 households specifically are funded with the ARPA dollars. The council staff concur with the county executive's recommendation to provide ongoing support for these families. Without obstruction. Okay, and that wraps up the budget recommendations for the services to prevent an in homeless service area. Staff did not identify any potential reductions based on the votes that were taken today. The chart on number 12 is accurate. Thank you. Great, thank you all very much. We're going to move on to our last item, which is our public health services follow up. We're going to take a quick two minute break before we do that. you you you you you you I'm sorry. All right. Thanks, everyone. are going to go ahead and reconvene our session. Thank you to our public health team. Again, our condolences to Dr. Davis. And I know Dr. Ashford, I believe, is in a conference or something. Yeah, so. Alright, alright, so as Clemens Johnson we're going to turn this over you to see this one up. Okay, thank you so much. This budget, this agenda item is a follow up to the public health services budget that was discussed last week. There were three items that will be discussed and need to be voted on by the committee. The committee wanted to take a pause and we deferred one item because there wasn't budget information at that time. And then there are two other items that have come up as well. So the support for the American Diversity Group free medical clinic was discussed, but the committee decided that they wanted to talk about the support provided through GHHS for access to health care services to the low-income and vulnerable populations as it is in regards to medical services to kind of talk about these as a system or continuum. So that is what is presented here. And then there was also an item that we will talk about first that the committee voted for in favor of but we also received updated budget information. So council staff wanted to present this budget item again so that you have the most up to date and relevant information. I'll pause there to see if there's questions. I don't think any general questions so we can we can dig into it. All right. First item is on page two of your packet 1.1 the increase for Montgomery Care's primary care reimbursement rate to 45% of the cost of care to support Clinton's minimum operational needs. So DHHS provided corrected information regarding the executive's rate, requested rate increase, number of encounters and indirect administrative rate. The requested rate, the CE requested rate is 78,000 encounters at $113.36 each. Given the current utilization, staff recommends setting the number of encounters for FY26 at 77,000. This recommendation does consider the suggestion increase in in clouders to include the ICM. We, Council staff made this decision based on information if you look on your packet of the current utilization. There were two months, particular September and October of this year where utilization trended very high. But over the course of the past few months, it seems like it's been on more par for usual. So that is why the staff is recommending just a revision down by about a thousand encounters. So with all of these changes, this results with the reduction of the encounters from their recommended rate, this results in an increase of $11.21 per encounter because there is an indirect administrative fee that increased to the clinic will be $11.21 and the indirect fee is $1.15. The total reimbursement rate to the clinic would be $113.36 that recommended rate. So the new amount needed to are their increased reimbursement rate is $950,610. This would be a savings of $12,751 for this item. So council staff has made this recommendation by including the reduced number of encounters. And if there are questions, I can certainly answer them. Thank you. I guess just reaction from our colleagues in the executive branch to the staff recommendation. I thank you, Council HHS Chair, Arwin, so with the numbers and the recommendation, I think is consistent with what we previously supported there is definitely a gap, a parity. And so going through through the numbers that you have the additional numbers and information there for council members. Yes, good afternoon. Good afternoon. I would say that as we, and that OMB is here, so based on the packet, what we have in front of us, council staff is recommending a thousand less encounters than the county executive has put forward. And so the data that we demonstrated that, the 78,000 is what the county executive is requesting to put forward. We do have data that suggests that we would reach 78,000 encounters in FY26 until from the department standpoint, you know, we would be concerned that if we only approve 77,000, we may come back for supplemental and FY26 for the additional 1,000 encounters. So that would be my only kind of feedback from the department standpoint. I think the rate overall is on par with what we have recommended. Okay. Council members sales. So is ICM not being considered to absorb the thousand that may result in an increase? I would rephrase it as the department believes that the encounters, the patients that will be seen by ICM and FY26 can be absorbed in the 78,000 encounters that the that the county executive has proposed in the FY 26 budget. I'll just note that staffed recommendation was as that this year was going to end out at around 75,600 encounters. If you 75, yeah. So if you add 1,000 that would put them at 76,700. So that is why I made the recommendation was that I thought the 78,000 was a was end of the year. I was at the end of the year and I was at the end of the year and I was at the end of the year and I was at the end of the year and I was at the end of the year and I was at the end of the year and I was at the end of the year and I was at the end of the year and I was at the end of the year and I was at the end of the year Yes, so I know that at the last time we discussed this, we had taken a vote and I was I was different from my fellow committee members, but wanted to to clarify whatever decisions being made here today that I would still like the packet to reflect my prior request to break out potential tranches of increases per the staff recommendations