Good afternoon. We are now just as the Planning Housing and Parks Committee and only just because we were previously a joint committee of the Public Safety and Planning Housing and Parks. We're here with three items today all related to the Merrill National Capital Park and Planning Commission's budgets and we are going to to efficiently make our way through these budgets with a number of moving parts, and I will welcome the planning board chair and the Department directors of planning and parks and Turn it over to council staff to Walk us through the packet unless we want any introductory remarks from the chair from the directors. So I just will be very brief. So Chair Freetz and committee members, I just thank you for being here today. We're delighted to be here to answer any questions on our budget. But I just want to do no in last June when we started preparing for this budget. I test all departments to look for efficiencies and develop primarily same service budgets because we knew that this was going to be a tough year or two coming up. So I just want to say that our budgets that we presented have those primary efficiencies and same service budgets. So thank you so much. Thank you for that. Thank you for all the work that you do. We're going to try to be efficient, but just know that we certainly appreciate the teams in the Parks Department and the Plane Department and in the Director's Office who work extremely hard every day. And we're going to try our best to make it easier for you to do your job. So look forward to good discussion. Let me turn it over to Miss Dunn to walk us through the items on our agenda. Great. Thank you, good afternoon committee. On the first page of the staff report, you'll just see an executive summary with key issues. I'm not going to focus on that because we are going to delve into all the minute details of the things that need to be before you today. So we're going to start on the second page of the staff report. At the top of the page, you'll see a summary. This is the FY25 approved budget for MNC PPC, which is really two funds that are tax supported, the administration fund and the park fund. And you'll see also in this table the FY26 County Executive Recommended budget and then what the changes are from the recommended by the CE to the FY25 approved. The Council received testimony over those three days of public hearings with numerous speakers in support of the County's park system and some also in support of planning, but we know that parks, I'm sorry, just shines in that public hearing. A lot of people in support of the park and the budget for the park system. So as I just mentioned the budget for MNCPPC it includes tax supported funds, self supporting funds, debt service and reserves. The commission's total FY26 budget request is just over $221 million which includes enterprise operations, property management, debt service, and special revenue funds. The appropriation required to support this total operating budget is $236.5 million. What we're going to focus on today is the FY26 proposed tax supported operating budget. We'll spend the most time on that, but we will cover everything Including debt service, this amounts to $197.4 million. It's an increase of about 14 million or 7.6% over the adopted FY25 tax-supported budget. The CE's recommended budget is about $2 million below the commission's request. For the park fund, his recommended budget is about, that's for the administration fund. The CE's budget is about $2 million below the commission's request. And for the park fund, the CE's budget is about $5.7 million below the commission's request. If you turn to page three, you'll see a very big table. We put this in every staff report each operating budget year because it lays out all the different pieces of the administration fund, the park fund grants, those self-supporting funds I mentioned, internal service funds, special revenue funds, which are tax supported, which are not, and the total appropriation. Because at the end of the day, the council will be approving the total appropriation so that both parks and the administration have opportunity to spend that money. This is just a chance to note at the top page four that by county approval is something that's required for this budget. Montgomery County and Prince George's County Council's must degree on any changes to the Central Administrative Services portion of this budget. That by county meeting right now is scheduled for May 8th. When we get to covering the CAS or Central Administrative Service portions of the budget, just keep in mind, things in that budget don't go on the reconciliation list because that is a process that tends to occur after that by counting meetings. So we either adopt the CAS budget as it is or make a change to it, but it has to be not on a list that would get considered after that May 8th date. The operating budget equity tool analysis is not something that's required of an agency budget. As you can see, this is the parking planning budget. It's quite big. And throughout it, our reference is to how the commission addresses racial equity and social justice in their budgeting processes, in the way they consider how they have to distribute money, new enhancements, all those issues. Multiple, too many for staff to go through and pick everything out to list here, but just wanted to note it's not required as part of the department budgets are, but it is something that the commission does address throughout its budget. With that, I'm going to mention the major changes in FY26. Personnel cost changes are probably the largest at approximately $8.3 million. Non-personnel cost changes between last year and this new budget are close to $4 million at $3.8 million and then funding for new initiatives to support program enhancements, represents a third category and totals approximately $2.4 million. Again, as mentioned earlier, these changes in some total about $14.5 million in our close just to 7.8% over the adopted FY25 budget. And then again on page five you'll see this summary of the changes in the budget broken down into those major categories. Personnel cost changes you can see there a little more detail with compensation manualization, health insurance, compensation marker. You can see non-personal cost changes, which such things as debt service and other major known commitments and then again critical needs or those program enhancements are the third category and they're listed here by the Commissioner's Office, Parks, Planning and CAS. With that we are now going to turn to a little more detail to each of the three funds that make up the park and planning budget. And the first one is the park fund. And parks has requested FY26 tax-supported funding of $142.2 million. This excludes grant, debt service, and reserves. And represents about a 7.5% increase over their FY25 approved budget. However, as we've already been talking about this morning in the joint committee meeting, the executive recommends a 3.2% increase over the FY25 budget, which has been a challenge, particularly covering compensation, and we'll get to that. But on page six of the staff report, you'll see a chart that summarizes what these increases by category are for the park fund. There are compensation adjustments, major known commitments, operating budget impacts of CIP projects is another one. We have a mandate to cover the national pollution discharge elimination system funding. There's funding for new program enhancements. There's debt service on up with general obligation bonds, and then there's been a decrease in the other post-employment benefits category. So in looking at how each of these major categories changes, the first one is compensation. It's an increase of a, it constitutes about 56% of the increase between FY 25 and 26, about half of it represents compensation adjustments that are commitments that should be covered. They are health benefits and pension costs. The other half of it has to do with a compensation marker and for compensation and reclassifications. Questions? Questions We'll continue. I think there are questions about how we're gonna handle that in light of what we have previously talked about against that couple of agents. Expecting to, but why don't we wait until we get to that point in the packet? Okay, thank you. So the next major category, again, major known commitments. This is about 25% of the requested increase, and this includes things like cost for contractual obligations, software maintenance, utility and telecommunications and inflationary adjustments. I list them all at the top of page seven. The third category operating budget impacts. This is about 7% of the increase. And this has to do with really cost associated with operating, maintaining and policing of new and expanded parks. It recognizes that these expenses are part of an approved capital improvements program when those projects go through the CIP budgeting process. Made a mistake in this one here. This increase supports five new full-time career positions and approximately 1.1 work years for seasonal staff. I had listed in the staff report an additional position and a .5 work year. Those were actually covered under the next one, which is the increase needed for the national pollution discharge elimination system. It's only 3.5% of the increase, but again, it's really a requirement that we provide funding for this and any increase in its costs. The next is debt service on general obligation bonds. It's only a .7% increase and then program enhancements at 12.2% increase. And this really this year is done to address what the department identifies as deficiencies in the work program or emerging trends that need to be met to really address park needs and park patrons. Some of these are new staffing positions such as a cultural resource program manager and administrative specialist to support park's active Montgomery, a GIS specialist full-time bilingual outreach specialist, strategic plan and a managed research projects and a hard surface trail construction inspector. And then turning to the next page on staffing. In total there are 18 new positions in this budget. Four of these, not three, but four of these positions have a net zero impact on the budget. Five of these new positions are part of the operating budget impacts, as mentioned on the previous page. And two of these are associated with the National Pollution Discharge Mandate. That leaves seven new positions that are being requested as program enhancements and you'll see those when we go to talk about the potential reductions to meet the CE's budget. The salaryaps for the Department is relatively stable. It had been increased from 9% to 10% in FY 24 budget review. At the second corner of 2025, it was just over 12%. The parks continues to work diligently to fill those empty positions. And so the 10% laps is a perfectly acceptable number for where they're at. Next are the increases. And the planning board approved a fee increase to some of its programs on January of 2025. There's a fee memo that was attached to the staff report. The increases naturally have more of an impact on the enterprise budget than they do on the tax supported budget. However, there are some programs that are operated that might be impacted through this budget, Community Gardens, the Parks Academy series and the Cultural Resource Museums as listed on the staff report. They also want to note that in their budget, the nature and outdoor programming for senior communities includes a $31,000 revenue. That's associated with getting the support it is requesting through staff to program those senior activities for the community. So with that, we now will turn to reductions to meet the executives recommended funding level. As the chair mentioned earlier, this is unique. Typically, the council of the committees are looking at department budgets. They're trying to decide whether what's before them is appropriate, whether there are any reductions that can be made to the county executive's budget. When the commission's budget comes over, typically it is underfunded by the county executive funds in a large amount. And then the commission has to decide where those reductions can be taken. So you'll see typically what they bring to the committee and the council are savings that they can take. They are things they, you know, when they provide and produce this budget, it's late in the fall so they don't have all the information by this time of the year, they have some sense of some end of your money they may have for positions that couldn't get filled. They can spend that to pre-fund certain things. So for each of the park fund and then any administration fund, you'll hear mention of savings and reductions, those we accept. And then you'll hear about tiers of potential reductions that could be restored, put on the reconciliation list, as we move forward, because those to meet the executive's budget, those cuts would have to be made for those reductions. So from what we received from the board is on the on the bottom of page 8 and the top of page nine. The savings and reductions for the park fund total approximately $1.6 million. That leads about 4.1 million that has to be reduced if you are to meet the county executives budget. As we know the very first item on tier one restoration is something we've been talking about this morning. That's the compensation increase. And as you know, you received a letter from the county executive. You expect to send an amendment to cover hopefully that full amount. He said around a million. It is just slightly over a million. So hopefully that covers it. That would leave the remaining items in Tier 1, which if you look back at what major known commitments are in the definition of that and base budget items these really do fall into those categories. These are things that fund utility and contractual costs, inflationary increases and other operating budget impacts. So tier one really does support the base budget for FY26 for the parks department. And what they did very clearly was they placed into Tier 2 for restoration. The things associated with their programming that they think would really support the park system moving forward into 2026. So that's what you have there. I'm going to open up. So here's my suggestion. I think we should deal with tier one and how we're handling that and then get to tier two. I think before we get to tier two, I'm going to ask the parts for them to go through each of those. I do think there is a difference here between tier one and tier two pretty dramatically. Tier one are what wouldn't be considered