Mayor and Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening Rockville. Today is July 27, 2026 and we're convening meeting 19-26. Please join me as you're able for the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you, everyone. We'll now move on to our agenda review. Ms. Sarah Taylor-Farrell.

Madam Mayor and Council Members, there are no changes to this evening's agenda.

Thank you. We'll now move to the City Manager's Report. Mr. Jeff Mihalik.

Mariation members of city council, ladies and gentlemen. Good evening. Um, next week is parks and recreation recognition month. So, of course, we're running around town, making improvements to all kinds of parks, which we're excited about. These parks include the village green park Logan oak park. improvements to the Maryvale Park, and we made some really good improvements to the Civic Center Park in cooperation with Eagle Scout Andrew Shi. Andrew did a fantastic job working with us. We congratulate him and we really appreciate his work improving one of our parks. also next week tuesday evening is national night out there are a number of different um neighborhoods in and around the city that will be hosting events and we'd love to see a lot of people attend i know mayor and council will be out there um if people want to see where those events are they want to register their event they should go to rockville md gov backslash nno again nno national night out last thing i want to make a plug for results rockville i do that on occasion So people won't have to listen to me or the mayor or anybody else to find out what's going on. They can do their own research themselves. They can go to Results Rockville and find out about all kinds of things, including affordable housing, climate action plan, Vision Zero, and so on. That's all I have, Mayor. Thank you.

Thank you very much. A plan is only good if we do the work in it, so thank you. I appreciate you mentioning that. I wanted to note the Mayor and Council will be participating and members of the Council will be a part of National Night Out. There are over 20 events across the city. I will ask for grace on behalf of all of us because we try to get to everyone. I think last year some of us got to 13. Please know that we love every community and we're trying to get out as best we can. So I just wanted to say that we do try to spread the love and we appreciate everyone who's planning those events. I also wanted to thank staff. I know the members of the council have been working very hard on getting out into communities, especially those who haven't been engaged. In the past in the same way, and so we've had some really good neighborhood connects. Across the city, so that that's something that the team has helped us organize and those are going to be continuing at the end of August. And then lastly, I wanted to note a very important county resource, given all that is going on in terms of immigration. The Gilchrist Center is a resource that's available to Rockville residents as well. And that number is 240-777-4940. And thank you for the city manager's report. We'll now move on, Council Member Jackson.

Thank you, Mayor. Just wanted to put a plug in. So last week, I went out to the graduation ceremony of the first annual Rockville Police Academy. And it was put on by Corporal Crow and Corporal Lee, as well as it was a brainchild of a of deputy chief who really put on the program that the residents had. It was a fantastic addition to the residents getting to know the police. And they think there was about 10 to 12 graduates And so I'll just put in a plug that they're doing the second annual Rockville Police Academy. And it's going to be in the fall. So check the website because it's a really fantastic way to get to know the police and what they do.

Thank you. And we just had some additional swearing in. So thank you to our RCPD. Okay, we'll now move on to boards and commissions appointments and reappointments. We have appointment nominations for the Commission on Aging, the Education Commission, the Environment Commission, the Human Rights Commission, the Human Services Advisory Commission, and the Retirement Board. Thank you to all of our volunteers in advance. We greatly appreciate you. Now I would like to request a motion for the nomination that we've made for the Commission on Aging. Council Member Jackson.

Thank you, Mayor. Again, so I move to reappoint Ann Herbster to the Commission on Aging to serve a three-year term until June 1, 2029.

Do we have a second? Council Member Valeri seconds. All those in favor, please raise your hand and say aye. Aye. Thank you. And Ms. Herbster is in the audience. We appreciate you. We'll now move on to the Education Commission. Council Member Miles.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I would like to move the appointment of Rashonda Piles to a new appointment to serve as an education professional with an expiring two-year term until April 1st, 2027.

Do we have a second? Council Member Fultz in seconds. All those in favor, please raise your hand and say aye. I will note that Principal Pyle's got a recent principal recognition. We're proud to see that in Rockville. Thank you. We'll now move to the Environment Commission. Councilmember Van Graak.

Madam Mayor, I move to appoint Xinyu Xin to the Environment Commission to serve an expiring three-year term until November 1st, 2028. And I move to appoint Maxwell Sanborn to the Environmental Commission to serve an expiring three-year term until September 1st, 2027.

Thank you. Do we have a second? Council Member Jackson seconds. All those in favor, please raise your hand and say aye. Aye. Thank you very much to our environment commissioners. Next, move on to the Human Rights Commission. Councilmember Shaw.

Madam Mayor, I move to appoint Dr. Jenny Stepanek to the Human Rights Commission to serve an expiring three-year term until July 1st, 2029. Thank you. Do we have a second?

Council Member Valeri seconds. All those in favor, please raise your hand and say aye.

Aye.

Thank you. Looking forward to more peace. All right. Now moving on to the Human Services Advisory Commission. Council Member Valeri.

I move to reappoint Reema Jawad-Google to the Human Services Advisory Commission to serve a three-year term until July 1st, 2029.

Thank you. Do we have a second? Council Member Shaw seconds. All those in favor, please raise your hand and say aye. Aye. Excellent. It's unanimous. Lastly, we have the Retirement Board. Council Member Fulton? Aye.

I move to reappoint Paula Perez to the Retirement Board to serve as the AAME representative for a three-year term until July 1st, 2029.

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

Aye.

Excellent. It is unanimous. Thank you very much to all of our volunteers. We appreciate everyone who's agreed to join our boards and commissions. We'll now be moving on to our community forum. This is a time to address the mayor and council. Please speak in a civil and courteous manner and be respectful to audience members as well. Each person is allowed three minutes. There will be a time clock in front of you. We ask that you stick to the three minutes allowed. Please state your name and if you live in Rockville for the record. First, I welcome David Levy.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, members of the Council. Again, David Levy, Rockville resident and 16-year former employee of Rockville. I was here last month to talk about the pension program and the fact that Rockville chose to vote to have a zero increase, so no COLA, for this year, just like you did last year. And I was talking with my mom, as some might do. She's a 45-year employee of Baltimore City Public Schools. And I said, oh, okay, well, you know, you'll be proud of me. You always want to get your mom proud of you, right, no matter how old you are. And she said, oh, did you guys get 2.698? I said, 2.698, what's that? She said, oh, that's the state system. So anybody who's on the state system got 2.698. That's the CPI estimate. She told the story about Doge and the evisceration of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and that Maryland had to come up with this system. Anyway, there are 133 units of local government in Maryland who are part of the state system, and they all got 2.698% this year. That's city of Annapolis, city of Bowie, Hartford County, school systems, Baltimore City, government, school systems. Rockville got zero. So... I don't know if Rockville should be part of the state system. I don't know enough to know. You've got a great chief financial officer. You know, Stacy's great. I worked with her for years. She would know better than I do. I do know, though, that Rockville should be true to its longtime employees. We're talking about, again, as I said last time, some version of this. You know, the people who show up at 3 a.m. and fix the water main break so that you have water when you wake up in the morning. It's the folks who remove that beehive that was in the right of way. It was road repaving. It's the people who signed up your kids for the rec programs. Send message, you send in a call for service. They get it out to the right people. Yes, I'm ultimately affected by it too. It's not about me. My wife and I, we're okay. It's about being right by the employees of Rockville, the longtime people who have served you. Taking into account inflation, the pensioners, the retirees have lost over the last 11 years 26% of their purchasing power. And if you look, you can see when this started. Before 2006, 2007, 2%, 3%, 1.5%, somewhere about 2008. It was either zeros, most of the time it was zeros, or it was ones. Rockville went way off track. Please do CPI for your retirees. Thank you. I left materials with Ms. Taylor-Farrell so you can see the comparisons.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Welcome, Jake Jakubek. Okay, we'll move to that in a bit for virtual. Welcome, Elizabeth Adams.

Hi, my name is Libby Adams. I am a former Rockville resident. However, my belongings are still being held hostage by an apartment complex within your city limits. Mr. City Manager, last time I was here, you made a statement when you knew no response could be made afterwards, making highly false claims. First, you claim that your personnel are following every step of the new mall law in every instance. However, on April 4th, I sent an email to Fields of Rockville, as well as landlord-tenant, code enforcement, the mayor and council, and you. And I was detailing that mold had been found in my unit. I even passed on the mold test results performed by Madison Taylor showing positively the presence of mold, specifically black mold. According to the state law, after a complaint of mold has been made, the complex has 15 days to perform a professional mold assessment. And still, 114 days later, that has yet to be done. And for documentation sake, the 45 days given for remediation has also passed. Oh, and the very clarifying email that I have here that you claimed was sent did anything but clarify the situation. In Rockville City Code of the mold law, you said an inspector must observe a suspicious substance. However, the Maryland law is written as a landlord shall perform a mold test within 15 days after a written notice by local agency or tenant. That's me. I provided that written notice. They are actively breaking the law and have moved to evict me so that they can cover it up. And all of you are allowing it. All of you know about it. You guys have known about it for more than a year. I have asked for your help in every way possible at every step of the way. I've begged you. I've cried to half of you. And still now they're able, I don't know, I messed up something, but they're able to move to evict my family, which means mine and my kids, every belonging that we have is going to be on the street because I don't have $12,000 to clean it. And you guys aren't holding them accountable. to the fact that they sent an email saying their industrial hygienist said it needed to be cleaned. Y'all were on that email, and still you're not enforcing it. You say that the law doesn't include belongings, but it includes holding landlords liable for... Habitability, which they didn't provide that either. They were absolutely breaking the warranty of habitability law also. Multiple Maryland laws. I printed out multiple Rockville laws that they violated. Nobody's done anything. So you guys claim that you care about Rockville residents. I see things on Facebook all the time. Oh, we have this, we have that. What about safe housing? And then I'm told to go get a lawyer. If I don't have the $12,000 to clean my belongings, I don't have money to go get a lawyer. And you guys have shoved this as a low-income housing community over here at Fields of Rockville. And so now it's full of people in my position who don't have money for a lawyer, don't have money for mold testing themselves, don't have money for mold remediation, cleaning their belongings, nothing. And what? They're going to come to you guys and they're going to get dicked around for a year? Excuse my language. You guys should do better. I don't know who got reelected, but hopefully not any of you.

Thank you very much for your testimony. I do know that we've asked the city manager to make sure that we are following up and that also legal resources, I know that there are some free legal resources that are available, so I just will continue to say we ask staff to follow up. Okay, thank you. Next, welcome Gerald Kitchy. Jerry, did you want to speak?

No, I just... We welcome you. All right. Thank you.

Thank you. Welcome, Madison Dunn.

Hello. You guys know me. My mom just came up and spoke. I know her. I was coming up here to talk about the stuff that my mom's been talking about, but I decided that it's not going to be any use because none of you actually listen. But I did want to point out some stuff that I've learned over the years about you guys. First, Mr. David Miles, is that your name? Is that his last name? Is that how you pronounce it? I did see you a bunch of times looking down. I don't want to be rude or anything. I just wanted to point that out. But also I keep hearing you say that there's a bunch of available stuff to help us out. But so far we haven't gotten any help with anything and we're still having problems with everything going on. And as my mom said, our stuff is about to get thrown out into the street and thrown out. But there's still a bunch of stuff from my and my sister's childhood, even my mother's childhood that we cannot save because it's covered in mold. And we do not want to take it to our new house and then have to put us through it. And then also our cats through all this stuff again. And so far, no one has done anything. And we've been here multiple times. So you guys know what's been going on as well. That's all I just wanted to say. Thank you for your feedback.

Is there anyone else? I'll just note, Mr. Mihalik, if staff can be available at the back, I know we've asked to provide support. Please follow up. Okay. Is there anyone else who would like to speak? Okay. We have a virtual speaker, Jake Jakubek.

Good evening. Can you all hear me?

We can hear you.

Perfect. Thank you. Dear Mayor Ashton and Rockville City Council, my name is Jake Jakovec, and I live at 319 Grandin Avenue. I live in the city. I am the chair of the Rockville Bicycle Advisory Committee. However, I am coming here to speak on my own behalf. We are approaching an update of the Comprehensive Transportation Review, the CTR, in the City of Rockville. The CTR is the tool we use to measure traffic impacts in our city and ones we use to determine the adequacy of transportation facilities in place when new development or redevelopment is proposed. The tool will use estimates of trips added by a development to determine if a road needs to be widened or turn lanes added or a free right turn, traffic light, et cetera, different kinds of infrastructure along those lines. I have given this some thought and wanted to propose some ideas for what could be added to the update to help improve the safety of people who are not traveling in their cars. The three examples are levying the transportation improvement fee even when the redevelopment of a property is not anticipated to generate more trips than it had already vested with the prior use of the land. Much of what isn't built in Rockville is infill development, and developers have estimated trips vested for the proposed use of the land. If the amount of trips does not exceed prior estimates, the builders don't need to pay the TIF. Having TIF money enables Rockville to build more cycling and pedestrian improvements because the money is dedicated for non-motor vehicle uses and is not tied to the development of a specific parcel of land. This fee is already included in the current CTR. However, we recommend more developments pay this fee. Another idea is to add an adequacy measure of whether cycling and pedestrian facilities exist in a particular area rather than mandating sizes. The CTR is the process to measure adequacy of facilities for automobile trips generated and requires infrastructure to be built depending on those trip numbers and if existing infrastructure can accommodate the new trips. Cycling and pedestrian improvements aren't really measured by this. And I think one way, simple, useful way to apply the CTR to such matters to simply ask the question, do bicycle and pedestrian facilities already exist here? This will enable missing tidbits to be built as properties redevelop and will also prevent a builder from being hamstrung by having to calculate the capacity for people on bikes and those walking. Volumes in Rockville are generally low enough that simply asking if something exists and building the standard if it does not will be adequate. The final idea is to relax thresholds in the CTR that mandate increasing the size of roadways in the area of a new development in response to the added vehicular trips that would be a useful way of shifting the burden of travel to people driving rather than people walking. If a trip estimate exceeds a threshold, then a road must be widened, extra turn lanes added, free right turns built, and other such projects. These enable more car trips at the expense of people not in their cars. Someone walking or cycling now has to watch out a free right turn or cross an extra turn lane while navigating this property, which makes the trip more dangerous. So also more cars can pass through space. Increasing automobile infrastructure largely results in more people driving and the cycle continues. If you build for people in their cars, you will get people driving. If you build for people walking or cycling, you'll receive more of those. We can maintain a balance as long as you consider the needs of the less vulnerable in this matter for the first time. Thank you for listening this evening.

Thank you very much. Okay. That exhausts the list of those who have signed up for community forum in advance. We appreciate all of the feedback. We'll now move on to our consent agenda. Agenda 9A, award and authorize the city manager to execute a rider agreement with colossal contractors. This is for carpentry contract services not to exceed 200K. 9B, to award and authorize the city manager to execute natural gas supply agreements with WGL Energy Services with terms consistent with the University of Maryland contract. for initial term between August 1st, 2026 through July 31st, 2027, and authorize the city manager to exercise optional renewals through June 30th, 2031. 9C, award and authorize the city manager to execute electricity supply agreements with WGL Energy Services with terms consistent with the Baltimore Regional Cooperative Purchasing Agreement, Howard County contract, and authorize the City Manager to exercise optional renewals for terms between September 2026 through September 2036. 9D, authorization for the City Manager to execute terms and conditions of PEPCO's EmpowerMD rebate program to include the program's application for use implementing Phase 3 of the City's LED streetlight conversion CIP project in support of our climate action plan. 9E, award and authorize the city manager to execute a five-year agreement for the purchase of software subscription and services with CDW government LLC for virtual service at various locations in amount not to exceed about $1.496 million. F authorize the city manager to execute an amendment to the writer agreement with Gail associates house in Maryland for a multi year consultant services for building envelope construction and repair work at city facilities in the amount not to exceed about 390 K annually. And this would support roof services as well. 9g authorize the city manager to execute amendment number one to interlocal contract for licensing spdc software buying between mayor and council of rockville licensee a municipal corporation and body corporate and politic organized under the laws of the state of maryland and south central planning and development commission a regional planning commission and political subdivision of the state of louisiana domiciles and tarragon parish H is the approval of minutes for June 29th and July 6th, 2026. Colleagues, do we have a motion to approve, or does anyone need to pull any of the items? Council Member Van Graak?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I move to approve consent agenda items A, B, C, D, E, F, and G, and H.

Thank you. Do we have a second? Council Member O'Leary seconds. All those in favor, please raise your hand and say aye. Aye. Excellent. Thank you very much. We're now moving on to agenda item 11, which is a potential adoption of the JEDI strategic plan. I'd like to welcome Jean Booth, Director of Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion from the City Manager's Office, as well as Dr. Patricia Morgan, CEO of the Executive Learning Lab, TEL. And this is their second time presenting to us. We did have a workshop and shared some feedback, and you are here to present a plan. We welcome you. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Thank you very much. We're excited to be here. I just want to take a moment just to introduce, we have had an intern for the last three months from University of Maryland Masters in Public Policy program, Emily Sakai. Thank you. So tonight we hope to talk about the process, very briefly talk about the process review and the existing foundation for the JEDI strategic plan. We'll review what we've heard. We'll spend some time focusing on the seven strategic priorities as well as the one-year roadmap, which leads into a five-year plan. We are going to highlight measurement, accountability, and governance structures, and then finally a recommended action. Okay, so tonight we present to you the JEDI strategic plan with the roadmap and the long-term plan. We're asking you to adopt the plan as presented and to direct staff to proceed with the year one implementation beginning next week in August. This plan is grounded in the staff survey and the focus groups that you've heard about in previous sessions, as well as expanded community listening sessions that have been completed since, and in a full review of Rockville's existing equity-related policies and programs, which I know Dr. Morgan is going to talk to you a little bit more in just a few moments. I'm going to turn it over now to Dr. Morgan, whose firm, the Executive Learning Lab, was contracted to lead these efforts.

