Thank you. It is being recorded. Good morning. This is the Council's second fiscal year 2026 operating budget work session. The proceeding this morning is a hybrid meeting which is being conducted in person. And via WebEx teleconference, the public may view through live stream available through the county council website. I will now do a roll call of our council members, Dr. Jones. Okay, Ms. Young. I am here good morning. I'm here to see you. Ms. Rigby. Present. And Mr. Youngman. Here. We will now proceed with our agenda. I don't have my secret one with the times on it. I wanted to give a preview of when we thought lunch might be, and so people later in our agenda could. Do you have times on it? No, I'm not doing math in my head. Where? I'm doing this. Okay, everyone stop handing me the same thing. All right, we will have that discussion afterwards. Is this your CEO? Anyone that says what we expect to reach before noon so that we may advise our leader guests that they do not need to sit in this room for two hours for no reason. But while we're looking for that, we will resume our regular scheduled program which begins with circuit court. We have our drug chair with us, just William Tucker and a friend and if you'd like to begin. No, I know. There's two lady names, so I'm not going to guess if you're Jennifer Kaiser or Deidre Marksdale. This is Ms. Kaiser. Good morning. Thank you all for accommodating us. Oh, that's okay. It's fine. It's fine. Yeah, I'm out of town next week, so I'm glad you were able to accommodate us and move us up on the agenda. Basically, we have submitted pretty much maintenance of effort budget. It's pretty much no for-else. We don't have many increases. I know we had postage that we've had to ask for about $1,000 more because we have more jury trials, so we have to send out more jury summons. But everything else is pretty much a maintenance of effort budget so I try to keep it you know straight to to bare bones that's my philosophy so if you have any questions I'm feel free to ask and if I can't answer something I'll defer to Miss, my court administrator. Thank you. I go first today. Okay. And I do have a question, but it's back in my office. So I will pass. Two Ms. Rigby, because Dr. Jones has not yet joined us. Sure, thank you. So I didn't really have a lot of questions today, because I've read through the whole, I don't remember what the D stands for, but differentiated case management plan? Yeah, all right. Yeah, all perfect. Good job. And I think you guys are doing really well to sort of have a path for everything and then be able to reassess your resources as needed for, you know, depending on what's coming in. So I really appreciated appreciated learning about that and I appreciate everything that you guys have done to really work to modernize our court system here and make it efficient and recover from the COVID backlog because I know that that was a lot on you guys so thank you. Yeah COVID did hit and we did a lot of effort trying to get caught up with the backlog and I think we have very little if any backlog now so we're pretty much up to speed so but thank you. Yeah, absolutely, especially with the complexity of the cases that are coming before the court now. They take a lot more everybody. Thank you. So true. Thank you. Ms. Young. Good morning again. Good morning. It is nice to see you all. And thank you for all the hard work that you do. We appreciate it. I only had one question. And this actually, I guess, was pointed out by our auditor that the No costs increased by 228,000, which was 5.7%. For step increases, does that sound right? I would say yes, that's correct. Normally, that is put into our budget by the budget office. So we don't calculate that on our own. Okay. I only pointed it out because I know that most everybody in the county is getting 4% or less this year. We would not get any more than what the other county paid employees were. We are in the same system. Okay. That's why I didn't know it was totally representative of what was occurring or not. No, there's a small increase. Sorry, I'm getting information from the back. You can't see behind you Jennifer. And yes, I was getting somebody pointing. Yes, so the right person I should be asking this question. Yeah, I was going to say circuit court employees or on the general scale. So they would get the call assumptions we put in their budget. They would get the step increments for those that are eligible, some are pro rated, you know, depending on the months of their anniversary, but nothing outside of that. Okay. Great. Thanks. I understand. Exactly. But I don't have any questions. Well, thank you so much. Thank you. Any chance, Dr. Jones joined us? Okay. Then I'll be Dr. Jones and he'll say, I just wanted to get on here and thank you guys for all of the hard work that you do. And I really appreciate you. But thank you so much. But he does not have any questions. Okay. And my singular question, and I've already lost the sheet again. This is what happens when they give us 2 million pieces of paper. Okay. Is, um, we heard about a domestic violence fatality review coordinator and the need for that by the domestic violence family review team. Um, they expressed a great need for more court oversight of the monitoring and compliance and domestic violence cases. The creation of that position would have met that need as well as the need for lethality assessments as part of custody case hearings to determine whether or whether both parties pose a risk for violence. Do you all know anything about that? I did see that suggestion that we consider that type of position. I think the wording that I saw was so the court could provide more oversight in compliance with court orders, and that isn't really the exact role of the court. We do enter the orders, but it is up to other parties if someone is not complying to bring that information to us, and then it comes to us and we address contempt. we can we address people not following the orders, but we don't have a monitoring unit. In the circuit court monitoring would be more from the sheriff's office, from the police, if they get phone calls saying someone is violating the order. Okay, and so when you say you saw something like that, you saw that in the report from that team or I believe so. Okay. Because we did make that request through our operating budget priorities this year that that coordinator position be created and filled. But and believe me, we could use a position to help us with the oversight of domestic violence cases. We do the case numbers are going up. Okay, definitely. It would not necessarily be a full time position, but we would have a use for it. Okay, but more likely that role would be filled through with Sheriff or police. Yes, okay, perfect. Okay, that's all I have Ms. Kaiser. And so I think, does it, Debra or Christina, do you have any more for our court? That was my second question about the follow-up. So in other areas, I mean, is this, when you say this, is typically done nor by the police or by the sheriff? How is that model work and how does the, how does everybody sort of the flow of information from the person who, who knows that the order is not being enforced or there's a challenge with it? How do they know sort of who the right person is to go to from there and then that person communicates, I assume with the courts, but how does it all loop together? And I know I'm asking you to sort of, you're this portion, I'm asking you to explain that portion. That's no's no problem. Normally, what will happen is if there is something going on that violates the court order, people will contact the police department. They will go out. If there is something illegal going on, they'll make an arrest, they'll make a report. If there is a criminal act happening happening that will then go into the court system. It can also be brought by the other party and brought in as a contempt. And then the judge will address it at that point. So the party would contact the police, the police would contact the court, or the party would contact the court directly or the state's attorney to if there's charges that we're going to be brought. Okay. Thank you. I think that is all that my colleagues and I have for courts. Thank you. All right. Well, thank you very much. We can see you all. You all have a good day back to work. Thank you. Actually, I just want to say thank you for choosing a local business as your cafeteria vendor versus like a large sadexo or something like that. I thought that was a really great choice and I appreciate it. We are very excited to have a new vendor. Who's the vendor? What are we talking about? It's on Agonda Delights. We had that earlier this week. Yes. We love them. And it was delightful. We are coming over Let's go to it. Yes, we just had them. Yes All right, well, thank you all very much have a good day. Thank you Our only five minutes behind schedule oh So we have police this morning, followed by our fire rescue services and Department of Corrections. Depending on how robust questioning goes for those offices or agencies, we may or may not get to Department of Planning and Zoning before or after lunch, but for sure, department of public works, general services, inspections license and permits, and soil conservation. Why do we do that to him? We'll be last. Well, there they are. Yeah, I don't know what David's doing, but if he wanted to go right after lunch, we would be willing to do that unless anyone has, you know, a lot of questions for soil conservation. Okay. Okay. We are now on police and we are joined. Thank you Chief Grigter. I see major bend back there. I see lots of friends with you. I expect that you can introduce them as you need them to help you, but we're happy to hear whatever presentation or opening remarks you have before you get into questions. All right, thank you. Good morning. I'm Chief Gregory Durve, the Howard County Police Department. It's my honor to represent the great men and women of the Howard County Police Department. Thank you for allowing me to speak on their behalf. Howard County is a unique special community. We are fortunate to enjoy a strong, positive working relationship between the police department, county agencies, and the citizens we serve. Reserving the strength of that relationship is one of my highest priorities. I'm accompanied today by several members of my staff. The various positions within the agency afford them highly specialized knowledge. They're fully versed in the many details of programs initiatives that they oversee. Joining me today, Major Jeff Speck, field operations command, Major Terran Spen, administration of command, Major Jason Janowiczicz, Criminal Investigations Command, Major Sarah Kaiser, Special Operations Command, Chief of Staff, Mr. Gary McElaney, and seated to my right, my budget director, Sean Hollywood. The Howard County Police Department's proposed budget stands at $162,820,000 in $809. This amount is 2.92 increase above the FY22 budget. We are navigating a time of considerable uncertainty. Recent changes at the federal and state levels are significantly impacted the county, and we are doing our part to address the resulting shortfalls. As strategic reductions in the proposed budget have been made with our continued goal and ability to maintain our current level of service for the residents of Howard County. We will continue to make decisions around the priority of ensuring our residents not only feel safe, but are safe. Personnel costs are our most significant expenses at just over 135 million, which is 84% of our total budget request. There's also an increase of approximately 1 million services from Axon, which the Harrow County Police Department uses for many different data storages and technical solutions, most notably our Body Worn Camera Program and Record of Management System. Regionally, recruitment remains a challenge for law enforcement agency. Thanks to county funding, we have been able to expand our recruitment strategies and continue to attract high quality candidates in this competitive market. We are continuing our focus on filling sworn and civilian jobs with the next generation of Howard County Police Department employees. Our comprehensive recruitment plan seeks and attracts the best candidates reflective of the community they serve. Our strategies include an expanded search radius, geofencing advertisements, social media, marketing campaigns, TV and radio ads, and fast track hiring events. As we compete for the best qualified candidates, we remain determined to keep Howard County a desirable place to live, work, and play under the protection of the best police department in the state of Maryland. My opinion. Thank you. Thank you. Our officers continue to work to disrupt criminal activity and reduce crime. We do this through the detection and prevention of violent crime and traffic fatalities that have a significant impact in our community. We continue to dedicate resources to investigate and combat violent crime so that Howard County remains one of the safest counties in America. We strive to be flexible and responsive to both short-term and long-term crime trends, shifting resources and changing strategies as needs dictate. We also recognize the importance of traffic safety for those who travel our roadways. Building on that success of the traffic enforcement section that we created August of 2022, we targeted initiative focusing on pedestrian safety as well as the move over law. Both the community and elected officials now have the ability to view real time data on our newly developed internal crime and traffic dashboards. As a result of our increased focus on traffic safety, I can report that our traffic stops have increased by 95% over the last two years. Today we stand at the forefront of transformative error in law enforcement. Because of your continued investment in support from County Administration, we have been able to integrate tools like drones into our normal operations, an impact that has been immediate and meaningful. Just in the last week, our drone unit played a critical role in quickly locating a missing autistic child, something that could have otherwise taken hours and not ended with such a positive result. This example of success isn't just about technology, it's about what happens when forward thinking leadership supports innovativeness on the ground. Looking ahead, we hope to continue to expand these capabilities to stay ahead of challenges in the community we serve. With the launch of our enhanced crime analysis division, we are embracing innovation to leverage state of the art tools to not only react to crime, but sometimes anticipate it. This initiative isn't just about technology, it's about smarter policing, safer neighborhoods, and stronger trust between our department and the communities we serve. We have also enhanced our consistent presence through a new crime reduction plan focusing on downtown Columbia, which created a permanent full-time unit of officers from our community outreach and path-reached section, also known as cops in the area, including the Maryweather District and the Mall in Columbia. Just last week, they located an armed subject coming out of the mall and arrested him. These officers will have a full-time satellite office inside the mall in the next coming months. We also added an additional B to our patrol division that will be assigned strictly to the mall 24 hours. In partnership with the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correction Services, we are now accompanying state division of parole and probation staff on home visits for adult offenders and proes in our community. This collaborative effort increases officer awareness of individuals under supervision in the county and enhances safety for parole and probation staff. In recognizing the need to improve information sharing with the Maryland Department of Juvenile Justice, we have begun partnering with D.J.S. to attend prescheduled events as part of its juvenile monitoring program. Since the establishment of this partnership, officers have attended these events, garnering increased positive interactions with teens in DJS juvenile system. Howard County Police Department has now meeting quarterly with the Department of Juvenile Services staff to share information and keep the lines of communications open. By increasing and providing resources, we are addressing the root calls of criminal activity and creating safer, more resilient neighborhoods. These are only some of the highlights of our efforts from the last year. We look forward to building upon these successes and finding new ones as we move to fiscal year 26. We understand the importance of transparency in the budget process and believe that this proposed budget adequately reflects the needs of our agency. We are prepared to meet future challenges and continue providing high quality public safety for those we serve. Thank you again for giving me the time to speak this morning. My team and I are ready to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you, Chief. I'm first today. I'm not hogging. And my first question goes to the new school resource officer that's in the budget. Can you give us some more information about that? We got an update this morning. It will be assigned to PCN. I don't know what that means either, but can you just give us a general description of what not. Right so we have the new high school. We have the new high school that that was we started to occupy this year. It had half the students in it. We have one SRO in there. The guidelines and best practices throughout the country is one SRO to a number of students. So we are filling that school. It will be filled. So per the Nazarro, I believe it is national association of school resource officers, we will need another SRO in that school for the amount of people that we have. Do you know the number? I'll fan. One SRO. So one SRO per 1,000 students is the national standard and because the school opened slowly at the lower level and slowly it has been building next year will be at full capacity. So close to 2000 students, that's why we need the other SRO to have two SROs at Gulf Park. Is that school much bigger than our other high schools? Yes. Okay. So is that the only school? It will be the largest capacity school and the largest capacity for print as well. Okay. So it's not expected that we would need more in the other 12 high schools. No. Okay. Is that SRO going to share duties at any other schools or be dedicated exclusively to that high school? Be dedicated to exclusive to that high school. Okay. Is the Board of Education and you may as well just leave it on. I'm gonna kill How what is the involvement of Board of Education or school system in that decision? They're supportive of that decision. They've been kept informed of that decision and they know it's coming. Okay, but they don't come to you and say, hey, look at NASRO standards, we need a second SRO, we're gonna fill it up for grades next year. You guys make that, identify that need and go to them and say this is what we're gonna do. It's our responsibility to know that standard for the school resource officers. Okay, and they are less concerned about it because it's coming out of your budget. I don't want to speak for that. I'm just guessing. Okay, all right, thank you for that. school resource officers. Okay and they are less concerned about it because it's coming out of your budget. I don't want to speak for that. I'm just guessing. Okay. All right. Thank you for that. I am one. So Dr. Jones will be next if he is joined us. Okay. Mr. McBeer. So one of the things that I noticed and this isn't coming from your budget but it ultimately impacts your budget. In the Department of Corrections, one of the things that I noticed, and this isn't coming from your budget, but it ultimately impacts your budget in the Department of Corrections. One of the things that was noted is that they're the percentage of people who are formally incarcerated returning to incarceration is increasing. And so I'm really wondering how you guys work with the Department of Corrections in terms of the prevention aspect. When we had just because this number is starting to trend in a direction we don't really want it to go. So I was curious sort of how you work with them and what prevention steps are going to take to the divism. Right, I don't want to speak for corrections. So the information just to make sure that I know what the question is, you're saying that they're the repeat offenders. We're having more repeat offenders. Yeah, I wish I had a good answer for that. I don't know. I think that, unfortunately, that's probably something that the corrections throughout the country is dealing with. I'm guessing that when someone offends, they try to rehabilitate them. Again, I don't want to step on anybody's toes. And then our job is to make sure that they abide by the laws once they get out into the community. So I don't have the answer for that. Ms. Young. Good morning. It's nice to see you all. I, first I want to thank criminal investigations for finding the perpetrator from the murder that was committed five years ago of the pregnant woman in Hickory Ridge. I'm forgetting her name. Do you remember? I don't have the name. It happened in 2020. Right. Yes. Yeah, five years ago. Cold case. Our police department never let that go. Every single year we got an email from her father asking us, since she was a district four resident, to make sure that we did everything we could. Every year we would say something to police department and say that her family is still very concerned and would like to know what was going on, but I'm sure that you all kept in touch with her. And the fact that you didn't let it go, that you kept, kept, kept on top of it so that you could give that family justice. I just am really, really thankful to you all for doing that since we have the head of criminal investigations here. I just want to, you can stand up, take a bow. I'll be happy to have you people. I think that that was really meaningful to the community and to that family. So I just want to let you know how much I appreciate that. No, well, thank you. I think we're not immune from crime here in Howard County. Crime happens everywhere. But when you commit a crime in Howard County, we are going to do everything within our power to make sure we solve it and bring that person to justice. So thank you for your attention. Yes. And now he will be brought to justice and to think that it was just a stray bullet. It really is very concerning. So back to a question. Do you know what is projected to be spent on overtime in FY26? So overtime is difficult to judge, right? I mean, it's difficult to forecast. It depends on what we're investigating at the time. I can tell you that our overtime in 2024 was about a little over 18,000 hours since we've had the new officers, the new pins, that overtime dropped in 2025 to 9,000 hours. So that was just call savings. Unfortunately, we've had some tool theft cases and some other cases, right? Where we have... Great job on the tool theft case, as long as we're talking about... Thank you. ...that we were talking about. Wow, were we impressed? That one, that was another one. Thank you. So the tool can, we'll just use that. The tool case, there was, you know, a lot of overtime that was developed, that we had to do, inventoring those tools, trying to contact the owners, storing those tools. So it's really, even though we are having cost saving measures with overtime and patrol because we're staffed very well in patrol right now, these other issues come up and other crimes come up where we have to utilize time. So you don't know what you all have projected right now for 26? So in the Shaw Hollywood budget administrator, the... Thank you, Mr. Hollywood, no problem. No problem. So for our 26 requests, we have approximately 12 and a half million dollars in our request for overtime. And how does that compare to what you money wise, what you projected in 25 or do you think 25 is gonna go over what you projected you think 25 is gonna go over okay. Correct. Because of like, sheep are just mentioned. So what do you think the amount is going to be for 25? Probably going to be pretty close to that. 12,000. Okay. All right. Mr. Raymond. What, what in contractual services is going away? I mean, you guys overall budget increase looks totally normal, but within it big drops in supplies, big drops in contractual services. What's happening with that? The largest decrease in contractual services is our DTCS chargeback. That contributes to a large percentage of that decrease. We'll book about that and supplies. Would supply this, you know, just given the fiscal realization that we're under. Are you down there? He is. He was sitting like that. He's trying to be the hide. He's trying so hard to hide. Bro, do you know why their chargeback has gone down so much? Because I haven't seen it with everybody else. It depends. So the chargeback is intended to recover the budget of DTCS, right? So the main way we do the allocation is we get an updated inventory account from DTCS of all the devices in every department that's connected to the network. So we use that. The air share of total devices connected to the network is what we use to allocate DTCS's budget back to the user agencies. So I think the main drive where besides an increase in DTCS's budget has been, we got updated from DTCS inventory count and this is the first time we've received an update since COVID. Since during COVID time there were a lot of changes, you know, new laptops being issued and the numbers were just moving rapidly. So we kept on using the pre-COVID inventory account which was more stable to do the allocation. Now we're post-COVID we have updated numbers received so you know what has been like three four years so that is probably another contributor to the change for some departments you know so reduction in their chargebacks for others is an increase in chargebacks we'll get to see what everybody's screen time looks like this year, I guess. And then supplies. What's in that number? So again, the law. It's taken by a third. Correct. And the largest of that is actually just a reclassification our contract with axon is actually considered a lease payment not a supply. So for financial reporting reasons, it moved down to the debt service area. I'll say the word gas being. Yeah, I see it. Yeah, I see it. Good. Okay, thanks. I'm assuming that police are not involved in what the administration has announced as a penny-pinching measures by reducing fleet and transportation, or fleet and communication costs. You guys didn't get touched by that. Okay. I'm going to assume no that doesn't seem like. Yeah, not to my knowledge. Okay. I know that we are looking for fleet for civilian folks that have cars. Very few of our civilians have cars. Most of ours are all sworn police officers. Okay, but so in this year's this year's FY 26 there are new cars for civilian employees. Oh, no, I thought you were on that 25. No, no. Okay. Well, I will intersect. One of the questions that we have pending in the portal goes to the 80 million or so in Pego funds that were used as part of operating last year and whether those funds as they were said to be distributed were actually spent down. And I think police were the beneficiary of a number of those. Can you speak to that like what what you got as part of last year's Pego and what was spent how and what remains? I don't have the exact numbers in front of you but you know we're spending down a large portion of that you know we have projects like the CAC relocation which was funded out of there and then there's other projects that are still kind of pending and we're making our way through those projects. But by and large, the funding is at least started getting tapped into if not exhausted at this point. OK, and I'm talking on the operating side, not capital. Correct. Yeah, so for CAC, we had $350,000 for the move and the furniture related to the relocation of the CAC. Okay. All right. I was looking at things like ammunition. Yeah, we're still drawing down on that as the ammunition gets issued. It gets expense against that line. And were you a beneficiary of the retention and recruitment bonuses? Corrective, we have been paying the retention and recruitment bonuses out of that pod as well. Okay, this year, page 346 of the bonder. 