Mayor and Council - Regular Meeting

Rockville. Today is 03/09/2026, and we're beginning meeting number seven dash 26. Please join me as you're able in the pledge of allegiance.

Allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. We'll now move to agenda review. Ms. Penny?

Merit, there's no changes to the agenda for this evening.

Thank you. And I'd like to formally welcome back Ms. Sarah Taylor Farrell into the office. She was out for a couple of weeks. And also to say thank you to Ms. Doris Stokes, who helped. I really appreciate all of her work. City Manager's report, Mr. Mihalik.

Mayor Asha, members of city council. Ladies and gentlemen, good evening. Last week, if you remember, I introduced our new CPDS director, Evan Johnson, but he was busy working away. He's actually in the room today, so there's Evan. I'm gonna have him stand up and give a wave. Hey. Again, super excited.

Yep. Welcome.

Super excited to have Evan join the team, and he's hit the ground running. So you'll see a lot more of him over the next several weeks. To say it's the busiest time of year for us is an understatement. That's for certain. Just gonna rattle off a couple of things. We're monitoring the state legislative session. Obviously, budget, capital improvements planning, our zoning ordinance update, we can see the light at the end of the tunnel for that. We're excited about bringing that forward for final adoption, and a whole bunch of other code updates, including the election code, landlord tenant code, etcetera. If members of the community are interested in any of those projects, we'd encourage them to go on our website and go to resultsrockfill. They can track the progress of a number of those initiatives.

And, of course, they can look at our six month planning calendar in case they want to attend a meeting and formally participate. That's all I have, Mayor. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much. I really appreciate all the work that the team is doing. I did wanna have at least one important announcement. You can join our housing needs assessment. There's budget survey that's sorry, a community workshop that's happening. Mr. Mihilek, do you want to add anything about that? Do people have to RSVP? Or we can we can check about on our website. There's more information there.

Exactly right.

Thank you.

Yes. So March 23, check out our events calendar on our website and join us. It's at the Rockville Memorial Library. And then the last thing I'll say is one of our council members celebrated a a birthday recently. So happy birthday to council member Zola Shah.

Council member Larry.

This is a twofer along with council member Jackson. But we were very intrepid over the weekend. And on Saturday, we were guests and extras on stage with the Victorian Lyric Opera. I was a peasant, which was awesome, had a great outfit, and Barry as well. And just want to give a shout out to everyone at VLOC, the Victorian Lyric Opera Company.

They were fantastic. I'm sad that this show ended. It was called Elixir in Love, but just tremendous talent and a very welcoming space. I know my colleague would like to share his amazing story and costume as well.

Thank you. So I'll be brief because I think you said it all, but I would like to say I didn't sing, and you will all be happy to hear that. It was also interesting because the concert designer actually gave me a concert to change into, which funnily enough was not really that different from what I was usually wearing. I don't know whether that was good or bad. Thank you, Mary.

Well, there are lots of good art shows to check out, and so look at Glenview Mansion, F. Scott Fitzgerald, other art exhibits, as well as live performing shows. Okay, so now we're moving on to our Boards and Commissions appointments and reappointments. We have several reappointments, including Community Police Advisory Board, Commission on Aging, the Environment Commission, Retirement Board, and Traffic Mobility Commission. Happy to share some nominations and hope you all will support. Do we have a motion to move forward with Community Policing Advisory Board? Go ahead. Councilmember Valery.

Madam Mayor, I move to reappoint Eric Schneider to the Community Policing Advisory Board to serve an expiring three year term until 03/01/2029.

Do we have a second? Council Member Jackson seconds. All those in favor, please raise your hand and say aye. Aye. Excellent. Next, have the Committee on Aging. Council Member Jackson.

Thank you, mayor. I move to reappoint Elaine Kubeck to the Commission on Aging to serve an uninspired three year term until 06/01/2029.

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

Aye.

Next, we have three reappointments for the Environment Commission. Councilmember Van Brack.

Madam Mayor, I move to reappoint Clark Reed, William McLean and Summer White each to the Environmental Commission and each to serve an expiring three year term until 02/01/2029.

Do we have a second? Councilmember Larry seconds. All those in favor, please raise your hand and say aye. Aye. Next, we have the retirement board.

Councilmember Jackson.

Thank you, Mayor. I move to reappoint Gerald Parrish to the retirement board to serve an aspiring three year term until 02/01/2029.

Thank you. Councilmember Shah, did you seconds? All those in favor, please raise your hand and say aye. Aye. Excellent. Thank you. Now we'll take our nomination for the Traffic and Mobility Commission. Councilmember Valery.

Madam Mayor, I move to reappoint Jeffrey Ganz to the Traffic and Mobility Commission to serve Transportation and Mobility Commission to serve an expiring three year term until 01/01/2029.

Thank you. Do we have a second? Councilman Shah seconds. All those in favor, please raise your hand and say aye. Aye. Excellent. Thank you. It's unanimous. Thank you to all who have put their names forward to serve. We'll now move over to community forum. I do want to note that we have a budget hearing later, which will come very soon after. So if you want to speak specifically to budget, please feel free to speak during that session. Now we're having a general community forum discussion. We do have a few people who have signed up in advance. If for some reason you have I call your name and you decide you wanna do the budget hearing instead, just please say so or raise your hand. First, we have Jake Jacobet.

Can I speak at the budget?

I we did get your special piece. Go ahead.

I'm kinda

You wanna you wanna move?

That. Yeah.

Perfect. Okay. Alright. Now we have Leslie Porter. Welcome.

K. Evening, everyone. Mayor Ashton, great to see you. City of Rockville, city of council members, great to meet you. My name's Leslie Porter. I bought my house at 825 Bryce Road in March 1998. I love my neighborhood. We don't leave. I'm here to tell you the people the the company that was hired to give us new sidewalks last summer was awesome. I believe the name of the company was Only Concrete Corporation, and the guys that worked to do the the new sidewalks were fabulous.

They were they were fun, happy to say good morning. They always left the job sites impeccable. And when bad weather came, someone came after hours and made sure all newly poured concrete and such was protected. I mean, this when you hire people based on budget, I get it. But the but the the, the caliber of the people who did our sidewalks, they were fabulous, as were the men who came when we had a water main break after the Snow Creek storm in January.

These guys worked twelve hours that day to repair a water main break at the top of Bryce Road, not far from the Ellwood Smith Center. I gave them coffee and all the protein bars I had that morning, but twelve hours, those guys were out there. Big kudos to them. And, also, to all the men, and I think there's a woman who works in our sanitation department. Those guys hustle, and I have only admiration for all of them and much gratitude.

And I have, I notified in back in, November, the pictures that I gave you are of a, a a rain grate in Rockville Pike not far from, Silver Diner that is collapsing. And I wanted to give a shout out to, Imad Elshafel, who helped me get my letter to the right person in the Maryland State Department of Transportation. However, crickets followed. I never heard back. So I went to our delegates, my delegates and state senators, and sure enough, Julie Polokovich Carr finally got through to the Maryland Department of Transportation, and they said that they are going to address this situation because I pity the poor soul whose car falls into that ditch if and when that rain grate collapses.

So thank you, Julie Carr, and thank you all for all you're doing.

Thank you very much.

Yep. Have a great afternoon. Good good evening.

Alright. I should also remind folks, you were perfectly on time. We appreciate that. I should have mentioned up front, everyone has three minutes. You'll hear an audible beep. Let's be respectful of each other, and we appreciate all of your ideas and communication. Next, have Jacob Lother. Do we have Jacob Lother? Welcome.

Good evening, mayor Ashton and member of, council. My name is Jacob Lathan. I am 19 years old, a proud resident of Montgomery County. And today, I'm standing before you to announce something that many of you will say is impossible. Inspired by the courage of those who believe in leadership is about vision rather than age or origin. I'm lodging lodging my journey to run for president of United States. I know the immediate response. I'm 19. I was born in Russia and adopted into this great nation as a child. Under my current laws, I am told I cannot serve in the highest office.

But I am here to tell you that the law is not a finish line. It is a conversation. I am running to change the conversation. I am running to prove that a natural born heart is more important than a natural born soil. My platform is piece by piece.

It is built on three unwavering pillars, animal rights, justice, and peace. I address address the concerns of the critics head on. To those who say I'm too young, I say that the youth of this country are the ones who will live in the future we are building today. We cannot wait for permission to care about the safety of our streets or the quality of our education. To those who say I am legally barred, I am starting a movement for a constitutional amendment.

I am asking our representatives, including those who walk these very halls, to recognize the loyalty and service and service have no, borders. Why am I the right fit for this mission? Because I see the world through the lens of a builder. I see animal rights as a foundation of a compassionate society. I see justice as the glue that keeps our communities from crumbling, and I see peace as a ser series of deliberate actions, not just the absence of war, but the presence of safety and for every family in Rockville and every citizen in America.

I'm starting here in my hometown. I'm starting my gathering signatures by listening to you and by proving that a 19 year old with a mission can move the needle of history. I am Jacob Latham. I am an American by choice, a leader by conviction, and I am ready to lead us towards a future that is safe and peaceful, peaceful, piece by piece. Thank you for your time, and I look forward to earning your support as we make history together.

Thank you. Welcome, Drew Powell.

Good evening, mayor and council. My name is Drew Powell. I reside at 1035 Carnation Drive in Rockville. I am also, on the board of directors of the Rockville Sister Cities Corporation and president emeritus of the Rockville Sister Cities Corporation. The Rockville Sister Cities Corporation is a 100% volunteer nonprofit organization tasked by the Rockville Marin Council to facilitate Rockville Sister City relationships.

These relationships or partnerships include Pinnenberg, Germany, and that relationship was founded in 1957. We're coming up on our seventieth year anniversary. And the Elon and Elon City, Taiwan founded in 2019. The in these challenging and polarizing times, the Rockville Sister City program is more important than ever. The Rockville Sister Cities Corporation is honored to help Rockville facilitate and maintain these this essential program.

Highlights of Rockville Sister Cities program include local events such as Rockville's recent Lantern Festival, as and thank you all for coming. Those that came was a wonderful time, as well as the Rockville Taiwan Bubble Tea Festival, which hosted more than 15,000 attendees in September. Mark your calendars because this year's Rockwall Bubble Tea Festival will be held on Saturday in on on Saturday, 09/19/2026. Recently, my younger son, Tyler, who is also a member of the Rockville Sister City Corporation, traveled to Elon City in the beginning of this year, And he met with the folks from the Elon Sister Cities Corporation. He also met with Mayor Chen of the city of Elon, who graciously received him at Elon City Hall and sends her very best to the Rockville Marin Council.

She asked for him to relay her message of good tidings and whatnot. And and, again, my son, by the way, he apologized for not being able to be here tonight. He had he had he had to go to work tonight, so sorry about that. She she and the Elon Sister City Corporation provided you all with a delicious gift. These are candied kumquats. And if I may present them to you right now, I'd appreciate that.

Thank you.

That's it. I just wanted to

Thank you.

Provide that to you. Thank you so much.

Thank you very much. Next, we welcome Nancy Picard.

Good evening, madam mayor and members of council. I'm Nancy Picard. As you are aware, I'm the executive director of Peerless Rockville, and I have a special focus in historic preservation. But I also wanted to say tonight that I also hold an advanced degree in urban and community planning, and I have over a decade of experience working with and as a partner to the city of Rockville. And as a community planner, I'm very well aware that the active participation of citizens in planning and government is a central tenant in planning.

And, this is needed and recognized at all levels of government at the highest levels. And as a member of the Rockville community, I wanted to come here this evening and express my concern for the truncated time frames that lately have been provided to members of the residents of the city to weigh in on really a variety of measures. I've noticed it with the King Farm master plan, the zoning rewrite, and now the f y twenty seven proposed budget. The budget was made publicly available sometime last Friday, leaving the public one business day and one weekend before the public hearing this evening. While I recognize there is another meeting later this month, it seems holding the meeting tonight gave residents little time to digest and evaluate the actual proposals and the actual dollar amounts that are contained in this 500 plus page document.

To be respectful of the community, I hope this body will consider adding additional hearing dates to extend the window for citizen participation and response. As for Peerless Rockville, we are alarmed by the drastic proposed reduction in funding with no advanced notice or explanation provided to us. We will return on March to speak to our grant request, and in the interim, would very much like to schedule a meeting with the city manager and any other relevant city parties to better understand this reduction, which if adopted will result in critical loss of staff and programming that benefits the entire community. So thank you.

Thank you very much. Now welcome Bob Wright.

Good evening, madam mayor and members of the Rockville City Council. I'm Bob Wright. I do live at 209 Watts Branch Parkway. I'm here tonight to give congratulations to miss Kim Francesco and the finance department for their rollout of the budget in the new format. The format was appealing and easy to read.

I know of no glitches. That's just me. So, the rollout was obviously very successful. Having said that, I also appreciate the option of having available created by the software of a PDF format coming from the old school and, you know, looking at a book and then getting to electronic era. That's sort of where people of my age reside.

However, the PDF format does allow things that I didn't find in the other format. So for example, the format allows for page numbers, which is a help. It allows for highlighting of text, and it allows for comments to be embedded. What was missing, and I don't know whether it could be corrected or not, is if you get the PDF format, there are no numbering for tables or figures. So that is left.

Now that is all from a reviewer's point of view who might wanna go through it. If you're just reading the budget to get a general sense, the new format is probably more than adequate. As I said, it was very, very pleasing. So again, congratulations to the finance department for the new format and the successful rollout. The second thing I wanna say is thank you for including a pavilion in Wootensville Park.

It it's been a a long time, a lot of effort put in by the the people who want it. And I know the staff continues to gather information regarding the pavilion. I'm glad it is in the CIP, although I will note it's out in FY thirty and thirty one. So maybe during the years, if that could be moved forward, that would be appreciated. But, again, just to have it in the CIP out in that five year period, I wanna thank you. And I look forward to tonight's budget presentation and the work session that follows. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Welcome, Ricky Moy.

May I speak during the budget?