Thank you gene and good evening mayor and council. It's a privilege to bring you the finished product of the process. Um, the work has moved through five phases across the last seven months. We were engaged in January and we were at the table with the equity champions in February, um, all the way until, um, even last month and this month doing some work. In March, following our work session, we launched the citywide staff survey and completed the focus groups. April brought community listening sessions, and May and June were spent presenting preliminary findings to you for your feedback and for additional recommendations. Then we translated everything that we heard into the strategic planning sessions that we held. with the equity champions across June and July to present the final plan to you. We also held a session with our ELT and directors in July as well for their feedback. All right, so this engagement was intentionally 360 degrees, both internally and externally. Internally, we surveyed over 210 staff members, responded across all 13 departments, and we had over 38% participation average rates across our different groups and in our different departments. As well as initially 9 focus groups, and then we had some additional focus groups in May externally. We conducted at 1st, 9 community sessions, and we held interviews with some of the mayor and council as well. And we also had some interviews with some senior leaders as well. As we were direct with you the last time we presented to you in May, the external turnout was low in some of our sessions and fell below the target, despite all of the outreach that we did to over 250 organizations. At that time, we went ahead and got a list from you all of some additional organizations that we should reach out to. We made some targeted outreach and held some additional sessions. and we were able to have some additional representation from some of the communities that we were missing the first time. So we do treat those findings as directional and not representative of entire communities. So the plan that you see, the final plan commits to continued outreach because we know that in order to tap in some of the specific communities that we were trying to get into, that seven months is not enough to get into some of the communities, especially when we have certain things that are going on right now that makes certain communities apprehensive to engage with law enforcement or with city officials as well. So you'll see that later tonight in the plan. All right. So I know this is not the first time that you're seeing this, but before we conducted the surveys, the focus groups, and the community sessions, the JEDI office completed a review of existing data, city policies, tools, programs, and all the reports that we could find. It was an extensive, I believe, 33-page report of all the existing reports. prior surveys and reports that were done and that were handed to us by the mayor and council, as well as other staff that had been in the position before Jean. The review came back as being very important for our baseline and the baseline for this plan. After the listening session and the feedback from the mayor and council, We went back to the foundation to this foundation that you see and we looked with a sharper lens. We're not just asking what does the city already have? We're also asking how can the city use what we already have to better reach subgroups address intersectionality? improve targeted community engagement, and connect JEDI implementation to existing city tools. This is why this slide is very important. Rockville is not starting from scratch, as we stated when we met with you last time. The city already has meaningful infrastructure in place including the 3E impact statement, the budget equity tool, Title VI, human right commitments, and human housing and youth programs, public safety standards, also demographic data guidance, which we use and included in the plan. as well as inclusive procurement efforts and climate-related equity support. So I want to be clear that we are not starting from zero. The plan that we have is asking the city to connect and strengthen, especially consistently applying what we already have. For example, if the question is how can the city better track subgroups and disparities, the plan is going to point back So the city standardized demographic data as guidance and mapping resources. If we're looking at how the city can reach people that we often miss, then we're going to point back to the trusted messenger engagement strategy that we mentioned in the plan, as well as targeted outreach and continued listening sessions, not just the ones that we held over the last seven months. And lastly, if we're looking at how can we be a force for change, then we need to think about how are we going to consistently apply the Jedi framework across departments, budgets, policy programs, as well as public reporting. So this slide is not just a summary of all the existing programs, but it's a bridge between what Rockville already has and what the plan is now asking you to do. So quickly, what the plan told us, and this is why the strategic plan, so you're probably wondering, why do we need a strategic plan if we already have the infrastructure in place or we already have it? It boils down to consistency. So because the engagement process made one thing unmistakably clear, having a policy on the books is not the same as staff and residents experiencing the effects of a plan in some of these policies. Staff told us that JEDI happens in some departments and not others, and it largely depends on the supervisors that they report to. Community members told us that services exist that they never learned about. The plan's entire job is to close that specific gap between what Rockville has committed to on paper and what people experience, not to invent new commitments for nothing. And so here are key things at a glance. And no single, I just wanna point that no single source of data can tell the full story here. The survey showed scale for staff. We also had additional representation from the focus groups that added additional texture. And then we also had community sessions, listening sessions that helped us understand how residents were experiencing the city services as well as access, communication, and trust. Across those sources, eight themes consistently surfaced. Staff and residents want JEDI to move from values into daily practice. Staff needed clear guidance tools in role-specific training, which is included in years one through five and how we roll that out. Also, language access and communication continue to be a reoccurring gap, and disability access needs to be understood more broadly than physical access alone. Community engagement needs to reach beyond the same established network, which is something that we tried the second time with the additional listening sessions as well. And data measurement and accountability needs to be more visible. So JEDI work needs clearer governance and shared ownership. And finally, Rockville has many programs already in place, but sometimes the residents don't always know how to find them. So the important point for this slide is that these themes are connected. If residents can't find the programs, that's a communication issue. If language access is inconsistent, that's a service delivery issue. And if disability access is uneven, that is both accessibility and an accountability issue, which we found both with staff as well as residents. So this side is going to bridge what we heard with what the plan is going to do. And the seven strategic priorities are designed to turn these themes into structures, actions, and accountability. All right, so let's look at some numbers. The survey showed a strong organizational foundation, which we presented last time. So you may be very familiar with these numbers. 81% of staff feel valued and respected regardless of identity. 75% rated hiring and workforce diversity positively. That was one of our highest rated areas. And 74% believe that the city programs effectively serve diverse communities. In terms of gaps, we mentioned this last time, and which is why year one we focused on making sure that we had some foundation in place to address training. So 35% rated JEDI training positively, and 38% believe that residents were even aware. Now, some may question, why does that matter? Well, it matters if 74% of staff is saying that we are engaging with diverse members of community, but then we also don't understand what they know about JEDI. Only 38% believe that the residents even know what the city is doing in terms of JEDI efforts. So that was against that 74% internal confidence number. So that 36% percent gap or 36 point gap between internal confidence and external visibility is one of the clearest signs in our entire data set. And it shows up directly in priority to All right, some more strength. So before we dig a little bit into the gaps, I want to name some of the strengths clearly, because this is how we built foundation year one. Hiring a workforce diversity is the city's most visible JEDI achievement. The existence and accessibility of the JEDI director was the single most frequently cited organizational strength in the open-ended response, and staff read that presence as genuine and as a signal that it wasn't just a policy statement to have Jean in this position, and that it was a priority for the city. Leaders are also confident. 98% said that they were confident in creating inclusive environments and interpersonal respect is strong across the workforce. So as I stated, the city is not starting from a deficit. It's a city that has real assets that needs to be extended consistently. All right, so four gaps, and this is what we presented last time to you, so you are aware of the gaps, but they stand out as the clearest and the most actionable findings in the survey. Training was rated the lowest area at 34%, and a meaningful share of staff don't know how how they can access training or if training exists within their department. Data used to identify disparities is nearly as low with the highest uncertainty as any measure, meaning staff genuinely don't know whether their department is using data at all. And then residence awareness sits just at 38%, as I shared lastly, badly lagging internal confidence. So among the leaders, accountability is the softest dimension. A third rarely discuss JEDI with their own teams. They don't see, and some don't know how, when we had our conversations with our directors and our senior leaders, we had a transparent moment where we said, here's the plan. Where will you need help? And some said, yes, I will admit that I need help having these hard conversations. So year one is gonna look like creating toolkits. When this happens, here's an example of how you can respond in role-specific examples. All right. All right. So this was who we found was left behind. Yeah. Okay. And this slide is important. One, because this team right here, the mayor and council, you specifically asked us to look at intersectionality to ensure that we were making sure that we were reaching those and not just giving you all the pretty data. And so we did dig deep to bring you this. And it is sad to report, but it's something that is going to drive a lot of work in year one. And it's important because the averages that we had on the previous slide, tells one story, but this right here tells a different story. We did disaggregate the staff data where employees self-identified, and the subgroup analysis showed that experiences are not across, they're not the same across the workforce. um specifically for these groups right here um and we debated on should we call out this group but we thought we had enough members to where we're not calling out any individual person within these subgroups um so we feel confident in sharing this data so frontline staff who are often the closest to residents rated seven out of the eight areas that we measured lower than any other group And they also rated having higher discrimination rates than managers and the senior leaders. Women reported microaggressions at nearly twice the rate of men, and Black and African American employees reported lower authenticity and voice ratings alongside higher discrimination and microaggression rates. Hispanic and Latino employees reported the highest level of discrimination and microaggression, plus a gap in advanced access. And lastly, new employees also scored lower on the seven areas, which could just point to onboarding and that early employee experience with the organization. So the takeaway is on this slide is not to single out any group. Again, we felt confident that we had enough in here to make the statement without calling out any individual. The takeaway is that the positive city averages can hide the meaningful difference in experience that you will feel if you are a member of one of these subgroups. And it's something for us to consider and to continue to put pulse checks in place so that we can measure this over time. Okay, the staff focus groups. So we did some additional staff focus groups, four additional staff focus groups after the first round. And the focus groups explain how the survey numbers show up in our daily work. The foundational theme was that there is no shared organizational definition of JEDI. Many frontline staff, as I've shared with you before, had not heard the acronym before it was introduced in the focus group. And once we defined it, their understanding varied. Some connected it to customer service and community members' experience with the organization, while others saw it as a leadership initiative, and they were disconnected from this work. or disconnected from their daily role. Second, language access was a systemic gap, not just a training issue. The language line was underused, and bilingual staff are often informally relied on without a consistent structure. So yes, we did find that there was a pay structure in place for them, but oftentimes the same individuals get used over and over again. Again, and that creates like this patchwork of people always going to the same three individuals to always do this. And then third, the real equity implications. Workforce culture appears highly dependent on your immediate supervisor and not the organization. So that is why year one is built around shared language, staff tools that's tied to role specific functions, language access protocols, governance, and account of in public accountability. So before the city can measure long term movements in outcomes, departments need to have this common operating structure for how this work shows up daily. Community listening sessions were across April, June, and July with the important caveat that I gave you earlier on attendance. The first round was we did not have high attendance except for one group, the group that self-identified as having a person with disability. That was the highest rated group for the community listening session. But two things were most common across every session. First, city outreach reliably reaches residents who are already connected. So the emails and the newsletters that we're sending, they go out to the same people. And then even if the residents who are deeply engaged are not reading the newsletter, they have friends that read the newsletter. So they come and they usually find out 15 minutes before a focus group because of their engaged colleagues. And that's how they... and that's how they engage. So not residents that were working multiple jobs or new to Rockville, they're having a harder time engaging. And so we ensure that as part of the plan that those continued listening sessions, and that was one of the things as we were holding the listening sessions, They were like, is that it? What happens now? Are you going to come back and talk to us? And we were like, yes, that's what's supposed to happen. We're supposed to continue having listening sessions to see if you feel differently today than you do a year from now. Second, geographic equity. This came up a lot. I know we discussed this last time, and then we got some additional names and questions. trusted messengers, what we call trusted messengers of people that we could go to based off of your relationships to get that. But Route 355 came up repeatedly as a dividing line. And of course, we talked about Twinbrook specifically being named unprompted. We did not prompt it in our question guide. in nearly every session by community members as well as the staff interviews that were conducted with roughly 40% of residents speaking a language other than English at home. We don't think that this is a secondary concern. It's central to how we should build this plan and implement it.

Mhm.

Three more findings round out the community picture. Language, transportation, and service navigation. And these are connected barriers. And I want to be clear that some of these are not held with the city. So it's important for the plan to talk about how we'll work with other agency as well, because some of these things, when I present them, they're not on the city. So this is where the city's relationship with social services partners become really important. You all do not own every program, benefit, transportation option, or support system that residents may need. Some residents sit within the county, Some go to nonprofit providers, faith-based organizations, housing partners, schools, our community-based organization, but the city can still play a critical role in helping residents access the right reference and materials and making referrals more visible. and coordinating with what we call trusted partners or trusted messengers and making sure the city's facing information is clear, multilingual, and accessible, which started in one of the focus groups after we did the first round of focus groups, the second round of focus groups. They really love the translation service that is on the website. And we went and added that line, I believe, to the plan. Trust and inclusion are also being affected right now. This is something that's really important. Participants described a hesitation to engage with city services, irrespective of who the trusted messenger was due to what's going on right now with immigration enforcement concerns. And faith communities flagged scheduling conflicts that sometimes can exclude them. Disability access is also broader than physical infrastructure. So participants raised concern about screen reader compatibility, digital access, service portals, voting materials, and how residents request or receive accommodations. And that was also a request that came from staff as well right now. All accommodation requests go through their supervisors. It's not a central HR function, so that is a recommendation that we made. So the takeaway for all of these barriers is that they are addressable, but not by one department alone. Priority two is going to focus on inclusive service delivery and language access. Priority three is going to focus on accessibility and inclusive design. Priority four is going to focus on trusted messenger and community engagement. And together these priorities will help the city strengthen its role as a connector, a communicator and a partner to these other service organizations. All right, so these are the seven priorities that come directly from the evidence that you've seen. Every one is traceable to a specific survey finding, focus group theme, or a community listening session. These are not standalone projects. In fact, when we were trying to prioritize which one should go first, we often found that they were interconnected, and you can't do this until you do that. So training strengthens delivery. Better data is going to strengthen accountability. Community engagement is going to improve how programs are designed, and accessibility and language access are part of equitable services. So policy alignment creates the structural conditions for all of this to happen. And I'll walk through each of them briefly. And then Jean and I will show you how your one translate into specific and dated actions. Okay, the first two priorities are foundational because they address two of the clearest findings in the plan. Staff needs shared understanding, a shared definition of JEDI, and residents need more consistency or consistent access to services. So for priority one, the evidence was that staff across departments from frontline operations to executive leadership describe uncertainty about what JEDI means for their daily responsibility. So the priority is not just about training, just to check off a box that 100% of staff will engage in a JEDI training. It's about giving staff plain language definition and role-specific examples and practical tools so JEDI connects to their actual work. For priority two, the evidence was that Rockville has programs and services, but equitable service depends on whether residents know these programs exist, whether they can access them in their own language, and whether systems are easy to navigate, and whether staff have clear guidance. That's why this priority focuses on language access, service navigation, multilingual communication, and residents' awareness. priority three response to specific accessibility feedback from the community including screen reader compatibility digital access accommodation processes and accessibility at public meetings are events now some of these are some are somewhat in the way i believe the city hired um a had a whole revamp of the city website that does translation so At the beginning that probably wasn't in place, but it was when we did the later focus groups in June and July. So they didn't know that they love that that service priority for response to the engagement gap. We heard that the city often reaches people who are already connected while other residents are hard to reach you standard email or public meetings. This priority focuses on what we're calling a trusted messenger map, existing gathering places, geographic reach, and better tracking of who's already being reached. These two priorities are especially important for priority five and six because they answer one core question. How does the plan move from value to practice? Priority five focuses on systems behind decisions. The city already has tools like the three impact statement and the budget equity tool. But this priority is about using those tools more consistently. So equity is considered in policy programs, budget procurement and boards and commission works. I'm also getting examples and non examples of equity. So right now, when you do your impact statement, you define in your words how that equates to equity. but everybody has a different definition. So giving leaders examples and non-examples is what we'll be doing for year one and priority five. Priority six is the accountability backbone of the plan. It focuses on clear goals, named responsible parties, public reporting, and how data can show whether progress is actually happening. Together, these priorities will help the plan from becoming symbolic, and they make the work visible, measurable, and easier for the residents and city staff and council to track over time. And then lastly, priority seven is what makes the other six priorities possible. The JEDI office can guide and coordinate this work, but it can't implement all seven alone. And that's why we met with the senior leadership team to basically highlight, which we'll show you in a couple of slides, which part every department will have to own and work and collaborate together to accomplish. So, the priorities create shared ownership structure, and it gives us clear roles for department, stronger support for the equity champions, which we're requesting coordination with HR for some of the items that we mentioned, like, accessibility and access needs communication, it and other partners. as part of the plan. So the key takeaway for this is that this is a system and not a checklist. Training, service delivery, accessibility, engagement, policy alignment, and accountability all depend on each other. Now let's go into year one. So you have the detailed map and year one is very extensive because it is the foundation. It runs in five phases that starts from July with formal adoption all the way through next June. July was preparation, including the feedback that we received from you all. before putting that into place getting the additional focus groups meeting with additional city leaders conform confirming leave and aligning departments before the public launch August and September will focus on the launch and awareness with staff residents and community partners. October through December is early implementation. That's when we plan to have the first tools, the pilots, and governance structure begin. I do want to make one quick note about that. Some of the items that we're developing in year one will not be able to be implemented. We can't implement it until year two. For example, when we make changes to the equity statement, that will happen. We'll prep them now, but budget season has already happened for this year, so it'll go for next year. So I want to be direct about what year one is and what it isn't so you're one is not the finish line it is the foundation that makes your 2 through 5 possible and the reason it focuses on leads tools launch and governance in early measurement is because those are the conditions that the city needs before it can track the long term impact of this work. And so here goes the priority highlight map. This is the full roadmap is in the plan. In our plan, we named the lead office, the key partners, the timing, as well as evidence of progress for every single action across all seven priorities. There's roughly two dozen action items, and there's also a Gantt chart. in the appendix as well that kind of flushes out where everything goes in the first year. Every action has a name lead and you can see the different leads on the screen. That's intentional because it makes this roadmap trackable rather than just aspirational. And the leaders have already been informed of their respective department leads. All right, and then resource and capacity. So I do want to be candid about the capacity because in order to make this plan achievable and not aspirational, we have to also look at how we're going to leverage the leaders in the sitting because right now the JEDI office currently has two staff members. And so this is something that I've mentioned as well to the senior leadership team they cannot execute the 20 plus year one action items on their own. So I was clear with the department directors, HR, communications, IT, and finance that everybody will have to carry a piece of this plan and they have assigned action items on the roadmap. And we've already started having this conversation, so they're ready for their respective parts that they have to own. And then the equity champions right now are currently volunteers and they are not paid. So we want to formalize their roles or their structure and how they will support year one deliverables. For example, one of the tangible artifacts that they have to come up with the JEDI training, the onboarding training. We can't make a goal that says 100% of staff has to complete it because of what's going on right now with current DEI legislation. But we can track who's taking the course, and that can be monitored. But they also need time to develop that training within year one. And then they also need time to develop the job aids within year one that we talked about before, because that's one of the feedback that we receive from the staff members, especially the staff members that are doing the work and that are closer to the residents. They want examples of how to actually implement this. So the equity champions will need some type of either release time or budgetary concerns for that. There's some budgetary concerns for that. All right. So the five year plan is available in the full plan. And it documents the specific actions, the leads and evidence of progress for all five years across all seven priorities, not just your one, I wanted to spend our time today tonight talking about your one, but you also have access to the detailed plans for years two through five in the handout. But the arc is simple. Year one is going to build the foundation and it's critical that we do this right. Year two and three will deepen and expand the foundation across every department and further into the community. And your four and five, it's really about institutionalizing this work. So it's embedded as a standard. And when we come back in five years, it's not going to depend on the supervisor, you had that if this work was successful or not, it will be a value of our city. All right, so who owns what? So as you can see, I was very specific about assigning roles to the plan because I believe that without governance, JEDI becomes fragmented and it depends on whoever is in place in terms of the equity champions instead of the community. So I wanted this to be an organizational organization wide structure. So this structure distributes ownership deliberately. So your role tonight as mayor and council is to set the direction and to receive progress reports as at these defined intervals that we've placed in the plan and allied the JEDI priorities with the city's budget and policy decisions going forward. The city manager's office will coordinate across departments. The JEDI office will guide and advise. It's explicitly not positioned as the sole implementer. And then department directors will own implementation within their own departments. This is the structural answer. to that comment that we received that leadership depends on if you have a great experience in the city. And this is the accountability cycle in public reporting standard that we have for every year, we want to make sure that the plan is you're able to go back and adjust it as needed. So this six step cycle repeats itself every year through 2030. We plan, implement, track, report, listen and adjust. For you specifically, you'll be receiving midterm, mid year reviews in January through the March window. and a public accountability report in July of 2027. And right now we have it in the plan going on Engage Rockville so that any resident can read. This ensures that the mayor and council, what you all said in the fall, I mean, in the earlier this year when you called for public commitments and not plans, we want to make sure that the public had access to the outcomes of this plan. And that's it for me. All right.

Thank you, Dr. Morgan. I'm so sorry. By 2031, I will remember to put that on. Thank you, Dr. Morgan. Mayor and Council, this plan, again, does not outline the completion of the work of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in five years. It really is the launch of all of our work, our careers. We are starting from a place of strength. We have the policies, programs, tools, and most importantly, we have the staff, we have the equity champions, we have the community partners who have spent years building the foundation for this work. What the planning process has revealed is that the city It starts from a place of commitment, which is a beautiful thing. It's not yet consistently visible to everyone, but it is measurable and accessible, and we're going to continue to strengthen this. The plan gives us a structure for closing the gap from isolated efforts across the organization to shared ownership from promises to some real, visible, trackable results. That brings us to the action that we're requesting tonight. We are recommending that the mayor and council adopt the JEDI strategic plan, formally establishing the city's five-year direction for justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion work. And you can see the suggested motion. And I will pause here.

Thank you very much for all the work that you've done on this. And I know that every member of the mayor and council provided feedback last time and appreciate you going back to collect additional data and to focus on the areas of interest that we flagged. We see some of that represented and deeply appreciate that. I'm going to go down the line. I just have two quick overarching questions. In several of our strategic plans, we have a resolution to adopt, like the Climate Action Plan has a nice resolution. So I just wanted to flag that would be something we want to consider. And then some other plans like have a cover page. This is a document of the mayor and council. It is approved by once you have that language. And then it also has acknowledgments of the staff who contributed to it. So I just wanted to flag some of those parallels and some of our other plans just as we have that ready for one that's finally approved. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Dr. Miles.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I want to echo the thanks she extended to you and everybody who contributed and participated in this process. It's great to see some so-called meat on the bones on a number of points there. I did want to highlight and thank you all for reminding all of us to continue some of the efforts and redouble our efforts, particularly with regard to disability access, this notion that is broader than just the physical. perceived physical barriers and highlight that was very important for my own education and a reminder about some of the work again we have done but that we still need to do so thanks so much for this i look forward to the comments of my colleagues and getting on with it as we say thank you

Thank you. Council Member Fulton.