additions, new enhancements, added anything. This is maintenance of service-based budget, dynamic, and any other department, including the compensation agreements. Tier 2 is a different story. Tier 2 are enhancements. These are new positions, new programs, enhanced programs, expansions. That is different, and I think should be treated differently. There are a number of things here. I'm sure that we would like to do, and everybody would love to see, and I wanna discuss those in detail, but I do think we should take them up separately. I also think that for Tier one, there's two different categories here. There's the compensation piece which may be handled in a certain way that we don't know exactly, but we at least have a memo indicating that something may be happening and the county executive may be suggesting on how to handle presumably we think is gonna to be the million seventy two eight twenty six he said somewhere on a million is was the number he used I'm assuming that's the exact number that he meant and then everything else I would put them both into a similar category of you know maintenance level of service but I do think we could put them into two different buckets, you know, personally. So I will just note that I will hear from colleagues and I do think that that is different than program enhancements and added positions, expansions, etc. So let me turn it over to colleagues if there are any comments or questions. Yeah, so this I agree with the chair So going back to tier one I Mean as you mentioned they can accept it one million but in reality is 3.1 Million dollars if you include the whole tier one is not just one million because you also have that you do the increases that's that's basic that's essential the budget impacts the rich management the contractual increases the last one that always have problems from financing inflation you know I seven the whole thing is to be part of the So it's 3.1 that we need to put back as a base. So is it what's the process? So we tell the county executive no, is no 1 million, is 3.1. So from what I understand, anything that is going to change from what the executive provided as his budget will be an amendment to that budget. He's going to send an amendment that's going to cover the compensation. That's one line. What the Chair is saying is the rest of Tier 1 can be a second amendment or a second recommendation from the committee to restore the rest of Tier 1 because it addresses the base budget needs for FY 26 for the park fund that would still go on a Reconciliation list but it gets noted as necessary to fund the base budget in FY 26 and this is really just a tracking thing It is the fact that we essential staff are tracking every change that gets made to the county executives Proposed or introduced budget. I understood that but I will challenge that because it's all part of the whole base. Like I don't think you should have two pockets. It's one thing. And that memo from like we should be sending in a letter, a SPHB saying that you, it is unacceptable for you to send us $1 million when the reality to really reflect what's happening in those contracts that we're doing is 3.1 million. It should not be part of the reconciliation let's because it's gonna compete with so many other things, but that's my view. I agree with you. So let me make a recommendation. There are two different dynamics here. One is whatever the county executive sends over as a budget amendment, which we can take up or not. He ultimately is going to make a recommendation that we can bake into our expectations or not. We do need to be able to track everything. So my recommendation is going to be this, if it's okay. I agree with you on the letter and I agree. We don't know what he's gonna send over. I think as soon as possible, if there is interest, I would be willing as a committee, if Councilmember Joanne de Vogue agrees with what you're sharing as well. We could send a letter to say, Thank you for your memo yesterday on April 22nd on covering the mistake of the contractual obligations. But the 1,072,826 doesn't cover the other items that are baseline services, including utility increases contractual obligations, cetera, which are going to have an impact on either services or on the ability to meet the contract. Those are not enhancements, those are not additions. And so when you send over your amendment, we would ask that you cover the 3,171,0556, which we can send. Separate from that, that we have to make a recommendation to the full council. And what I would recommend is that we have two categories of the, you know, or we can do one if you want. But to say, we think these are baseline services that should be funded accordingly, but the full council has to take that up and decide in the context of whether it's a reconciliation list and decided at the end or whether it is, you know, accepted in which I think it should be and taken off prior to that. Does that work? Okay. Councillor Modrawanda. So it would be two different, just to like summarize of what I'm suggesting based on what I've heard from Councillor Fonding and Zalas. One would be, providing to the council, a wreckage that we think these are baseline services that should be funded accordingly. We can either do one bucket or two, but I don't think it doesn't need to be more than that from my perspective. And then two, send a letter to the county executive to say, you know, we would like to copy council members that are situationally aware that we think that the 3.171 556 should be included in your budget amendment. Okay, because we Drawer. Yeah, I appreciate it. I think I followed. Yeah, I was looking back at the memo from yesterday. It says approximately one way. So I think the intention is to cover the that. So I do think that's a separate category. And we know that's coming. I think there's going to be agreement on both on both branches of government that that should 100% be included as part of I think Councilman was agreed but yes for committee action. I would agree that that would be restored. I also agree that utility increases and inflationary increases are are part of bed are part of you know things you have to do. The one question I would have I guess to to parks is was there back and forth on these items or was it known to where in OMB is here too, right? Or someone from... I just add quickly, typically when the executive is looking, I think, in making the recommendation for the parking plenty budget, it's at the really high macro level. Doesn't look at all the line items within the budget, but... Yeah, that's been traditionally how it's happened. But I guess the question is, has there been any discussion on those specific items? Do you mean sense the county executive submitted his budget? Yes. No, we've not had back and forth with it. Prior to their problem, the number is probably didn't exist. But prior to, we were of the belief, of the belief we had kind of understood that all county departments and agencies could expect a number that was certainly less than what we were asking for. But we did not have any reason to believe that it would come in as low as it did. That was what was a surprise to us that it did not fund same services, more fully fund compensation. And while we're on the subject of compensations, I just want to make sure we're just completely clear. Our contracts are negotiated separately, and we are currently in negotiation with our unions. We've not yet come to agreements on the contracts, but we follow on what the county executive negotiates with his unions for his employees. So we were surprised that his departments had their compensation funded and our marker, it's really a marker, was not funded. Yeah, and I agree. And like I said, the letter says an error. You know, whether it was or not, at least there's some acknowledgement now. So the, for example, item one, six, contractual increases. Just give some context of what that is. Shoot you do want to address some of the contractual increases? Sure. So these are just basic maintenance line items that we have in our base budget. So for example, we have a portable toilet contract that we need to continue to fund. And there's always escalation costs with that when you're dealing with contracts. I definitely want you to fund that. And that's one example. And then we also have another category in there that's similar, which is inflationary increases. So we're talking about increases for a ball field maintenance, for example. So we won't be able to buy as much seed to keep up with the maintenance in our ball fields and eventually that means they're not gonna be playable, they're gonna be unsafe. So we're really talking about minimal baseline, you know, maintenance standards that we just need to keep up with. We can barely keep up with now. Right. I appreciate that. And I think it's important to just illustrate for the public and for us and that what these things are that they are obviously taking the compensation out because that's paying your employees and there's agreement at least conceptually that that should be funded. So you're really talking about the two million, the two million, two million one, two point one, I guess, ish. That would be the other I have. Correct. There are things so that you can maintain current levels of service. Correct. Is that exactly the matter? Yes, those are all for maintaining current levels of service. And that number, that two point one minus the one, if we get it from the county executive, that number's already been reduced as Pam points it out in her memo because right off the bat, we looked to find whatever savings we could, a big chunk of the savings that we were able to find so as to make that number smaller, was around what 1.5 million dollars, about half of that for example that for example Was pre paying some of our risk management costs were self-insured there were a couple of other things in there We deferred some of our OBI for later in the year So that number that's now presumably we hope we're grateful to ish million is you know significant already reduced If the county executive's amendment comes to is yes, it's already been reduced It's smaller than it would otherwise be yeah, we've been trying to shrink it as much as possible So it's to make it something that can be Swallowed palatable. Yes, also another another important point. So just I am comfortable with putting the conversation back in and saying it's our assumption. And then putting these other things as a tier one restoration saying that we think they're part of, they should be part of the base budget. But obviously we need to track it because it wasn't sent over. And I'd also be comfortable sending the can executive the letter saying that we would like your amendment to include these. And I think if you could flush out, since there has, since back to my first question, since there hasn't been the level of communication on their part, and I know I see at least one OMB person in here, I think it would be helpful if there was communication from you about what these things are, you know, just so they know, even if it's just an email or something that, and that we could even maybe include in our letter to say, these are things that, this is why, and they're obviously hopefully listening to us talk today too, but I just think I'm getting tired of this exercise. It's a reasonable thing in a budget to say I don't want to fund X because I think we can't afford X because of why but like there should just be that level of minimal dialogue. We have impact statements and we can pull something together that would help you we're happy to share that information. Yeah I appreciate it. So I would just suggest that in the letter we we use some illustrative examples about what these are that maybe you can help us with that, as you just did, like, potable, portable toilets. So thank you. Okay, great. So we're gonna include two categories for restoration for, I think, ease of understanding, even though I put them in the same general bucket, just because we've already heard about one from from the county executive and we're asking frankly for the other to be added. I just think it'd be easier for us to follow the balancing ball if we categorize it in that way for the executive branch for parks and for the council for all of us. If the memo or letter excuse me do we think like by the end of the day tomorrow, the PARP's team could work with us. We absolutely think it used something by the end of the day tomorrow. Okay, great. No problem. We could send it over, certainly I think the three of us and our teams can review it very quickly. And Miss Dunn does that seem reasonable to you? Okay, great. So we're going to have a letter. We're going to ask for the 4-3-171556 as part of the budget amendment as a maintenance of service to restore the levels to fully cover the compensation and the contractual obligations inflationary increases, etc. Okay, and then we will include to the council those two numbers broken out into two different buckets and recommend those being included as base budget level funding efforts to maintain current services. Great. Let's move on to tier two. This is an entirely different category, the totally legitimate aspect as Council Vice President Juwanda just noted, which I agree, which is here are new and expanded services, expansions of things that we're doing. There are perfectly good reasons for that, but these should reasonably compete with other priorities within county government, within the parks department, everywhere else to decide, you know, what are the best uses of our limited resources to maximize benefits to residents. So what I would suggest is rather than going through each one and deciding, let's have the parks department go through and explain what each one is. If you have a question on it or want better understanding, then we can ask at each one. But then we can have a discussion of what if any of these we're going to recommend to colleagues on the council to be included on the reconciliation list to compete with other enhancements and new programs, new positions, etc. if that works for everybody. Yeah, absolutely. Shichin, I would be happy to go through these. So just as quickly or solely as you like, but we're just going to do the... Go through each one high level if you can explain where you're at. Very high level. And take a brief pause. I'll just turn to Colle to see if there are any questions. And then we'll keep going. But we're not going to make judgment calls on each one until we get to the end and can have a fuller discussion. And I'm just going to cover, I'm not going