Absolutely. Thank you. You. Welcome Gabriela Zwe.

Hello. I am here on no official capacity, but I am here to say save the date, please, for Rockville Pride twenty twenty six. Rockville Pride will take place in Rockville Town Center as usual on Sunday, June 7 from 2PM to 5PM. We always love having as many council members and, of course, the mayor, as many as possible speak at our event, and even just being around to talk with constituents, and to join the party, and also a message to all residents, those of us in the room, those of us watching online, that Rockville Pride will be on June 7, two to 5PM, and it's gonna be very fun. We have taken all of our performer applications and have voted on the performers, but we are still accepting applications for artists and authors who would like to table for free at the event.

Not sure I I believe the correct way to go about that is emailing Dolores, who is listed on the Rockville Pride webpage. Now with a new email address for this year, which is specific to Rockville Pride related emails. Yeah. That's everything.

Thank you. Welcome, JD Kumar.

Clock is good. City of Rockville, Maryland government, thank you for this opportunity, this open democracy forum. My name is James Dhruva Kumar. I file for candidacy to be your United States Congress House of Representatives, Democrat for this Maryland District 8 as JD Kumar. The Democrat primaries on Tuesday, 06/23/2026. I have a fun, informative website, votejdk.com, and social media account Twitter x is at vote JDK. No longer a limited forum like here. Please visit the website and social media accounts free frequently. I'm updating with policies, thoughts, ideas. Thank you.

Now it has been a while, so I'll state state again that I pledge allegiance to the flag of British America who are founders and framers of our USA constitution. I pledge allegiance to USA America everywhere. My home nation USA, we are the oldest democracy, always strive striving to form a more perfect union. Now this should not be controversial comment at all, but as I move forward as a political candidate, I need to discuss this again. Your Latin American and Central American I had to do more research based on what you all do here.

Your Latin American and Central American problem callous groups, LA callous, militant black nationalist, majority minority religious, ethnic, and jealous hate groups. All of this promoters, supported, and funded by our already seceded to Latin America and Central America, Montgomery County, Maryland Government, the Epstein, Repstein, the Tacoma Cinco Ocho, the County Jurassic and Axis of Evil, etcetera. Warning to all of you again, a four general me on many occasions. Now please note, my home country, India, is a founder investor, founder emeritus of the original British American USA colonies. Here, my home nation USA.

Specifically, my extended family, advanced civilization, regions, and my our ancestral lineage. And this is so important to mention because many of the young that come now in recent decades from my home country, India, cannot make this claim. My direct family members emanated during the British Empire. Therefore, I'm the ancestral representative of this, and so my so many divine rights. This is important to have this research foundational fact to move forward.

I state this not for economic advent advantages or usurpation, but more for belonging and respect. So please teach your kids properly. Don't have them running around like little gangsters, disrespecting older people, elders, seniors, USA Americans, etcetera. I stated before, me, we are not your guests here, but some of you, perhaps, even a lot of you, tired, huddled, are are my guests here. Miss Valer, you feel me on this? Kagan Kagan is Russian for Cohen, but I don't think like this at all. We are not greedy. We love everybody. Very American, very generous, before and always, but many of you call us ugly, dirty, skanky, UDS. Our geography was different in those days.

It took just over a week from South Asia, India, United Kingdom to reach the Atlantic Coast, but it took many months to go all the way West Coast, California.

Thank you.

So international trade, global trade, different in

those days. Very much.

Thank you.

That exhausts the list of those who have signed up in advance as to anyone else who would like to speak, and we will have a budget hearing in a little bit. Okay. Thank you to everyone who shared their ideas and who testified. We'll now move on to our agenda item nine, consent agenda. We have several items for review.

Instrumental nonprofit grant seeking resource city of Rockville agreement. This is an agreement that will help nonprofit members of our community access resources to find funding. So it's really the city's efforts to try to help nonprofits to access more things as we look at the nonprofit sector has been deeply impacted by the federal transition. This is an effort to try to help support nonprofits. 9B is the adoption of resolution to support HB eleven forty two, Maryland Municipal League's priority legislation establishing the task force to modernize county and municipal revenue resources.

This was an actual addition, recent addition, that was added last week, I believe on Friday, and this would help to establish a committee at the state legislative level. There hasn't been a committee like this since the nineteen seventies is what I'm hearing, And so that's really important as the highway user revenues are going to be going down in the future. Next is the approval of minutes, that's 9C, for 02/23/2026. And that exhausts the list of the consent agenda. I want to see if anyone has questions. Council member Miles.

I think, madam mayor, it's just about consent agenda item nine a. Should I ask now?

Please proceed.

Alright. This is for staff or maybe the city manager. Apologies. I think I got these questions out, but it's I say it's super busy, so it's all good. Just curious about this nonprofit grant resource. How did how were they identified as the vendor of SOAR?

So they actually came to us Mhmm. And suggested their services to us. One thing I have to stress is that this is a free service to the city, so there's no procurement process with it. They offered to provide the services. We reached out to some of our nonprofit grantees that we've worked with for a number of years and thought that this was a great resource for them. Cool.

And thanks. I think you answered my next question with regard to whether or not there was a procurement process for it. And I recognize that although it's no cost to us, there is a nominal fee to the, I guess, the organizations. Is that is that a correct understanding? That's correct. Alright. That that's all

I had.

I just wanted some clarification.

Thank you. And I think the only reason why the city is doing this agreement is so that there could be a negotiated discounted fee. Is that correct?

That's also correct.

Okay. I had a chance to sit in on there was a public nonprofit cafe that the team put together, and they actually walked through some of the nonprofits to be able to see. So they would enter their mission, the population, and they would be able to find funding for them. So that's just a little bit more background. Alright. Do we have a motion to approve? Councilmember Shah.

Madam Mayor, I move to approve consent agenda items a, b, and c.

Thank you. Do we have a second? Councilmember Valeri seconds. All those in favor, please raise your hand and say aye. Aye. Excellent. Thank you. We're now gonna move on to our public hearing. I'm gonna ask the city clerk's office if this public hearing has been properly

Mayor, the public hearing was noticed twice in the Washington Post on March 19 and sorry. February 19 and March 5.

Thank you very much. I would like to welcome Daniel Chambers as well as Stacey Webster in Kim Francisco.

Good evening, madam mayor and members of the council. This is our second public hearing scheduled for the f y twenty seven operating budget and capital improvements program. There will be one final public hearing two weeks from today on March 23, and the public record is scheduled to remain open until April 13. In addition to speaking at these hearings, the public can submit written comments directly to the mayor and council via the city clerk as well as submit responses to the city's community budget priority survey, which is available at rockvillemd.gov/budget. Included in the packet this evening is a summary of all public testimony on the f y twenty seven budget thus far as well as an interim report on our survey, which has had over 400 responses at this point.

This public hearing was advertised in The Washington Post. It was posted to the city of Rockville's website, social media accounts, and the channel eleven bulletin board as well as in the February and March editions of the Rock Of Rockville reports. And once again, there will be another public hearing two weeks from today on March 23, with the public record remaining open through April 13.

Thank you

very much.

Thank you very much. We have some folks who have signed up in advance. I'm going to start with the folks who signed up in advance but switched from community forum to public hearing. First, we have Mr. Jake Jakoback, and as you come up, I'll note that, we will have a time clock. Please mention your name, whether you live in the city of Rockville, and if you're representing an organization or you are personally representing your testimony. Thank you.

Thank you. Dear madam mayor and Rockville City Council, my name is Jake Jakobic. I live at 319 Grandin Avenue, Croydon Park. I am the chair of the Rockville Bicycle Advisory Committee, and I'm here speaking in my official capacity. Thank you for providing the community the opportunity to comment on the budget every year.

We as council member Miles stated in our last committee meeting, it feels like we're always coming into budget season, in budget season, or leaving budget season. However, I think that that is city governance, and, you know, that is his opportunity to to form some direction in where our city is going. I'm here to offer some comments on to for the council to consider with respect to the budget that was just published. The committee has provided comments on our city's budget over the past four years, and we feel it's impossible to con important to continue weighing it. Today, I want to remind the city the council of some safe streets projects we have coming up that are longer longer term and require some more planning on the part of the city when we complete the you know, by the time we complete the preliminary work.

The city is working on two projects which will certainly be expensive and require significant effort, and those ones will be, the Scott Drive and Veres Military Use Path and the Fleet Streets and Monroe Streets Complete Streets project. Both of these projects are important in the city's goals of achieving Vision Zero and, where we will prevent serious or fatal crashes on the roads and have everybody safe traveling around our city as is our duty. Scott Drive and Viers Drive will enable safe bicycle access from the western edge of The Rock of Rockville to the Millennium Trail. It runs past an elderly facility elderly living facility, a school, a large number of homes, and it'll be provide an excellent connection for people walking or cycling from there. There's some legwork past that, however, this is a good sign.

Being that this will be a shared youth path, probably require property acquisition and certain amount of capital work, It will be quite expensive. The Fleet Streets and Fleet And Monroe Streets Complete Streets project will provide a shared use path for people near Town Center and Richard Montgomery School, access to the Town Center cycle tracks and will be a great connection for people in Rockville to walk or cycle to Town Center from the neighborhoods near the school or even to the school itself. That would, again, enable our kids to ride their bikes or walk to school instead of being driven and being stuck in lines and all the kind of stuff that comes along with that. Once again, this is going to be a shared use path in a fairly densely developed part of Rockville, so it will also be very expensive. So it took me a while to get here.

I'm ready that the city propose considering these Vision Zero projects down the road in the current budget and plan for them in the future. I ask that the council plan to put money aside to prepare for larger safe streets projects such as these. With both of these projects being in the preliminary stages, now is the time to begin planning on how we can pay for them when they are ready to be constructed. Please begin planning how to pay for these important Vision Zero projects in our current budget.

Thank you

for your time.

Thank you very much. Next, we welcome Sarah Beshart.

Good

evening. I'm Sarah Besheart, the executive director of Community Reach of Montgomery County and Mansfield Caseman Health Clinic. I'm here to express our thanks for the funding designated for us to receive from the city for our senior reach program, the Mansfield Caseman Health Clinic, language outreach program, and housing programs through community services and enrichment grants. For decades, these programs have fulfilled a critical role in supporting both seniors and formerly unhoused residents of Rockville, as well as teaching English to adult learners and offering health care to low income patients who do not have health insurance. The longevity of our programs is not a coincidence.

It reflects consistent results, community trust, and a proven return on the investment that the city makes. This year, our language outreach program partnered with Meadowhall Elementary School and Twinbrook Elementary School to provide English classes to their families. We also partnered with Rockville High School, who students helped to provide with our tutoring program for the children while their parents attended English classes. We received positive feedback from the teachers saying that these children are improving in their classes, thanks to the tutoring. During the last fiscal year, our language outreach program served 94 City Of Rockville residents and 28 children in the tutoring program.

This was through classes at schools and at Twinbrook and Lincoln Park community centers. In our housing program, the Jefferson House and Rockland House, they show the power of stable supportive housing. The residents receive a safe home, case management, and the guidance needed to regain independence in their lives. This year in our housing program, we celebrated two residents who successfully transitioned into homes of their own, an important milestone in their journey toward independence. Another resident earned her driver's license and was able to purchase a car creating creating greater freedom and access to opportunities.

These successes reflect the resilience of our residents and the impact of compassionate, consistent support. Senior Reach provides wraparound support to older adults living independently in Rockville, Under which so far this year, 11 senior REACH clients have received essential home repair and other home services through REACH's Safe and Secure program. 27 clients receive weekly in home care services, and a total of 26 clients rely on alert response systems including the medical necklaces that allow them to call for immediate help in an emergency. Some clients also receive food pantry deliveries or cleaning services to support them aging in place in Rockville. Through comprehensive case management, we connect clients to these and other critical resources.

And our friendly caller program provides weekly wellness calls from trained volunteers reducing isolation and ensuring ongoing emotional support. The Casement Clinic is one of the Montgomery Cares clinics serving low income residents who do not have health insurance. Our monthly patient encounters have increased by about 20% in the first half of this fiscal year and we have greater capacity at our new ish location most of you have been there and are happy that our numbers are continuing to increase. In the past year, we've added some new specialists to serve our patients, including a neurologist, an endocrinologist, and a physical therapist. The need for specialty care is ever increasing and we are pleased that we've been able to help meet this need.

In the past year, we've also significantly increased the number of diabetic patients receiving a retinal scan and evaluation. That's twenty five percent more patients are completing this exam each this year, which is critical for diabetic patients. And while it's not part of the Community Services and Enrichment grant, the Rockville Emergency Assistance Program, REAP, is a program where REACH is able to serve Rockville residents through the funding provided by the city. These funds prevent evictions and energy turnoffs, fund costly prescriptions or medical expenses, and have done so for 317 residents this year so far. Through this work, we also referred almost 1,500 people to local resources for dental, vision, clothing, food, and computers.

We're proud to continue this relationship that we've had with you for over forty years, working together to support the stability of of the city's community members. The need for all of these safety net services provided by Reach and the Casement Clinic have not diminished. If anything, they've grown. Stable and adequate funding ensures that we can continue to provide high quality, uninterrupted services. We are proud to be the stewards of public dollars and to be trusted by community members as a safe place to turn when they're in need. On be on on behalf of Community Reach and Casement Clinic, I urge you to maintain all of the funding for the community services and enrichment grants that preserve these programs and all the other incredible services provided by other grantees. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Next, we welcome David Hill.

Greetings. David Hill, the president of Rockville Sister City Corporation and representing the organization to explain our community organization grant submission for FY 2027. First, the constant items since, all these since FY '25 and our grant ask are for the Bubble Tea Festival, in kind city facility usages, city city contribution to student exchanges, and Lantern Festival. This is a total of 17,000 and is 1,000 less than comparables for the prior fiscal year, so a 6% reduction. In the proposed grand budget list, we experienced a significant shortfall, though.