Thank you, and sincerely thank you for getting us here tonight. I mean, I will share, like, since the first time we talked about this, I remember saying, I'll be interested to see, like, what's the plan, right? We can spend a lot of time getting feedback, diagnosing the problem, admiring the problem, fine-tuning the diagnosis, rewording the diagnosis, and getting wrapped up in analysis paralysis, and looking for perfection is the enemy of the good here. And I am really interested in approving this and getting going. Let's start to see some results. I also appreciate that you said it's a cyclical process. If we want to iterate and next year we want to make a couple of changes or focus on a new thing, we have that opportunity to do that. I also appreciate that you said even if we approve tonight, some things won't happen for a year from now. And each moment that we don't get this going has an impact. I'm eager to like, you know, one of the things you said, one of the slides said that only certain people are aware of the Jedi efforts. We should increase the number of people that are aware of Jedi efforts. But we shouldn't just be talking about the fact that we have Jedi efforts. We should be making meaningful changes such that there's less issues to talk about. So all of that is to say there are parts in here where I am really curious what the meat on the bones is. Some of them seem easier to address than others. Screen reader accessible emails is a tangible thing. We can do it or not do it. there's but however having a standardized engagement plan that we use for all things is a much bigger uh more nuanced issue so i'll be interested to see how we uh make progress on the sort of more specific versus the more complicated. But I think that you guys did some amazing investigating, got feedback, synthesized it, took our feedback, came back. And all of the major issues that we would have expected to see are here with plans to address them. So I'm eager to move forward and get this done. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Valeri.

Yes. Hi. Thank you both so much. This has been quite the journey. I will say I truly enjoyed my very small input into this process because I just learned a lot more of kind of, you know, what the focus groups look like. I really, it was a very thoughtful discussion, too. And I hope that my colleagues had the same experience. So we want to thank you. Thank you both for taking that on. And I think we should do that annually, but maybe that's just me. There are a couple things I did just want to note. I want to absolutely co-sign what Madam Mayor said. Currently, 10-21 is not expansive enough in that it only focuses on, and please forgive me if I'm wrong, racial equity and not the totality of the diversity that we really need to look at from a justice lens. So I would be all in as to what Madam Mayor said. If we need to, you know, it's been a while since I was 1021. I think it's 1026. I think we can update that. And again, be more expansive. I think that would be great. I am, I don't, I don't, I'm trying to find the right word here. I don't like being right on this point, but the geographic equity issue, I thank you for validating something that I've been saying, I think since I moved to the east side of the city, first in East Rockville, now in Twinbrook. and people have told me, and they've still told me, and I continue to be disheartened that, you know, even as recently as our amazing event at Twinbrook Pool, where we acknowledge the history on the east side of the city, people were still telling me, thank you. If it weren't for you being there, people wouldn't know anything about the east side, and I don't want people to feel like that at all. Like, it's it's not a good feeling. So I will be really interested, you know, what our plans are very specifically to address this. I think it's, there's a lot of, as with anything, a lot of intersectionality, right? Like I noticed that only 36% of staff report their department uses data to identify disparities. Well, yeah, and then you're not going to be reaching out to the east side of the city if you're not looking at the data. Because I've been looking at the data since the Charter Review Commission, and it's pretty straightforward. For instance, I know for a fact that more than 40% of the east side of the city speaks a non-English language at home. So, even that stat alone, when you apply it to the east side, it's an amplification, I think, of a lot of the issues that you caught in the staff feedback, in the rate of the table where you showed, you know, the staff from various groups, how they feel around microaggressions, just keep applying all of that. You can see where we're at, and I will be really interested to see how we can address this, because I think it's actually pretty, embarrassing and I think we can do better than that. I want to note, and this will be my last comment for now, I reserve my right, that if we're looking at an expansive approach to disability access, I think that as with the entire plan, the consistency across the board in terms of disability access, I think Not only are we looking at physical accessibility, but I think, excuse me, working more closely with the autism community, working more closely with the mental health community, maybe we would be in a place where our CPD still had a mental health specialist if we actually looked at that with intentionality. These are the things I think that we can do as part of that approach. I think our rec and parks does a really good job to a certain extent. I think that the needs of the neurodivergent community go well beyond sensory, tense at hometown holidays, it needs to be like an everyday thing. I know I appreciate the choir, but I wanted to flag that because I think those are two areas that we can do a whole whole lot better. And the last thing I'll say, there really shouldn't, I don't think so, there should not be any hindrance in conducting any JEDI training due to federal concerns. Because I think that we're all very proud that we have a JEDI, plan here, we have it on the agenda, and this administration too will pass, so that's all I will say. And thank you both, and thank you Ms. Booth for just spearheading all this, really appreciate it.

Thank you to my colleagues for all of your comments. And again, just say thank you for the deep work that you've done here. There's something that you said that really stuck out to me, and I know my colleague just mentioned it, but this idea that we can't require training for JEDI. I have a problem with that. Because that's how we are responsive to our community, right? Like, we can't ignore people with disabilities. We can't ignore inequities in socioeconomic status, racial inequities, we can't ignore it. So we wouldn't be doing our job as a city if we're not thinking about how do we support from a cultural perspective, then turning into a service delivery perspective. So I have a challenge with that. And I'd like to better explore that because I do think that that should be part of orientation as well as follow up. So I don't know if there's additional comment is that is that a an interpretation of the law is, how would the city implement that? And I feel free to tap a friend from the city attorney's office.

We've been speaking. And it really is, there's some language that's tied to funding. We are absolutely committed to providing training. We are doing that. The language is about requirements. And so That's what I would say about that.

If someone has to be trained on how to secure their email and cybersecurity, they should also be trained on how to support our community. And that's my perspective. So it should be a requirement. Yes. Let us know if there's anything mayor and council need to do to clarify that.

Okay.

Okay. All right. By and large, the data and the information here is very good. So I'm only going to focus on things that I have questions about, if that's okay with you. But I will say I love some of the progress. Kudos to RCPD. Kudos to some of the programs coming out of Rec and Park. There's so many different points of, you know, movement in the right direction. I also appreciate Some of the focus on, and I think you did a nice job of incorporating some of the ADA and elevating beyond the requirements of ADA. I think that you've acknowledged some of the racial equity issues and some of the geographic issues. I would love to see a bit more about the interfaith piece. That is something that we have seen some issues with. and we've seen some things coming forward that we've heard from members of the community that we need to strengthen this area, as well as our own practices and how we're respecting and observing and appreciating all faiths. Same with socioeconomic disparities. I think the city has always done very well, has been doing very well on our responsiveness, and there are some communities Rockville and I've said this before who are really good at reaching out to the city and their neighborhoods and blocks look as such there are other communities who do not necessarily engage with the city in the same way through it because of a number of factors and if we're only responsive then and not being proactive then we're not seeing that balancing and I've seen it in wire is dangling. I've seen it in more potholes. I've seen it in, you know, just the upkeep. And so I just wanted to flag that I've been trying to walk and take pictures and send them out. But I just that there's a cultural perspective of who haven't I heard from what part of the city haven't I engaged? as a systemic question that we ask ourselves. So I just wanted to really point that out, because I know we talked about moving from compliance to culture last time. And so that's a really key part of how do we continue to support JEDI. I was also wanting to see like, and I know it comes to the department. So I saw kind of an in name, but I have worked for the old names of the Office of Minority Health for many, many years. I've helped build plans in the past, and it's always kind of like a focus on outcomes and really targeting on specific populations or disparities. And so I know this is focused on sort of the infrastructure approach of how do we get there, but my heart was wanting to see what are the social impacts we're gonna be creating My mind wants to see how do we make progress and see outcomes and deliver. And so I just wanted to see more of a nod in that direction. And how will we dig into the plans of the departments and, you know, make sure that we're actually making change. The city of Rockville does have a disparities page. to just plan B addressing like that needs to be updated. Are we measuring those outcomes? It's not just reporting. We need to be looking at those outcomes where people see and experience every day. I was at a presentation two weeks ago in a community presentation where I saw absenteeism happening in elementary schools. I saw, and I'm not going to name specific populations, but some populations, less than 30% of that population is proficient in math. Now, that's not a direct line. We don't do education. But there are social impacts that are contributing to those academic performance metrics. And we're seeing that we need more wraparound services. And so I'm just kind of wanting to dig into some of that meat to say, how do we really make progress for our people? And I just wanted to hear your feedback on that.

What's that? You want my feedback on?

Yes, like how could we, how do you plan to get there? Yes.

So, and I appreciate the feedback and the questions. We have plans that you can see in building out in year one the structure of how we're going to be approaching the work. And the work that is a part of that building is going to inform what year two looks like, what year three looks like, all of those things. So the actions and the measures and all those sort of concrete Details will be forthcoming, and I appreciate your saying that you would like to see them now. And so some of that will have to come as we do the work. I'm not sure. No, I think we're, yeah.

I would just say a couple years ago we did get some presentations on infrastructure and like, okay, we're going to be doing training, we're going to be doing this. And so that's why I'm like, okay, when are we getting to like making real progress with real people? And I also know that when I look at some of the parallel plans, like, climate action and pedestrian safety. We don't just articulate a year one work plan, but there are some aspirational goals for year two, three, four, and five that are articulated that we can go back and say, okay, here are our guideposts. So I was just wondering, how does this compare to that approach on the plans and why is this different?

So we have actually started building out the dashboard, the public dashboard, listing out the strategies for all of the years. So there are some in It begins on page 45, I want to say, of the plan that talks about years two, three, four, and five. And while they're not as substantive as year one, because we know that the work will need to build from year one, we are already in... Dave Gottesman and I have already had conversations about building it out. So there's frameworks there. It just hasn't been published at this point. We're waiting for feedback from you guys to say you can publish that. But we are building out all of those metrics for all of the years. Okay.

And we'll have a chance to see that? Yes. Okay. Absolutely. Yes. And then also, to the point I made earlier about not, and you made, like not all of this sits in our but we all need to work together. So just thinking about the strengthening of specific metrics or actions that will support collaboration. So for example, MCPS and the street outreach team at the county, There's a variety of other partners who will be critical to the success. Just like in the Pedestrian Action Plan, we specifically tie in those collaborators because even if we do everything right on Vision Zero, if the state roads are not right, we're still having losses of life and seeing serious crashes. So I just wanted to flag that as a potential area to flesh out how are we going to strengthen relationships with those community partners and look at the mapping of who's doing what and where can we improve. I'll pause there so my colleagues can give feedback, but again, just really appreciate this is deep work, but it's so important because this is where we can have a real community impact. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Jackson.

Thank you, Mayor. Well, you guys have really done a great job. And I'm really excited about it because this has been a long time coming. This plan has been talked about for years. And for whatever reason, it just seems stuck. And you guys have moved it forward. You've actually given us a lot Uh, information, uh, both the strategic priorities, which I appreciate. And I also like how you said that they're not service 7 separate projects. They're all interconnected. And I think that, um, that realization going forward is going to be key to actually implementing the plan. And it's a month-all-year plan, which I think is really smart, too. You're not pretending that it's going to be solved overnight, that it's going to be something that gets implemented overnight. It's a phased-in approach to really bring about a cultural change in the city, which I think is really needed. And the other thing that you guys did, and I just want to applaud you for this, is instead of taking a broad survey of city staff And drawing conclusions, you actually dug down into the data and had specific groups that you found who were, as you said, being left behind. And I think this is really a key because. A lot of times you get the data and it's great news and you just skim the surface. But I think you guys really did a good job in getting down to the nitty-gritty and pulling out the findings that are really key to making the plan a success. And finally, the other thing I would say to my colleague, To her point is yes, we need to just get it done. I mean, this, this talking is great and the planning is great, but I think we need to actually get it done and pass it and get on with it because it's been a long time coming. We've been planning for a long time. It's time to actually make the, the, the, the, the. Progress that we want to make in Jedi and just finally I would say that the priority of Disabilities is something that's near and dear to my heart and know other people as well And so I thank you for that because I think that for too long Disabilities we know about them, but we don't really talk about them, and we don't have a plan to address them It's just something that it's going to be addressed but more often than not, I think we forget about it. So thanks for that. Thanks for making it one of the priorities and I look forward to going forward with it and actually implementing the plan.

Thank you. Council member Shaw.

I want to echo my colleagues and thank you. This is a lot of amazing, excellent work. And I know that we're just getting started with this in a lot of ways. I know there's a lot of work that we can build on, but we are revising this in a different way, in a different approach. And so I'm very excited about this. The first thing I wanted to chat about is the community engagement. We talked about trusted messengers, and that term is often used a lot within government. I am to a point, quite frankly, where I feel like it is very challenging for government to do real community engagement. And I sometimes even question the extent in which government can actually get to the level that we need. And so with that, I know we talked about trusted messengers. But we also talked about how there is the same kind of circle of engaged people. So how are we going to find trusted messengers when we're going to the same circle of engaged people? Also, I believe it was two years ago, we looked at community engagement from a spectrum. And at the end of that spectrum, there was community ownership. So I feel like part of the community engagement beyond trusted messengers, because I think the point of it is to get to community agency and community ownership and actually building community power beyond those that are currently engaged to make sure that everybody has the ability to access their government and feel represented. So in terms of trusted messengers, there is that barrier of going beyond the engaged folks, which are probably the same folks when we ask for feedback, they're the first ones that gives us their feedback, usually the first ones that provide a budget proposal, like all the things, right? The first one that responds to surveys, And then moving beyond that circle, sometimes we have to wait a little while to go through the barriers of engagement, to hear other voices. So could you talk a little bit about getting beyond that circle to reach more people?

Yes, thank you very much. it is about relationship. So it is beyond the terminology of saying I'm trying to develop trusted relationships. And this work began when you hired me, to be honest. So I've been going out to meetings in the community. I've been going out to events. I've been stopping and talking to kids and teenagers and parents and talking about all kinds of things. And so you plant those seeds, those relationship seeds, in all kinds of ways, in all spaces. And so it's not like I'm going out to meetings Find a trusted messenger. I'm going out to build relationships. I'm going out to show authenticity and trustworthiness and represent the city in a way that makes people know that they can come and be engaged, to be civically engaged citizens. That's what we all want. And so it is a process. It is a slow process. hence five years. And in five years, we'll have some trusted messengers. We won't have all that we need, but we'll continue to work towards that goal. And so what I know is that it is a slow planting of trust in all communities, in all spaces, through a number of different mechanisms. It's not like we're going to have a day where we're recruiting trusted messengers, right? So we're going to be doing it in small ways, in big ways, in... in direct ways and indirect ways, it really is gonna be a long process. I hope that's helpful.

Yes, that is helpful, and I also encourage you, Director Booth, to, it's not just you, because you can't solve, you can't just solve justice alone, so, and our networks are wider when we leverage all of them, and so everyone has their own network, so just thinking about that approach in that way. And then also, are impact statements. We talked about outcomes, but I think they are one of the most powerful tools that we have in policy to ensure that we are, as an elected body, making decisions that will either regress or advance equity or keep it neutral. And if our goal is to advance equity thus advancing justice that we need to make sure that we have a standard methodology across the board across departments that have an equity statement and That particularly answer the question not just who is burdened but also who is benefiting from the current system and also identifying who is the most negatively impacted. I've seen some equity statements that don't provide a lot of detail, and so I think it's very helpful for this body to have more information when making decisions. And, you know, there are times when we as decision makers may not, our decisions may not align with the equity statement, but at least publicly, because we were, you know, looking for that accountability, I think publicly, it's just kind of good to know where we stand and how we're making decisions to keep us accountable. And I know we were talking about training, and I do think it's important, not just for staff, but also this body to also have training. And I'm not talking about this body in particular, but we, as elected officials, as the mayor and council, we are an entity. and previous mayor and councils did make decisions that created the disparities that we are currently addressing now. And sometimes we make decisions that may not advance equity. Either way, I think it's really important as a body to have that information because part of our reporting system is reliant on us And so we should also have that type of training to make sure that we have a defined equity lens. It was good to see that we will get data or baseline data because when we're measuring outcomes, it's important to see exactly where we are and how we can get to equity. So whichever group we have defined as doing the best out of a certain group, focus area, that the goal would be that everyone would have those outcomes. So that's equity and the work of equity. And if no one has the negative outcomes, then that is justice. But making sure that we are defining these terms and also having baseline data to measure. And I think you're going to do that with the dashboard, right? Yes. Okay. And we will have more input in the things that we are measuring. Like, for example, not just services, but like eviction, housing stability, income, jobs, all of these things that I think is really important. to make sure that everyone's okay. The other thing I was going to share is I did want to see a little bit more data on income. I know we talk about race, interfaith, disability, but also income, because I think that's something that intersects. Also race intersects as well. And from the data that I have seen across the board, it did seem like race was one of the most profound identities that has an impact on outcomes, just across the board. And so I do think it's still very, our 10-21 that deals with structural racism, I think is still very important and still very relevant. And the other thing I was going to add, let's see. Oh, so what is the process in terms of, so we have our plan, right, in the next year or so, and we have our system set up. What is the accountability? What does accountability look like? Because I have seen all types of equity plans for all types of governments come and go. I see Dr. Morgan is smiling. I've seen all types of equity plans come and go like trends. So what is going to keep us accountable as an organization?

So, and part of it is the dashboard, and part of it is a planful way of approaching how we're updating that dashboard and who is providing the information to update that dashboard. And it's our dashboard, it's other people's, other initiatives' dashboards, making sure that they have, just as you're talking about, the data points that discuss impact. And so we have... I love a good tracker. So we have trackers by month, by priority, by who's responsible for what, who's participating in what. And it's going to be available for, it's going to inform what we upload onto the public dashboard. We have the website and then we have the dashboard. So there's going to be multiple places where people can look. And I'm going to be available to come and present information directly. whenever I'm asked, or to whomever requested.

I might add, if it's okay, Mayor, Councilmember Shaw, part of it for me is a lot of this work is really gonna be the responsibilities of this team, and also every single department director. Yes. And I will hold them accountable in their work, including their performance reviews as part of this to make sure we're making good progress. But most importantly, you heard us many times talk about the survey work that we did. That really led to more what I would consider a gaps analysis of anything else at all. We need to in future years, subsequent years, go back. Talk to the same groups talk to the same people do the gaps analysis again to see if those gaps were closed based on implementing this work. That's how we measure success in the future.

Thank you. Councilman, are you done? Okay, thank you for your comments. Councilman Van Graak.

