Mayor and Council - Regular Meeting

It's 04/27/2026, and we're beginning meeting 11/2026. I'd like to begin with the pledge of allegiance. Please join us as you're able. Thank you. Just wanted to turn it to Sarah Taylor Farrell for agenda review.

Madam Mayor and council members, there are no changes to the agenda for this evening.

Okay. Thank you. I did give my colleagues a heads up about this, but I just wanted to see if we might change the order of our action item and work session so we can have about the election code and then move into discussion on introduction. Councilmember Vallery?

I would agree with making that change. I think that order makes more sense to me as well.

So if you want, councilor Van Graak.

I would just ask it's just I wanna make sure because I know that the introduction has certain time periods as well as relation to what we do with regard to our work sessions. I just want to make sure from either a legal perspective or orderly perspective what we're doing and discussing there isn't any concern or issues.

Yeah. Just to clarify, if we're still having the discussion tonight, it's just putting work session tonight first.

Well, that's what I want to

make sure.

So we can just yes.

So I'll take a stab, and then if my colleagues have anything to add. So the order we typically do traditionally action items first, then we do work sessions. But as long as we do the introduction after the work session and you guys direct us to schedule the public hearing, then we'll still be able to stay on schedule.

Thank you. Colleagues, is everyone okay with us? Okay. Thank you. Okay. Next, city manager's report. Welcome, mister Mihelic.

Mayor Ashland, members of city council, ladies and gentlemen, good evening. We continue to be in high season in a number of different things, which we're we're happy to be super busy. Based on last week's really good work session, we are now putting the final touches on the budget, which we'll present to the council for adoption here in a couple weeks. Working on a number of different updates to the city code in a number of different areas, including zoning and landlord tenant and, of course, election code, which we'll talk about in some detail in a little while. We're also doing a number of different park improvements in in the city.

This is playground equipment, paths, etcetera. But then every now and then, get to do something fun, and we did that this past week as a number of city departments hosted take your child to work day. You know, a lot of kids are running around city hall, having a good time, learning about their parents' work. It was really neat. So we had a bunch of budding police officers and park planners, etcetera. For some reason, no kid wanted to sign up

to be the future city manager, but

I get that. It's understandable. So that's all I have to report, Mayor. Thank you.

Thank you. Moving on to agenda item six. We have a number of boards and commissions appointments and reappointments for Cultural Arts Commission. We have the Financial Advisory Board as well as Rockville Housing Enterprise. Councilman Vallari.

Madam Mayor, I can do the Cultural Arts Commission, the first two, if that makes sense. Please proceed. I move to appoint Anika Vargan to the Cultural Arts Commission to serve a three year term until 03/01/2027. And I move to appoint Emily Pucello to the Cultural Arts Commission to serve an expiring three year term until 03/01/2028. Thank you.

Perfect. Do we have a second? Councilmember Jackson seconds. All those in favor, please raise your hand and say aye. Aye. Excellent. We have a few more on the Cultural Arts Commission. Does anyone want to make the motion? Councilmember Valeris.

Sure. I move to appoint Jerry Callistine to the Cultural Arts Commission to serve an expiring three year term until 02/01/2028. I move to appoint Molly Scott to the Cultural Arts Commission to serve an expiring three year term until 02/01/2028.

Thank you. Do we have a second? Councilmember Shaw seconds. All those in favor, please raise your hand and say aye. Aye. Excellent. Thank you. Next, we have the Financial Advisory Board. Councilmember Jackson.

Thank Thank you, Mayor. I move to reappoint Jack Kelly to the Financial Advisory Board to serve a three year term until 06/01/2029.

Thank you. Do you also want to do the next one?

No, just take it separately.

Do we have a second? Councilmember Shah seconds. All those in favor, please raise your hand and say aye. Aye. Excellent. Thank you. It's unanimous.

All right. Thank you, Mayor. Now the last one. I move to appoint Jocelyn Fortis to the Financial Advisory Board to serve an aspiring three year term until 02/01/2027.

Do we have a second? Councilman Fulton seconds. All those in favor, please raise your hand and say aye.

Aye. Okay.

Next we have Rockville Housing Enterprise. Councilmember Shaw.

I move to appoint Megan Meekin to the Rockville Housing Enterprise Inc. To serve an expiring term expiring three year term until 04/01/2027.

Thank you. Do we have a second? Councilmember Valery seconds. All those in favor, please raise your hand and say aye. Aye. Excellent. Okay. Thank you to everyone who has signed up to serve and you'll be hearing from our city clerk's office with more information. Next, we have community forum, and this is the time that we hold sacred to be able to hear feedback from the public on your ideas, your concerns, and anything we can do to be supportive. Please address the mayor and council and also speak in a civil and courteous manner and also be respectful to members of the audience.

Each person will be allowed three minutes, and we ask that you stick to the time clock in front of you. You will hear an audible beep when your three minutes has concluded. Please state your name and whether you live in the city of Rockville for the record. I'm gonna proceed with those who have signed up in advance. Welcome, Robert Kernick.

Okay. Madam mayor, members of the city council, I'm Robert Kernick. I'm the chair of the board of supervisors of elections, and, yes, I live in Rockville. I wanted to offer a few comments about the proposed redraft of chapter eight of the city code, which you are scheduled to consider later this evening. That draft represents a lot of work.

And to be sure, it is a it represents a good faith effort on the part of the city attorney. And in several respects, to be fair, it's an improvement over the current law. But but it was prepared and drafted without any significant input from the BSE. We saw it for the first time just a few days ago. And as a result, there are provisions and omissions that are really, really problematic.

So, for example, there are no provisions requiring those who make independent expenditures to register or report. So the organizations that spent money in the last election, like CASA and CHECK and Affordable Maryland and our revolution, would have no obligation to reveal what they had spent. There is no reference in there to the mailings that we are required under current law to send out in advance of the election. There's nothing about the number or the location of ballot drop boxes. The draft purports to impose obligations on the Montgomery County Board of Elections, which I I don't think we have the authority to do.

The description of when the campaign finance reports are due is hopelessly complicated. The actual dates only appear in the definitions section, and at least one of those dates is just wrong. It requires disclaimers on anything posted on the Internet, which is more than the FEC actually requires. It says that it's unlawful to contribute more than a thousand dollars to a candidate, but it doesn't say it's unlawful to accept more than a thousand dollars. And the definition of contributions does not exclude volunteer work.

So people that do volunteer work would be making a reportable in kind contribution, which is not something I think that we want. My point is not that you should discard this draft. My point is it still needs a lot of work and that the mayor and council should seriously consider this only after the BSE has an opportunity to review it and propose changes, and I hope that you will give us that opportunity. Thank you very much.

Excellent. Thank you. Welcome, Steven Fisher.

Good

evening, madam mayor and members of the council. For the record, my name is Steven Fisher, and I've been a resident of Rockville since October 1957, the same week that former mayor, Dick Ranhossepion, signed Rockville's first sister city agreement with Pinnaberg, Germany. Twenty seven years later, I had the opportunity to run with Viola Hossepien, wife of Dick Gran Hossepien twice, first in her bid for council reelection in April 1984, the last city election to be held in the spring of an even numbered year. And again, as a supporting candidate on the alliance Iraq filled citizens slate in November 1985, a transitional eighteen months term of office when Viola sought to retain her seat as Rockville's first female mayor following the resignation of former mayor John Freeland, a member of the Independence for Rockville nonpartisan political party referenced in my written comments on the draft city election code. I wish to bring to your attention that this Friday, 05/01/2026, represents the one year mark prior to the commencement of the twenty twenty seven city election cycle.

I would ask that you obtain, if not already have in hand, a timeline of activities and processes as outlined by the city clerk that must be completed before the 2027 candidate handbooks can be made available to interested parties commencing on 05/01/2027. Twelve months may appear to be a generous period of time. However, as you know, the mayor and council and all city boards and commissions generally take a hiatus in the month of August each year, removing one month from the twelve month calendar for progress on this issue. As things now stand, the mayor and council must first address their preferences in the draft election code with regard to language concerning some or all of the ballot questions included in the draft code, as well as decide what to do about enforcement provisions for election code violations, and decide how large financial expenditures by political action committees and independent expenditure groups will be publicly reported and addressed in the election code, as well as address the question of how and where the city's 10 election districts will be referenced in the code as these matters were not included or significantly considered in the current draft. These next steps represent about 30 of what still needs to be addressed.

And I know we've run out of time, but I will have copies of these sent to you.

Thank you. And we have your written comments as well. Thank you. Welcome, Vincent Russo.

I don't know if I see him.

He's not here yet. Okay. Welcome, Steven Weiner.

Madam mayor, members of the council, I'm Steven Weiner. I reside in, the King Farm community here in Rockville. I'm a member of the city's board of supervisors of elections, but I need to stress that I am not speaking for the board tonight. But I do want to address some of my specific substantive concerns about the draft revision of chapter eight and then make a broader overall comment. Expanding the current section eight dash one definitions is a much needed upgrade, but issues still remain.

For example, the code uses the terms voter, eligible voter, and registered voter, but only defines voter, and it uses it incorrectly. The proposed definition of candidate is too inclusive, making it difficult for the code to clearly stipulate which candidates at what point in the election cycle it addresses. And there are terms defined elsewhere, particularly in the eight dash nineties that should be an eight dash four. The process described to address code violations in article eight is too long. One of my marginal comments that the process was, I need a flowchart.

So not only is it too long, the process is too complex or perhaps clunky is a better word. But in this case, neither complex nor clunky is a good thing. In addition, article eight puts too much responsibility on the board. Tasks that should be performed by paid personnel at the office of the city attorney are devolved to unpaid, mostly little lit legally illiterate board members. The draft suggests that we count ballots postmarked on or before election day that arrive no loader later than the close of business two days later.

Why? Why that Thursday? Why not the following Wednesday? My point is that whatever day, date, or time after the close of the voting centers on election day is arbitrary and cannot logically be defended. I have other substantive comments on the draft, but let me move to a broader issue.

In a document, anything that is makes the message more difficult to understand is noise, and this is a very noisy document. Please don't say we have more important things to do than to get rid of legalese, to correct the grammar, to align the text. We'll do that later. Later almost always becomes too late. So please have a document specialist, someone who knows how to use MS Word, I assume you're using, who knows how to use it and use it well, reformat this document.

And please have a good substantive editor, not just a proofreader, read over this to make suggestions to help you make it easier to identify

Thank you.

And concentrate on big things. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Appreciate it. J. D. Kumar? Okay. Birgitta Mulligan.

Good evening, mayor and council. My name is Birgitta Mulligan, and I'm a sixty year resident from Twinbrook. It has been some time since I've appeared before you. I would like to acknowledge that our city Rockville has been recognized as one of the top three places to live in Montgomery County, Maryland. Our residents are highly educated, contribute substantial tax revenue, and we appreciate the services provided.

However, the high cost of living in Rockville has led many property owners to move away and rent out their homes, resulting in approximately 50% to the city residents now being renters. I am here this evening to gain better understanding of the potential changes to the Rockville election code. My interest in this matter comes from my experience as a four time city council candidate and as a former member of the Board of Supervisors of Election here in Rockville. I have heard that some of the proposed changes to the election code as posted on the Rockville website have not received input from the Board of Supervisors of Election. Could you please explain why that step may have been bypassed?

I hope that tonight's work session will provide clarity regarding the process that is being followed. I am here to offer several comments on the Rockville city election codes and to listen to what the work session will accomplish this evening. One of my questions is, why does Rockville allow individuals to vote in the city election without being registered with the state of Maryland? If this situation is rare, why maintain a separate process? Having a separate registration system adds administrative complexity and can cause potential confusion.

I would also like to know how many people vote exclusively in Rockville City elections without being registered at the state level. Additionally, I am seeking the clarification on whether Rockville election code, the authority of the separate city voter registration system is defined and explained. I haven't seen it. In the past, I have spoken at multiple public hearings to express my opposition to lowering the voting age to 16 and to oppose adoption of ranked choice voting. I intend to present my concerns again at your next public hearing on the election code changes.

Furthermore, I plan to speak in opposition to implementing city campaign financing and in support of instituting term limits for the mayor and council positions. I admit that I had have I I admit it has been a while since I've last used your website. The updated format differs significantly from what I was accustomed to, and it took me considerable time and effort to locate and download the election codes from the agenda. Thank you for your attention, and I'll be here to see what you all discuss at the work session. This is a very important issue.

Thank very much. Welcome, Kevin Owen.

Good evening. My name is Kevin Owen. I'm a resident of the city of Rockville, and I'm the former chair of the Rockville Charter Review Commission. Two of you voted to, put me in that position, and two of you spent countless hours working with me on the Charter Review for seemed like years. During the charter review process, the board of supervisors of elections was present for almost all of the meetings.

We took into consideration what the BSE thought. We cared about it. We formulated a lot of our opinions and recommendations to this body based on the input from the BSE. So I was surprised when I learned that the rewrite of the election code did not include the input of the board of supervisors elections, and I'm also wondering how much input there was from the city clerk's office who is the entity that actually administers the elections. I strongly urge the city council to table full action on the rewrite of the election code, refer it to the board of supervisors of elections for further consultation, and then pick it up.

There is a lot of good in what these recommendations look like. There is a lot that have yet to be discussed, and I have concerns about how this will play out over the rest of this process. I also will caution that there were two recommendations in the Charter Review Commission report. One of that made it to the ballot. One of which was the 16, 17 year old voting.

That was a recommendation that I supported. I voted in favor of lowering the voting age, and the mayor and council put it on the ballot. And that lost 28 to 69%. And yet, term limits were also on the ballot, and that passed 74 to 22%. And I'm a little perplexed as to why the 16, 17 year old voting is making its way into the draft legislation where we have not yet done anything on the term limits.

That signals to me, and I don't think this mayor and council presently intend this, but that signals that the process we all went through for the Charter Review Commission and then for the voters to speak is not being listened to. And so I strongly encourage the mayor and council to address that and to refer this matter back to the BSE. Thank you.

Thank you. Welcome, Vincent Russo.

Good evening, mayor and council. Vincent Russo, City Of Rockville resident. I'm also speaking about the proposed revision to chapter eight and would like to share some thoughts about both the content and and the process. In terms of content, I still, do not think ranked choice voting makes sense for council elections where voters choose up to six candidates. When these selections are all aggregated, the result is a collective ranking not unlike the outcome from ranked choice voting.

It might make sense for the single seat mayoral election, but, in the history of Rockville elections, no voter has ever had to choose from more than two mayoral candidates. So ranked choice is a is a good solution, but it's in search of a problem that does not exist in Rockville. Take it off the table even for 2031 and keep the focus on issues that are more salient to Rockville. The read rewrite does improve alignment with state law, but some details unique to municipal elections are not addressed or or unclear. For example, the the section outlining the boundaries of the city's election districts is removed.

What is the implication of this? Mhmm. The draft addresses reporting requirements for out of state campaign committees, but leaves unclear the reporting obligations for Maryland committees that are participating in Rockville elections. Nothing in the draft addresses stipends for members of the BSE, despite the significant demands it still places on them, nor are there any provisions protecting election officials from intimidation or harassment. But what concerns me most is that the, approval process here feels very rushed.

From introduction tonight to adoption in eight weeks is as unworkable. This draft, which includes many technical adjustments to the conduct of Rockville elections, is being presented to you without prior review by the city's election officials. By contrast, the Planning Commission painstakingly reviews zoning changes before they come here. You should want to know from the BSC its views on the enforcement mechanisms that are revised in the text. Will the administrative hearing process be effective?