to cover the ones that are zero cost, obviously. I'm just going to cover the ones that are program enhancements that require funding through the park fund. So we bring these as we always do to try to be helpful to the committee in terms of, our preference of getting them back, right? From, you know, and they're all good. They're all important to us. We love all our children, but we've got to rank them, right? So that's how they're ranked. But of course, it is entirely up to the committee and the council, which of these, if any, they really are interested in and want to fund. So the first one is the Parks Cleanup Program Assistance. I think that you all hear from us in every semi-annual about the value of our volunteer services and how we leverage volunteers to clean up parks, for example. So last year we received some grant funding from the Montgomery Parks Foundation that allowed us to hire a temporary position because we thought we wanted to pilot what more could we accomplish if we had one other person in our volunteer services team who was managing clean-ups currently we just have one. So we wanted to create another one. And what we found was with this position we we increased the number of cleanups by 50%. And we increased this position focused pretty much exclusively in equity areas and doing cleanups there to make sure that all parts of the county are getting the same sort of love from our volunteers. And the cleanups in the designated equity focus area parks increased by 20%. So we did ask for a program enhancement to permanently fund this position. The second one is, we made a request. And by the way, some of these, they were reduced because we have delayed. If they were to be funded, we delayed for four months when we would hire in order to bring that first year cost down, but we've also shared what the annualized cost would be just in full transparency for the positions. The next one is for Park Facelifts. So we've talked to you before about what we were able to accomplish last year with some funding that we found to do small scale, large impact sort of improvements at parks. You know, we do a lot of, you know, minor new construction and major maintenance, and we do park renovations, but sometimes in between all those things, little things fall through the cracks. An example of that would be signs in our parks. And we were able to replace a number of brown and white park entrance signs. And this made a big made a big difference. So we asked for $200,000 to go into our budget to help fund those sort of small impact, small scale high impact improvements. We asked for a position for a GIS, especially this is actually the second time. Before you go to GIS. I just have a quick questions. Yes, of course, I'll speak to more later, but on the parts face lifts. Yes, you asked for 200,000 just out of curiosity as we have the conversation. Is there a number at which it wouldn't be helpful? Like if if we decided to do any number of pages of 100,000 instead of 200,000 just to see if we get something. Absolutely. Is it any number would be helpful? Any number? Yes. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Any increase we get helps us put out more signs and more bike racks or kiosks or what have you. And I think the original, did we take that number down, shoot you? No, that's that that was what we requested. OK. So yes, an answer to your question. The next position we're requesting is for a GIS specialist. As I said, we also made this ask last year. I wanna see if Shuchi would like to speak to this position because this person would be under Shuchi in Management Services as part of our data team. Yeah. Shuchi Ver, I should have introduced myself earlier, Division Chief of Management Services. Yes, so this would be an additional position. We have a two-person GIS team right now. They're a small and mighty team, but they can't do a lot of their quests that we're getting from our staff. Our usage of GIS has exploded in the last two years, just internally within our staff, because we've been doing such a good job of making the tool available. It's gone from like 24 licenses to almost 200 licenses. So we're supporting a ton more people. What this really means for the public is that we have more and more people doing geospatial analysis and putting out maps on our websites that are helpful to our public. Our latest project that's going to be launched soon, available on our website is a park in trail mat list and the big sort of benefit of this new atlas is that it's going to be almost 100% accessible. There's a federal law right now that requires us by April of 2026 to be digitally accessible. And so GIS and mapping is pretty difficult to make accessible, but we have done a ton of work there. We are just in terms of data analysis, this GIS analysis is so important we're a sprawling park system, we have parks all over the county. And almost any analysis we do is on a park by park basis. So that's what this initiative is about. So our next position that we're requesting is for another public outreach specialist. Again, we, this is, I think, the second time we made this request. We currently have one full time bilingual outreach specialist and this would allow us to hire another one. We've shared with the council some of the really intensive public outreach we've been able to do over the last few years. The Long Branch Parks Initiative is an example. Our skate park study is another example. And so hiring this position would just give us that kind of outreach is very, very very very labor intensive. It's it's it's very intensive work. So just hiring one other person to help the one person who currently does this for all of our parks projects and programs countywide every public meeting every visit to a park that we do to figure out what people need that that's the kind of work that these this team does the next position is for $200,000 I think we had originally requested a little bit more than that for buying our zero-turn electric moors electric moors cost about twice as much and last half as long as gas powered mowers. We have shifted all of our Elect handheld electric equipment equipment is now electric So we're trying to do the same with our larger equipment, but it costs a lot of money and we're not really funded for that extra expenditure So this 200,000 dollars would allow us to buy two zero turn moors in the southern region and two zero turn moors in the northern region, each with their own charging trailer because they also have their own associated equipment. So that's what that funding would be for. We also requested a position as a strategic planner in our park planning division. We get a lot of questions about things like where can we have more bathrooms for example. Tell us about what your priorities are for park renovations, playground replacements, park acquisitions, and that all comes out of our park planning team. In addition, our park recreation and open space plan is work that's done by this team, and we are requesting another position to help us basically better and more intentionally And in a more data- driven way, plan how we use our park resources to make improvements. And then the next position is for a support person for active Montgomery, active Montgomery is the system that we use along with Cough and Rec to permit fields and facilities like Park Activity Buildings for example. And it requires a lot of support. So this would improve our customer service to people who are trying to permit our facilities. The next position is for nature and outdoor programming for our senior community, which we are characterizing is 55 and over, which I don't know how I feel about that, but so, but you know, we all know that by 2040, one in five residents are going to be over the age of 55 and we would really like to keep expanding our programming to these folks to make sure that they are getting out in nature and getting exercise and socializing with each other and our nature centers are a really important part of that programming. And then the next position is, you know, we've got these federal grants, our raised grant, our safe streets for all grants that we secured from the federal government, tens of millions of dollars for our hard surface, trail improvements in the county, and all of that is run through our park development team. And to get that work out the door, we need support. We actually need people to help us manage those projects. And this is someone who would do inspection associated with those kinds of projects for hard surface trails. And that's my quickest of run-throughs of our program enhancements. I hope it was steady, but I am here at your service to answer any and all questions you have about them. We're very excited to talk more about them. It was and I appreciate it. My preference personally would be to focus as much as possible on front facing positions that actually impact residents. I think residents want to see that. I think they are looking for activation of parks. There's a mix in here of that. And so if I were personally prioritizing, I would lean more towards, you know, programmatic front facing, customer facing elements, just to kind of put my cars on the table, but let me open it up to colleagues. And we can have a discussion and see if we can land on a consensus, which we tend to do in this committee on this particular budget year and a year out. Councillor Modrauna. Yeah, I appreciate that. I was going to, I'll fill up us a little bit. I was going to ask Mr. Dunn, what did we have to restore in tier one last year? Do you remember that number? Okay, just I want to have that in my mind. It just for some reason I feel maybe it's just the year, maybe I'm tired today. Just that first, it feels like a big number this year, bigger than normal, but Oh, I'm preventing his face. No, no, no, no. I just meant like the number we had to make up from the, you know, so the contract issue obviously. Oh, you mean adding the restoring a same services budget, right? I just want to know the difference. So someone could find that. But I say that because, you know, I'm just mindful of, again, this all goes on the same list of things and I'm like it's impossible for me to take my chair of education and hat off and Obviously there's other things. I agree that the front facing stuff to these things that we do want to push forward would be most important I do think Active Montgomery. I just flagged. I was gonna bring one up in no particular order. I'd love us to just get a more intuitive system at some point and not have to hire a person to help us figure out a non intuitive system. You're not wrong. Okay, so I'm probably not going to, you know, I just, I don't know why we double down on that. Create a position for something that isn't great. But so, go ahead. I was just going to say, I don't disagree with you that there are issues with the system. We share it with other county agencies. So it's not entirely right now in our control, whether or not we would continue with the system like that. So we're trying to, we have the same conversations and the same concerns. And we're trying to balance that concern, which is very legitimate, along with the customer service concerns that we have, and we get a lot of complaints. So this is kind of our attempt to, you know, and it's partly supported with enterprise funding so it's not all park fund. This is our attempt to try to address that. We understand it feels like an imperfect solution, but when you're on the phone for a really long time trying to sign your kid up for summer camp, you just want it fixed. But your point is fully taken. And who does that now? Where does that go now? Well, we have folks who work on this but we just don't have enough because it is. It's a very intensively, the program needs a lot of, yeah. And the park facelift, as was asked, that's the sign. Yes, those are sort of those. Any amount helps. Yeah any amount helps on that one. Yeah and in terms of I just also want to the the first one which is the volunteer services coordinator for cleanups. I I hope that you would have I think that is a very front facing. Those folks are just engaged with the community and after that what? Yeah. And it leverages on the TV. Yeah, I was saying it leverages the volunteers. Yeah. I think that is a very front facing. Those folks are just engaged with the community and and that what? Yeah, I was saying leverages the volunteers which which is worth a lot more than the value there. That's one of the few where you have tons of volunteers in the parts. If you don't necessarily have in other departments which were very lucky to have, but to be able to have personal and staff to channel them in the right place to leverage their help is important. No, I appreciate that and I was working my way up and I think that I agree. So I would I'll just say I would support that one for sure. Number two two one the assistant delivered's volunteers and then the 55 community one I think is super important. You know, that some of the biggest users of, and you said by 2040, right? Yeah, that it'll be, I think. Yeah. I'll be in there too by then, so. I'm apparently in there now. Yes, but so yes, I would say those two, and then you have an answer to my question my question. Yes, Councillor Marjuano. I think this Nancy Stein is either here or watching because she came in like a champ and noticed that yes, the question was what was restored last year? It was about $1.2 million, but we'll add that compensation was fully funded last year, so to not compare that of it. But it's still about double. So it's still about 2 million instead of 1 million. Well I would say I don't want to. It was 1.2 million. But what I don't know is included in that, were there any other base budget items? My guess would be not. There was another word. This was a conversation last year too, if we go back, it actually covers much of the non-compensation piece. There's about a million of the compensation piece, the 1.2, and there was a number of elements in there that were contractual obligations and OBI and things like that that we can- There were new enhancements, I remember we got the moors- To is but then we also added some It's a lot of the two yeah, yeah, some of which weren't funded either, you know some right yeah, right so be Yeah, just it's a little so it's a little higher than what it was last year was my point that the cuts were a little deeper The cuts were deeper and our request was last so it was kind of yeah, we got hit both ways Yeah, and we've talked about that about that too okay so I would say those would be the two I would add