The calendar year 2027 is a big year for the sister cities the city sister city program and RSCC. We had exceptional costs in our assets the first half of that year, which arise in FY '27. Our ask was for 32,000, including constant and those onetime activities while this proposed grant line item is holding steady at 18,000, same as the prior fiscal year. But what we intend to do, we're loosely obliged to do, is more, not the same, in that calendar year. The two further unfulfilled asks were $10,000 city contribution for a delegation visit by our German sister city to celebrate the milestone seventieth anniversary of the relationship.

The city and RCC historically have exchanged large official delegations, further visitors, and students for a decennial milestone. Given international relation concerns I read to you at the last meeting, sustaining historic relations may be important at this time. We hope this will be the first visit of Burgermeister Voyster to Rockville, whom, along with DHRP, hosted our Rockville delegation so gracefully in September 2025. I note that the city contribution for just the last decennial celebration was near 35,000. Any of this handled by RSCC has apparently sliced out of the proposed grant line item.

Still, let us talk more because the nascent coplanning that we do with our sister city shifts this visit to FY '28 timing with the Rockville visit to Pinnenberg in FY '27, and different cost assumptions will go into that traveling there, which we do not know yet. The last biggest exceptional ask was $5,000 city contribution for the potential visit of mayor Chen and an entourage from our Taiwanese sister city. This has been pending since 2024 after she and YSCC hosted a Rockville delegation there in 2023. This apparently also is excluded from the proposed line item. This may be okay because we know that mayor Chen cannot visit in the calendar year 2026, and the alternate time is early fall twenty twenty seven was mentioned, which would be in the following fiscal year.

We anticipate both of these activities should occur primarily as reciprocal visits of our sister cities for visits we've already made to their cities. Especially as we look to the big anniversary with Pinnenberg, we do need some idea of what the city will fund. It spreads across f y twenty seven and f y twenty eight. The current proposed line item answer is nothing by grant funding in f y twenty seven. An answer for FY twenty eight is unknown until this time of next year when we are already into that anniversary exchanges.

RSCC cannot carry the full cost nor should we to operate the Citi program. We also need some flexibility to accomplish our mission in these budget cycles. We do not ask the city for a single cash grant payout as some organizations do. Since we are a partner organization conducting the city sister city program, we continue to desire another funding method than a fixed grant cycle with submissions up to twenty one months ahead of actual events. We experienced we've also experienced the third city administration regimen we have interfaced with in five years, and the fit seems a little better this particular year.

With a little more time, one more matter I just wanna mention, I would prefer if we could carry over student exchange support from year to year. For example, the last two years, we did not have a direct exchange supported by the city, so those allocated funds have been returned and saved by the city. But that leaves us shy in any given year for a large group trip. The cost figure in one year is insufficient for a large group and the lead time too far ahead to make a specific bigger ask in one year. Plus, we will not get ahead in setting aside funding to ever get back to making scholarships to needy students and families that cannot afford this experience than otherwise at full cost.

In all, thank you for sixty nine years of having Sister Cities and supporting RSCC for the last forty years of its experience by considering our grant submission. I'll also just mention really quickly that RSCC celebrates its fortieth year this year. So thank you very much.

Thank you. Happy anniversary. Welcome, Anne Herbster.

Good evening, mayor Ashton members of the council and Rockville staff. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. My name is Anne Herbster I'm a King Farm resident of twenty twenty one years I'm also the president of the Village Support Network. It's a five zero one C three nonprofit organization. I'm also current commissioner and past chair of the Rockville Commission on Aging.

So I've been very committed to all things seniors in the city of Rockville. Village Support Network was incorporated in 2017 with a mission of empowering, developing and vulnerable aging in place village organizations across Montgomery County by providing operational support that helps them grow sustainably and to be successful. For those unfamiliar with the village model, village is a neighborhood based organization that provides social engagement activities, transportation support, and other services that allow adults to remain active and connected with their communities. As we heard earlier with the other individual who was talking about her nonprofit, seniors suffer isolation as they age. Efforts of the villages that are being formed in the city are helping to overcome that and to also provide interaction throughout their neighborhoods.

Since 2017, I've worked closely with Trish Evans, the Rockville Village facilitator, and together we have seen a remarkable growth. In Rockville, we've expanded from two villages to 10, all in various stages of development and engagement. Participation has grown exponentially. We have over 2,000 village at Rockville residents now connected to village programs and activities, a 400% increase. Importantly, this progress has been achieved with only one full time staff position supporting these efforts.

Through the community services and enrichment grant that we received this year, we have partnered with the city, local villages to expand outreach, support community events, provide technology tools such as building websites, materials that enable them to communicate with the individuals to engage, to share information. The work is important given Rockville's demographics. 23% of the residents of Rockville are 60 and twenty seven percent are 55 which is that up and coming group and I think this is an important demographic and a group that we have opportunities to engage with. These villages, volunteer led organizations are powered by neighbors helping neighbors and we exist to support these grassroot efforts. We have supported more than 25 villages throughout Montgomery County with funds that we've gotten from a variety of sources, but the money earmarked and provided by the city has enabled us to work very closely with the city.

I'm here to respectfully ask for your continued support of the community services enrichment grant in 2026 with 2027 budget. It allows us to continue supporting. Additionally, as a commissioner, I'm here to say the efforts and the work that happens in the Rockville Senior Center are unparalleled and don't exist in most of the cities in Rockville. And we appreciate that and it's important that we continue to support the senior center. The individuals that work there have done a tremendous amount of work to help engage with seniors providing services and activities. Thank you for your time and your continued support of this important demographic in the city. Thank you.

Thank you. Welcome Terry Blandon. Kyle Gallagher.

Thank you for your time, mayor and council. I'm Kyle Gallagher, a resident for the last eleven years. I moved here with some friends after college, and then six years ago, I bought a house. I love the amenities Rockville has to offer and the communities that have sprung up around them. One thing that is unique amongst communities surrounding DC is Rockville's belt Beltway.

It's a mini beltway. It's the Carl Hen Millennium Trail, and this trail provides the backbone of the city's bicycle infrastructure. It provides a safe, unified path all the way around the city, But, unfortunately, it doesn't really connect that much to the city and into the neighborhoods. A key thing to remember is like our Beltway around DC, it's useless without connections. It can't work alone.

So it has

to be part of a broader network connecting neighborhoods, schools, shopping, restaurants, and parks. Without a safe viable route to destinations, we can only use it as a recreational, tool. So some easy connections, to destinations that are pretty close and fairly inexpensive to do would be the Lakewood Elementary School. It's there's already a bridge that goes over into the neighborhood. If we could connect that to the Millennium Trail, that would expand the reach of the bridge to more of the neighborhoods around it.

Yale Place, which is along the north part of the Millennium Trail, that goes directly from the north right over towards the college. Right now, it's kind of wonky, and you either get to choose that wonky route or you can go on 355, which is kind of brutal. The Millennium Trail via the Rockville Senior Center, there's already a connection right there. But then from there to Woodley Gardens Park as well as all the way up to the city, if you, you know, make it look like there's a real bike path there instead of the Sharrows that are there right now, That would encourage residents to use the entire, what is it, Martin's Way. And, also, it might provide backup parking for the park.

Right now, it routinely overfills and then spills over to the Carmen's parking lot. Twinbrook and Chapman to the trolley trail. Right now, none of those lights actually see cyclists. So, you know, there's that. But also, the bike lane ends right there. And then there's no real safe way without using the sidewalk to get to the actual lane. This is one block, so it'd be pretty, you know, great if there was another way to do that. Finally, if there's no way to lock up bikes when you get to your destination, you know, we kinda need to work towards a better way of that. And a thing that might come in there would be using public right right of way.

Thank you for

your very much. Appreciate it. Welcome, Ricky Moy. Thanks.

Good evening, mayor Ashton and the city council. My name is Rick Moy. The I have the, I live at 708 West Montgomery in Rockville. I have the pleasure of serving and representing tonight as chair of HVAC, the Human Services Advisory Commission. My remarks tonight will re will focus on the importance of continuing operating budget support for human services in Rockville.

Some of our HVAC commissioners, to include Sarah Basehart, represent nonprofit organizations that provide essential social and health services across our city and Montgomery County. These organizations aim to address housing instability, food insecurity, unemployment, and other urgent challenges. For some of the folks receiving these services, they are not optional, but rather could mean the difference between stability and crisis. Through site visits conducted alongside city staff, HVAC commissioners have an unmitigated perspective on the impact of Rockville's grant funding to these nonprofit organizations. Mana Food Centre is introducing programs like food choice, which allows families to select food that aligns with their dietary or cultural needs while maximizing donated and recovered supplies.

This approach improves dignity, reduces waste, and increases effectiveness. Sunflower Bakery trains and employs young adults with learning differences, equipping them with marketable skills and instills confidence, oftentimes leading to real employment opportunities. CCACC's new health clinic produces, provides diagnostic and treatment services for hundreds of Rockville patients, including a 102 year old nice young lady I met the other day. But these residents particularly face challenges obtaining insurance or they may have language barriers. Little known is that CCACC serves a majority of Asian patients but also Hispanic patients.

CCACC leverages the volunteerism of many local clinicians as they serve patients. These programs are part of a broader continuum of care that includes the Casement Clinic that stabilizes families, builds skills, and promotes long term self sufficiency. These nonprofits have very low margins, low overhead, and work cooperatively to optimize resources. We, HVAC, respectfully urge the mayor and council to maintain strong grant funding for human services in the FY '27 operating budget. This investment directly strengthens Rockville's residents, workforce, and community stability.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you. That exhausts the list of those who have signed up in advance. Is there anyone else who would like to speak? Please please state your name and whether you live in the city of Rockville.

Hello, mayor and council. My name is Max Silverstone, and I'm a resident of Rockville. I live in College Gardens.

And are you representing an organization?

Yes. And I'm a member of the Rockville Bicycle Advisory Committee.

You're representing PARBAC. Just wanna make sure for timing's sake.

Sorry.

Yep. Thank

you. Yep. I try to live as car free as possible and am a daily commuter on my electric bicycle. I am deeply appreciative of the efforts that our elected officials and city staff have undertaken to make Rockville friendlier to transit riders, pedestrians, and cyclists such as myself. The Carlhan Millennium Trail, mere feet from my home, is a safe, convenient, and fun way to circumnavigate the city from a to b, and the protected bike lanes up the street from here in places like North Washington Street, East Middle Lane, and Beale Avenue are exactly what any of us would want inside of a dense downtown area.

Of course, there are always more improvements to be made as well, which is why I hope in the budget you will make room for the public works department to conduct more studies and increase signage that make the city more bike friendly. I wanna give three examples of the types of places that could use signage. There are no outlet signs in the city at dead ends for cars, but some of these dead ends have cut throughs for pedestrians and cyclists. An example is on Millboro Drive in the Potomac Woods neighborhood. There's a tiny, maybe eight foot long path that cuts through the trees connecting to Wooten Parkway, an important artery for for cyclists and pedestrians due to carrying the Carlheim Millennium Trail.

Spots like this need additional signage that say, No outlet except for pedestrians and bicycles. Another is evaluating the no turn on red signs to add except bicycles. These no turn on red signs are a net good that increase safety, but bicycles, due to their lack of blind spots and minimal danger posed to other road users, should be exempt at smaller intersections. The right turn off of East Middle Lane, for example, to North Washington is a perfect example because cyclists land right in a protected lane. Lastly, there are right turn only lanes that should allow bicyclists to go straight.

A place I find myself cycling a lot is where Park Road crosses underneath the train tracks towards Maryland 5th 355. The right lane is a right turn only lane, but but it is also the most convenient lane for cyclists to use to go straight and land in the east middle lane protected bike lanes on the far side of the intersection. I hope the city will study and install except bicycles in this spot. I understand that conducting studies and installing signs is a process that costs the city time and money, and so I hope you will consider these needs when decided on the FY 2027 budget. Thank you for your time.

Thank you very much. Please state your name whether you live in the city of Rockville.

Yeah. JD Kumar, congressional, Democrat, 8th District, candidate. Okay. So I'm not prepared for this part. I should have looked it up in the agenda. But, I do wanna say a few things. Right? I go around, drive around, look at all these, high schools you guys are rebuilding for billion dollars, half $1,000,000,000. What have y'all city of Rockville done for the senior center? The senior center is just total crap.

But, anyway, I have a plan where I'm bringing in I talked about bringing 20,000,000,000 here. I'm actually bringing in $250,000,000,000 here. That's 50,000,000,000 per year over a five year period. And part of that is I wanna give seniors, where they could take vic several vacations per year. I wanna give them a $250,000 check towards their home so they can purchase it and a full stipend for free full time caregiver assistance.

So you have to figure out if I get this through in congress, how you can integrate it with your with your budget. Now, Medicaid, I'm proposing a third FICA column, Social Security, medic I'm sorry, Medicaid. Social Security Medicare, the FICA taxes, Medicaid, and then Medicare. Right? So I'm proposing a third separate column because the Medicaid is so controversial, yet it's only 3% of the total entitlements.

Half of the entitlements is the entitlements, the FDR entitlements. A large part is Department of War. So what I'm proposing, and this has to do with how you integrate and how you collect taxes and how the state collects taxes, is to create a third FICA column, but make it voluntary. So if you really believe in helping people, it's voluntary. Check mark like you do for the FEC. FEC money, all you do all you politicians that do matching contributions, put a check mark for your Medicaid, and it's voluntary. We're not increasing taxes for anybody. But if you re really wanna help your people and humanity, then you can do this. So the reason I mention all this here, and, again, I'm not prepared, is because it's related to your budget and it's gonna cost you money. Finally, this is very important.

I talked about EIMC, established immigrant migrant communities, or I now improved it to merit communities, EIMC. Well, I've asked Montgomery County now to really issue these credentials. So it's a dual purpose. If somebody comes into our space, our multifamily home, or near our hallway, then they have a credential. It can be encrypted, but it also serves like a a green card or a citizen card. We're in the county. We tell them we love you. We care for you. You have this card. It'll have a number on it.