348 is this year's fiscal year 26 proposed. One time expenses, right? Because that's the premise that you're only going to buy ammunition once. It was, so last year was the ammunition was to buy three years worth of ammunition because the supply chain issues related to acquiring it. And we're still in the process of we put in the orders and the product and it's rolling in as the suppliers able to get it to us. Okay. Weapons and equipment for $800,000 in this year. Correct. We are outfitting patrol with more rifles. We had an incident in the county last year where our patrol officers rolled up on the domestic and they encountered heavy gunfire from a semonomatic machine gun. And one officer had a rifle and was able to take care of that situation. So I think in the agency feels that it's important for our officers to be prepared when we're encountering these threats in the community. Okay, so it's $800,000 worth of rifles? No, the rest of it is the equivalent supplies to the SRO, a record-simplementation payment that we have for Axon for next year, and that covers the $800,000. Yeah, that's the equipment for the SROs. Correct. The equipment vehicle. All right, Mr. Hollywood, could you give us a breakdown of that and some, you know, best effort description of why it's one time only. And I'm pardoned Pago because, you know, what we've seen in the budget book is this, here's our budget, here's, you know, deliver same services. And I get, you know, an SRO, a new SRO at a high school is new. But when the administration starts folding and what looks like not one time, just regular old operating expenses and a pay go thing, I think that that clouds what true, you know, same services delivery is and I would like us to better understand that as a council. Thank you. About now. Dr. Jones. All right, I'm going to send a message to see if he's going to join us this morning. Miss Rigby? Well, I'll stay on the topic because I was going to talk a little bit about ballistic vests, which were another item. And this is probably more for Mr. Mammow, but I know, but you're, I mean, we're right here. You can't have for me. So could you touch on, there's sometimes where we're, I feel like one time maybe better classified as infrequent, non-annual, because I know sometimes we're using this to buy specialty equipment when it comes to recreation in parks or in the case and I want to check my understanding on this because it looks like the ballistic vests in particular, there's a state grant and then we're using matching dollars. Is that correct? I'm not sure about that. I know ballistic vests were included as part of the pay go under that weapon category. I'm not sure if there's a state funding. They're separate. They're separate line items. Yeah, but I'm not sure if there's a state funding to help cover that too. I don't know Sean. If you know that. Yeah, speak a little bit to that so we do occasionally the state does put up funding for ballistic vests requiring a county match. But those funds are usually not enough I think what we see in Pego is also to outfit as because the vests I'm'm also not a sworn officer, so I might be out over my head. But the Vests are fitted to the individual officer. So is I would hope. Yes. I would hope that Mr. Ben and I are not wearing the same Vests. For either of us that would be uncomfortable. All right. So when new staff come in, they have to be fitted for the VASO. So as new officers come in into the specifically, this was for the repeat offender division, to be able to outfit them with the proper size ballistic vest. And you said that the state, this is not an annual grant than that the state's doing. It just sort of pops up for availability sometimes and we need to sort of be ready to take it to match it if we if we have the capacity. Correct. Okay. And Mr. Mammal, because I imagine that this budget we're going to spend a lot of time talking about payego. If you can, so help us understand how you guys are approaching these infrequent, occasional, but not necessarily regular and regular to anticipate things. That would be helpful, I think, because we wrap our minds around how you approach it. I think the way we look at it is, you know, something that's not one time that's recurring goes in the base budget and the expectation is it stays in the base budget and then going forward the changes are incremental cost increases, right, inflation, things of that nature, like personnel costs, right. One time, you know, it could be piece of equipment that you need one time but it doesn't mean you're not going to need it five years from now, but it does not go in your base budget. But it's not something that you need every single year. Exactly. Okay. Typically, yes, yes. It's something that does not go in your base budget. So one. Right. So then it goes to this like ballistic vests make a little bit more sense, but the ammunition piece. But if I can also understand trying to avoid all the supply chain and now these tariffs and the ammunition from last year, as Sean said, triggered my memory. But it was, I think there was definitely a supply chain issue. And so the idea was to try to stock up and order ahead of time a three-year supply. One price is we're increasing. Secondly, it was very difficult to procure the, you know, the ammunition. So we looked at it as like a one-time investment to make sure we have out of wedded so going forward just going I want to say replace them, but addition of your That's in the base budget. Yeah, that's helpful. That was very on target This is a plentiful budget season. So everyone knows. Oh God. Miss Young. So I'd like to ask about money that's coming from other places. Other than our government. Which is school bus camera and speed camera and some of the bigger items like federal asset seizure. So hello. Thank you for joining us. Good morning. Good morning. School bus camera. I'm sorry to say that it looks like you're anticipating more money this coming year. Is that is that the trend that we keep seeing more money in this fund every year from people passing school buses and getting caught? Okay. Sorry it was already on. Good morning. So it's actually trending down, which is exactly what we want. Good. It shows that we're changing behavior, along with the high fine that's associated with the school bus cameras. So it's actually exactly what we want to see. We do budget the fund high, realistically high. We, and part of that is to ensure that we have the spending authority because for example, the school bus camera vendor payments are tied to the amount of revenue that we collect. So the more revenue we collect, the higher our expense is going to be. So we want to make sure that there's sufficient budget authority if that happens. Clearly, as Major said, we would like for this fund to actually go out of business. But if this is the case, we're going to need the budget authority if the revenue does increase. OK. And speed cameras. Is that trending up or down? Well, we just added the seventh camera. I believe last year. So I think that generated an extra 8600 citations just from that camera. Oh, trending up. Well, only because we added a camera to it. I don't think I think we're still changing behavior. And our ask this year is through County legislation. We're limited to the eight cameras. We have seven, so we're asking for the additional eight camera. You're asking for an eighth camera. Correct. Okay. And red light cameras. I saw that there was a plan to add four red light cameras. Correct.. Where are those red light? Have you already decided where they're going to be placed? So, SHA goes out and they do inspection sites. So, and those cameras get changed around. It's listed on their websites. So, there's already more locations that we have cameras. I believe they are adding two or three locations. I don't have those off the top of my head, but they are just currently approved by SHI. So that's where I would find that. Correct. All right. And then I assume that we're expanding the red light camera program in order to make our county safer. But how much do we generally get from these red, how much revenue do we generally get from these red light cameras? So generally, like again, fines are a little trickier because it depends on behaviors of people. Historically we generate roughly double in revenue from the actual lease cost for the camera equipment. It's about 180 to 200,000 per year from these from these red light cameras. Camera average. Well, okay, people who ever are listening out there stop running red light because you You're gonna get caught by these cameras. Then over to the grants. We're gonna go around one more time, Ted. Okay, I miss your moment. Still on the speed cameras, and I know it's a small number, but every year we budget a few hundred thousand bucks and the expenses are like six grand. Are we netting the revenue against the expense on that? So the for speed camera the revenue first goes to paying for the cost of the operation and speed cameras of the personnel cost and the lease costs for the equipment and then anything additional above that can go to public safety or pedestrian safety projects as well. So it depends on availability of funds in that particular fund. So how are we always spending seven grand? I mean, that was the actual 24 and that's the estimated 25. Still budget couple hundred thousand. So we budget it. Again, we budget kind of high. So that way if the revenue comes in, we utilize that contractual service line. We use a lot for printing, you know, providing. We've put in marketing materials inside the tax bills to encourage people not to speed. We're probably, it's the only enterprise that encourages people not to contribute to it. But, plus the find itself. Plus the find. But, you know, we're actively marketing against, you know, like raising awareness about speeding through school zones. And so that line, that line of my particular is for that. And it allows us to, if funding is available, we can increase the amount of marketing that we do. Are we in that program? Are we limited? By state enabling to the school zones? Is that where that comes from or is it our legislation? It's county legislation. Okay. No. Yeah. We can only put speed cameras in school zones because of state legislation. Yes, but count. Is that so it is so. Like county is limited to eight in number. Right. For reasons I do not understand that's going to be my next question is. Why not go to? Yeah, from what I was told was initially when we first started the program, they put the limitations on it just to see kind of how everything would take off. Or originally two cameras. Oh, okay. People were freaking out about the prospect of speed camera. I think I sat out in the testimony chair and referred to them in CTMs. Yes but again we want not their money we want them to slow down. I know but I'm just you know this should come as news. One out of five. One out of five. So I thought I heard you say well it's hard for for us because the right apps we get don't have actual numbers except for 20s 24. So when they're saying it looks like, you know, the right apps we have are say it looks like the revenues are going up and up and up. And that's I guess because of this estimation that you're doing. And then we don't have any reflected like revenues coming in. So it just looks like at least for the last two years that we don't have final numbers on, that we're just putting out money for these cameras, whether on the school bus or in the school zones. But is that once the numbers are reconciled, like I see in 2024, the speed cameras are sending money out to other programs in the amount of $200,000. Perhaps like God, DPW, anything that's safety related. And that I mean that didn't happen in 2122 is that that's because of COVID stuff. Yes. And then so then in 2020 it's up to 319 it was 700,000. So is my understanding correct that it is at a present moment based on our constituents behavior around school zones generating revenue for other county programming. Okay, so to me there would be some benefit in eliminating that eight count that exists in legislation. Now would you have any ups or downs on that? I'm not going to speak for the chief. I mean, we'd have to look it and see what the impact was. Having more cameras. I don't know if the top of my head with the fiscal note would be for we had to hire more people. I don't know, but we would definitely be interested in entertaining that. Okay. Me too. It will be a creative meeting to be. They don't make money. We'll probably start after draft of legislation that just strikes the number. So So just to clarify, we do have the revenue estimates on page 369 for the 24 actual 25 estimated and then what we anticipate to get with the addition of an extra camera on in 26. Okay, thanks for your time. We'll tell me that page one more time. 3.69. 3.69. Okay. Okay. I forgot it was a fund. Maybe you can see the road. Um. I mean, because I've heard reports of what, you know, what the speeds are measured, particularly around 99, you know, those two high schools, Tevern and, and, and, Mary's Ridge. But then even on the school bus one, I don't know if you guys gave it whoever put we don't have that run down and I write up for this Speed camera, but we do have the run down of like the most tickets generated by location for the school bus one and out of one two three four five Out of the five of them for our Andre one like One is always the problem So I wondered does this get reported back to the school system and they consider moving stops or, you know, how is there any interplay between there are 108 citations at the 6200 block of Washington Boulevard and whether we should change a school bus stop location? No. I'm not positive, but I can definitely look into it and get back to you. Okay. All right, thanks. One, going to your question, there seems to be some confusion. I think only actual law. Like, and this might be why it's root one. Like, root one, you know, I've got like, you know, a bunch of lanes, school buses way over here on the right. If I'm in the other side of root one, do I have to stop or not? And you do. And I don't know if the cameras are picking up four lanes over, but that could be why we're seeing that problem. I'm sure there's probably educational piece to it that, you know, we can put something out or even through the school systems, put something out for sure. I think that when you have a divided highway like that, you do get some confusion, and it's a very busy, bird way. Okay, yeah, I didn't look up. Route one at Hills Street had 422 citations. It is terrifying, particular for your baby guts on a bus, and you were near there. Yeah, well, I'll look, but yeah, both of those issues, the the school camera school zone cameras and the bus Sack and answer gonna be top of mind for us I'm gonna skip Dr. Jones and go immediately to miss rugby Well, I'll stay on this because this was one of the questions that I had and I did I was trying to look it up And it looked almost like route one at Hill Street and then 9900 block are the same. Now there is a hill there. I'm sure that's a contributing factor. There is a hill at Hill Street. But you know for me I think that the proactive awareness is helpful but I'm really wondering about signage at those specific locations so that when drivers are there in the location they're seeing you must stop for a school bus or like speed camera ahead slow down the speeds that are at Mount Hebron and Married's Ridge were alarming. I mean like completely unnecessary. So I guess if you're going 100 miles per hour, you might not see a sign that says slow down, but you'll get that ticket. And eventually, I would hope that that would change that behavior. But I mean, you know, for me, I'm really wondering what we can do more on those specific locations to get that behavior change in the moment. And maybe it's some targeted enforcement at first, but also what is that long-term solution? Because officers can't be everywhere all the time. And you know, that's one of the reasons that we have these cameras. And I would hope with increased cameras, you could decrease some of those traffic stops as well. For sure. And I know like one of the things we touched upon too was the fact that there was a flat fine, right? So whether you're going 10 miles over the speed limit or 80 miles over the speed limit, it's the same fine. So you know, where's the change of behavior? And I know that state just put something through to change that. It'll be tiered kind of based on how much you're going over the speed limit. Yeah, and I was glad to see that. So I just, for me, I'm wondering what more can we do at those specific locations? Because to have those two, the fact that the two highest ones are at the same location, that to me says that we need something needs to be done there. And maybe that's also a discussion with the SHA about the roadway. the roadway and what could be done to slow down in the roadway because it's near one of the priority intersections for pedestrian safety that SHA already has. So just trying to get everyone to work together there. For sure. And we do use a lot of that data for our speed enforcement. We do like grant funded or even police funded pedestrian sales and stuff. And we do use a lot of that data for our speed enforcement. We do like grant funded or even police funded pedestrian, decals and stuff. And we do use a lot of that data to target those specific areas. Well, you've led into my next question, but I'm going to hold it because I I'll wait for the next round, but it's really about that federal exposure in terms of grants and what we could be facing. Miss Young. Actually, that was the question I was going to ask in the last round. Yes, I was going over to the federal asset seizures $676,000 in grants. And it looks like that you're anticipating the same amount. I don't know that anybody's anticipating the same amount from the federal government for anything right now. So I'm wondering if you all are seriously anticipating these, I'm looking, federal asset seizure, federal asset seizure treasury. I don't know how many of these other ones might be federal money, but are you feeling confident? I guess that's the way to put it. So as of right now, so currently we have just over $400,000 worth of federal awards that we're working with right now. And then so, and as of right now I can I can say we have not been notified of any any adjustments to our federal funding. And as a matter of fact, the DOJ a couple couple of weeks ago, there was a lot of talk about DOJ polling funding away. Most of that funding was pulled from, from not-for-profit entities. And only about 7% of that affected the state and local governments. So it's hard to say, we don't have a crystal ball. But we have not yet had any indication that any of our anticipated grants might be affected. But again, it comes up when the grant awards, when the notice of award comes out and we apply for it, you know, it will specify what they're looking for and what kinds of things that they're looking to fund. So when those federal awards actually start being announced, we'll definitely keep an eye out. You's our objective to get as much federal awards that we're able to get. And we build our budget based on an optimistic view of that. But I can't know what to say. This is what's going to happen in the next couple of months. And do you think there's a lot of state awards on here as well? Do you think that the state's financial situation, so that's look on your face. Well, again, we haven't received any indication that any of this funding is a jeopardy, but again, like I also, we also know like there's a reality to this. And it's something that yeah, it's concerning, but we haven't gotten any firm indication of that causes concern other than the general malaise that seems to happen around these particular funding pots. The only thing I'll add to that is sometimes if you look at what's happening at the federal government level, a lot of programs being cut, law enforcement has survived some of those cuts just because we're law enforcement, right, wrong or indifferent. So we are optimistic. Okay, because I know fires here too, they have not survived some of those cuts. So a really big one with that fire training center right in the middle of Eldersburg that we've used I guess from all over the country yeah. It's for Emmett's bird. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's a shame but anyway I do have a few more questions but but I can wait until the next round. Okay. I have one more question. Oh, wait, but first I wanted to say, I knew I had to mail. and Brook 20 meter page 360. It looks like that estimated revenues from the speed enforcement fund in fiscal year 2025 is 418. Am I reading that right? 418,000. In the speed fund? Yeah. Right? No. Okay, which is. Thank you so much. I. Which is it is. can't every seven million page on page 369 369 yes of the budget block. Okay, I don't. I don't. I thought I had the answer, but I'll take that over. You're saying the net is 1.7. But no, the total revenue. Oh right, I'm saying the net is 418. That's, I'm thinking revenue generally by the program. Yes. Okay good. So revenues estimated to exceed expenses. Okay. Yes correct. That's the right answer. Okay. So then my last question is. I feel like we heard about some of these. The increases and are you know. Well, what we heard about was, in our office, specifically D1, I don't know if other council offices have this problem, is semi-trailers parking in residential districts and driving the neighbors bananas. The fee that we charge for that is so low, how could that person not? I mean, that's like the cost of a parking, like press. And so I expected in this wrap up here to see some legislation that would have increased at least that fee because I know, I mean, I think the only reason bike lanes got installed on Columbia road is because to eliminate semi-parking not to like, you know, draw our constituents out onto a bike. But that seems like a really expensive way to address this problem when we could simply increase the fee. So that's something that we've looked at throughout the years about. And you're absolutely right. It's cheaper to park there illegally and pay the fine than it is to park some of those commercial trucks and other places. So we did talk to mostly, I think we talked to every council person. And it's our understanding that it's going to be put in. In the amendment to this? Not in our... So we did talk to mostly I think we talked to every council person and it's our understanding that it's gonna be put in Not in our budget. It's gonna be put in they count they legislation is gonna be put yeah, councilman Sorry Jones Jones yes Michael Paris with his office and they're currently working on it right now I believe we have one more meeting with them. It looks like they'll be putting that in for you guys to vote on. I imagine that's something that we would all like to come to sponsor. Well, I mean, I would just like a single one of us. Absolutely. And like I said, we can set up that meeting with everyone involved. Yeah,'t want to be his office, I know it was a big push before we even met with him that they're already working on. Um, so we didn't want to step on anyone's, um, toes to do that. But we can definitely set something up with everyone just so everyone's on the same page. I know like meeting with some of you guys face to face and just being what other jerks like you do. Absolutely. I mean, since I get what it happens and a lot of the times the drivers actually live in those neighborhoods, you park your second car there. But we've been looked at throughout the years. Most of our commercial vehicles. It's from some of the auctions and places that nature. They're parking these cars there. And again, it's cheaper to park them there. And we've been told that that I think that we've issued citations and some of them said yeah what's 40 dollars or 40 dollars off the top of my grand it's like 40 dollars it cost like a hundred fifty dollars to park it overnight somewhere else so and that's why we wanted to talk to everybody to explain the issue yeah let's please do that that'll I'm hearing both say but all of us a lot of calls probably. Yep. Okay that was that was I'm on. It's not there. Okay. Miss Rigby? This is more about the personnel. I know that for a while there is a lot of a shift trying to take positions that can can be done that are being done by a sworn officer and shifting them to civilian positions. So that way, a little easier to fill seems like the civilian positions are a little easier to fill and that way you have sworn officers focusing on sworn officer duties. So I was just wondering if that is an ongoing process, or if we've sort of, it was more of a transition process, and now we're mostly settled in how we're approaching that. So we evaluate that when I first got here, and we started looking at that, we have civilian ice some positions and put more law enforcement folks out on the street, sworn folks, if you will. And that was really at a necessity, because we were sure it was sort of staffed. Yeah, actually, can you say that again into the microphone that your staffed very well in patrol? The 26 new pins that went to patrol helped us out a lot. They helped us out a lot. But that's something that's an ongoing evaluation. We look at the position and if we feel it can be done by civilian folks, some of the positions can be done better by civilian folks quite honestly and a lot cheaper too. So that's something that we evaluate the major looks at quite frequently. The only issue is sometimes if we have a civilian person that will retire or leave, it's difficult to get a civilian in there because we have sworn people. So what I've done is for example, during the recruiting, let's say the recruiting deficiency that we had and we had that push to hire all those people. We didn't have enough background investigators and it would have taken us months to hire him. So I did it had a push for our criminal investigation folks to come in and do some of those backgrounds because they're multi-purpose. They can do multiple things. Um're experienced. Not a perfect fit for them to do all the time, but since then, we were able to utilize those in those positions where, or in those positions where we could get something done quickly and move them back. But again, that's something that we evaluate, probably monthly. Major, if you want to add anything. Good answer. All right. I appreciate that. I just wanted to make sure I understood that as we're going into tougher times ahead. Stormy sees. Thank you. Miss you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. that we will probably our county council will not be able to be there but not because we don't care and we wouldn't like to be there but because we will be here in the George Banner group so but I want to recognize. I appreciate that you're working to fulfill our budget. Yes, we are. Thank you very much. We are. Yes, that's an exception. Oh, and the police are going to buy the police. They're going to get what they want. And the police are going to get what they want. And the police are going to get what they want. And the police are going to get what they want. And the police are going to get what they want. And look, we appreciate all your support. I mean, we know that there are tough times. We've come through some tough times. And we appreciate all your support. When the rubber hits the road, every one of you support our agency and provide us with what we need. So thank you. Well, I did just I was gonna step out and attend I mean, I don't think I've missed one of those because they do they do tend to coincide with budget So we are all here and we can see the gathering and we go out I know so mr. Herady. We're gonna call like a recess in the middle of our budget hearing tomorrow and say, okay, that's up to the chair and the council. They can certainly do that. Okay, well, maybe we will be there tomorrow. Okay. All right. Yes, it's public hearing. So it's not a budget session. Yeah. Either way, if you're working on budgets, we understand. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate that. So my last question is also about positions. You mentioned your 26 new pens, which means for the public listening, 26 new individuals who have become sworn officers now. Yay. Do you have another class coming in? So we run classes twice a year because of the nutrition. We always have people that are retiring. So typically every year we run two entry-level classes and then we also run lateral classes when we have laterals and typically we will run we've even run a class for one lateral. So typically we would only run a class for two or three ladders at least three, but now that we're running entry level, if we have one person and we have our staff, we can put them in with the entry level folks and get them trained up on certain things that they need. So, you know, we are constantly hiring. So you have an ongoing class, 26, 26, get pinned, another 20, another class is ready to be pinned. So when I say P, I mean, like personal identification numbers. So they are new positions that we acquired. Just a couple of years ago, thanks to the county and the administration. And that added to our strength. But because we added that to our strength, we're still short. So right now, I think we're short like 17 officers because typically we have to have someone retire and then we can fill that pin and it takes six months to go through the academy. So we're always looking at we have an open enrollment. We will never be fully fully fully fully fully training. You're always training. You're always training. Okay. And when do you expect the next class to graduate? We have Academy graduation next week i think right i believe the invitations went out okay alright Okay all right I'm sure it's on my I'm sure it's on my government. Hopefully there's not a budget here. We will see you there. Okay I was just looking at the memorial service for this week. Yes yes. Wednesday night right? It's correct. 14th. It's 14th. Okay great. All right. Go ahead. And then my last question about personnel is it looked like there were three new positions, but there are two frozen positions. And if you could, if you can tell me anything about the three new positions. This actually, sorry. This actually one new position for the SRL. Okay, that's it. Yes. All right. And then the two frozen positions, do you feel like that's going to? If chief wouldn't mind me addressing that. So we've got two frozen positions last year. And I think this was a confusion of that lead. I think the auditor's office to think we had three new positions. There were two positions taken out of the budget last year, and by mistake those pins were not abolished and they ended up being filled, at least one of them is filled. So in lieu of those two positions, we froze two different positions of an equal value to still have the same amount of savings that we had anticipated last year. So there are two different positions frozen from this year? Exactly. Okay. And those two positions, do you know what they are? One is like a store. It's back, one's a store clerk, a property room clerk, and the other one is a background investigator. Okay. All right. Thank you. You're good. You're done. Yep. All right, Mr. Rigby. This might be more for Mr. Ramo. So lucky today. But knowing the budget savings tools that we're deploying now and knowing the ones that we may need to keep in our back pocket, depending on these shifting wins. When furloughs occur is the police department or fire department part of that furlough process or is public safety sort of separated out? How do you guys approach that? I mean,, that's a policy decision, but my I would assume public safety would be excluded. You know, police, fire, dispatchers, sheriff, you know, correctional officers. And I believe I wasn't here at that time, but the last time a forla was done. after the 2008 recession, the Great Recession, I think the same approach was taken at that time. Thank you. I appreciate that. So I can speak on that a little bit. So some of it is contractual. Some of the contracts, the union contracts have furlough clauses in them too. So just one follow follow up and I guess this is along the same lines. Are the police including the collectively bargained unions subject to the change in how much employees have to pay for insurance? Yes, that's correct. Okay. I assume fire is as well then. Okay. Are we good? I think we're good. Thank you, Chief Der. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. Next we have fire rescue services. Saw Chief Winston back there. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning. Welcome. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. We'd love to hear any remarks or a presentation you have and then we'll get right into questions. All right. It gets you out of here. Okay. Good morning. council chairwalsh and council members. Thank you for the opportunity to present five rescues proposed FY26 operating budget. I'm joined this morning by Deputy Chief Wallace, Fiscal Manager, Megan Kudusky, and other members of the department. We'll begin on a brief overview of our proposed budget and then we'll welcome any questions and discussion afterwards. FY26 budget requests is designed to sustain parent services levels while achieving minor sufficiencies and services to them. This proposal supports the continuation of a dynamic. All has its fire rescue and emergency medical system response system. And that's why 25 we responded over 43,000 calls, 80% of those calls were EMS. Value community outreach and risk reduction programs that benefit both residents and visitors in the Howard County and implementation of industry best practices and safety and wellness initiatives without personnel. We are submitting one new effort request for the Office of Emergency Management, a senior administrative analyst, this position support, OMIS strategic growth and the lines with both county climate, priorities and state resiliency initiatives. There's also critical for mitigating the potential impact of reduced federal funding and ensuring continuity of operations. Key challenges in developing our FY26 budget included extended lead times for equipment manufacturing, a 15% to 20% increase in general pricing, rising costs, salaries, apparatus equipment, technology, pharmaceuticals, and medical evaluations. Despite these challenges, our proposed FY26 budget of 163,373,463 reflects a modest .4 percent increase over last year's amended operating budget, which included one time initiatives. 72% of our proposed budget are personnel costs and benefits. This maintenance of effort budget will allow us to continue delivering effective efficient services to the residents, workers and visitors of a higher county. Some of our department strategies and achievements. The major department of goal has been to meet the NFPA 1710 standard for recommended staff with the support of the administration and the county council. We are pleased to report that the current training class set to graduate in August will bring us to full staffing pending any retirements. This progress reduced first respond to fatigue, support better work life balance, and has already contributed to a 6% reduction in overtime from 2020 to 2024. As the first ground-based EMS system in Maryland to implement a whole blood program, We have administered 34 units to 29 patients. Among patients who receive blood before cardiac arrest, the survival rate is 91%. The overall survival rate, including all patients is 72%. We remain committed to a strong safety culture and risk reduction plan. Our percentage of reduction plan plan includes clean cat fire engines, turnout gear extractors, annual events gear inspection and cleaning, continued implementation of fire station, legal design and evaluation and plan purchase PFAS free gear for all personnel. Our mobile integrated health program continues to expand and offer vital service to high utilization populations. We proactive engagement, case management and real time coordination with agencies such as the office of aging and grassroots. We've seen significant outcomes. 80% reduction in 911 calls, 71% reduction in ER visits and a 70% reduction in hospital administration, excuse me, hospital admissions. Our apparatus replacement plan remains a high priority. Since 2019, we've added 13 new ambulance, 12 new engines, three new ladder trucks, last hours, two new tankers. Additional apparatus remain on back order to support our fleet readiness and response capabilities. We've secured external funding to enhance firefighter health. Cancer screening grant through the Maryland Department of Health provides comprehensive screenings, including ultrasound exams through United Diagnostic Services. FEMA's assistance to firefighter grant supports health and safety initiatives including fire ground training, gym equipment and wellness programs. Inclusion now, FY26 budget supports the continuation of vital services prioritizes safety and wellness and reflects our ongoing commitment to fiscal responsibility. We look forward to working with the Council and the Administration to ensure high quality, efficient services for our community. Thank you for your continued support and trust in our department, the best fire department in the country. We'll take any questions. you, Chief. I know, you know, due to the the construct of these work sessions, you don't have that much time to talk about what what you've accomplished. But the five of us or the four of us over the seven years have seen what you've done, you know, since the beginning and it is, it is remarkable to say that there's no vacancies because that training class and the equipment, it's just remarkable. You're blazing through it, but that is a lot, a lot, a lot of work that you and the rest of the fire has put in, and we all benefit from that. It's really, it cannot be stated enough what you do and everyone expects you to do but what you've done above and beyond to really make it the best. We certainly thank you, Jeff. Certainly been a team effort, support of the Council administration, working with budget. We thank you all for all the support and getting us to that point. Thank. Thank you. Sure, my colleagues will allow to you as well. I don't know if it was stated in this book, but in our write-up it says, there's no training class of FY26 proposed, and that's because you build the vacancies. Yes, there's no proposed class in FY26. It doesn't like the only vacancies will be retirees or drop retirees and it benefits us probably to do a class of at least 20. So we may have like three or four vacancies here there with with a plan or unplanned retirement. So we're trying to, you know, anticipate either where we get 20 vacancies or, you know, where the new station coming along. There'll be new efforts there. So. Okay. Fantastic. Thank you. Mr. Rigby. I was hoping to talk about the impact of some of the federal FEMA actions. And what I know it's impossible to know everything at this point, but what you do know and how we're best positioning ourselves in light of the cuts to FEMA and everything. Yeah, so our Office of Emergency Management is probably the agency that will be most affected through cuts and grants. Sure, come on up. And our director is here, so I think she can speak on that a little bit more. Good morning, everybody. So, um, candidly, it's been a very difficult time for emergency management in terms of the federal actions. We're not just impacted in terms of the grants, but obviously we're seeing a changing landscape as well. And quite frankly, we're just trying to keep up with it at this point in terms of of the federal grants, that not only impacts us, but also some of that funding goes to things like Hasmat, to the whole blood program that was started, right? Mass casually, things like that, as well as law enforcement from our Urban Area Security Initiative and State Home and Security Grant Program gets 35% of each of those grants. All of that money is currently unhulled and under review. So I know police has $200,000 worth of projects, on hold there's several projects from fire that are unhulled, and that pays for staffing for four of our employees. So to say the least, it's been challenging, we're looking at continuity and how we make that work. One of the hardest things about it right now is we're getting varied information, right? So we have started to receive some trickle down. There was a court in New York that overturned FEMA's manual reimbursement process. And when they say manual, it really was like pen paper. They were given additional time frames and then they were gonna look at our, excuse me, our existing grants for new criteria from the federal administration. So meaning looking at sanctuary status, looking at DEI, right? It hasn't been fully clear to us what all of that necessarily means for our existing money that's already been federally appropriated That is millions of dollars that we're kind of it's a wait and see so that's the currently appropriated money that we should have legal access to but also again pays for all of those things in those projects We're ready to go we're ready to pull the trigger once someone tells us that we can spend that money again Looking forward,, we do finally have hopefully an a date of when the notice of funding opportunities will be released. We're thinking around May 15th is what they're saying. Now that's been delayed by several months. The only information that we've gotten is one, there's a possibility we make it zero funds because of the sanctuary status. It just may not be available to us at all. They're also looking at changing the definition of homeland security to focus on transnational crime and border security. So those would be the eligible projects for things like that. We don't know that that would then cover staffing or anything like that. So that's kind of what we're working with right now. We're hoping next week we'll have a little bit more information about the future of the landscape. So obviously a lot of conversations with chief with administration about how do we protect our positions. And then additionally with FEMA looking into this hurricane season, I'm sure we've all seen some of the executive orders as well as the memos that have kind of leaked or come out. They are looking at... That should have asked the police about that. Oh, cutting different programs for public assistance. I know we all remember the Elecatsity floods, right? So we've seen Washington State, Kentucky, and several others now be denied despite meeting the federal threshold for public assistance. So any of those programs that we received in the Ellicott City floods, despite two times meeting that limit, those programs are now being denied and they're kind of doing that indiscriminately. So we also know that the federal assistance, while we have a really good robust system here in Howard County locally and at the state level, that's not coming now. We don't know if there will be reimbursement, they're looking at expanding the PCI, which is effectively what they multiply to get based on your population, the threshold for what would be catastrophic. Currently it's at 1.87 times.87 times the amount of damage They're looking at proposing it by time seven So really you'd be looking at a hurricane Katrina level or a 9-11 level type emergency to qualify And that would be limited assistance. Yes, and our previous Incidents would not qualify not not if they yeah based on that on that level, right? So, Ellicott City floods currently, our threshold is around 13 million. And obviously it was different a couple years ago, but 2016 was around 20 million in public infrastructure damage, 22 in 2018. So those were no longer qualified, which again, disaster assistance centers, different things like that would no longer be accessible to the public. So that's just kind of a smattering. I could talk about this for years, but I won't do that to you all. Maybe the cost of the tariffs will rise. The cost of supplies so much that we could beat that threshold. I appreciate your creativity. It's helpful. I think getting if you're able, and obviously that no post coming out in a week or so, but having an understanding of what sort of the high number and the low number of what that exposure is and what we might have to cover locally, because the state's not really in a great position and then on top of that a lot of the pass through comes from the state so between all of these the confluence of all these factors having an idea of what our emergency exposure is I think would be would be really helpful going into this coming year. Yeah and I know Megan has some more exact numbers but we can certainly provide that especially when we get the nofo and I did also just want to mention I think this was maybe in a response we provided but the state level just for your awareness so as we see the shifts at the federal level and them saying you know we're gonna push to the state we're state. We're going to push to local with potentially no additional money or less money. Okay. I don't think they know that we have to have balanced budgets at state. Well, the state has approximately 75% of their positions are grant funded in the Maryland Department of Emergency Management. I'm sorry. Could just to clarify, you said 75% approximately 75% are grant funded. Yes, and come from the federal government that's correct oh great okay so we're we're not only looking at a shift in less federal support but potentially the Maryland Department of Emergency Management being completely gutted and locals again we are very thankful for the sport that we've had from chief and from all of you in the administration to this point. But we are looking at other local entities who are almost completely grant funded as well. We, when fully staffed, have 12 people, what it includes myself and our deputy director and administrative aid, who is not part of that. But four of those positions are grant funding. Other entities are almost entirely. So we are looking at a gutting of federal state and then those grants that locals rely upon as well to fund some of these positions because historically they have been very stable grants. And when you say that, are you talking about the sort of base foundation of your staff or when you sort of pop up into your emergency structure? Our base foundation. Okay. And I'm unable currently, I'm just, you know, in discussion with Grant Freizes and all those other pieces to fill those positions because, understandably, we don't want to hire someone just to let them go. Thank you very much. Missyam. Well, that's concerning. Hard to wrap your head around that. Burr Howard County, the state, the United States of America. Which gets me back to Emmett'sburg, not Eldersburg, okay? And what is happening there? That's where the national fire training program is located, correct? And I remember seeing reading about that all the funding was going to be cut from that program. I assume that we in Howard County send members of our fire department up there to receive training. Can you update me on that? Yeah, so we do send members to to Emmett's bird for training. Just this past Sunday they had the National Fallen of Fireers Memorial there, which we did have one of our members Lieutenant Blankenship was on there. At first that, when the initial cuts came out, that program was going to be on hold, but the program went through. So we're hoping that with that sign, there's going to be sign that some of these programs up there, those training classes won't be cut. The fallen firefighter program went through. Well, not even the training training program did go. So they had stay in training classes were reinstated after they caught, cut them like them. Okay. Yeah, I think some of them were reinstated. But what I was saying that one time they closed the whole campus down. And so with us, you know, having the National Fallen Firefighters program, and we open that, that's a sign that they won't just shut the whole campus down. Yeah. So for my understanding, they're still going kind of week to week, you offering them classes. So we've had people signed up for classes. And one of our fire investigators needs a particular training that you can really only get from the National Fire Academy. And she's been delayed twice now already. It's been pushed back to the fall. And we don't know. It's kind of just a week to week month to month unknown, whether they're going to hold the classes or not. So we're just like with the grant situation, we're all living in this kind of world of, we're not sure exactly what's going to happen. And if I can just add, please, the National Emergency Management Institute is also there as well, and we have the exact same situation. So we also cannot send staff there. So. Well, hugely concerning, but what happens when you can't send the fire service personnel up there to get this sort of training that is only offered there. But it did. They're, I guess they're just not trained or they don't know the latest. There are, there are other avenues to get some of that training. It's more costly because obviously programs at the National Fire Academy, the benefit of them is all you have to do is pay for a meal ticket. There's no tuition or lodging expenses, which was a really that's what drew people in from all over the Gratio to go there. I would imagine that state institutions like the Maryland Fire and Rescue Institute, they may be forced to develop those kind of curriculum to be able to deliver. Each state may have to end up doing that. They might, yeah And it's unfortunate because the amount of experience that comes with the instruction from the NFA staff is, you know, above and beyond. They bring in experts from all over the world really to teach these classes. And it really is top-notch stuff that we're in our backyard that we're... It is, when I started reading about it, I'm like, whoa, this is really fabulous. All we have to do is drive. Okay. Which is great. We really don't have to pay anything. So I was a huge bonus to those of us who have fire services here in Maryland and our emergency management services as well. Emma Spurg said that they were afraid they would have to shut down as a town if they didn't have this activity going on. So that was also concerning. For little Emmysburg. Okay. Mr. Yermen. Go back to, you were talking about the federal grants that are at risk because of the sanctuary status. You's just the word, it's just a name, right? What specifically is in our law, or it is in our policies that is bumping us over that line? So I'll defer to Gary if he's here. I thought I saw him up behind you. Oh, go. Yeah. What we've been told, so there's no actual definition is the problem. Yeah. Basically, from the state perspective, they kind of looked and based on our legislation that we have in place, even though it says nowhere the words sanctuary, right? That ICE is effectively classifying that as a sanctuary jurisdiction. I'm not as familiar with the legal legalese, so I apologize and I'll defer there, but effectively what they but we have not seen a list. So the state of Maryland came to us and said by legal statute, Howard County and Prince George's County are the two that we would say qualify. Now however we haven't seen a list. Apparently this is a list that ICE has developed. They have not shared it with FEMA. So we also don't know what that really means. Will they then be targeting Howard County, Prince George's County or will they be going after the state of Maryland as a whole and saying, well, you don't qualify because you have these counties. But again, we also haven't seen their list or how they're fully defining things. So we don't know this is just against some of that information that we've been given to this point and the executive orders and also the memos that we've seen, I specifically called out by whatever definition. If you have a jurisdiction that is a sanctuary county, a sanctuary state, a sanctuary city, you will not be eligible for funding. So this is just the information we're going on based on what the state of Maryland is currently assessing as our likelihood of being impacted. Because I think the limited cooperation in policy, like us and let's say Montgomery County or Baltimore County, I think we're kind of the same. The difference, I think with us in Prince George County, we're the only ones that passed actual laws, which when we were evaluating that a few years ago, we were told by million people, like change the policy, don't change the law. So now we're stuck with that. That is my understanding as well. Okay. Oh no. Oh my god. Well, I mean, you know, I mean, you've got a corner. Well, first of all, we need to figure out why do we need to figure out like really truly like what's going to happen. And if it's just a little tweak in our law or a little tweak moving like like what's that line that could get us back on the good side for grants. That's really the basic question. And to be honest with you, I don't think we know unfortunately if there just will be a state by state situation or really if they are going to go jurisdiction by jurisdiction, just because the grants themselves are we are the subrecipient, right? They're just living at the state level. So. Well, notify. My question is actually back to the budget book. And again, the same level of service is reflected for every department and agency. If I did the math right, your same level of service resulted in a 2% increase over a prior years budget. But just personnel costs alone, which I think one of you said was about 70, 72%. Yeah, is rising by 4%. Like how do you manage that? What, how are you delivering the same level of service and increasing either personnel or cost to pay personnel, but overall reducing the level of service? Or overall having a same level of service that's not going up, proportionally? Sure. I understand you question to be a person. I'm not going to be a person. I'm not going to be a person. I'm not going to be a person. I'm not going to be a person. I'm not going to be a person. I'm not going to be a person. I'm not going to be a person. I'm not going to be a person. I'm not going to be a person. Do you see where I'm going? I'm not apparently articulating this. So you're saying personnel category is going up significantly while the entire budget is relatively flat. And the main reason is. Thank you. I wouldn't even say significant, but like. Well, it's going up. Yes. As compared to the entire budget for the fire department. And the main reason is the prior year we had some one-time expenditures in the prior budget which added up roughly to about 10 million if I'm not mistaken and you're no longer there. So that's a big contributor to that budget to budget. Okay, perfect. All right, that totally explains it. Okay, thanks. Miss Rickby, do you want to, okay. Trying to stay focused and not go down at Stephen Miller rabbit hole, but. I was wondering about the volunteer funding and especially at the fifth district. And I wondered if you could just just in looking at what's going to each district. The fifth district really stood out and I was wondering if we could just have a discussion about that and some explanation. So, just going kind of going back to some of the grant funding. from the operational side, the only other additional grants that may be at risk are the assistance of firefighter grant from FEMA. And then the Amos grant that the volunteers get for basically purchase of apparatus. I think that's about 600, 650,000. Sorry, that's a federal grant, you said? State, the Amos. Amos, AMOS. AMOS-SS. Thank you. As far as the funding for the fifth district, that may be a little higher. Obviously they have a bigger, larger station and they have the clock spill ballroom that is a attached to the station. So some of their operating costs are a little higher than some of the smaller stations. So you may have seen some increase there as it relates to the funding for that particular station. Yeah, sure. Hi, good morning. Hi, my name is Mark. Their increase was 2.8% from 25 to 26, which accounts for 20,699, of which 4% was for facility maintenance and 10% was for pest control. So it's not a lot. They just moved items around. Okay. That's helpful. Thank you. Right. And like proportionally for looking at each previous to, you know, obviously, like, um, Ellicott City is a smaller station, um, Lisbon, um, and like the number last year to this year is not a huge difference, but just sort of in the overall scheme I was like, why is this why is this one not like the others. So thank you. This is me in the fifth district. We'll stop putting notices on people's windshields. Do you want to see If we pass this budget. Yeah, so we actually we met we've been at a meeting up very yesterday. Oh, excellent. We'll be back. We'll be back up there Friday. Excellent. All right. That's not my question, but I did make me think about the fifth district. So my question was actually, I can't even find it. Going back to, I guess, personnel. You all nodded, but I want to ask the question, whether or not the collective, collectively bargained employees will also be hit by the 5% increase in what employees will have to pay for health insurance. Yes. Okay. So the answer is yes, that they will have to do that. And what happens in those instances when the employees have already reached an agreement, or have they reached an agreement? the healthcare is not part of the bargaining contract. Just wait just. Yes. Okay. What is, have they finished their bargaining for coalists and step increases this year? Yes. The contract has been ratified. It has been ratified. And what's the, what's the call it increased for this year? I think. So what was negotiated and mediated was a 1% effective July of this year, a 3% January of 2026. And then a% January of 2027. And it's a two year contract. It's a two year contract starting effective July 1st. All right, thank you. Mr. Yemen. I'm back at the district five thing. I didn't have any other questions, but you mentioned that their costs, their funding from us is a little higher because they have the 10x ballroom. Can I hear that right? I'm really, you want to add? The station itself, the operational portion of the station is larger than most of our other volunteer corporations with the exception of West friendship. I know they also had to put in a little bit of additional funding for they need an HVAC system replacement because their system is the original one in the building. So 25 years old. The funding for the ballroom is a separate entity. We have a joint use agreement with Clarksville and really it's the operational part of the station where we operate fire apparatus and our crews out of where some of that funding goes towards their responsible for the ballroom. They're responsible for the operating cost of the ballroom. Okay, because they keep all the revenue from it. Yes. That's okay. Great. Thanks. This question is probably more for our auditors and council administrator staff. And it came up with police. I think where we asked like what's the proportion of over time to to regular salary paid? If I if I am word search the entire operating budget, I think the time appears once. So it's not something that is being presented to the public for whatever reason. But I don't see that kind of analysis in here. If I missed it great, if I didn't miss it, can we at least have that for police and fire and rescue services? Absolutely. That's it. It's in the detail at the general ledger account. So we can get that. Okay, you're talking like budget words now. Okay. Okay, thank you. All right, that's that was my last one. You're done. Do you have more? More about you, Mr. B. Okay, all right. You're up, Mr. Young. So equipment. Last year, lots of equipment or there was a lot of money for a lot of equipment. And I'm wondering what the status is on that equipment. There was also funding for full time employees to operate a second peak load ambulance that was going to begin in 2025. And I'm wondering to go down the route one corridor if that occurred. And the. There was a new basic life support, EMS transport. And I was wondering if that's an additional ambulance and where that unit's going to be housed. Sure. So the equipment that was part of the amendment, all of that equipment has been ordered. So there's a tower and engine, a new medical ambulance bus and a command unit. Those all have been, the orders have been placed. But you haven't received any of them yet. No, well, manufacturing times are still. What are you looking at? What do you think you're looking at? Two-year, I could do it. Yeah, close to two years, right? So we've won't even get those for another year. Those amended equipment that we did order, yes. Probably at least another year or two. The BLS Peekload unit will go in service in August when this class graduates. It will be run out of station 12 Waterloo. It's an additional 12 hourhour peak-loo unit that certainly our call volume has shown that that unit is needed. And station 12 being one of our newer station is actually one of our busiest busiest stations. So we're hoping that that BLS unit will, you know, support some of our MS services down along that one quarter. Well, if in follow up to that, if you could just talk about what your plans are to spend down the fire fund balance. Do you have other hopes and dreams? Yes, so obviously we're looking at as we spoke capital budget, new fire stations. We're working closely with budget as far as the fire fun. And we're looking at We did order additional like said additional equipment We're looking at again the PFOS free gear Did you get some of that gear last year? Yeah, so did you order it? Did you order it? Did you order it and get it or did you just order it? Yeah, so, um, fortunately we did not order it. The working without manufacturers, uh, what we found was the current gear that was out was not meeting. The manufacturer wasn't meeting their quality and safety standards. So for instance, there was some leak and some leaks and a developed hose and excuse me holds and the durability wasn't the same. Right now, we get 9 to 10 years out of the product. And it looked like some of that the PFAS-free moisture barrier would be have to replace every five to six years. Additionally, the current gear that we have some of the thermal protection while the thermal protection would rise with the new PFAS gear, the THL would fall greatly, which would expose our members to more heat in like an financial situation. Is there only one PFAS-free manufacturer in the country? No, so there's several manufacturers that are looking, but they've all had the same kind of same issue. So talking with our manufacturers, they're hoping to have a better product. I think they said the end of this summer, or towards the end of this year, to have a better product that we will certainly continue to work with them, and hopefully be able to wear tests some of that that gear, hopefully by the end of the year going into your early next year. There's our goal. And do we have those already? And we're looking to replace them or is this a new product? It's a new product. It's a brand new product. OK. All right. Thank you. I actually did one have other question. And it was again for auditors and council administrator, which is last year we we made some adjustments to fire tax and got you know long term modeling. Can we check in and make sure that that's still tracking the way that we thought so because it looks as though there was like a 1.2 appropriation from the fund balance proposed in this year. Spudgett, right? Yeah. I just want to check it and make sure we're still tracking with what was represented to us last year. In the modeling of the fire tax fund as demonstrated. The cash flow. Just take a look at the cash flow. Thank you. Yeah. Well, thank you, Chris. All right. I think I think we are we have finished our discussion then of fire and rescue services. Thank you all for coming this morning and again for what you do for us every day. Right. Thank you. Thank you all for your continued support. Of course. Yeah, I think so. Um, I saw Director Chip and Dale. Yep. We're going to get you in before lunch. It's breezy. And it's not outside. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm seeing that. I'm seeing that. I'm seeing that. I'm seeing that. I'm seeing that. I'm seeing that. I'm seeing that. I'm seeing that. I'm seeing that. I'm seeing that. I'm seeing that. I'm seeing that. I'm seeing that. I'm seeing that. I'm seeing that. I'm seeing that. I'm seeing that. I'm saying. Are you okay with us starting? Like you can wander around. Yeah, okay. All right. Well then welcome, Director Chimandale. Thank you for joining us this morning. We'd love to hear from you any remarks that you have or presentation and then we'll get right into Council questions. Thank you, Ms. Washington Council members. I have Deputy Greg Smith with me today and my bus and my budget wizard. Mr Scott Tilton. Just some brief remarks. Thank you for this opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the fiscal year 26 budget on behalf of Howard County Department of Corrections. I would like to begin by expressing our appreciation for your continued Over and collaboration as we work to maintain a safe, secure, and progressive correctional environment. Over the past year, we've made significant strides in enhancing both operational effectiveness and the care we provide to those in our custody. Most notably, we successfully launched our dedicated mental health unit an important step in addressing the complex needs of individual struggling with behavioral health issues. This initiative not only improves the well-being of the incarcerated people, but also helps create a safer and more stable environment for the staff and the inmates. We've also prioritized staff safety and preparedness. With the procurement of new weapons and upgraded ballistic vests, we are better equipped to protect our personnel and respond appropriately to emergency threats within the facility or while we are assigned to external assignments such as a hospital or a transportation run. With respect to budget line items, we have requested $80,000 more than was budget in fiscal year 25 to cover our overtime costs. Over time is needed to ensure appropriate staffing throughout the facility in our efforts to keep staff in the incarcerated population safe. Over time, fluctuates pay period to pay period. Based on disability leave usage, our vacation schedules, hospital coverage, staff vacancies, as well as our mandated training initiatives. We continue to make every effort to fulfill our correctional officer vacancies as quickly as possible, but there will almost always be turnover with resignations and retirement. We are requesting an additional $66,000 over fiscal year 25 for our dietary department. As our food prices have increased, as they have in the community, but also our incarcerated population numbers have increased. So we have more folks to feed every day. An increase of $33,000 over fiscal year 25 will also be needed to purchase clothing and uniforms for the incarcerated population as well as our staff. We are required to issue new uniforms and safety shoes annually for all correctional officers. As the incarcerated population numbers increase again, we need to purchase more clothing for them. We will also see an increase in janitorial supplies of approximately $20,000 over the previous year. And once again, this is based on increases in the community for cleaning and paper products. As we reviewed fiscal year 26 budget, I want to note that we are satisfied with what is before us. We recognize the importance of being fiscally responsible, especially during these uncertain economic times. And we are committed to operating within our means while continuing to provide essential correctional services to the county. Once again, I thank you for your support and for this opportunity. And we look forward to working with you and we welcome many questions you may have. Thank you, Director. I think you were in here for Chief Winston's remarks and mine. You are another one of the departments where I feel like we've seen a lot of things move in the last couple of years that we hadn't seen before. Even though we've been hearing about them since probably our entire two terms now in office. So that's really appreciated. Thank you. I'm going to ask it because I think it probably all of us have it on our list. And it is so de minimis, but this is our only chance to ask it is this notion of the gift cards. Can you just explain what you know what's going on there? I'm going to defer to the deputy because he took those notes for us. But I will say to you that we're making significant changes in how we're going to operate with our gift cards because we recognize there's an issue, but I'll let Greg speak a little bit further on that. Sure. Good morning, everyone. One of the main purpose of the gift cards we utilize tomorrow when we do hospital runs and also when we take individuals to medical appointments, staff aren't able to have lunch in per-out collective bargaining agreement. We have to provide lunch to all staff. A lot of times those runs may run over eight hours. They also when we have individuals in the hospital, unfortunately, we again, we don't have cafeteria access like we do on site. So we use primarily the gift cards for those reasons and also for parking. I'm allowed out of hospital runs sometimes be in downtown Baltimore. And we don't do not get the affordability to have designated parking. So we park just like everyone else and we have the pages like's like everyone else. On occasion, our dietary department may utilize a gift card for the purpose of an emergency purchase such as like last week we needed some new serving spoons. Or if we have an individual as a special diet that we would not ordinarily order on one a weekly basis such as culture diets. Since that majority of our population are not on that diet, we have to frequently go out and purchase those meals in order to satisfy the need. That pretty much sums it up the purposes of what we use them for primarily. Okay, thanks. You're welcome. Mr. Memma, is the department of corrections the only one that run, the only department that runs into that kind of thing, like making sure employees are able to even when they're off-site or... I think as far as use of gift cards, as far as I'm aware, it's at apartment corrections. But I'm saying, aren't there other mechanisms to reimburse or to even avoid having an employee have to go out of pocket for those kinds of costs? Yes, I mean, I'm aware of reimbursements. OK, but there's not something that prevents them from having to go out of pocket. What are the, are there credit cards or whatever the, yes, you can use, but I think in this case, you have a lot of different employees that fall under that situation, right? That is correct. And when I said we already have made some changes as recently as this week when we started reviewing our gift cards, there will be other things that we believe would be better served if they were handled through a PDQ card. Okay, PDK. Okay. Yeah. All right. And that's. I mean, it is such a diminimus amount. but it just pops out. And I hope no one on your staff is planning on writing a book about healthy eating choices for children. Okay. Now you guys didn't get my joke. All right, Ms. Ruby, you're next. I appreciate you starting off with the gift cards because I think that definitely stood out to everyone. When I was going through, I was trying to understand if we were expecting less people from the US Marshall Service or if we were receiving lower rates per person. We're receiving greater rates per person. The issue is yes, we are receiving lesser intakes. While we've been in conversation with the US Marshal because we would like to maintain our current, what we've had in the past and we have seen a Gwimlin intake, the response has been where we used to receive a fair amount of females from the US Marshal. They are now going to the Maryland Courts and Institution for Women. They've entered into a contract with the US Marshalls. So we have we've lost some of those bodies. We also have not seen as many coming to us from the Chusspeed Detention Facility. But I will say that we continue to be in conversation because we recognize that that was revenue generating for the department and we will continue to make those conversations. Yeah, I mean, I think speaking for myself, I certainly have conflicting feelings, but I also recognize that it is what allows the Department of Corrections to function essentially at all given given the age of your building, the layout of your building, and the staffing challenges that that, uh, uh, currently exist for you and, and it's not just for you. It's across the industry. I guess I would say are the, um, departments across the state. Um, I think one of the things that I learned this year, I feel like I'm constantly learning, there's so much to know and understand when working across and with so many different departments. But many of the US Marshall folks, they're not staying usually for less than a year. Sometimes they can be there for years. Correct. And so I guess, and this can really just be a pin for a later time, but really understanding how the two populations interact if at all and just sort of how they're existing in this liminal space for years. We don't necessarily segregate them into distinct populations and if there was a challenge we can move them. That's that is the beauty of least having multiple housing units. Yeah. But by and large the US Marshall population and some of those individuals that are still awaiting trial here in Howard County Right, they're not even they have not even been convicted of a crime. They are still They are awaiting their due process their fair trial And and are incarcerated well, they're cohabitating receiving the same services in the institution, the same programming. That's not on you just to clarify for anybody listening. I mean that's not to say that there's not challenges with some of the US Marshall cases but certainly we've been able to manage them further well. Okay well I appreciate that and I know it's a sensitive subject but you know I'm I accept the contract the contract and the need for it. Thank you. Ms. Young. Good afternoon. This means you all three of you. I see you. You all were accredited last year. Congratulations, ma'am. Congratulations. I understand that you are only the second institution of its kind of Maryland to receive accreditation. The only county. The only county. Yes. Howard County and Montgomery County. Yes. Way to go. Thank you. That's a big deal. It is a big deal. Yes. I can't even imagine all the hoops that you had to jump through. And you still have to jump. And you're still jumping through them. Yes. Anytime the word accreditation is in a sentence. I know that it means you've got a lot on your plate. so that's a big deal. So is there a renewal process for this accreditation? There is. You have to keep jumping through more hoops. Can you describe that a little bit? The accreditation process takes place every three years. So when the American American Correctional Association left our institution, there were things that we were advised to work on, even though we were fully accredited with very high marks. There are always room for improvement. So there will be things that when they come back in three years that they will be looking for us to fulfill. Is that the reason for more training? Is it? It is. Yes, ma'am. That's one of the reasons for more training enhancements and training. Yes. And that's why you have more absences and still a need for more over time. Yes, ma'am. That's one of the reasons. Yes. Okay. Because well, it's great to see that you all don't have as as are you not predicting as many vacancies? Are there still a lot of vacancies right now? There are, yes. Okay. I can see the look on your face. Our vacancies are quite minimal. We have two civilian vacancies. Okay. And we have five correctional officer vacancies of which all five right now are in the background. Checked. Okay. That's good. So, but there's still all this overtime. All the overtime and as great intimated, yes, with the training. Under prior to ACA accreditation, the state of Maryland mandates 18 hours of insurface. ACA requires 40 hours of insurface. That's a lot of training. It's a lot of training. That is a lot of training. Annually. Yeah. Annually. And it looks like your recividism rate is good. Yes it is. Yeah. It looks the actual number of inmates returning within three years was 3% and 24% and 25. Oh, but it's going out predicted to be 5% and 26. But still very low in comparison to everything else that's going on in the United States of America. Correct. Yeah. But so what do you think your low recidivism rate is attributed to? Directly attributed to our robust reentry program. Reentry in Howard County starts the day an individual walks into the institution. Our reentry folks are sitting with those individuals in their review and they follow them through their incarceration, making certain that they're in the appropriate programs while they're inside the institution. If they need a GED, if they need job training, so on and so forth, we are preparing them for those activities and then we follow them into the community up to 18 months to ensure that they're successful. Well follow up to that because when you say that you follow them into the community, do you release any of the people that you are working with in the detention center with ankle monitors? There are individuals that are on home detention under pre-trial supervision, but they're not being physically released from us and having a monitor on them. Once they've satisfied their time, there is no ankle monitor. Okay. And so there's might be before they get to the detention center. And the ankle, how, what is your interaction with the ankle monitoring system? Do you have to look at what's going on with those individuals when they have ankle monitoring device on, or is that only the ankle monitoring company that is keeping track of those individuals? We have individuals that are under pretrial supervision that would or could have an ankle monitor on them. We are pre-trial supervisors, follow that through a mapping process, GPS. So they do track that. We also have some individuals, not all of our work release individuals, are on GPS monitoring, but some do. When we put somebody out on work-a-lies, for example, maybe it was a domestic violence issue, we will put a monitor on them because we want to make certain they don't stray from where they're supposed to be. And we have two work-a-lies counselors who monitor those ample monitors. And again, electronically. Does the monitor, I'm curious because as you know, we had some very severe angle monitoring issues here in Howard County, not through the detention center. Just want to point that out. But does the angle monitor person who's looking at your angle monitor, we'll call them call them GPS monitors. That's good. Okay, GPS monitors. Does it go, is there a, doesn't alarm go off so that the person who's monitoring those GPS monitors knows that they have straight out of the area that they're allowed to be in. Yes, there is a sound. There's a sound. There's an actual alarm. Okay, that's very interesting. Then when that alarm goes off, what's the next thing that happens? Do you call the police and say, oh, hey, we have somebody on a GPS monitor, and they've straight out of the area that they're allowed to be in. Will you please go check on them? Well, the first thing we would do would be attempt to contact the individual because maybe the monitor is just inoperable. And for example, maybe they're at work or maybe they're at school or what have you. So we would be making contact with that person first. And then if we were not successful, then we would advise the police department. Okay. All right. Thank you. Certainly. Mr. Yemen. My only question was about monitors. So you got it. I'm sorry. Mr. Riggby. I was wondering about your exposure to federal funding changes. And if you rely on any federal grants, and whether they pass to the state or come direct. All right. Our reentry grant is actually through the governor's commission on crime control and prevention. So that's a state through the state. We don't anticipate that we're going to lose any money there. The health department handles our, what we refer to as our sore grant, which is for medical assisted treatment of the population, which has had a lot of progress in recent years. Absolutely. While we may see some reduction, we're not anticipating that it's going to negatively in fact this. Okay. Thank you. I'm missing. Do you have any more questions? About the ballistic vests. So the ballistic vests were minor standing, they were received in FY25 and that there is another $38,000 proposed for FY26. So that did make me think about, I thought, again, I could be totally wrong. I'm just letting you guys educate me here, that in a detention center, you didn't carry firearms. That's correct. So I was thinking, it just made me think, what was the purpose of the ballistic vests? Well, the ballistic vests, not only have they utilized in the institution, but when we have to go out and make a transportation run or in the hospital, then it does put our officers in jeopardy or in harm's way if they did not have access to that vest. you you never know what's going to happen when we're transporting somebody. You never know when you may be accosted in a hospital. So while they're ballistic vests, they're also to protect us against stabs. And that could occur more frequently in an institution. OK, so the ballistic vests, there's not like a stabbing vests or a ballistic vests. There's just a ballistic vests that serves all purposes. You're actually, in some facilities, they may utilize just a stab for the best, but we wanted to think before we're thinking because of the reason the director stated, all of our officers are qualified with the handgun. We send everyone to training from weapons qualification. So with that being said, everyone would be outfitted for the best for the reasons she stated of the external transfers also in the facility. We have individuals who don't want to be there. And so we want to protect our staff by having them wearing a will a staff professor and also a ballistic vest for safety reasons. Okay, and are your staff going to be impacted by the higher contribution to health insurance. Yes, ma'am. Okay. What is the starting salary of a correctional officer? We just want to put 56. Yeah, 56. Yes, 56 and some. 56 and some around. Okay. All right. Thank you. You're welcome. Yes. I was wondering you just, and it was really interesting to read through and sort of with some of the documents that you provided. But I really wanted to hear about the timeline for your new facility. It was fascinating that, you know, I think it was four jails were developed in the 80s and they're all the same model but then ours is different. Then these other ones in surrounding counties which has led to some of our challenges but I want to stay focused on the future in the hopes that we will get this new facility together. All right, well we meet every two weeks. As a matter of fact, we have a meeting today at two o'clock with facilities and we also meet with prime architects there they are architectural company that we're using. At this point we have. We're anticipating a new detention center ten years out recognizing that there will be need for funding. But we've all but we have projected as far as 20 years out in terms of what the population would look like the incarcerated population in Howard County might look like and it could be as high as 580 in mace at that time. So when we're looking at building a new facility and the design of a new facility, it is to accommodate up to 580. Recognizing at that point, obviously, there will be a need for additional staff. The whole design of the institution is not anything like the existing institution. Yeah. We are looking at what we refer to in the business as direct supervision, where the officers will be in the housing units with the incarcerated population. For those of you who have been in the jail, You know that our officers are outside of the housing units which is certainly an antiquated system. Not the best system takes too long to respond. It also, fortunately for us though, we have cameras to accommodate it now, but if we didn't have those cameras, the institution would be far less safe than it is simply because of the physical plan. But we're also looking when we're building or designing this new facility, what's lacking in Howard County Detention Center? We're lacking a lot of program space, lacking indoor recreational space. We could bring outdoor space. But we're looking at increasing our dietary, our kitchen is very tiny. And if you have a population of going up to 580 and then an increase in staffing, you need a lot, a larger dietary department. So we're looking at that. We've looked at things as perhaps having a range, a firing range, because it stands now. We have to borrow. The police department sometimes will give us space, but more often than not, we are borrowing space from the Department of Public Safety and the Incrational Services for our officers to qualify annually on firearms. We're looking to improve our medical department and certainly at that point, a state of the art mental health facility. We are also looking to have bed space for juveniles. As it is now, legally, we cannot handle juveniles in Howard County Detention Center because we don't have sight and sound barriers. So when we get a juvenile in, until such time as DJS can take custody of the individual, we have to keep them incarcerated over in central booking. Central booking was never designed to be a housing unit. And we can't provide services in that unit. So we have to either wait for DJS, or we have agreements with Anna Rondo County, Montgomery County and Prince George's County to take in our juveniles. But it would be good when we're building a new facility to have that sight and sound and be able to provide those individuals with services. Great. I'm glad to hear it. Thank you. Keep keep the dream alive. Are we done? Early in our first term, we would get email from a certain person who would remind us that there are only two categories of persons that this county can compel to be in a location. And that is our school children and the occupants of your detention facility. And for that reason, that we should be more focused on ensuring they're safe and appropriate care. And that really resonated with me. And again, I see you making so much more progress than we've seen in the past. And that's really encouraging. Thank you. With that, we will close our morning session. Thank you so much. Sara, do you want to see if we can get, well, it's 12. 25 ish, can we resume at 1255? Up in the hour. Do you want to see if we can get plumber in on soil conservation after DPC? Yes, we can. So we're starting back at 1255. Yes. All right, welcome back to our evening afternoon. Welcome back. All right. We will start this afternoon with the Department of Planning and Zoning. I see Director Eisenberg has joined us with the deputy or two and some others. If you'd like to make brief remarks or presentation, we're happy to hear them. Absolutely. Good afternoon members of the county council. I'm here today with Deputy Director Mary Kendall, Deputy Director Chad M. Minson and Laura Boone from our staff. We're pleased to present to you our operating budget for FY26. We want to highlight for you our key accomplishments from FY25, the overall budget difference between FY 25 and 26 and highlight our new efforts for 26. I know that time is of the essence, so I will go through this quickly. I just wanted to highlight some of our key accomplishments from FY 25. First and foremost, I want to thank you for your help in this first effort that we received the National Association of Counties Best in Category Award and Planning for Hoco-Bio Design. We received that award last year. So thank you so much for that. You had a huge help, a huge hand in that effort. I know there are many late-night spent with Council going through Hoco-Bio Design and putting that through to adoption. We led nearly 17 meetings and an APO public hearing for the APO public facilities ordinance review committee and the housing affordability work group to develop recommendations for APO changes. So that is well underway. And our next public hearing is on May 20. So that's the second of two that's required by county code. We rebooted the five weeks that is in planning and zoning course, plan hard academy to reflect, talk about design policies and are currently facilitating a spring, 25 academy with 35 participants. Last night was our third of five nights. So we have two more of those to go in this spring semester. We earned two state grants, totally in 175,000 to support the sod improvement programs in Ellicat City and North Laurel Savage, Sustainable Communities, and partnered with Economic Development Authority and Ellicat City Partnership to administer those. We continue to work with the Howard County Conservancy to place easements on environmentally significant sites and anticipate the purchasing of two new easements before the end of the year. We acquired one new agricultural land preservation purchased easement of approximately 86 acres. We launched an interactive map showing historic zoning maps and approved zoning petitions and that's separate from our typical interactive map that we have for all our other recent zoning on our DPC web page. We created historic inventories for four sites representative of 19th and 20th century African American history including an enslavement quarter on Blandeir Park which was featured on WJ TV. And we have that news clip first and foremost on the front page of our DPC webpage and Ken Short with our department was interviewed in that segment. It was really nice. If you have an opportunity, please watch it. We worked with the Department of Inspection, seeing license and permits to draft an EV charging permit process checklist specifically for a town home community HOAs and we just had in meeting with Council person Rigby yesterday to talk about that and how we can expedite that process to make EV charging easier without having to go through tremendous red line process to get these installed for our constituents. We upgraded our project docs to receive and process zoning and alternative compliance requests who did not have that ability prior to this. We had to go through the old paper forms so now we have that through our project docs and we've begun work, beginning in the sure with DTCS to create an online application submissions and processing payments for all our zoning processes. We're hoping to have that complete by the end of this fiscal year. We're in process of completing our drafting of zoning regulations to implement new and relevant policies as as outlined in hookah by design related to agricultural uses to address issues to reduce conflicts in our current zoning code as to improve clarity, accessibility and ease. Ease of technical administration and respond to changes in marking conditions and new industry opportunities. We anticipate a planning board meeting in July and council profile and late August for this axi. We have held three focus group meetings with more than 60 individuals representing diverse stakeholder groups to seek input on our landscape manual. This update will be completed in the fall. And we held five advisory committee meetings for public meetings and 49 stakeholder group meetings and focus groups for input in the development of the Gateway Master Plan. This plan will be before Council in the fall of this year. To total overall decrease in funding by percentage for fiscal 26 versus 25. The DPC general operating budget for FY 26 is roughly $287,000 less than last year. From an over $9 million budget to not 8.8 million8 million budget. This decreases primarily result of a decrease in chargeback, specifically regarding DTCS, and personal cost from the freezing of three vacant positions. DPC did not request any new effort funding for FY26, so this is a real maintenance of effort budget. However, we will be utilizing FY 25 funds in our work program and the new fiscal year. Some highlights from this work program are initiating the new town task force which is underway. We're hoping to get the executive order out this week. We've already selected our consulting team to assist in facilitating and develop recommendations for this that may be used to inform future zoning updates. We anticipate the task force beginning this month with completion in the next 10 to 12 months. We're also close to selecting a consultant to assist in updating the root one and root 40 manuals to better align with the newly updated root one corridor plan and also working on the root 40 manual to better align with other plans that we adopted recently. And the landscape manual is also expected to be complete. This project is expected to begin next month or to be completed by the end of December of 2026. We'll also be launching and completing a sustainable communities plan for Elk Ridge. This sustainable community's program is a place based revitalized, revitalized designation available through Maryland Department of Housing Community Development. This designation is approved by the state and supported by council council will make the county and nonprofit community development organizations eligible to apply To state for various capital grant programs that support the community development projects. So just more tools in our toolbox for that particular area. We're in the process of developing and launching a GIS based interactive online tool to assist the public with navigating zoning regulations, revamping and reauthorizing the RUT1 tax credit program to achieve the revitalization goals outlined in the RUT1 corridor plan, completing the update to the Elecated City Historic District Guidelines, and finally an