previously. I appreciate that. So we're not talking about a lot of savings here. It's just 12,751. I concur in principle with the staff recommendation. But I also think to the degree to which we can build a little bit of a cushion because I do think there may be more visits this upcoming year because given all of the changes at the federal level. So even just a slight leeway for lack of a better term, I think is warranted and because the number is so modest, I think the executive's recommendation of $78,000, something I'm comfortable with. Having said that, again, you're doing your job, Ms. Clemens Johnson, and you're doing a heck of a job, doing that job. So I appreciate that, but I think in this instance, I think setting it to the $78,000 probably makes sense. Okay, I will note one thing about the rate change and the increase in the encounters is like, they kind of happen in tandem. So for item 1.2 and I will take your vote, is that the number, if you see the requested versus, versus versus the revised budget, council staff was able to capture savings, because this is where the rate increase happens. So like explaining the Montgomery cares rate is always funky. But so we're increasing the rate and increasing the number of encounters. So now we have increased the rate for the 77, but they are currently funded at 72,000 encounters. So this next line item takes care of those 72,000 to bump those up to the 113. If we did a thousand less, if you could see in the budget chart on page three, my revised one captures that savings of a thousand. So I was able to recommend savings from that. But if we don't, if you, and I'm not saying, I just want to point this out, is that if we fund them at 78,000, we, we cannot take the reduction of the primary care encounters because those would need to happen in tandem. So this whole amount of $903,000, well, not we could, you could also, only I also made a recommendation to reduce the specialty care. So that would be the only thing that you could reduce if we are to sustain the number of encounters at 78,000. Okay. Sorry, it's always a bit weird. No, no, I'm not going to be cared, but you know, we're you know, I should have thought ahead to the 1.2, but I think the same rule applies just giving a little bit more of leeway and threshold given the uncertainty of the upcoming year, I think would be warranted and hopefully minimize the impact for the possibility of the executive having to come back from a supplemental. Okay. And so I would say for item number two, the any reduction other than the FY26 requested budget, any reduction in any of these lines could be considered for specialty care and ICM. My recommendation without changing the rate or the number of encounters requested would be to reduce the specialty care budget request by 74,300. So that would be the only potential savings that could be found in this line. I know. I'd be fine with that. Okay. Yeah. Okay. All right. So that takes care of items one and two. The last item is 1.3. Support for the American Diversity Groups Free Medical Clinic. So the committee, excuse me, briefly discussed this item during the April 21st work session, and committee members requested additional information concerning whether ADG's free medical clinic provided services distinct from those offered by Montgomery Cures clinics. You guys ask for demographic data on current patient served and the clinic location. So DHHS did provide that information. I will say in paragraph two, they really detail the why they are requesting this one time funded item for the American diversity group. The clinic is located in East County off of Plum Orchard Road. And collectively in 2024, they saw 944 patients. This is a breakdown of the specialties, the referrals that were made to specialty providers. And also on page five is a list of the demographics. So this item is considered one time funding. I would think it would be helpful to know from, I think it would be helpful for the committee to know when referrals are made to specialty care are the people uninsured or uninsured or is there a pathway to Montgomery cares if these are uninsured clients. So council staff recommended this as a potential reduction. It was just based on the council president's guidance on affordability that this would be a new contract for similar services available by the department and that there are opportunities for ADG and similar medical clinics in the county to apply for grants. Council member Mink and then would love to hear the department's update and we've got the information here before us but would love to hear in your words that as well but Council Member Mimic. Thank you. Yeah and I'm so glad to have an opportunity to attend so really appreciate the committee adjusting as well and great to have the additional information in front of us. American diversity group is a really critical piece of the healthcare infrastructure serving County, but also serving areas outside East County as well. Hospitals are one of their major, major refers because they are filling in a lot of gaps. And we have a lot of fantastic and really critical healthcare infrastructure that is county-based and through our county partners. But there do still remain some significant gaps as well, and ADG has done an incredible job. And I've seen it firsthand really since coming into office of filling in and addressing some of those gaps in a very cost-effective way. They are open on weekend hours, which is when so many clinics are closed. And so that's one of the reasons that hospitals so often we'll call them to refer patients when somebody really needs to see somebody on that weekend, they can't wait for the Monday. And we don't have very many options at all for folks who are even part of the Montgomery CARES and Care for Kids program. So they do see a number of patients who are already enrolled in Montgomery CARES and in Care for Kids, and it also goes the opposite direction when they have clients who are a fit for those programs. They do assist them with with enrolling in the in the county options and also connecting them to other providers, including our minority health programs have been to events at American diversity group where they have tables that are