right now so I heard sorry I heard the parks clean up at 2 1 and the 55 plus at 2 8 you know the two with a you would prioritize which I'll just those are two of my top top tops and I know last year that was a top top top top from Council of Refunding Gonzales as well that we both jumped in on. So I just will note that but I just I'm there as well let me hear from Council of Refunding Gonzales and then I'll add anything that I have and we'll see if we can land on a consensus. Yeah, I wrote that and I'm still for two for the electric equipment. The more. census. Yeah, I remember that. And I'm still for two for the electric equipment, the moors. Isn't that like a requirement at this point that you have to have them because they have to be electric? Well, there is the county mandate that we go to, you know, zero fossil fuels by 2035. So we've been steadily working towards that and we can't do it until we electrifying the equipment is a really important piece of that. Should you have to? Yeah. Before 2025? Yeah. Yeah. But they're again, extremely expensive. Twice is expensive. I'm more concerned about the kids on the grass than the, you know, than the equipment that's cutting it. But I would just, I would just prioritize those two. Okay, I hear you. I'm not sure I can fully get on board with the, uh, the mowers ahead of some of the other items that I just, Oh, sorry, oh, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, I thought you meant the two plus that one. Okay, good, good, good. Okay. Um, the two you said, I would also personally suggest that I think the park faceless make a big day. I know you focus on the signs. I don't think the signs are just said, I think the the welcoming nature of having decrepit facilities that you walk up to and ones that look like they're inviting to people, they get activated more. I've seen it in parks that I have walked by in my own community. I know all of us have and for an extremely nominal amount of money, you can make them look safer. And sometimes things that look safer are safer. The more people that utilize a park space, the safer it normally is because there is safety in numbers, one child playing or two children playing in a park versus 25 children playing in a park, 25 children are safer because there's more kids to see something happening to one kid. So I would suggest maybe splitting that up or maybe doing half, saying 100,000 for park facelift or splitting it up, but including that. And then I would be fully on board. Those are the ones that, those three items were the ones that I had flagged as the most important, the most front facing, the ones that would have the biggest impact for the most modest amount of money from my perspective. Yeah, please. Councilor Drone. Yeah, and on the facelift, I had assumed this was more like sidewalk repair where like you have a schedule you're doing it already. This would be an enhancement or is this to have it done at all? This is to have it done at all. So our maintenance teams go out every day and do things like pick up trash and, you know, grass, but a lot of this kind of sort of you know replacing a park bench or a picnic table or painting something that's just looking kind of ratty is not the kind of everyday maintenance that they're engaged in. So then the other kind of work we do as I mentioned is you know minor new construction starting to get into larger projects or whole park renovations. So what happens is that unless something is broken and it's a safety issue there isn't like a way of attacking it unless you're gonna do a much bigger project without this kind of pot of funding in order to kind of target specifically these kinds of small fixes and aren't everyday maintenance and then aren't projects. So there's no other dedicated funding in your budget that would address a park sign. We have funding in our budget, but that goes to our our our our it it supplies, for example, it's the people who make the repairs, but this is a, this is set aside for precisely this kind of work. And so 200,000 across a year, do you have a sense of what the, what the scope is? What would that cover? And what would you be trying to cover. That's a really good question. Let me think on that for a minute. I will take that one. Oh thank you. So we were able to with some I think with some urine funding do some of these facelifts. That's why we thought that if we had the money in our base budget, we could do even more. So we used about $100,000 in our last fiscal year savings and we were able to get to about 10 parks and do these sign replacements, the benches, bike racks, just make things look cleaner. So we got to 10. So I guess you could say you could double that. Okay, that's really helpful context. And we replace 34 signs. Okay, with that into year funding. Yes. So yeah, I think that's great value. I'd be willing to do the two tranches of 100,000. Perfect. All right. And could you provide that in writing to council staffs that we can include in the packet? You know what you did with the 100,000 with end of year money because I think that really added value to the value that we're getting out of this, that if you could make small improvements to a fairly substantial number of parks, the number of families, the number of children, the number of older adults that you're actually reaching with a fairly modest amount of money is very significant. And you certainly have three people up here who are moved by that. So all right, two $100,000 tranches for 2-2, and then 2-1 and 2-8, and that is our recommendation for new programs and enhancements to add to the reclist. And while everything else is important, and we think it would be great if you were able to do it, we want to go all in on these and really advocate strongly and hopefully get them across the finish line and acknowledge that you were cut really deeply and we're pushing back really hard and we're trying to make sure that you can continue to do the good work that you do. Thank you. Great. All right. Well, as I mentioned, we normally can come to a consensus on these and I'm glad that we have a unanimous Committee recommendation and we'll be fighting hard at the full council to get our colleagues to appreciate and understand the importance of these items Great. Thank you. I'm gonna move on through the next part of the budget In the budget you're gonna see that you have information on the property management, enterprise and advanced land acquisition revolving funds. This is here again to provide the information to the committee and to the council so that when the monies come in or there's an appropriation, it's funded through the budget. These don't really have any recommendations for reductions or to replace them on the reconciliation because of the unique funding structure for these funds. But they're in the budget. Staff report, they're on pages 10 and 11. And if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them. But for the most part, again, it's per fun to be put them in here so that you have the information and you are approving those appropriate. With that we're on page 12 of the budget we're looking at the administration fund now. Should I mention it earlier this covers the central administrative services, the commissioners office and the planning department, the total tax supported budget request for the administration fund for FY26 was 47.3 million. This represents a $4.1 million increase or 9.4% over FY 25 adopted budget. The executive recommended a little over 45 million, which is approximately 2 million below the commission's request, and 1.9 million above the FY 25 adopted budget. And there's a table showing this on page 12. For the commissioners office, we'll cover that one first. The requested budget increases about a little less than $1.5 million. This includes an increase of $166,000 primarily to increase some personnel services. You can see that at the bottom of page 12, top of page 13, all the components that make up this increase of about $166,000, sorry, $166,000. As we mentioned earlier because the county executive has funded the administration fund below their request at about 2.1 million. The commissioners office must make a share of the reductions needed to meet that amount, that reduction at 2.1 million. And in this case, you'll see that they have put on their, for their tier one reduction, the administrative specialist, two position that they request to funding for that's converting a part time position into a full time position. Also in the response to the county executive, there was a recommendation related to non-departmental account in the form of compensation. It reduces compensation and reclassification. And then so the request here is to place back on the Tier 1 reconciliation, the compensation increase. You can see that explanation all on page 13 of the staff report. And this gets to be a conversation similar to parks in that compensations are things we do think about as base budget and so would request that the 314.7 thousand dollar compensation increase be placed on the reconciliation list or noted as a base budget for restoration and then whether or not the administrative specialist fee position is included with that or is placed on the reconciliation list separately is up to the committee. Okay, let's hear about that. I just want to understand the 314,000 in compensation. That is in addition to the million, just over a million that we just talked about in parts. Correct. Okay. So we're not to deal with that in a similar way. I think the county executive was focused on what he was hearing in the public testimony. The chair's budget does not come up in public hearings often, understandably from residents, but certainly compensation is the same dynamic of what we just handled. So we may just want to add that to the letter and also treat that the same way on the compensation side. I think the position I want to talk about, which is separate. So, okay, there's consensus on, we want to add to the letter the compensation aspect to the counting executive that we would expect that to be included in the budget amendments that all the compensation for the commission should be included in that. And then included in, as its own line item, so that people understand where it's going but as a base compensation category as maintenance of service obligation different from an enhancement or new position new program. Okay so consensus on that that's unanimous by the committee. Let's talk about the administrative specialist position. Yeah, yeah, already here is here at the planning board. I just, yeah, I really love to talk about that. So just a couple things. In 2019, my office included three administrative positions, a chief of staff, two technical writers, plus the chair and four other commissioners for total of six staff supporting the five commissioners. But by 2023, that had dropped to only two administrative positions, okay? Right, there were always three, right? And then it dropped in 2023, I don't know why, before my time it dropped to two, right? Including the chief of staff and the commissioners. Yet our work is only multiplied, right? We're seeking to bring back that administrative capacity, that extra person to bring us back to what we were prior to 2023, right? To ensure we can properly serve the residents of the counties. And is it reason why that is so far this fiscal year, we've supported over 350 resident applications and stakeholders participating and truly, virtually in our planning board meetings. We still hold in person and virtually, right? And we distributed and the distribution of about 1,000 pieces of correspondence supported almost 700 individuals to testify before the board and respond to 400 specific requests for information. We're struggling to keep up with that demand, right? We're all so far that we were doing more than we did all of last year. So what we're asking for is this additional person to help with all of our administrative demands and given their more than there were before, you know, they're increasing every year. So that's why we are asking for this additional position. It was not more than what anyone had before. We even went back to 2014 and they also had for administrative staff positions, okay it. Okay. So positions were eliminated. They haven't restored. You're trying to get back to position previously, including this administrative position. Let me open up to colleagues. See if there are any questions or comments on that one. No colleagues here are jumping at the opportunity to talk about this one, but let me. Sure, let me follow the sword. Yeah, I appreciate it. I just. It's hard for me to justify that in the context we're in right now. I'm not saying there's not need. There is of course need and you've articulated it well. realizing this is going to go on list, that 100,000 is going to compete with any other 100,000. It's going to be seen as a park's item or a planning, park and planning item. So I just, I don't think we should move forward at this point. I know you'd leverage in the conversation we've had offline that you leverage probably more than they'd like, parking planning staff to help with things. And so yeah, I just don't think we should add it at this point. Councilor Fungansol. You said it so well. I had this conversation with for complaining you know how I feel I'm not gonna say here. I don't think we'll survive this budget and I will not. I mean even if we say yes and we added it's not gonna survive. I don't believe it and I just don't see that as a top priority for me with everything going on. So yeah, I appreciate it. I don't think we're saying no, not never. Or not ever. I think we're saying no, not now. I'm a little uncomfortable twofold. One, I want to be able to go to bat and fight really hard as a committee for everything that we have in the Park and Planning Budget given the magnitude of the cuts that are before us and the huge needs that we have and a very challenging budget cycle and I just I'm not sure that's one where we have full-throwed advocacy that we're gonna get from the committee and I just would rather us be able to with a unified voice to be able to fight hard for what we have and I'd be a little concerned although I don't think it would make it through and I think it's a little disingenuous if we put it on and aren't really fighting for it as as council and funding Gonzales said and I wouldn't want the 55 plus position or the coordinator of volunteers in our parks and to not get funded at the expense of this. And I think realistically we're going to have to fight hard to get those. So I appreciate it. I think we're