update to the Development Monitoring System report with the new metric of land preservation. So those are just some of the highlights from this past year on what's upcoming in FY26. So with that, I will open up to questions. Thank you, Director. I'm going first today and my question goes to personnel. I think if I understand the right up in the budget book, three positions within your department were frozen last year, but they are now unfrozen. No? Yes. Okay, our right up literally says, DPC does not have any frozen positions for fiscal year 26. But that explains why why I'm confused. You are freezing three positions. Correct. And that is a position then in development engineering, land development and resource conservation. Correct. So if that position wasn't frozen, what would those, what would those three positions be doing? So the engineering specialist three, that was a position that was vacated by Paul DeMarca who moved to public work. So that was our engineering three position, which was a PE. So again, just again processing the engineering portion of plans that come through our development review process. So just again, part of the day-to-day processes of our plans review. With regard to our planning specialist one, that position was vacated through attrition of a retirement and resource conservation. So we had a shuffling of positions. So Susan Overstreet, who is in our resource conservation division, was a long tenured person who retired last year when she left that left that vacancy and allowed for a series of promotions to occur. So then we had a promotion occur from her position opening that person moved from DLD who was a planner to moved into her position, which is a planner three position. That opened up then a free space within DLD for a planner two. So a planner one from DLD was promoted that into the planner two position. So that vacated that planner one position. So again, that just left an opening for again, a planner one that would be processing plans within that planner one position within DLD. And then the planning specialist and the resource conservation division was our historic planter that was that was vacated by Margaret Milliken who found another position outside of county government and so that person was assisting with our historic preservation work. So we have two others Samantha and Ken Shorhu also do that similar work. Okay and is that why then that the personnel costs are down by the 2.6%? This is one of the smallest staff departments that we have and nobody thought I was going to show up and advocate for more personnel in DPC, but I do every year because I think you are understaffed and I think you could do a better job if you had more people actually assigned to do the work that you are tasked with performing. So, and maybe we'll hear more about more frozen positions across that are proportionally similar to what's in this one. But who is making a decision that this is the right department to freeze three positions, including historic resources? I mean, the administration worked with the free department to see what kind of savings we can generate. So there's been discussions. So I was not involved personally in identifying those positions, but I know there's been communication between the administration and the various departments. Okay, let me get my little notes. It is not rare. I didn't pull all of them. I just just pulled last year years, but I made six operating budget requests to the executive this year. And number two was additional zoning enforcement inspectors. One of the biggest complaints we hear from the communities that zoning codes are not enforced and violations take too long to be resolved, especially after hours and on weekends. I went to more than one and I probably said this last year and probably the year before that. I went to more than one of the executive's listening sessions, so-called listening sessions before his second term or as his second term began. And across every community that I went to, the number one complaint was not speeding or overdevelopment or school's crowding, it was zoning enforcement. And it wasn't the same two people showing up at every meeting. It was different people, different issues, same agency, same inspectors not there. It's bad enough that we're already operating on a complaint driven basis, but that even in that narrow universe, we're not able to meet the needs of our constituents as explicitly exclaimed during many community meetings three years ago. I don't understand that. This is not the department for personnel costs, at least not at the working level. Dr. Jones is not joining us today. I have to confirm that. So Ms. Rigby, you're next. I was going to ask about the timeline for landscape manual, but I believe you said that would be completed in the fall. Correct. And how are you working with Office of Commute Sustainability and the B-City initiative to really make sure that our requirements are helping to expand their initiatives and their efforts. So actually we're working with Office of Community Sustainability on many efforts. Yeah. And also to help with their Climate Change initiative. The Landscape Manual is one of the leading efforts from our department that's helping to forward their initiatives on that. So we've worked very closely with them to make sure that we're helping to achieve the goals within that main goal. Great, glad to hear it. Look forward to reading it. Miss Young? I was interested to see that actually first, I got news of this, even though I represent five of the Columbia villages that you are on the edge, I guess, of putting together the new town task force. And I would love to know who was appointed to that new town task force. Do you have a list of those people? So we're finalizing the list now. We should have the executive order out later this week or the beginning of next week. So do you know who you're inviting to be on the task force? You do. Yes, we have a list. And do you know if any of the names that I submitted to represent those five villages are on the task force? I'd have to look at the list of names, and I'm not sure who submitted what name specifically, but I can provide that list to you. And I take it, you're not I can provide that list to you. And I take it. You're not using Pago or you are using Pago for this consultant. I believe so. Yes. But this is not this is new Pago. No, this isn't the Pago that you claim to year ago that you needed to do the app a vote task force that you then didn't use, but said that that was why we needed to wait an entire year for the next budget to come through so that you could get that pay go. That's a different pay go, a pay go that you didn't use. This is the same pay go funds that we had repurposed for instead of the code rewrite that we were reusing for our for hookah by design implementation efforts and this is one of the implementation efforts. We did not need to use a consultant for the app hotel task. Well, no, but that was when you told us more than a year ago that you were going to delay that effort until you were able to get that million dollars in the following budget. I don't believe we said that we were going to be using a million dollars. It was always 500,000. And there was no, but maybe it was 500. I thought it was a million, but I do remember you saying that we wouldn't be able to pursue that effort for a year until that money was put in the budget. We had, which is why we waited an entire year to put that APPO Task Force together. Well, the APPO Task Force had to be put together by county code as a last year. Within a year. Within a year. We could have done it any time within the year, but we waited almost a year to put it together. And now it's taken almost a year to complete their work. That's my understanding. have a year once the the APHOTAS Force is established to complete the work. I understand. I understand you have that time, but that was time that was purposefully used up so that we wouldn't have time to do comprehensive rezoning. And I cannot tell you, while Ms. Walsh may be hearing out there about people who are having frustrations with zoning complaints. What I'm hearing are people who are frustrated about the fact that we're not doing comprehensive rezoning. Very frustrated. And there were a lot of people who followed our general plan. There were a lot of people who thought it was a good general plan. And they're very disappointed that which should naturally happen after that much time and effort has gone into a general plan is comprehensive rezoning. And that's what I'm hearing when I'm out in the community is disappointment that we're not doing that. So how far away are you from completing the work on the FFOTAS force? So we have our second public hearing on May 20th. Then we'll convene after we've heard from the public about the comments on the recommendations that have been put forward. And then we'll complete the final report. And then we look forward to coming to county council with that this summer. What are you going to come to County Council with when you come this summer? Are you coming with legislation? Are you coming with the report? What do you report in recommendations? And are, is there an expectation that the county council will follow that up with legislation or that the county executive will be following that up with legislation? Okay. Mr. Yammer. I'm going to echo what district one said. We've talked a lot about zoning enforcement, ability to get people out on weekends and pay, you know, they're really bringing in the stumps from somewhere else. It might necessitate somebody having the time to sit out there and watch the driveway, I'd say it. So I know you were down an inspector and I guess staffed back up, but it just seems counterintuitive that you think of half of what we do here and half of what we fight about and half of stuff is to create zoning code. But then we don't, everybody just kind of does what they want to do. So anyway, the AgPres Fund, this jump of almost a million bucks in administration costs coming out the Ag Fund. It's not debt services, is it? The entire Ag Fund sheet, that is not just DPC, that is Office of Ag, PDA. So we're just a portion of that. But it still falls under your your cost center here. A portion of it does we we have some salary. We have the debt service for. The IPAs but like contractual services. We have a very I think we have about 52,000 in contractual services. Yeah, well this is... So this is not everything that also should be allocated to other departments. This is just the DP, the piece of the Ag Fund. So I'm not sure what you're looking at, but for DP, the Ag Fund went up by half a million dollars or a 7% increase. increase. I'm not sure what you're looking at, but for DPC, the ACFUN went up by half a million dollars or 7% increase. Well, I'm looking at the estimated 2025. So you're right. It's 7.8% from last year budget, but from where we're going. And that's all that service. It's all that service. Yes. OK. Got it. Thanks. It's going to to me. The landscape design manual and the route 40 design manual. I think I got amendments into the general plan to address this. Again, it's a request that I included in the executives budget priority from D1. CREAN WAIT achieved itself organically with, as far as I knew, no assistance from local government. But I think now that they're there and so successful and so well regarded in such an important part of our community, I would expect that both of those, if not just the root 40 design manual would give special attention to honoring that culture and the value it brings. Missy, Miss Rigby. So along with the root 40 manual, you had also included an update for the route one manual. Yes. And I was just wondering what your timeline for that was looking like. It's the same. So the route one and route 40 manual are going to go hand in hand with each other. We are looking to select our consultant, which we're using our on call consultant teams for that by the end of next week. So we will have a contract hopefully within the next month. So definitely by the end of the fiscal year, so we can kick off that project. If the end of the summer, beginning of the fall and completed by the end of calendar year 26, so 18 months. Great. And then those manuals, then they come before the council. Yes, that is correct. So would we expect those probably in the winter of 27? Yeah, it's like it. Well, if we're talking about technical. Yeah. Yes. 20s. Yeah. Raffing up the manuals, bringing them to council sometime around December 20, 26. Okay. Thank you. Miss. Yeah. So manuals are just that you look at them. You can there's no force a law behind them. No, actually there is a force force law because they are adopted by council. So if a developer doesn't follow a manual, a landscape manual for example, what happens? You can get certain waivers to certain manuals. Okay, well actually I'm glad that you brought up waivers because we had had a legislative session on Monday night, and one of the bills in front of us was to make the waiver process public. And we don't really know with the, how the three people who actually decide whether to grant waivers, how they actually go about doing it. And I said maybe they call each other on the phone. Maybe they just send the director of DPC and email that says approved. I have no idea. And since you're here and we were just discussing this and you mentioned waivers, this might be a good time to explain how waivers are conducted. Absolutely. So there's two different types of waivers. So those waivers that you're talking about are waivers like our Force Cons, Stormwater Management, Steep Slope waivers. So that's the ones that have been signed. Sure. Yep. And then there's also the design manual waivers. So, you know, to our traffic, our roads, road, storm drains, structural, you know, our staff design waivers, things like that, which are more administrative. So the ones that you're referring to are done by the three directors depending on if it falls under the stormwater management, steep slopes, features or the forced conservation features depends on what directors are involved in what waivers. But a developer who's coming in and submits a waiver to a certain part of the code that they would want a waiver to use a hypothetical. Okay. Somebody is a developer who's seeking a waiver for steep slopes, filling in a a watered area and tearing down specimen trees and and uprooting force conservation. I'm one singular lot. Okay. So they would have to do two different waiver submissions for each type of waiver that they're requesting or alternative compliance, I should say. So they fill out the form. They have to meet certain criteria and justify why there's a particular hardship that's not self-imposed or financial, why they need this particular waiver to be. Submit through our system, our electronic system, requesting what this particular request is, why they need it, and what the conditions are that led up to this, then staff for the different departments that are hearing whatever different type of. Well, the conditions are they bought the land and those were the features on the land. Sure. So they wanted waivers for all of those things. Sents on what they're doing. Those are typically the conditions. What's also to let's hypothetically assume that to. To type depends on what they're building. If there's a road that needs to go through them. there's a lot of different issues that can happen on a piece of property that may necessitate that that can't be avoided for whatever reason. So, all sorts of scenarios come through. When those scenarios come through, they put in their petition why, again, this is a particular hardship that cannot be avoided. So, that is then given staff from each of the departments, DPW, Office of Community Sustainability, DPZ, Reckham Parks, whoever. So DPZ is also part of the, they sit on DPZ since with this, but I don't know again if you actually sit. So let me, let me finish here. Okay. Okay. Staff, get this information and they review it. And I'm sorry, interrupt you do. The third one is Reckham Parks, right? Reck, depending. So, you know, if it's a force conservation labor type of concern, it is recreation in parks. It is DPC and it is OCS. It is a storm water management, steep slope, storm, waterway compliance. It is DPW is substituted out for recreation in parks. So two different types of waivers would have to be submitted. But DPC always does sit then on this with this group of three. And that's the third. And so it's OCS. I did not know that. Okay. And so how do you then? Okay. So comes in staff does a very thorough review from all the different departments, looking at what the issues are and what is being requested. They review it, then they give us their staff technical assessment of what is being requested. We have a meeting. Sometimes we go out on the site to review what the request is. If the request seems like it's unreasonable or too much, sometimes we'll say, you know what? We need a revise and resubmit, and we go back to them saying, you need to change a couple of things. Let's say that didn't happen. Let's say you didn't ask that. Then do you just, do you meet? Let's say you did go to the site. Do you meet in person? Sometimes and sometimes we mostly meet virtually, depending on what the schedules are for that particular week, but we have a standing meeting weekly. And that's where you discuss what, who on the DPC staff is part of that three? Well, so the directors are the ones who make the decisions. What I thought, so it's you, are the ones who review the technicality. Okay. All right, so it's you, Mr. Latimer and either Mr. Cabetti. Cabetti or yeah, go ahead. Yeah. Okay. And then after you make that decision, that's when you determine whether or not to grant the waiver. What are you, you then take that decision and you, and form the people at DPC who are writing the, whatever the letter is about. Right. And so a lot of times it's not at face value. It's waiver with conditions and that's what's called alternative compliance. So it's not at face value of what the request is depending on, you know, if it's maybe three trees came in to be requested and we say, you know, only one tree changed this up and for that two trees that are being removed out of the three you've requested, you need to do x, y and z. So, you know, only one tree changed this up and for that two trees that are being removed out of the three you've requested you need to do x, y, and z. So, you know, there's so many different variables. So the initial request that comes in is typically not what the final approval is for any of those cases. Well, that was not my community's experience, but yeah, Every waiver was granted in full. But yeah. Okay. Okay. Do we finish the process though? Is there a vote taken at that meeting? Yes, there is a vote taken. Is there like someone who's the recording secretary or something? Yes. And that is Mr. Cattado from our department. Well, Mr. Cataldo is also there. Yes, an all-er-stopper present. Why is Mr. Cataldo the recording? Because DLD is the one who runs the reviews, typically, because all projects come in through Department of Land Development, a Division of Land Development. And when you say all other stuff, the people who wrote whatever the correct, who are staff technical assessment. Correct. Correct. Is office of law there? No. Why is an office of law there? It's not a, there's no legal questions. Typically that we have these are very technical questions. There's no legal questions today, but miss my house sitting right there. Mr. Cook was here this morning. That was the crack. I I wish I could have meetings without office of law sitting on my shoulder but you guys make decisions all the time to wave the law without any office of law input and the analysis for the bill that we just voted down and when I say that I'm putting what you Christiana and you David is two-thirds of the time you grant those waivers from law without any input from Office of Law. But so you have a meeting you take a vote and the recording secretary, Anthony Cotaldo, measures that vote, and then what happens? It's either approved or denied the waiver. But you don't call the applicant and say it's approved or denied there's a written product generated. It's a union now. So that's what I'm talking about. What happens next? It's sent out. Who writes it? Staff. And then we all sign it. The same staff who put together the staff technical assessment? Yes. Is it always the same staff? It's the staff person does the main review. So it can vary. who were the staff people who do those reviews? It depends on the department who's the most technically adept person at doing it. So I can't say who always reviews it for OCS or DPW or... Oh, I'm sorry, I misunderstood you. I thought only DPZ staff was involved. No, it's the staff from the other agencies as well. Okay, so there's some combined their comments. Someone from DPC, someone from OCS, and someone from Reckon Parks or DPDG. Public works is always there. Okay, and then those at least three people then go and collectively write a decision in order. Yeah, we accept their, we take their comments, we combine all the comments together. We DPC. Yes. We Anthony Cotaldo. I'm or whoever he designates as the staff person I don't get into the minutia who's exactly writing what but it comes from his shop and he reviews them. So sign off on them. If I were to identify the three people who are involved in every single waiver that this county extends. It would be you as director of DPC. It would be Tim Latimer as the administrator of the Office of Community Sustainability, and it would be Anthony Cattaldo. He's a part of the piece on a signatory on it. Okay. All right, I'm sorry to interrupt you, Miss Young. You did it. I'm sorry, but it is a big deal. It is a big deal. It is a really big deal with a big deal that Ms. Wash filed an excellent piece of legislation to bring some more sunshine to this problem. It's not over. We'll file a public information act request. That's what I was thinking. We were just doing. And we published that for the benefit of this company if the executive branch cannot bother to do so. I mean, that's the stupidest solution ever, but that's the only way I see today like this very important subject matter. And I will say everything is posted online and there is a dashboard that's posted online and all of the information is also posted online. So it is accessible. All the notes. We don't keep any notes online but you do get to see all the reports. Okay yeah I've seen the reports but not the notes or of course not knowing what's going on in the meetings. So my other question was Route 1. Well we're going to full circle around Okay, Mr. Yermen. Yeah, I'm sorry. So just to clarify earlier, you had said you would, part of the discussion amongst the three would be, you know, when you have a constrained envelope, because all of these are parcel based, right? These are all decisions that are based on the parcel before you. These aren't broad decisions based on theoretical. Correct. So when you have a parcel before you, and you're working to see how the storm water regulations would apply, and then you're seeing these requests for waivers, it doesn't sound like they're all automatically granted, that there is a negotiation. Not at all, they are not automatically granted at all. Well, I'm very glad that we can have that on the public record. And then just to, I'm sure you guys have a larger background in this based on your professional experience. But primarily, I think it's the FIS amendment that is what drives a lot of the opportunities for the waiver process to exist, that we don't have a right to take of their property without due process. And so, am I correct in understanding that that is the reason why the waiver process exists for that constitutional protection? I can't speak to the legalities but I mean we do get opportunities to you know work within the building envelope that we have into grant alternatives to the current compliance is that we have and we're not the only jurisdiction that allows alternatives to the regulations within our code. Well, I would hope not because it's many times our regulations that require the waivers to be needed. You have a pie shaped lot. We force you in from the side of the road. We force you back from the front and now you're in a back corner. So there's very, you know, I think very often it's our regulations that prompt this waiver process. And I look forward to reviewing those when the time comes. But really I, I wanted to express my appreciation for Mr. Edmondsons. Not related to all of this, but the EV charging that red line process, especially for homeowners and HOAs, was really onerous. It's really not designed for them. And I'm very grateful that you created a process that works for them so that they can make these energy efficiency upgrades at their property in a way that is far less complicated than the full red line. So thank you. Miss Young. So I'm gonna go back to the root one plan tax credit. Is there another new plan coming up for root one? No, really? Are you asking about the one manual update? Yeah, what is going on now? Sure. So when we first established the root one design manual, it wasn't 2009. So since then, we've adopted a lot of new plans and other policies that have suggested that we need to update the design manual. So we've adopted hook-o-by design. We have the root one corridor plan that provides more design guidance for these particular manuals. We also have the complete streets policy. So we wanna make sure that this design manual is compliant consistent with those visions. And how long do you expect that we'll take? So we're looking to hire a consultant in the next couple of months and then we expect that the process will take us through end of December next year. And so that's what we were talking about that we had the we're doing the on call consultant that we said that we talked. Yeah, yeah. and on call. I'm sorry I missed that. So that's there are our our our term contractors that we have have already. So we have on call contractors that we're going to be using for that particular manual. And you think it's going to be parallel with the root 40 efforts of the same consulting team that will be using for root 40 will also be used for the root one manual. Do you think that any of the design guidelines that were set forth in the 2009 root one manual have been implemented in a way that you would have hope they would have been implemented. Well, I mean, I can tell you that when did you come to DPC Mary? Were you here when they first five years ago? Five years ago. So this was not your original work, work, the manual. Correct. That was in 2009. Yeah. Back to my original question then. Do you see anything that's in the manual now that's been implemented in a way that you would have expected, you would have hoped that looks anything like what the manual was contemplating when it was written. Yeah, I mean, I'm not an expert in the 2009 manual, but I think what it did was it gave some specific design guidance for a lot of the new zoning districts that were established along Route 1. So a lot of the CAC's community activity center, and some of the other mixed-use zoning districts that were established after that last general plan, that is why the Route 1 design manual was established to provide farther design guidance now that we have these new mixed-use zoning districts. Wasn't CAC commercial activity? So that could be commercial activity Yeah. Which was changed radically by this council not by myself and Ms. Walsh, but yeah, so that you don't need to do nearly as much commercial. So that was one aspect of it that you recalling was important in the original design manual. That's right. It was to address the zoning changes that resulted from a previous general plan that created mixed use development opportunities than the Route 1 Court. That was the point. That was the idea. It provided further design guidance in those zoning districts. So now we have hook-o-by design in the Route 1 Court or a plan that provides a lot of design guidance for that area. We also have the complete streets policy that provides a lot of guidance for how we design and utilize our right of ways. So we're hiring consultants to take a fresh look at both Route 1 and Route 40 to think about how do we need to update and improve these manuals so that we can create that design that we describe in these new, in our new, our new planning documents and policies. What do you think that you would need to do to make sure that, I mean, I, I think that you all have a lot of really good ideas in these manuals. And I love looking at them. Oh, these are pretty. This is really nice. I'd love to see Howard County look like this. I'd love to see Rupert Forty look like this. I'd love to see Rupert one look like this. What do you think we as planners? What do you think that we need to do as a county to actually make any of those things happen. What could we do? What could we do better? What could we do? Do we need to do legislation? Do you think that the county council should be more prescriptive in its legislation when we're passing things? Should we be looking at your manuals? What should we do? That's a really hard question to ask because a lot of it is the willingness of of time that it takes to do it from the natural turnover of these properties to one to do it. So I hear what you're saying. I think that's a broader question. And I think, you know, we set the plans out in the guidelines, but again, I think it's the willingness for them to want to do it. And how do we incentivize that for them? I think incentives is a big component of this. Do you have any? I have one more question if you don't have any questions. No, you don't, we're going to end very soon. Have one more each and then we'll move on. Okay, but then I'll jettison the one I wanted. Pick this one instead. But primarily change occurs when development or redevelopment activity occurs. Is that correct? Correct. So if we want more places to look like what we want them to look like, we need more development and redevelopment to occur. Is that correct? I'd say that's fair. Yeah. All right. Universal guidelines. We, you mentioned that you were going to include Universal Guideline update, but frozen positions prevent continued work on this. I know that, I mean, this has been a really big deal to our aging community. They've been asking for this for a long time and they've been asking the administration for it. I've been contacted. I know that Bob Francis has been contacted. We were actually, my office at one point was just going to start our