Thanks. This is exceptional. The structure that has been put in place about how we move forward with the JEDI is exactly what we need to do, whether it's directing how we start with looking at staff, how we look at the community, and how we look about this five-year plan. It's exactly the structure. And so while I do have some comments that I want to go over, I'm clearly going to be supporting adoption because, you've really done what we need to do in the direction and the planning for JEDI improvement. So, kudos across the board for the amazing work. I do want to highlight a couple of things. I know some of the things that I mentioned last time that I want to go over. Just as Councilmember Villeri said, I think it's excellent that you've noted that geographic equity matters. I hear it time and time again at the City. I do want to note, like I did last time, you mentioned the dividing line of 355. there's also a dividing line of 270. And I think that's important because just as Council Member Shaw said, there's kind of trusted messengers. And I know that I spoke to this weekend kind of getting into a number of kind of some of the community leaders because in the west of 270, there aren't a lot of very active community associations, but on some of the people who I know have been active in the community, hey, I didn't even know there was a Jedi. So I think there's a number of people, which highlights why some of the people west of 270 might not think that they're involved, because there wasn't even a contact to some of the neighborhood groups. of getting involved in jedi so i i think that what you've got in the plan regarding geography matters is critical you are hit the nail on the head just as councilman valeri said it's critical i just want to make sure we're not missing another dividing line where um We might have not reached some of the messengers who would be able to convey some of that inequities that they're feeling as being not part of the city or not engaging in parts of the city. But your overall issue of geography matters 100% spot on and I'm thrilled to see it in here. The other thing that I want to talk a little bit about, and I know the mayor touched on it, and I think that's going back to some of the interfaith issues. Because I think, I know you did talk about the community, but I think it's also true with staff. Because when we go back to the October 2023 issue that we've talked about with regard to the community, there was even at least one staff person that I know that was instructed to attend a city event on one of the Jewish high holidays. So this is not just about the community interfaith. It's also about respecting staff and their religious diversity when we make things. And I know that in October 2023, when the mayor and council was addressing this issue, they specifically talked and made a resolution talking about the interfaith and diversity calendar. And the mayor has actually been fabulous. The mayor has actually regularly, I'd say almost every few months, noted, hey, I note that there's actually an event that's been planned for this religious holiday. And a number of us have been pointed out that, hey, so we might not be going in that direction that the mayor and council talked about going on three years ago, which brings me to the issue of your one-year plan is exactly what it needs to be because you've got to have an understanding of before we get to some of the more implementation. However, there's some implementation that is probably a good idea to include in that first year. Some things that we know have been a problem, such as the interface calendar, such as the Jewish community has been waiting since October 2023 to have some meeting. I don't wanna say, hey, we're gonna push it off three years because we wanna see what the content is. and similar with kind of making sure that there is a robust interfaith calendar, not just for the community, but for staff as well. And so, I think to the extent that there is some implementation of that first year for known issues that we can try to solve, I think it would be better. But overall, I think it's fabulous. Fully support amendment. Heck, I'd even move to amend now. I don't know if anybody, or move to adopt now if need be, but fabulous, fabulous work and fabulous organization.

I'm just going to start down the line again to see if anyone has comments. I saw some hands. Okay, Council Member Valeri.

Yes, just two quick things. Yes, two quick things. So I noted in the presentation there was a reference to plain language. I've been really urging us, our agenda, staff presentations during mayor and council meetings, If we can start with level setting on what is actually being discussed, what does a suggested motion. I think that it was very tricky for me as a more academically privileged person to delve into this when I was a community association president. If you don't have the benefit of that sort of academic privilege, which I would also state that in addition to income is another thing to really look at, I think that it's really important that we put everything across the board. I think, you know, I know it's tough to write for websites. I know it's tough to kind of take our agenda and all the outward facing, but, you know, they all still score extremely high when you put them through accessibility filters. So I hope that we can do that. Super quick to Council Member Van Graak's point, and thank you. I always love a compliment from Council Member Van Graak, but I do want to make sure that we are also reaching out to HOAs because that is a vast majority of the other side of 270, much deeper than it is on the east side of the city. I think that as long as we have an intentionality about trying to work with HOA leadership, to get the materials out and then finally and this kind of just came popped in my mind maybe what we call it is the jedi action plan we have a climate action plan we have you know division zero action plan like it to many people's points we want to just get this moving and going and do the work i feel like action plans tend to I don't know, maybe it's psychology, but it tends to get us rolling. So that's what I'd like to see for sure. And thank you.

I appreciate the comments of my colleagues and some of your feedback as well. I had a few small things. You talked about reporting. I thought in this document that it was reporting to have an annual update to us. Is that still planned? Okay. Thank you. And I just wanted to go to the preamble of like why we're doing this. I really appreciate some of the work that you've done with staff and staff's feedback. and some of the geographic equity, there are some other things that are pulled out in that disparities page on Rockville that also speak to our why, the income inequalities, the racial inequalities. We've talked about interfaith issues, but I also want to raise this. We just experienced this this June, the rise in hate and bias. And what some members of our community, and I want to acknowledge the Human Rights Commission and the work that they did on pride. But we saw some hate and bias, disgusting commentary that has no place in the city. But there's a reason why we're doing this. And so I guess when I say I want to give power to people and power to progress and really measure our outcomes, I also want to acknowledge the time that we're in. And so whether this is approved tonight or not, I just want to see, can that be just strengthened a little bit in whatever is posted online, if that's okay. And I'm not going to speak to those comments because they don't deserve that airspace, but it cannot be ignored. of what we're seeing in immigration right now and people are feeling and the impacts it's having on people. I just wanna make sure we're capturing the moment of why we're standing up and doing this as a city. The other piece I wanted to flag, I know we talked about departments. I wanna also speak to economic development equality So equity and opportunity, I know that we're doing some of that to the financial literacy, but socioeconomic status also has a key part in disparities and some divides as well. So I wanted to flag that we think about the work that Ready is doing and consider that a part of the department as well. I really also appreciate what the city manager said of how we're going to be doing this as part of performance evaluations. I will say, that each of our appointed have language specific to Jedi in our actual review. And I don't know if that has permeated down to staff yet, but that's a great way to make sure that people think about it every year. And, you know, that's up to the city manager and to the city clerk and to the city attorney, but I would highly encourage it. Because I think that people see and make progress on what's measured and what they're reminded of. Just the comment of like, we've seen a couple of these presentations and it's like moving beyond what is JEDI in terms of training to like how do we do equitable decision making. and again asking the question of who's not here and how do we help those who are not. There were also some other municipal plans that spoke to sort of supporting employee resource groups. I don't know if that's something that's planned, but I did, you know, the gender issues that the microaggressions really stuck out in the staff survey. There are things that we can do to address that, but I wanted to say that sometimes there are safe spaces. We were doing that last term where they were having speakers come in and spaces for staff. I know we went through a staff change and then we're working on this plan, but there are some things that have worked in the past and then disappeared. And so just creating systems so that it's not like things happen after this conversation and then two years from now it fades. We want to avoid that. I was also wondering about how do we think about the populations that we're serving and including them in the decision-making process? Even something as simple as as we're looking at our streets and sidewalks, how does it actually feel to someone in a wheelchair? How does it feel to someone who has low vision. How are we actually collecting that feedback? When we're thinking about improving the audio in a space like this room, are we engaging with the populations we're choosing to serve? I think that has to be part of how we operate as a city as well. Sometimes what we think is a progress and a direction doesn't quite hit the mark with the population we're trying to serve. And we've heard that feedback in the past. And so how do we build that into our process, into our plan measurement? Yeah.

OK.

Yes. So what you're describing in my mind and in this plan is participatory decision making, right? So it moves beyond are we having the right staff members in the room, but are we asking the right people before we make the decisions, before we make the policy decisions that they're participating in. So yes, that is absolutely a part of how we are planning to build the toolkits for the decision makers in the city, right? So they will now have potentially a checklist that says, did you ask, who did you ask? And how did you incorporate what you heard into the decision making? So that's part of the toolkits that we're hoping to build for all the different levels within the city.

Okay, thank you. And I looked at the, you know, went to some of our approved plans that are being well measured. They do have listed either up front or in the appendix matter, the actual resolutions that have guided the development. I didn't see a new resolution here that's all encompassing. But what would be your suggestion for that? Should we include all the old ones? Do you want to... the summarizing resolution i just wanted to see see how we can get to acknowledging the resolutions from the mayor and council and you know that is a planned format that seems to work well

That's a great point mayor we can add what to say a ratifying resolution on the body on the front of the plan I think that's critically important with all the Acknowledgements and I think as an appendix to your point all the other actions that the mayor and council took in past years Should be as part of that too because this has been as many of you mentioned an ongoing conversation There were numerous actions by this body and previous bodies to set us up for today So we're happy to add those elements before we publish the plan. I

Okay, thank you. And then maybe, I know some of my colleagues had some really good comments that you might want to make some fine-tuning. Do you have any questions for us? That's my question, and I'll go down and see if any of my colleagues have anything to add.

Not at this time, thank you. I have lots of notes.

Okay, thank you. Anyone have any other comments? Council Member Shaw.

I know this work has been a long time coming and there have been some previous bodies also doing this work. But I do think it is important for us to review just to make sure that to review what would be included from previous bodies just to make sure we're all in alignment with some of the things that were suggested. I know that community members have had some feedback on some of the things that have been suggested and some concerns. So I just think it's important just to have a robust process with what we include. And then also when we're talking about participatory government, it's also Important for us to be careful of the other end where there have been certain historically underrepresented groups sharing what they Envision as a policy over and over and over again and the city asking for continual Community engagement and then they essentially do not get that policy which causes a lot of distrust And so and I know that you know not all bodies are are perfect and i know there's been previous bodies that have done have done that um so just kind of uh keeping in mind just the history of our community engagement and some of the barriers that it has created thank you councilman fulton

Thank you. So it sounds like we've gotten some good feedback from colleagues as we move forward with implementation, some comments on maybe a ratifying resolution and some appendix. But coming back to what I said at the beginning, I'm ready to go. So I move to adopt the JEDI strategic plan.

Thank you. And incorporating, I know the city manager said he's going to. He said that. Yes, perfect. Thank you. I want to confirm. Council Member Van Graak.

I'll second with those amendments.

Thank you. Okay. All those in favor, please raise your hand. Aye. Aye. Okay. All right. So you've got direction from us. Thank you for making the tweaks that we've discussed. We are looking forward to hearing this July 2027. And then see you soon. And also would love to see the dashboards. I know you mentioned you'd send that to us as well.

Okay.

Thank you. I know it feels like you're moving from the hot seat, but thank you. We appreciate it. I saw the sigh of relief. And thank you to all the community members who have participated and who will continue to hold us accountable. Thank you. We're now moving on to the work session portion of our agenda. I will note it is 8.30 p.m. We are just 15 minutes shy of hitting our target, but we're moving to the Chapter 4 Arts and Cultural Affairs Ordinance Revisions. We welcome Anne O'Donnell, Cultural Arts and History Program Manager, City Manager's Office, and thank you for presenting to us this evening.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, Council Members. I'm Anne Odell, Arts and Culture Program Manager, with you this evening for our second work session on Chapter 4, Arts and Cultural Affairs Ordinance Revisions. During the presentation, I will share the feedback we're requesting this evening, provide background on the ordinance, share the Cultural Arts Commission's comments on the revisions that have been proposed, propose next steps. I will then take your feedback and answer any questions you may have. Feedback being requested this evening is, does the mayor and council support merging and incorporating works of art and public architecture and art and public places articles into one public art program article, the recommendations for the publicly accessible art and private development article, and enhanced community engagement and public art program delivery? As background on Chapter 4, it was adopted in 1975 along with Article 2 that established the Cultural Arts Commission. Article 3, incorporation of works of art and public architecture, AIPA, was adopted in 1978 and requires that 1% of qualifying capital improvement projects is appropriated for public art and that 1% comes from the general fund. Article 4, publicly accessible art and private development, AIPD, was adopted in 2001 and requires developers with qualifying development projects to make a contribution to publicly accessible art. Article 5, art in public places, AIPP, was adopted in 2003 and requires that one-tenth of one percent of the previous fiscal year's general fund budget be appropriated for public art. These administrative revisions are being proposed to continue the implementation of the 2019 arts and culture study recommendations. The prioritized recommendation was to create the position I am now working in, arts and culture program manager, and central to my work plan is to assess chapter four as a foundation for future program development so that Rockville can fulfill its potential as an arts destination. We also need to make sure that our roles and processes reflect best practices. The practical implementation of the ordinance has evolved over the years and we need to update our code to reflect that. We also need to formalize and professionalize the city's role in arts and culture development because this is the first time in the city's history that a professional arts administrator has been hired to manage the public art programs. We just need to come up to speed with best practices in that field. Proposed revisions begin with the addition of a preamble that would clarify the focus of work in the arts and culture program, because historically, Recreation and Parks produced all the arts and culture programs in the city. And the Recreation and Parks Department has its own advisory board, so we just need to provide some clarification around the scope of work in the arts and culture program. Article 2, Cultural Arts Commission suggesting moving process related language to guidelines, because those are updated more efficiently than ordinances. and shifting budget and project management responsibilities to city staff because there's now staff capacity to do this work. Proposed revisions continue with merging AIPA and AIPP into one public art program because they have similar purposes and administrative processes. We need to clarify roles in program administration to improve program delivery and follow best practices. Again, removing process-related language to guidelines for reasons previously discussed. Revise the definition of acceptable art and eligible sites because the current definitions are limiting. The field of public art has evolved beyond the definition that is in the ordinance. And eligible sites limit public art installation to city-owned property, which suggests changing that eligible sites to sites in the public realm. Also recommending that the public art plan be created by staff in consultation with the Cultural Arts Commission's Public Art Committee. The effects of these revisions will be discussed on this slide. So currently, Art in Public Architecture has used the AIPP process. It should be noted that in the AIPA article, there is language specifying how AIPA projects are approved, which is the city manager provides the CAC with project information. CAC has 30 days to return comments. After those 30 days, city manager forwards project information and any received comments to the mayor and council. AIPP process has been led by the Cultural Arts Commission with staff assistance. The commission creates the AIPP implementation plan and budgets and project plans and selects sites with staff assistance. Commission leads the artist selection process and then the artist designs the artwork. The mayor and council approve the final design and the artwork is created and installed. The proposed public art process is one that's led by staff in consultation with the Cultural Arts Commission. What I'm seeking to find in the proposed process is the balance between community engagement and involvement, commission community engagement involvement, staff management of the process, and then the mayor and council's role. So we're seeking to have staff create the public art plan in consultation with the CAC's Public Art Committee. Mayor and Council would approve contracts that return $50,000 in alignment with procurement standards. Staff would create and manage project plans and processes. CAC's Public Art Committee would approve the final artwork design. And I want to pause here and share that with the Lincoln Park and David Skoll Park, public art projects. We have had art selection committees that had at least two members of that neighborhood community members join the art selection committee. And we also had at least two CAC members, one of whom was on the public art committee. And for David Skull Park, we also had a recreation and park staff person to make sure that the final design would work with the project. So it's recommended that the Public Art Committee would approve the Art Selection Committee's recommendation because those two committees have the most firsthand information about the process that brought us to that final design. The artwork would then be created and installed, and the Mayor and Council would be kept informed of projects by staff. The community benefits would be that we would combine funding. AIPP has historically supplemented the AIPA budget. We just need to formally recognize that. And we would be able to integrate public art into broader city plans and projects, such as transportation, community planning and development, housing and tourism. We would be able to respond to how the community evolves by having them directly engage with the process at all times. We'd also be able to partner with county and state agencies and private entities on projects that affect the public realm, such as CSX Overpass and the bridge between Metro and the Square. Proposed revisions for Article IV, Public Art and Private Development, would be to redefine acceptable art forms for reasons previously discussed. Clearly define publicly accessible, because not all artwork that's installed on site is publicly accessible. We need to define roles in program administration for reasons previously discussed. Eliminate the option to remove artwork because the artwork should be permanent in nature. Currently, after it's installed, the artwork can be removed zero to five years with a sliding scale financial penalty. After five years, it can be removed at no penalty to the developer. recommending to change the formula to determine required contributions, because the current formula that Rockville has is not in line with the public art field. Rockville is the only locality across the country of 92 localities that have an ordinance requiring developer contributions to public art that has the formula that we determine the required contribution with. Our formula is tiered, and it's based on residential, commercial, and industrial development projects. I'll share on the next slide the change that I'm suggesting in its place. Also suggesting to modify the options for how contributions can be applied because not all options are equitable or in alignment with the public art field. So on the left side of the table, you see the current options that developers can choose to make their contribution. They can install art on site, make a monetary contribution to the city's Friends of the Arts Fund, provide an art space such as a gallery, provide arts-based infrastructure such as lighting equipment, make a monetary contribution to a qualifying arts nonprofit, or combine any of the above options. So in the 25-year history of this program, 58% of developers chose to install art on-site, 38% chose to contribute money, and of that 38%, 72% contributed funds to the city, 28% contributed it to nonprofits, and those nonprofits that received the contributions were in closest proximity to city staff, which is not an equitable process. One art space was implemented. That was a gallery. No arts infrastructure was implemented and point zero three percent of the time a combination was chosen that Combination resulted when artwork was installed on site and there were a couple hundred dollars left over They contributed that couple of hundred dollars to the city most of the time in one time to a non-profit so on the right hand side are the suggested revisions that reflect the reality of the 25-year history of the program in that developers would install art on site or choose to make a monetary contribution to the city's public art program in the amount of 1% of the cost of the development, not to exceed $300,000. So this is an alignment. All the other 91 localities across the country have these two options. So we would be meeting best practices in the public art field, as well as just actually implementing the data that we have. This slide is new. It's not in the brief book because with the implementation of NGO, we've been able to gather some very new data that reflects that we need to consider the timing of when the AIPD requirement must be filled. Currently, in the AIPD article, the AIPD requirement must be filled before the issuance of the first occupancy permit. So I've even had developers come to me with this issue, because if they're building a multifamily housing development with 52 building permits that require 52 occupancy permits, and they have to install the art on site before the first occupancy permit is issued, they have to remove the artwork or potentially risk damaging it as they build other buildings around it. So we need to address this and meet the developers where they need us to meet them. So I would suggest having the AIPD contribution selection included in the plans provided to the Planning Commission and the Mayor and Council because historically developers have not indicated before that moment how they will apply the required contributions so we want to make that crystal clear that it needs to happen at that point and then if they choose to install art on site we will have a building permit for installing art on site so that's how we will track their fulfillment of that requirement if they're making a monetary contribution they would need to make that contribution upon approval of the project by the mayor and council Community benefits would be that we have permanent public art that is publicly accessible, will eliminate confusion for stakeholders, have a more equitable program, align with best practices in the public art profession, and improve that administrative process for developers who want to install art on site. At the first work session, Mayor and Council requested the Cultural Arts Commission comments on the suggested revisions, and the Cultural Arts Commission assembled an ordinance committee. They gave a great deal of thought to the revisions, and in February of this year, they adopted their comments and passed them along. They do agree that we should have a preamble. There's some conversations that we can have about what will be in that preamble, but by and large, they're in agreement that we need it. They don't see the budget or process-related language in Article 2, and I would say, just to give more background on that, Article 2 is written so broadly that the Commission has assumed staff work in the past. So this is an opportunity just to provide clarification for everyone who's involved in the public art process as to how we'll each participate in it. Article 3, they mostly agreed. They gave some really good feedback, and they do continue the funding of AIPP and AIPA. Article 4, again, good comments about administrative processes, definitions, and locations of artwork. Additional comments, they did request a comparison of jurisdictions in the region for AIPD. Going back to the analysis I provided the first work session, the reason I went for a national scan is because Rockville is the only locality in the state of Maryland, and we're the only locality in the DC region that has an ordinance requiring developer contributions for publicly accessible art or public art. Arlington County does have a public art policy. It does not require developer contributions. That county program selects sites they would like to install public art on. They then have a negotiation with the developer about that site having public art on it. City of Alexandria also has a policy that requires a minimum $75,000 contribution for publicly accessible art. I only analyze ordinances just so we would have a consistent data set. So proposed next steps would be that I would take your guidance tonight, and I would prepare a draft of the ordinance, along with any colleagues that would need to participate in that process, would then share that draft with the Cultural Arts Commission for further comments, and then we would present the ordinance to you, Mayor and Council. So at this time, I will take your feedback.

Thank you very much for getting some feedback from the commissioners early on. I know that they're anxious to see a revision as well. So I do support that before it comes back to us and incorporating our feedback this evening. I'm going to start on this side of the table to provide feedback, and then we'll go down the line. Thank you.

So this is great. I think there's a lot of plus here. One just overarching question. I know I've brought it up before. Has there been any discussion about going forward with either a part of Rockville as an arts and entertainment district and how that could integrate with what we're looking to do here with regard to the Chapter 4 amendments?

Sure. So the Arts and Entertainment District has come up. And we even had the state director of that program present at a Cultural Arts Commission meeting in 2025. And he gave a very good presentation. And essentially, We would look at the Arts and Entertainment District designation as like the icing on the cake. There's so much analysis that would go into whether or not we would pursue that designation that I think first we need to take a look at how we can better implement public art into Rockville from an economic and community development standpoint and then go back and revisit that conversation again. Just from what I've seen at this time, I don't think Rockville will be a strong candidate for that designation. I think it is absolutely something that we should continue to revisit in the future. So I don't know that I would include it in the ordinance, but I would definitely include it in any planning processes that we would use.