If you have a problem, you call this number. I wanna get our current rep to start a law firm. He's a constitutional lawyer. I'd like him to go move on to do a nationwide law firm. Now, finally, I have a Twitter account called at May at make basics cheap. At make basics cheap. I'm negotiating with corporations to make 25 to 50 items

for your test

like 99¢ apple bags and 50¢ toothpaste. Thank you. And that's gonna impact your Thank

you very much.

Impact your taxes.

That exhausts the list of those who have signed up and joined from the room. Just wanna offer one last opportunity for those who may not have spoken who would like to speak. Okay. Thank you, everyone. I just wanted to turn this back to staff. We have another budget public hearing. Can you please share more about that?

Yes. The next budget public hearing is on March 23, two weeks from today.

Thank you. And I know that we also are accepting comments on the budget survey through April 13 as well. I just want to see if anyone has any comments or questions about the budget hearing process. Councilman Valeri.

I don't have a question about the process. I guess I have a question to Ms. Picard during Community forum, I did notice as well that it's a bit of a truncated time period. Would it be possible to include an additional hearing? I think that it's a very valid point, and especially for folks who may volunteer and don't have that kind of quick ability to turn around and give their input. It allows for a little extra time. Is that something that we could build into the timeline for the budget adoption?

Mr. Mihalik.

Yep. Mayor, we absolutely can do that. I'd recommend we talk about that at the LPT meeting. But April 13 looks like a reasonable date to plug that in.

Okay. That was my only question, Madam Mayor. Thank you, mister city manager.

Thank you. I support a budget public hearing extend addition as well. Do you need anything official from us, mister Mihael, to make that happen?

I absolutely do.

Okay. Great. So there do we have okay. Let's just do a thumbs up.

Crystal clear. Thank

Okay. Alright. Thank you. Alright. So for the listening public, we'll add an additional public hearing on April 13. This will not change our ultimate timeline. And actually, our survey is open until April 13 anyway, so we'll fit within our schedule. Excellent. Thank you. Alright. So that is the conclusion of this budget public hearing. There'll be one on March 23. There'll be one on April 13. You can fill out the budget survey. You can actually sign up now for March 23 if you're interested so that we can hear your testimony.

And I also would like to just encourage us to reach out to the boards and commissions so that they are reminded about the budget public hearing dates now that we've added the initial one. Okay. Great. Thank you very much. Now we're moving on to agenda item 11A. And so we have a full night of budget, a couple of agenda items coming up. For the listening public to follow along our journey, we'll be moving on to introduction and possible adoption of an ordinance to amend Ordinance No. Fourteen-twenty five to appropriate funds and levy taxes for this is for FY 'twenty six, which is essentially a budget amendment No. Three. And just so you know, our journey after this, we'll be moving on to introduction of an ordinance appropriate funds.

And then we will have FY 'twenty seven budget work session. So thanks to everyone for watching. Thanks to staff for sticking with us and helping us through this process. With that, I'd like to welcome Mary Sue Martin as well as Kim Francisco. And I know you have Stacy Webster here with you as well. Thank you all.

Good evening, madam mayor and members of the council. This is the third budget amendment for f y twenty six. This amendment includes funding for the recognition of the Choice Hotels grant expenditure based on their meeting all of their performance requirements, several onetime initiatives and equipment replacements detailed in your agenda packet tonight, contracted water main repairs and WSSC water usage due to weather related breaks this winter, emergency equipment repairs and maintenance at the water treatment plant, replenishment of contingency in the water, sewer, and parking funds, recognition of a 1 and a half million dollar land and water, excuse me, conservation fund grant for Red Gate Park. Several of the items on this amendment support the mayor and council's initiatives related to the environment as well as the local economy as explained on packet page one eighty eight. If this amendment is adopted tonight, the total appropriated by fund would change as shown on the budget ordinance in your attachment one.

Tonight's staff recommends that the mayor and council introduce the ordinance, waive the layover period, and adopt the ordinance. Thank you.

Thank you. Appreciate that summary. I know that city manager sent us a preview. There's also information posted online, and I know thank you for answering many of my questions. I may have one or two follow ups, but I think this is pretty straightforward. Colleagues, does anyone have any questions before I ask? Okay, thank you. Just to confirm, because you've mentioned Choice, and I often get questions about this, they have moved to Pike And Rose. This was a coordinated deal with the county. There are no additional funds going to them. They and we did not pay the did we pay the full amount to them in total that we had originally planned to?

Madam Mayor, we did make that payment to Choice. There was a clawback provision if they did not meet the performance requirements. After coordinating with our counterparts over at the county, they determined and we agreed that they did meet those performance requirements. So this is just a recognition of that expense. It is not an outlay of any funds to Choice.

Thank you very much for the clarification. One thing I will say is sometimes we piggyback with the county for some of these kinds of business incentives. And so I wonder, they may meet the county because they stay in the county, but they leave Rockville. So just something for us to consider that if they leave Rockville, that there might be a clawback specifically for Rockville. So I just wanted to share that for the future, Agreed. Mr. I thought you might. Okay. Thank you. And then the other question I asked just because you mentioned water main breaks there.

Climate change has resulted in more water main breaks, change in weather, ups and downs. And the city is proactively doing work, not just fixing water mains, but also proactively working to replace pipes throughout the city. I believe it's something like a mile per year, a little bit more than that. So I just wanted the listening public to know what's going on and what's included in this. Thank you. Miss Mihalik.

You got it right, mayor. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Shaw. I

just wanted to thank staff for their work on this, and I did have a quick question. I saw that there was no equity impact statement here, and I just think with the significant amount of money, the amount of work, the infrastructure, I think there is an an equity impact. And so if you can share some information a bit later on how this would impact equity, I would appreciate it.

Council Mershaw, is that for the whole budget amendment or for the water main breaks just so we're giving staff clarity?

Well, the statement, the impact statement is under all of these changes, so it would be applied to all of the

We can provide a summary.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Appreciate that. Okay. There are no Okay. Councilman Van Gruek.

Madam Mayor, I introduce the ordinance to amend Ordinance No. Fourteen-twenty five to appropriate funds and levy taxes for FY 2026, and this will be budget amendment number three.

Thank you. Councilmember Vollary? I move to waive the layover period. Thank you. Councilmember I'll just give it to Council Member Jackson for this one. Go ahead.

I'm just seconded.

Okay. It's been seconded. All those in favor, please raise your hand and say aye. Aye. I just want to note, we don't have Council Member Miles. He just stepped out briefly, but we have enough people to do this. I want clarify. Okay. We have. Alright. So now we're going to potentially oh, there he goes. You're just in time to vote. Just so we can have a unanimous, we made a motion to waive the layover period. Great. I thought so. Alright. Do we have a motion to adopt? Council Member Jackson?

Thank you, Mayor. I move to adopt the ordinance number fourteen twenty five to appropriate funds and levy taxes for FY 2026, budget amendment number three.

Thank you. Council Member Shaw. I second. Thank All those in favor, please raise your hand and say aye. Aye. Thank you very much. All right. Thank you, Mary Sue Martin and Kimberly Francisco. We will now be moving on to Agenda Item 11B, which is focused on focused on FY '27. This section will be focused on the introduction of an ordinance to appropriate funds and levy taxes for fiscal year 2027. Mr. Mihelic.

Mayor Ashley, members of council, good evening. We are very pleased to present the recommended budget for next fiscal year. The budget really does reflect budget priorities identified by this mayor and council. A lot of input from our residents, which we included in your packet, which is great that we've received so many comments, and, of course, recommendations from the various departments. The total recommended budget is $1,187,000,000 across all funds.

It represents a very modest 6.6% increase. It does maintain a flat property tax rate while maintaining healthy reserves. Let me stress again, we are not recommending a property tax increase. It's always worth saying that more than once. The proposed utility rate and user fee adjustments are structured to sustain long term infrastructure investment, maintaining service reliability, and to comply with our cost recovery framework.

Proposed capital improvements plan is robust and supports 56 projects, including seven entirely new projects highlighted by the much anticipated Farmstead Park. The budget continues strategic investments in high priorities for this council, which is public safety, economic development, and housing affordability. I do wanna stress, and I made this commitment to all of you during the budget development process departments that while the city's current financial outlook remains stable, we continue to carefully monitor broader economic conditions. The recommended budget reflects prudent fiscal planning and positions us well to respond to evolving conditions. Conditions.

With that brief overview, I appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you very much. So I also want to welcome Ms. Stacey Webster and welcome back Kim Francisco. Is there anything you would like to add?

Thank you, Mr. Mihalik, for sharing the FY 2027 budget overview. I wanted to just take a moment to highlight how the FY 2027 budget is being presented this year. For the first time, the city is publishing the budget document as a digital budget book using a digital platform. This allows the mayor and council, as well as residents, to explore the budget in a much more interactive and user friendly format than a traditional PDF.

So I wanted just to give a brief overview for you and for the watching members of the public. So this is what our budget book looks like now. On the left side, you'll see a full table of contents. Each section can be expanded so that users can quickly jump to areas and find things like the guiding principles, different fund summaries, if you're interested in a certain particular fund, and then, you know, CIP projects. You can jump around these sections very easily.

So, as an example, if I wanted to look at the new King Farm Farmstead Master Plan Phase one project, I could find that easily just by coming into the table of contents, going under CIP projects, into recreation and parks, and finding the King Farm project. Here, we can see also there's a path at the top. Those are all links that are interactive and will allow you to navigate the budget document more easily. So our capital project pages still include one or more images, but now there's also a discrete location map for discrete projects. We have also coded new projects this year as new, like this one is new three, for increased transparency for users of the document.

Consistent with previous years, you will still find things like changes from prior year, any mandates or plans, project notes, the associated guiding principle, and things like that. Capital costs and funding sources continue to be shown in this format, and the project timeline now appears at the bottom. With the timeline specifically, the date reference corresponds to the fiscal year that the noted milestone is expected to occur. It's not intended to be the exact date. Planned We and scheduled to have a focused CIP discussion on April 13.

Another thing I want to show in this document, in this format, is just some functionality with tables and charts. If we look in the executive summary section, for instance, we can scroll down and see some tables and charts. It is a dynamic document, so if we want to see these in an expanded form, we can close that, and all of a sudden, our pie chart gets bigger. Other things we could do, for instance, if we wanted to look at the history of FTEs, as shown here, but maybe I'm not so interested in the temp FTEs, I can remove those. And then suddenly, my chart changes for me, and it can be focused in just on the full time staffing levels.

If we scroll down to our pie charts, we can hover over different areas and isolate information that we're interested in. If we're looking at licenses and permits, for instance, we can hover that section of the pie is highlighted. We can also look this way and see that's 4% of general fund revenues. It's very transparent. You can see that different ways. I'll pivot over to our department pages just to do a quick walk through of how that looks now in this new format. I'll pick on the police department tonight. I think we have someone here. Okay. Operating departments.

Okay. Now if I go into the police department, we still provide an org chart as we have in the past in these departmental sections. We show fiscal year 2026 accomplishments, a fiscal year 2027 outlook that's consistent with even the previous budget presentations. But in this format, we have more financial charts presented. We actually show more years of historical actuals in this format.

Previously, we would have one prior year of historical actuals. Now we have three. So we show information by fund, by division, and by category for both expenditures and revenues. And similar similarly to before, we provide an explanation of significant changes that's also consistent with our previous budgets. We get that functionality, like I mentioned, when we look at these different charts and tables.

If, for instance, I wanted to look at police revenues, but I didn't really want to focus on the general fund, I just wanted to look at parking and speed camera, well, I can take that out. Then it just completely removes that from the charts. It really allows our users to navigate these charts, have more interactive abilities to drill down on what the elements they're most interested in seeing, and look at the data in different ways. Now, if we look at the Field services bureau within the division sections and all of the division sections have the same format we continue to have performance measures and short term objectives, just like our previous format. And then we, again, show expenditures and revenues when applicable by cost center and by type.

Consistent with our prior presentation, we note reasons for significant changes, when there are any. In addition to these enhanced visualizations, you know, this document is formatted and structured to support screen reader technology, allowing people who use assistive devices the ability to navigate the headings, the sections, and tables more easily than traditional PDF documents. In addition, if you look at the bottom here, there's a little tab that says Select Language. In this digital platform, you can translate this instantly to almost any language. So that is encouraging.

We feel engagement in promoting ease of use for our users. Traditional budget books are often hundreds of pages long, and the digital format reduces some of those barriers to access, allowing users just to jump around to the areas that they find most interesting and most important to them. That being said, anyone can convert this to a PDF, if interested. So there's an area to do that as well. Thank you, Mr.

Wright, for coming and talking about your experience with that. You can create a PDF document if that's your preference. However, you do lose quite a bit of functionality and formatting with that view. So, we are encouraging people to access the content in this digital format, and we hope that our users find this transparent, informative, and helpful. And that concludes my overview. As part of budget introduction, all we need to do tonight is introduce the budget. The ordinance, we know, will undergo changes over these next several work sessions. So this is just for introductory purposes only tonight.

Thank you very much. Does anyone have any questions about we're not going to go into the initiatives generally yet, very broadly on this introduction and display a budget approach. So I saw Councilmember Vallery, Councilmember Van Graig, Doctor. Miles. Councilmember Jackson.

Thank you. And thank you to the entire finance slash budget team. I think I always call you all the budget team, and I can't get it out of of my head, but you do so much more than that. I know that it this in particular, if if I can geek out a little bit, is really awesome. Especially coming from an accessibility perspective, I think it is fantastic, and accessibility in general with the myriad of languages, for sure.

Just, again, as a geek, just for two things. One, and I know where you're coming from on the PDF creation, for sure. And I would want to always push people toward the more robust feature filled option. But I also wouldn't want to take away as somebody who's sitting up here with a binder because for me, learning wise, sometimes for me to really and I think a lot of folks who are neurodivergent to internalize things, it's very difficult in this kind of it's cool, don't get me wrong. But just there might be other reasons that people would want a PDF.