Will the new financial reporting requirements provide timely transparency on who is funding city campaigns? What are the implications of randomized ordering of candidate names on ballots or tabulating ballots received up to two days after the election? There are lots of technical changes here, and they are not easy to find without a red line markup. So you should you should hear from the Board of Supervisors of Election

Thank you.

Before introducing this ordinance tonight.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Welcome, doctor Mohammad.

First, I wanna say I didn't plan to be speaking here, but since I get the opportunity, I might as well let it all out. My name is Doc Mohammad. I've been in Maryland for about forty years. I've been in business for forty years, and I pay my taxes. My situation has been Maryland is, I'm currently in the process of a lawsuit in Charles County, Prince George's County for discrimination against black people.

We found that, especially in New Carleton I took care it in in New Carleton. People go to stores like Subway, Starbucks, seven Eleven, different places. Right? And the law in in America is that when you have a public place of business like these businesses are, no one can be put off the property as long as they're not stealing. But yet, in Maryland, I found in Charles County, PG, and now in Rockville City, that these people working in these stores have green cards, and they're intimidated by white supremacy groups to call police on black people for no reason.

I mean, they I've been told they've been saying, if you just don't want them because you don't like them, just call us, but come get them off the property. That's wrong against the law in America. I ran into a situation right here in Rockville Town Center in some bakery place. It's a French place. The guy immediately walked up on me as soon as I came in the door. Can I help you? Like, I didn't belong there. So I left, and he called the police while I was in there and went to Starbucks. Do you know the city Rockville City rookie police officer came in to Starbucks concerning the situation in another address and convinced the store lady to go along with him and bomb me from the Starbucks right here in town center, which had nothing to do with that store. There was no situation in the Starbucks.

He just wants to follow me from one store to another. And I found this to be a habit with the police officers. They seem to follow you on the road when you're off the property and still wanna tell you, you can't come back for a year. That's against the law. They can't do that. No police officer has the authority to do that in a public place of business that you have out here. And this is mainly aimed at black people. Okay? My my lawyers are working on this in Charles County and in PG County. I took care of the situation in in in in in New Crowley.

It was a seven Eleven, a Starbucks, and a Subway doing this. You know what they did? They fined all three of these businesses. So you all need need to do the same thing to these businesses in Rockville. I don't wanna include Rockville in in the in the in this lawsuit, but since I've been given the platform this morning, the lady said come up, I figured I would mention it. Okay? Now, something needs to be done about that. These officers need to back up. I don't know why they attacking black it's only black people. I know it's they they don't call on no one else but black people.

Okay? So this is a racial thing, and it's promoted by white supremacy that's still in this state, unfortunately. While I'm up here, I might as well mention to y'all, I also I'm also a part of ICE from Saturday to Monday Thank you very 3AM. And I'm gonna tell you all nothing new to

a staff member in the back who can the time has expired.

Oh, it is.

I'd like to have a

staff member in the back meeting to share more of your concerns. Credit cards. They're hacking you big time.

Thank you very much. Appreciate your testimony. Welcome, John Becker.

Good evening. My name is John Becker. I am a resident of Americana Center Condominium across the street from the Rockville Metro Station. I'm here also to comment on the election situation, and the future of elections in the city of Rockville. I'm gonna piggyback on some of the statements made previously.

And just in a general sense, this situation right now as far as the report and the process that has been mentioned is strictly ramming and cramming. Not enough time. It should have been done and presented earlier this year at the latest. There should be a review in detail of the proposed language and the existing so we can even people like me can figure out what's going on. I can tell you right now this is gonna be a multipart process that probably is not gonna get done in June based upon the comments tonight and more people who will come forward.

Costs need to be considered. Any proposal that's on here on this report, I'm all forward looking as far as considering it, but there has to be a cost analysis of city funds to do these things in the future, I sure wouldn't want them to take money away from the police department or the fire department or some other organization. I think the consultant's report, both the written report and what was presented last year at his presentation before mayor and council, needs to be considered. And finally, I just would like to say that, the process has to include the BSE, and I hope you will treat them with respect which they are due and include them in this process. I have other things I wanna talk about regarding budget, but tonight is more or less the election thing, and I will be back next week.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Welcome, Libby Adams.

So before my time starts, the last time I was here a couple weeks ago, I did not have everybody's full attention. Some people were on their phones, and I would appreciate if that doesn't happen this time. My name is Libby Adams. Most of you know that. I've been here a few times.

I am not a current resident of Rockville, however, all of my belongings are. They are still being held hostage over across the street at Fields of Rockville in a mold infested apartment that I recently had tested, shows black mold and active mold growth. They have refused to clean and return our belongings unless I sign a release giving them blanket immunity over situation. According to the Maryland Tenant Protection Act passed July and in effect as of October, landlords have forty five days to complete remediation. It has been eleven months since I discovered the mold and six months since they remediated their property and have since left mine there with nothing done to it despite their industrial hygienist being the one to suggest that it needed to be cleaned.

This is beyond an accept unacceptable on their part, but the city's inaction to hold them accountable is both disheartening and disgusting. I am presenting myself to all of the renters in Rockville City as an advocate, also Montgomery County and Maryland as a whole. We are stronger together, and this time, we hold the landlords and the governments accountable for their inaction and neglect as far as protection for the renters in our community. My phone number is (657) 855-3194. I can also be reached at mold in Rockville City at g mail and mold in Gaithersburg City at g mail.

It was a Rockville city inspector who cleared my apartment as habitable at the November, December, something like that. Five months later, I have ran my own mold test that shows black mold and active mold growth. I have presented it to you guys. Not only does this fall on them, but this also falls on the city of Rockville now because you guys also cleared my apartment as habitable when it wasn't. I don't know how many more times I have to come back here and ask for help, how many emails I have to send, how many times I have to be ignored, how many senators I have to reach out to.

You guys all know my story. You know my trail of things, and, if I'm the only one that thinks it's unacceptable, that's pretty ridiculous. I feel like my family should have gotten help by now. But, yeah, I'll be, uniting the rest of the renters in Rockville,

and I

guess we'll be seeing you guys. Have a great day.

Thank you. Welcome, Madison Dunn.

Hi. I'm, my name is Madison Dunn, and I used to be I used to live here with my mom and my sister, but now we don't. And I personally, I this is my own opinion, feel like we haven't gotten any help. All of our stuff, as my mom said, is still in the mold infested apartment. And and they said that they were gonna help replace everything if my mom signed something saying that she wouldn't sue them. She never said to she never actually signed it because that is ridiculous. And so now our stuff is still in there, and we can't even we can't even replace any of it because most of the stuff in there is really expensive. For example, my record player and on my records. It's very expensive. My mom got it for me for a Christmas, and it's very expensive, so my mom cannot replace it.

And most of the stuff in there also is from me, my sisters, and my mom's childhood. So that also can't be replaced because it's very special. So my me we have been asking for you guys' help in action in stopping the fields of Rockville and helping to just to do just for everything. But so far, we haven't gotten help, and we've been here been here constantly and constantly. And I'm kinda getting tired of coming here, like, just just to be honest.

I'm tired of coming having to come here. I just want all my stuff back or at least for it to get replaced. We we went to the apartment multiple times to get clothes and stuff to clean it. My mom found some peep found some people to to see if they could clean the stuff. It's a bunch of money. I don't know how much it is. I don't remember the specific amount, but it's a bunch of money. And my mom doesn't have that money, and then she got hacked in her bank account, and now and now we don't have any money at all. So I'm just asking for your help. That's all I'm saying.

Thank you. Welcome, Cassidy Ayers.

Y'all have seen me before. After we've been living in the mold apartment for two years, it is discussing that you guys have done nothing for us or helped us. And now since you guys have done nothing, we all develop symptoms because of the mold. And this made us feel like shit. And since you guys have done nothing about it, I hope you guys can do something now.

Thanks. Thank you. Mister city manager, can you please help to follow-up on this issue? I know that the mayor and council have requested this previously.

Happy to do so. Thank you.

Thank you. Welcome, Mark Pusiella.

Thank you, madam mayor, members of council of 816 Fordham Street in Rockville. First of all, I wanna thank five members of this mayor and body for showing up at the Ready Retreat on Saturday. It was a fabulous, showing of support from mayor and council. Appreciate that very much. Secondly, I wish to speak about the zoning ordinance.

On April 20, the city released new documents. There is a red line version between what you all approved in December for discussion and what is now before you, but who cares? What we really need is a comparison between what is the current law and what will be the next zoning ordinance. It's hugely important. And if a red line is not possible, then there are a few things that really need to be in the an improved highlights document between the current law and the new law.

And one is uses, and I presented something to you a few weeks ago. The other one, if if nothing else, include a comparison of definitions between present law and next. And, you know, you might just keep the city out of several lawsuits if you do that. I would like to speak about the elections now. I speak as somebody who participated as a candidate in seven straight city elections.

I've already said I'm not gonna run again for a Rockville election. I just finished this afternoon reading the draft. I didn't have a lot of time to study it, but it just needs a lot of work. It needs a red line version between the current code and the new code. It also needs to clarify what will be in place for this coming election and what will be in place starting in 2031.

And I know having sat on that body for twelve years that it's awkward to be a sitting elected member discussing election law changes because these changes may impact you if you run for reelection and the closer we get to the the next election, the more awkward it becomes. Take for example, voting age 16 or 17. Well, that would probably impact some of your election chances. That's where the awkwardness comes in. I would say, please pay attention to the advisory ballot questions that were posed in 2023.

Some of those, outcomes were very decisive and, I'm not sure ranked choice voting was even on that advisory ballot in 2023, but I know, 1617 year old voting was, term limits was, and several other things. So please pay attention to those results, especially where they're very decisive. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm having trouble reading this, name here, but mister is there a l a l a s h e? Oh, sorry. Welcome. Please state your name.

Oh, for sure. Good evening, mayor and council member. My name is Ibo, and I'm speaking on behalf of Frank Choice Voting. We support the effort of upgrading Rockville local election and approve many process changes in the city code, including improvement improvement of accessibility, campaign funds, and lowering the voting age, and, of course, ranked choice voting. There's a three reasons why we believe the city is ready for RCV.

The first one, RCV has already done a lot of work. Back in 2022, the Rockville Character Review Commission recommended the city consider ranked choice voting. Since then, the community and the city have given careful consideration to implementation. The second reason, Rockville is not alone. DC is using ranked choice voting after eighteen month of adapting.

Greenbelt is implementing ranked choice voting in 2027 and I believe Rockville can do that in 2027. RCV Maryland is here to support Rockville with knowledge and resources, and we do we've been doing education around the city in the past four months. We've been doing canvassing and tabling, and we have separate answers. The people who's not voters, they were like, it's really democracy, and I would love I can't vote about it. And whose voter, they were really excited because that's happening in their city, and that's considering their city.

The council can can sizes the moment to give voters more power in Rockville. We're spoke respectfully urge the council to follow Greenbald example and give the voters ranked choice voting in 2027. Thank you so much.

Thank you. That exhausts the list of those who have signed up in advance. Is there anyone else who would like to speak? Welcome.

Good evening, mayor and council. My name is Anita Neal Powell, and I serve as president of the Lincoln Park Historical Foundation. I am also a former candidate for the Rockville City Council and a former commissioner of the Rockville Charter Review Commission. Based on these experiences, I offer the following recommendations for this evening's work session. My remarks focus on the proposed charter amendments currently under consideration.

Article two. As you review this article, please note that members of the board are volunteers rather than paid staff. If the amendment would expand the board's duty, I recommend assessing the resources and administrative support required to ensure a successful 2027, election. Article three, I support lowering the min the minimum voting age from 18 to 16 to promote early civic engagement and increase voter participation. Article five four five, term limits.

I support establishing a limit of three consecutive four year terms for the mayor and council members. This approach would expand opportunities for residents seeking office, encourage the introduction of new ideas, and support city leadership, representative districts. I also support establishing council districts and recommend, excuse me, that the mayor and council, determine an appropriate number of districts and at large seats. Article six, voting. I support maintaining the City Of Rockville current voting system.

Based on my experience as a candidate, the process was well organized and accessible, and it provided voters with clear information and sufficient materials to make an informed decision. I also want to thank the city clerk's office for his continued support of the board of supervisor election and for his leadership in advancing updates to the Rockville city charter in chapter eight of the Rockville city code following Rockville's Twenty Nineteen Election. This includes amendments implemented for the twenty twenty three election, such as expanding the size of the council from five to seven seats. Thank you for the opportunity to provide comments during this evening's community forum, and I look forward to the discussion along with including BSE into the process process to allow for their expertise and experience to be considered. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Is there anyone else who would like to speak? Thank you to everyone who provided testimony. I will note we received a number of written comments and appreciate what we have received thus far, and we welcome additional written comments. We'll continue the discussion during our work session. Next, we have a special presentation. It is agenda item 8A, presentation on climate action plan and electric vehicle readiness plan.

Thank you, mayor and council. Tonight, we are yep. Well, you just said we're providing a special presentation on the fourth annual progress report for the climate action plan and the first annual report for the electric vehicle readiness plan. We've integrated reporting on the two plans since the electric vehicle plan is basically a sub plan of the Climate Action Plan. I'm joined by Denzel John and Erica Chinguera.

And so I'm going to be providing an action status summary and then highlight community wide progress and the EV plan progress. And then Denzel is going to cover the municipal projects and go over the next steps. A reminder that this presentation is just a really quick overview, and so please go to the Rockville website and look under Results Rockville where both of the dashboards for the two plans are posted, and you could drill down to get more details. Here's the status summary of all of the different actions in the Climate Action Plan. The FY 'twenty six budget performance measure aims for 45% of the Climate Action Plan items to be completed or institutionalized this year.

But by the end of 2025, 56% of the actions were completed or institutionalized. Institutionalized refers to actions such expanded program that's been set up and is running and is implemented on an ongoing basis, whereas completed refers to like a one off project that has a completion date. Another 42% of actions is shown in yellow that are in progress. So completed and institutionalized is green and blue if you're looking at that circle. The Council of Government recently issued a new greenhouse gas emissions inventory for the City Of Rockville for 2023.

And so now we have a view of the trends since the pandemic. Between the baseline year of 2005 and 2023, Rockville reduced our net greenhouse gas emissions by 34%. We outpaced the Metropolitan Washington region as a whole, which only achieved a 20% reduction over that same period. Most emissions are derived from building energy use, which is shown in the orange on this diagram, and blue, which is methane gas, heating oil, electricity, and then the blue is transportation emissions, which mostly consists of vehicle emissions. A smaller amount comes from other sources such as waste that they also track.

So now I'm going to go through the different action areas. So energy efficiency is really the bread and butter of climate action. Plus, you don't have to pay for energy that you don't use. The existing commercial and multifamily buildings over 25,000 square feet in the city are subject to Montgomery County's Building Energy Benchmarking and Performance Standards that will require strengthening energy performance over the next decade starting in 2028. But since energy reporting began in 2018, the median site energy use intensity of the two forty five buildings that report their energy use in Rockville, it's already dropped by 25%.

The Montgomery County Green Bank also provides subsidies and loans to assist with compliance with the performance standards. And then the new buildings that are built in Rockville will soon be subject to our strengthened green building codes, which were adopted earlier this year. Many residents have also taken advantage of energy efficiency programs and seen the comfort and energy savings that can come from those. Pepco offers up to $10,000 in rebates and some free services. Last year, over 2,000 homes in Rockville participated in the home performance with ENERGY STAR and the Quick Home Energy Checkup programs.

Installing insulation and air sealing really can go a long way. We partner with the county also to promote the Electrify MC Help Desk and its appliance electrification discount program. The program helps homes make the transition from fossil fuel to electric appliances for cooking and heating. Participation is growing. Last year, 17 appliances were electrified with almost $30,000 worth of rebates.