in agreement on that. I appreciate what you're saying. I just wanted to be clear that this is not, we're not asking for something that we didn't, that the board didn't have before and that I just went to know that we're working very, very hard for this constituents of this county. And just when, just put on record, it's not an additional position, wanting more and more, but it's position to get us to where we feel we can deliver the services needed. But I understand where you're here. We hear you, I hear you. But it's not one that we're able to fight in a full-throated unanimous way for as a committee and we're committing to that and I hope you and the whole team apart in planning here that because this committee wants to fight for you. And that's just one we're not in a position this year at this moment given the magnitude, the challenges that we're facing and all the needs that we have to fight for that one right here. I understand. Appreciate it. OK. Let's continue. OK. Great. Thank you. We're going to move into now the Planning Department's portion of the Administration Fund. You're going to see at the top of page 14. Currently the Planning Department is staffed and managed across 10 different divisions. Their budget, the budget resolution is required for them to show their budget across these different divisions. A summary of the 25 adopted and 26 requested budgets are listed at the top of the page there. But after receipt of the proposed FY26 operating budget, the planning board has now approved a reorganization of staff into new divisions and a crosswalk of funding from the old structure to the new is provided for you at the bottom of page 14. So any changes that will be made through this budget process are going to be attributed to this new breakdown at the bottom of page 14 on the right-hand side. Do you have any questions? Okay. Thanks, sir. I turn to page 15. You'll see the similar to what we've done for Parks and for the commissioners office. We have the Plenty of Departments, changes from FY25 to 26, changes that are related to base budget changes. Again, these are salary and benefits, inflationary increases, major known commitments, and then new initiatives and new funding, both broken down as one time funding and ongoing funding requests. And we'll take these up in turn. So according to this, the increases to the base budget include salary benefits, inflationary, and charge back adjustments and other major known commitments. Major known commitments make up more than half of this increase, and they include the things that are listed at the top of page 16 of the staff report. They're an update to the GIS base map, a project docs cloud migration, an increase in funding for the travel demand model maintenance, and an increase in funding for the master plan monitoring. In addition, professional service funding is listed in a chart within the budget. And of note, there was funding for a request for $16,000 of ongoing funding related to the planning academy. Sure recall last year the council approved $199,700 to fund the planning academy and it was planning's intention last year to have a conversation that included 16,000 of this which would need to be provided annually to support the program. However, the council didn't discuss this last year in FY 25. So we kind of need the committee's nod that there will be this ongoing commitment to support the planning academy that would be $16,000 worth. It doesn't change the bottom line in this budget given the way things were drafted here. Okay. Great. Great. And then third, staff requested any other additional increases to ongoing contracts and there were two. There's a $46,700 increase in this budget for place making efforts. This would increase the current funding from $83,000 to $130,000. The others a $20,000 increased to support historic designations, which would double its current funding of $20,000. Any questions? No questions. OK. Now we'll turn to new initiatives. One-time funding. There's a proposal for four new one-time initiatives or studies, housing needs assessment and preference study, analysis of shaping corridor focused growth, retail market analysis, and development of green streets guidelines. In total, these are $620,000 worth of professional service funding, but they were placed last year's one-time funding of $418,700 for a net increase of $200,000, and $200,000, $200,000, $300.00. In addition, there is new ongoing funding, $300,000 for a master plan support. This is important to notice that typically in the past, this has been included in the other category. There's one time funding for each new master plan that gets added to the work program when we do an operating budget. So the change here is going from one time funding for master plans to just a lump sum of ongoing master plan funding. And so it's now included in this category. The other major change for new ongoing funding is $415,000 plus for new positions. Three new positions that are funded with that money, one is a converted position. And with that, that's also summarized for you under the salary and the laps. We can turn to the master plan schedule. We'll go through that before we talk about how to meet the CES budget. So, the top of page 17, what you'll see below the planning has a proposed list to their work program. We have two master plans, the Burton'sville Employment Area Minor Master Plan Amendment, and the Kensington Sector Plan Amendment, and the studies many of which we've already mentioned because they were under the funding initiatives listed on the previous page. Then also on this page you'll see the schedule of when those master plans, both current proposed, are scheduled to be delivered to the council. If there's any adjustment in timing, they either planning wants to make or the committee or council wants to make, we should note it at this time so we can update that work program chart when it goes into the resolution. And then following that on the next page are the deliverables for studies that were also part of the work program chart that was provided by the Planning Department. Does there's any questions? Councilor Drona. So vice president, yeah, thank you. Just on the, we've talked about these master plans, those the's film, Kensington's Sector, that makes sense. Remind me about what the location or atlas update is again. Sure, that was for the record Jason Sarter already planning director. So the location or atlas is kind of the precursor to the master plan of historic preservation. And so we have a number, it's in about 126, I think, sites that are identified on the location of Atlas as potentially historic and I think 13 districts on the Atlas. Also designated as historic however, they're not protected and designated on the master plan for historic preservation. Some of those sites have been on there for nearly 50 years. And so what we're trying to do now is saying it's kind of like in some ways it's like a purgatory of designation. And we're saying we need to try to move these along. If they're on there, they can't be demolished. But if there is an interest in demolishing and rebuilding on a site, then it has to be brought before the board and then the council to determine whether or not it should be designated. So we're saying let's preemptively try to move some of these things along. That's actually something we added to our work program last year for no cost. It's something that we are continuing to do on our, as we can, it'll probably take about three to five years with our, I always know cost. So see with that. That's just you just saying you want to continue doing working through the list. OK, so I'm just going to kind of look up at me. So I'm assuming that's worth you doing. OK, sure. If she's getting any looks like I've said anything wrong, Please invite them forward. I think I should have taken a picture. Okay, thank you. That was the question I had. Thank you. Let's continue. Great. Thank you. We are on page 18. And so now we're at the place where we will talk about the reductions to meet the executive and funding level for the planning department's portion of the budget. To meet the executive's budget, the planning must reduce their request by $862,509. Again, the department has identified savings and reductions, things we take because they can either reduce the scope of a project or pre-pay something. And the remaining of that is broken into two tiers of reductions that hopefully get either restored or placed on the Reconciliation list and I will turn it back to you for questions and planning Okay, any questions before we turn it over to planning All right Great, I'll thank you so We took a little bit of a different approach with this and we were in a different situation than parks was. So the county executive's budget, the impact that it has for us, essentially is a 2.5% increase. If you take a look at our base budget, the base budget increase was a 2.3% increase. So the 2.5% just barely covers our base. And so everything that we've offered up here are things that are new initiatives, whether they're new ongoing initiatives or new one-time initiatives. And so as we went through and we tried to identify our $862,509 in reductions to meet the county executive's budget, The first thing you see that we reduce was that master plan support. We were requesting $300,000. We reduced that by about a third. The impact of that obviously is that it limits the amount that we can put into the work that we're doing on master plans, which may delay some of them, but we want to at least start the process of getting the funding in this new kind of format. The other two, well, we have also offered up portions of the three positions. So we completely offered up the climate position and the organizational development administrative specialist positions as non-recommended reductions. We also offered up as a non-recommended reduction a four-month lapse in the place-making coordinate position. So we wanted to maintain that knowing the importance of place-making at this time and in knowing that it's a major and significant component of the work that we do in the planning department, and we need someone who's kind of charged with organizing and kind of running that effort for us. The other things that we offered up was a reduction cutting in half the housing needs assessment and preferences survey study. So this is actually kind of two pieces. The housing needs assessment was something we did in 2017, 2018. Well, sorry, it was 2020 with in advance of the drive. And so this would be an update of that. A lot has changed. It would give us an opportunity to understand how our housing supply meets the demand that we have and the needs that we have based on different types of housing, different price points for different populations as well. That is something that we believe that we have based on different types of housing, different price points for different populations as well. That is something that we believe that we can do in-house. It's just going to take us longer to be able to do that. And so we offered up $100,000 reduction there to be for us to take that on. What we can't do in-house really is the preferences survey part of that, which would be a statistically valid survey of residents across the county to understand their interest, their desires in types of housing, whether it's owner occupied renter. if they want, you know, single family homes, townhouses, missing middle types of homes, duplexes, multi-family. To really get a good sense of what the interest is in our community. And so that was something that we were trying to maintain the funding for. And then the other, as Ms. Dunn mentioned, that there are some that we offered up as pure reductions in those for the retail market analysis. We believe we can fund that through money that we have for year end this year and then the shaping corridor focus growth for something we were going to merge in with our Georgia Avenue corridor plan. In terms of our desired restoration of those, our first year would be to fully fund the master plan support mine. And as part of that first tier, we were also asking for restoration of eight months of funding for the two additional positions. So as part of our, what we offered up as a reduction, we offered up eight, four months of the place making position, but we wanted to maintain eight months of that so that we can get that position. The others we had offered up completely. It's part of our first tier of restoration. We were asking for eight months of those two positions back so that we can get those positions and at least for the eight months for this first year. And that I'll leave it there. We can go into more detail. Essentially the second tier is restoration of everything else, than the things that we've completely for for gone. Okay. Any... detail essentially the the second-year restoration of everything else other than the things that we've completely for for gone. Okay any questions comments colleagues because we're fighting ourselves. We're gonna start shopping things all right okay so I will say yes I was you're only chopping what we're adding so I don't want it to seem we got to be careful of our language. Oh, no, I'm keeping it real We're full full full full-throwed support whenever we decide to do here customer funding is always I would say I I completely agree with that you're one that should be part of the reconciliation of this no? No. OK. At least the master plan support, it's a mast. I will say that one. OK, if I had to pick one, that would be that one. And I will challenge you and say that under tier two, I think that the housing needs assessment is very critical. I honestly, I believe so. I will put that under under 201 but that's just my view. I think we need to update what the trend is and what people are looking for. I think that's important information especially if you add in a the whole discussion about creating more housing for people of all abilities. You know I don don't think we do an agreed job as a county. And I like seeing that and seeing the need of creating more housing for people with disabilities, especially understanding that our senior population is increasing. So looking at so I'm seeing this as with that perspective. And I think the housing is the Assessment will fall into that. So tier one, number one. And then, and again, under tier two, I will place the House and the Assessment up under tier one and add it. That's it. For you, that's it. Could I just ask for clarification? So the housing needs assessment appears to me to be reduced in both the alternative one and alternative two. Could you just clarify the difference on that? I just because it was specifically cited just so we understand. Oh, sorry. In a non-recommended cuts, it's listed as 100,000. 