I just wanted to put a pin in that. Is there a way so, that's one thing. Second thing, is there a way to easily search? Because one of the things that when I started following the city budget as a community organization president, and I'd be sitting there highlighting, I could not have told you where to find certain departments. It took me a little while to kind of get the hang of things, So I would probably do a search for college gardens, and then it would show every time that is mentioned in the budget.

Is that something that you can do in the super cool interactive version? I couldn't necessarily see if it was there.

So I think that the search, if you do a search, it's generally going to search on the page where you are. It's not going to do a complete document search for a certain word or a term. I don't think it will do that automatically. It will look at the page you're on.

That's what I was kind of thinking. And it just might be something to consider, you know, maybe in next year's budget or whoever is up here, the budget after that, that having the ability because, again, the table of contents, you know, I'm finally getting the hang of it, right? But I wouldn't know in the past where to find certain things. So anyway, we can make the language more accessible and kind of take it out of the government jargonese space of like, I don't know what an operating budget is, right? But I think sometimes that can be a barrier to accessibility. Having said all that, this is super cool. And I love the drill downs, especially on the data. So I just want to say kudos on that for sure.

You. Councilman Van Graig.

First and foremost, just echoing what you've heard from a number of people, this is fantastic. I mean, able to go through and have that interaction, I know, took a lot of work and really is helpful because anybody who is not as familiar with the budget as I know some of us are, it really allows you to compartmentalize and work with the data. So it's fantastic. The only other thing I'd mentioned, you know, kind of echoing what former council member Wright said, if you print out the budget and download it from PDF, which is a great option, so you can do what I often like doing just, you know, look, go through it. It references page numbers and has specific table of contents.

So you can actually reference, hey, on page number blank. However, in what you have here, which is a great interaction, if I'm looking and I know council former councilman Wright talked about an image or a graph, but also with regard to a specific notation, there's no reference other than on one of the pages with regard to this, you know, the operational of the city managers. So being able to actually pinpoint within a page number or some type of reference so that whether you're reading it from a PDF, whether you've got a big binder or whether you're looking online, you can all uniformly have some type of reference. I don't know how you do that, and maybe it's something that, like, if you click on some section or a graph, it says reference page number blank on the PDF so that when someone is giving us a comment saying, I'd like to comment on the graph on page blank because they'd get the reference without having to fully download the PDF to find out where that reference is. It just could be helpful when people are interacting with us or even when we're interacting with staff.

I mean, you guys know, you get questions from us throughout this process. Most of us probably have you know, or will be downloading the full budget in the PDF, but I think a lot of other residents might not go through that step. So just might be another reference. That being said, that's just a small criticism because this is just absolutely fantastic, and you guys did a fantastic job.

Thank you very much. Doctor Miles.

Thank you, madam mayor. Thank you all. I feel like the grumpy uncle where I just I'm so set in my ways, and I'm kinda like by birthday, like millennial adjacent, but I'm just it's hard. But I will say, first off, as the city manager said, thanks for collating all the community input. It was packet page 19. It's now packet page 24. The summary of written testimony was super helpful. Help me index that and then could go through the responses with even better fidelity. I did I did download the whole 569 page p d I'm just habit. And so you'll be getting my question.

I got to about a fifth of it so far by package number. But, again, I'm just a creature of habit. I do appreciate that you walked us through how to use like, I tried using it Friday. Was like, dude, this is way above like like, gray hairs are popping out as I was doing it. But I think that it is, as you articulated, a way to make it more accessible. And I will also say that the overall format, even if in PDF, it seems to be cleaner and easier for me to understand. I think each year, I learn a little bit more. I'm still learning new things, but I like the way it was presented. One day, I'll do it online, but, yeah, I'm a creature of habit, and I appreciate what y'all do. Take care.

Thank you. Councilmember Jackson.

Thank you. Thank you, mayor. And doctor Browns, thank you for making me feel really old. As the oldest person on this dais, I feel even older now.

Listen, we're lucky we're alive. About that?

Celebrate life.

I'm not

far is back to

doctor to doctor

council member Thank

you, mayor. No. Thank you to staff. This is really an excellent presentation. And I I just wanna say, I mean, you you have consistently raised the bar.

You know, this is the third budget now that we've been through the cycle. And the the first one, it was like drinking from a a fire hose, honestly, for many of us up here. Well, I wouldn't say that for me. But over time, it's gotten easier, and it's because the staff has done such a great job of laying out the budget and then explaining it in a way that it's really understandable for residents and for us on the council and for nonprofits and others that we work with. So I I just wanna say thank you for that.

And thank you for including it in multiple forms. I mean, this digital form is fantastic. I mean, you went through what is in there and how you use it. And it's really interactive, and it's really laid out nicely. So I don't know who did the actual kind of work, but thank you for doing that because I think this is really a great document.

As As Bob Wright was talking about, I mean, it is just really usable. But I think the PDF option is also really important as well. I know many people are gonna download the PDF and use it, maybe print it out or use it on their computer when they're not connected to wireless. And for the luddites, like myself, I I still have in the back a printed out version that I'm gonna take home and and use and and mark up and do all the things that you typically do with with paper. So that said, I mean, it's it's it meets the the how you use the budget is your own preference.

And so I think you've done a fantastic job of giving us options, which is really fantastic. So kudos to you, and I look forward to talking about the budget further.

Thank you, Councilmember Shah.

I want to echo my colleagues. You've done a fantastic job in making this more accessible. And also, because this is the first year that we are doing it in this format, it would be good to have any analytics with the website, particularly how many downloads there are to a PDF, where some of the traffic could be coming from, as well as how many clicks we're getting on some of the sections, like housing or police, just to kind of inform where people have their interest and can help to inform next year's and how we want to conduct our outreach. But overall, fantastic. Thank you.

Thank you. Councillor Fulton.

The first thing was going say, there's a rich amount of data that can come from having the interactive format. If we have the ability to track that, think it would be awesome. The second thing I was going say is I just really appreciate that you guys pick up some of the stuff that we're talking about, about how we care about accessibility and we care about transparency, and you come up with ways to advance those goals that we didn't even ask for. So thank you for that. The web version is just one example. Throughout the budget are other examples of city staff coming up with ways to do things that we didn't even ask you to do. So thank you for that. I look forward to all the budget conversation.

Thank you. I wanna echo the comments of all of my colleagues. I agree with everything they've said. Thank you for coming up with this new version. I just also want to say thank you for trying new things. We always can tweak things and ask for things, but you had to start somewhere, and I think we have to be willing to try new things. So thank you for that, and I want to encourage particularly like the idea of making it more accessible from an ADA accessibility perspective as well as a language access. Can you just go to the section is there any way to put the select language up higher? Just because I'm just just wondering, just so that when people are looking at things, you may not they may dismiss this whole page because they may not see it at the bottom. Just a thought.

I don't think that I have the ability to customize the location,

but it's something that I can ask. Provide feedback. Yeah. Okay. Perfect. Thank you. I also want to echo my colleague's comment on search. So I am one who searches the budget regularly, and I do it over years. And I know the FAB does want to thank them as well. So I just want to think about, as you're giving feedback to the team, as how we improve the searchability of the document.

So that's an additional thought. I'm also interested in the data to see how this gets used and views versus downloads. On the download part, I wanna see, is it possible to post the full link to the PDF? I did get some feedback from multiple people who were trying to navigate the version, but they also are they're budget super users, and they like to dig in into pages and to search. But they were at they were going to the PDF because they couldn't search the interactive.

So maybe when we solve the interactive search, then we won't need the p the PDF, but I still think that we need to have an easier way to get to the PDF. I have downloaded it. It actually takes some time before so you have to, like, put in an email, and then it gets emailed then to you, then it takes time to download. So it created three steps where there was one. So I think as we're since we're in a state of transition, might wanna consider just really posting a PDF with page numbers and and, you know, charts noted as my as my colleagues have shared as well as mister Wright, former council member Wright, shared as well.

So I I I wanted is that is it possible to post a download version so that you don't have to send to email? The other thing I want to note is not everyone has email. Yeah. So accessing the PDF, just making it easier one might be something to consider.

Yeah. It's reducing it. Can we

do that? Okay. Thank you. Oh, thank you. One okay. One second. And then I talked about analytics. The other thing is while we while we have the budget survey, as we're going to this more advanced tech, which I love, we might wanna just put a printed budget book by the budget survey in our foyer just so that anyone who wants to access it can. They can come and scan the pages and, you know, while they're waiting to talk at community forum or just to make it fully accessible for all kinds of users. But really, really nice job.

I love that you can play with the tables. I don't know I haven't played with this one yet, but whether you can actually save the manipulations you do with the table if you can download them. That's a whole another level, but I'll leave that for next year.

I will say that part of the ClearGov platform includes a transparency portal, And so when you talk about downloading things or even digging into more more years of history and other charts and graphs, those are things that are included in our f y twenty twenty seven outlook. So it's something that we will be working on once we wrap up with budget. This was kind of phase one. And then we'll move into that transparency portal going into the new fiscal year.

That's wonderful. Thank you. And is this a new vendor that you have to keep up with over time and pay? Okay. So with that said, I do think it's actually very, very important that we, every year, post the PDF ourselves so that we always have that access in the event that you don't use the same vendor or something changes over time because then you're gonna have to move all that data. So that might be another good reason to make the the downloadable PDF, like, right on our page.

Councilmember Valeri. And also testing, testing, testing. This is probably the best way to do it because it can be an iterative process because this is awesome at first blush, but I know we can do a lot more, I'm sure. I just wanted to flag, because I was sitting here as a web designer, I'm sitting here going, Oh, let me see, because I was on my laptop looking at it previously. So on the mobile version of this initial homepage, the translation link does not appear.

It is only by clicking on what they call it in the biz, the hamburger, which is the navigation, and then you see it. So it might just be maybe some slight language to and I can share a screenshot if anybody yeah, no, that would be maybe just the only only edit that might be needed. Because I know I love the Google translator. It's always gonna do things better overall. But if folks don't know how to get there, they might just see that and be like, and go somewhere else.

Communities that are not as proficient in English are, of course, less likely to have desktop or laptop computers, so that mobile design and responsive design that way is really important.

I'll just close this portion and say I know we have an introduction to do. But again, thank you for trying something new. Thank you for thinking about accessibility, both in terms of different disabilities as well as language, and allowing people to manipulate and play with the data so that they can customize their experience. So very well done. We appreciate you trying new things and look forward to the introduction. Alright, colleagues. We have an introduction to make. Who would like to make it? I'm gonna volunteer somewhat. Okay. Council Member Vallari.

Sure. I introduce the ordinance to appropriate funds and levy taxes for fiscal year 2027.

Thank you. Ms. Francisco, is there anything else you need on this one? Nope. Excellent. Again, excellent work. I'm going to propose since we have a longer session that we take a brief break. Okay? And let's come back in about five minutes.

Good evening, Madam Mayor and members of the Council. Tonight is Mayor and Council's first work session on the FY 2027 proposed operating budget and capital improvements program. We'll focus on, like the mayor said, strategic initiatives included in the operating budget. We'll review the budget by funds, we will walk through proposed revenues and fees. So the proposed FY 2027 budget totals $187,100,000 a 6.6% increase from the FY 2026 adopted budget while maintaining the current property tax rate.

The proposed CIP includes $35,200,000 in new appropriations supporting 56 capital projects. The general fund transfer to the CIP totals 12,300,000.0, reflecting the city's continued commitment to infrastructure and capital maintenance. This year, we're also introducing a new digital budget document, which offers improved accessibility and functionality, which I demonstrated for the listening audience earlier. Before moving further into the budget, we'd like to briefly highlight our surveys and how those priorities align with the proposed budget. Two surveys help inform the city's budget planning.

So the community survey, a statistical survey that was conducted last fall, identified the following top priorities: economic health, public safety, utility infrastructure, transportation, and communication. The community budget priority survey, which is still underway, highlights quality neighborhoods, active living, infrastructure maintenance, community safety, and economic development. As we move through the budget over the coming work sessions, we believe that you will find that there are resources dedicated to all of these areas. The Community Budget Priority Survey will remain open until April 13. Residents can access that survey using the QR code that's on the screen or by visiting rockvillemd.gov/budget.

Interim survey results accompany the public hearing materials, and a final report will be provided with budget adoption. So this evening's presentation focuses on the operating budget and the strategic initiatives that align with the mayor and council's guiding principles. The general fund represents about 67% of the city's budget. The proposed budget includes more than $3,000,000 in funding for initiatives that are aligned with the mayor and council's guiding principles. I'll briefly highlight key initiatives that align with each focus area.

Under stewardship of the environment infrastructure, the proposed budget includes a second electric vehicle bus for the Rockville Senior Center, expanded contractual services for right of way ball planning, additional community garden plots, and expanded recycling in parks following a successful pilot program. City work plans also continue to advance from the climate action plan, which includes work on the flood resiliency master plan and the green space management management plan. Within economic development, the budget includes 1,600,000.0 for Rockville Economic Development Inc. This supports small business grants, incentive programs, and expanded marketing tied to the city's life sciences branding initiative. The proposed budget also introduces a murals and private development grant pilot program to enhance placemaking and strengthen the visual character of commercial areas.

FY 2027 will also mark the completion of the economic development strategic plan, and work will advance on the Rockville Pike Neighborhood Plan update, an important effort for both land use planning and economic development. The FY 2027 budget includes several public safety investments, including converting two police officer overfill positions into permanent positions, adding one sergeant position to strengthen patrol supervision and support new special units, and increasing pay rates for officer on call overtime. Additional investments include continued CCTV modernization work. If you recall, we started that initiative last year, so this is year two of that two year project. Funding is also included for a school pathway lighting feasibility study, security improvements at park pavilions and restrooms, and $50,000 in emergency vehicle replacement assistance for the Rockville Volunteer Fire Department.