Moving on to renewable energy. Rockville buildings continue to install solar systems. We cross promote the affordable solar with Switch Together group discount program, and last year saw another six twenty registrations in the program. This year's program is open now for residents and small businesses through mid August. Regarding materials and waste reduction, we opened a fourth compost drop off station, and you can see the rise in the number of tons of food waste collected over the last few years.

Leading up to twenty twenty five, we collected two forty two tons of food waste in those four locations. The city also opted into the plastic bag law, which took effect in January. In the area of land management, while we continue to implement our rainscapes and our tree planting programs, over the next few years, we'll be developing a green space management plan to better manage over 1,000 acres of city owned property. The plan will assess biodiversity and invasive plants and recommend strategies to foster healthy and resilient ecosystems. We're planning to award the consulting contract in fiscal year twenty twenty six coming up and launch community engagement and field work in fiscal year twenty twenty seven.

The draft plan is anticipated in fiscal year twenty twenty eight. My last three slides cover transportation and the electric vehicle readiness plan. The Rockville community's electric vehicle ownership continues to just blossom, growing another 22% between 2024 and 2025. The blue colors in the bar chart represent electric and plug in hybrid vehicles. The green line is public chargers, which have grown to three twenty six ports.

Here's a spotlight on some of the actions in electric vehicle plan, which was adopted a year ago. Over onethree of the actions are already completed or institutionalized, which are in blue and green on this ring here. Several more will be incorporated in the upcoming zoning ordinance rewrite. And to give you a sense of the depth and breadth of the actions that we've already completed, I'm not going to read through all of these, but it's a lot of really fun actions to help facilitate EV adoption in the city. Now I'm going to hand it over to Denzel for municipal projects.

Thank you, Amanda, and good evening, mayor and council. I'll now transition to our municipal projects. This is where we are putting the climate action plan and the EV readiness plan into practice through city fleet and facility operations. Starting with transportation, we've made steady progress expanding alternative field vehicles across the city's fleet operations, including 25 battery electric vehicles, two plug in hybrids, and three hybrids. We have also secured our $160,000 Maryland Energy Administration grant for two senior center electric buses, which helps move us toward cleaner, lower emissions senior shuttle service.

We've continued expanding our EV charging infrastructure, including six ports installed for fleet charging at City Hall, one port at the police station. We have four port fleet ports planned for installation and direct services in the coming week, designing five ports for fleet and public use at 6th Taft Court, and planning the city's first fleet direct current fast charging ports at Rothkeb for the electric senior shuttle buses in future medium and heavy duty fleet charging. We are also coordinating with Montgomery County on a broader public charging effort through a carbon reduction program grant that would install 28 level two charging ports at seven sites within city limits. Next, I'll turn to facility energy efficiency, where we've continued delivery of direct cost avoidance and emissions reductions at city buildings. In 2025, we completed LED lighting upgrades at several city facilities, including the F.

Scott Fitzgerald Theater, Thomas Farm Community Center, Cording Creek Nature Center and Rothkeb Maintenance. In total, we converted ten twenty two facility lights to LED at a total project cost of roughly $197,000 What's especially encouraging is that we were able to leverage strong outside funding, including Maryland Energy Administration grants and PEPCO rebates, resulting in a city share under $10,000 and a phenomenal sub eight month return on investment. Another major efficiency project is our LED streetlight conversion. Phase one and phase two are now complete, phase two being completed in 2025. Phase three is planned for 2026.

To date, we've converted 2,500 streetlights to LED with another six fifty planned for phase three. This is a good example of a project that delivers both visible public benefit and long term energy savings, while also making smart use of state and utility funding through leveraging over $1,000,000 in Maryland Energy Administration grants and PEPCO rebates. Looking ahead, we've also developed a new building energy performance improvement CIP for fiscal year twenty seven. This new program is designed to help modernize city facilities, improve energy efficiency, and expand on-site renewable energy generation. It's closely aligned with our broader climate goals and with state and county building energy performance requirements.

The project list includes rooftop and carport solar photovoltaic across city facilities, installation of energy submeters, and designing hot water heater conversions to high efficiency heat pump units. We have already secured $454,000 in Maryland Energy Administration grant funding to support projects planned within the BPCIP. We will continue to leverage outside state and utility funding to support the energy efficiency projects planned. On the renewable energy side, we're moving forward with a multi facility solar strategy. In March 2026, we completed solicitation and awarded the contract for rooftop solar at Lincoln Park Community Center funded through a US Department of Energy grant.

This project, which is current currently under design, will be the city's first municipal solar installation. Earlier in 2025, we received Maryland Energy Administration solar evaluations for five facilities, and staff utilized findings to draft a multi facility RFP for rooftop and carport solar with plans to explore either a power purchase agreement andor city purchase, depending on what gives us the best value and flexibility. The multi facility solar RFP is anticipated to hit the street in the coming week. Looking ahead, our focus will be on implementation. We will continue work on the flood resiliency master plan and the green space management plan, while also moving forward on key code and policy updates to support these plans.

At the same time, we'll keep advancing the capital projects that are already in motion, including solar, EV charging, senior sensor electric buses, streetlight conversions to LED, and building energy improvements. The goal is to keep momentum moving planning into the from planning into delivery. This concludes the presentation. I want to thank the mayor and council, the Rockville Environment Commission, our government partners, city departments, boards and commissions, and the residents and businesses of Rockville for their continued support. None of this project progress happens alone, and your partnership has been essential to the work we've accomplished.

Thank you for your continued commitment to a more resilient, efficient and sustainable Rockville.

Thank you very much for your wonderful presentation. Colleagues, this is a special presentation, so we are listening and receiving. And if anyone has any further questions, please feel free to reach to us. I also wanted to flag that we have a great resource called Results Rockville where you can track our progress and percent completion. Thank you for an outstanding annual report on behalf of the Council.

Thank you. Okay. We're now going to be moving on to our work session. Agenda Item 12b, Discussion on the Proposed Draft Election Code Chapter eight. Welcome Jeff Mihalik, City Manager, as well as Sarah Taylor Farrell, our City Clerk and Director of Council Operations, and Cindy Walters, Deputy City Attorney. And I know Barak Matita also has helped on this effort. Thank you all.

Mary Ashen, thank you very much. We are very excited to present to you this evening the draft election code. We are presenting just this evening articles one through six. There are a number of work sessions planned in the future, a couple with the BSC and a couple more with city council, and then we'll bring back the final chapter. So a lot of work tonight really should be considered just an introduction of a draft.

We know I have a lot of work to do, but we also need a few, questions answered before we can put the final touches on a code in advance of presenting this to the BSC. So we're gonna go through just a little bit of background tonight that led us to this introduction. We certainly have some feedback that we need to receive from counsel. I'll present to you at a very high level, the first several articles of the code. Again, we'll seek feedback, and then I'll describe the next steps in a bit more detail.

So it's important for, residents who are just tuning in that this has been a a long initiative. The admiring council last year had a couple of work sessions both on May 19 and 07/21/2025 along with the assistance of an election consultant. Those were great work sessions. We got into some really good detail, received quite a bit of feedback from the mayor and council, and we all agreed that we need to do a complete rewrite of the election code. That's what I heard loud and clear from the members of the body.

We've done that. We also had some really good community engagement sessions on June 5 and June 7. A final report was developed by the consultant, and the mayor and council accepted the report. I wanna stress that the acceptance of the report was just thank you very much for your expertise, consultant, but now let's go ahead and write a code. And that work has been going on back since September 2025, and we're here to present that to you tonight.

If people want to know a little bit more about those, work sessions, about the community community engagement sessions, all those links are attached to the staff report to tonight's meeting, and they can go online and check all that information out. And if there's additional information that folks want, just let us know. We're happy to share that with you. So the feedback that we need tonight, and you've heard a couple people in the audience mention that. And, again, I'll get to this at the end, but just for you guys to be thinking about it over the next twenty minutes or so.

Question number one, should Rockville allow 16 and seven year olds to vote? Should Rockville limit the mayor and council terms? And if yes, there's a couple follow-up questions. Should Rockville create representative council districts? Again, a couple follow-up questions there. And then lastly, should Rockville Institute rank choice voting beginning in 2031? So you guys can think about that for a little bit, and we'll look for some feedback from you. So let me start going through the articles. Again, very high level, and then we'll entertain as many questions as you guys would like to put forward to us. So article one is really the the general, all purpose portion of chapter eight.

It provides a number of definitions. We think it's a great improvement to the passcode. It also includes a general provisions section. And it it's another important amendment, and we heard this loud and clear from council members during the work sessions who were candidates back then, that you wanted to see that no changes to the election code could be made within a hundred and eighty days of the Rockville general election or within thirty days of the Rockville municipal special election, unless approved by a supermajority or six members of the body. And the only reason we think that this little exception could be in there is what if something happened at the federal level or the state level, and the council had to react very quickly and make what I would consider, and I think the city attorney agree with me, an emergency amendment to the code.

Short of that, recommending that no changes are made, prior to a hundred and eighty days of the election. Article two is really talking about the board of supervisors of elections. I think there's a few of them here today. I'm pretty sure. So, hopefully, they'll give us some really good feedback in a couple of weeks on that.

The way it's drafted is that consists of five members serving four year staggered terms. Those members are appointed by any member of the mayor and council and approved by a majority. The duties include registration of voters, administering the nomination process and enforcing the code, developing administrative policies, procedures, forms, etcetera, in concert with the, city clerk's office. Yeah. And we all obviously, we'll do what we can to support the work of the BSC both both in work session during the election and then any follow ups thereafter.

Article three is all about voter registration that was brought up a little bit today. There is a registration requirement contemplated within the code. Registration can be done with the state of Maryland, or it can be done with the board of supervisors of election. One of the one of the errors that we've saved as a section that could be added is whether or not you wanted to allow 16 and seven year old odes to vote. This is where that article could be amended.

And then voter registration challenges and appeals process is also outlined in article three as well. Article four is about candidates, talks about candidate eligibility. Again, we have the section in here built in. If you're gonna allow 16 to 17 year olds to vote, then I guess the next logical question, would you also allow them, to be a candidate for elected office? We would need that direction before we put it in the code. We also call out in this article that candidacy for more than one office is prohibited. It simply means you couldn't run for a council, district and the mayor at the same time. You'd pick one or the other. It outlines the candidate nomination petition. It also notes that city employees can be candidates.

However, they cannot engage in political activity during work hours, and they shall resign upon assumption of office. That is state statute, by the way. We're just showing this within our local code as where as well to provide some clarity. And we're noting that writing candidates are permitted as well. Article five is about municipal elections themselves. It covers general elections, special elections, and recall elections. Couple sections are reserved there in case you wanna do term limits and also whether or not you wanna create council districts beginning in 2031. Council districts, if you decide to go that, is a very involved process. I've been through that in other jurisdictions. It's really interested to go through that process.

If you wanna do that, I'd recommend that you, create a separate, body that would you guys would all appoint to go through that, development of creating those council districts along with the help of a demographer that can provide real time maps. If you guys haven't been through that before, it's fascinating because The United States constitution has language that you may remember. It's called one person, one vote, which requires that all of your, council districts have to be within 10% of one another because if not, you'll have undue representation. So in other words, District 1 couldn't have 10,000 people in the district, and District 2 only has 5,000. They all all gotta be within 10%.

And good demographers have these really cool, systems that if you change one little boundary, all the other, districts will adjust, and you can see real time the population there. It's kind of a cool activity. So if you decide to do that, we need to create a new process for that as well, and we'd have plenty of time if you wanna do that for 2031. Article six is about voting. It covers the mechanics and framework on how to vote in the elections.

It's the system requirement, voting by ballot, ballot distribution, canvassing, vote by mail, and voting centers, etcetera. It also talks about election judges, the appointment qualification, etcetera, rules the do's and don'ts about electioneering. And also, depending on the feedback we received tonight, there's a section there that could be allowed to see whether or not we wanna do ranked choice voting. We can slide that right in, but, of course, we need the direction first. So that was a very, very high level.

I I assumed you didn't want us to go through page by page, so we didn't do that. I'm sure we'll have a bunch of questions in a in a second, but let me go through the next steps. I'll slow down here because we heard a lot of comments from folks. We wanted to hear from counsel tonight first, get those key questions answered, update the draft code. Then I know the BSC wants to review this in some detail or great detail on May 7, and they wanna have another work session on May 14.

We'll develop their more specific, comments, and then we'll present all that information to the city council. If, you guys decide to introduce tonight and direct staff, we are recommending a public hearing on June 1. And then we'd also have a work session that same night where we present the results of the work sessions we're gonna have with the BSC along with article seven and articles eight. Then we'll do the difficult work of melding it all together, the community engagement, feedback from council, feedback from BSC, do that drafting process. It'll be a piece of cake, right, team, to do all that.

Your eyebrows are up. And then, hopefully, we'll have the adoption of a new election code on June '26. Again, just a quick reminder, the what the feedback we're looking for tonight is on this page. But before we get to that, mayor, we're happy to try to entertain any questions that you might have.

Thank you so much. I wanna thank everyone who testified this evening. We appreciate all of your feedback. We take it seriously. I know my colleagues have been reviewing, and we welcome more feedback throughout the entire process, even before the public hearing. So just wanted to note that. I want thank staff. This has been long awaited, and we really appreciate all the work that you've put into it. I think that we can proceed with the questions you have asked us. However, I do wanna note that I think it would be prudent for us to also go through some of the sections because I know some of us have submitted questions by those sections.

If you're going to evolve those drafts, it's going to be critical that we give you feedback on those sections. I also wanted to note that we really value the BSE. All the comments that you have given us and the mayor and council have always asked that the BSC be involved. So I want to note that it is our intention to also make sure that happens, and I believe a draft has been sent and there's a meeting scheduled, as you noted, on the next steps. Is that correct, Mr. City Manager?

That is correct.

Okay. And then a broad level question just in terms of process and next steps before we go through your questions. Can you please share this is for the deputy city attorney the correlation between the charter as well as the code and how they I know that we have to make changes to our constitution as well as potentially the code. So can you just talk about the interplay of those and how they would work together?

Certainly. So there are changes in this code or potential changes in the code that would require a charter change. So the charter is really more, as you said, our constitution. The code is more specific. With respect to the charter amendments, that process is about a three to four month process.

Once we do a resolution, once we do a public hearing, once it's been passed, it has to be posted for forty days, and it doesn't become effective until the fiftieth day. However, we could adopt an ordinance with a future effective date that we would coordinate so that the charter changes would all, you know, be effect well, the charter changes would be effective first, and then the ordinance would be effective thereafter. So I hope that makes sense.

That is very helpful. If you could just also finish, what are the key things in here just as we discussed these questions? If if you can point out to us which ones will require a charter change.

So there are about six items that would require a charter change. Voter age, candidate age. They're in the draft. There's the discussion of the reduction of the number of notices and advertisements of the election, term limits, council districts, ranked choice voting, and public finance. Now some of these clearly were anticipated, you know, not for the twenty twenty seven election. However, all of those would require a charter change.

Okay. Thank you. City manager, go ahead.

Thank you, mayor. Just a follow-up too in terms of procedure. Completely agree with the city attorney. We talked about that with your three appointments earlier today. If council decide to move forward with adoption of a new election code on June 29 with a later effective date, we don't have that date, but we come up with you. But right after June 29, we'd start working on the process, procedures, notices for the charter change. And then also, we heard about this from the BSC tonight, and we agree with them. The election procedures, we start on that right away too. Because there's a there's a a long run for that. CLIC's office needs to needs to work with the BSC and city staff on those procedures. This is one of those things where I think we need to run concurrently and not go to one step, then the next step, then the next step, because we need all the time we can get. Thank you, Mary.