100,000 is the cut or the cost. So the cost for the total project was 200,000. That's what I thought. And a hundred and a half. And a hundred and a half. And a hundred was for the preferences survey. So what we had offered as a non-recommended reduction was the 100,000 for the needs assessment, maintaining the funded. That's that. Yeah, yeah. Right, so the 100,000 that you see under the tier would be taking them back to the 200,000 that was initially in the budget as it was sent over. But as they've just explained, they retained 100,000. That piece is to really go for the survey. The other 100 that they've cut by is really where they now can expect staff to take on that workload. It would slightly delay it as the director here has mentioned, but it would still allow them to do it in house. So that's sort of the difference. Is that clear? Yes. Okay. So, well, I would just make one other comment for you. So you had, on to your one, the delay in hiring these two positions. And I'll turn it to that is because that provides that commits the county and the council to further funding those positions from now on, at almost a half a million dollars, at $400,000 annually. An alternative would be just a fully fund, one of, well not fully fund, but fund the place making coordinator position that they put as their highest priority of their three new positions at eight months. Yeah, so I think there's a couple different choices. I'll just throw out that we can consider and I want to hear from customer Joanda also. These are just options. They're not, we don't have to, you know, it's not a, you get what you get and you don't get upset. Scenario for the parents in the room or that I use for my visas and nephews. You can, you know, we can, we can pick and choose here. If the goal is to fully fund the housing needs assessment, you could do alternative two and add in the funding for the housing needs assessment for that cut. I mean, that would be a one time expense that wouldn't add to the ongoing, but it would address that issue. So I would just put that out there. That would be another alternative that would have an upfront cost, but wouldn't have the same ongoing, you know, funding new positions aspect to it. So I would just put that as just something for us to think about. I don't even know where I'm going to land exactly, but I just, I don't want us to get too rigid here and to, we have to pick among one of these options. Mistun has come up with another alternative saying don't delay two positions to encumber us to the full annualized costs of both positions in the out years, which is a significant ongoing cost. That's the biggest difference here between alternative one and alternative two is the 415,431 additional ongoing costs, opposed to 133, 957. That's a big difference. So I just, you know, we'll put that out there as well. So I think we have a few different alternatives that we can think through. Council vice president, Juana. Just to go back to the point you made the thing that was happening that will continue to happen. That was the housing needs assessment that you're doing in-house or that's going to happen and just happen slower. Exactly. Just want to understand that. So so I think if you think you know we're glad we're not in a similar situation as parks what was recommended covers the base the base which is great so we're in a different context here. Yep. This is all this is all gravy or sprinkles or you know know, but other things that you want to do to expand service or speed up or. I think people like sprinkles. Yes, sprinkles are good. Yes, sprinkles. So the master plan support, I'm assuming that's contractual like consultant services. Yes, it would be a work. In some cases it's doing some additional analyses that we do for master plans. A lot of them tend to be transportation ones. We've done ones that have like parking analyses, some real estate analyses. We've done it. We use that for ensuring that our outreach and engagement efforts for a master plan are appropriate for the area as well as sufficient in terms of the amount that we do. It's translation services, it's other different events and things that will do related to master. And that's your number one priority. Certainly, yeah, establishing that. And yeah, and just maybe for a little clarification, you know, that what we've sent as our non-recommended reductions would not include the two positions, the climate and the organizational development specialists. It would maintain funding, the eight months of funding for the place-making position. That tier one of restorations would restore eight months of funding for those two other positions, was what we were asking for. And yes, and it would commit to ongoing for then all three of the positions. Yeah. So what is so in the current budget, you've already got the one position in what we've not reduced. And you've not what you've not reduced. Yes. We do have the one place making position that would be the ongoing, which is, uh, that's important to understand. Right. Yeah. So I wanted to make sure this was that was clear. We appreciate that. Yeah. And the the hunt. What is the ongoing cost of the master plan support? That would be $300,000. That's what you have. Yeah. Essentially that would be the ongoing when we look back at how much we tend to spend on our master plans on an annual basis. That is pretty consistent with where we are today. Yeah. So that's over. So you spent around that. That's what you, what's the extra, what's the plus up? That's just what you're spending. You're just saying we need that because that's what we're spending. That's what we do today. So in the, so for example, in our FY25 budget, you approved $155,000 for the Georgia Avenue corridor plan. That was one time funding for the Georgia Avenue corridor plan and that goes away. So what this would do is essentially create, you know, the $300,000 on an intangual basis. Well, it would, because the $155 for Georgia Avenue goes away, it doesn't exist in FY add so this was a conversation. I just want to give context because we talked about last year a little bit Just remind us of it. I know we're all having a little bit of deja vu on on some of these budgets so one of the things that I have raised last year and that we had discussed as a committee Was this issue where we were funding master plan by master plan item by item, and we were treating them as if it was new work. But the idea is if it's a no enhancements type of budget, a limited enhancement type of budget, the core function of maintaining the work that the planning department does, which by nature, when one master plan ends, another begins. That's the nature of the work plan that we've asked them to do. It's not treated in the same way in their budget. And so they essentially have changed the way that it's here, as opposed to saying, this is a project-based budget item. This is master plan support, which is a core function of what we do. It's on a new program, per se, but each master plan is a different master plan that has different support. So I just want to, yeah, it would be like DGS, which we took up in government operations earlier today, has contractual services or office of labor relations. They have their contractual support for collective bargaining. Those are entered into on each bargaining negotiation, but it's not a new function. It's the same function. It just happens to be a different contract. So I just want to give the content. That was the content. That is a change from how we received it in previous years. And it was based on the feedback that essentially we gave to them. I just want to get that. No, I appreciate that and I think another part of that discussion has been that I've raised before is just our reliance on consultants versus in-house versus reliance on consultants. And you know there's a balance to be struck there, there's expertise, you've described some of the factors. I will say that there are, you know, these two plans for this year are smaller plans. And so, you know, one of the, I do agree with the shift to like making a yearly pot, not making it master plan by master plan, but maybe we can ramp our way up. Maybe we don't do the whole 300,000, but we do some portion of it. And then we can come back at another year. Does that make the understand what I'm saying? I hear what you're saying. And I would counter that it doesn't necessarily mean that they're less significant or involved efforts in terms of the engagement that we want to do and the issues that are involved. And so in Burton's Ville, we're probably going to do some scenario planning to try to understand the recommendations that were in the Fairland Plan from 1997, you know, that haven't been realized, you know, what are some different scenarios and just doing, preparing those and doing the analysis on those and, you know, it costs money. In Kensington, we have a lot of historic resources that we are looking to kind of weave into the recommendation to come out of this plan. And so that kind of has a certain level of sensitivity that has, well, raised some issues. And I completely understand your point, and we've heard it from others. Council Member Fannie Gonzalez has also raised concerns in the past about the amount of consultant services. And I want to highlight, there's a good opportunity for me to do this, and we've talked about this before, but we've talked about former staffing levels levels. In 2010, the planning department had 182 positions. We today are 29 positions below that, but we are expected and asked to do a lot more than we probably were doing in 2010. If we had more staff, there's some of these things we wouldn't need consultant services for. Some things we would still need. We're not going to hire 15 people to go door to door for a master plan that we might do once a year. But there are some of these things that are ongoing things that if we had the staff we wouldn't need the consultant. I appreciate that. And just so I'm clear the requested increase was 300,000, but the tier one restoration is 96,000. So that means you already would be taking 200,000, 200,000, oh yeah. We're not talking about, you're not gonna have this bucket of money, you will. It's just whether you have 300,000 or 200,000. Right, to meet the county executives budget, we reduce that almost by a third, and that would have implications in terms of time enough when we start the master plans and well we're able to, you know, got it. Okay, but that's a remainder number one priority. Yes. Okay, so I would suggest, my, what I would say is that we just include that. Yeah. I, you know, give it the best shot. I think that's the core function of what you do and what people expect you to do. Many alternative to or just trying to understand. Yeah, that's a great question. I don't, whatever alternative, I'm looking at the sheet. Okay, I'm looking at the actual, sorry. Let me go to the, Are you on 20 or? I'm in the, I'm in the, I think alternative three, isn't it? It's, it may not even be on this page. Let's just not look at the table. Yeah that's what I stopped doing. I stopped. It's fine. I just want to make sure I'm understanding just just restore the just the master plan support. We're ignoring the table on kitchen. Yeah and you've already got the one position. Alternative to the net function is 96,383. That's why I added NEST. So I just want, because that's after the puts and takes of the reductions that you've taken and the master plan support, the delaying the hiring and the place making coordinator. I don't want to say I don't want to annualize any. Don't annualize the place made in coordinator. Yeah. So we're out on the place made in coordinator. I think the question would be the housing needs assessment that council member finds out. So no positions. No new positions is what you're saying. Yeah, I'm saying no new positions. That's what I'm saying. Other than the one that you've already got in that was included. included. So that's effectively alternative three which is a hundred thousand dollars on the reconciliation list and no ongoing commitments. That's my suggestion. Okay, I mean, I did want to, I won't, you're welcome. Sure, can you just explain this because in alternative two, there's 96,383. I may have made a mistake, and maybe that's why I asked you to stop. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I think there isn't a mistake. Yeah, let's not look. What we need to do is figure out where the committee is with what they want to put on the reconciliation. We were hearing master plan support. We need to get clarity. I want to ask Claire. We're not going to fund. I think we're going to move away from funding new positions. We want to support your top priority, which is master plan support. And there is a question that I think we need to reconcile on the housing needs assessment. I just want to hear from you of what that leaves out and what issues we've just created. All right, well, and just to clarify, our top priority was getting that position. That's why we didn't offer it up completely. We maintained eight months of funding for that position in our, right? So what we offered up was a four month lapse in that position. And then the placement, the place making coordinator. So when I was asked about what our top priority was, I was up the things that were on our non-recommended reduction list. Like if we could forego the four months of that position, that's fine. I'm sorry. And part of that's my fault. I should have paused before we started this and said the decision the committee needs to make before getting into talking about these reductions is whether you are on board with these three new positions because the way in which planning has structured their reductions assumed that the committee approves these three positions and in particular approves the place making position because it only included reducing its salary by four months rather than like the position is approved not approved it goes on the list. So I'm sorry that it's cost to part of this confusion part of that's my fault part of it Just what's the annualized cost of that position that's your height? 