set up, you know, for the minority health programs to make sure that people are getting connected and are getting FaceTime with each other and helping to build those relationships as well as, you know, to shift services onto into programs that are already county-funded. They are also connecting people to, you know, Medicaid and Medicare and assisting with enrollment there. So the way that it functions, it does make a lot of sense. They're also, they're so low barrier, they take everybody. And so the fact that there is not a cumbersome kind of enrollment process on the front end is another piece of their programming that allows them to be so effective in filling in some of those gaps and then helping to assist people to connection with connections to other programs. And then, and I'll note also that they are seeing with folks who are undocumented and who might may have fears and consider they are, they are seen as a trusted resource for folks at this point. And so they are really, really helping with making sure people are getting that care that that they need at that time and are not overwhelming, for example, emergency rooms also and also with the relationship building piece with our other county funded programs. Language barriers is also a huge, huge piece there. We can see that they are serving many Spanish-speaking people and that they have staff, they have people on site who speak Spanish. They also, there are seven non-English languages that are spoken there on the weekends, you know, Hindi, Urdu, Pashto, Napoli, and having especially in a medical setting, a person there on site who can speak the language as opposed to using say a language line is so, so, so critical for ensuring that that medical care is appropriate and that the clients feel comfortable speaking up about what their needs are and that there's not kind of cross lines in terms of understanding because you could call up a language line. That person is not always going to be so agile with using medical language. And then also, you really have to have somebody there who can look at the client and assess them in person, a health care provider who can see and then see the expression on everybody's face. There are just so many ways in which a language line falls short, but different places, places, but especially in a medical setting. So here we have this clinic that is doing that service, has all of these languages there on site. They do leverage relationships with specialists, with providers who will volunteer time and services, and that is based in a trust and relationship that has been built with Mayor Modi at American Diversity Group is able to leverage those contacts. So again, another example of how cost effective this is. They're spated, the cost of their space getting that covered. So there are so many, so many efficiencies being found here and so many services that are being provided where we really don't have other services to fill in those gaps. And they are also serving people who are outside of the immediate area. So while they're a huge, huge resource for East County where we know we do not have enough healthcare infrastructure and the needs are very, very high. They also are providing every single week in that they're open. They are providing transportation to clients from across the county to their program. Because again, they get these referral calls from hospitals, but also from other places, from council member offices, from schools, from a range of places. And they are wanting to make sure that transportation is not an issue. So transporting people from, you know, Germantown, Gatherersburg, Damascus, parts of Darnstown, and all sorts of places. And they are also providing transportation for folks who are mobility impaired and are not able to get themselves to their, some of their local clinics as well and need urgent assistance or need timely assistance and they are providing that care as well. So this is a critical piece of our health care infrastructure and I ask the committee to ensure that this funding is protected. It belongs here and I understand why it's one time funding also and I obviously I think that down the road that having a piece of this in the county budget makes sense. We have one co with a line in our budget as well, because we recognize the importance of that infrastructure. I think likely that this is something that belongs there too. However, there are a lot of moving pieces, and we want to make sure that we are being efficient with every dollar. The field is changing over time in terms of how much funding is available from the state, how much is obviously federal is another issue. But also from, you know, they do leverage a lot of, you know, private donations and there are businesses who make donations. They have, you know, we've talked to Adventists and so on. They have gotten some funding from Adventists as well. I really appreciate that. I know that their, you know, funding is tight as well, but this is infrastructure for them too. And so what is the as well, but this is infrastructure for them too. And so what is the appropriate amount to have in the operating budget? It's hard to say. And so to have the opportunity to reevaluate, I think makes sense. In the current evaluation of things, I think that what is in front of us is very much reasonable and dollars that are very well spent. And again, I ask the committee to ensure that these dollars remain protected. All them. Thank you. Thank you very much, Councilor Murenke. If I worked at HHS, I would say something along the lines of your hired. That was a very comprehensive explanation. I don't know that HHS is in a position to add to that. And I know you have visited this facility in person. I did have a couple of questions relative to where we go from here because of the one time funding and sort of the general landscape. But Councillor Murloughey, did you have a question or a thought as well? Okay. So here in Councillor Murlough's going to have a question as well. So here's my question. So an excellent case has been made for the need for this to be funded within the FY26 operating budget for all the reasons we've heard and more, and as we've discussed many times in this committee, but