So then I guess. understand that we wouldn't necessarily go ahead and do it now because of the the hurdles that I know we'd have to meet the question is is there anything within our drafting of chapter four here that we can do as part of that planning step presuming that we'd want to do that because of the economic benefits and the overall benefits as the laudable goal in a step process

I think the quick answer to it is we're not aware that there's anything that we should add to the ordinance to tee us up for that designation. But we'll take that back and take a look at it. And if there is, we'll make sure to present to the CAC and back to Council. But right now, the answer is we don't think so.

MR. Excellent. And so the only other question I had before I kind of get to any feedback is going back to kind of one of the last things you said, and it's dealing with the CAC feedback with regard to Article 2. where, and I know you just said that it was, they talked a little bit about who was doing what and where, where is, cause it seems to me that as you've laid it out, there is a budgetary process and there does seem to be roles. Where do they really see that there's something lacking within the process that you've proposed in article two and article two section four dash 20 numbers four and eight are written very broadly.

So there's, in practice, the commission has assumed the work of staff in those respective areas. It's not prescribed in the ordinance. So just have the opportunity now to clarify who would have the role regarding budget preparation, regarding plan preparation, site selection, all of those details could be included.

Oh, so you're supporting that clarification?

I would like a clarification.

Oh, great. Okay. All right. Then we're fully on the same page. I thought it was like they're asking for it, and you don't see it. No, but they're asking for more clarification, and you're supporting that more detailed clarification. We're fully on the same page, and I have positive support for all of your questions. Good. Thank you. Thank you.

You're welcome. Councillor Bouchard. I want to echo my colleague's thank you. And this is excellent work. I strongly support all three measures on this slide.

Council Member Jackson.

Thank you, Mary. Excellent work. I have a couple of questions, but I really want to delve into the mayor and council's role. Can you spend a little bit more about what you're proposing and what it means?

Sure. So, historically, the mayor and council have approved the final design. FOR ALL PUBLIC ART PROJECTS. I WOULD RECOMMEND, BECAUSE THIS IS TECHNICALLY A PROCUREMENT PROCESS, IT IS A NUANCED PROCUREMENT PROCESS, BUT THAT WE WOULD HOLD TO THE STANDARDS OF PROCUREMENT with Mayor and Council approving contracts $250,000 or greater. That's because what I want to see and what's been proven as the best practice of public art is that we have that consistent community engagement thread from the very beginning of the project all the way to the end of the project. And when we begin the project to very clearly lay out what our values are, what the expectations of that public art installation are, what may and may not be included in that particular public artwork. We'll be very clear in that. So we make sure that we meet your expectations as a mayor and council. And then we'll move forward understanding we're on the same page with you already from the beginning. And then we'll keep you informed as we move along through that process.

All right. And I had another question. And this one goes to the proposed revisions. Number four says eliminate the option to remove artwork, and artwork should be permanent. And I just wonder what that means in practicality. I understand living for four years with financial penalties, and then in the fifth year, there's none, and you want to change that. But broader concept-wise, what does it mean to have art be permanent?

We want at least a 30-year lifespan, preferably 50 years. There are some artworks that will live on beyond that, depending on how much care and maintenance they're given on a regular basis. So I want minimum 30 years for the artwork. And especially when you consider all the resources that's put into that public artwork, it really is best to do due diligence on the maintenance so it will last that long.

So even when, let's say, somebody has an apartment building or an office building and they have public artwork there and it changes hands, then you're saying that the new owner cannot change the artwork until a certain time period is up.

So this is an excellent question. I have encountered it already in the AIPD program. I said to the developer, understanding that it's now changed hands, it's your project, and they're actually doing improvements. They want to put a new public art piece. But that aside, I said, it's up to you if you remove it. You're the new owner. The artwork has been there for, I think, 20 years already. please be sure to make sure that you can find the original contract between the developer and the artist to make sure that you understand what the responsibilities are for the owner of that property to the artist. So that document is the guiding document for how that artwork can be removed at any point in time. And if someone new takes over the development, I completely understand there would need to be flexibility given if they're doing renovation, if they're changing the use of the property, that could very well change whether or not there should even be public artwork. So I think that's a dynamic conversation that I'd be open to having with them.

So that then changes the definition of permanent. I mean, you're saying, yes, it's permanent with various stipulations.

Yes, it could be. Yes.

All right.

Yeah.

Thank you. I just wanted to thank you for the detailed and the brief book and the presentation were very well done and clear. So I appreciate the framework that you provided for us. I'll just say separate from this, I do support the arts and cultural district support. I know that the Cultural Arts Commission has shared that with us and I know it was in the art study. Also, I know that the arts and culture study spoke about development of a plan, which I also support. So I just wanted to make those two comments as liaison for the Cultural Arts Commission. I appreciate the comments and the specific feedback that you've provided. I do tend to agree with some of the comments of the Cultural Arts Commission, just having heard their rationale. But in terms of the preamble, I fully support what staff is trying to do here. I do think that merging the sections might be useful since there's so much overlap. However, I think we'd like to see what that looks like to make sure we're not losing anything. And I do wanna make sure that the CAC continues to have a role that work as well. I will say something about permanent art and also the Mayor and Council's previous feedback. Cultural norms change over time and sometimes things that were if you ever watch a movie from the 90s you might be aghast. I've had it happen I'm like whoa I can't believe what they just said. So I want to make sure that we're thinking about that aspect of well, of making things more culturally appropriate and respectful. So I just wanted to offer some wiggle room there as we're thinking about how cultures change and norms change, that we're striving to be more and more respectful of our community and inclusive, especially given the conversation we just had. In terms of Article 2, I was curious about the CAC's comments on they do not see a need for this change and request the opportunity to review proposed track changes. I know there was a subcommittee focused on this. Can you share a little bit more detail about that feedback? This is for Article 2. relating to move the process related language to program guidelines. And I think some of the feedback they had is like it's great to have some things written out. And I know we've seen this as a body where like staff changes and someone is not looking at that process document. I have seen that happen where I won't name which particular issues, but things that I know were supposed to happen have changed because it's just turnover. It happens in any organization. So I do value some of it being articulated, the values of what we have and making it clear. So this is how we do things. So I just want to get more feedback on that.

Let's see. Which of their comments specifically?

Yes, this is Article 2, Cultural Arts Commission. It's unclear what process-related language is referenced in the proposal. Oh, yes. Yeah.

So that would be the section 4-20, numbers 4 and 8. That's what I was referring to before. The practice has been that the Cultural Arts Commission has assumed certain administrative and budget tasks. When we now have staff capacity to do that, it's just not written. It's not clear. So that's why I would provide clarity around that.

Yeah, so obviously staff... creates the budget with the city manager, right? You guys send the recommendations. But we do have commissions who are engaged with plan development. So I guess it's TBD because we don't have the language yet, but you're going to come to us with something to look at. Yes. Okay. All right. Okay, that is very helpful. The article three public art program. I appreciate that you're going to be specifically making some changes there and looking at key considerations. I do I do value and have appreciated the opportunity to review and approve we have made some some important changes uh as i go through some of the projects where some things might have gone up that might have been concerning if they're they're very very very much invisible places in the city so i just wanted to and this is prior to you being here it's not you but i just want to say there have been instances where we have made substantive changes to a project that might not have been appropriate And that's what gives me pause in particular. And I like the commission's comments on not just a number threshold. So I just wanted to share that feedback. Again, this happened before your time. but staff changes. And so I just, I do value the opportunity. And then the public also gets to see what we're putting up, what it means, et cetera. So there's something nice about presenting it in public as well for all to see. So I wanted to share that feedback. And this particular section, I think the CAC had some really good specific feedback, which I also align with. I won't repeat everything that they have here, but they were very specific in that. And then, The page nine of this section was something that I know that the CAC was very interested in making sure that they have a chance to see the revised draft. They had some concerns. that I think that we should pay attention to. So I just wanted to flag that. I know the naming piece is, I have questions about some of those comments, particularly as, you know, I know this is a process for naming things, but the other comments I do support and appreciate. And those are my core comments, and I appreciate the opportunity to provide feedback. I know this is a work session, and we'll get a chance to see the actual draft. Thank you.

Council Member O'Leary.

Yes.

Hello. You know, it was very funny. Maybe not funny, haha, but interesting. when I was looking at the presentation, that some of our most prominent, and I might be biased, visually interesting, engaging art pieces are both done by the same artist. Charlotte Lees, so in 2012 and 2009. I was interested by that. Sorry, I had to like, as a sidebar. You know, and from our various conversations, I am a big fan of the arts. I'm a big fan of making the arts more accessible and engaging. Can you tell me, expand a little bit, On number three, on the enhanced community engagement, kind of tell me what you're thinking, what direction you're thinking about going in.

Yes, so enhancing community engagement. Every day I work across departments with my colleagues so that we're implementing your standards of community engagement. I have access to all the tools to do that. So that's step one. And then continuing the thread, that's actually where I connect with people. I ask them, would you like to volunteer to be on an arts selection committee? And that's how I find community members to be on the Art Selection Committee, carrying through their voices from the selection through to the installation. Because after we select the artists and go to contract with them, they come back to Rockville and work again with the community. So continuing to build on those touch points along the way is not something that's historically been done. but it is now part of our process, and I would just like to recognize that as part of the process.

Gotcha. So kind of formalizing the process and making it. I would love to give the feedback or my hope is that actually the community engagement piece that you're talking about here is reflective of or can, you know, that you can work very closely in line with our Jedi strategic plans. I think that a lot of the lessons of the feedback that we just heard can, I think, be applied to some of the artist selection processes. I think at least from the few that I've been privy to before you started, they were overwhelmingly white. overwhelmingly older. And this kind of comports with the folks that kind of always open all the emails, the same old folks. Not old folks, but you know what I'm saying. We have to kind of reinvigorate and reimagine our community engagement. And I think that you have a really, you have an opportunity with the public art program to do it in a really exciting way. So I'm hopeful that you could work with the JEDI team to really make that more fulsome. I do want to, in the art in public places, I'm like gonna segment everything out here. Only about art in public places, okay. If we could, as part of the guidelines, to ensure that the, if we're looking at art in public places that we either, avoid art in the public right away, or we look at location based on Vision Zero best practices. I think a great example of this is the Globe at 355 and Middle Lane that is actually in such a location as to make it difficult for folks. So I just want to flag, because again, I know we have CTR coming up too. Art and transportation do not often overlap, but we want people to still be able to safely traverse. So that would be, I think, one of my biggest things that you don't really think about in terms of public art. I definitely... I see as far as the current public art processes and the proposed public art process, I absolutely see where you are kind of coming from And I would probably not question the approach if I hadn't been witness to public art, the art in public places, being made better by feedback from the dais. And the two examples that I can give are the mural on City Hall, or not on City Hall, but you know, that very well could have had a wine glass, And martini, apologies. I knew it was some sort of booze-related beverage. But I think that from an artistic perspective, I wouldn't have had a problem with that. But there is also a connotation of putting alcoholic beverages on a city hall. And we're not in Napa Valley, right? There are other things that we can look at. So that got better. I think the other one, actually, frankly, it was this elected body, and that was the original, the OG Twinbrook Rec Center mural. And this definitely, it predated you, but the first iteration that was brought to us was not reflective of, the idea was not at all really reflective of the community, and I think it was made better in part by the feedback from the dais, and my concern is that it wouldn't have gotten to a better place if we hadn't been part of that process. So the artist selection committee had no problem with the idea, and in part that was a different, that was kind of an issue with the artist selection committee, because it was not reflective of the diversity of the neighborhood, so that was a problem. But you have a much more diverse mayor and council, we all kind of said, hey, these are things that we should look at, and that art got better because of our input into it. So in a perfect world, yes, every public art piece is going to be brilliant and perfect out of the box, but you always have to have that fail safe, that backstop, and ultimately the backstop is us because we have the fiduciary responsibility to be good stewards of tax dollars. So while I appreciate that everybody has a role in art and public places. Ultimately, we have that responsibility so that if a resident comes to us and says, hey, why are there martini glasses all over City Hall? This is what the process did. I think that I'm very challenged by taking us out of the final design approval process. I think there can be guardrails. There can be criteria. There's a way to form it so that people are not making, I just don't like that kind of art. I only like Thomas Kinkade. Whatever. We're not talking about those sort of situations, we're looking at just having the lens of being the final decision makers and having that fiduciary responsibility. So I really want to emphasize that and I feel very strongly about that. You mentioned in the public art and private development section, in the proposed revisions, Did you mention that the provision of an art space, it only happened once and it was a gallery? Is that gallery still around? I will have to check. OK. Just off the top of my head, I was like, I can't even really remember. I say this because I'm challenged because, again, while the proposed options are awesome, i also think if there is a developer out there that's like hey we would love to have how about we give x number of spaces for local artists to be able to come in artists don't i mean bizarts is amazing right but we need more spaces that people can actually do that hands-on work i wouldn't want to preclude that And again, I know that we have to, again, create these options, but I think that it's very difficult to find art spaces, especially when you start getting into the larger art forms, not painting miniatures. So I really just want to put a plug in for perhaps there's a better way to encapsulate that, but if a developer really wants to provide an art space for the amount of time that their art would be in place. So the 30-year trend, I would not say no to that, especially not for the local arts community. And I think that's it. I think my colleagues definitely said the artwork should be permanent. I know that, and I definitely hear you on the You don't want like artwork that's made of jello that is not going to last very long. But I think that I think that the flip side of that is sometimes Confederate statues. There are art pieces that should no longer be out. And so, you know, having that kind of framework and process for that. And with that, Madam Mayor, I think I'm done. Thank you. Council Member Fulton.

Thank you, and thanks for this. Broadly speaking, on the requested feedback, I am supportive I think of all three. But I guess more generally, you had made a couple of references through your presentation about best practices. It would really help. I am not an expert in this space. So it would really help me as we move forward and actually make some more final decisions if you could provide some of that in the background, what other jurisdictions do, how it works, just so I could put us in the context of everyone else. That would help me make decisions moving forward. The other broad point I'll make is a lot of this is about clarifying roles and role clarity. I'm 100% not going to say that clarity is kindness, but we should be like a lot of the issues that we've had in the past with the, the public art and everyone's acknowledged it. It was before your time. Like we have an expert on staff now that can help solve some of these problems and has some accountability and should therefore have some authority. So like being clear on the role of, of staff and the committees and mayor and council is a great idea. Um, but I think, you know, uh, what exactly those different roles should be. I'd love to look at best practices, but I do think that you should be empowered. It's your job. So we should do that somehow in the role clarity piece. I think that's all I have for now. Thanks. Thank you. Dr. Miles.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I thank my colleagues for bringing up some very important concerns with regard to oversight. I think I do ascribe a bit to both what, and had written down previously, things that our colleagues had said, particularly Council Members Jackson and Valeri. Jackson on the, just getting clarity on, and I think buttressed by Madam Mayor, about making sure that the Mayor and Council had some role. Look, we're guilty. I think the paralysis by analysis is real. We spend sometimes way too long picking through stuff where we have competent individuals like yourselves, great commissions and boards that do the grunt work to bring excellent recommendations before us. I don't think there's anybody with nefarious intent who's going around like, we're gonna approve this thing because we know it's gonna get, I don't think that's what that's about. But I do appreciate and would align myself with the comments of my colleague council member. At the end of the day, it's our names on it. And for something that's permanent, I would want to just take a peek or something. You know what I'm saying? I don't think that, again, I don't assume nefarious intent. But I do want to make sure that before Platt goes up, and I hate my name being on stuff, but I want to make sure, like, I really co-sign this thing before he gets out. So that's, you know, putting, making sure that we have some oversight, I think, is fair. And then we talked about the removal part. I do agree with part number one, the merging. Number two, I talked about particularly with regard to 2D. But, you know, notwithstanding those comments, and, you know, I'm in agreement with it and for three Works for me. Thanks for this presentation. Thanks for taking it back and forth. And again, it's all in the spit We're not trying to micromanage you but we just want to make sure but at least I'm coming from per se I just want to make sure that I'm okay with my name being on something on behalf of the city.

I understand that. Thank you Any other comments

Okay, I have three quick things. The Cultural Arts Commission talked about the database of public artworks. I know that we have something that's online. Go ahead, I hear you.

Oh, I'm ready, I'm ready. I think they specifically referenced the database for AIPD, and we have just finished compiling the list of all those artworks over the 25-year history. Now we have to go out and make sure they're still there. Before we put it up online, because I don't want to send anyone on a wild goose chase and not be there. So, yeah. So that is in process. And we agree we should be able to recognize that program. Because sometimes people don't even recognize that that is art and private development. It's like the piece that Council Member Valeria referenced on the corner down here. That's actually an AIPD piece by Creative Machines. So... And a lot of people have come to me saying, that's such a cool piece of artwork that you have. Well, sorry, it's not ours. But we should be able to communicate that. We will.

And we have people, really cool walking tours. So that could be part of our Rockville walking tour. So I fully support and co-sign that as well. as long as it's still there. And then when things are not, we can always archive them. I know we've had to do that with Memory Walk, for example. So I know that was a tough issue, but I think cataloging that and recognizing the community's input into that also has a place for thinking about how we archive and remember the past. And then they also had a comment about establishing a clear set of guidelines to track in lieu fees. I do support that as well. I just wanted to specifically call that out. I know that you had a nice accounting here from what has been done in the past, but just making sure that we can do that in the future. And if someone is contributing, how are we tracking and allocating that? There was something that came forward in a development project that we were told you can't include any name of the community in the artwork. Is there anything that says, no, we can't do that? Because we said, we'll come back to that and address that. So I just want to make sure that if we want to include a name of a community, like Twinbrook or what other community, Lincoln Park, that we're not precluded from that.

So this is a very good topic to explore. Because it gets into the regulation of commercial speech and non-commercial speech. And at what point does artwork become a sign and is a sign artwork? And there's a case law that's been established around that. So what I said to developers, because this isn't a good AI PD question specifically, if they have a development that is so tight and there is hardly any room to install public art, but they want public art, I will say to them, I will explore the options of signage with you if the public artist designs, creates, fabricates, and installs that sign. So I'm open to exploring that on a case-by-case basis because there are very good pieces of public artwork out there that do have signage. They artfully communicate where you are. So I that's a case by case basis for me because we want to make sure that we're there have been localities that have been sued for not regulating art as signage, but regulating marketing firms putting up signage. And those were very expensive lawsuits. So for that reason, like I would want to do a case by case basis.

okay that's helpful i appreciate that background and i think our goal was the primary intent is art but if it recognized the community woven into something why not um i just wanted to make sure that we weren't specifically doing anything to preclude that considering potential litigation But yeah, I had a note on that and I just wanted to say, and then we just spent a lot of time talking about JEDI. Just want to make sure that we're thinking about equity and the programs and policies that we're putting forward as you rewrite this and develop protocols. So we want to see that translate into all we do. Sure. Yeah. And whether that's transit considerations and equity and other types of equity considerations, we could just have that lens for this as well.

Yes, I agree.

Councilman Valeri, just remembered one last thing. I think, and this might be something to maybe go back to the CAC, but I would love to find a way to encourage more local artists, especially for the art in public places, not so much the private development stuff, but I definitely want us to have a diversity of artists, but we also have Montgomery College Rockville has a very strong arts program. I think that we have some fantastic artists here in Rockville. If we want to expand into Montgomery County, sure, if we got to. But I would love us to have a local preference on our art in public places, because I think that's another way to to both excite residents, but it's another way to excite young people too, who sometimes don't think that being an artist is a viable endeavor. It is very exciting as a young child to see, hey, that was somebody that used to live in Rockville and now their art's here. So I just wanted to throw that idea out as something to consider.