133,000 about I think what just under 134 Okay, so for me. I'm in the kind of either or category. I I don't if you're saying if the map, if you wanted to the master plan support above the at the 300,000 level, or do you want to do the the person? That's what I would ask. Sure. So yeah, our preference would be to get the position, even if that comes at the expense of the master plan support, that by by a third, you know know, it was the 93,000 that's why we put the 93,000 on our reduction list But maintain the position for the eight months in the interest of doing what we've been Successful and doing up to this point of trying to reach a consensus. Could I make a suggestion recommendation? In the spirit of life where I think all of us are of we want to give some Deference to you to say what your top priority is and to be able to Advocate for it recognizing that they're competing dynamics and we're not going to be able to fund everything. So there's consensus on that. We got to figure out what that means. If we take you at your wanting the place making coordinators your top priority, If we make that a six month lapse instead of a four month lapse number one. Number two if we do the master plan you had it at 300,000 yeah that was our request yeah if we lower that to 200,000 Well, they're at 204 now, but you took them lower than I was. Pardon? So I think they're... Their reduction was only 96,000. Yeah, just just right. There's a third part. Sorry. And the third part would be to add back in part of the housing needs assessment. I'm trying to I'm trying to find the balance of what everybody has said their priorities are and what the department, that's a one time cost. What the department has said and balance the ongoing with the one time, which is something that I know we're all sensitive to. And the question on the housing needs assessment is, you've cut it from 200 to 100. Do you need all 100 back with 75,000 back with 50 that look is there a point at which it doesn't really mean anything to fund it? Yeah, I think that if we had less than that full 100 back what we would do is we would do a certain portion of it ourselves, take a more of it than the consultant who would help us with it would be there to supplement our work. With whatever we were able to pull them out. So if it was less than the hundred thousand back that we make it work. How much are we talking about here in a 50K? If we had 50, if we were trying to balance all of this, if we did two, I mean, just would this seem, you tell me if there's a different way to arrange this that would better reflect what you would consider to be department priorities. Sure. And then we're going to have to decide. I'm just putting this out there to colleagues and I'm trying to take in what colleagues are saying. But if 200,000 master plan support, which would be an ongoing item that we would keep, 50,000 for the housing needs assessment that would have to be supplemented with in-house staffinghouse staffing time, you know, et cetera, you know restored back from the hundred thousand that was you know was was was reduced and then the lapse of the place-making coordinator planter three at a six-month lapse as opposed to a four-month lapse which would save another 20 adding an additional two months of lapse. Right. You add another two months of lapse that should add 22,326 dollars of savings by my back of the napkin, I think, exact math. Yes. So does that with that have a flex what your priorities would be within the framework of what what we're talking about. Yes. So, does that reflect what your priorities would be within the framework of what we're talking about? Yeah, certainly. I mean, a big priority is getting that position, even if it means that we have to wait two more months before we can fill it. The knowledge that we have the position is good. And, you know, with the master plan support, it'll, in fact, the timing of when we start some of the master plans and then getting that the additional $50,000. And I just want to understand, is it the committee's recommendation that these be included or that certain parts of all of these additions are put on a reconciliation list? Well, these will all have to be on the reconciliation list. Okay. New program enhancements, etc. So Okay. Yep. Oh, I'm confident. So yeah, I just think yeah, yeah, and that is a working consideration, right? Like you have three items, right? You know, you have there, there might need to be some communication from your side where if you only got to, yeah just you know you may get all three, but you might not this is something to think about So I just want to make I get a little clarity on the master plan support piece of this what's currently on the Reconciliation is 96 thousand dollars. It's Ensuring that they have in their budget Over 200,000 currently from master plan support So maybe that wouldn't be an item, right? So that would be... So we just take off the request for the additional 96,000 and leave them at 204,000 that's already in the budget that we're not really considering at this moment. OK. OK. And then we have the placemaker position. We would be adding two months of lapse to that and then the 50,000 for the housing needs assessment. It's actually a very small ask. Yeah it's a very small ask and I think this committee can fight hard for it right okay that sound good to you. Yes so we have two items on the reconciliation list because one would be under the county executives recommended budget the six month lapse position and the 50,000 for the housing needs assessment. Okay, all right. Thank you colleagues. Thank you for working with us and this is an iterative process always I think we landed in a good place on that okay I think we have clarity on that and no letter required on this one. We're thankful for okay Right we are moving forward on page 20 of the staff report We're now going to cover the central administrative services portion of the commission's budget and And the Central Administrative Services, as you know, it consists of several departments and units that provide corporate administrative governance and support for the agency as a whole, both for Montgomery County and Prince George's County. The Montgomery County portion of the proposed CAS budget after chargebacks is about $13.6 million. This is an increase of almost $700,000 or 5.3% over the FY 25 adjusted adopted budget Each year CS allocate recalculates sorry the allocation of costs between the two counties based on cost drivers and labor distribution for FY 26 The allocation of costs is such that approximately 45.6% is to Montgomery County and 54.4% is distributed to Prince George's County. The Total Montgomery County portion of CAS Work Years is proposed to be 73.65 work years, which is an increase of 2.4 work years from FY25. There's a table. The middle of page 21 that shows you by division how the CAS budget is is broken down for the MacGermite County portion between FY25 and 26. Again, the by-counting meeting will occur on May 8th and the council has to complete its review of other departments and budgets. It's probably not occurred by then. However, it won't be possible to revisit the CIS portion of this MNCPPC budget after May 8th. To meet the CES recommended budget, CAS's portion of the reduction is $388,442 and CAS similar to every other portion of the commission has identified savings and reductions and then also two tiers of non-recommended reductions to meet that. The savings and reductions total a little over $42,000. The remaining $340, practically $46,000 has been split into two tiers. This is on page 22, 21 and 22 of the staff report. Initially, the council staff in looking at this noted that the reductions in delays, that many of the Tier 1 proposed reductions were in the form of delayed hiring and suggested that the committee support taking the Tier 1 and Tier 2 reductions. However, since that time I've had a conversation with the chair. It was my misunderstanding, the three positions, the executive director hiring, the administrative assistant hiring, the payroll manager hiring, all those first three, tier one, AB&C, are current positions that they were simply going to push out the hiring for to meet the county executive's recommended budget, which is obviously a difficulty if you're waiting to hire people this long, and they are open positions and they're funded positions. I had interpreted them as new positions, having been working with the planning budget before looking at this one, my mistake. The only new position in their tier one reductions is the hiring for the senior auditor. And so with that, I, Councillor Staff would recommend the committee support, actually, at least considering retaining some of those, we're storing, replacing on the, well, you'd have to restore. So this is the one that's a little bit of an odd, animal compared to what we've just been talking about. You can't put anything on the reconciliation list for CIS because we don't have an opportunity to come back There is no reconciliation list for this we negotiate with Prince George's County on this we have our by county meeting Ultimately, this is a signal to essentially the council president You know we signal to the Council the council then gives our signal to the council president and the council president negotiate with the chair of Brinchorges County and ultimately we have to come to an agreement before we have the by-county conversation on that. So we do have to figure out where we're going to land on this. Question on the six month, four month and three month lapses for Executive Director, Administrative Assistant, Payroll Manager. Is that the timeline that you expect to take before a new person comes on board? I mean, an Executive Director is a high level person. I assume they're not gonna give two weeks notice and leave a job and come to a new job. So is this just a more realistic expectation for when these jobs are gonna start? And this is what the actual budget will look like or is this you're going to delay the hiring process. So one of the things that you know we have and we build spinsters here, it is acting executive director. Right now we're going through, we've hired a consultant to look at the executive director position and make sure as we go out, we have the right roles and responsibilities for that position, okay. So, so we've heard as the time I mentioned this question, what's the timeline for the search? Yes. Has it commenced when When are interviews? How's that process looking? Right. So currently we're reviewing the answer question directly. Photo-record Bill Spitzer acting executive director. We're undergoing a current study of the roles and responsibilities and of the structure that we operate under. Expect that it will take about four months, that's underway currently. Then probably at least another two months after that to hire an executive director. So we plan that it will be about six months from now. All right, so that's on a reduction. That's a realistic expectation for the timing. Correct. Okay. So we'll definitely take the six month lapse, because that's just real of what's happening. How about the other two positions? The other two positions are very critical. The administrative assistant position is responsible for the proper completion and dissemination of petty cash requests, employee time, time cards, mail, and overall customer service to the executive office building. And also is supports the three policy positions that are engaged in high level critical work and setting our procedures and overall commission processes. So who's doing that now? More one is doing the work of this position and supporting the all of that work. So who's having overseen the petty cash? We have Tim Rurley. No good. No, no. The duties have been disproved. You have to please hear your microphone. And for the record Terry Charles, corporate budget director, as Mr. Spencer was getting ready to share, the duties that he listed have been, if you will, temporarily reassigned to the existing staff, but it has been, at the detriment of them actually being able to focus on their direct policy-related work. Again, we're talking about administrative work. So they've had to try to learn the particular processes in order to get the transactions, if you will, through operationally. So it's not enough that So now it's continuing what's happening now for next few months. Right. It's not an effective way, too. Yeah, I got it. How about the payroll manager? Who's doing that work? The payroll manager that positions is vacant. And that is a position that's truly needed because of regulatory compliance, basically. We, and let me ask you a question. They have staff that is working to try to fill the gap but not effectively, okay? And so they need that position because it is a position that responsible for regulatory compliance and will be lead on the payroll and system and also in the implementation of the enterprise resource planning system which is our platform, our backbone of our integrated digital system for or budget for finance, for accounting, for human resources, information systems, all that information flows together. And we don't have a position there at the moment and they are, I think believe they have posted a position and is seeking a Canada for that last year we had over 6,000 W2s, 130, 130,000 checks written, 144, 121 directed parties made, but we'd have no one that is right now in a position to ensure that there's regulatory compliance with all of this. Okay, so I'm going to suggest we strike 1B and 1C and keep all the other reductions. Recommended reductions. Okay, that's what we're going to do. With unanimous agreement among colleagues, we're going to not accept 1B and 1C as recommended reductions, so you will not be if this goes through, ultimately. We'll not have to delay the hiring of those two critical functions. The executive director is just the real time that you're doing and the rest of the cuts that you've recommended is non-recommended cuts we would accept. Assuming there's agreement from a printhorders County and we'll negotiate with them at that time. If I could just one other position, if you'd allow me. OK. And that would be the one E, which is in order to be good stewards of the public's funds. That position is required by state to ensure public accountability by preventing investigating and reporting instances of fraud, race and abuse. And yesterday there are people who are doing that now, however there's been an increase in the request from the Department to ensure that we look at their processes and ensure that someone is handling these, the investigations that are required and needed that they are seeking. And so because of the increase and to ensure that there is no fraud, no abuse, no waste. Is that, I mean, that's one half, not one eb, I think. But that person makes $65,000 as a senior auditor. It seems unlikely. No, no, it's that. It's delayed by six months, so does that have? Yeah, so, so doubling six months would be 12 months, which would be the annual salary. I'm just making sure I'm bycane aspect. So then it's double that because it's the bycane we're splitting it. Okay. Thank you. All right. So that's 130,000 position. 