Housing remains a key priority for the mayor and council. The proposed budget includes the addition of one community enhancement codes inspector to strengthen rental housing inspections and improve housing quality within the city. The budget also includes half $1,000,000 general fund transfer to the housing opportunities fund. That supports the down payment assistance and employee home ownership assistance programs, but also provides important funding that will allow the city to participate in gap financing opportunities, which expand our affordable housing within the city. The proposed budget also advances effective and efficient service delivery through several organizational investments.

These include a new assistant city attorney position, expanded childcare staffing at Montrose Discovery Preschool, temporary procurement support, organizational development initiatives within human resources, and expanded community services and enrichment grants. Funding is also included to extend the outdoor swim season at the Rockville Swim and Fitness Center following a successful pilot program. Together, these investments strengthen internal capacity and the resident experience. Next, I'll provide a brief overview of the FY 2027 operating budget by fund. As I mentioned, the general fund makes up about 67% of city appropriations, 95% of governmental fund appropriations.

So the general fund is the city's primary operating fund and accounts for most government activities. Special revenue funds account for revenues that are restricted for specific purposes, including the special activities fund, the community development block grant fund, and the speed camera fund. The Debt Service Fund is used to pay principal and interest on taxpayer supported long term debt. Overall, the General Fund represents approximately two third of the budget and about 78% of full time positions. The city's enterprise funds operate similar to to private businesses where expenses are supported by user fees rather than tax revenues.

These include water, sewer, refuse, parking, and stormwater management funds. These together total 55,500,000.0 or about 29% of the FY '27 operating budget and support major city services. General fund revenues are projected to increase 7.2% to $125,500,000 in FY 'twenty seven. Property taxes remain the largest revenue source, accounting for 43% of General Fund revenues, and they are increasing due to growth in assessed property values. Other notable increases to revenues include income tax, red light camera citations, recreation program fees, tax duplication revenue, and investment earnings.

Highway revenues are projected to decline in f y twenty twenty seven and even further in f y twenty twenty eight. I will say that we did we did receive a tax duplication update, and so we are going to be increasing that by about $300,000, and so that's great news for the city. General fund expenditures increased 7.7% from the FY 2026 adopted budget. Personnel costs remain the largest category and includes 5.8 new FTEs along with a 2% cost of living adjustment and merit increases. Operating expenditures include contractual services, utilities, training, supplies and equipment.

The general fund also supports significant transfers, most notably to the capital improvements program and the debt service fund. The city policy requires that we maintain an unassigned fund balance equal to at least 20% of general fund revenues. The FY 2027 proposed budget recommends using $4,000,000 in reserves to support the FY '27 through FY '31 CIP. Even with this use of reserves, the forecast indicates the city will maintain reserve levels above the policy threshold. As part of this year's budget, the mayor and council will need to adopt new refuse and stormwater management fees.

The annual refuse rate is proposed to increase $20 or about a dollar 67 per month. The stormwater rate is proposed to increase $10 per equivalent residential unit. Water and sewer rates were previously adopted on a three year schedule following the last cost of service study. The f y twenty seven budget includes funding for a new cost of service study that will inform the next round of rates. The FY twenty twenty seven fee summary document provides a comprehensive overview of proposed fees and user charges across all city departments.

Some permitting and development fees are proposed to increase following a recently completed fee analysis and benchmarking with neighboring jurisdictions. Moderate adjustments are proposed to certain recreation fees, while many others are proposed to remain flat. A typical single family homeowner who also pays Rockville water and sewer rates would recognize the combined impact of these proposed changes of approximately $170 per year or $14 per month. That takes into account the things that they see on their property tax bill and fees that they would charge be charged on a utility bill if they're on city water and sewer service. So this is a 4.3% increase in utility costs and roughly a 4% increase in tax and fees paid through that property tax bill.

Staff believe that these are modest increases that support the continued delivery of high quality municipal services. Looking ahead, we have a work session on operating expenditures and community grants scheduled for March 23. We will also hold a public hearing on March 23. On April 13, we will have our third work session focused on the CIP, debt issuance, final balancing. We will hold an additional public hearing on April 13. And on May 4, are scheduled to adopt budget. Tonight's discussion focuses on the operating budget, strategic initiatives, and proposed fees. And with that, I will turn the discussion over to you, Mayor Ashton.

Thank you very much. So just to flag, I know March 23 is going to just keep the schedule up here is going to focus on operating expenditures. Do you also want us to talk about operating expenditures today? Because I thought we were just going to really focus on fees

The intentions and initiatives. Yes, initiatives and fees is the focus of tonight's discussion.

Okay, just want to make sure we're focused because I know that we'll have another bite of the apple with operating expenditures and grants on the twenty third, and then April 13 will be CIP and balancing, among other things that you've listed. Perfect. Thank you. I have one overarching question since I know fees is a big part of our discussion. Is it possible for us to get the benchmarking that was done? Because the report was a fantastic study. It included more about what Rockville is what was before and what is proposed, but I couldn't see the benchmarking that you all had an opportunity to look at. Is that data available to share with us?

We'll get you everything we have. And if benchmarking is a key consideration for the council, we'll make sure to give you everything we have on that.

Excellent. And then you'll probably hear this coming from multiple colleagues, but I know that it was focused on Maryland jurisdictions. Given that we're looking at trying to improve Maryland's economy and by some measures and some reports, Maryland doesn't always rank as favorably as we would like it to in terms of cost to do business, affordability, etcetera. We also should be looking at other jurisdictions that are ranking favorably so that we can make sure we're comparing because we want to be ranked favorably in the future.

With subsequent studies, we're happy to add peer cities outside our region. The challenge is making sure we're comparing apples to apples when looking at fees. We'd have a little more analysis, but in the future, we can do that.

If the for the ones that have the highest fees that we might have a question about tonight, would it be fair to say that we could check and see some neighboring jurisdictions to make sure that we're not pricing ourselves out of opportunity in this area?

So we have done some of that, and that's how we got to our final recommended fee. But if you guys call out a certain fee that may give you some questions, then we'll make sure we provide you all the data we have for that particular fee, including what cities we benchmarked against.

Excellent. Thank you. Okay. So just to help keep us focused, I'm wondering if we can go back to the special initiative slides and kind of go by those and we can go down the road, if that's all right with you. So I think ahead of we had the environment, public safety. If you can go back up. I think there's two more slides. Perfect. Okay, right there. Let's start with stewardship and the environment. Last time we started on that side. I'm going to start on the other side now. Councilmember Van Graig.

I mean, everything here looks great. I don't have specifically any comments. I think you're looking at the right direction. I think this is the right perspective. I know from the environment commission, the way we're focusing on the budget. I know they're gonna come, I think, on testimony testify on the twenty third with some of their thoughts into the budget more than just the general issues. So I think when we when we get into that, they'll be able to give their comment a little bit more of some of the areas that we can be more a stewardship in the environment.

Thank you. Councilwoman Bashaw.

I strongly support everything here on this slide, and also just wanted to share that particularly expanding our community garden plots, and I think that's incredibly important for addressing some food insecurity issues. And so, I agree with everything on this slide.

Thank you. Councilman Jackson.

Thank you, mayor. I support everything on this slide, and I would be remiss not to call out, it's been in community garden plots. I'm really interested in that and how we're gonna do it. But that's another conversation for another day.

Thank you. I was excited to see what you have here. And I wanna thank you for continuing to build upon our climate action plan, but also to support our infrastructure. And I know there are things that we are doing that are not even listed here, like we talked about earlier, replacing pipes. We're really focusing on correcting infrastructure before it breaks down.

So I appreciate the annual work that you do for that. And I know we'll talk more about that in CIP. In terms of the environmental piece, I do wanna thank you for putting in the recycling program in parks. That's something we've heard around, but I wanna give some credit to our Girl Scouts who really pushed in and wrote nice letters to say, why not try it? And thank you to our city manager for looking at the data and seeing that it it worked out very well.

Community gardens, I've been talking about this for years, and I love that we're having this here because it's such a popular thing in some parts of city, the but it's just not available in others. So I I love everything you have here. On the others I I would be remiss if I didn't say I would I know that we're gonna try to get more get our first solar done this year but to continue to expand. Is that something that you can just speak to how you're rolling that out?

I'm happy to speak to that. Yes. We plan on making sure that when we cut the ribbon on the scene on the community center that the solar is there and fired up and ready to go before, the end of the year. But then we're gonna do a a bit of a pivot with the help of, hopefully, some some grant funds, which we should learn about in two months. Our goal is to actually do a master plan to add EV solar to a number of different facilities in the city over the next several years.

So that that study is gonna allow us to do one study instead of doing them piecemeal, which we think is the right thing to do. Hopefully, then select one or less, contractor to do a number of those projects. And then our goal, as I talk to the team, is to provide a new solar initiative at a new city facility every year for the next several years after that.

Thank you. I also wanna acknowledge the city's efforts to expand composting to more parts of the city, which you've done this past year and a half or so. The two other big things I wanted to flag, thank you for putting the first water fill station in City Hall, and I know we're trying to get that out into other community centers. We've already saved 300 plastic water bottles from going into the trash or recycle. And then the floodwater plan, there is something on Engage Rockville. I I would assume that they're gonna be working on some implementation of that or rollout, But that would also go under this section. Is that right? Okay.

That's correct.

Excellent. Thank you. The last thing I was going to mention goes under the infrastructure and efficiency bucket. And it's not a specific, you know, spend this much money at all. It's really about looking at how we can use analytics and AI to improve city services and data analytics, and I'm hopeful that we can explore it this year.

I've been looking at best case uses and and case studies from other cities. The city of Chicago is using it to help support predictive modeling to see what buildings have quality housing issues. And they're also using it to see the complaints that come in, analyzing them, and identifying which buildings might have the most issues. So it's not just just taking in a human and putting in the spreadsheet, they're kind of like leveraging the analytics to be more effective in terms of making sure there's quality housing across the city. Boston is using it to look at their permitting processes and seeing how are permits going out on time, what are the stop gaps, how can we improve.

So I just I'm not it's not a general prescriptive a prescriptive request, but just to look at are there analytical tools that can help us improve our infrastructure and our processes. Thank you. Councilmember Vollary.

Yes. Thank you. I love both the environment and infrastructure. So a couple of thoughts. I'm supportive of all of these except for one.

That'll be my teaser. I know that often the Rockville Senior Center buses are really just used for a lot of recreation purposes. So I kind of see this as I mean, the senior center uses it, but I know that the city has used it. Like, when the Lincoln Park Community Center was being renovated, it almost seems like just a rec bus. So I just wanted to flag that for community.

Because it seems to me like, oh, man, second EV bus, and some people haven't gotten their first one. But really, the buses are utilized more broadly in the city. So I just want to flag that. I am challenged by the second bullet point, especially because annual boat planting is actually not good for the environment at all. I know Mr.

City managers, like, I knew Valeri would probably say something about this, but it is both economically a bad policy decision and not environmentally sustainable and not good for the environment. So I would not be supportive. I'm sure I'll get outvoted on that. But it might be something in the out years we can look at more sustainable, environmentally friendly landscaping in public right of ways. That's my dream.

And I will continue onward with my dream. Absolutely love community garden plots. I think the ones that I've been able to visit and hang out with, the folks in King Farm are just rocking it for sure. And elsewhere, I just want to make sure that we have geographic parity when we do expand community garden plots. So we are looking at a prioritization based on just greater geographic parity.

I'd be very supportive of that. I think, mister city manager, I think you shared previously what did the metrics of success look like? Because I know that, especially on these sort of pilot projects in our parks, that if it's not been there before, that maybe adherence to it would not make it look like, oh, this is not successful because people are throwing garbage in the recycling one. So I'm really curious about what the metrics were on what success looked like.

It was levels of contamination more than anything else. But we changed the way we did signage, and that helped a lot.

Okay. Yeah, that's what I kind of suspected it was the level of contamination. I also think it's just ongoing public education efforts, too. I think signage goes a long way on that. And then finally, just want to cosign Solar, madam mayor's point. And I would love to have City Hall be one of the first locations too. I'm sure that the DPW team is, like, giving me, like, you know, the the the the look of death. But, hey, if the town of Somerset can have solar on their city hall, I think we should be able to. So thank you.

Thank you, council member Fulton.

I'm good with all of this. There's nothing that I see that's missing that's not covered, like, through operating or other stuff, and I support all of it. So thank you.

Thank you. Doctor Miles.

Thank you, madam mayor. I associate myself largely with the comments of my colleagues supporting the points here. I had a question. This is not fair because I didn't ask it in advance. I apologize. With regard to the implementation of our climate action plan, I think we're trying to reduce our greenhouse gases by 50% to 2,005 levels by 2030. And I do recognize as well that we're in a tight budget year. From a staffing perspective, are we good in terms of implement implementation of the climate action plan for this in the out years?

We are. We are.

Okay. And, again, we've already discussed some of the things we're looking at with regard to procurement. Still interested in ways to for us to achieve some of our climate goals via procurement, and I'll wait what recommendations they have back from their report and to see whether or not they have a monetary note to them. I I guess and if so, I guess we can discuss it for future budget years. But other than that, I'll I'll hold my fire for now. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilman Van Grack?

We I just wanna clarify because I know we were to we're we've got separate sections for operating and CIP. I've got other issues related to environmental issues that are in the CIP and operational. So should we be discussing that now here today on this? Or should we be going it? Because I know that it's kind of like a mixed bag, I want to see where it's best to address those issues. I do have other things related to the environmental infrastructure.

I think we're just looking for overall feedback on the projects that we've listed in these areas. But if there's deeper media questions when we get into operating, that would be the better time to ask it.

Thank you. And if there's anything that's like a high level initiative, would know as we go through that. Like, not like small project base, but if there's something that's like, it's a big initiative that we haven't discussed or is not here, that's I think, also fair game as we go through the slides.

So when I started and I showed that big wheel with all the dollars, and I said more than 3,000,000, that's operating funding. So the initiatives that we're calling out here are things that are funded through the operating budget. If we were talking about capital projects, I would have told you about the new project about building energy performance measures. Right? And that's where some of those solar initiatives come through. But we're trying to focus a little more operating with these first two work sessions and then focus CIP on the third.