Something Councilman Valeri previously said, you just reminded me of it because I wrote it down and I didn't say it. And the Cultural Arts Commission said we tend to favor visual arts, graphic arts. So when it comes to arts in private places, to the comment of if someone were to develop something that supported performing arts, they made a gallery, they made a theater or something, Is that something that we have the capacity to consider?

I would consider in the AIPD as a contribution or in general. As a contribution? Yes.

It's like their form of art. Because I think they're right in saying like we're pretty much not including performing arts or things that support performing arts. But if someone is developing something that does support performing arts or create art spaces that will stay, I'm just wondering, is that allowable? Okay.

So for the revisions that I'm putting forward, it would not be, simply because developers have not expressed interest in doing that, because it's very expensive to do. They're often not financially viable. So that's why you don't see these spaces being put in. I've been in other jobs where people have wanted a black box theater, but they can't get the funding to do it, and they can't create the business plan to make it stay. And I think that's why developers have not implemented art spaces. Also, I think if you want to take into consideration, this article also allows for office space for nonprofits, for nonprofit arts and culture organizations, but they can't rent them out at the market rate because it's too expensive for nonprofits. So there could be a separate conversation for the nonprofit sector as a whole that the city could pursue that could still benefit arts and culture nonprofits. I think if the city wants to encourage a black box theater or a gallery, There are other avenues that wouldn't quite be a public-private partnership, but it's along that model. There's actually organizations that specialize in bringing those to communities, and they are sustainable because of the historic tax credits that they are able to take advantage of, and they specialize in creating those spaces. So for-profit developers haven't done it. It's just not financially desirable, and I think that's why we haven't seen it.

I appreciate some of the creativity options you've mentioned. I'll also note for instance, I'm not sure this was part of art in public and private places, but if someone wanted to come in and build a performance stage that is like in town square and it's providing tremendous joy in arts and community building, that might be something that, you know, I just wanted to make sure that we're being creative because I did take the comment very seriously and I've heard it multiple times of how do we support other types of arts as well. So I appreciate you thinking that through and sharing best practices with us. Yes. All right. Well, you've heard our feedback. I wanted to pause and say thank you. I also want to make sure that we've answered your questions as well as we can. You've got some feedback as a work session, and we'll have a chance to make decisions in the future. But have we given you enough to work with? Yes. Thank you. Okay. Thank you so much. You're welcome. We appreciate you.

You're welcome.

We're now moving on to our second work session, which is focused on amendments to the City Code Chapter 21, Streets, Roads, Rights of Way, and Public Improvements, and the Comprehensive Transportation Review. I'd like to welcome Sean Murphy, who is our Principal Engineer in Public Works, and also recognized panelist, Craig Cimino, Director of Public Works, and Ahmad Al-Shafi, Chief of Traffic and Transportation in Public Works. I will also just do a time check. We are at 9.23 and we have given ourselves until 10.15. We may not need all that time, but I just want to make sure I'm marking the time for us. Welcome to our panelists.

Hi, good evening. My name is, good evening, thank you Madam Mayor, members of council, Mr. City Manager, thank you for this opportunity to hold an opening work session on the proposed changes to chapter 21 of the city code, the road code. and the Comprehensive Transportation Review, the CTR. Joining me tonight, Director of Public Works, Mr. Craig Cimino, and Chief of Traffic and Transportation, Mr. Ahmad El-Shafi. The purpose of this work session is to obtain some general direction from Mayor and Council on the policy revisions to the code and separately to the CTR regulations. So I'll go over some background information. I will go through the timeline, introduce what these ordinance and regulations cover. We've picked out the top issues in Chapter 21 and the CTR. What we'd like to do is to pause at the end of each of the Chapter 21 sections to have a bit of discussion and direction from you all. And then we'll take the three CTR topics together and take a look at those. So updates to the code are a bit overdue. The code hasn't been significantly revised since 1958. We want to modernize that. Again, this is a great opportunity with the recently adopted zoning ordinance rewrite looking to support high density modern urban development. Both chapter 21 and the CTR were two specific action items of the city's FAST initiative. And as a reminder, that's the faster, accountable, smarter, and transparent project that the city's undertaken to make improvements to the permitting and development review process. We're looking again to facilitate housing and economic development by streamlining our workflows and approval processes. Those changes would include codifying some of our current practices and if where it's appropriate establishing some administrative approval authority to again speed up our development process. We also would like to ensure tenants for accessibility and Vision Zero are incorporated into our review standards to improve the safety and convenience of transportation modes for all transportation modes and users. And again, realigning Chapter 21 with the recently adopted zoning ordinance. So to be quite honest, staff has been working on this project for far longer than this timeline might indicate, but I've tied it to, again, the FAST phase two project. That brings us here tonight to have this initial discussion with you all. Looking ahead, we'll hold a public virtual meeting with the development stakeholders, get some of their thoughts. We've scheduled a briefing with the Transportation and Mobility Commission for August 25th. We've also invited our RBAC and RPAC members to attend that TMC meeting as well. The next time we see you all will be in September where we actually introduce a draft of the ordinance and follow up with some more work session on these changes. Now, the code does not require a public hearing, but we've scheduled for one. Certainly, we would like your feedback on as to whether to hold that public hearing or not. We can come back to that question after we go through some of these topics again to get your thoughts. Once the ordinance and draft CTR have been introduced, we'll return to TMC, again, get their thoughts on more of the detail of what's in that draft and scheduled for an adoption hearing in December. So I want to try and very briefly describe what this Chapter 21 is really about, our streets, roads, rights-of-way, and public improvements ordinance. The road code regulates and allows the city to manage the infrastructure, which makes up rights-of-way, including the streets themselves and the improvements therein. We do this through the issuance of permits and approvals. The code also requires that DPW establish standards and specifications. These are in addition to the minimum standards established by code, and it gets more into the nitty gritty engineering details. Chapter 21 works in tandem with the zoning ordinance to review and make requirements of private development. Again, trying to summarize on this slide the scope of what Chapter 21 includes and to try and address some of the misunderstandings or misconceptions as to what it doesn't cover. And so there are separate chapters or regulations specifically that look at traffic and parking in streets, for example. Um, any onsite development, any private, um, property is, is obviously, uh, regulated by the zoning ordinance. Uh, even the, uh, establishment of rights of way themselves is regulated by the subdivision ordinance. Um, the subdivision article of the zoning ordinance. Any improvements that we make for traffic safety access or circulation purposes come from a variety of policies and regulations really depending on where those improvements are located, whether it's rights of way or on site. with the development, whether it's existing or proposed improvements that are being analyzed. And then we'll take a closer look at the CTR, but the purpose there is to establish transportation adequacy in accordance with the city's adequate public facilities ordinance. So next, I'd like to go into the first of our topics for discussion, private streets. So Chapter 21 does apply currently to all city streets. That's clear in the code. And it's been the department's practice to wherever that private street is allowed to record a public access easement instead of the dedication of public right-of-way. Now, unless that private street is classified as an alley, DPW has generally pushed applicants to providing a public street for several reasons. I'll just go through a couple of those. The owners of private streets, typically HOAs, can be burdened with that maintenance requirement that the city would otherwise handle. There's also a bit of inequity to city residents, whether that maintenance is being provided directly from the city or through a third party. We found that certain city standards have been more difficult to enforce on private streets. This has come up specifically for the requirement of street trees, which doesn't make sense, and we'd like to correct that. Actually, I think it was corrected in the zoning ordinance rewrite. And it also makes sense to have a public right of way if that road contains city-owned and operated infrastructure, specifically the city's public water and sewer system, and very often storm drain as well. So again, the code is silent as to where a private street might be allowed. Because the city is a diverse and inclusive and equitable community, we generally don't support gated communities. So having public roads available to our citizens and to those who pass through is a priority of ours. And so by adding this to the code as to where private treaties could be allowed, we want to make it very clear to applicants what those scenarios might be. We've come up, staff, as proposing four different scenarios in which that might apply. We're asking mayor and council if they do support these scenarios. Residential alleys, again, typically what we've allowed by practice. non-residential campuses For example for higher education or a government the best example might be Montgomery College here in the city We've also received some development applications for research and development campuses so that that type of single use where there's a an overall owner for that non-residential use. where a private street might serve a apartment complex. We have not allowed that historically in the city, but if we think of some examples where this could have applied in the past, had it been allowed or had the subdivision gone through slightly differently, Thinking about Rollins Park, for example, or Parkside Landing, these sites were developed with private drive aisles, but maybe we could consider private streets in those circumstances. This last option, limited streets within a mixed-use zone that meet certain specific conditions. It's pretty vague, I realize, but the intent there would be where that street is not critical to the public transportation network or necessary for access and circulation or where it doesn't contain, again, the city public water and sewer, for example. The best example would be in Twinbrook Quarter, the recently constructed Festival Street, and that's sort of what we're modeling that after. So I want to pause here, again, offer you guys the opportunity.

Thank you very much. I'm just going to see if any of my colleagues on this side have any questions or comments. On this, yeah, we're starting on this.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thanks for staff for answering and clarifying questions about whether or not these changes would be retroactive, which they are with regard to private streets. So thank you for that. I have no further questions or comments.

Thank you. Council Member Fulton. Thank you, by the way. I do have one question. What is the benefit to the developer or anyone of a private street? I must be missing something. If our code still applies, but we are not responsible for that, why would someone want a private street?

There could be a few reasons. Private streets are not dedicated to the city. It remains privately owned land, so they can, to some extent, do as they would like. Maybe, I guess if we take Festival Street, if it's directly adjacent to that park, and so programming that private street for private use for events, for example, it's a little easier. for the owner, the private owner to do something like that.

That helps. That makes sense. Thank you. For your feedback, do we support? Yes, I support this proposal on private streets. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Valeri.

Yes. Hi. Thank you to Council Member Fulton for asking that question. This actually came up during drop-in where someone was having a concern about the snow removal on a street that was not a city-maintained street. So I think that it's always good to educate residents about, you know, no, this is not a city street. And this is why. And I will tell you, at least based on that feedback, they're none too pleased that it is not a city street. But, you know, that to me makes sense. It's also interesting, too, given the discussions that we had during the zoning ordinance rewrite and the parcel 12 and the idea of, you know, restricting access to certain types of vehicles. Like, I think, you know, at a certain point, if you want that kind of close control on a street, then yeah, it should be a private street. But otherwise, it's a city street and it's a a public utility, really. So no, I have this is really great. And thank you. Thank you for the very clear requested feedback.

Thank you for your presentation for the work on this. I will just say I know all of this is going to come back to getting feedback from the Transportation Mobility Commission, our pack and our back. So with that in mind that we'll get that feedback. I'll say I do support a public hearing. I do support getting their feedback. Regarding this particular question, I support staff's recommendation. I will say that a lot of people want private streets until they have to deal with snow and maintenance. And I do think that long term those residents may not have been there in the original project and now feel like they're treated inequitably. So I do support making those public. Um, and so I, and I appreciate staff's approach here. Um, now, if there are projects that are already in play, I also want to like. Timber quarter, I support that approach because there's been plans already laid out. Um, so I want to acknowledge people who are already in progress, but going forward after that. At some point, there's a cut off. Um, I would support this new approach. Can I also say, I think we need to more clearly articulate when HOAs want to give streets back to the city, what that process is. We literally had that question and drop in and they are not getting the same ability to go to work and go to school because they can't get out with snow. And sometimes it's hard to hire vendors because you're competing with governments and MCPS and others. And so they're kind of stuck. So I just want to acknowledge as we think about this We should also be thinking about what is a clear process if someone wants to give a street back to the city Is their initial fee? How do we deal with that? I just want to make sure that I also have a chance to raise that given some of the comments I've recently heard So that's my feedback Councilman Jackson

Thank you, Mayor. First, good presentation so far. I support a public hearing. I think that we need some public feedback as well as weigh in from the Transportation Committee and others. I have a question about private streets, and this is something that I have familiarity with, living in King Farm and being the HOA president for a number of years. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the workings of King Farm, it's a hodgepodge of private streets, public streets, private sidewalks, public sidewalks. It drives you up the wall. And the question of maintenance, snow removal, I could go on about what we... What the HOA pays for and what the city pays for and yes, and this is someone who's nodding but why are there so many private streets in King Farm and

I'll take that one because I was here. I know you were. At least the end part of it. I wasn't here when it was all approved, but the developer wanted the private streets. A lot of the reason why they wanted the private streets was upgraded amenities in the street, brick pavers and things like that. So they wanted something that was higher than the city standard, and they were allowed to have it, but they had to maintain it. There has been some requests to give things back and usually my first thing is if you give it back to us We're going to not necessarily abide by that upgraded Infrastructure that's there and that usually puts an end to the question, but wasn't there also when they built King farm wasn't there a desire to Have more density and so they made the trade streets narrower and There was, back when that was going on, we had some degree of how we were counting the parking on private streets and how we were counting the trees. We had a very disjointed way of counting the trees. If it was a private street, they got credit for the trees on that street. which was, in our opinion, not equitable because a street tree is a street tree is a street tree. And we have since cleaned up the code to rectify all of that counting of things on private streets because we were incentivizing private streets, if you would, by allowing them to count the trees differently than if it was on a right-of-way. We have since cleaned all that up and put that on a more level playing field, and that's why we're able to take a stronger stance here now on private streets.

So, but what I heard, and I'm sorry to belabor the point, but I just want to be clear, because for years, I have heard that we have private streets in King Farm, and they're narrower because we wanted more density. The city and the developer wanted more density, and that was a way to actually get it and to get more room to build more houses was to make the streets narrower. Is that not the case?

The mayor and council did approve alternate street designs for King Farm. And so some of the public streets and the private streets were accepted or wavered from the standards. But it wasn't universally just to get private streets. It was a little bit of both. But density was one of the reasons why they wanted to get different standards.

And that's what I want to get at is kind of we seem to be moving across purposes and that's okay if we end up there, but we have a desire to have more housing and more density in places in Rockville. And so, According to what we've proposed here today, we're saying no more private streets. So if we don't have the ability to negotiate private streets with developers, then do we have other tools to make sure that we can get the density that we say we need for all the housing that we want?

We reviewed our road codes road standards since that time since the urbanization and we have made changes to the standards to allow more denser and we've allowed For example, parking on one side, if there was enough parking in the street. We think we have urbanized our standards now to catch up with what happened, if you would, back then. And effectively, the only waivers we're taking the mayor and council have made it through. And the developers, we seem to have right-sized what we're doing now. And the developers seem to be accepting the practice that we're bringing to you here.

That's a perfect answer. Thank you so much for that answer. And let me just say, I mean, if we could develop some way to actually take back some streets, I'm sure, speaking as a King Farm resident, that would be awesome. I know that's really difficult to do, but maybe that's a step for another time. But no, I support exactly what you're trying to do here.

Council member I'll just say I sent a question to the city manager specifically on that very topic of a nature way who was the city to take the street back and we just need to also clarify what what that process is if there actually is one. So thank you for raising it. Council member Shaw.

Thank you for the excellent presentation. I do support staff's recommendation here and I also want to thank my colleagues for their questions. Thank you. Council member Van Graak.

So, yeah, private streets create problems. I've seen it broadly when I was in college in St. Louis, where they had an extremely broad ability for mixed-use zoning to have private streets, and it creates problems. And we've seen it here in Rockville. And part of it is not just that certain neighborhoods that have private streets have can't get it a lot of times those neighbors don't even know that it's a private street and blame the city for the problem and i know that a lot of times there's creative building that developers want to do but down the road it often becomes a city problem there are certain circumstances such as when you have an alleyway or when there's a non-residential campus where it certainly makes sense in limited circumstances to have private roads. But when you're getting into mixed use zoning and mixed use areas where snow plowing is gonna be a necessity, where you have the narrowing of roads, where you have a reason for the city to have its regulations, in a certain format for the benefit of not just the people who live there, but the people who are gonna be driving in there, it really makes sense to have it public. So the very narrow areas that you talked about at the beginning, which is the alleyways, the non-resident campuses, possibly certain complexes that are adjacent to each other under certain circumstances but outside of that I think we need to clarify that it's for the benefit of the residents as a whole not to have private streets and of course I'd also support my colleagues to the extent there's a way to get the streets back to the city I'd support that, but I think that also creates a lot of problems because depending on what that infrastructure was created, just as Mr. Seminole, you were talking about, it might not meet city code for even certain trucks that the city would need to do those streets so it's certainly something that we could look into but we have to be extremely careful because again we let it go in the first place and again all the more reason to be very very very restrictive about private streets because there could be a circumstance where they want to come back to the city but how it was built makes it difficult for the city to actually control its infrastructure Overall, though, excellent presentation. Really appreciate it. And I also support having a hearing on this. I think this is broad enough that we need to do so.

Thank you. Can I ask one clarifying question you made about the comment you made about trees. So we actually have heard about this. I think it was a project in King farm. I'm trying to remember exactly, but, uh, someone was developing a project and they were thinking about, you know, they were going to turn land over to the city to have public streets. And there was a debate about whether the trees would be counted as part of that project. We have used, we've fully solved that, like their trees that they put in a public right away would initially be counted. Correct.

As part of that, that has been clarified now, and no longer is there an incentive for street trees on private streets to count the example 1 of the examples we had was in town square. There was a tree removed that should not have been removed and it was not in the right away and we had to take enforcement action to get it back to where it should have been because it was a private street.

Yeah, okay. So when they think about the total number of trees they have to plant, we are initially allowing them to count because they're giving us the land and the road, but going forward, that becomes our tree.

No, I do not believe the street trees count.

I would like to know about that because I think that's something that we need to look at because if there's a total amount of land that's given to the city and then the project is based on that and then there's no place the crowding trees without them being able to grow. And with thinking about density, I think that we just need to be careful about that. That did come up as a major issue and a complaint that this is land that they own, they're gonna put trees there, they should count. So I wanted to flag that as we think about this. Okay, moving on to the next question.

Thank you. We'll move on to private improvements in the right-of-way. So private improvements which are privately owned by an adjacent owner can be allowed in the public right-of-way in a city street. It's been the DPW's current practice to issue permits and to require license and maintenance agreements for those cases. We found that urbanization, particularly in mixed-use districts where there are zero-foot setbacks for buildings, pushes some of those streetscape amenities into the public right-of-way. And doing so is supported by urban design principles, and it is, in fact, encouraged by the Town Center Master Plan. I want to just highlight two very specific examples that you all are very familiar with quickly, and because they'll come back in some of our later discussion. Shown on the right here is Gibbs Street, Gibbs Street in the square. That was closed to vehicle traffic during the COVID pandemic, and it was repurposed as a pedestrian promenade in a streetery. We did this through the issuance of short-term six-month permits. And again, that allowed businesses to use and to install private improvements in the right of way. The city recently formalized a formal agreement, a license and maintenance agreement, to allow for I believe it's a five-year term, you know, a long-term deal with Moorgard to allow that streetery to continue. And we're actually going through the process of working with Moorgard to improve that streetscape further. And so actually I would encourage you all to check back later this summer to see the square once Moorgard makes those final improvements. The other quick example that I would share is EV charging stations in the public right-of-way. I understand those were recently adopted and allowed through the electric vehicle readiness plan. That was brought to Marin Council and there was authorization for administrative approval of a template that would allow for EV charging stations in the right of way. And so that's the process that we want to apply to other improvements. So codifying the requirement that our current practice of requiring license and maintenance agreements and who would approve those. We would establish code requirements for certain allowable private improvements and we've broken those down into a few different categories. Here we have temporary improvements, These are most commonly associated with the construction period if there's a need to occupy that right away for shooting and shoring of a building directly a budding or to use the right of way as a lay down area again for site constrained. Area constrained sites. Uh, the second bullet here describes, uh, very specific improvements, uh, that we think are, um, uh, again, specific enough that, uh, Marin council could, could consider, um, uh, on their own vehicle charging stations. Like we've talked about architectural improvements of buildings again, directly abutting rights of way, uh, for awnings or. Balconies projecting into business district roads or for wayfinding signage, for example. And then if we consider even more broadly than that. improvements for urban streetscape furnishings that might be shown on a development plan, a site plan, for example. And those could include a number of different things, streetscape amenities for bicycle parking, for hardscaping, for landscaping, plantings, for amenity lighting, all sorts of common streetscape improvements that we're seeing with more urban development. Uh, of course, any other private improvements, uh, that might be proposed, uh, that are not categorized here, uh, would still be subject to Marin Council's approval in the public right of way for that to allow for that, uh, on a case by case basis. And so seeking your feedback on those different options, whether you support first the EV charging stations, the awnings, the signs, the balconies in business districts, and then beyond that, allowing administrative approval, again, with a LMA, a license and maintenance agreement, for other specified urban streetscape that is proposed through development.