Okay. And then you will be producing a summary of changes for the board's BSC. I know some of them have asked about that.

Yes.

Okay. All right. Let's start at the top. We have Doctor. Miles, the requested feedback. I would also then after we go through the requested feedback, then we can weigh in on the sections. Before we begin, does anyone have a burning overarching question that you are I'm going to go in order of all of us, but do you have a burning overarching question? Go ahead. Councilman Van Grugh.

So we can certainly provide these feedback. And this you heard from, you know, the chair of the BSE. This is a great start. This is a great structure. But one of my concerns is you just have us looking at the first part today. A lot of those first parts interact with the second parts. And there's a lot of interaction. I think we've got a lot of work even just within the definitions with where in the first part, which correlate to parts within the second part. And we're not having a public hearing until we've essentially exhausted the discussion based on this presentation on the first part. I think that we need to I mean and certainly give feedback, address what you need to be, and we can even potentially be on schedule.

But we've got a lot of work to do. I mean, I know the mayor and council, we didn't receive this just until, less than a few weeks ago, much like when the public didn't get it. And there's a lot of work to be done. Great structure, great beginnings, but I'm a little bit concerned about us just giving feedback on the first part without addressing the interaction of the second part and trying to cabinet when I think a lot of us, and I hope I don't speak for everybody, have some overarching views of how this interacts with it, how it plays, and how everything comes together. And it might even be better for us to have a discussion about overall issues as opposed to drilling down in just the first part, which is essentially being suggested.

And I know this is I mean, a lot of people within the city didn't receive this within, you know, a couple weeks. So I think everybody is trying to play catch up with not having seen this draft until recent. And you've heard it from the public. I'm sure you'll hear it from us. And so I don't know if the best start of it is for us to just give comments on the first part without looking at it overall. So that would just be my overall thoughts.

Thank you. I know I've sent out a lot of questions and overarching thoughts. I'm holding some of them back, but I just wanna let my colleagues ask some overarching questions first and then Councilmember Valeri, Councilmember Fulton. Then we're going go down the line.

Just an overarching question and thank you to the acting city attorney for stepping up. On the voting rights age, the age eligibility, and ranked choice voting, unless explicitly not delineated in the charter, wouldn't we have I thought it was my understanding from Charter Review Commission that we have that capability to implement those two things without having to amend our charter. Okay. We can get back to that one too, and I can send that also to you as well, only because Takoma Park, Hyattsville, and others were able to lower the voting age explicitly without charter amendment. But I don't know if it was because their charter specifically didn't have the so that's why I raised the question.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. And then I do want to concur with my colleague, Councilmember Van Grack, in particular the definitions are concerning me. To his point, the code in some ways complements the Charter, but also I think we need to do a deep dive because some of these definitions are problematic.

Councilmember Fulton?

So I absolutely agree that there's a lot to get through, and it's difficult to figure out the best way to get feedback. We all just heard and we all just said we wanted to hear from the BSE before we decide a lot of things or weigh in on a lot of things. So I worry I don't know what the right answer is, but I don't think the right answer is us providing scattershot across the whole co provision unique unorganized thoughts. Because number one, we're not informed, and number two, don't know how helpful that is in drafting. So while I agree that maybe what we have planned here might not be the most optimal, I think that a free for all without the informed of the BSE also isn't a good idea.

Thank you very much. We have more overarching comments. Councilmember?

I'll be brief. As usual, Councilmember Fulton has actually stated it very well, I agree a 100% with her comments.

And then I'll just say the elephant in the room. A lot of us are seeing this very recently. We've been asking for it. We've been pushing for it. We know this is important. We know we wanna get this done not too close to election season, and so we're in a crunch. We all want the feedback of the BSC because they do the actual work, and we can't operate in a vacuum. We need the feedback of the city clerk and of the city attorney's office to kinda grapple with the feedback that we all give. So I will just note that any feedback we're giving tonight is very preliminary, but there's some overarching things that we need to do. We need to make sure we have a clear summary of changes.

We've heard that from many of the BSE members and the public. We need to really map out a concrete timeline to see what is feasible because there may be some elements of this that can be done sooner than later, but because of staff limitations and other things, they may require more time. And we need staff to be open and honest with us about, you know, whatever your limitations are so that we don't put you in a difficult position. The number one thing is to make sure we have free, fair elections and that they run well. That's a core part of our democracy and what we will work to uphold.

We appreciate all the work. We know this is a work in progress and maybe that this is part one. I think for me, I will say the most critical thing is fixing what we know needs to be fixed from the last election. There were some very specific feedback that BSC has provided us. So some of those are represented here, but there are a lot of them that are not and that are deeper in the code. So I will just note that there's more to come. This is just a discussion. This is not a final decision making effort. So I just wanted to set of that context. Doctor Miles.

Thank you, madam mayor. Thank you to my colleagues. They said much of what I would say in overarching comments. I apologize to staff to particularly our. We agree in principle to an agenda, and also, I guess, an apology to the public.

As was noted, there were these ballot referenda that people participated in. We got feedback, and there was, I think, a fair expectation that we would be implementing it in a timeline that was, I think, implied in in some of the questions that we are going to answer tonight. As my colleagues have stated, there are concerns about process, which I think are valid, And I'll have some specific questions later to ask to the folks who are administering the election, particularly our city clerk, about the implications of code changes, and does that necessitate us doing charter changes? And if so, how long that process is? While I wanna honor all the feedback that we've gotten from the public, both in the referenda as well as those in your testimony tonight, and I hope subsequent sessions.

I think that my personal take, and I'm I might be an outlier on this. I'd hate I prefer to get it right than to get it done quick. To that end, to take the process as is get all the feedback, particularly from, the board of supervised elections, those who help the city clerk in the administration of election to make sure we get it right. And I'll I'll I'll stop there and then go ahead and answer your your questions. I think, again, implicit in my answering these questions that I I don't I mean, as expressed by one of my colleagues, there's some who might think that we can make the time line.

My gut tells me we probably won't be able to make these time And so my answer to questions are gonna be couched in this knowledge, just, you know, the other elephant in the room is that we're gonna be able to make these time I just don't think in order to get it right, I don't know that we'll make it then. I think we'll make the changes, but I don't foresee if we're gonna do it right that we'll get them done as outlined here. So this is probably much I said a long time. I'll stop there and go ahead and answer questions. Number one, so 16, 17 year olds be allowed to vote yes.

Number two, should the term be term limits? Yes. The timing, again, it's it's it's a function of how we're gonna implement this, and I think there needs to be, you know, more public hearings, more input from the community, more input from city clerk's office, legal, make sure we're in city clerk's office that administer it and then legal to make sure that we're above board with any changes that are being made. So, yes, in principle, I I support term limits. Should we create representative I go back and forth on this one.

I think, as I've noted in the past, there's been some historic underrepresentation of certain communities. And I think just even just geographically, certainly in the recent era in the past twenty years, And I think there can be some benefit in doing this, but I think we have to do that right as well. There's some questions about how districts will be designed, split up, and I think we need to have some very extensive discussions. I you know, if if there are to be districts, I I I can't even say what confidence is twenty third like, I don't know. I have to hear back from the experts, to see the feasibility of doing so.

You know? I know there's smaller municipalities that do district election, but we need to learn from them to see how to implement it if that's the will of the the rest of my colleagues. How many council designated districts? I think it's a function of how we break things up. I do agree with you, though, that I think as a as a representative, regardless if the district's not you're still representing all of Rockville. So I I go back and forth, but I do recognize that there are certain communities just geographic outside of SCS, race, ethnicity that are underrepresented that whose voices should be heard as well. Number four, ranked choice one. I think I'm open to it. I wanna learn more how to how to implement it. Again, we are a very small municipality.

I think it can work, but I have to get the input of the people who are going to administer election to see its feasibility before I can opine for it further. Sorry to be nebulous. I'm sorry to be I'm sorry not to give you all firm deadlines, but I just think there's a lot to be done to get it right as opposed to get it done quickly. And I'll end there. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilman Fulton.

Thank you. I'm gonna be so excited if we make it down this line and get this feedback tonight. So should Rockville allow 16 to 17 year olds to vote? Yes. Should Rockville limit the mayor and council member to terms? Yes. And it should be no more than three, and it should be as soon as possible. Should Rockville create representative council districts? No. And I will expound a little bit on my answer there. We are elected to represent all of Rockville. Factionalism is not good. We're trying to be one town. I looked earlier today. The county has districts.

There's 140,000 people in each of the districts in the county. It's when you're that big that you need to break down into districts. So given our size, given how we want to be as a city, I would not support council districts. I do believe representation is a problem. And I do believe we need to do more to get better representation on the council and city government in general.

I think there are better solutions to that problem. And I also, for number four, think Rockville should institute ranked choice voting as soon as possible. And I'll just one thing on that. I there were comments made today that wouldn't make a huge difference in city of Rockville elections, not based on history, but we can't predict the future. And I also think that ranked choice voting in general in our society is a better representation of democracy, and we should be supporting it writ large regardless of the impact here in this city.

Councilman Fowleri. Yes. Hello.

Feel and it was referred to during community forum. I feel like I had the deep dive master's level course in a lot of these issues through the Charter Review Commission. I'm sure my colleague feels the same way. That was two plus years, as the acting city attorney knows, of just going through every study and being very thoughtful, I think, about the recommendations that we put forward. And I really do encourage folks to check out the Charter Review Commission web page.

It still has the 2022 report as well as the previous ones. So you'll hear me refer to the findings of that report in my going down the list, and you'll you'll hear a little bit from me on that. In regards to the voting age, yes, I think from the get go, especially since charter review, have been supportive for allowing 16 and 17 year olds to vote. And I feel like there was a sub note on this as well, but I note that we're not getting into it, which would be the eligibility to run for council and the eligibility run for mayor. So I just want to flag that, put a pin in, that that might be something that we need to come back to.

I also want to reflect back that, yes, the advisory ballot measures and the results of that were not in favor of this. However, unlike other jurisdictions, our ballot measures are not implemented. They are advisory. And then that is part of the full breadth and scope of how I think we all come to these decisions. I know for me as well, I don't take it lightly if I do not agree with the end result of the ballot measures.

On term limits, again, I really think the Charter Review Commission had a very good solution to this. I support term limits. I believe it should be three consecutive terms. And then if somebody wants to take a year off, take four years off and come back, you know, go with God. But I think having it be three consecutive makes sense.

On representative districts, I think I have been very outspoken in my support for this, both on Charter Review Commission as well as a candidate, as well as sitting up here on the dais. While I appreciate the idea of parochialism, the fear of parochialism that comes from implementing representative districts. I think that if we have a structure of four districts, two at large, that really does eliminate a lot of those parochial concerns. We can have geographic representation while having the best interests of the entire city at the core. And I really do feel very strongly about it.

I feel strongly about it as well in terms of the affordability to be

able to

run for council. It is much more affordable to run for a smaller district if you were to do a mailing in particular. And I think that that, quite frankly, is the elephant in the room, which is the actual affordability to be able to run to be up here. And I hope that we get to a variety of strategies that really impact that, because the affordability of running is a direct connection to representation and diversity on the dais. Let's see.

And also, I will note that there was one election district that went for council district, so I just want to throw that out there. Ranked choice voting, I am very supportive of that as well. I I do I would like to test it out with mayor only maybe initially because I noticed in the proposed definition language that, God forbid, there would be a tie, that it would be decided by lot. Like, it could be flipping a coin. It could be throwing some dice.

I'm not a big fan of that for a variety of reasons, but I think ranked choice voting is extremely smart. And then I do want to flag as well as something that we did mention in previous sessions is not in our slide. It was not on a ballot measure, but we did talk about it and would have implications for the code, and that would be public financing of elections, several members of the body. And the at some point during the the drafting process, it was alluded to, I believe that the draft went farther than what some of us on the dais wanted to see in terms of a pilot. But I do want to note that I know it's missing from here, and if we could add it in maybe to a future work session, because I think that that goes a long way toward increasing the representation up here.

You. Thank you. I think the body answered many of these questions in a previous work session, so

I really appreciate that you're double checking. But I did want to note that we did have a robust discussion and would encourage a look back to that. In terms of 16 and 17 year olds voting, I do support it. I do know that we didn't ask 16 and 17 year olds about their opinion on this, but the Youth Commission does support it, so I just wanted to note that. And I think of the ones that are here, we already collect information from the county on who's eligible, so this is not necessarily a heavy lift, although there is a potential charter change here.

So I want to acknowledge that as well. And I do want staff to share with us if this would be a hardship or an issue with implementing the election, but if you would come back to us with that as you're analyzing this. In terms of term limits, for me, it would be four consecutive terms. I do think the word consecutive is important in there, and this one is one that I know that we've asked and shared feedback about previously. In terms of representative district council districts, I wanted to say something about the code change here.

The current draft of the code currently removes the entire district section. I am very concerned about that because there's no way we could implement this by the next election, and we need to have that inserted back into the code. The very strong feedback to look at the current code and don't scrap that section because we still need something to exist for the next election in 2027, and I would like to see that put back in. And then to to this question, I agree with council member Fulton. I do think this is something that is very useful for very large jurisdictions and maybe something that must be revisited or should be revisited when Rockville reaches 100,000 people.

I do think we're in a high I've mentioned this before in the last work session. We're in a high growth phase, and so I'm concerned about frequent boundary shifts that would have to happen as we're adding more housing in town center. For example, if you look at Development Review Watch, you'll see there's a lot coming. And each time you have those populations similar to what the city manager said, you have to make sure that you are redrawing boundaries. So that's something that I that was on mind for me.

In terms of ranked choice voting, I do think that the 2031 is the right date given where we are in the code. I do think that it would be helpful for staff to share with us what it would take to implement, how much it would cost, etcetera. And I know that we were at at the work session previously asking about the state code and the machines, and we asked our d seventeen team for help. And I don't think I don't think that passed, but please let us know if it did. What the machine situation would be because we want to make sure that the voting machines can handle it.

So those are some of the specific questions. I did want to also note, we have not discussed as a body changing the age for being able to run, so I was surprised to see that in here. That requires a much more robust discussion and feedback from the public, so I would not flippantly add that into the code at this stage. I think it's an interesting topic, but I just want to note that we haven't had that discussion since it's the first time we're having that. So I wanted to point to that because I know that's also included in the draft. I'll stop there. I have other comments. Mister city manager.

Mayor, could I just I just wanna make sure. I'm not sure I heard a clear yes or no from you on representative districts or rank choice voting.

I'm sorry. No at this time for I was very clear. If we get to 100,000, that's when I think the city should look at that.

Thank you.

Okay. And I said because we're in a high growth stage, the timing seems to be an interesting one now because we'd be withdrawing the boundaries very soon. I also think that staff would we when we met last time, we wanted more information about how this could work. And so to put it in code right now would be very would be premature, in my opinion. Though I do think it's something worth exploring when we get to a 100,000. And ranked choice voting, said 2,031 is the right date, but I also think that staff needs to come back to us with what can you do, how much it costs, and do do we have the machines to get it done.

Appreciate that.

Thank you. And did you get the comment about adding in the section on

Crystal clear.

Okay. The districts that was removed should be re added back in. Council Member

All right. I'm up. Thank you, Mayor. So first, I do agree with some of the comments that I made earlier, especially I think it was a former council member, Prashila, who said that, you know, we should have a red line document that we can see what is being repealed and what is being replaced and laid out like that. Because I do take the mayor's point on the districts that in the code right now or the ordinance and the fact that we should retain those as we go into the next election.