own task force and put together a group of people on our own because we weren't hearing back. So I've been totally understand. Yeah. I mean, what is going on? Why are we not doing this? Why is this not a priority? So it's not that it's not a priority, but other things are also a priority too, right? And I think what we said in our response to the audit or budget questions was, you know, there were other parties that came up. So root one and root 40. And we only have so much bandwidth and so much staff. And so then again, with shifting priorities, moving up other new town task force, root one, root 40, and then also declining staff. There's only so much we can do. However, if time permits at the end of this year, if we have the bandwidth, we would, you know, we could move that into a slot, but we have other obligations as well that we'd like to also complete this year as well. I mean, I just think I'm not setting the priorities, but I mean, Rube 1 is a long term thing. We've had this design manual in place since 2009, right? Same with Route 40. Universal Guidelines are something we need right now. That's something that people, when they are moving into a place, we need to have something that developers, home builders, apartment builders can look at and say, these are the universal guidelines. This is what we should, universal design guidelines. These are the things that we should be looking at. It just seems like that we do have guidelines currently. So then all they need is updating. I think a little Based on what we've outlined as the guidance in hook-o-by design and the guidance in the age-friendly action plan, they would require a bit of a comprehensive update. So it's not a simple update. It's pretty comprehensive and I think we'd want to take a look at how other communities and counties have updated their universal design guidelines. So we'd want to look best practices. So we want to do a good job on such a task. And going back to how nicer documents are, our current guidelines are just a two-page black and white words without really any good uniform design standards and good pictures and imagery to really convey the message to as well. So I think it would be a lot of work as Mary said to really get them up to standards of what other communities are doing. So it would not be a light lift. Okay. We're going to end Department of Planning and zoning there. Thank you for your time. Thank you for coming down. I understand that we have David Plummer from Soul Conservation District. Joining us. People will receive no more than 30 seconds for opening remarks. I'm kidding. Okay. Okay. So, your conversation. Okay. Okay. Okay. No, we're happy to hear from you and we're happy to slot you in before we get to the next one which could run a while. Ready? All right. David Plummer, Howard Soil Conservation District Manager. Thanks for having me. I'd like to thank our budget team, Paul and Broken Doctor Sun. They always make it very simple for us. So I appreciate everything that they do. Obviously the district would not be able to operate without all the funding that we get from you all. So Thank you. We have a maintenance of effort budget. In fact, it's actually decreasing a little bit, as you can probably see and have wondered. Last year, we had a one-time funding from AgPREZ for a grant loan program. And that was one time. We still are figuring out the details of that, but we have that money. That's why I think the decrease shows up this year because that was one time. The AgPres cost year program is going very well. We have already on the books, started spending this coming years money. So a lot of interest in it from the farmers means a lot of conservation is going on the ground. It's been a fantastic program. The only challenge we foresee is some of our federal and state partners are pulling back a little bit on some of their call share programs. So the money is to go to farmers for practices. The state zeroed out their call share program. However, they have enough backlog that they think it'll last them for a year. And the feds have changed in a number of ways some of their goals for conservation practices. So in the future, it may be a little bit of a challenge to keep this money rolling, but so far it's been fantastic and we've gotten a lot more practices on the ground conservation practice. A lot of them that you all have seen on some of the tours because of this funding from you all, so we really appreciate it. So that's pretty much it. And if you have any questions, we'll be happy to answer them. Thank you, Mr. Plummer. I don't have any questions. Ms. Rigby. I have my, I feel like been asking it for almost every department this year, but I am, I was particularly concerned about yours. And it relates it's relates to those federal, um, the federal outlook. I mean, it looks like significant cuts are coming to agriculture. Um, and I'm wondering how those are going to affect you. So the main part of the federal, uh, monies that we see are the call share programs, so, um, I'll just give you an example. The main program that we use is called Equip Environmental Quality and Center Program. Last year we had about a dozen applications approved in Howard County this year. There's three. Three, sorry, you had 12 approved out of 12 submitted. There was a couple that weren't approved last year, but most of the ones we submitted were approved. And then I'm assuming you submitted more than three. Yeah. Yeah. So now I will just say that varies year to year. So we can't this could be just a one off. But it's that much. It can, but something is definitely going on at the federal level. The funding that was coming through, I don't want to get into the weeds too much, but the IRA... That's okay, this is the weed time. The weed time. IRA funding was going to help support conservation practices, and most of the IRA funding is kind of on hold at the federal level. Okay. So we don't know what the future of that will be. And are you hearing from farmers? I feel like you're one of the folks in the county who are most directly connected to our farmers. And while we have some farmers like 3 dozen daisies, we also have our commodity farmers. And I guess I feel like the 3 dozen daisies folks have less impact from federal changes, but the commodities folks have really significant impacts. So have you been hearing from them and sort of I'm wondering if if the ground's kind of coming out below them on this side, if there's more that we're going to have to do on our side? Everything I've heard so far is anecdotal and the commodity prices and some of the tariff issues are what's going to impact our commodity farmers the most. It's interesting that you mentioned three dozen days but they had a project last year for a high tunnel as you guys saw in the tour. That's the kind of thing that's maybe not making it to the level of getting funded this year in the equip program. So it could affect across the board. So like those new starting, not new to farming, not farming legacy? I would say they're going to be in the similar vote to the commodity farmers. And again, those cost share programs still have to be hashed out. It's all very new, as you know. So it may not be, it may not be a problem, but it's just something that we're watching on the radar. As far as talking to farmers and hearing direct impacts to them yet, as I said, it's just anecdotal and we'll think they know how all that's going to shake out just yet. Okay. Well, please, please keep us on top of things as the federal government is going through this process. I believe in hope that whatever this original skinning proposal is doesn't stay as is but obviously can have some pretty big impacts. So thank you. It's always a pleasure to see you. Thank you, same here. Thank you. I'm sorry I wasn't here on time. I had just shoved the crab cake sandwich in my mouth when I was still when Michelle called me. It was the special today and I thought at one 30 was going to be plenty early enough. So I'm fine. Where was that crab cake family? In my last day, is that okay? You could say, we want to help. It's special today at Tony Locos. Oh. Over there in David's side of the count. There we go. I mean, Tony you're on a first name basis. So that sounds great. Okay, one more crab cake, piece of advice people. Bush will impact Monday night crab cake special 22 bucks best crab cake I have ever consumed just saying thank you for that. Okay. All right. Um So I don't have any questions. I'm glad we had a chance to share crab cake restaurants. I. I mean, that's, yeah, that's always important, but yeah, no questions. Okay. The loan program, it just never got started. It's in the works. We're not a bank or a lending institution. So we're trying to figure out the terms and the details. There hasn't been anyone yet that has needed it, that has missed out. So we're, I would say it's going to be ready for prime time very soon, and it'll be available. It's just a little bit of a little challenge because it's not our typical thing. So the funding hasn't come back. You still got funding from last year. You're sitting on that money. And once it gets going, you won't need new funds because it's going to revolve. That's the plan. Yep. Okay. Got it. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Sorry. I couldn't be here right after launch. I followed you. No, you were scheduled for way late and I was like, that's insane. Yeah. Great. Thank you. All right. That brings us then to Department of Public Works. Okay. There's Director Cavittie. I am guessing based on doing the math here that we will get no further today than general services after Department of Public Works. because additional to just the operating budget of DPW were supposed to also address the capital projects C0337 and hopefully you also those materials that came in yesterday. And then I don't know right or wrong I still associate general services with DPW for now. It's at some point in time you'll be two distinct agencies, but I do not see us getting to inspection licenses and permits. So you want to let up Francis know that please. And that means we have to find an additional 30 minutes somewhere else or something. Okay. All right, but if you have opening remarks or presentation or anything, we'd love to hear it and then we'll get started with questions. Okay. Thank you, Chair Walsh and members of the council., Yosuf Khabeta for the Department of Public Works. I do have a presentation that is up now, yes. And also I will be speaking on behalf of DGS also in this presentation and my time up here. Okay, that would explain why I tend to group you together. Okay. So again, thank you, Council members, for giving us an opportunity to speak to you about our FY26 operating budget. So thanks to the administration and Dr. Sainan broke for their support. And I wanted to start off as you can see the first slide there, the our vision as a department is to be a national model of public work sex and right next to that you see the six people that are the key drivers that are working hard to get us to that end state. So Chris Jagarapo with highways, Sharon Walsh with facilities. Daniel Davis is not able to be with us today, but he is represented by his deputy Craig Daley. Alison Ford is our bureau chief for utilities and Mark Deluca with environmental services. So those bureau chiefs are supported by the director's office to help them as they do the good work of the department. And so that the director's office is comprised of John C. Fried who oversees budgeting as well as our safety and learning and development programs. Ernie bridges our senior HR liaison and Kendrick McIntyre overse our communication and outreach both internal and external. So the two yellow boxes obviously are the two functions that will be part of DGS come FY 26. And then you see up there are core values and our strategic priorities. The next slide. So I wanted to highlight some key fundamentals that we're focused on in the department. Obviously, safety is number one. A lot of the work that the women and men of the department do is very dangerous. So we are in the process of building a department-wide safety program with key individuals that would be responsible for not just training but also hazard identification and mitigation. As far as employees, we get them in the doors. The key to keeping them here and retaining them is having a world-class learning and development program. So that's also in the nascent stages, but we're developing our development program through utilizing technology. For instance, some AI powered learning management systems for our staff, as well as LinkedIn Learning is a tool that we're using for our employees, as well as focusing on asset management training for staff. And speaking of asset management, that is the third key fundamental, where the stewards of billions of dollars of worth of assets, and so managing those assets that we are able to continue to provide high quality services to the public is very critical. And then how we maintain those assets, how we build it, how we design it, all of that really matters. And so we have a burgeoning program to focus on that for the department as a whole. Next slide. So these are, I'm not going to read all the key accomplishments that we've listed because the next slide has some of the pictures. But I just wanted to highlight the traffic calming policies, as something that we're very proud of, as you're aware, that's what we updated and issued the policy. And currently it's being implemented. And if you go to the next slide, there are some pictures that you'll see. Top left is the solar canopies at the East Columbia campus that was completed this fiscal year. We're one of a few jurisdictions in the state that has a curbside collection of food scraps. And so we were able to expand to additional areas, this was school year, bottom left as a group of apprentices that we graduated. The first full class of apprentices, the electrical, HVAC and plumbing. And then in the middle bottom is the Henryton bridge. We were fortunate to win project of the year just a couple months ago for projects under five million dollars and that project was a key accomplishment for our department. And that was through the Maryland Quality Initiative or MDQI as far as the award. And then we planted a thousand trees this past year. So that's a bottom-right picture. Next slide. So when we talk about key accomplishments, we really cannot leave out snow operations. That's an accomplishment. That is not just for this year, but it's a year in year out as you all are aware. The picture on the left shows you that even in the most extreme and harshest conditions, unfortunately, you know, we have water main breaks. So it is our team that does go out there in the dead of night sometimes and freezing sub-zero temperatures to repair these assets and get the residents back in service. So being able to do that as well as the snow operations that you see on the right, making the roads clear, the effort and the sacrifice that our men and women make during the winter season. I just wanted to make sure that we highlight their efforts and appreciate them for that. So. No comments. So the next slide looking at comparisons between last year, our budget proved last year and our current ask. So the bottom line is in FY26 we are requesting $257 million across all funds for the operating budget. There is a significant drop, as you can see from FY25. And the main reason for that is the fact that the Bureau of Facilities and the Real Estate Services Division will be its own department. And so the next slide shows you where those funds are going. So the bottom line ask for FY26 for DGS is $48 million. key new efforts and I'm wrapping up here in a couple minutes. For FY26 in DPW, we are requesting an Engineer Manager 1 to be funded six months into the year. This individual would be a senior member of the highways team. The volume of capital projects is getting high. And so we need that support. And that the Engineer Manager one will be a key member of the Senior Leadership Team to make sure these projects continue and progress. Within DGS, there are several new efforts. Obviously, the new director, new deputy director director as well as the various costs that are now associated with this new department related to facilities like 97, 55, Patuxen Woods and the pool and the old courthouse. And last slide is just an image of the left is the rendering of the North Laurel pool and then of course 9755 on the right. And so that completes the question and so there members of the team here to answer details questions along with myself. So thank you And actually, if you don't mind, one thing I forgot to mention, National Public Works Week is coming up May 18 to May 24. So we are planning some events to honor and appreciate our staff and just wanted to make you aware. We're going to have a party. Can we have a party in the parking lot and thank them for doing everything they've done to make it a nice parking lot? We would love to do that, but I think we'll have to think of it. Oh, come on, bro! Way to go, bro! A party, bro! You don't need to be in this town. You can't really speak stuff. Yeah. I'm sure all of us will be happy to share whatever you are doing in that regard on social media at least that's free mr. memo Okay Okay. Well, I guess I to talk about DGS and DPW at the same time. Is that your preference? Yes, you're saying correct. And that that first can we go back to that on the on the big thing? I say I think it's two. Yeah, one two. Yeah, it's like the first substance one This is this is a chart of the combined DGS and DPW. Am I understand that? What this is the old chart as it is today? yes. Oh, OK. But like starting fiscal year 2026, there will be a separate DGS. Correct. And then the other. Because my confusion is, you're saying today they're together because it's still like May, whatever it is. And that's today. Versus on July 1, there will be two distinct entities. DGS and DPW will be two distinct entities. Come July one. OK, is there a chart for that? I do not have a chart for that, but I know that it is in the budget book. But the department is comprised of four bureaus. OK. OK, I got it now. Does that chart though identify the actual personnel? Like this one does? That chart does not identify the actual personnel. Yeah, well, so that's what I'm looking for. And I will, who gave this to me? Oh, Chris, thank you. So page 166 of the book has a similar chart for general services. I know who the county executive is. The director is to be determined. The director of DGS is to be determined. That is correct. See so many nods. Real estate management. Is that is that role going to roll over from someone or is that a new hire as well? I do not know. I assume it would roll over as is. Okay, and as is that Emily a yucky that's correct. Okay, and that's our yellow thing. What do you know, I want to know leadership. I want to know this kind of information for 15 plus 30, 45 days from now. The positions have not been filled yet, but functionally, the staff of facilities and real estate services will all come over. One new agency as we build out the leadership. Okay, so maybe a different way to say this is what that's up here falls off. That's the yellow boxes. That's the yellow. Okay. Okay. So it, okay, so is facilities bureau chief one of these, these blue boxes on page 186,6. It is not. All right, and here's here's me foreshadowing is it. Which side is Zach column back going to belong on? Sinkling you out Zach because you're like the project designer or project engineer on the C0337 that we're going to get to. So there's no pretense like a Zach columnback is going to be in DGS and also. safe and sound right unless you're cloning him or something. We haven't made a determination how that will play out yet. Okay. unless you're cloning him. I do not think. like us to cloner. If you're going to put him in more than one of these two positions, which I see is very distinct, DGS and overseeing or having some critical role in C033. So we've funded the cloning program or is that not it? I don't know. Rook's probably going to shut that down. Okay. All right. That's my concern is. I mean, I'm starting single you out, Mr. Hollenback. But you are named in all over C0337. And I do always associate the dynamic duo over there together. I'm sure in Walsh and Zach. So I am concerned about that. And so if someone could address that concern one way or the other, that would be helpful. But that's my question number one. Mr. Riggby. Director Camilla, I'm very glad that you started with the safety plan because that's where I was going to start. I think it is just I can say that I personally had no idea that DPW job, not just how we're County DPW jobs, but public works jobs or some of the most dangerous jobs in the whole country. And so safety really has to be incredibly important. When do you expect to shift from the planning stage for this effort and shifting into the implementation stage? So, I would say we're a little bit beyond the planning stage now. So first of all, I should say that the Office of Human Resources has the risk management team that supports us very much in terms of the day to day, right? whether it's interfacing with the most, if there is a concern that the most may have about our locations or providing training. So that is already happening. Where we are now is in the process of filling three key positions. One is a safety manager or supervisor. And then the other two are safety coordinators that would report to that safety supervisor. So we are actively in the interviewing and selection phase. Okay. And really not good at saying things the way they should be said. So I'm just going to say this, especially, but I feel like it shouldn't because it's during budget. But I care, you know, obviously the risk management portion is important and we have a fiduciary responsibility to the county to ensure that we are performing risk management and managing our liabilities. My primary concern from this comes from more of the employee perspectives that they should feel safe at work that they should know what to do to promote safety that there is a strong culture of safety and really that at the end of the day you know know, our employees are coming home whole to their families. So I certainly appreciate that part, but I guess I'm wondering more in the day to day experience, how things will be changing for TPPW employees. Once we are able to fill those positions, some of the responsibilities that the office of risk and safety currently has in terms of providing the training or developing for instance, job hazard analyses for particular types of work that are staff to will be transferred over and will be able to do that ourselves within DPW. But then there will be other things that will still remain in the domain of the Office of Risk since they have general oversight and also managing the learning management system that is currently being used to track the training for not just DPW staff but staff throughout the county. Is that answer your question? A little bit on the training side, but I guess I'm wondering if an employee has a concern that there's an unsafe environment or that maybe they've elevated it within their work unit, but don't feel that it's getting appropriate attention beyond that. Right. What would those options be for an employee once the hiring is completed? So we are in the process of finalizing the guidance to do exactly what you're talking about, which is if I'm an employee and I'm in a location and I see something that's unsafe, or my job. Do you some say something? Who do I say it? Right. For my supervisor, it tells me to do something, a job that is unsafe. Yeah. A workflow that gives the employee the process, who do take it too. So as far as our structure, as we're filling the positions, obviously we don't have those safety personnel currently. But John Seafeed, in my office, is the overseas the safety program. So an employee would then be able, if they do not feel comfortable reaching out to their immediate chain of command, they have that option of working with John and then John would then pull in whoever's needed to help resolve or mitigate. But at the end of the day, it's the, what you talked about earlier is really what we're after which is making sure that staff understand that there is There's value and even Pointing out near misses. Yeah, there's a lot of value in near misses And that they should not feel like they would be retaliated against if they you know pointed out something unsafe in the workplace So it's really a lot about continual engagement with the staff to communicate that. Yeah, and I'm glad you mentioned that because I think sometimes when if you're the squeaky wheel, but you don't feel that it's being heard, you can start to develop, you can have a chilling effect that people don't want to report because they don't want to be the troublemaker. Exactly. And I think that could be one of the worst things to affect the culture of safety. Agreed. Thank you. Thank you. Miss Yall. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. I'd like to talk about personnel as well, but from a different perspective, the salary equity adjustments that were done in DPC actually the personnel cost decreased due to the salary equity study. Was, do you know why that happened? Was it a decrease in middle management or? So in general, if you're comparing FY25 to FY26, the decrease in personnel cost would be attributed to the real estate, the services division and the facilities bureau being spun off. But beyond that, I would have to ask Brooke. Yeah, I don't that's not what I'm referring to. Do you know what I'm referring to Brooke? No, no, and I think unless I'm this heard, I think I heard you say DPC. Valerie, DPDW. DPDW did I say DPDW. I meant to say DPDW. It was a salary equity study that the HR department did. Well, that can be initiated and it could be ongoing, but I'm not aware of any salary equity assessment that led to a decrease in somebody's pay. Randy, I don't know that the not having position, not in somebody's pay. So that if there was a hiring then in that position again, that there would be a not as big a salary. No. And I think potentially a misunderstanding may come from. Last year we specifically put in some kind of like seed money, right? In most, in each department, if they identify cases of salary and equity for them to pursue it and go through HR, and that funding was not renewed this year. So maybe you're looking at that line item, the funding decreasing.. But there was no. Well, maybe that was it. Yeah, there was no an actual assessment that was done that led to a reduction in force or reduction in pay. How could you read my mind when I'm reading a budget sheet wrong? That's amazing. Okay. Brandy, that was what you were going to say. Okay. Yes, ma'am. All right. So you have collectively bargained people in your employee at DPW. We have. You do. Okay. So I'm asking this question of everybody at your employees or all of your employees are also going to be paying that extra percentage for their health insurance. Correct. And when what is your lowest paid entry position at DPW? Lowest paid for the time. Lowest paid for the time. 18 to 20 dollars an hour, which is what on a salary basis on a year. That would be a high 30s, low 40s. Okay. Okay. How many people do you have any idea? How many people you have in those positions right now? In those lower paid positions? Yeah. I don't have that exact number. You don't know. Oh, I thought you might know. Okay. We can definitely get that. Okay. Yes, I would I would like to know that and and is here like a threshold or a dollar amount. I would say under 55 people who are working in DPW at a starting salary in under 55. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to ask you a question. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. Okay, that's what, all right. And if I may add, that's all funds. It's not just a job fund. Okay. Water insurer, everything else. All right, okay. Mr. Yaman. The watershed protection and restoration fund, I don't get the math. Where is the 3.1 million appropriation to fund balance coming from? So let me try to find the page. Oh, it's three is five. It's okay. So generally what happens, if you you remember I'm sure you do we increase the fees Yeah, I've not been increased since the fee was enacted back in FY 2014 and The idea the level of increase was supposed to sustain that fund for X number of years so So initially at the beginning, you're going to have revenues being generated that are above your expenses. So that additional revenue that's being or anticipated to be generated in FY 26 above expenses is going to go back to the fund balance. And the way we depict that fund statement that you're looking at, we show that as an appropriation to fund balance as an expense item because that money we're collecting is being sent back to the fund balance. So it's more of a technical way to balance your revenues and expenses. If the opposite was true, we have less revenues in the current year than expenses, then we'll be taking money out of fund balance. So that will be an appropriation from fund balance. Well then where is it in? So you're saying that's inexpensive somewhere? Yes. So one of the expense categories. Operating transfers? No, it wouldn't be operating transfers. Expenses are the other expenses. Yeah, expenses other. So that explains the increase in expenses other. What is the big increase in contractual services? It's about a million bucks from wherever we've been to end up this year. So this fund includes DPW, OCS, soil con. So off the top of my head, I think there was an increase in transfers to capital projects. There was an OCS an increase in stormwater reimbursement money. You know, the rebate program that we have, not just for residential, but also for commercial. So those were the few of the items that come to mind. Oh, thank you. And also, you know, there's always changes in our chargebacks, our beloved chargebacks. So, I'm not sure how that plays into this, but. And then the 3.6 million increase in operating transfers. That would be going to capital. That's what's going to get us. Yes. Okay. I'm good. Thanks. My understanding is that neither DPW nor DGS is the beneficiary of a pay as you go fund operating find item. That's correct. But last year, the department should have received $400,000 for a bike lane lead removal equipment. Did that happen? I believe so. Yeah, we did. Do we use it? We're Mr. Jagger up Mr. Jagger up. We can answer. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chris Jagger up your chief of highways. We have not made a purchase yet. So we have been looking for a piece of equipment and that we demoed several pieces of machines. A lot of these machines are made in Europe. They're new to the United States and they're coming over now. We explore four options so far. We're close to picking one of those options. So hopefully we'll finish making the purchase in the near future. Okay. There was another one. Traffic coming pilot program. Not $1 million. That was in your slides, right? Right. Um. That was for last year. For this year. It was in the slides as a as an accomplishment in terms of yeah, last year. But we're going forward with that. Correct. Okay, so do we spend that half a million dollars? That was appropriated as pay as you go funds last year? Close to it, yes. And so whatever costs to continue that program are now in operating? They will be in the capital funds for the program. Oh, the capital, okay. Because this was a new policy, we weren't sure how many new requests we would get. So the idea was to at least have some money for us to continue the program because the program was being initiated in the middle of a fiscal year. So the funds are being used for projects that are in construction now. And once those are done, all new projects will go into a fight 26 to a capital program. Okay, All right. And so I mean, those are the only two obvious. There could be others in here, but that's a pending request that at least the one made, which was what was to spend down on last years. 79.6 million dollar pay as you go funds dedicated to various alleged operating expenses. Ms. Rigby. I'm going to say that. I'm going to say that. I'm going to say that. I'm going to say that. I'm going to say that. I'm going to say that. I'm going to say that. I'm going to say that. I'm going to say that. I'm going to say that. I'm going to say that. I'm going to say that. I'm going to say that. But I wanted to hear more about the expansion of the food scraps collection program in HCPSS. You know, and I could be remembering this incorrectly, but I feel like there was a pull away that many HCPSS sites had. And so I was glad to see that reengagement. And I wondered if you could just touch on that and talk about how the vibes are going because it sounds like they are interested in engaging on this. Thanks, thanks for the question. So I think the most damaging thing event that happened in the Food scrap program in the schools was COVID. And so we were we were in about seven schools at the time and they were going you know with mixed results and So when COVID hit a lot of the schools Just fell out of the program they need to be reengaged and we've had some conversations with the schools and with their Kitchen staff their janitorial staff as well as with some of the principals. And so most recently, we expanded into bellow spring elementary, and we're re-engaging in a lot of the schools that we were in before the pandemic. So the reports out of Bellow Springs Elementary is very good. And so, and there are some, honestly, there are some bugs in the program, in handling the waste and no pun intended. And so we're working with the schools to address some of those issues. And some of it has to do with, you know, liquids. And, but we've promoted a share table that they develop share tables at their schools. So if they know they're not going to eat their apple or their potato chips or if they're not going to drink their milk, they put it on the share table for someone else. That's great to hear. I mean, there's a level of food waste in our schools is appalling. Like, everybody here should take an hour and volunteer as a lunch monitor, yet to be really good at opening milk and catch up. But aside from those, I think that's why I was so excited to see this because it is extensive, but also it's such an opportunity to get kids thinking about food waste and about how to reduce waste and how to really start some of these environmental practices. So I was really glad to see this expansion way to go on getting it back. Thank you. And if we have, or I should say when, when we have residents reach out about this issue and wanting a program in their school, who should we connect them to? Well, what is the process we should encourage them to? Right. I would have them call, they can always start with just calling our main number, which is the 64, 4, 4 number. And they'll be directed to the recycling and collections people. But if not, you know, the individual in charge of it is Alan Wilkham, ESAW. If he hits in charge of a lot of things. Well, recycling and collections. So, and that FoodScrack program in the schools and on the street, curbside is a responsibility. Okay, thank you very much. Okay. Miss Young. Is that you, Chris, traffic signals? Okay. Could you? You might. I'm hoping that you'll know the answer to this. I keep just talking about it and it looks like it's actually going to be done. So I'm trying to determine if this is truly the case. The following five traffic signals will be upgraded as part of the Highway Safety Improvement Program. Harper's Farm Road, a beaver kill. Yes, thank you, Chris. I appreciate that. I really do. They really, really needed that. And our friend who is who takes those walks those children across the street every day will be very grateful too. So thank you. Um, Cedar Lane at free town road. I'm trying to figure out what could possibly now that there's another 72 apartments there, but we already have left-hand turn signals. It's a T section. So I What what else is going to be done there? So all of those five signals will have pedestrian improvements to be crosswalks and lights and pedestrian lights That's sort of thing. That is correct. And one of the main premise for the project as a highway safety improvement project was a lot of these signals were old signals and they've been in the system for a while. And instead of using our capital funds to make the improvements, we applied for a grant to rebuild the traffic signals. As part of rebuilding the traffic signals, we also committed to making some pedestrian improvements along the way. That's how we chose the locations where these signals are, where we had the request for additional improvements, tied them with the existing cappal needs for the signals. Both of them combined resulted in identifying those five locations. I shouldn't take the credit. I used to be a signal engineer for the county long time ago, but the credit should go to Ms. Chen Wu and Su Min George. They put the work together. Yes. And the third one, which is making me, I think, very excited as well, is Cedar Lane at Own Brown Road. We're going to get a left hand turn signal there. I believe that is correct. Yes. Thank you. I can that will affect me every single day. And all the people who come in behind me who can no longer make a left hand turn on Own Brown Road from Cedar Lane because because there's too much traffic. So we are very, very appreciative. Yeah, plans are finalized and you should see them going into construction as soon. The sequence of the construction, I don't know like which one would start first, but I think all of them we're planning to finish on this year. I am very happy about that. And I just had more question I think about the apprentices. Okay well let's save that for the next round. Okay just a quick question. Mr. Youngman? Four Mark went and sat back down again so I have questions about environmental services. questions or mark. What's the S. What's the estimate of the increased revenue this year from increasing the fees? Like what's the total? It looks like we're budgeting flat landfill services fees and only $350,000 higher in charges for services. So it doesn't seem like a lot for all the fee increases? Well, the fee increase was needed because we were running a deficit where we had to take money out of our balance fund. At the end of the year, in fact, we even had, in one year, I believe two years ago, where we had put in legislation for an emergency action to take that money out of the balance fund, about 3 million. Our, so we needed to update our fees so that we wouldn't be running those type of deficits. And so the the the the tip fee and the residential fee that we came up with pretty much covers it just covers what our expenses are. And we'll get us through, according to the model, the cost model, we'll easily get us through the next few years. Since you brought that up, I think it's important to note that as we develop the model with budget And we increase expenses and we increase labor at a rate of 2.5 to 3%. Expenses are going up at 2.5 to 3%. Growth in the county that will be getting the trash fee is below 1%. So revenues are really not growing because of new homes being into paying the fee. And so we had thought that when we wanted to raise the fee, we thought of a yearly or an annual adjustment, CPI adjustment on the fee itself to keep up with the way expenses we're growing. However, we haven't done that and we haven't introduced that. But I think that there is a need because we fund our own capital and pay the debt service, so in addition to our growing expenditures, the rate that expenses are going up, and that's just our costs, labor costs, and also chargebacks that, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the trying to figure out is, the estimated 2025 revenue is $40.4 million dollars. And before the fund transfer, the projected is 40.7 million dollars. So it's only like $350,000 increase in revenue coming from all the fee increases, which it doesn't, I mean it's diminimous. That thumbs off there. I'm not sure what are you going to say. I see the 40.4. It's 41, 793 minus the appropriation from fund balance. Okay, so we're looking at F526. Yeah, so I mean, then you can see it above too. It's only like 350. So basically, yes. So basically what we're doing is, we're going to, we're going to add the results. MiloPolities, Mr. Mamo, I could you turn your microphone on, let's make some of that. Yeah, but, yes. And I think the big problem was this more alluded to, you know, there's kind of like a structural imbalance between kind of the expected growth rate and our expenses and in the fee income, right? Right. Well, I, but I just know we're running out of time. I mean, fiscal year 2024, actual, we were in the black, three million. We contributed three million to fund balance. We were even estimated to be in the black fiscal year 2025. Now, only by $77,000. That's a little tight. So, you know, we're going to increase these fees, but I don't see the increase in revenue. I don't see a big increase in revenue. And this year's the first, I mean, the budget year, 26th of the first year, we're actually going to use fund balance despite raising the fees. Yeah, I think as you compare What we're anticipating to collect in 25 with what we collected in 24 You'll see the impact of the increase when you are comparing revenues and expenses 26 alone in isolation what you're seeing is or expenses have increased so So it's significantly, so that's why that's why red expenses are exceeding. So is the plan to just kind of burn down this fun balance over the next few years? I think that's probably a likely out. Because we're only using our million this year. Yeah, and the feeds just went up so like It's gonna be three million next time where you feed that we charge, you know residential customers It only increases when you get Developments right so it's very limited Well our expenses grow every year right 4% or high but now the fees have the CPI kick around on them, right? No, they don't. There you go. We were hoping to do that last year. Right. And we were advised by the Office of Law that made it problematic to have an automatic CPI adjustment. There's such a problem. Potentially. She's not listening. She's not listening. So because of that, we... because you can't set a rate for for a few dreams. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. And the other thing to keep in mind is that or curbside collections, you have a household fee or curbside collections, which the cost of that does go up because the contracting costs go up as well as our operating costs go up. We have another side of the house, which is really how much we export and how much that costs, which could be offset by our tip fees and what we charge commercial clients. And so we have revenue, I believe that we estimated revenue around $4 million that will get from tip fees and maybe another miscellaneous fee. We may have some miscellaneous fees that we will collect. And then also organic sales, which come in somewhere around $300,000, sometimes in some years it's been higher, and all very per year, because it all depends how many trucks come across the scale. Right. And we did see, not because we don't know what to attribute it to, but the volume of trash has gone down. So we saw tremendous growth in the volume of trash over the pandemic. We went from 118,000 tons in 2019 to over 134,000 tons in 2023. To the private contractor, like that would go pick up at a restaurant or something, did they come to our landfill or did they may? They may. They may, but not all the time. Not all the time. They can have the room. Everybody's home and now they're not home again. I'm good with this. I don't wanna take up too much time. So that could have been. They can have the room. Everybody was home and now they're home again. Right. I'm good with this. I don't want to take up too much time. Thanks. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think we'll do one more round of questions and then move on to C0337. My last question has to do with the multiple cost savings measures that have been taken by the county. I remember to ask DPC about the freezing of their employees, whereas the administration is represented to the council in general, 3% overall has been frozen, DPC or a disproportionate share of that with 5% of their positions frozen. If I do the math for you, Director Kabetty, it's 1%. And I can't say that I'm surprised with that. If you have a given number of vacancies and a finite scope of work or maybe infinite scope of work, that might make sense. But I wondered if your department also was affected by reducing, wasn't there a fleet one? County transportation costs, mobile comms. I mean, do any of these cost savings measures reach DPW and future DGS? It's as far as I understand it, it is across the board, yes. Okay, so that's what I'm asking. How does it affect specifically DPW and DGS? So in terms of the freezing of the positions, in addition to the bureau facilities, the engineering bureau and the highways bureau had some positions frozen, some for six months, some for 12. As far as the other cost cutting measures, I think you mentioned fleet. Reducing IIT mobile communications and county transportation costs. Yes, I'll let the administration address the specifics behind them, but yes, our employees, short answer is yes, to what extent I don't know as far as how we have been impacted so far. Okay, do you have some in the admis cans County administrator? Yes. Thank you. So a couple of things that are happening to the printing costs will be reduced because obviously, you know, there are days when we won't have people in the building. So we're we're looking at the cost of paper savings, the cost of the printers and things like that which will impact all departments and then there is a vehicle utilization study that is currently being completed for all vehicles. Okay so no no final decisions have been made in terms of how the county transportation costs will be saved. We're currently going through, we're doing an analysis of everything. Yes, ma'am. The was DPW or the future DGS involved in the decision to close various buildings in selected days to save on energy, custodial and security costs? There was conversation, there were conversations, I think the administration, with the administration to get input from the subject matter experts, that would be the facilities bureau for the most part. Yeah, okay. And I think we're still waiting on the breakdown of those costs and I know Ms. Young has reached this notion of healthcare already, but it's just, you know, we would like to see the results of that analysis preferably before May 21st. Okay, that's my last question. Miss Rigby? Let, yeah, I know. Yeah. Well, so I have a follow-up to Ms's question. What are the buildings that we're using for energy efficiency? I know George Howard was one in a send. Do you remember the others? Well, Ms. Gans looks it up. I can go on memory. Do you want to get a go? Ascend one. We have, you mentioned George Howard. Yes, the riverwood uh, uh, uh, a city. Riverwood is which that's the Bureau of Engineering and the Bureau of Highways. And are we the only tenant there? Um, I, if not the only one, we pretty much have most of the, the vast the square foot. Well, I asked that because can we turn the energy off in that building or turn it way down? If there's another company that shares that building, then we can't control the energy output for the whole building. So in some scenarios, it's segmented off. So we could control that and in certain situations we've worked with the partners in those buildings in order to make sure that they're aware of what's happening on those days. So in some it is segmented off. Yes, ma'am. but in others I assume it's not. We could really turn up the heat in this room right now. So that we wouldn't all freeze every moment that we're sitting here. I bet that would save a lot of energy. Oh my god, I'm freezing. I've been freezing since the moment. Yeah. I wanted to actually ask one quick question and then it premises, is the Patuxent Woods address that DGS is going to a rented building or is that our new building that we bought? It's a purchased. It's the new building that we bought. Okay, fabulous. Okay. And then apprentices. How many of we had four, you said we had four apprentices. I think you said graduated from the program last year into being journeyman. Into being journeyman which is great right. Do any of them stay and work for Howard County? All of them. All of them stay and work for Howard County. Is that part of the agreement? Is it like a military thing where if you get to be an apprentice you have to stay for a certain number of years. Ms. Walsh behind you is nodding her head. Yes. OK. Yes. So all right. And all we have right now are electrical printed electrical HVAC apprentice and slumming and plumbing. How many are in the plumbing apprentice program? One. Is is there could we what could we do to recruit more? Can we recruit more? Is that a possibility or we just can't get them to come into the program or what's the deal? Depending on the availability of a position and apprenticeship position. And the budget includes one additional apprentice position. 26. Okay, step will give us to then for the plumbing or electric. It's just general. For DPW or DGS to decide right, you know, for which trade, which ever trade is more in need. Is it threatened around the country that that local governments are doing this? I'm just curious. You know, when you go to conferences. Ms. Walsh, do you want? Can you come and join us? I feel like Ms. Walsh is the authority here and we're not getting the benefit of her. Finally, you joined us. Good afternoon. Hi. And it is something that there's a problem across the country with a shortage of trade professionals. So I can tell you that of all the jurisdictions around us, they are very envious of our program. Most of them do not have programs for it. At all. Yeah. And our other local governments trying to put something like this into place. So we actually are putting together a PowerPoint that we're going to be sharing with some of the other jurisdictions in a couple weeks. We meet every quarter just to kind of share how to do it, how to work with the state, et cetera. Excellent. We're leaders. I like that. Okay. That's it. That's all I have. Yeah. Super smart. Super smart. Yeah. I did. Can we put on on my list of overtime versus regular salary that DPW by Bureau, please. That brings us to the 0337. And we are here till 330 we have closed captioning, is that right? Okay, so we're five minutes short. Um, who's staying, what's staying, what? No, Ms. Gants is going. Dr. Cavide is staying. I see various marks approaching. And a Holland back. All right, welcome, gentlemen. Thank you for returning. Hopefully my colleagues have seen the information that was sent to us yesterday. Traumatic pause. Yes. Yes, for the 400 million or so items of work. I mean as a first comment, each of these seven projects should be distinct items and a budget book. Although we have way more information than we've had in the last six years of us approving these projects, at least the majority of them. This is the first time that we've seen a cumulative cost. So we don't even know if some of these costs change dramatically over the last year or have steadily, you know, increased in cost over the six years that we've been kept in the dark about them. I suppose I should be happy that we received the information, but that it had to come to this. is unfortunate. And it's most unfortunate that you put Mr. Diluka in the situation of admitting that the information existed, but that you just declined to provide it to us. And then after us asking for it, you declined to provide it to us until the day before a rescheduled work session. Nothing that I just said was not true. This is the district that I represent. Um, this issue is the one that caused me to get into office. I don't think I was surprised by the numbers. Um, I will tell you what I'm surprised by is that you don't seem to have an identifiable means of being for the latter projects, which is really problematic in my view when some of those projects involve buildings that already have been demolished. Or when you represent to my colleagues that the tunnel costs a certain amount, but it doesn't includeX. I still can't figure that part out. What I would hope we would do in this time is maybe very briefly because we want to ask questions I'm sure. But go through the summary that you have for each of those. I don't even care about the old projects. I don't know if anyone else does. But for those projects that are either in progress or yet to be completed, I would like you to walk us through those numbers and explain what is and isn't in there. Again, time being constraint. I think I already said this. What we don't have that we would have if this was properly accounted for in a budget book over the last six years was which which so my my auditor's gone, which source of funds is paying for which category of costs? Did I say that kind of right? So for example, the WIFI alone is funding what? Or a state grant is funding which of those projects? That I did not see in here, is that correct? We still do not have what fund sources are paying for which expenditures. I think I said that right. That's insane, right? That's insane. It's only because I'm tired that I am talking in this slow, relatively medium voice. I think everyone here knows how infuriating this is to me and I hope others. But with that said, if you would please jump in to start with, I don't know whichever one you want that's still in progress, nor tunnel or the other age pond, and then walk us through the remaining three. Mark Deluca, I see you starting to talk and you are a gibber jabber or we have a hard stop at 3.30 so do not fill a buster. I was not going to, I was going to be brief. And Deb you can interrupt him because these are the two worst but yes, please keep it brief. We did prepare. Oh dear. I just wanted to leave it to you to your option. I mean, we would like to be able to show some of these slides you've already seen before. Okay. But does it reset issue of like, this is this project and it costs this much to build and it's this much done and we have this much funding to do it. Yeah. Say culminates with that. Okay. All right. Culmination. You want to go to the well, let's let's blaze through until we get to the culmination mark. Okay. What? I think I said it right, Chris. I think I think I said it right. Talking about. Thank you. Imagine the revenue funding source with the expenditure and we don't see that in the financial system. So we can show you this and then we can yes you do. Okay and then I'm gonna turn it over to Zach. This is like I said you've seen some of these slides but I think that some there are some new slides in here that I think are important for you to Remember if you had seen them before or if you're seeing them for the very first time I think it's very important that you see them and then it culminates with a project by project expense and I think Miss Walsh you were talking about source. And I think we do have that. It may not necessarily be granular enough on the very last slide, but we do have it. We can provide that. So let's start and Zach, go ahead. Good afternoon. So, you know, we talked last time about the seven projects that constitute safe and sound. And I think it's in one of the things we wanted to do was just go refresh some of the background and how we got there, which we won't spend a lot of time on. But we haven't refreshed it in the last couple of years. Next slide, please. So, to get to this, there was an analysis of many different individual projects and an analysis of how to put those together in various different ways to result in the most efficacy for this project. And that's how 3G 7.0 came to be, which is what we call the collection of seven flood mitigation projects. And then we took that through review by the Army Corps of Engineers to ensure that it was a viable plan. Next slide, please. So in the 2019 launch, the components that were in there, a few of them are complete, which we've talked to you about. One of them included West End convey conveyance which would have resulted in the removal of a half dozen or so residential properties and to mitigate that adverse impact through the Section 106 project process excuse me the extended north tunnel came to be known from the north tunnel which also improved the efficacy of flood mitigation in the West End and develop it city. Next slide, please. And so the way that the projects work together is this. which also improve the efficacy of flood mitigation in the West End of Ellicott City. Next slide, please. And so the way that the projects work together is this mitigation of both depth of flood water and velocity, and those two have to work together. And I know last time, Mr. Youngman raised a few questions. Well, what's the water level if we do this versus not that? And so I think it's important to reintroduce and just make sure that everyone knows that those two work together and those values of three feet or less and five feet per second or less are priorities in support of non-structural flood-proofing approaches, which many of our neighbors on Main Street have begun to incorporate through various grants or through their own funding and and also in support of being able to make sure that we don't have individuals swept away or vehicles mobilized through the flood water that that could cause additional loss of life. Next slide please. Since the inception of EC Safe and Sound, we've had 25 events, which would be classified as our Safe and Sound event, and that's two inches of rainfall in a 24 hour period. And so, we all see that these mega storms are coming more frequently than we've seen in the past with higher duration and higher intensity. And so part of the program includes efforts working with our friends at highways and Howard Eco works to ensure that the channels are cleared, maintaining critical points to allow the water to flow through the channels and stay in the channels. But we've had 25 of these in the last few years since the inception of the safe and sound. And so, H7, we talked about last time as complete. That's our one that's up in the Clover Leaf by Walmart. Next slide please. Quaker Mill complete. Again on Roger's Avenue just down the street. Next please, H4 will be complete this fall right up the road on Frederick Road right after you go under 29. North Tunnel will is on track to complete in 2027. Again mega undertaking and the could go back to the court. I'm sorry and so I know there was a couple questions last time about the alignment. And so the alignment of the tunnel that you see here in yellow is what we selected after intensive efforts during preliminary design to understand the ground conditions through a series of rock pouring that we did along the alignments on both private and publicly owned property. And then through analysis of the conditions of the ground, as well as looking at trying to maintain minimized the impact to private loan property was how the alignment of the tunnel was selected. Next slide, please. So, you know, since the inception of the extended north tunnel in 2021, we are pleased that we are approximately one year into construction with this project, which is again, a mega undertake. And I think many of you have driven by the site and seen our partners at Keywood trailer, hard at work on the site. And we are this week working on excavating the mining shaft and drop shaft, the mining shaft being the larger shaft to the right, which the tunnel mooring machine will be located, be lowered through to excavate the tunnel, the drop shaft being kind of center of the screen, which is where water will enter the tunnel system. Once the stream channel is put back into to its naturalized condition at the end of the project. Next slide, please. Our team at Kiwick trailer, this is an image from last month's safety meeting. There is a monthly safety meeting between all of the shifts on the project. Certainly safety is huge right now. We're just speaking to the safety and director of it was speaking to the DPW safety program. You know, we've had an unfortunate loss of life from these major flood events and a number of other impacts, both physical and mental to residents in Ellicott City as well as visitors. And you know, one of the key things for the construction of this large project is to make sure that that we are ensuring that all of our neighbors are safe and that all of our crew is safe all the time. And the so thank you. Maryland Avenue Colbert project is in final design along lower main. One of the things that we did, we were able to complete late last year and reopen earlier this year. And we have a couple slides to talk about that is the expanded interim type park area. And so the building removal facilitated. Sorry. no, no, just fine. So, so the the built the other bit the building removal work will set the stage for construction of the Maryland Avenue covert project, but it allowed us also to reactivate