Thank you. I'm watching the time, just trying to make sure we're getting the feedback. And I just want to say, broadly, does anyone have a question, or can you do a thumbs up? Okay, I'm gonna show some thumbs up and then I have three colleagues with questions. Okay, we'll start down the line there.

I was just going to say, generally speaking, for administrative approval for just about any of these, I'm okay. When we're doing something broader, like a giant streetscape and potentially closing things off, that's where I think we need to have a little bit of an oversight from the mayor and council. But if we're talking about awnings, we're talking about charging stations, balconies, I've got no issue. It's the larger issues that I think there needs to be some mayor and council, even if it's within development plan. If we're talking about a larger scale, I think that should be Mayor and Council Oversight.

Council Member Jackson.

I would agree. I just agree with my colleague, Council Member Van Graak. I think that's stated perfectly.

I'll echo, but I'll just note, again, there has to be some for bigger opportunities. The Transportation Mobility Commission, they're here for a reason to lend perspective. So I just want to make sure we're thinking about how you're going to build that into the approval process. Thank you. Councilman Valeri.

Yes, thank you. So, I think, I'm sure we'll get into it in the next work session, but I think that getting a little bit more specificity here, especially for number one, I think there's a difference between looking at an EV charging station in the right-of-way versus looking at a balcony. I think that there may be different levels here. I recall that when we had a development before us for Middle Lane, that this was pre-Zor adoption, that they were unable to have anything more than a Juliet balcony on Maryland Avenue. the developer at the time, the developer was like, well, we would want to do more than a Juliet balcony. So even long story short, even with amongst balconies, we're looking at, are we talking to Juliet? Are we talking to full size balcony? And I, you know, I, I really hesitate to say, yes, I support because I think that there's the, The devil truly is in the details here. And I will be the one to say it. Clarity is kindness. And any way that we can kind of look at the specifics of that, because I think we're looking at very different intrusion, I guess. And then overall, all these private improvements in the right of way, and this might It'll be a jump ball for whoever wants to answer this. Would we say that PROAG is a city policy for transportation?

I'm sorry and I can I can unless you want to go through I just I hate doing acronyms I just realized I just threw one out there but yes and you you asked a very current question currently right now pro-ag municipalities are not required to implement pro-ag because the Department of Justice has not passed it we anticipate that's going to happen so we are right now transitioning into pro-ag we're requiring by a matter of policy, all new developments to comply. The problem is, if I tell you today that PROAG is the policy, we'll be found in violation tomorrow because we have sidewalks that don't meet the new 2 percent requirement. And the Mayor and Council have approved a plan in the CIP to get us there. So, we'd be very careful on what we would say, and that's how I would say it right now. Yes, all new development, all new infrastructure will comply with PROAG, and we're figuring out now how to get existing infrastructure there because we know the day is coming when it will be mandatory.

That's, and thank you for that. I think that that is generally, that was what I thought, and for, I hate, I didn't have it up in front of me. So PROAG is the acronym for the Public Right-of-Way Accessibility Guidelines. They're guidelines around ADA and ABA accessibility in the public right-of-way. I think there's a lot of overlap. We've heard it, you know, with the public art. There's just a lot of aspects of pro-ag. And I want to make sure that while we can't say that it is a city policy right now, that as this evolves, that there is some sort of placeholder, but flexibility in the code that we can, once it is policy, that we can insert. Because I think it should be a policy of the city when it is. passed, and I will be equally cautious with you. And I'm sorry, and the ABA is the Architectural Barriers Act, which is even older than the ADA. So, thank you, thank you for that. I think generally I agree, I would be okay with a template agreement. I, again, I'd like to kind of see more details and maybe even I'm a big fan of illustrative examples, too, that would be, hey, this would fall under administrative approval. So thank you. And I know that both the Transportation Mobility Commission, as well as RPAC and RBAC, I'm sure, are going to have some great feedback and input. So I look forward to that as well. And thank you.

Thank you. I think we're ready for the next section.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Moving on to easements. Easements and right-of-way agreements such as LMAs are routinely necessary for development and CIP projects. However, the code doesn't specify that process specifically of how easements are approved. executed or abandoned. And so we we'd like to clarify that in the code specifically for easement abandonment because that does require the city to release some of its interest or responsibility to providing a service or maintenance of public infrastructure. In keeping with FAST goals, we think it's necessary to both clarify in the code and make it predictable for staff and applicants. DPW has worked closely with the city attorney's office to come up with very routine, very standard language and template agreements. that we think would will work well moving forward for any development. So we're asking whether you all support abandoning, I'm sorry, approving the abandonment of city easements in the code and allowing the administrative approval of certain easements by the city manager for certain template agreements.

Thank you. Colleagues, are there any specific questions? Can we do a thumbs up? All right. Good to go. Thank you.

Thank you. The next item will be primary access. Just to explain, traditionally, a record lot will have direct vehicle access from an abutting street that's been a tenant of land development, what we would call street frontage. However, Working with the zoning ordinance team, we want to allow for a bit of flexibility in developments in allowing for alternate site layouts. So the zoning ordinance currently and in the recently adopted version do allow for frontage on not just the street, but a common open space. There is a disconnect in Chapter 21, however, because lots that front on a common open space are obtaining their access by an alley where Chapter 21 defines an alley as only providing secondary access. We'll take a look at an example on the next slide. But the goal, again, would be to allow for alternate layouts to provide for that flexibility. Again, we would like to align Chapter 21 with the zoning ordinance to allow for that. One of the standards that staff is considering developing, where units are primarily accessed by an alley, we would not want that alley to exceed a certain distance. And that is in order to... To prevent developments from circumventing residential road standards to an extent, we want to encourage onsite walkability to slow the flow of traffic where we can by introducing street intersections with these alleys. All good urban planning design practices. This is an example taken from the recently constructed Tower Oaks development. I've highlighted the right of way in red. On the left-hand side, we have detached housing, which has frontage directly on a public street. In the middle is illustrating this common open space concept. There are town homes that both front a public street, and also there are separately units that front on a common open space, but those are all accessed by an alley. And so where those units are accessed by an alley, there is a public sidewalk allowing for pedestrian connectivity to the right-of-way because the standard for an alley does not require sidewalks. The aside from alleys we also. Want to allow for shared driveways without triggering the requirement for a street. And so if that driveway is less than a certain distance, and we've based that distance off of fire code requirements for access to lots, we again want to provide for that flexibility in development without using a public street, but having a private driveway with an easement between the owners. So we're seeking Marion Council's input to change the Chapter 21 definition of an alley to allow for secondary access to develop standards where that access is, where that primary access is being provided by an alley. And then the second question asking about the use of shared driveways for certain residential uses.

Thank you. Dr. Miles.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I want to thank staff for answering a question, but I needed a little bit more clarification. If we can go back to the previous slide, that example was helpful with regard to pedestrian access in the context of an alley. My read of it was that there was going to be a requirement of a pedestrian access in the alley, but that's not true. There should be some sort of pedestrian access requirement. which in this case, it wouldn't necessarily be the alley. It would be the courtyard between the two, presume those are townhomes on the right-hand side. Is that the pedestrian access that's being mandated in the context of there being an alleyway?

Correct, in that green open space.

Got it. And so the broader, again, I just want to make sure I'm reading what you all are recommending correctly, is that in the context of there being an alleyway, there just has to be some sort of walkway area but it doesn't necessarily have to be an alley, just something that connects the housing units. Is that a fair read?

Right. We don't want to allow for pedestrians in the alleys themselves. We want to separate vehicles from pedestrian traffic. And so providing primary vehicle access in the rear via the alley and primary pedestrian access at the front of the unit via the open space.

Thanks for the clarification. Just help the written response to the question that I have. That's all I have. Thank you.

Councilman Van Graak.

I just want to clarify, we're not mandating anything more restrictive. We're just giving more abilities to construct things in a more favorable positioning if they want to do so. Is that correct? Good. That's what I thought. Just wanted to make sure.

Does this have anything to do with some of the multifamily projects that are coming through, like Is it just mostly for townhomes and single family?

It's mostly for townhomes and what we project multiplex units, again, as are now being allowed by the zoning ordinance.

Okay. Thank you. And are there any projects that would this negatively affect that are going through review right now?

No, they're all moving to this practice now, and we're trying to align Chapter 21 with 25 with what we kind of have settled on as a good common practice.

Excellent. And Dr. Miles' question was exactly one of the ones that I was thinking of, so thank you for asking. Yeah. All right. Do we have a thumbs up?

Thank you. We'll move on to road code waivers. And specifically for road code waivers, we want to focus on dead end streets. The code prohibits dead ends. Specifically, it says that roads must connect with other roads or end in a cul-de-sac. However, given the very urban nature that redevelopment is going through, we are proposing alternatives to the more land-intensive cul-de-sac design by allowing for different turnarounds, T or hammerhead type areas to allow for more flexibility, a bit more space for urban development to facilitate again housing for the fast goals. We are proposing to also allow for flexibility where dead ends are under a certain distance. Again, we're considering fire access to these units. And so if that road is not necessary for fire access, it might not need a turnaround. if it's meeting certain conditions, if it's only for residential, for example. We'll take a look at an example here. on the currently under construction, the farmstead, the King Buick site. There are three dead ends that I'll just quickly point out. The first being in the top left of the screen. You can see the very large T or hammerhead. Turn around area because that alley is exceeding 150 feet It has to be safe for a fire engine to go down to serve those units and to turn around the alley at the at the top left continues through from George Thomas Road and circles around it provides for that complete circulation and There are two more dead ends at the bottom of the screen pointed out by these blue arrows. Those are simply dead end alleys without a turnaround. They are less than 150 feet. They're very short. They're pretty much just serving those townhome units that provide access to it. And so staff feels comfortable in allowing very limited dead ends to allow for flexible housing development. So seeking your support on these two items, allowing the connection of roads to either end in a turnaround in something other than a cul-de-sac. The item that I didn't mention, allowing roads to connect to a private drive aisle or driveway where there's a continuation of public access via an easement. And secondly, to allow administrative approval of certain dead ends without a turnaround if it meets certain criteria.

Looking to this side, are there any questions?

Okay.

Can I just ask two questions for safety? One is, have we seen any challenges with this in regards to fire or even ambulance access?

That's what the 150 feet is for. After 150 feet, the fire needs access there, so we need to turn around, et cetera. So this is in conjunction with the fire regulations for fire trucks.

Okay. And if someone, if you're connecting to private drive aisles and there's a fire truck that needs to get through, are you saying that the fire truck could use the private drive aisle to turn around or they would just back out?

We would, on limited circumstances, allow the public to use that private drive aisle to turn around if we had a public access easement on it.

Okay. And that's not a situation where a car would be parked there?

No, no, it would be the entrance to some, some other private development that would allow public access for somebody to turn around at the end and come back.

So it wouldn't be a block by accident. All right. I was just going to there's something that came up. Last weekend, it wasn't residential, but it was, um. Some of the car shops that are in the Lincoln Park community is is raffle border and, um. there were cars that just all stacked up and an ambulance couldn't get through or turn around. Someone had a heart attack and it was hard to get help. So I just thought, I just had that in mind. I wanted to make sure we're thinking through all those issues. So you're telling me this will be safe?

Correct. We would ensure that the area selected would have an easement and it would not, it would be subject to not being blocked under those conditions.

Okay. And then in some cases we just need to do better enforcement.

Yeah, I don't believe any of the areas we select are going to have that parking problem. They're going to be pretty obvious entrances to businesses, et cetera, that public almost can go to anyway, but we're going to have an easement to protect the public's right to go and back turnaround.

Okay. We'll trust that answer. Okay. Do we have thumbs up?

street classification.

This is an interesting one. The road code functionally classifies streets, mostly according to the adjacent land use and zoning. So that's all done. Land use and zoning is separately adopted by comprehensive map amendments, as was recently done with the zoning ordinance. The process laid out in Chapter 21 to classify streets, however, it's a little unique. It requires, first, the recommendation of mayor and council to the city manager, back to you all with that recommendation again, and then before a classification is adopted by resolution. The classification of a street, again, because it's tied to land uses and zoning, is typically self-evident based on what those adjacent parcels are zoned for. It's also necessary through redevelopment that that classification of street be known up front during the design process to be able to lay out the site and design around it. We are looking to clarify that in code through administrative approval, more simply to allow for the classification of streets. Secondly, there was some discussion that came up during the zoning ordinance adoption process about emergency access drives. And so I want to share an example of where the city has been successful in addressing this very issue. So at the top of the screen is the Chestnut Lodge development. To the bottom of the screen is the Rose Hill neighborhood. Chestnut Lodge has a single point of access off of West Montgomery. However, to allow for emergency access, it was necessary to provide some alternate means for fire trucks in the case of an emergency or in case that single entrance off of West Montgomery became blocked for whatever reason. And so while this looks like a typical six-foot sidewalk, it in fact supports the load of a fire emergency vehicle. There's pavers underneath that grass. There are bollards to restrict access only in the event of an emergency. And so we've developed these standards before and could implement a new street classification for emergency access drives just the same. So seeking mayor and council's feedback on those two options. First, the classification of a new road for emergency access. And secondly, the process for street classification proposed by administrative approval.

I will just say those are some of the best walking paths secret hidden areas and it really creates a beautiful way to get around the city for pedestrians and feel safe, so thank you for sharing that example. should be safe everywhere that's true. All right, do we have a thumbs up on this. Excellent.

This will be the last chapter 21 topic, street closings. First, I want to recognize that Mayor and Council are authorized specifically for the permanent closure and abandonment of rights of way that we don't propose to change at all in the code. However, the process for temporary closures is a little less clear. There's some overlapping of authority where the code says that Mayor and Council could close a right of way for a period of 18 months by resolution. well, the department could just as well issue a permit for up to two years to allow for that temporary closure. And that's exactly what happened with the Gibbs Street example. There are other means of temporary closing rights of way that I should mention. Chapter 12, if there are special events, Say, for example, a marathon in town center that follows its own process not addressed by chapter 21 but managed through record recreation and parks through a public events license. So staff are proposing to first retain their authority for permanent closures. We think that's clear. But to clarify where all other temporary road closures could be approved administratively by the department through the issuance of permits. And so perhaps we could clarify the length of term temporary road closures exceeding that typical permit duration might still be subject to parent council's approval through agreement, through a resolution, and clarifying all other temporary road closures at the discretion of the director.

Thank you. Just to clarify, the original agreement to close grips was a very robust mayor and council discussion. So I just wanted to flag that that happened during COVID. And I know that staff maintained it, but that was a public discussion to support it.

You are correct, Madam Mayor. There was a very robust public discussion. Resolution of the issue was not done during that session. Staff was directed to come back a second time. However, in the end, the mayor and council did not want it to come back and gave guidance to city manager to have the director take care of the temporary closing. And that's what happened.

Okay. I just want to make sure that, like, if there's something that's closing for two years, we would know about that. It wouldn't just randomly happen.

Yes, we don't typically close streets for two years or anything, but there is authority to do so if it needs to happen. So clearly the mayor and council are going to know about it. It's a matter of do we need a formal agreement or do we do it under permit?

Okay. Council Member Valeri?

So, I've been kind of struggling with this concept a little bit for the entirety of the presentation, but it's kind of hit me really hard right now. We're talking about closing streets to vehicular traffic, right? Mr.

Primarily, yes. Ms.

Okay. So, is the, my understanding and correct me if I'm wrong, that the CTR encompasses all methods of transportation and mobility. So we heard during community forum from the RBAC chair, does the CTR include pedestrians, bicyclists, and other modes of transportation beyond automobiles?

The CTR does not prescribe any standards for anything other than vehicles. The standards that we do to review pedestrian, bicycles, et cetera, is usually coming from either Chapter 21 or it's coming from the standards we write, like the neighborhood traffic guidelines or Chapter 25. The CTR itself does not promulgate any standards other than the capacity and the transportation improvement fee, as you'll find out.

Gotcha. But wouldn't we, just to be clear, when we're talking about transportation, we're talking about automobile transportation.

Closing of streets, yes, we have never closed the street and closed it to pedestrians and bicyclists. Matter of fact, we have specifically tried to retain pedestrian and bicycle access when we've done it.

Exactly. Okay. I just wanted to be real clear on this because I think that when we just say road closings, you know, one person's road closure is another person's opportunity to traverse safely. So I appreciate this. I vaguely recall the very robust discussion around Gibbs. I know it continued to be robust. And yeah, I think i can i can i'd have to think on this one a little bit more whether or not you know it was a good discussion to be had in the public eye um and wouldn't want to lose that opportunity but also i would want to make it easier as well to to do some of these temporary street closings so um yeah i guess i'm i'm a little wavering i'm not agnostic but i'm i'm kind of wavering on this one

Thank you. I remember one of the things that came out of the robust discussion was thinking about ways for emergency vehicular access. That was one. And then there was some discussion about thinking about pickup opportunities and creating space for that. So there were some improvements that came out of a discussion. Just out of curiosity, are there and what instances would staff be exercising their right to do two years without mayor and council being aware?

I can't see any right now. Maybe another pandemic.

all right we are not going to bring that into existence no no manifesting on that council member fulton i do feel like on this i just i i want to make a point uh it is intention for us to say we need to move things faster get things done let's make it easier for people yet we want to have a conversation here scheduled every it takes months to get it scheduled I am in favor of being able to move faster while still exercising appropriate oversight. I also think it's worth noting that like, These meetings are not the only place where things can be public and clear to the public and communicated well. In fact, I would argue in a lot of ways, this is not the best way to do that. So I do think that you confirmed that the mayor and council would be aware of any such closure before it happened, if it was that long. And I hope that we could find a way to make sure that if we were ever doing that, it wouldn't just be awareness, but we'd be able to have that opportunity for, you know, And you all would be thinking about things like emergency access and pickup, and there would be an opportunity to make sure that it was done well.

In fact, Council Member, we had three public meetings, staff-held public meetings. In fact, we went door-to-door of all the businesses on Gibbs Street to personally invite them to those meetings.

Awesome. Thank you. Council Member Van Graak.

Yeah, and I just want to just expand on that because it's not just about public. So long as the code allows an oversight. So there can be an administrative approval, but that the mayor and council can exert and veto that decision. That allows us to be able to do it while retaining the ability to do something on an expedited basis without months of potential meetings if needed.

I think our colleagues have shared some good feedback. Just making sure that if this is allowed, that we are one, we must be notified, and two, there's veto power. Understood. Okay, thanks.