And I wonder, are there other things that we should be retaining or at least debating? So a red line document would be very helpful, at least to me. The feedback so I'll just go down the line. So should Rockville allow 16 and 17 year olds to vote? I understand the reasoning behind people saying that we should allow 16 and 17 year olds to vote.

I think, though, that that solution is misguided in that we want to get up the participation in general in 20 year olds, 30 year olds, 40 year olds. And I think that people think that we're gonna expand voting and that by going to 16 and 17 year olds, it's somehow going to produce a big influx of new voters. And while I do think it will produce some, a very little bit, I think that is misguided, and we should be actually putting our efforts into upping participation from the the existing groups. So I'm a no for the 16 to 17 year old votes. Should Rockville limit the mayor and council members' terms?

I think I've been pretty clear. Yes. But like the mayor said, I believe it should be four terms and yeah. Consecutive consecutively. Should Rockville create representative council districts?

That one's a tough one for me because, honestly, I went into the election, and I was talking to people door to door, and I was very strongly in favor of districts. Districts. But as I've been learning more about it, as I've been talking to the city manager about what it takes expense wise, staff wise, resource wise to actually make sure that there are representatives and that they're the same size, I don't think that Rockville is a size enough yet city to justify having representative council districts. I like the concept. I really like the concept and for all the reasons that my council colleague Marissa Valeri said.

But I just can't countenance the expense and everything else of actually keeping up those boundaries when Rockville is not really a city of a significant size to have representative districts. And finally, should Rockville Institute rank choice voting? I've gone back and forth, and not on rank choice voting. I'm a strong supporter of rank choice voting. But should it be for the council or just for the mayor?

And I also recognize what some people community forum were were talking about. The fact that, you know, ranked choice voting is really for one of them, three candidates, four candidates, and that we have six candidates that are elected. But when you have six candidates elected and you have maybe 15 running or 12 running, I think it does make a difference to actually take those votes and count them up. So I am in favor of ranked choice voting beginning at 2031 and for mayor and council races. So I'm totally in favor of ranked choice voting.

And I think, though, that we should take the time. We cannot implement it now because we don't really have enough time to do it but we should take the time to fully explore ranked choice voting, determine how it would work, and then make sure that we educate the public. Because I think that it's going be a little bit complicated. I think it's the right thing to do, but I think it's a little bit complicated, so we should implement it beginning in 2031. And with that, I'll yield back.

Thank you, Councilmember Shah.

First, I wanna express my appreciation for staff. I know this was a lot of work, and a lot of hands were involved in this and a lot of different voices. So I greatly appreciate the draft that the first starting draft is the starting point that we have right now. And whatever we choose, I would like and I'll just echo my colleagues. I would like to see a cost analysis as well as understanding the administrative concerns as well as an equity demographic impact analysis as well just so we can see which populations may be impacted the most.

Okay. So for should Rockville allow 16 to 17 year olds to vote? Yes. This is something that I pushed forward in the Rockville Charter Review Commission, and I served on the subcommittee, and this is something I introduced. And it came out of looking to expand the number of voters.

There were a number of measures to do that, and this was one of them. In Takoma Park, when it was implemented, the amount of voters actually increased among all ages because 16 and 17 year olds are actually really good messengers in their families, and their excitement about voting brought their family out. And so this is something that, across the board, can help to increase voting. And I will I will also share that it's it's also good to get some of the demographic information how many 16 and 17 year olds are registered in the city, how that would expand just to have a broader impact. Should Rockville limit the mayor and council terms?

Yes. And I believe we should begin well, I'll more information on that of when we should begin on timing. But I also agree with the three consecutive terms as well. Should Rockville create representative districts? This is a tricky one for me.

I keep going back and forth. Ultimately, my concern with representative districts is I know that we are one of the reasons that we wish to do this is to address inequities and geographic inequities. But, sometimes, inequities can be created within the districts themselves, and it can be harder to hear from certain voices if there's already some structural systems there within those representative districts. We could look at something that are representative districts and at large districts. There's a lot of different ways that we can look at this, but I would also like to just get some more information.

And I know there will be a large cost with a boundary study, and that will take a really long time. Should Rockville institute ranked choice voting beginning in 2031? Yes. And I'm also not sure if that is enough time. I know a lot can go into that.

Just like anything else, I would love to see the administrative process as well as the cost and just have some more details. But overall, yes. And this is also something that I introduced on the Rockville Charter Review Commission when we were looking at different electoral systems. This is more representative of the majority, and so that's one of the reasons why I support it.

Thank you. Councilman Van Grak.

Thank you. So I'm going to say this again. I really want us to make sure that even though we're talking about the first part here, I think there's other issues with regard to this first half. I know Councilmember Valeri talked about some of the other issues, some of my colleagues did too. I think I really want to see the board of supervisors of elections results, and some I've got, like, line item comments that I've reviewed that I wanna make sure that we're integrating.

But with regard to the feedback, question number one with regard to 16, seven year old votes. I fully understand the need to wanna increase voter involvement. It's an important thing that I know everybody on this council has talked about. I don't know if this is the right decision. And it's interesting because, during the past election, one member of the Richard Montgomery student government went back to the student government, asked if they wanna take a position. They decided not to. I was talking with a number of students from Wooten High School just this past week knowing it was coming up, and there was they were actually talking about issues that were before the mayor and council. When I asked them, what do you think about sixteen, seven year voting voting? They said, I don't know. I don't know if that's a good idea.

And they were 16, 17 year olds themselves. So I don't know if that's the right method. So I don't currently support it, though I do love the idea of expanding it. With regard to term limits, I think there's a need for term limits. I think it makes sense. However, I also understand when it comes to municipalities, we've really got to see a lot of things through. We've got a lot of plans, and I don't wanna restrict that more than we need to. I think four consecutive terms is reasonable. And if you're getting above that, then there really needs to be a change, of course. Now with regard to districts, oh, and I have no trouble implementing that in the next election or whenever it's possible for the next election.

With regard to districts, this has been something that I've definitely wrestled hard with. I went back and looked the last five elections. The average number of candidates from the West Of 270, regions, which is essentially almost a third of the city, it was less than one candidate per election in the last five elections. So we clearly need to do better, just as council member Valeri talked about, with districts. That being said, as much as the community that I've lived a large portion of my life, has been underrepresented, I don't think we should do districts, for a lot of the reasons that some of my colleagues have said, it doesn't make sense.

I did, another quick math, and I saw that if we were to just go to four districts and two at large, someone essentially could be elected with only a thousand or less than a thousand votes. And that's concerning to me because just as was said before by some of my colleagues, we represent the whole city. And it's important for us to make sure that not only do we represent the whole city, but we are, essentially beholden to the city with regard to the votes that we have. Just as council member Fulton said eloquently, there's a reason when you are large as Montgomery County or large as a state or have a huge city like Baltimore. When you have a large portion, you need to be able to have a representative because outside of at large, you have too many regions that would take control.

I don't see that in a city that is currently only 70,000. And even if we get up to a 100,000 in the city, I still think it's probably too small. So I don't support that. Ranked choice and so the other question about when we should begin, I don't think we should begin. With regard to ranked choice voting, ranked choice voting is something that is important.

The more and more I look at it, the more and more I see that it is something that benefits a community. And I am thoroughly in support of ranked choice voting, especially when you have a race where you have one candidate. And one of the most important things you see in data is the collaboration. Because when you have ranked choice voting and people are essentially gonna be ranking to determine a mayor, a county executive, a president, a senator, there has to be collaboration because you wanna get the second place votes. So having that collaboration when you have a single entity voting is important.

However, when it comes to a multi choice election, I actually see a difference. And, it's interesting. I've had a lot of meeting with ranked choice voting folks and asked them, how would you implement a six election ranked choice voting? I met with three different groups. All three gave me different ways in which they've implemented. And even more importantly, I think the greatest benefit of ranked choice voting is actually the collaboration that you get. You potentially would go the other direction if you implement it in council. And I wanna give an example why. You have six votes in Rockville. Right now, I can go to anybody else in the city saying, you're best friends with Barry Jackson.

You're best friends with Izola Shaw. Give me your vote too. There's no essentially risk. But if you're now ranking all six of them and you're actually now giving a number aside from a vote, there's no competition. Because I wanna get your first vote, not just your second, third, fourth, fifth, or sixth.

Because the number you give me in a council actually matters with ranked choice voting. When it's simply a levered choice with regard to six, there's no longer competition. So considering the fact that it potentially could be complicated as well as the fact that you're now going to implement competition where there wasn't competition before, I don't think it makes sense to do so in a council. In addition to which, there was some data done on a county level with regard to, the at large selections where they chose four. They actually found on the council level, most people didn't choose four.

I suspect with Rockville, we also have situations where people aren't choosing all six. And to actually say you now have to rank all 13 or 14 votes in a council election could potentially cause more stress or confusion for voters. So I think with regard to mayor, it's a great idea. With regard to council, I think we need to potentially think whether it's the right idea, and I wouldn't support it at this time.

Thank you. Mister Mihaelic.

Mayor, that was extremely helpful. Can I just recap what I heard to make sure everybody heard what I heard? 16, 17 year old voters to allow them, yes. Term limits? Yes. I'll come back to whether it's three or four in a second. Representative districts, I heard no. Ranked choice voting, I heard yes. What I heard on, terms, yes, there should be term limits, but three of you said three consecutive terms, and three of you said four consecutive terms. So I don't know how you wanna break up.

A straw poll if we like, or we can end we can do a straw poll, but then also maybe get some feedback from the BSC.

The straw poll now would be helpful. Just allow us to write it, and then, of course, we'll get feedback from BSM. So three terms or four terms?

Does anyone want to change let's just do it again. So who is for four consecutive terms?

There you go.

Is that at four or no? Okay. So It's four. Okay. Who's for three?

Okay.

Okay. Thank you. Clear?

Extremely helpful, thank you.

Okay. And we welcome the feedback at the BSE, of course, on all of these things. I do think from what I'm hearing that I'm hearing some, like, ranked choice voting, wanna hear the cost. We're gonna need additional information.

Correct. Okay.

Thank you. And also, like, mayor versus council, the whole thing, I heard a mixture of that too. So we'd really love to hear the feedback of the BSC and from staff on implementation constraints and costs. Councilmember Vallari?

Yeah, on that point, it was alluded to by one of my colleagues that there is cost information that's been gathered specifically on districts. If that has already been prepared, I would love to see that as well. And for any of the other items, I think sharing it broadly with all the members on the dais would be helpful.

I will also say I was digging into this in preparation for this meeting. There was some analysis of Montgomery County when they were going through how they were going to break up the districts, that they had less competition in the districts than at large. It was very interesting. So that kind of data is probably helpful to make sure we're not introducing unintended consequences. But I know that it didn't pass this time, but I think it's something that is still helpful for future bodies and maybe perhaps this body. Madam Mayor Council Member Koretz, go ahead.

Yeah, sorry. On that point, actually, there's a lot of good footnoting and research and numbers in the Charter Review Commission report, which did not seem to be reflected in our draft yet, maybe. But I would urge everybody who has not committed it to memory or clicked all the footnote links. And if you'd like to chat more, I'm sure Councilmember Shaw and I are always available. But no, it's a really good report. And a lot of these sort of studies, both on representative districts as well as 16 and 17 year old voting, there's good stuff in that that I hope we can use.

Thank you. Mr. Mihelic, you have any other questions about these? I do have some comments on the sections.

Oh, I was just gonna say, if there's other comments or questions on the sections, we'll entertain them. As I mentioned, all of you, the three of us are still getting up to speed. So if you hear a lot of, we'll get back to you. That's from the heart. We'll we'll

get back

to you.

I think we'll keep it high level for the sections. Just some of the things we've heard from the BSC and others, think, would be good to just at

least make sure we're looking in. Too. If anybody has any written anything you wanna send us to an email to all three of us, we'll make sure the answers go to all seven of you, of course. Thank you, ma'am. I'm sorry to interrupt if

I did. Okay. Can we can we go to the slide on that section? Did you have another overarching question on these? Did. Councilman Vallari, go ahead.

Just because it kind of does connect, seeing as we all are looking forward to the BSE input on this, how does that affect the timeline? Because I think that many of my colleagues mentioned it. Are we going to get through this if we have not yet received the input of the

Let's wrap up with the next steps. That's a great question. Okay. Yes. I will do. Because I also have some questions about another session and things like that. Okey doke. Let's go through article one. I'm gonna kind of stagger on our row. Doctor. Mazza, went for us last time. Councilman Fulton, is there anything you wanna add here?

No. I don't have anything for this.

Okay. Councilman Valeri.

I have many, many issues with the definitions and would reserve my right to submit them in writing first and address at a future work session.

Session. Thank you. I did want to look overall at the definitions and have them compared because I did see there were some changes. But you'd have to really go line by line to see is there anything significant. So I'll rely on the experts to help us and with the BSC's input. I do appreciate that we have more definitions, but I do feel like we need to dig in on that a little bit more closely and compare it to what we currently have. Councilman Jackson.

Thank you, Mayor. I really don't have any questions, but I do have a question that was submitted by Steve Fitcher, because I think it was a good one, actually. And I know you don't have the answer right now. So on online platform, it has 100,000 or more unique monthly United States visitors or users. I mean, where did that number come from?

Why 100,000? I mean, when we're looking at those definitions and that question is not just specific to this one, but I would just go back and say what are we using as a baseline and why, really?

What page do you have just so we can have staff It's look at

page five It's page five of the draft code AA.

Yeah. I will just concur. I was looking at the wrong page and I had that too, so I apologize. Thank you for raising that. That seems more like a state level metric that is applied to Rockville. We don't even have 100,000 residents here. So I just thought that number was very interesting as well, and I appreciate my colleague raising that.

Well, I raised it because Steve

And thank called you to our BSC member who raised it as well. Perfect. Okay. Thank you. Councilman Bershaw.

Councilman Van Grak.

Thank you. So, a couple things with regard to the article one. One, I understand and, again, I know there's a lot of issues here to get through. But the amendments and the no changes, it says that we can't make changes unless there's a vote of six members of the mayor and council. Yet the change that was made that was created a problem last election was a unanimous vote.

So I don't know that just saying six votes is what's needed. There has to be more of a restriction than just six votes because for the most part, if it's if it I mean, the BSE recommended that. It took a while before it got to the the mayor and council before they addressed it, so I don't fault the BSE. For But the most part, if the BSE gives amendments and gives reasons, there's almost certainly gonna be a close to unanimous vote. So I don't know that that restriction is the type of restriction.

I understand there could be a reason for amendments, but we might might wanna get that reason more clear other than just a vote of six of the mayor and council. I also think in you know, just as council member Jackson said and some members of the BSE, the definitions really need a lot more work. And it's not just with regard to the issue of online platform. Person from a statutory construction is not proper because you essentially have an individual group with legal entity because it's not a proper way you address that. You've got issues with regard to qualifying paid digital communication, which seems to be limiting what could be used.

The quarterly submission dates, just as was talked about before, is only noted here. And I also query whether there needs to be an adjustment to the quarterly submission dates when you're in the middle of an election that comes really close and divided by. We've got significant definitions throughout here that have significant impact to later sections. And the meaning of a lot of those later sections with regard to what the transfer is. That's a limiting definition.

And I really think we need to expand, and I'm sure the board of supervisors election is gonna address some of those. I've got some of my notes. I'm happy to provide them in more detail. But we really need to get in it's one thing I've learned in addressing codes. Some some of the most important distinctions are made is within the definition. So let's make sure we get it right. And I actually think and I I've got a list of them. There are other definitions that I think are important when especially the second half of the code. When we get into the issues of campaigning, when we in this code and expansive expansive issues of violations. What is a violation?