Thank you.

So we're gonna go on to the next section, and we'll start off with Councilmember Shah.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I do support all the proposed options here. Thank you.

You. Councilmember Jackson.

Thank you, Mayor. Yes. Actually, no questions. I do support everything here on this page.

Thank you. Just very brief for me. I support everything here. When is the economic development plan gonna be completed, just so we have a sense of that?

It'll be completed within the next four months. Six months?

End of year.

What's that, Brock?

Of this year.

End of this year. Yes. Thank you.

I was was look reading. Okay.

I should have just kept adding a month later.

Saw his, you know, everyone is like, wait a minute. So thank you for that. I just I just wanted to flag that, if there's something that is a major initiative or something that comes out of that plan that we need some flexibility to expand here. Thank you. Councilmember Valeri?

Yes. I I definitely support both of these, mostly because I'm I'm really excited about the the second bullet point. Mister city manager, can you just give a a quick, like, elevator pitch on on this and kinda what it's gonna look like as far as from the the the city budget side of things?

Yep. I'll I'll just say broadly. I'll just talk about broadly, then Kimberly will give the actual numbers. We'll give her a second to look it up. But it's amazing how popular our place making, initiatives are citywide. I mean, it's very stunning, whether it's a new signage we're doing in the community, painting, you know, I heart Rockville over a bridge, etcetera, but also our murals. Right? Mhmm. But there's so many murals that could be painted on walls that are not owned by the city or by private a utility company. So we're just providing private businesses that have really prominent walls the opportunity to do a fifty fifty grant program with us to do murals in private development. It is a pilot program. I wanna stress that. We're not sure what the take rate's gonna be, but we're gonna give it a shot. And, Kimberly, can you talk about the numbers piece of it, please?

Sure. So the budget includes 37,500, and I think the idea is that would provide that $50.50 match for about four different private developments. And so we'll we'll see how that goes.

See how it goes.

That's awesome. I'm I'm very excited about that. And, of course, I support this. Thank you.

Councilmember Yes,

I support all of this. Maybe I just echo what the mayor said about having a buffer. I can't think of anything that's missing here. But when I juxtapose this small slice of this pie with what we've said, both of the surveys had economic health and economic development listed fairly high. I can't think of anything we should be spending more money on, but I do want to make sure we have enough room that we can really invest in this where we can. Otherwise, it looks great.

You. Doctor. Myles?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I support everything here. That's all.

Thank you. I have one quick follow-up question, and I see Councilman Vangrad next. You made me think about your private development grant pilot program, and we think about whether we should also think about something in the future, maybe not this year. But if we're gonna be funding potentially on private properties to do art, should we also have something where we get private properties to be more accessible? This has come up where it's like people can't get into a building. I I just wanted to just put it out there for discussion, and maybe it's an initiative for a later period of time. But I I see that as economic development as well.

Yeah. I'll just say one little piece of it. We haven't developed the the program details yet, but that's a really good point, Mayor. The last thing we wanna do on this particular pilot program is to do a mural on a private wall that only a handful of citizens can view and appreciate. So we're gonna make sure that they are on a wall in a mural that a lot of people can see. If it's in the back corner that only people can get to by a private parking lot, that wouldn't, hit the mark on this. And then as we continue to grow our art programs, and you know, as you know, we have a great art manager. If we can do other collections of pieces beyond murals in other private areas, that would be great.

Yeah. And I and I also should have clarified. I was meaning also we've heard and seen in some surveys in the past that we are doing better by accessibility from an ADA perspective, but it's the private properties that unless they redevelop, they don't have to be accessible. So I just wanted to flag it from that perspective. Thank you. Because I see that as economic development. Councilman Van Graig.

So I also support what you're doing here with economic development. Obviously, these two avenues are great, I but want to expand a little bit on what councilmember Fulton was saying. I actually agree with her. I think we need to do a little bit more with economic development. I think that we heard from, Ready when they were here.

I know that I've met with members of Ready, and one of the things is about the partnership. I think we've talked about when we've had our economic development session, more integration with making sure the city is interacting with Ready. And I think, you know, we even heard, and I guess we'll maybe get to them later, some of the ideas that Ready had in the ways that Citi can help with economic development. So I think this is a good start. I like the fact that we're engaging more with Ready about how the Citi can help in.

And I think maybe that that pie piece can be expanded a little bit because as we've seen time and time again, I've seen studies throughout the country when cities invest in infrastructure areas with city beautification, with other things that the economic development folks are suggesting can help bring not only residents in, but businesses in because this is a place they want to invest in. They wanna see the city do well too. So I agree and echo what councilman Raffatten was saying.

Okay. Thank you very much. And I know that we'll have that economic development plan, and also RED is having their strategic planning session this April, which we're all invited to. Next, have public safety, and Councilman Jackson is up first.

Alright. Thank you, Mayor. So public safety, basically I agree with all of these programs. I just have a question on public safety, which really is kind of an addition, I guess. So we're going to have the annexation discussion later in the year. And so have you taken that into account? Because how will it affect the budget to actually annex some of the areas we're talking about?

Yep. Thank you. Two ways we're addressing it. One is, as you all recall, we're really only recommending annexing areas of the city that we know aren't, let's just say, high generating use of, police services. When it comes to Shady Grove, and you're right, you're kinda projecting the the conversation we'll have in a little while, is we're recommending only annexing half of the property, not the whole thing, because that will reduce it.

But the other thing I wanna call out is this street crimes special unit and improved patrol operations. If we annex some of the areas into the city, particularly commercial areas that we know right now currently have a fair amount of calls for service from the county, that special crimes unit is gonna be able to go into that area, you know, show our patrol, and hopefully tamp down that crime in a much more efficient way. So as of this next budget year, with the annexations that I think the council may entertain, I think we'll be, just fine with the public safety complement we have. But in subsequent years, if we annex more greater properties, we won't be bashing about asking for additional resources.

No. Thank thank you. I have a question on the public restroom security improvements. And may well, first of all, what are we talking about right there?

Thank you for your question, Councilmember Jackson. This is in regards to the initiative to have restrooms and parks more open and accessible to the public. And so in order to do that, we need, locking systems. We need, cameras and monitors to make sure that, those facilities are kept clean and safe and undisturbed. So that requires, some equipment. It requires Wi Fi, and connectivity to keep those, cameras going and, feeding the appropriate people so that they know if there's an issue to respond to.

No, thank you. And I was hoping that was the answer because I've heard from many people who are kind of disappointed that they're at the park and their restrooms are closed and they had to go home to use the bathroom or take their kids home. So I think that's just right on in line of where we should be going. The last question I have is the Rockville Volunteer Fire Department emergency vehicle replacement assistance. What is that?

This is $50,000 in funding to the Rockville Volunteer Fire Department to assist them with the acquisition of an emergency response vehicle.

Okay. So it's it's in the grants, and we'll get to that later, of course. I will put a pin in that because when I discuss that grant. But for now, yes, I support all of this.

Thank you. Everything here looks good to me. I just have a question. I'm not gonna go through my list now, but I did read all of the community feedback survey and proposal projects and want to get a sense of when you'd like us to mention or a staff going through those to see what can be done this year and map out next year because there are some really good points in there, including the bathrooms, which you addressed. If you could help us understand, because I did highlight a number of things from the community input.

So if you have a specific question about a specific proposal project, please send that over to us because staff has looked at every single one, and we can let you know, what the feedback is. There are some items that were requested that staff looked at and said, oh, yeah. We can go fix that next week. And then there are other things that we looked at and said, that's not in the city. So the response varies. So if you can just send us if you have a specific question about one, we can help get back to

Okay. So I won't read my three page list now. But I do want to thank all the residents for providing feedback because it was very, very helpful. On the ones that are not in the city, but seem to me important, I would I if it's a proposal project, we do have that contact. So I was just wondering if you can refer refer it over to the county, county, particularly for the public safety ones. Is that possible?

We can look for a way to reach out to that person and direct them to

the And some of them were state as well.

I may not exactly know where to direct them all.

But yeah, I think if we mostly give them to either they mostly would go to public works and they have contacts

there. Or Department of Transportation.

Yes, exactly. Excellent. Thank you very much. Councilmember Valeri.

Yes. Hello. So just before I start getting into my list, for budgeting purposes, Vision Zero falls under public safety, correct? Okay. Cool.

I just wanna make sure I still got that right. Okay. So looking through all of these things, for sure, I support. I would like to we'll put a pin in it because I do have some questions around the Rockville Volunteer Fire Department item, but put a pin, I'll go into the rest of of these things. Around the funding for a school pathway lighting feasibility study, I know that often we look at the direct path that students will walk to school.

But I also want to put out a consideration for where students catch their bus as well. Because, for instance, there is a bus stop at the Toonbrook Community Recreation Center. That is a very heavily used bus stop for Richard Montgomery. And when it is extremely dark in the morning, there is zero lighting, not even ambient lighting coming off of the tennis courts or anything, really. So I think that from a public safety perspective, looking at the totality of how students get to school, that would be something I would love to kind of talk through.

And I appreciate Mr. City Manager kind of talking through how the overlap between calls for service and annexation, definitely in terms of adequate public facilities for public safety, because definitely that is an important consideration, But nothing should be attributed to an area that we might be looking at for annexation if there is a high level of calls for service, because that should not be a disqualifier on face value. So most of the Vision Zero things are in the CIP, so I'm not going go into any of those yet. But that is definitely another place where the overlap of the proposed project, there are so many times, once again, where it's like, please fill this pothole, or this sidewalk segment is broken. Like, I think that's great that people are reporting it, but it that's just part of the regular operations of of city maintenance.

But I just had, like, a little mini brainstorm. So the way we were talking about the the private property pilot for for murals, wouldn't it just in throwing out there, random thought, one of the biggest locations of Vision Zero nonadherence is private property. And in particular, there are many times, as our RCPD can tell you, that the collision occurs in a parking lot, where we don't have the ability to say, hey, maybe you should improve the sight lines here, or perhaps you could make a clear walking path. I do walk almost exclusively, except when I'm in a car with a loved one or Uber. But I think that that would be a really interesting concept to see ways that there would be kind of the same program that would encourage businesses to make Vision Zero improvements on their private property.

And if there's a way to do some sort of match to do that, I think that would be awesome, because I think that unless that private property is undergoing a renovation or significant changes, we don't have the ability to really make any changes, and the area continues to be not safe. So yeah, that's kind of what I'm thinking through. But yeah, that popped in my head. And then finally, I do continue to support it's not noted here, and perhaps we'll get more in-depth on it I continue to support the in house mental health specialist for our CPD, probably now more than ever, given a lot of the issues that the community is facing. So that's all I have.

Thank you.

Thank you. Councilman Merrifulton.

I'm good. Nothing to add. Thanks. Doctor. Miles?

Thank you, madam mayor. I did wanna bring up a point for clarification as was mentioned by the colleague. What is this or do the FTEs how are they finding are we are we making any changes to the in house mental health person or no, or how are we funding this one?

So that's not a modification to an FTE. That's a modification to a contract.

To what?

To a contract. Thank you.

Contractual services. So

can you say it in a a different way for me to understand?

So So I'm gonna give you the the complete answer. It's probably better during the operations discussion. But Okay. Would you rather hear it there, you wanna

hear it now? Yeah.

Now it's cool.

It's for

my clarification, and we come back.

So we are in a really fortunate position in that the county provides mental health crisis response to the city 247365. It's an amazing program. It's been in existence for a number of years, and we really take advantage of that program. When we're when we get a call for service, there are times when the police department needs to go out by themselves, and there are other times when we're pretty understanding based on the details that we get at dispatch that it involves someone experiencing mental health crisis. So we corespond.

Right? County sends someone, we go someone, we go together. And if a police officer coresponding realizes that it's less of a crime that's being occurred, and most importantly, it's a safe situation, then the officers will back out, and so mental health crisis specialists will take over the scene, if you will, and provide the services. It's actually a better, more thoughtful way to provide someone with care that is having a mental health crisis situation. A number of years ago, there was a recommendation to actually embed one of the mental health crisis response workers into the city.

Because that's a value added service, we had to agree to pay for that. And when you consider the contractual arrangement we have with the county now, that is somewhere between 180 and $200,000 a year to provide that additional support. What we realized recently is that the embedded, person that's been assigned to the city has been on extended leave. Right? And we, of course, wanna respect when people need to go on on leave.

But what during that time when we didn't have someone embedded in the police department at all, when we called for service 247365, we still had a mental health crisis response worker respond with our employees, and the police department thought that that service was very well provided by the county. So our recommendation is why would we wanna pay that extra amount of money to have that person embed in the organization when we're gonna get resource no matter what. It's also an opportunity for us to be able to fund, like, the new FTE for the sergeant. That's why we're making that recommendation.

Understood. And you could, madam mayor or city manager, just let me know if this is a discussion best had now versus operations. With

I would say if you wanna give an indication as to a follow-up on this one, and then we can have a more complete discussion. But if you have an opinion that you wanted to share to give them some thought to come back,

that's fine. Yeah. That that's fair. Thank you. So I guess, you know, when we move forward to the operations section of these discussions, Again, not having given staff the benefit of the doubt of having my question out in advance.

If we may be able to have information if available on the difference, if any, in response times to situations that ultimately get dispositioned as a mental health emergency, that'd be helpful just to see compare comparing things. My personal recommendation or waterfall is similar to my colleague. I would prefer having somebody in house. I do recognize the expense. However, I'd you know, I wanna make that that that gut feeling, I guess, buttress it with the data out there, if if available.

If I'm wrong, I'm I'm you know, can I've I've said I'm wrong before. But just to have the data so we can have that discussion. But would prefer keeping them in house if at all possible.

That's all, madam mayor. Thank you. Happy to provide that data.

Thank you. Councilmember Van Grak.

Obviously, I think this is a great a great overview for public safety. I think, this is great. Just to to focus on the first thing with the two FTEs, think this goes to one of my questions. But one of those two FTEs that we're adding here is with what we're doing with the with the community engagement officer with Rockville High School. Right?