especially over the last few months, as the world has changed, any and all opportunities that we have to be able to build bridges for people to feel comfortable coming forward to access services that are provided by government-supported organizations where the government itself is a really wise investment right now. And it's clear from the breakdown and demographic information that whatever ADG is doing to ensure culturally appropriate and welcoming voice is working, which is fabulous, which is fabulous. My question is more relative to our overall public health care infrastructure and system. So we finally got the RV, which is online. We are now about to invest more as we should and it still doesn't go far enough to my friends in the Primary Care Coalition, but we are enhancing the reimbursement rate, which will hopefully add some capacity to our primary care organizations. As we learned during COVID with our food system resilience program, the good news is there are more people entered into this space than sometimes we're totally and completely aware of. And so I'd love to moving forward beyond this year and we'll be talking about this a lot. Better understand exactly how this wonderful organization fits into that system in matrix. And where do you see their work being leveraged and how do you see the referrals among the primary care organizations and clinics working collaboratively and cohesively together. So it's a broader conversation, but just if you can briefly describe for now, where you see ADG's work fitting within that system. Sure, thank you, Council Member Arwin-Oz. And I'm going to be very brief. I'm going to toss it over to my colleagues who are going to really answer those questions. Council Member Ming, thank you. I heard you say trust three times. The ADG is a trusted clinical partner in the community. That trust was built on their response to COVID. And so Council Member Alvin knows there is a way forward and I'll let my colleagues articulate that now. I just want to start off and say thank you again for your advocacy. You saved us a lot of time. I'd also like to say we know one size doesn't fit all and this is certainly a different model than some of the other things that we pursue regularly. But it's because they have a track record of showing what they can do that they can turn out the community, that connection, that education is an opportunity, especially in East County, where we don't have the brick-and-mortar in the private or public sector to provide all these services. And it's similar to what we're trying to do with the dental collaborative. We, I'm hoping that this one-time funding can be thought of as seed money so that they can help to transition towards ongoing things. We've been stressing with them the importance of applying for state and federal grants. There's a lot of work out there that is funded externally that we need help doing and we'd love to work with them on preparing those grants. but they do represent right now a connection to the community, culturally appropriate, and it gives us an opportunity to maintain those connections and get those people into Montgomery Cares, or care for kids, or other places, but so many residents, particularly in East County, are not participating in anything, even if they have insurance, they're not going to the private sector. So that's where we need this additional boost. And actually, I'm glad you referenced the mobile health clinic. Dr. Rogers is going to talk a little bit about how they have been working synergistically with ADG. So that's a great question, Councilmember Elwinos. How does ADG fit into the long-term grand scheme of public health, health care and infrastructure? For a time-sake, I would just point to the recent community health needs assessment and some of the things that we heard from the community, such as limited hours of operation from health care services and council member Mick spoke about the access to care to 80G fields as far as the gap in the community provided services on the weekends and as well as afternoon hours. We also heard about long wait times for health care services from the community. I know for the mobile health clinic standpoint, we have strategic partners with the Montgomery Kids Clinic so that when we see a patient in the community, we're able to refer that patient to a primary care medical home. But they are just a few clinics that we can get a patient in like same day or next day. But I know that when we send a patient over to ADG, especially if we at one of our weekend events, we can get that patient in for a foot for their service pretty much the same day. And so that's been a good strategic partnership for us to have. And so ADG feels that community based healthcare provider role in that the wellness services that they provide provide as well as the linkages from foot patients who may not have a primary care medical home but are in need of a primary care medical home. So ADG can see patients that then refer them over to the Montgomery Kids Clinics which we know they are referring patients to Montgomery Kids Clinics for a specialty care services like endocrinology and other services. And so you know access to Kia we we know in the Montgomery county community and many communities does not always mean that you have you can you can go to a clinic but sometimes it means the provider hours sometimes it means a location and as the executive is committed to Strickland and health care services at East County We believe ADG is a part of that part of that continuum and then can link patients up to clinics like MCC and other clinics That are within the East County community Thank you. I appreciate that I think you know, certainly a really strong case has been made I think my concern more is moving forward. You know, the one time seed funding is great. I've been around a long time as my colleagues. I always talk about. And, you know, understandably this organization is probably going to come back a year from now if history is, it tells us anything. And understandably say they need some assistance for ongoing resources to be able to sustain their effort. I like the concept of seed funding and we'll come back to this conversation for sure over the