When there can be a violation? And the different nature of being late, the different definitions that there are not definitions of, but would help clarify things later on. If you go to and I've if you listen to the BSA meetings or go to their transcripts, transcripts, a lot of their confusion actually comes in the fact that there are terms used both in the restrictions, in the campaigning, in who is eligible to do certain things, and what is the essentially body or entity that's doing something? And a lot of their disputes are, well, there's no definition explanation of that, or the definition is too limiting, and we're not sure how it can be. So I actually think that there's probably about and I I can provide a list later about probably about a dozen more terms that need to be defined.

And I I know I listed six here, but there's about 10 other definitions that I think we need to expand or be more clear about. To quote you, mister city manager, clarity is kindness. So I don't think you can get, in trouble for being as clear and less ambiguous as possible.

Thank you. I did wanna raise on this section before we leave that, members of the BSC also noted, in addition to the 100,000 number, which seems like a state level number, not a municipal number, how is the 500 disseminated digital communications determined? And is that the appropriate number for municipal government? Other thing that was noted by the BSE members of the BSE include the second quarterly submission date should be April 5, not March 5. And they also note to that we're familiar with the requirement dates so that we can make sure that we get that right.

Now we are moving Doctor. Ahead. Yes.

Okay. Sorry

about that, Doctor. Mouse.

Oh, you're good.

So a lot of us up here, a lot of opinions. Don't have much to add. I think definition section, there have been a number of things mentioned in terms of concerns raised. A couple of other definitions just to add to the list that would need some clarity. And, again, I think having our board of supervisors of elections, our city clerk, in on this on the front end can be helpful.

But things having to do with independent expend expenditures, political action committees, things like that also need to comport more with the idiosyncrasies of a municipal election. I'm unsure some of the language used in this rewrite seems to perhaps apply to larger jurisdictions and without the idiosyncrasies of Rockville. So I think that, as was mentioned previously, addressing the definitional spec specificities is important. In terms of provisions, I think among others that have been mentioned already, you know, a a recount provision needs to be discussed and outlined again with the same people in the room who will be administering the election. Mhmm.

Section eight three, have no big concerns. But, again, as council member Valeri said, I I just want I need more input. I'm, although I'll I've been in election. I'm I'm not a a professional in elections. I would hear from from the professionals now in there. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. So now we have section two, which is focused on the Board of Supervisory Elections. Council Member Galleri, you are first this time.

I feel like I'm going to turn into a repetitive person here. I'm very uncomfortable giving feedback without having heard the feedback of the BSE first, given that maybe it's just because my heart goes out to volunteers in this city. Been one. I'm really proud of all the volunteers here. And I think that just acting respectfully in that way to all our volunteers is that, along with clarity, is a kindness that I think that we can extend to everybody.

So I would really want to hear their input. Also, too, I don't know if and Madam Mayor has a much better memory than me on some of these things, but I don't recall if we did a straw vote or not on the possibility of expanding the number of the Board of Supervisors of elections. Of course, I want their feedback, but that was also with within the Charter Review Commission report recommendations. So that would be interesting. The proposed draft goes under the assumption that we would stay the course on the number of BSE members.

But if we didn't give that feedback, then I would not feel comfortable. Yeah, that's all that they really, especially with the expansion of duties, I am increasingly uncomfortable giving more feedback than that without hearing from the BSC first.

Thank you. I have a couple of comments. One is we don't clarify I know we note that each member of the board shall be registered Rockville eligible voter in Montgomery County and should not hold or be a candidate for Rockville elected office. Are there any rules about being a family member of a candidate or any spouse of a candidate? I just I was curious about that because we get into that with judges, but I don't see them necessarily with the overarching supervisor. Mr. City Manager, have a comment on that?

I'm just saying we'll circle back on

that. Okay.

Yeah. That was something that it seemed like in other areas we were considering that, but not specifically here. I also wanted to note that the duties I want to acknowledge the feedback of the BSC members that we've heard from as individuals, that there are a number of duties that are assigned here. And I'd like to understand, is this too much for them? Make sure that we're giving them the proper support and staff to make this happen.

So that was an overarching concern that I have. In terms of Section eight eighteen, my comments relate on that to eight seventeen and eight nineteen. In terms of eight eighteen, I wanted to ask whether staff currently reimburses the BSC for their travel. They do a lot of voter outreach and go to events, and I just want to make sure that should be an eligible expense because they do so much of it and they have this I wanted to raise the idea. They have travel too.

Yeah. So do we know if we currently reimburse for travel? We do not. So that was something I would support. So I think that would go a long way in helping support them.

I know that there were some state changes that were happening. I know in terms of live streaming and others, I just wanted to get a sense to make sure that we have really looked at and compared against this particular legislative session to see if there's anything else we need to incorporate into this section. The other piece that I everything else. Councilman Jackson.

Thank you, Mayor. I'll be short. I defer to the BSE, at least now, to take a look at the duties and tell us what you think about the Asphetian duties. I do find it interesting what my colleague, Council Member Valery, was talking about, and would urge the board of supervisors of election to look at the five member board and whether or not that's sufficient. I leave it up to you, but it does seem like a good point, especially since the duties have been suspended somewhat.

But that's my only comments here. I think that the voters' elections probably will have a lot to say, and take it into account.

Council Mashaw. I also want to echo my colleagues and get more information from the BSE. And I am interested in exploring increasing the number of members. But again, I just want to get more feedback.

Thank you. Councilor Baybrag.

Thank you. So section eight seventeen duties is actually one of the areas that I think integrates a lot with later going on something that we've talked about before. We and I guess it goes to what we've also talked about needing the board of supervisors of elections input here, but more importantly, the board of supervisors of elections together with the clerk's office. Why is that so important? We've talked significantly about accountability and responsibility.

There's a lot of duties, not just in 08/17, but throughout it. There's in article three, article four, article five, and article six, and seven, eight, and nine that actually talk about duties within there, but they talk generally. Well, the duties here are talked about more specifically, but it's just shall. So we have actually conflicting duties sometimes, and I'm sure you'll hear it from the board of supervised elections and the clerk's office that are both assigned to both of them. There needs to be much more clear accountability with regard to some of these tasks.

Because in duties, it's great to have some of the general responsibilities, but there needs to be a delineation and more clear. And, again, all the more reason you're hearing from all of us, communication with the Board of Supervised Elections and the Clerk's Office so that they can understand what they have the capability of doing, but that there is a necessary accountability. And while there is some shall language within the duties, we go and, heck, just in eight, section eight fifty eight on page 18, we're talking about mailing of ballots. We're talking about addressing the ballots. We're talking about making sure they get, but there isn't a general duty as to other than promulgated by the board, city clerk, and shall be mailed.

Well, that's a lot of different people there with regard to who is essentially the buck stops here. And sometimes when you have confusion, you create confusion later. So, again, all the more reason for the board of supervised election and the clerk's office to really get some detailed feedback to make sure that there isn't confusion and there's a different, clear responsibility. I echo the mayor 100% with regard to section eight eighteen. To the extent there's any expense whatsoever by the board of supervise of election, there is no way that any volunteer in this city should have to expend any money for what they're doing, and I think that's important.

And, of course, interestingly enough, when we get to the staff support, we're again talking about responsibilities that come from essentially a number of different areas. And I wanna make sure that with regard to tasks that happen with an election, overseeing and responsibilities, there's a clear delineation. I suspect once we get feedback from the board of supervisors of elections and the clerk's office, we're gonna see a lot of that, but I wanna make sure that there's clarity.

Doctor Miles.

Thank you, madam mayor. I largely associate myself with comments of my colleagues, specifically council member Villarney, and then with the addition of the provision about compensation for travel as you outlined in there. Thank you.

Thank you. Council member Fulton.

I agree. I'd like to hear from the BSE, but I also think it's worth looking at expanding the number and compensation.

I have a follow-up question on this section from my colleagues. Well, from listening to my colleagues and thinking about the duties, there are a lot of sections that relate to administrative policies. Does the BSC currently have policies? And how much extra work we'll be putting on them between now and the election? So I think that is another important indicator as you're looking at the overarching timeline, what is not yet available to us.

So we just have discussion about what do we need to do to get to twenty twenty seven fair, free, effective, and efficient election versus what is a longer term idea. So I just I want I really want that specific feedback. And then my other question related to the one I mentioned earlier, can a BSC member be a treasurer on someone's campaign? It doesn't specifically say no. I know I asked about the family member, but it doesn't say no. The judge just says no, but I just wanted to know I would assume no one would do that, but it doesn't specifically speak to that and I wanted to ask the question for staff to look at in the BSE.

We'll look at that.

Thank you. Next section. Voter registration. So that would be eight dash twenty six through eight dash thirty. I have a couple of comments here.

There's more language here added that appears to be from the state, and I was just curious as to the intent. Is that appropriate for the city? That was just an overarching question that I had. We already talked about the 16 to and 17 year old voting. Interestingly, the draft says sixteen-eighteen versus sixteen-seventeen, so I just wanted to flag that.

I was curious about, on page 11, where we haven't really disenfranchised people who have been imprisoned before. So I just I I was curious about how that crept in here and wanna get more background on why that is. Again, eight dash 28 says 16 verse I'm guessing you said 16 or 18 because you're saying at least. So but I know that we gave feedback on that particular item there. In terms of voter registries, doesn't Montgomery County I know in the current code, get one free voter roll, but then after that, you charge.

Can you just give some background as to what happens here? Because it got changed in this draft? Ms. Sarah Taylor Farrell, do you recall

The voter list.

The voter list that candidates can ask for?

If the request that the city clerk gets and we provide a copy to those candidates, that is not that's free of charge. But if you request a customized voter database from the county, like a walking or a specific area or something like that, then you have to pay for it.

Okay. I just wanna make sure you guys look at that to make sure it's in align with what you're doing. And there was a comment that I saw in terms of challenges and appeals. There's a difference in the code from what we currently have to what is drafted in here that it seemed to be important versus where the city would automatically do something versus whether someone has to do an appeal. So I just wanted to make sure we're specifically looking at that because I wouldn't want to if the city is concerned, we should recount.

But so I I just that that was something that seemed like a difference, and I'd like to just make sure that we're looking at that. And I know the members of the BSC have written about the eligibility in 08/1936, so I will wait on that. Council Member Jackson.

Thank you, mayor. No questions.

Council Member Shah. No questions. Council Member Van Graak.

I would just note, I know this was brought up before. I think that if we're going to allow 16 year olds to vote, we have to allow them to run as well. I guess it's one of the reasons why I have a concern because we're now changing the eligibility, but I have a hard time telling someone that they can vote, but they can't run. So I think if we're gonna do one, we kind of have to do the other. Again, it's not something that I support because I don't think it's a good idea, but it's just one thing for us to think about if this is a change we're gonna make. And, again, as usual with every section, I'd like to from hear the board of superheroes of election and the clerk's office.

Doctor Miles.

Thank you, madam mayor. I think on this one, I I associate myself largely with the comments that you all brought up brought up in terms of some of the oversights. I think what would be helpful in this and much of what we're doing with regard to this election rewrite would just to be this to see what was what we had before and have, like, a red line of what we're what's being changed because it's it's hard to kinda figure out where we've been and where we're going. But associate myself with y'all's comments. That's all.

Thank you. Councilmember Fulton.

So on this one, one of my colleagues made the point that there seems to be a lot of state stuff in here. I think it's a drafting concern. By my read, this doesn't actually disenfranchise anyone. It just says you either have to be registered with the state, and you can't be registered with the state of your felon. But then it says you can also register with the board, and those restrictions don't apply.

I think it's just a really confusing drafting that we would want to clear up a little bit. And the only other thing I just wanted and I don't know if it's covered here, but it's worth noting, I know that we had, I believe, some hiccups with the registry we got from the county, and I would just want to make sure that every way we can whether we need a code change to make sure that doesn't happen again or a procedure change, I don't want to miss that opportunity as well.

Ms. Sarah Taylor, do you want to comment on that?

Yes, that would be a procedural change that we have in process for twenty twenty seven.

I think it was Montgomery County acceptance. Yeah. They they were totaling people based on who wanted to get electronic ballots. That was that issue.

But the leave was not. That was Citi. Councilman Vollary. Okay. On voter registration, I understand to the point that my colleague made, it's not quite clear.

However, for future elected bodies, there may be a need for a secondary list. So I would not want to exclude that language, a secondary list that would fall under our jurisdiction but outside of the purview of the state. I do just want to flag for my colleague that there is actually a precedent of having 16 and 17 year olds voting for mayor and council, but not being able to serve in those seats until 18. The city of Hyattsville does that explicitly. So basically, I think that's something that we need to, which is why I think in the previous section I said, let's put a pin in that, because I think that that's an important aspect that I think we need to address whatever direction that we're going to go on with regards to that.

But there is a precedent. Let's see. Agreed with all my colleagues, just cosign a lot of what other folks said, in particular that there's a lot of state language in that, and that is what Montgomery County looks to. We have a lot of autonomy that perhaps the county does not. So to that extent, maybe it just needs to remove all the very state specific language that would only apply to the county and not to the city.

And I feel just eternally would like to hear from the BSC on this and especially on the administrative burden that it it may create.

Thank you. Mister city manager and city attorney's office and clerk, anything that you need us to clarify in this section? Go ahead.

I don't think we need clarifications, Mara. I just I wanna point out something. The deputy city attorney and I were clarifying and conferring on this, and I don't wanna, disappoint everybody. It will be really hard for us to do an actual red line. I wanna make sure you guys know that because this is this is repeal and replace. So we might have whole sections of the former code, all red lines, and then have a new code. So I would strongly encourage whether it's counsel, BSC, residents watching, to read the code on its face. Now a couple of you have said, wait a minute. What about this section of the previous code? Where is it now?

If you send us those questions, we're happy to say, was in this section, and now it's in this section. We can do that. But doing an actual red line, I don't think it create confusion. But if there's any comparison contrast you want us to make, let us know, we're happy to do that work.

I want to clarify that I heard from several of my colleagues and the members of the BSC that we need a summary of changes.

Okay.

That is critical.

I think we can do that.

Okay. Yeah. A summary of changes that highlights what what so that because otherwise, I know I've I've read it over five times, and each time I find something new.

Yep. Happy to have to

provide that. And I'll read it another five to seven times between now and the next work session, and I'm sure I'll find more. But I think that, just a summary of those kinds of key changes. I do like that you have a summary of the new sections, But what has changed in those sections I think is important for us and the public to know. Comes from Valeri.

On this point, I think at a minimum, if we could get even a table of what the changes to the existing definitions obviously, if there's new definitions, then those could be segmented out. But for the existing definitions, there absolutely is a way to not maybe necessarily red line it, but say here's is previous, what's not in there. I agree that because it is a repeal and replace or however, it's a nice renovation. But there are some apples to apples within that that it would be hard to peel back. So maybe if we just even started with the definitions, that would get us rolling to a better place on this.

Colleagues, we've got in this section in terms of feedback? Great. All right. Now we're moving on to Article four, candidates. Council Member Jackson, you have the floor.

Thank you, Mayor. And just to reiterate, I know what you're saying about the red line, but just with my colleagues, it would be nice to have a summary of what's changing and what isn't, and what's in and what's not. Because I think many of us have expressed that desire, especially we're repealing and replacing. I won't belabor the point, but we just need some clarity as to the language. So on Article four, again, I think of several of my well, one of my colleagues as a broken record, but I'm gonna say it as well.

I mean, I look at eight thirty six a two. I mean, we have to decide that. You know, whether they're 16 or 18, which age are they eligible to be mayor. And likewise, know, we ask the the candidates for city council, are they 16 or 18? And so we had to decide that.