Thank you. We'll talk next about amendments to the CTR. So as we said, the CTR is implementing the APFO for transportation, making sure that there is adequate capacity for the APFO and there is a review for acceptable traffic flow within the city's network. Uh, the, uh, very similar to chapter 21, the purpose of updating the is again, uh, implementing, uh, fast initiatives. Um, and, uh, to update some of the thresholds for requirements, uh, to make it more equitable, uh, between developments. Staff also intend to separate out the ctr regulations from some of the more administrative processes or or guidelines into two distinct documents Similar to to for example similar to what we've done with the with a development review manual setting up guidelines for applicants, what's needed for submissions, a checklist of requirements, some of the more administrative process. trying to summarize again what the CTR specifically covers and what's covered by separate codes and regulations. Again, the CTR is focusing on adequacy and mitigating insufficient, specifically vehicle adequacy. It the transportation report evaluates developments impacts to road capacity and traffic operations. It establishes the transportation improvement fee. Yeah, all of which will take a look at what some changes are proposed. The CTR currently requires mitigation whenever a developer is adding greater than 10% capacity to that intersection. However, staff are proposing to eliminate that requirement for mitigation if it can be shown that that intersection will still operate at an acceptable level of service. by reducing or eliminating that requirement for mitigation where there's still adequacy within the transportation system, staff proposes to be more equitable between developments. The second change that staff are proposing relates to our requirements for a transportation report. There is a threshold for applicants proposing so many trips, 30 peak hour net trips, to submit for an onsite report. However, the CTR is really focusing more, should focus more on the adequacy of public facilities, and staff can continue to review onsite requirements, but there are other channels The zoning ordinance, for instance, the on-site requirements for transportation safety can be done through, can continue to be done through the development review process. rather than the requiring an onsite report. And so we would remove that requirement for an onsite report. We would, however, still continue to analyze two of the intersections closest to the development for applications proposing so many trips. But that analysis would not be used to require any capacity mitigation. It's more for our information, our understanding of how traffic is operating at those intersections. And then the third change to the city's transportation improvement fee The tiff is used by the city to make certain public improvements. These might include installing bus shelters or sidewalks. But the tip is not used in making any capacity improvements. Staff are proposing to lower the threshold of requiring the transportation improvement fee from 30 peak hour net trips down to 10 peak hour net trips. And by lowering the threshold of trips, we can increase the number of development projects subject to that requirement, which is actually more equitable to collect from developers of all sizes contributing to this fund so that the city can make transportation improvements. So taken as a whole, seeking mayor and council's feedback on these four items, eliminating the requirement to provide capacity mitigation where there is adequacy at that intersection, eliminating the requirement to submit the onsite report for applications with less than 30 peak hour net trips, still requiring that applicants of less than 30 peak hour net trips or more than 50 total peak hour trips to analyze intersections and lowering the threshold for the payment of the transportation improvement fee from 30 to 10 peak hour net trips, and adding a new threshold for any application to pay for that transportation improvement fee of more than 50 peak hour total trips.

Thank you. I know that Council Member Fulton and Dr. Miles had questions. Council Member Fulton, go ahead.

Thank you for this. I really appreciate it. But before getting to your actual feedback, I want to ask a question. And I'm sorry if this is sort of out of the blue, you've done a really nice job of explaining what this is and what this isn't. And that it's, you know, you said it's mostly about vehicular traffic. And you've given some of the purposes here about acceptable traffic flow, meaning vehicular traffic flow. What if we wanted to make it more than that? What if we wanted the purpose of the CTR to be about all modes of transportation and impacts on them and not just vehicular traffic? What is our ability to conceptualize it that way and think about changes and improvements for all modes of transportation?

You can do that, however, the CTR, to be quite blunt with you, the CTR is being conceived as more than it really is. It is a way to not only do those things that we're talking about with the transportation improvement fee and capacity, because we have an APFO, it's also a way to think about reviewing the entire development and all of the transportation needs. We're going to retain that in a checklist, but we're going to separate out where the core requirement comes for each of those requirements, if you would. For example, Chapter 21 lays out a lot of standards that they must meet. You don't have to repeat them in the CTR because there's already a code requirement to do those things. and there's already a Chapter 25 requirement to do those things. And so there's a lot of feeling that we've got to add things here because we've got to make it more equitable, but that is already out there in the codes, et cetera, to do that.

But part of what we're doing with our codes and the ZOR is to synthesize, to bring like with like, to not make people have to go from one place to another to find the different requirements. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off, but I just – Our approach when we do development seems to be focused on vehicular traffic flow. Is this gonna increase traffic? Is it gonna increase traffic? I'm just wondering if this body, given our priorities, has the ability to think holistically about the impact on all modes of transportation when we evaluate development.

I agree with you, and that's why we're going to have a checklist that's going to contain everything. So it's a one-stop guideline shop for the developer and everybody looking at it. Here's all the requirements synthesized from everywhere. However, you do not have to create any new standards for pedestrians because they're already all out there. And we are, in fact, looking at streets holistically. In fact, we are paying probably more attention to pedestrian and bike safety right now than we are A lot of them. For example, one example is on East Middle Lane. We are actually considering removing a vehicle lane, a turn lane, where it enters Rockville Pike so we can get an adequate sidewalk and get the bike lane to go through there. So we're actually thinking of doing the reverse of what people say we're only looking at vehicle stuff. We're actually trying to do that.

I appreciate that. And I thank you. I'll take you at your word as long as we're able to do it. But just one last question on it. When we talk about the tie to the it's the adequate public facilities ordinance that we do a transportation review on. Is there anything about the APFO that requires facilities for other modes of transportation and pedestrians? Or does the APFO only consider vehicular traffic?

The APFO only considers vehicular traffic capacity.

Got it. Okay, I'll let it go at that. I just wanted to make sure I understood where, I wanted to make sure somehow we were looking at it holistically, and I'll take you at your word that we'll do it that way.

Dr. Miles.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I want to thank staff again for answering my questions in advance. I'm asking them again because it's still less than clear for me, and perhaps in this discussion you can help clarify the point. It's kind of backwards, so I've taken point number four up here first. And it's this, who's the entity that, question I ask is, who's the entity that determines peak trips? And the response I got, I guess in part, it is the developer in part that would help determine those peak trips. That the city would get input from the developer. But then it strikes me that it's in the developer's interest to reduce the number of peak trips so as not to have to pay the TIF. So, Again, we have very smart, again, high marks to all the folks in DPW. I don't think you all are pushovers, but I'm just concerned that if it's the developer that's giving us the numbers, how can we ensure their accuracy in terms of determining peak trips?

The guidelines detail very specifically what manual they use to determine the number of trips for each type of use in the development is a very prescribed process. There's standards out there that are published that they have to use. They do it because they know what the development is doing. Staff reviews it to make sure they're following the correct guidelines and using the correct manual and the correct numbers to do it. So despite them submitting it to us, they have a very prescribed process and very prescribed manuals they use to take

calculate those trips understand I appreciate the response I'm again it's just a concern that's all from a incentive perspective the other question I had is I needed some additional assistance in understanding the capacity mitigation mandate you spoke about it earlier but it I'm still trying to wrap my brain around On the one hand, it seems to be a good thing to ensure that traffic is appropriately managed. So if we were moving it, like I'm trying to understand why you all are advocating for the change that you're advocating. So again, apologies for having you to re-explain it to me.

I guess my question is, which change are you talking about? Yeah, the first one. Yeah, see, what we do right now is it requires any developer who's generating more than 10% more traffic to mitigate an intersection, even though after they do the development, the intersection is going to be at an acceptable level of service. So they're actually doing the opposite of what the speaker spoke at during community forum. If we follow this, they're actually going to have to do improvements at an intersection, even though the intersection is going to function fine after they're done. Just the way it was written, we want to eliminate that and only require improvements to intersections when the capacity is going to be exceeded at the intersection.

Thanks. I'm going to just munch on it a little bit, but I appreciate your explaining it to me again.

Council Member Valeri? I like that. I'm going to munch on a lot of this, I think, over. Just for my own clarity, maybe clarity for people up this late watching at home, what exactly is the difference between a net trip and a total number of trips?

The net trips subtracts out the existing trips that the site is authorized. For example, if it was a retail center of a certain size, there's a certain number of trips that inherently has already been approved for that development. And they come back and they put a residential in there. You take the new residential trips minus the old trips. That's the net trip.

Gotcha. Okay. Thank you. I was joking. Math is not my strongest subject, so I appreciate the guidance. When the city does a traffic study, now I understand developers do their own traffic studies. We definitely heard some of this tension around the new Rockshire development, where there was, I guess, a difference in approach on traffic studies. When the city does a traffic study, Do we look at the, not necessarily the, pardon the pun, the intersection of vehicular and pedestrian slash bicycle traffic, but do we kinda gather data on how much existing pedestrian or bicycle traffic there is?

When looking at the pedestrian and bicycle traffic, there's not a standard of capacity by numbers. What we do in that regard is we look at our master plans. We look at the pedestrian master plan, the bikeway master plan, all the plans, and we see which infrastructure is lacking there, and then we see what is on the frontage of that development and then require them to do improvements there. As far as the intersections go, we always look at all the pedestrian and bicycle movements at all of those intersections. It's understood we're doing that, and they're required, especially on the frontage. We can require a lot of development improvements on the frontage if there's lacking of that capacity or the width of the sidewalk, for example. The pool in a good example is Woodley Gardens Pool. The sidewalk did not meet the standard, and they came and developed. They put a new sidewalk in that met the standard.

Yeah. No, that makes sense. Thank you. I just think, you know, we're going to have an evolving definition, I think, of transportation and, frankly, traffic because I think that over time things are going to look a little different. I just want to make sure that, you know, we are thinking in a more proactive way in how we define transportation. I would be absolutely up for including adequate pedestrian or bicycle facilities as part of the APFO. I don't know why we couldn't. We already have the advisory body that is the Transportation Mobility Commission. I think that their input is vital to any development that's coming in because they have that particular expertise and lens to be able to look at these sort of things, but if we could you know, codify it in some way, I think that that would be a more progressive view of the way that we look at traffic and transportation overall. And maybe we'll get to that point because I'm thinking, you know, I would be fascinated to see what some of the peak hour trips, you know, for less car-centric newer developments will look like because I think it's going to look different over time. So no, I appreciate that, and I echo Council Member Miles' concern too. Again, the developer does have to do the traffic study. I think that obviously the city traffic study is probably the most neutral arbiter in many ways, but I could see that being perhaps a challenge. But thank you, and I really appreciate Actually, I appreciate everybody, but definitely Mr. Cimino, who I feel like I've known for so long. And we've got a crazy journey together, and I always appreciate how you take the time to explain things the way that you have. So thank you.

Thank you. I echo and support the comments of Councilor Miles, Fulton, and Valeri. I did want to just say two things, well, three things. One is this is something, the CTR is something that the Traffic and Mobility Commission has been asking about for a couple years. I really would like to get their feedback on this, especially this specific section. I think there's a lot in here. I think that moving to administratively published guidelines, does that remove the commissions in RPAC and RPAC You know, this discussion, I will note that Vision Zero came from a mixture of mayor and council and the community driving this discussion. So I just want to make sure that we create opportunities to, you know, not only have, which I fully respect and appreciate, and you keep us legal and safe, this is an engineer's perspective, but Vision Zero has really grown from the community. and engineers are embracing Vision Zero, but there's always space for hearing what the lived experience is beyond what the technical standards are. I really want to, on this in particular, give the opportunity to have those review bodies give us input here. This is one in particular I wanted to pause on. The second piece is the peak hour net trips. How did you come at the number with 30? In my head, I was thinking of number for numbers two, three, and four, where it's just 30 to do 20, or four at 30 to 10 to 20. So where did the 30 number come from? Because if you have an area, because you talked about total, that has a lot of trips, Adding an additional 30 could be a lot. Um, so I, I was the, the number, the numbers jump was what caught me.

30 is the existing number where that came from. Um, believe it or not, it proceeded by 21 years in, in the city. Um, exactly. So it goes way back. Um, we're, we're proposing to lower it to 10 and then to add a second group. And again, which is more than 50 total trips. And this is what we hear about from the community a lot. This is what we hear about from the boards and commissions a lot. Wait a minute, you're telling me that there's only 28 new net trips and they don't have to do all this? We're adding this 50 because it could be a major redevelopment where there's a lot of trips total, but there's not a lot of new ones and still require them to go back and analyze the intersections and pay the transportation improvement fee.

Okay, I will say when we did the CAC, Cultural Arts Commission code, it was very helpful to see the comments of the commissioners. This is one that I value, and I would really like to get their feedback before I particularly weigh in. But I appreciate and support where staff is going. I just love to get that additional perspective. Council Member Van Graak.

Thank you. Obviously, I support what my colleagues are saying. We definitely want to hear from the Commission. We definitely want to understand where their perspective is. But I think the broader issue with these four questions that we're addressing here is, on the most part, almost every single question you've got that has a lesser threshold that needs to meet it I'm going to support that. However, as you're hearing from a number of colleagues and as I have it in my notes, one of the big key is determining what is going to be that impact. And so when you're talking as potentially eliminating the need for transportation reports and reviews, that's the key to determine what the impact is in the first place. So I really think we need to not diminish where we have the necessity for the on-site transportation reports for the applications so that we can more effectively understand what the actual impacts are. Because even if we're just evaluating certain peak hour trips, that transportation report could evaluate and see differently. What is the peak hour that you're looking at? Because in certain areas of the city, different peak hours whether it's lunchtime going into an area schools versus versus rush hour could all impact differently and that on-site transportation report does a more broad evaluation than simple checking off boxes as to whether it's going to have certain peak peak hour impact or not so to the extent that we're limiting the on-site transportation report, I want to not necessarily do that and make sure that we're actually having a transportation report where we need to and limiting the amount of, for example, requiring applications with less than 30 peak hour trips, not more to analyze, to give those extra necessities. Basically, we've got certain areas of the city that we want to make sure that if we're going to be building in that area, we're not impacting the city overall. We can still have the development, but we have to make sure that it's not creating more of a burden than need be.

If I could, Councilmember, number two, the reason we're proposing elimination of the on-site transportation report, that's on the private property. We already get all the information off the site plan. And requiring a developer to do another plan, another submission, when we, in fact, already have all the information on the site plan, is duplicative. And that's why we're recommending getting rid of it. We still look at that site plan for all of them. For example, one of them that has more than those trips They're not required to do an on-site one, but we get all the information through the site plan process, so it's duplicative.

So, help me out here, because I know that when we were evaluating the, for example, Rockshire development, part of the issue was there was no requirement for an on-site development transportation report. I know there was discussion from us on the day saying, hey, where's the transportation report? They said, well, we did a voluntary report. But they acknowledged their voluntary report didn't meet the standard of a full on-site transportation report. And so what I'm trying to get at is just because there's a site plan doesn't necessarily mean that there's going to be an on-site transportation report, which I think is going to be helpful for us in evaluating what is going to be the impact.

I do not believe so, because the on-site report just says what the infrastructure is on-site. When they have a crosswalk on-site, et cetera, not in the public streets. When we say on-site, we don't mean in the public street. We mean on the private property outside of the public realm. And so there's nothing there that we don't get from the site plan.

Well, then how can we evaluate? Because I think what maybe we're getting at or what I'm getting at is I want to understand that when we're putting this out and we're making an evaluation, we understand the impact of the transportation on the surrounding area. We look at that through the right of way.

We looked at that through Chapter 21. We looked at that through the zoning ordinance and all the things that's smitten to us. This on-site report is just duplicative of what we already get.

Can I ask, Council Member, can I ask a question? When do you involve the Transportation Mobility Commission? I know sometimes you do joint meetings or invite RPAC and RBAC. So when would they be able to see what's going on?

125, is it peak hour trips? Peak hour trips. If it's greater than 125 peak hour trips.

Total or net?

Net.

That's a lot. That threshold is really high for a city that's trying to do Vision Zero. So I'll just note that. I know last time we were really bringing more projects as courtesy reviews. I just I just want to make sure that we're not that we're thinking about moving the vision zero stuff forward to my colleagues comments here. That's the intent of what we're trying to do. So I just as you look at revisions and talking to the commissions and committees, just we would like you to come back to us with that in mind. Yeah, okay, um, there were a couple of things at this is your last section, correct? Okay. Um, there was some things in the staff report that talked about, like, cross marked crosswalks. I just wanted to my comment is I would love more marked crosswalks. I think we've heard from community members that they would love more Mark crosswalks. So I just want to put that plug there. And then there was a comment about like, we don't typically like to have only one entrance in a community. You showed us some examples of like how there has been safe ways and just not having cut through traffic. So I just wanted to, we've said that the body has spoken a number of ways about that. As you look at revisions, just keep the spirit of the body's feedback on that in mind, please.

We have heard you loud and clear. That is why we're putting that forward. We always had the anticipation that we could keep trying to get two regular entrances, and I think what we're acknowledging is in infill development, you're going to have an impact on that adjacent neighborhood, and that's why we're putting this forward, because we've heard you.

Thank you very much. Thank you to the entire team. I know this is a lot of work in the making, and you outlined a very articulate process going forward, and we look forward to it. Thank you. Okay, so next we have the mock agenda. We have reviewed this during the leadership planning team meeting, but just wanted to flag in case anyone has any further comments. Okay, thank you. Next is old new business. Dr. Moss.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I wanted to bring up a request I think we received from Peerless Rockville about a letter in support of their grant from the historic... Foundation, I'm gonna have to pull it up. It is a letter, an email correspondence, I believe we received back on the 27th. This program, or grant program, this Rural Roots, Freedom, and Kinship in Rockville's Haytide community. So I'm just wondering if there's support among us here to have staff work on a letter of support for Peerless's application for this grant.

Thank you, Dr. Miles. I'll just also note this is a project titled Rural Roots from Freedom and Kinship in Rockville's Haiti Community and speaks to Haiti being a thriving, very rural, self-sustaining black community bound together by tight-knit family and social networks and shaped in response to the legal and economic restrictions of segregation. And this primary objective is to update an outdated survey data, create a baseline for the future, planning and they will host a public launching event featuring expert-led walking tour of the Hittite community. So I support this grant and just want to see, to support the comments of Dr. Miles. Can we do a thumbs up? Okay, excellent.

We'll have it ready tomorrow.

Thank you very much. Councilman Valeri.

Yes. Hi. I absolutely support the intent of it. I do have some other concerns regarding ongoing outreach and engagement. So I will reserve those for now. But I think it's a more than worthwhile grant. I do want to note that and I believe that Council Member Jackson as well is familiar with this, there was a incident regarding a service animal at a business in Rockville, and while it was very kindly addressed, I think ultimately it caused some discomfort by making the individuals have to be outside in the heat and so it might be a good teachable moment or maybe some better education on where service animals are and are not allowed to be. I think this dovetails nicely with our Jedi discussion that we had. And again, I know that it was very tactfully dealt with, but I think that ultimately it did cause some consternation, and I do defer to others on that as well. I just wanted to raise that. Thank you. Council Member Jackson?

Yeah, so just because Council Member Valeri mentioned my name and just to clarify. No, no, no. It's okay. I agree with you. But I was there and I saw it and heard it and it wasn't egregious but yeah I think it definitely bothered myself and you're the person that it occurred to and I think it does speak to the need for more education and potential

outreach that we need to do more of with this service animals and acceptance so thank you for raising it can I just ask a clarifying question on that what because I don't it wasn't clear and I'm looking at was it city staff who were maybe not or was it a private okay yeah just wanted to clarify that

Perhaps more information can be shared with the body. And is there anything that the city has to do so that we're clear on? I'm sure Jeff's team would like to know what

Maybe during our one-on-ones we can just catch up. Perfect.

Thank you very much. The last thing I just, I meant to say this earlier during the JEDI plan, but I just wanted to specifically call out that it is my hope that the Human Rights Commission will be involved in the finalization of, you know, and implementation of the work plan for JEDI. It wasn't specifically called out in the report or our comments, so I just felt I would be remiss if I didn't say that. Thank you. Council Member Valeri.

On that note, I also want to put a pin in. We did not include veterans as part of the diversity, equity, inclusion that we want to see. I think it's a community that we could be doing a lot more and maybe do things better for, so I realized it after the fact. I was like, dang it, I forgot to mention that. But I think it's a community, maybe that we do some sort of advisory group, and similar to Mr. City Manager, I saw that there was a disability community advisory group, or something to that effect. Um, I think that, you know, nothing for us without us also applies to veterans as well. So we may want to look at that sort of entity for them as well.

Thank you, colleagues. I'll just note our next meeting is August 3rd and it is virtual. I wanted to just repeat that again. It is a virtual meeting on August 3rd in case anyone interested in watching there can still be virtual community forum is that right miss Sarah Taylor Farrell absolutely excellent so you can still be a part of community forum but it will be virtual thank you do we have a motion to adjourn councilman Fulton I move to adjourn do we have a second councilman Valeri seconds all those in favor please raise your hand and say aye thank you staff for the great presentations this evening