course of the fiscal year if and when that request is made. But I'll end with this thought and then confirm where I'm at with this personally. As we said last time, there are other primary care clinics doing work that are not receiving Montgomery Care's funding directly. I mentioned the great work of Dr. Esquietta and the very sad news that she's not going to be able to move forward with her work because she did not secure sufficient funding to be able to sustain that work. We just need to have clear set criteria so that there's consistency and ensuring that we're making investments across the board because she also is serving a population that in this case was aging residents that we're not English speaking and providing home services that were critical. And while the numbers weren't significant, the care that she was providing to patients was a hole that wasn't really being filled by anyone else. And I know she was tremendously frustrated that she did not get the support that she felt she needed from the county moving forward. So that's not to say we shouldn't fund organizations like this, who are also doing great work. It just underscores the need for us to cast a wider net. And we've made some investments with the Infrastructure and Administrative Support with the NHHS over over the last couple of years. And I'm hoping that through that support we can do an even better job than when we're doing now. We're doing a good job of really connecting to more of those organizations. So I will support this recommendation for all the reasons that have been stated. But it's something, if and when a request is made to annualize this, we have to talk about that and see where it fits with in the system. That's where I met colleagues, Council Member Sales. Thank you. I too am in the same place. I, you know, have watched how ADG has adapted and responded to our residents' needs all across the county and did have quite a few questions regarding if this one-time funding does happen, you know, would be helpful to better understand the populations that they are serving and how the residents are leaving and the post support that they are receiving, how they're experiencing care in this facility, since this is basically a pilot that we're going to be testing out outside of the normal line of funding. And just thinking about, this is just our recommendation to the full council. If this funding is not approved, where else in East County can our residents find access to care. What other facilities are available? So thank you Councilmember Sales. Yes, we would build into the contract requirements for ADG to complete like patient satisfaction surveys as part of the INCAN some type of evaluation. So we would require that in the contract in East County as far as our safety net health care for the uninsured. We have Muslim Community Center. We also have the Mary Center Operating over in Silver Spring and I believe we also have CCI that operates in that community as well. Those are the ones that come to mind at the top of my head, but Mary's MCC is one of the big ones kind of in that corridor right there. Mobile Mid is actually in East County too. Mobile Mid is well. Okay, all right, thank you. Councilmember Luki? So just to clarify because Currently the county does not fund ADG correct okay, and Is it DHHS position that DHHS wants to create a contract with ADG? The department supports the CES recommended budget of funding ADG which would then require us to enter into a contract with ADHG for FY26. Okay. So the all the numbers that got put in the packet is who they're currently serving. It is not increasing capacity. the numbers that we have there, the funding, let me back that up again. The funding that the county executive placed in the budget that we are considering now, which would be new funding for a contract that does not currently exist, would in fact create capacity to expand their services above the numbers that were in here that they served in 2024. Is that right? That is council's staff's understanding. I think if the department is able it would be good to know how the funding will be utilized like will it pay for medical services? Will it replace other dollars? Right. Will they have more patients? Sean looks like he wants to answer that question. I've seen their proposed budget. And as has been described, they have operated largely off volunteer services of professional medical staff, community support, and this is what they produced, right? They see a lot of people without a lot of money coming through. Their proposal here is to bring on physician, nurse practitioners, and other support staff, not in a full time basis, we're not talking about enough money to do that, but in a capacity to be able to do additional primary care visits and set that up on a regular basis. In addition to the volunteers that they are leveraging and that support. Okay. I would just say ADG has stated that one of the program objectives is to expand the clinic I was an increased the number of patients served by 25%. Okay. Look, I love their work and they work not just in East County as councilmember Mink noted. They leverage every resource they can pull and they not just bring people to East County to their office, but they host events at Faith Base communities up county where they're able to see patients from that area. I have some concerns and Councilmember Al Ranoz touched upon this about sort of, you know, we have ICM that was just coming on as a member of Primary Care Coalition and they had their clinic and, you know, and this is another clinic and are we treating entities in the same way as they seek to expand their reach? And that's something that's been simply because of how things get added on or tacked on or expanded. It's been hard to wrap arms around for this committee. And I think for the council as a whole, certainly when they don't sit through all the HHS committee hearings. And so I do worry about that. Is this a different way of coming in then? We have required of other similarly situated entities who also do great work, right? Because make no mistake, ADG does incredible work, incredible work. And so because of that, I wish that we could flag this onto the reckless for discussion