152 actually. I'll paint because it's not even split. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. I'm fine. Good. Put that. OK. All right. So I'll add that back in as well. It's a state requirement. So we won't accept 1a. We won't accept 1c. We won't accept 1b. We will take 1a, 1d, 1e, and 1g. OK? OK. All right. Thank you for working with us and for the clarity and for being here today. All right. We have well unanimously send that to the full council. They agree. The council president will negotiate with the point of interest. Chair. Great. Thank you. All right. We're going to move along. The next one is Section I. It's on page 22. It are the Fund Balance Policies. This is about the Special Revenue Funds. Again, this is similar to the other ones you looked at earlier. We provide all the information on these because they need appropriation associated, but they tend to operate on their own. And the information for you on their expected revenues, their expected expenses projected end of your balances are all on pages I think 22 through 24. The only other thing to note here was that in FY26 the commission asked for a $1.5 million transfer for the administration fund to support the development review special revenue fund And the executive supports this request and it would be just part of the appropriation, but that's not impact the operating budget Okay, okay now we'll move on to amendments to the FY 25 through 30 capital improvements program. You have Two items under this before you, and then we have an addendum for today related to state aid. So the first one is a revised affordability reconciliation PDF on March 14th, the County Executive Transmitted, a council to the council a package of CIP amendments. And in that initial sending of recommended changes, I think the committee's already reviewed. It changed to MNC PPC bond funding of $24,000. The council received a second set of amendments, a revised affordability, affordability reconciliation PDF, which reduced Geobahn funding by $2 million, $1.5 million, FY26, and $500,000 in FY29. And the planning board met and it's attached in the packet there, response, which is basically a request that the Council reject the CES recommended $2 million reduction in Geo-Bond funding for the commission, which they attributed to the Wheaton Regional Park PDF, Affordability or PDF. I have a table that's on page 25 that shows the other projects within the commissions portfolio that received GeoBond funding. You can see very few of them are large enough to support such a large cut and some of the ones that could also be considered really do look at level of effort work for the county. So with that, I'll give it to questions for the parks department. The questions from colleagues, anything you wanna share with us, obviously there's quite a bit here in state aid, which is great, we really appreciate all the work that our state partners, and we've lucky to have a chair of the Capital Budget subcommittee and have advocates who work really hard for us to like a corner in the past is has worked very hard among others But let me turn it over to you To discuss. Yes. Thank you. So we were very Surprised because as I think that I have shared previously with some of you individually and maybe also during my semi-annual report, we had been in frequent communication with County OMB staff during the CIP process during this off year. So we were surprised to find at the same time that we got our operating budget request that we had also been told to cut $2 million worth of Geo bonds with 1.5 million coming in FY26. And really the only place to go for that funding is unfortunately the Wheaton Regional Park PDF. Now we did, and this is something I want to clarify. The $3 million grant that we received from the state which we are so grateful for is specifically for the Wheaton Action Sports Park. The $1.5 million in FY 26 is to implement some other aspects of the Wheaton Regional Park master plan implementation that are preparatory to being able to build the Wheaton Action Sports Park. So without that 1.5 million dollars, we can't quite get to the 3 million that we need for the Wheaton Action Sports Park. The other piece that I'd like to clarify is that last year we came to the council with a large and ambitious request for additional geo bonds for Wheaton Regional Park and the council gave us an additional, I believe, $6 million of the six-year CIP, which wasn't everything that we had asked for, but it was a significant step towards implementation of that master plan. And now with this $1.5 million cut, which now is set back, it's taking away what the council had previously agreed to give us for Wheaton Regional Park. So we are, of course, asking for restoration of that cut. In other words, not to have to take that cut because without that cut, I think the gap for us in terms of building out everything that we have sort of agreed to with the community. That's gotten so much community support after so much public outreach. Our gap is still several million dollars. We're not all the way there. We will still need to find additional sources of funding and we'll probably come back in this next CIP cycle and request more. But obviously what we have to ask in the next CIP cycle is going to be much greater if there's a cut now and we're going to see a delay in the implementation of the project. And also just to kind of, you know, Pam alluded to some of the appropriations we're gonna ask to make in terms of state grants, which we were so grateful for received several bond bills. In addition to this $3 million grant for Wheaton Regional Park, we're also taking a massive reduction in the expected program open space funding that we had planned for from the state. So the state give it and the state take it away. It's roughly about different sources of funding, but we're looking at about a wash. We've got $5 million from the state in terms of grants and bond bills, and we're gonna lose about $5 million worth of program open space funding. Let me yield to the district council member because we're finding the solve. I will say, this is, I appreciate a comment, but this is not just a weakened issue. This is Montgomery County Park. This park attracts people from Virginia, from DC, from other parts of the state. I see people from around the world that come and visit Brooks High Gardens and then they walked on the trails to the park. Okay, so that's number one. Number two, I find outrageous, the mechanic's executive is not only he failed to give us a proposal that meets contractual agreements with our unions, he's also taking money away a reduction from something that we already approved for last year, particularly on this park. So it's not that he's taking away something that we agreed on. That is not okay. And I think it's said to really bad person because it may happen today here, it could happen anywhere in the county. And it's not okay. So I'm gonna ask to restore all that. I said it quickly because I know you gotta go. Okay, so we have a request from District Council and we'll restore that funding and light of the comments from the department, Councilmember Drujno. Just if there's any, I know in the packet, and you address this a little bit Miss Fogredo the the state award grant not being an offset for this that it's Combined and additional Is there any other context that our staff has or that OMB has? Let me start with OMB. Anything to say on this since you're here? Vivian Eko OMB. So I would like to remind. Pull it down, Omega. I'd like to remind the committee that in March, the county executive had to reduce almost approximately 42 million dollars due to revenue right now. And several MCG departments were impacted based on the reduction of this revenue. And so we had to look, you know, further to the fiscal impact. And that was why the reduction, the two million reduction was made. Okay. So you're saying in the context of other right downs. Yes. As a part of the $42 million. Okay. And it's done so that the way this comes from. So the proposal would be the two one point five this year. And where's the other 500 coming out of next. Yeah, the half a million would be an FY 28, I believe, 29, 29, sorry. Okay. We're in the CIP right now. It's correct. So it's $2 million in the CIP. Obviously, even though it's an off year, we still got to reconcile everything and make it all work. We just got a briefing this week, I think. Yeah, from Mr. Lovchenko. Yeah, or recently, this week, yeah, this week, about where we are with that. It was yesterday, yeah. Yeah, I think exactly. Okay. Yeah, so I, that's, I just wanna bring that up because that's always the context in which we find ourselves with the CIP. It's a big puzzle. That being said, you know, I don't want to delay the any of these projects, including the Wheaton Regional improvements. So, but I do want to look at everything in the context of the full CIP. So, how would we, if we added it back, this isn't really a reconcil, how would that happen? There's no reconciliation list for the CIP. I think that, and I don't have. I don't think Mr. Lochango is here, but I don't know whether it is in the signal that we want to make a signal that you want to say. It's a recommendation for there. I mean, just just to be clear, it works like any other committee, just to be clear, we recommend restoring this to what the council had previously gone. And there is a reconciliation that happens at the end. I will note that unlike the operating budget historically, we have always started as the baseline, the council approved CIP is the standard. And then there are puts and takes. So the committee could, and I would agree with the district council member and it sounds agree with you heading in this direction to stick with the approved CIP timeline, which would not, which would not, now we'd have to reconcile that two million, one and a half and 500,000 in those two fiscal years, but that would have to come out in all the moving parts of the CIP reconciliation that will happen over the next several weeks. So it would be a committee recommendation. Yeah, we would have to land on that particular item. I agree with that. I'd be curious to know what other out of that 42 million what other cuts were made to MCG. I don't know if you have that. I probably don't have that right in front of you, but I would like to see that before we get to the end. Yeah, it's part of what came up. That's gonna be, just to be clear, that will all be part of the reconciliation because we do start as the baseline of the council approved CIP and then and then there's the executives Recommendations and there's the committee recommendations and there's a reconciliation process so that yep That will come out the part of the song fine with the committee recommendation to restore But and just wanted to talk that through so thank you. Sounds good. So we have a consensus committee recommendation to restore that back to the original schedule. Okay, thank you. The next amendment that was received by the County Executive on April 14th was an amendment to the Ballfield Initiatives PDF and it was a revision to the text of the Ballfield Initiative project to ensure that the county funds are not used to support artificial turf field installation or improvements due to associated environmental and health concerns. And Council staff's position on this was that the committee consider this at a different date. This isn't have a budgetary number next to it. It is probably a bigger discussion than we should be having in the middle of April during our budget process. It's complicated and long. Deserves more information and more time and impacts. Many more departments and individuals than just the parks department. It impacts MCPS, it impacts the rec department, it impacts our users of ball fields, equity issues. So I would suggest that it is a worthwhile conversation, but perhaps one that would be better deferred to a different time. I think it's a good recommendation. At this hour and at this time, given all the budget conversations we're having, an important conversation to have environmental equity considerations, like in many cases, a very complicated and nuanced dynamic that has been an ongoing conversation that we've been having with partners, with the community, with our state partners, and it does have major implications as well as noted with MCPS and with Department of Recreation. I think we need to have a broader conversation with them at a time when we can really talk through the impacts and the implementation of it. So I think it's a good recommendation. It seems like colleagues are in agreement. Okay. Great. Thank you. With that, I will turn to the Addendum for today, which is really just a high-level overview of the state aid. I haven't received some of it. I guess we did maybe get it. We did get it officially late. I was trying to put this together. It came from planning. So thank you for that from Parks and the Board. So the Addendum is again, it has a third section to the J section, which is amendments to the FY 25 through 30 capital improvements program, revisions to accept state aid and other revenue. This again goes before the council so that these changes can be recognized and the money can be appropriated so it can get spent. You'll see there the amounts that came in either through grants, state aid, or the land sale proceeds from Warner Circle. And then below that, the program open space adjustments, as the Parks Director mentioned, the program open space funding allocation was reduced for FY26, which required them to shift money out of certain PDFs to make room for that decline. And so I will open it up for questions. I don't see any questions from colleagues. So I think it's helpful to have as an addendum. Obviously we thank our state partners that I did earlier today in the context of Wheaton and beyond. A lot of support that the parks get from the state and so we really appreciate it. And with that we are done. We are adjourned. Thank you very much to our partners in parking planning. Thank you to colleagues. I'm very proud of the fact that we went through a challenging budget and reached all consensus decisions. And I think landed in a very good place and we prepared to fight very hard for parks and for the commission at the full council. Thank you.