There's no getting around that. The nominating petition, I wanna say thank you to the BSE. I know we talked about the electronic signature, and I believe that was something that these guys took up and I believe passed. And I think that's a great thing. I know the devil's in the details, it's it's gonna be interesting to implement.

But I do think that getting in the modern times is a great step forward. And so I just want to shout that out as something that we're trying to modernize our technology. The only other thing that I would say and I know that we're going to get the BSC's take. But I really do like the language of the withdrawal of Rockville Nine Eighteen petition. I know that there was a problem with some of that in the past. And so having a procedure to withdraw a candidacy is a step in the right direction. And with that, I yield back.

Council Member Shaw.

I also wanted to thank the BSC for the electronic signatures. I know that makes the process more accessible for the candidate, for the community. And I imagine it may make it easier when you're counting as well. And so I think that's a wonderful addition for the next election.

Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Van Gruyk.

So, yeah, this section, again, there's a lot of things. And, again, I know we keep talking about the BSE. I also wanna hear from the clerk's office too because there's a lot of responsibilities here. Like, for example, the withdrawal. I agree with council member Jackson. Having the withdrawal here is great. We've heard about it from the BSE. We've heard about it from the clerk's office, but we also have fifty five calendar days. I'm not sure where that number came from, and I'd like to hear from the forward of the of elections in the clerk's office, is that a reasonable time level? Same thing with the nominating petitions.

I mean, it seems like this was drafted, and it's great that it was drafted. The BSE and the city clerk's office need to come together in understanding what can make it most easy. I would love to see the the BSEs talked about the electronic signatures, but I wanna make sure that we're doing what we can to support the clerk's office and the BSE with everything that's being done here because they're lifting a heavy burden when this all comes about. So I think this is a great start, and I'd really like to hear more from those who are gonna be implementing.

Thank you. Doctor Miles.

Thank you, madam mayor. I'll keep it simple. I'll associate myself with the comments of council member Van Graig, specifically around the of getting both BSEs and city clerk's involvement in knowing these very important, critical, detail oriented functions. Thank you.

Council member Bolton.

I have nothing to add on this one. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilmember Valery?

I thought we were just moving on. No, I appreciate and thank everybody for their previous comments. I'm going to do the ditto on the BSC and the city clerk. I would really like to get more explicit, would these work, sort of answers, especially from Madam Madam City Clerk's office, on the deadlines that are here, if that actually works for the printing of the ballots. I'm not quite sure on that.

And then additionally, section on write ins, how that may or may not play into the administrative burden if we have the capacity to do that and then how that would be managed, again, falls very squarely on the city clerk and the BSC. So I think those are the big points for me on this section.

Thank you. I have a question about the withdrawal of a nomination petition. My question is if someone submits a nomination petition and then responds to nothing else, they don't submit any of their required reporting documents. What would would happen? They still go on the ballot. I think that's something that came up that the BSC specifically wanted to see addressed, And I don't know if we hit the mark on that one or if we need to dig in a bit more. I'm not sure. I wanted to check-in with the team to see if you can look at that.

We'll look into it.

Okay. And then similarly, under eligibility, I know members of the BSC have added under eight-thirty six has submitted all required forms of paperwork to the city clerk director of council operations to confirm candidate eligibility. I think that's a good add and would recommend adding it. I'm gonna ask the team, do you have any questions or clarification needs from us before we move on to the next section? Alright. Let's do it. Article five, Rockford Municipal Elections. Council member Shore, you have floor.

Thank you, madam mayor. I just wanted to bring up one point here about the notices. So the BSC, the clerk's office, the city of Rockville, you you do amazing job with advertising the election. I think at one point, I saw a a car, like a vote by mail vehicle or something, but y'all y'all do a really great job in the mailers, canvassing, everywhere you go, in all of our events. I think, overall, it's a great job.

And then our code has a very it's very different in our code. It's not much as you do on a regular basis. And I think it's really, really important to maintain that. The work of outreach, you do it in different languages. And so if we can somehow include some of that work in the code the code is very basic.

I think it's for newspaper articles. And not a lot of folks read newspapers. I'm sure a lot of folk well, I'm sure some folks read newspapers, but not a lot of folks read a lot of folks read newspapers. And there's a lot of ways people are getting their information nowadays. And so if we could look at updating the code based on the amount of work that you do or strike some balance, I think this would help overall in future years.

Councilman Van Gretz.

As with every section, I'd like to hear from the board of supervisor of elections and the clerk's office. But, a few, quick comments with regard to section eight forty six, you see emergencies. This is kind of a section that I think can be mirrored with regard to amendments to it outside of the one hundred and eighty days. Because this essentially says, in the event of x, then you can do b. Right?

So x, y, b, a, c. So this is kind of, I think, how we should mirror whether there's going to be amendments to this. Because, again, there could be circumstances just as we were talking about during the presentation that could merit it, just like we have here. I'd also like to note, I understand that it's been a very long time. I'm trying to remember the last time there was a special election.

However, just having two clauses, and I'm sure the Board of Supervisors of Elections have comments on this, just having two paragraphs with regard to special elections, a lot of our later codes, and again, going to how this section goes to the latter sections, presume that we're on the normal track. If you have a special election, that actually adjusts a lot of what you're gonna be doing in the second part. And just having two sections said, hey. You can do a special election, I don't think addresses. And there would be a lot of questions that I think would come from the board of supervisors of elections with regard to the later provisions that presumes we're in the normal general election category. Other than that, I have no other comments.

Thank you. Doctor Miles.

Thank you, madam mayor. I think we've discussed portions of this previously and gave some straw polls and direction. I have nothing further outside of what my colleagues already articulated. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilman Fulton.

So I have two thoughts on this section, and unfortunately, I'm not going to be that concrete on it. When I read the part eight-forty seven on terms, we did just decide for four year terms. It's not clear to me in this language or in what we decided whether there's a difference between council terms and mayor terms. If there is a difference, it's for council, for mayor, that's somebody serving for thirty four years. So I I do think we maybe need is it just terms in general as part of the body, or is there a difference between the position?

I would vote terms in general. So I just don't know if you need clarity on that point. The other point I will make is probably, I think we're already good on ranked choice voting. But I will say when it comes to special elections, my colleague, council member Van Grak, talked about how it could create competition. There is current competition.

There are reasons why, like, getting the highest votes makes a difference now, And it comes into play with special elections and departures of, for example, the mayor. Right now, the highest vote getter could end up being a a replacement mayor, and I don't know that the highest vote getter is necessarily the city's actual favorite person for that role. I would like to think so, but probably not. So I just do make that point, when it comes to to ranked choice voting as well.

Thank you. Council member Valeri.

Yes. As with all things, city clerk, BSC, ditto, ditto, ditto. Do know that this is like a deep cut here. During the Charter Review Commission and Madam Acting City Attorney was also the resource attorney for us we brought up the idea of whether or not it was legal under Maryland law, the resign to run provision. I'm just curious.

And I'm not gonna put you on the spot with this, madam City Attorney, but I would love to know if we got an answer on that one or got any other sort of guidance. Because that would actually and for folks at home, they're like, what is Councilmember Valerian about? I think that that would be interesting to compare or to have in our heads if we're looking at things like special elections, if it is possible to do so. If seeking higher office, then that would kind of change something. I also agree with council member Fulton.

We're looking at consecutive versus cumulative term limits. I heard consecutive up here, but I didn't hear cumulative. Cumulative. On consecutive, then the the code has to be very explicit to consecutive. But that doesn't mean, you know, that people can't take off four years and come back and, you know, if that's what they wanna do. Let's see. We are we're on five. I think that's all that I have on on this part. But I just brought up the resign to run because I realized that was still a question mark by the end for by the end of our commission. So I'm curious about that. Thank you.

Thank you. I'd like to get more information on that as well. I will echo the comments of my colleagues. I will say I heard consecutive, and I think we were talking about per position. But I just wanted to flag that was my understanding. People may want to clarify on their own. In terms of other pieces, we have already commented on the referenda. I do want to look again at Section 46. So we will speak to the notices. And I just want to check, is that a reduction in notices?

If you could clarify the number between current code and what is here. I do recall that the body did not opt last time in our work session to reduce anything. So I would want to check on that.

We'll circle back.

Okay. Thank you. The other piece is I found this and I believe some members of the BSC also commented on this, we don't speak to the mailers themselves that need to go out prior to the ballot. And the importance of that in ensuring that we are one of the things that it does is it helps us to know which mailers come back so that when we actually mail the ballot, if something came back because that person doesn't live there, that helps us not send the ballot to that home. So that process also helps us to make sure that our voter rolls are correct.

And I wanted to just make sure that we look back at that language and our processes on that. This section also doesn't speak to language access. So I remember in 2019 I was very eager. And I saw we were doing work in Spanish. We weren't doing them in Asian languages. And they were like, well, we're not required to. It's not in the code. And I remember I got that answer. So I just want to raise this again because we are trying to be a more inclusive city to say if there's a baseline of languages to include. I think we should be reflective of our population and provide that information.

So wanted to flag that language access as well. I also agree with my colleagues on the comment on it's not just a newspaper anymore. There's other ways and just kind of being updated with the times. K. I thought that the Rockville Municipal elections and recall, all of that to me needed a lot more specificity.

And also, I will agree with the comments of my colleagues on comments related to what happens if there's a replacement or someone leaves. That has happened in the past few years, and there was a lot of kerfuffle around it. Been a part of that directly, I know Doctor. Miles as well, we were watching very closely and being a part of it. I think that could be more clarity and more procedure added to that is is needed. Just trying to see if there's anything else. I think that's it for me for now. Councilmember Jackson.

Thank you, mayor. No questions.

Thank you, councilmember. I think we councilmember Shaw? You won already. Perfect. Councilmember Van Grak.

I just wanna make one one, clarification. With regard to special elections, I wasn't saying there's a problem with competition. My issue is with those two provisions only, there are assumptions that we're on a November perspective as opposed to the shortened time period of special elections later on that I think we need to clarify, maybe either in the later provisions or otherwise so that the board of supervisors of election isn't guessing what they have to do in a special election. Because if we have a special election, there's, you know, just as noted, the date of the Rockville municipal special election must be within a period of not less than forty days nor more than sixty days after the adoption of the resolution. What does that do with the the the financial disclosures?

What does that do with everything else that is presuming we're on this larger section? Now it might mean that we have something in there that says the board of supervisors of elections, given the special elections, can adjust what they need to given the time period and the emerging nature. I don't know what that is, but I know that it's not clear within here, and there needs to be more clarifying.

Thank you. And, also, the current, code says a special election will occur no less than one hundred and five days and no more than one hundred and fifty days after mayor and council vacancy occurs. Individuals seeking election to city office must be provided no less than thirty days when the date of the special election is announced to file the nominating petition, and within fifteen days of mayor and council vacancy occurring, the Board of Supervisor elections will determine and publicly announce the date of the special election. So there is some more language in the current code that I didn't quite see here and just wanna understand the why if that if, you know, staff feel very strongly about the new language versus what we currently have. But in any case, I do think that a vacancy needs to be more there needs to be more clarity on a vacancy as well.

Any questions from the team on this section on the feedback you've heard from us? Alright. Article six, Council Member Shaw. Think it's Council Member. Sorry, right back. Council Member Bank, back. Did you go first? No. Okay. Perfect. Doctor. Miles. My bad. Thank you.

Thank you, madam. Thank you, madam mayor. Again, I wanna get feedback as my colleagues have articulated from the board staff supervisors of elections as well as from the city clerk on these. I have no it's hard for me to open much further beyond that at this point. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilman Marfulton?

So I'll I'll just say broadly on this one, and, again, this is my not quite understanding of some of the procedures and what should be in here. But I don't wanna lose any of the good work we've done towards, like, many voter centers we will have, how much outreach we will do, how the ability we wanna expand the ability of people to cast a ballot. And so well, while I totally get that we can't get a red line, just making sure that we're not restricting access in any way by any changes here would be incredibly important. I thought I had one other thing, but I can't remember what it was. So I'm, yeah, I'm good for now.

If you remember, we'll come back. Council member Valery.

Alright. Again, BSC, city clerk's office. Go team. So in I would like I'm just gonna pull out a couple of things. One, I do want a little more clarity.

I understand the various components of a voting system, but the way as drafted, something hit me kind of off. Beyond the ADA HABA paper audit trail requirements, are we getting into an area where the BSC would want want to advise mayor council on a voting system? Is that something that we I mean, I I don't know. So I'm just gonna throw that out there. That that eight dash 56 to eight dash 60 kinda confused me there.

I do wanna make sure to as well, again, this could probably be extrapolated for all these different sections. If any of the ideas that we as a body, anything comes out of my mouth, is going to be very administratively onerous, please let us know ASAP and yeah, and to that, that extent. As much as I really like the randomized order, if that is of last names as fellow V last name person, if that's going to be too prohibitively onerous, then I'm willing to change my perspective on that. My only comment on both, I think there's a difference and a distinction between the vote centers specifically because it is more of a kind of administratively heavy lift versus drop boxes. I'm with council member Fulton, Let a Million Flowers Bloom.

I don't know if it's a million vote centers, so I defer to the BSC to give that feedback. Subject to Mayor and Council approval, yes, we really need another vote center, and we can determine where that is. I'm a little challenged by the number of drop boxes and locations being set by the BSE, and I only say this because I think that without significant in the community outreach, it's very hard to kind of get that sense like what a lot of us and what a lot of the community associations and even HOAs here in terms of access, I think that those entities, those constituents, are hearing it a little bit more closely. So I would be a little less comfortable with that.

I

think we've hit on both, most of these. I I do I do question as well 863. Yeah.

We're in the right one. Right?

Yeah. Eight dash sorry. It's late. Eight dash 63. I just wanna make sure that we're consistent generally with Montgomery County law, but some of that's not gonna apply here. So are we really concerned about and maybe we are with poll watchers and election judges wearing campaign buttons? And is that just something that we could do a cross reference with existing Montgomery County? I don't know. But it seems that that was modified and pulled out explicitly. But in general, I agree with Councilmember Fulton.

Don't want to miss a lot of the good stuff that was in this draft, but I think that there's definitely some massaging left to do.

Thank you. I will always say, yes, we want to hear staff and BSC's feedback. There was one really important edit that needs to be fixed here, like, must must. On on page 19 on timeliness section eight dash 59, a ballot is considered timely, may be counted if the ballot is returned to the in person to the city clerk, director of council operations at City Hall no later than 5PM. That is not the right time. Mm-mm. It is 8PM, I believe. Yeah. So I just wanna be very, very careful that we don't shorten the window for voting because a lot of people need to be able to work and then vote. So that that was I and I I would love to see.

Can we scan for any other major issues like that where we are making a major change? I don't think that was intended, but I wanna make sure we we get to that and and figure that out. Have a number of other comments here. There's some questions about board versus city clerk, DCO responsibility. I would love to see the three of you plus the BSE talk about that together because there's a lot more onus put on the BSE.

And I wanna be mindful of their needs, and they've clearly articulated to us some of the concerns of the major shifts that are happening. And that's in many of the sections here. On page 17, comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. I just wanted to ask, are we currently in compliance? Does that involve having braille?

I want to make sure that if there's anything we need to do to better comply, that would be very helpful to know. Page 18, we got feedback from the BSC and I understand the comments about the randomized order and whether that would be a challenge for them. They gave specific comments that there are currently 10 different ballot styles used, consistent with there being 10 different election districts in Rockville to help track voter participation throughout the city requiring would have additional variances regarding the order of candidates and order would add considerable expense process and make vote counting by machine much more complicated and expensive. So I just wanted to flag that feedback from the BSC. And if that is a real concern, I agree with that.