at full council or at least have that noted in the packet because this isn't funding that's already been given. It would be a new set of funding. And you don't currently have a contract, but you would like to make a contract. And I think that's worth a bigger discussion about how to go about the expansion, if that makes sense. Okay. Council member Mc. Thank you. I just wanted to clarify that they have, that they are, they don't have enough money to sustain their operations currently. So this is going to help to bring them up to being able to do that. They actually, for the first time in many, many years, had to cut services down from, so they don't have Sundays running right now and haven't for the last six months, which is a pretty severe impact in terms of their numbers. And they have worked really, really hard every year to have a diverse range of funding sources and grants from many different places. But they just have seen, given the field, the environment as it is, decreases in many places, even places that are still funding them, you know, it's less. And so it has been, you know, just kind of an annual scramble for them every year to try to make sure that they're going to be able to keep up with the demand. And of course demand has continued to increase. But they have managed to do it. We all know Mayor Modi pulls out miracles and he leverages those relationships and all those things but now having watched this process for the last couple of years of it's also it's a lot of time that then is spent by Mayor and other members of the team every year to go after those funds and And that is taking away time that could be also spent on healthcare purposes. And so, well, the county doesn't run this clinic. We can't be there, their whole operating budget or anything like that. I think that's not what he's asking for here. That's not what ADG is asking for. They're for some county support to be part of at least for this year But I guess as as chair when I was noted like something to consider about what this looks like over the long term but to ensure some stability and to make sure that there is not a decrease or reduction in those services They do have a donation that they're hoping to see come through actually in the next month that would get their doors back open for Sunday as well, which a credit to them for the always, you know, trying to pull out those miracles. But it's a very, very tough environment needs are greatly increasing and this funding is really needed to ensure that there is a continuation of the services that have been historically provided here. Councillor Lutkey, as a follow-up. Yeah, so I was going to ask it, you know, because this is like, this is stuff that wasn't in the packet, right? And wasn't before us for thinking through. And I greatly appreciate Council Member McFarbringying this to the table today and for HHS for responding. But these are things that I think need to be examined fleshed out, certainly getting the other information that we asked for last week about the number of people served, the demographics, that was all super helpful. But like what council member Mink is saying is stuff that we need to get fleshed out. Like, is this a service they're currently providing? The county needs them to provide it. It's not going to happen without the funding. That's the critical question that needs to be addressed, particularly given the assignment we were all given, right? Knowing this is a tough year. And this is, quote unquote, new funding, because it isn't a contract that currently exists. But those are critical pieces of information about level of need and the fact that otherwise if it is, you know, that's the landscape that they've been living in in the last six months with reduction of services, then that's something the council needs to know in making this decision. So all good points. I think I'll end where I started in just that was further information that was even more helpful. I do like Council Member Lutke's recommendation to certainly note in the packet as although you know if the committee does proceed with making a recommendation as we would with footnotes and anything that we're recommending, I think we do want to make sure our full council knows that we underscore the fact that it's new funding. But for the reasons that have been stated, HHS and the executive branch are recommending it moving forward. There are going to be, I'm sure, questions about the one-time nature of this. I can think of two colleagues in particular who don't love one-time funding because of, you know, it does ultimately, in many instances, lead to annualized funding. So, but I'm comfortable with moving this recommendation forward with that footnote. Thank you. So moving this recommendation forward, as in no vote today in discussion at full council. No, I think committee recommendation for funding, but acknowledging within the footnote that this is new funding. I think that's how I interested it. Yeah, it was a two to one if you were, because I wanted it broken out to flag as new funding in that way for consideration, given the concerns, of course, that have been raised, but also wanting that extra information because if this is meeting that need and it wouldn't be met otherwise, then that's something our colleagues need to know in the realm of considering something that's a new piece of funding. Staff will note that in the packet. Great. All right. Thank you all very much. Was there anything else Miss Clements Johnson? No, just want to make sure I'm good on the vote so at the bottom of chart number five the increase to the Montgomery Cares re-embracement rate will be as the executive has recommended for the maintenance of Montgomery cares enrollment growth. There was a reduction of 74,300 approved for this line item reducing the specialty care and that there is a vote to the one for the American diversity group with a request for more information and a note to colleagues regarding the discussion that happened today. Yes. Nailed it. Great. All right. Thank you all very much. I don't even remember when our next committee session is, but I'm sure it's in the horizon. Yep. Yep. So thank you all very much. And with that we are adjourned.