that space along lower main and interim state. Next slide, please. NC3 project is in design as well as next slide, the T1 project. Both of those continued to work through the preliminary design process. And so last time, I think Mr. Youngman and others may have raised a few questions about what happens with the various projects and how they work together to achieve this goal of the three feet or less of water and five feet second or less of velocity. And so looking at our baseline storm, which we've used for analysis as the July 2016 event, and saying that that's approximately 8 feet of water on lower main, those build collectively. And so all of the components work together to get us to that goal. We have also substantially completed the Channel Construction Project. We're in the process of completing some structural work to the 8095 former shoe maker building, which has been challenging. But we're going to be completing that work later this spring. And we'll also be reactivating the Kaplan's building for next slide, please. For micro-retail later this summer, looking at using that as at using that as a micro retail incubator for small businesses. Next slide go ahead next one. And so yeah we we as I mentioned earlier removed four buildings along Lower Main to facilitate the Maryland Avenue and activated and activated that as interim expanded Tyber Park, which hosted the part of the music fest you see here. Next slide please as well as an event for our midnight madness. And you know really the things that we heard from the community along Lower Main was time and time again that when visitors came to lower main and saw the building sitting there That there was a perception that lower main was closed and so And you're removing those buildings and putting this interim space in was really something that the community Along this area asked us time and time again to expedite in order to promote more of a sense that the area is open for business. We mentioned some of our other related efforts last time and I won't go in a detail on those other to say we're continuing to support efforts to keep everyone safe. And most recently, building on our monitoring system through additional cameras and instrumentation that Mr. Deluca talked about last time. And then continuing to progress a number of related efforts that tie into all of these at the same time. Most of these efforts being supported directly by state grants from the legislative bond initiative process or bond bills. So I'll turn it over to Mark. So this is the money chart. And I just want to say that it refers back to, it was put in here, but it actually refers back to question 10405, I believe. It was whatever that one was, and we do have that here. But I think what you'll see in this chart is that we have broken it out and not too granularly, but we have broken it out by project. And we listed age seven for the spent and encumbered to be 5.4 and age four is currently at 7.8. It's expected to be 7.8. That one will be completed in the fall of this year. Quaker Mill is complete, that was 3.5. And the tunnel is at 168.6 million and that includes the one course the 141 for the contract with Kiwit to build the tunnel. This also includes this This also includes money for design. These are purchase orders that have already been cut. And they are the total that has been in cumbersome to date. And then when we go below the dark black line, we see lot F, which is a project that is part of the tunnel that catches water that comes down elegant mills and some of the areas north and would funnel into Lodf and there would be another drop shaft and another tunnel, small diameter tunnel that would carry it over to the main stem of the tunnel. And right now that's estimated to be 45 million of which we have 20 million available. But the rest of that is pending. The Rogers Avenue Culver, which is a Rogers Avenue drop shaft, which is another drop shaft up by Rogers Avenue and the intersection of Main Street there that was planned to collect water coming from the North again. And that was 13 million. Maryland Avenue culverts currently. We have spent our income bird about 10 million. and we're expecting construction to be somewhere in the 59 when everything is set and done with Design it would cost about 59.7 million dollars to do that And that is pending getting Dollars for it T1 Currently currently we have set aside and in convert 2.9 million for the preliminary design. And C3, we have 1 million for preliminary design. And then the building construction that Zach talked about at the lower end of Main Street is about 11.2 million. So the total safe and sound cost estimate is approximately 211 million. There are some non-safe and sound expenditures that total about 15.7. That gives for C0337 for the total. It gives the incumbent amount to be 200, 226.8 million dollars. Now, when you total up the total cost column, you'll see that that costs for $430.5 million. And then of course, we have and we still have money in the Applied 26 proposed budget of some grants that need to be recognized that would bring our total appropriation to 320.6 million. So there is a $110 million gap to fund everything that's in the project the way that it's envisioned envisioned today. There's $110 million gap. And so, and a lot of those, a lot of that can be made up. Some of it, we've listed as some of it is, depending the dollars or the decisions to do that particular element of the design. And a lot of that would be based off of something quantitative like, you know, we would go straight to the model to determine the benefit per versus the cost to see if it was, if it's worth doing for this amount of money or if the money could be better spent on some other element, some other line item of the project to do. So, and that's a future exercise as we attempt to get the money and look to the administration and other decision makers to figure out whether we would move forward with some of the items. So that's this chart and we have submitted something through the portal that is more granular that takes these costs in the very first column of spent and encumbered and breaks that down so you could actually see what was spent, how that was spent, but was too awkward and cumbersome to put all in this one chart. So this is just the summary of that and I'll just open it up to questions. Okay, thank you for that. I mean, I think at least what I'm most interested is not, we already spent money. This is a fiscal year 2026. I mean, that's the comment we made when you appeared before it or that's coming. I I made when you appeared before us is theoretically the whole purpose of this is to look at prospective costs. At least we have retrospective costs. And again, as you say, we have a men a granular level. And now they wrap up to be these some totals above your dark black line. But the problem is what remains of that program that was put out by the administration in 2019 and how are we going to fund everything that has a little whatever red construction truck on your graphics. Do we have enough money to finish the north tunnel? Yes, so, but I'll qualify that. Okay, because we have enough money to create the main stem of the tunnel. What does that mean? That is from papillon drive where the big hole is all the way to the river? Okay, we also have enough money for whatever CSX and the county agrees to as far as how we're going to design going under their tracks at the location of the tunnel how we daylight the tunnel that outfall so we have enough money for that and that's the 40.6 in your chart that's that's a portion of the 40.6 okay and then we also have whatever track realignment we need to do and also to replace the main street bridge. The main street. See you. And we also have whatever track realignment we need to do and also to replace the main street bridge, the main street CSX bridge. So if they require us to replace that bridge because we're realigning the tracks, then we have enough money for that. we have enough money for the project administration, all the inspection and the design that's associated with any of the work that I just talked about. And that's all within the 40.6. Yes. So those going under the going under the track, realigning the track, replacing the bridge and contract administration. Yes. Now the reason why I said there's a caveat and I'll point it out is that, well, what is lawdf? And I described what lawdf is. Yes, it is. And that is not included. Even though it's partially funded and we may even be able to put the underground piece in, okay? There right now, We are about 20 million short of being able to put the underground piece in. Okay? There right now we are about 20 million short of being able to put in or 25 million short of being able to put in the total of the way it was initially designed. And as far as funding sources go, we're still putting in for revolving loans with the state. We're still putting in for any with any loan or bond initiative. Asking for any bond initiative. We can get from the state to help us fund construction. And we're not looking. We're not really looking too much at federal dollars however as they present themselves will be chasing federal dollars as well. Okay but the part that we're missing right now is, you know, you say funding available for that 40.6 from where? It's part of the money that it has not been, it's part of the appropriations that have already been made. Okay, and they haven't been encumbered by a purchase order and we haven't spent them, right? There are appropriations that we have taken and kind of put a hold on. Some of that money could be, some of that money could be some other grants that we've gotten that can only be used for the tunnel. And like you were asking for before, we can give you more granular picture of where the money, where that money is coming from. If it's state money, if it's federal money, or if it's local money. Okay, but, and also is it a loan or is it a grant? Well, recently, well, recently it's been a mix. The Revolving Lo loan program, we've gotten a lot of money from the revolving loan program, so their loans. WIFIA is a loan. And but we have gotten some money from bond initiatives. We just recently got in this last state budget, $10 million. And then we received $10 million last year too. We've been extremely lucky about that. So there's no strings attached for that. OK, and that's Courtney Watson and Katie Fryhester as far as I'm concerned. What I'm trying to understand is from everything on your chart that's like a talisized funding available, rest pending, pending money. What if that is already appropriated via, you know, through fiscal year 2025 versus what's in this proposed fiscal year 2026 budget, which is just we don't know yet. So those italicized, I'm seeing it correctly, the italicized amounts are, are, um, funds that don't exist. They don't exist yet. Okay, I'm gonna ask you. Yeah, under, under the dark, bold line, um, under total, in the total column, they don't exist. They're based Based on our, a lot of times they're just based on our estimates. Our best estimates. And we don't have all the money to move forward. But say, for instance, for a lot of F, we have 20 million available. But the rest, but we're saying that a lot of F is going to cost us 45 million. So it's italicized because we don't have the total amount. That is the only one except for the building removal and rehab where all of that money, all the funding is available for that. But all the other things like Maryland Avenue callverts, well, 59.7 million is not totally available. The construction dollars, 50 million dollars in construction is not available. Okay. All right. So if I'm looking at our fiscal year 26 proposed budget, we're asking for $23 million this year period, and that's one of these revolving state loans. Great. If I do the math, the difference between what was spent in 24 from 25 of February, so not, you know, exact, but appropriate or approximately leaves about 40 million from prior appropriations. Am I in the right ball park here? So as far as I can tell, the combination of what remains in prior appropriations plus what you're asking for in this fiscal years proposed budget is about 65 million dollars or 60 million million, which is about what you're saying is the 40.6 for the CSX and various other things, including contract administration and the $20 million you have available for a lot of. Am I understanding that right? Am I doing the math right? I'm not sure, but I can tell you that the total amount that's been spent and encumbered and is also equal to the appropriated, if I'm not mistaken, is 226.8 million. And then with the FY26 budget, we'll be putting in 23.2 million. So now the appropriation on spending will be 320.6 million. So that's what takes us to the 326 million. So that's what we get from our charts through SAP. And this has gone through not only our own internal budget people, but also through Office of Budget reviewed all of our numbers. So after the 26th budget is approved, and this 23.2 is included in spending appropriation to give a spending authority. We'll have 320,000, 320 million dollars available and appropriated. Oh, I see. And that's the highlighting on page 26 of your slide. Correct. All right. I have one more question on North Tunnel and then I'll let others ask. So then lot F and not and Rogers Avenue drop shafts, which are the next two rows beneath the hard black line. Is it their add-ons like we could have them, but the North tunnel could could function with the drops in in in. of water at the bottom of Main Street with or without. Yes, however, yes, well, I just want to. The tunnel does function without them, but there is that reduction. At the end of Main Street, there is that increase in water as a result. Oh, is that that's on your chart? Yes. Okay. And so if we don't do them before they before QA trailer, whoever demobilizes, it's not a matter of we would come back and do it later, right? Like if the funding isn't there by 27 and they've they've connected beginning to end. Is that the same piece of equipment? Is that, or that's different? We could come in later and do this for the same cost because I mean, we're not even talking about what 27 and 28 costs are now, right? These are all 26 costs. We're not gonna do any of this in 26. It would be more money. Yeah. I mean, it's gonna be, it will be more money It's got to be expected to be more money because what the scenario that you're painting is, keyword would demobilize. Yeah. So if keyword demobilize is, that means that we would have to go through, get another contractor to come in. They would have to mobilize. They have to bring their own machine in. They have to do a lot of what Kiwi has already done. So there are certain things here that, so yes, it would be more expensive. And every year that it goes into the future, we can expect there's going to be some increase, whether that's a 2%, 3%, 8%, it's been as much as 8%, although I don't well It's been as much as I know it's been as much as 8% in the past but You know, I would believe that you know that you can expect that the price would go up Okay, miss young Yeah Do you have any questions? Yeah, I do. So bottom line, $430 million is what these projects would cost in today's dollars. In today's dollars. five years from now, $460, $500 million, half a billion dollars. And does this include things like $4 million we paid for Mount Island? For? Yes, it does. It does. Where is that under building construction removal rehab or that's under north tunnel. It's going to be in the north tunnel. Okay. And are there other easements that we need to buy that are not included yet in north tunnel? Not that I'm aware. talkedements. Yeah. So we had not gotten yet in the potential of having to go around and do a different by an order to get those. So currently we're good on all acquisitions, whether they're easements or fee simple. So we don't have that issue with the North Tunnel. And we might have it on these other projects. No, because I was going to say, and on these other projects, we don't have it. So there's no more easement buying. No. I would love to see just the total of how much we've spent on buying easements, land, tearing down buildings that actually, you know, wasn't directly building, putting in a hole in the ground, but just all the destruction that has taken place on Main Street. And what else we're going to have to build if we have to build CSX, a new bridge. So we did have to buy some properties fee simple for the tunnel. And we do have some easements for the tunnel. And we had to buy a few thing, one property for NC3, that was fee simple. And so we made all of our acquisitions. They're in the individual project. That's like more than 20 million, do you know? For all of them, yes. For all of them. And I still here. She can give you the exact number, but for the tunnel, H4, Quaker Mill, the Maryland Avenue, and NC3, then not all of them had easements or fee simple purchases. But that was approximately 24 million, and she could give you the actual number. After the floods, of course, there was a policy decision that 10 buildings on Lower Main Street were purchased. There was also a policy decision where even individuals on the West End came to the county and wanted us to buy those properties because they were in the flood plain and they were constantly being destroyed that they were purchased as well. So some of those buildings were not part of the tunnel but they won't flood because is we, you know, one of the acceptable ways through FEMA is that we would offer to buy them if they're built in the floodplain. And so some of those purchases were done. They're not in this total that I gave you for the tunnel or any of the safe and sound projects. They are only projects, they are only acquisitions that were made that are strictly related to what we needed to get in order to build. So I'd like to see a list of those two. That's just so we can get the whole whole picture. Get everything. And I mean, I know this was all a policy decision, but I wonder if it the five of us had known, or even the county executive have known at the beginning, that this project could end up costing half a billion dollars if that's the direction we would have gone in. It's even more expensive than the new courthouse. It didn't think that would happen. Now, new courthouse of classes 400 million in the end. Right. That's your own name. Um, page 17. Is this accumulated water at the bottom of the hill, or is this the depth of the water running down Main Street? It's primarily at the bottom of the hill. It'll taper off as you go farther up Main Street. So this is like the depth that we'd have for like a bottom up flood. This doesn't address sort of. You want a bottom up flood. Well I mean, Agnes and all was what? That was a bottom up flood. Right. But this is for what I, what we are calling an urban flash flood. Right. And what we've gotten this over this 500 to a thousand year store. That's our 2016 design store. Do we have this a chart like this that talks about depth and velocity coming down the hill. We don't have one right now, but we can generate it. We tried to keep this that would be great because I mean, I know that you lose inventory and you lose things on the water that accumulates at the bottom of the hill, but the real destruction has been the depth and velocity of the water on its way down. And I don't see like the, you know, the incremental changes for that. Second question on this. I think we need to break out the North Tunnel. I think we've really, I mean, I know that I know we're already committed to it, but that's, you know, that's $210 million at this project. Yeah, so I, so again, I know Ms. Wallace wants to look forward to the future, but like, I think we need to see what the retention ponds and the building removal is kind of got us, but then what the $210 million is getting us. And then the last thing, and I'll go around more. On the 110 million. No, North Tunnels 168.6 plus 40.6. Partizzius X is, the tunnel's costing us $210 million, and that doesn doesn't and that does include the building acquisitions, right? So that's everything below. So you're asking for everything below the bold line. If that's not included. No, right. You're asking for a breakdown of what did Quaker Mill get us in a reduction in height? What did age four get us? What did age seven get us and what did North Tunnel get us? Yeah, I wasn't mind if the three ponds were combined. Oh, I'd love to see them separately. Okay, but what I'm really trying to isolate is tunnel. Because that will inform your next decisions, which is what is your cost benefit? Like, if we picked up a foot for $210 million then we should just stop now. You know, like that would be ridiculous. Yeah. So I would say that the way that we would run the model and of course I'm only one person but I would imagine that the way we would run the model is what has been built and The tunnel is expected to be completed what has only what is in design and what is nowhere near started construction they would be on opposite ends Right, and so then we would run the model and Say well, this is what's existing that would be the tunnel plus whatever pods and then we. And then we would look at whatever we would add on, which is below the black line, and then see the benefit, do a benefit analysis upon that. So, and then do them separately against what's been built so that we could see, well, lot's the benefit of adding lot F to what is built versus its cost I think what's the benefit of Ireland and I think we want that but we also want to see it for the stuff that we're already doing we want we want to at least I do and I think I'm swall to see like, what did we get for each of those ponds? Which the model looked like within without each of those ponds and within without the tunnel so we can sort of second guess ourselves on those, I guess. But on, well, not really second guess because again if the tunnel is is it's not a significant driver of this then we need to have a pretty serious conversation I think don't we? I think you're gonna find the opposite which is those other things were window dressing to make us think that we were doing something and the North Tunnel is to silver bullet could be wrong but that's what that's what we want to see that's what we wanted to see for six years and isn And isn't the firm that ran these models five years ago? I mean, they can plug in any of these components, can't they? I mean, I would just keep running that thing scenario one, two, you know. And you would be using those dates that you listed out, Mr. Hollenbach, to verify that your modeling is correct, ideally. And the last thing before I stop on this chart. Like the first plan in the current plan. I don't understand these estimated costs. Because I thought the first plan was going to be like 80 million. And we're at 430. For this plan and this one only says it's too small to read, but it's 100 something Huh I gotta bridge to sell you. Yeah exactly. How about this? Can I say well? Let's let us please get the details on the funding sources Did I say that right by individual project? Let us please implore upon whoever makes that decision to break these projects down into separate budget items and we have a placeholder at the end for you know un- resolved capital work session that I want to let Miss Rigby at least ask a 10 minute question about this $400 million item before we have to have to have to stop at 3.4.5. I appreciate that because it probably will be. My earlier this morning, we heard from OEM. And there are significant changes from the federal level, especially to FEMA. And my real one of the things that this has me wondering in concert with that discussion is what happens to these assets if they're damaged. What happens if we have a tornado that damages one of these large ponds. you know, how do we cover the cost of repair? If there is no female, if there are no reimbursements, if we're never rising to the threshold of hurricane Katrina, or I mean, we don't want to either, that's the other piece. But if our challenges are being determined to not be challenges by the federal government, what is our, what recourse do we have if these assets are damaged? How do we repair them? How do we fund that repair? What is that process? Okay, that pause indicates you do not have good news for me, Mr. Deluca. It's a very good question. It's something that we need to evolve. So whatever we would say today would be somewhat speculative. Yeah. I think that without federal government age, or with the threshold being so much higher, that we wouldn't get a presidential declaration, and we wouldn't be able to get the sources of funds that wouldn't be a source of funds for us. It's right about 75% of the help from MEMA, because that apparently is all grant funded as well. But we, I think, our first look would be towards the state. It would have to be towards the state and whether the state has those funds or not. Separate from federal, separate, separate from whatever they would get from the feds in terms of a block, for them to help us repair it. So it would be on the locals and the state. And if we didn't meet it, I gotta say that during the floods, even though we did meet presidential declarations, both times, FEMA was, they were helpful, but there were many, there were many things they declined the paper. And we needed to make improvements. And because we had an antiquated system that couldn't work and FEMA didn't pay for any of that. So in fact when we had them down and they were taking that class at Emmett'sburg and there were 40 of them that we had two busloads of them. Yeah we had two bus loads of them, if not three bus loads of them, came down to Ellicott City and we showed them, and I think what really struck them when I had private conversations, and a couple of us had private conversations with how much FEMA didn't contribute to those floods. Yeah. So, and I bring that up only because, you know, we were able to do it. It was very helpful, you know, the million, the couple of million, 10 million, whatever they put in and you may know specifically how much. But we funded that repair. We fund a lot of that by ourselves with the state, with the state. And there were some grants coming through the state that were MEMA grants, and some FEMA grants, low dollar, MEMA grants, that we did use, we did receive, we did use. But my argument is not that FEMA is or was perfect and therefore, I'm going to what their contribution was in the past. And it's a long reimbursement timeline as well, right? So we've had to forward fund those things and then we get reimbursed for them. So we actually used the NRNCRS, which is mainly does the agricultural piece in the government. And I can't remember what that acronym stands for with this. I feel like it's a conservation resource. Yes, and they were very helpful. And so when we were on the new cut, a lot of the repairs that we did on the new cut actually came from that source. So even though we didn't get the money directly from FEMA, we were still able to scratch around and find the money in different agencies that would pay for it for different reasons. I appreciate your creativity, but I and that does give me some hope. I think the point I met with this product with these Coatcert of projects, you know, I'm certainly one of five. This has never been what I alone would choose, but that is why I'm the district three representative. But if there is a reduced commitment from our federal government, or the support of these types of things, it does lead the question of how much we should be investing if we can't count on additional support and emergencies, or the replacement of these items. Thank you. Okay. That's going to conclude our discussion for today. We look forward to that funding information from DPW on this budget item in terms of how to reschedule the DILP session that we did not get today. You presented two options, County Administrator. I like neither one of them because I believe they both fall after the budget amendment prefiled. Not that I'm saying I anticipate many DILP amendments, but my preference would be to put it on Wednesday, May 14th and bump the 10 to 230 time to 330 or 4, which is I think a more realistic thing. Does that work? Please, we'll start with Dilp on the 14th. 14th we go to 3. Am I looking at the right way? We go to we go to 330 on the 14th already. No, it's just 230 on my schedule. Let me get it. It says it says Monday 10 to 12 to 30 and when same made to 230 but whichever one I'd rather do it on 12 or 14 is what I'm saying. I don't know if anyone has been there. I don't know if anyone has been there. I don't know if anyone has been there. I don't know if anyone has been there. I don't know if anyone has been there. I don't know if anyone has been there. I don't know if anyone has been there. I don't know if anyone has been there. I don't know if anyone has been there. I don't know if anyone has been there. so I don't know if anyone would say the 14th. All right, and that's also the... Well, why don't we do anyone else. On Wednesday the 14th. All right and that's also the, well why don't we do it on the 12th then? The 14th is the police academy graduation. So can we add another hour or hour and one half? I mean we're going to be fast. Like, deal will be fast. Yeah, deal will be fast and I think all of these others. On the 12th. I don't know, I thought we were saying the 12th. I didn't know around the 12th. You mentioned that you said the 14th and 16th. Well, you gave me 16 or 19 and I think all of these others were to 14 on the 12 know what that we're saying The 12 I didn't know on the 12 you mentioned that you said the 14 well you gave me 16 or 19 and I'm like no We're doing 12 or 14 is still available on the 12th? Well, that's another question. Let's try to check Thank you, you went the 12 or 14 If you put us first on the 12, the dope can do 10 10 a.m. Yes, we will. We will, Bob. On the 12th. That's very sneaky of you listening and like that. So we're doing the 12th for Dope. Isaiah sent me the meeting link, so I've been here. He's so helpful. Alright, so let's, I don't think it's really going to go that way. Dope is on the 12th. Okay, my concern was the Pego Fund that okay, I'd rather do it the 12th. So yes, we'll start with Dilup on the drop? I think it's really going to go that way. Do you want to put something on the drop? Okay. My concern was the pay go fund. Okay. I'd rather do it the 12th. So, yes. We'll start with Dilup on the 12th at 10 and buy another hour for that day, hoping that we don't need it. Okay. We'll do our best. to everyone. Thanks, staff. You look so happy and well.