So and I appreciate my colleague, council member Valeri, raising that as well. Think the question there's a pretty big change on the postmark here, so I just wanted to flag that. I do understand the the board's need to do things timely. I I'm fine with it having to be, you know, in by election day, but I just think that the communication education needs to be clearer because I do hear confusion in the community as is it received by election day? Is it postmark election day?

And I know that you all really do like to receive all the ballots and count them election night, and I'm fine with that. But I just think that education needs to be better articulated. The vote centers, that's a big one. Clearly articulate, and I wouldn't want to take away the number of vote centers to my colleague, Councilmember Fulton and Valeri's point. I definitely want to support keeping that language in and the number that we have because we want to make sure that as staff changes, council changes, that there's very clear articulation of what we want to see.

We want to see people being able to vote close to home and have those drop off boxes as well. So I did want to make sure that we are not losing anything in that. There is a section on eight sixty allowing campaign signs on premises at minimum from 5PM the day preceding election. We've not started that early before. It's usually you don't want I know that you kind of do in the morning, so I just wanted to clarify that if you could provide additional information and what staff and the BSC would recommend there.

The BSC did provide some feedback about just clarifying the role in the election judges and appointments of that, so I wanted to flag that as well. But one of the things that I did see that was interesting is that they would like to have additional election judges on standby as necessary. And then there were some comments from members on challengers and watchers. Certified watchers are permitted to attend the canvassing and vote count at the Montgomery County BSC. I don't know if that language is very clear in the current draft, so I wanted to flag that as well.

We have simply just covered our electioneering stuff in size so that there's not, like, this I don't know. What you what do you call that? Not a it wouldn't be, like, a coordinated effort where a lot of people come in with all wearing the same T shirt. I could see people there's a loophole for that. A flash mob. That's what I wanted to say. Was thinking mob, but I don't wanna say mob. Flash mob. I I do like our current practice, and so I was just concerned about the change. And I did see that the BSC has not discussed that and would like to, but I do wanna be mindful of unintended consequences.

I don't think it has been overly onerous to just put something over it, cover up, take off the buttons, keep the voting area free and clear of campaigning. I think that is very good to do. And then I saw a question about does the board have the authority to determine who can watch initial vote counting? That came up, and think that's worth exploring. Let me just see if there's anything else here.

Those are my four comments. Thank you very much. Council member Jackson.

Thank you, mayor. So this is really a crucial section. And I know that the BSE is going to have a lot of comments, and so I I I will reserve them. But I noticed that the question of the the postmark, and you've heard me har har on this a number of times, because I'm really concerned about the post office and their new rules around postmarking and just the mail actually being delivered on time. And I think it's a real question.

And so, you know, I I really do like this section about the the postmarking and the fact that, you know, if it's not in your hands on election night, that people have a little bit of time because things happen with the with the mail. And I I just I I would like to on the side of giving people a little bit of a grace period because I'm not even talking about people. I'm talking about the fact that once a ballot is out on somebody's hands and mailed, it could be a week before it gets delivered, and so the election might have passed. And so there should be some time between election day and when you could actually count the ballots because we're taking to into account that the post office, for whatever reason, is a little bit unreliable right now and will be for the foreseeable future maybe. Now I do have a question, though.

And, obviously, we won't answer right now, but missus city manager, city attorney, and BSE. If the return envelope does not contain a postmark or the postmark is illegible by the voters affidavit that the ballot was mailed on or before election day, first of all, I mean, how would they know? But secondly, by the affidavit so if it is inaccurate and they didn't, I I guess, send it before the election day, was a penalty. So the other one was challenges to the election results. And here, we say that if the candidate has lost by margin of one half of 1% or less, they can challenge.

But is there an automatic recount triggered, or is it just that the candidate has to ask for it? That's something that I think that we should just consider and make a recommendation. I don't know the answer, but it seems like automatic recounts for margins of that sort or less would be a good idea rather than just relying on a candidate to challenge it. But no, I think this section really gets in a lot of stuff, and I look forward to the BSC's recommendations and recommendations of the general public.

Thank you. Council member Shah.

Thank you. Just one point to add. I think we could explore looking at the placement of names on the ballot that is covered in this section. There are some jurisdictions that pick names out of a hat or do some random so so the names are randomly selected, not necessarily in alphabetical order, and I think that is is something that we can pursue.

Councilman Van Graaff.

Thanks. As usual, wanna see board of the the board of supervisor of elections and the clerk's office, consulted. I know some of my colleagues have talked about this before, but this section, once again has a lot of areas that has some dual responsibility but not clear accountability. And I think we have to make sure both with what the clerk's office and the board have believed they can handle, but also at least so each task has, you know, a buck stops here with regard to what has to happen. With regard to the randomized order, I mean, I understand what the BSE is saying because but there's two different ways that you can have random.

And I think it's important to note that jurisdictions are more and more going to random, because that is the fair way to do it. But there's two ways to do it. There can either be one randomized in a single draw, meaning that all the candidates before you go on the ballot are randomly picked out of a hat. Fair, and that's the one ballot that goes across the city. Alternatively, there could be what's called rotated ballots, meaning that there's multiple versions of a ballot that's randomly assigned.

Now rotated ballots is clearly the most fair. It's absolutely the most fair. But if we, for whatever reason, can't do rotated ballots because it's too complicated or too cost prohibitive, then at the very least, we should be do it randomized single draw because that is the most fair for all candidates because anybody could be placed first, not just whatever name you happen to have. So randomized single draw is a good step. Rotated ballots, which I think is what the Board of Supervisors of Election was commenting on, is the most fair.

And if it is able for us to implement, great, because that would be the most way to do. But at the very least, having randomized single draw is more fair than what we have now. With regard to going through, I do agree with council member Jackson what he's saying with regard to the mail. That being said, we have to make sure that we're also, having some type of limitation Because, you know, the reason when we have it clear that it must be received by that time on election, I know a lot of people won't put it in the mail because they know that that is something that they have to make sure it gets done. If we expand it and say, just postmarked, no worries, then a lot of more people are gonna be putting it in the mail.

And a lot more people are going to do it, and that's gonna expand, and it's gonna get do later and later and later with regard to what we do. So I think at least having it be received by election day, which is a clear standard, makes people know, hey. You've gotta take owners for what you do and not potentially put more responsibility or tasks on the board of supervisors of elections having to count not just on election day, but the day after and the day after. But more importantly than anything, as we continually discussed, we need to hear from the board of supervisors of elections and the clerk's office as well because they're heavily involved with regard to what they think is reasonable and fair with regard to how we conduct the elections. I I agree with what a lot of my colleagues were talking about with regard to electioneering and making sure that, everything from provisional voting and the results are addressed fairly.

I know we've had rules. And I think the other code had a little bit more clarity with regard to poll watchers and those who are tasked for reviewing. I wanna make sure that the board of supervised elections, who's in the room more than we are on a regular basis, has that input and understands what we're do. Thanks.

Thank you. I have two colleagues who have additional comments and questions, council member Fulton and council member O'Leary. No.

I just remembered my other thing. I wanted to get back to the mayor made this point. A lot of people made this point, And maybe this is the right place to say it. Election districts. I think we made the decision that we're not going to have voting districts. Like, we're not, but we do need because we need another way to address representation problems, we need to know who's coming out to vote. So I don't we we if this is the right place to put that back in or to rethink about that, I don't wanna lose

that. I was crystal clear.

Okay. Good.

So yes, not representative districts, voting districts. I wish we had the former. I do have a question very randomly. I don't have to answer it now. But in terms of electioneering and individual behavior, electioneering looks different when we're a vote by mail only city.

So one test or use case, would it be electioneering if people, during the time period that the drop box is active at city hall, are wearing campaign specific gear in the mayor and council chambers? I don't know. I don't know what the answer is, but it's something to consider because I think we're looking at electioneering very differently.

I think that's a good point.

So thank you. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Then the other point is, in other jurisdictions, a voter affidavit can also be a receipt from the post office so that if somebody does drop it off at the post office, post offices provide them free of charge. So that is also a potential solution. But I think ultimately it does come down to consistent messaging over and over and over to let people know that your safest bet will be to drop it off at a ballot dropbox.

Thank you. And with that in mind, I just was curious if staff could just share with us some data on has it been a big problem that there are a ton of ballots that come in after? And would you recommend including more drop boxes at different places so that people have the option to do the drop box closer to home? That may also be a solve to address the issue. All right.

So these are the core sections you've asked us to address. I know that there's some overarching comments that people were making, and we shared some earlier. I will say that I'm concerned that we do have some important sections that deal with campaign finance and dealing with infractions that were critical to the last section that we're not covering tonight and is not covered until June. I think that's too late. That's my humble opinion because we're getting very, very close to the election, and that is where there's the most complexity and forms need to be updated.

And so I will just say I think it's imperative that we find out the time to talk about this in May, and perhaps after the BSE has a chance to provide feedback. I wanted to share that as an option with my colleagues and see what everyone thinks. I'm seeing thumbs up. But I do want to also get feedback from staff on what is feasible for you. I want to be able to get feedback from the BSC and also to give you these other sections that we haven't gone through that are critical to get feedback on before June.

I'll comment, but I'll look down the aisle as I make these comments. So I think we should take it one step a time. We had we had great feedback from. Really appreciate it, especially the pointed questions we need to answer. Also, I expect to hear or get other written comments from from some of you that will incorporate.

We're gonna do our best to come up with a brand new draft incorporating all those things before we have the meeting with, BSE on May 7. If we can't get to everything, we'll stop, but we'll put a draft together for the BSE. We'll say updated draft with a date on it. Go to BSE, get their comments. And, again, we're gonna meet with them the seventh and the fourteenth. At the meeting of the fourteenth with BSC, we'll take diligent notes on what their recommended changes are. Then we'll do another updated draft and get that to the council. It's gonna it's it should sound very, very familiar. This is exactly how we did the Zohr process. Very iterative, if you remember.

Work session with council, went to plan commission, back to council, etcetera, recommending the same thing. After the meeting with the BSE on the fourteenth, we'll just see where we are. Three of us will confer, and we'll circle back with council and just see what that draft looks like. And if we think there's an opportunity for another work session, we'll make some recommendations. Just keep in mind too, we're right in the middle of the Zohr. We're gonna have very long work sessions in May for the Zohr, and I just wanna make sure the council has an appetite for that. So let us get through the May 7, May 14 meetings with the BSC, come up with a new draft, and then we'll circle back if that's okay.

Thank you. I will just note I have concerns with not providing feedback on the latter sections. I'm looking at five pages of comments from the BSC members already, and you haven't even seen ours. And I think that should be done publicly. So I just I do wanna implore a consideration even if it's just focused on those remaining sections for you to hear from the body on that so that you can get to a more revised draft in June. Councilman Miles.

Thank you, madam mayor. Thanks for bringing those comments up. I don't have much on those specific points. It's a question for, I guess, the clerk and or city attorney. Moving forward with this, and, again, you might not have an answer now given the scope of what's being discussed. If if we move forward, you know, if we even get to the point of doing election code as outlined in the deadline of 06/29/2026. Again, are there charter changes that are gonna need to be part of this? And if so, how long will those take?

Thank you. Can we also hear from the city attorney's office as well on on these two items?

Yeah. As I mentioned earlier, our goal would be immediately after adoption of an election code, you know, we will bring forward to also a recommended effective date. Let's just say that's sixty, ninety days out. Between the adoption of election code, I'm just gonna pick a date. Right? Let's just say it's June 29 and the effective date, which may be three months later, first thing we would do is put together the the charter change and get that to you as soon as possible. We would also start working on the updated rules and procedures that are effective after the adoption of election codes. So that way, we can do those things overlapping and create some efficiencies there. Do my colleagues wanna add anything to that?

I just wanna reiterate that the code would be adopted with an effective date that would be in the future, and we would work on the charter changes, and they would be effective first.

Thank you. Councilman Fulton.

So I just wanted to clarify my view on this process. Like, my understanding is all three offices came together with this proposal on the timeline that we got a while ago, and ten days ago. So what my view is, I'm willing to give it a go. Right? What you just laid out, city manager, about you'll work with the BSE, you'll do what you can to do a draft, I'm willing to just I don't know that I need to presuppose that we need another work session. I think what I heard you say is you'll come back after it, and we'll be able to make a decision. That's where I'm at now, just to be clear on where I am.

Thank you. Anyone have any other comments? Councilmember Jackson, Doctor. Miles?

No, go ahead.

No, I was just gonna say I do agree with the mayor's point. I mean, I know that we've had a lot of discussion tonight. And so I think that additional work session, public hearing, I mean, I think it would was only enhance what we come up with.

Council Member Miles and then Council Member Van Graig.

Thank you, madam mayor. Tagging on that point. Again, to other appointeds, I mean, which else I mean, we we hear a perspective. Do do you think we need more work sessions or public hearings? I mean I mean, you're running an election, so I'm this is this this is on

I think we just need to start plugging in what we heard tonight and see where we go. You know, we'll have to bring this back for input from the board, input from the public, and we still have two more sections to go. So it's hard to really say what we need right now. So or how what the timeline looks like.

May I tag on that? I guess I I would ask, and perhaps I'm getting out. I don't know if this is out of order. I'll I'll defer to the city attorney on this one. If you could if you all all three of you can communicate with us, if you think more is needed Mhmm. More time or certain work sessions, public hearings, just let us know. I mean, we again, we we've been in elections, but we aren't election professionals. Right? And Yep. We certainly aren't legal election professionals. So those couple of us are lawyers as well. So I I do wanna hear from you all. Again, this is what you all do. That's all.

Thank you. I'll clarify.

Can I

make one clarifying point? Can you just put to the timeline so that we can see? I just want to flag the next steps that you have here.

Just

to note that the current timeline us providing feedback on the last two sections in June and then adopting the entire code on June 29. And, also, we would be at that same meeting having a public hearing where the public doesn't hear what our opinions are on those two most some of the most important sections that caused the biggest issues last election. So I just wanted to flag that short window between June 1 and June 29 for our colleagues, and that public hearing is scheduled the same day of June 1. The public hearing will occur before the public has a chance to hear what we are thinking. So I just that is the the spirit of my concern for the public and wanting to make sure that we are giving you all enough time to hear our feedback on those last two sections and for the public to know where the BSC and the mayor and council are headed.

Councilman Van Gruyk.

So I think everybody's right here. We definitely need work. We need to hear from the BSC. We need to hear from the public. That being said, madam city clerk, you've told us numerous time and time again that you wanted this done by May because you need a full year to understand what the rules are before we get there. And I know circumstances have caused us to not get this draft until recently, as customer Fulton said. But customer Fulton's right in the fact that we can't just, you know, lay this out time and time again. And Cosmere Fulton's right that we do have a structure. We heard from the during community forum from the head of the BSE who said, there's a good structure here. It just needs work.

And so we've got a good structure here, and I don't think we need to jettison and say, it's all we it needs work. But I think we need to really try as best we can to meet the, this the next steps here. Now we can if we wanna add another work session, into our other meetings to try to cram some stuff in, okay. If we wanna add another hearing after we get there, maybe we try to fit that in. But I don't want us to, you know, think that this is something that we can just keep putting off and off and off because I wanna respect what you've said.

You know? And I'm sure the board of supervisors elections probably has a similar view because they were in a crunch last time when certain things were changing, and they had to play catch up. And so I think we need to not only make sure we get it done right. And to to council member Miles' point that he made earlier, we don't wanna just rush through this and get it wrong. At the same at this in the same vein, we're under a ticking clock here. And I don't wanna put this off any further than what we have here. So just as the chair said, we've got a structure here. We've got some good feedback. We're going to hear from the BSE. I assume we're gonna hear from madam's city clerk on details as well.