That is correct.

Excellent. So, not only with that, I've only heard positive things about the street street street crime special unit. So I think you got staff is doing just a fantastic job of getting to this issue. I also will echo with what my, colleague, councilmember Jackson, said. The support we that this body has been doing with the Rockville Volunteer Fire Department has truly been fantastic, and I know they've appreciated appreciated it given some of the backlog of what they're doing.

I know that it and my quick, you know, jotted down notes, I think we we've done only about 25% of what they're looking for. Might need to be, as council member Jackson using his phrase, put a pin in that, look at that. But I really appreciate what you guys doing and emphasizing, our public safety, the degree that you have here. So thank you so much.

Thank you. Councilor Mujah.

I also agree with my colleagues with all of these items. I will say with the street crime special unit, I know that's a a new initiative. And just considering the context of high unemployment, our our shelters are full to the brim. There's been a rise of evictions, particularly in Rockville, and we have increased housing instability in Rockville. So the street crime special unit will be equipped with some resources to share with residents? Okay.

Absolutely.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you. My colleagues let me think of two other things, if that's okay. One is we talked about public safety during our public safety work session. And one of the things we raised, I know I've been trying to follow-up on this, is public safety is about enforcement, but there are also things like you have in here, Vision Zero. But there's also the human side, which is how do we prevent crimes by helping people with wraparound services.

So one in particular that I wanted to flag is services for at risk youth. And I don't know how we're dealing with that in this budget. I know we can get more into that, and I'm hopeful to get more answers as we get into operating. We have an incredible Latino youth development program. It hasn't been expanded too much in some time, and so I would love to look at that and say, are there other ways that we can help support at risk youth?

Usually our police know who they are, usually teachers know who they are, people who need help, and we want to prevent that crime. We want to prevent things escalating to where multiple lives could be ruined, it could be self harm to others, self harm as well. So that's one thing I just wanted to say for me is kind of missing from the youth services piece, my colleagues, when we think about that, I appreciate some of the comments that you all have said because I wanted to raise that in particular. And you talk about the school pathway lighting feasibility. I just wanted to raise another thought about what I've heard from some of our senior commissioners and people who live in senior living communities.

They might also need to be in the future a look at senior living pathways. There are situations where people who are older Americans or older Rockvillians are trying to get to city centers or neighborhood shopping centers just to get out of that community to enjoy the whole of Rockville, and they're finding that there are trip hazards or issues. I know that there are folks recently with BrightView that we looked at that, and we helped make their pathway to the pharmacy a little safer. So I just wanted to note that as something that I don't think we have fully talked about, but we have addressed some specialized projects as not only thinking about youth and safety to school, but also senior safety. And I don't know if that's a study or I wanted to raise that issue, so my colleagues' comments let me think about that as well.

I support my colleagues' comments on the request for data on the in house mental health specialist. I think the data points that they requested make sense. I was also wondering, are our offices trained and equipped to know when there is a need for a mental health intervention? As my colleague said, has it had an impact on response times? And then the other thing that came up when the previous council were talking about the mental health specialist, staff shared with us that that mental health specialist will also support our officers.

I understand that may or may not have happened, but what are we doing to support officers? It is not easy to be in fire. It's not easy to be in policing, and making sure there's mental health support for them is important as well. I don't think it's send them to an employee service line is enough. Sometimes you have to have something where people are seeing it more visibly on a on a regular basis. Mr. Mihelak, is there anything that you want to add to that?

Let me follow-up. I don't want to give a clipped answer. We'll provide detail on response times, data on usage of the mental health crisis response, and also what potential outside services could we augment to provide care for our individual officers.

Thank you.

I have one thing to add.

Councilman Valeri has one thing to add to that point.

Yeah, I just wanted to add to that. It just came out of my brain. Oh, the fact that the mental health specialist, the embedded mental health specialist, was also providing victims advocacy services, so the solution that has been proposed doesn't address that at all either. So really, that cost was two hats combined. And I would like that data as well, and I suspect that the training requirements would be different between a licensed clinical social worker and a police officer. But I could be wrong. So that would be interesting as well.

Thank you. Let's move to the next slide. So we have housing here. I definitely support the code inspector. I know that, to my understanding, this is support the enhanced inspection program. Is that right? And you mentioned that you would add this in?

That's correct.

Okay. Thank you. And then we would also be supporting the homeownership and down payment assistance program and sourcing for affordable units. I think I mentioned this earlier, but we were expecting about 1 point something million back this year, and that may be a little bit later. So we're adding funds in, and then hopefully in the future, for the next year, we'll have that return funds to be able to support the HOF. Is that right?

That's correct. We are expecting, I think, 1,200,000.0 back. The timing on that is a little uncertain, so this infusion of that $05,000,000 will help get those balances right now, not including the 1,200,000.0 to a point where we should be positioned to provide some GAAP financing if needed.

Okay. And there's also things that we've talked about through our landlord tenant code update, the increased need for education and outreach. That's all going to be factored in later as we go through the year and have a, you know, actually finalize some of those efforts. That will be included as well. Okay. Thank you very much. Councilmember Valery.

Thank you. That was my question as well, that this perhaps is a shorter list now but is going to get extremely long possibly. I think this is all extremely straightforward with that in mind for sure, But also and it kind of goes back and forth between housing and effective and efficient service delivery, something that Madame Mayor mentioned, I think it's good to either pin or have a longer conversation. But the AI tools that we could be utilizing to streamline and create efficiencies around housing, for sure, if that requires some financial resources, then I think that that would be worthwhile as well, because I think it kind of straddles those two issues. But I agree with the rest of this as well.

Thank you.

Councilmember Fulton?

Yeah, I agree with this.

No concerns. But I think it's just worth, for anyone who's these slides are not describing every single thing we're doing on these scenarios. We talked a lot about housing. We're doing a lot on housing. So it's just worth clarifying. Yep, As the new initiatives that aren't already covered and funded and we've talked about at length, I think this is perfect. Thank you.

Thank you. Doctor Miles.

Thank you, madam mayor. I have no issues and can support everything on the housing slide. Thanks.

Thank you. Councilman Van Grugh.

I support what we're currently doing, and I support these initiatives that we have here. I think this is a really good focus on housing.

Councilman Michelle.

I support these initiatives. And so the one additional FTE, this will also help with the increased tenant requested inspections as well. Correct? Because I know we talked about, like, the land the regular typical the the landlord standard landlord inspections, but this will also help with

Yes.

Perhaps increased tenant inspect tenant requested inspections.

So let me let me make sure we're clear about that. So when there's a when there's a a proposed when there's something wrong with someone's unit, they're supposed to talk to the property owner first. The property owner doesn't get something fixed, then we strongly encourage the renter then to send a note to the code enforcement team. That's when we'll go out and do an inspection. What this is really doing is our annual inspection program. If you guys remember, we had a work session on it. We have a brand new program. It's annual inspections attached to the rental license, where now we have a certain percentage that if they fail a number of inspections, then they get assigned to a senior community enhancement code inspector that's gonna do an additional number of inspections in that particular building. So, yes, in totality, it absolutely helps the renters. I just wanted to provide some clarity on that.

No. I I do understand that. Yeah. I do understand that. I just think that things issues and repairs are probably found quicker when the tenant requests it and requests an inspection. That's more frequent than I think it was, like, every other year or something, and we're not going into every single unit and all of that. So so just to answer the question, so this is not for tenant requested inspections. This is for the standard landlord?

Correct.

Okay. So thank you. Okay. I do think this is something that we could discuss of having increased inspections from particular tenants, especially if, you know, if part of the if part of the apartment building is being inspected, there may be other tenants that would be encouraged by that, and it could lead to more inspections. So I just think we can kind of, like, think through that and discuss that as we move on with the budget. And also just to be clear, the homeownership down payment assistance program, which is a really great program, that only applies to I think it's, like, $250,000. Is that correct?

The funding for both the employee homeownership assistance program and the homeownership down payment assistance program that's available to the community combined has a $250,000 budget.

Okay. So that's about, like, 10 homes or so. Okay. So it's not it's not a significant part of our community if it's like 10 families or so. And I know that this is a pilot program, but I just wanted to be clear on the scale of how many people it's reaching and the actual need. I do overall agree with this, and I look forward to more of a robust discussion on housing.

Councilman Jackson.

Thank you, mayor. I basically agree with this entire page, but I want to drill down a little bit. Thank you, Councilman Rachael, for your question on the homeownership program. So I won't get into that, but can you tell me a little bit, you say source for retaining and adding affordable units. Can you explain a little bit about that?

Sure. So that refers to the ability to participate in gap financing arrangements. So if the city is approached by a developer who wants to create affordable housing in the city, they will sometimes reach out to, nonprofit or government partners looking for assistance. Typically, the more outside assistance they have, the more affordable they can make their units, and then they wouldn't necessarily only be doing 15 or 20%. They could make more of the building affordable or have all of the building, in fact, be affordable.

So as the finances change, our involvement can bring additional affordable units into the city by way of getting involved in those agreements.

And how big or what size is the housing opportunities fund?

In dollars?

Yeah. Dollars.

I can tell you that after looking forward, okay, once this $500,000 is added, once we take into consideration the programmatic initiatives that happen in the housing opportunities fund, there will be over a million dollars there that would be available to the city if we want to participate in a gap financing arrangement, somewhere to the tune of $1.2

Yeah. And so I thank my colleague, Councilmember Shah, for raising this. So I think $1,000,000 is a good start, but as expensive as it is to build new buildings in Rockville, but everywhere. I don't think $1,000,000 gets us there. But I think it's a good start.

I think it's an iterative program. And I don't want to have this discussion right now, but just put a pin in it. And maybe in the future, we can talk about really scaling it up to make it so that it's really attractive to developers and others who want to build affordable housing.

Thank you very much. I just add some of the experiences that I've seen the DHCD, Department of Housing and Community Development team do is they have helped with layering financing between private, nonprofit, the county, as well as the city. So sometimes there are buildings that go up for sale, and there is a right of first refusal process. And so the city would add in a million 2.2, as we've done in the past, to the stack to be able to preserve those units as affordable versus going straight market rate. So that has been especially helpful.

I've also seen you all do it for buildings that were at risk when there was a high unpaid balance by tenants for whatever reasons because life happens, that you've been able to go in and help save that building because that building, because of the lack of of financing, could collapse and not be affordable. So I appreciate the flexibility. And I think also in our comprehensive plan, it calls for looking at collaborations with CDFIs, community development financing institutions. That's not something I've seen just yet, but I look forward to the city continuing to explore this as well. So I just wanna say thank you for for doing this, and I believe as we get the RIT money back, that will also give us some additional funding to to engage with.

I have a the my last question that my colleagues reminded me of is the half also gets added to through sales of MPDUs. Is that not right?

That's correct. So if a MPDU I believe if it sells for a profit, then some portion of that comes back to the city, or if it sells earlier than it's supposed to, then some portions can come back to the city.

Okay. And I'll just say it would be helpful to the council to be able to share what strategic opportunities we are working on or considering, what came through that we couldn't afford, and so maybe that might provide insight as to what we need to add in the future, that would be helpful. Then when he talks about the inspector here, it's my understanding that the tenant sometimes tenant complaints and concerns can lead to enhanced inspections. And I'm hopeful if we ever go to some sort of AI tool analytics that we can start taking all kinds of complaints and seeing where there is volume to help us provide decision making opportunities on where we need to pay more attention to. Thank you to my colleagues for their thoughtful feedback and how we've been able to feed off of each other.

Okay. So

next is council member Is it me? Valeri. Right?

Is it me? Yes. It's you. Alright. I'm like, what time is it?

No, there's no excuse for that. Okay. So I feel like a lot of things, like in the Venn diagram of our priorities, things kind of cross over, because I think that a lot of the goals of effective and efficient service delivery impact everything else as well. So I applaud you for being able to pull together things because I'm like, you know, I I could probably made this slide, like, even longer for sure. To the points that are here, and I'm just going to stick to those because otherwise it's a rabbit hole.

I know for this budget for sure, I appreciate expanding the community grants and the REAP funding. I want to just put my eternal pin because I feel like we've been saying this for a little bit, but FY 2028 will be a post Medicaid cuts time period. And when you have those additional costs or the community impacted by that, then you're going to see an expanded need from our nonprofits. So I just want to flag that. I know you guys probably already know, but for the public as well, that things are shaky but okay right now, and it's very possible that things will get a lot worse for a safety net.

I think that that would also apply, too, to the overlap on the housing opportunities. As my colleagues mentioned, I think we're going to have a bit of a perfect storm. Absolutely excited about the neighborhood signage initiative, just rocking and rolling on that. Excellent. I'm kind of confused about the last bullet point about the extended outdoor swim season, how that might fall under this category. I don't I mean, I might be missing something about this, but I mean, I guess effective, maybe? Like

Community enhancement? Fair enough. Fair enough. Okay. Enhanced community experience.

No. No. That's that's yeah. No. That's that's that's extremely valid.

I think Brecken Parks found that when they did the pilot and kept the pool open for an extra think it was two weeks. Mhmm. That they saw strong attendance, and everyone seemed to like it, and the weather seemed to hold up and allow for it, and they expressed an interest in continuing that.

Yeah. No, I definitely support that. And honestly, getting more ideas like that from rec and parks would be great. So if there's other areas and again, going to kind of like, let's try some new things, too, dovetailing what Madame Mayor mentioned previously. There was one thing that city rec and parks used to do that that actually was really effective, and it was done in the Lincoln Park community, it was very effective in reaching especially marginalized kids, and that was midnight basketball tournaments.

Don't know why it ever stopped, but thinking about things like that, and obviously there would be a budgetary impact for that, but I think that that would be something kind of cool to try that. I say that as someone who's never played basketball. But it's also a safe place for people to be able to hang out and watch basketball. So I'll throw that out there because your last bullet point inspired me, but all this looks great. Thank you.

Thank you, council member Fulton.

Looks good to me. I support all of these. Thanks.

Council member Miles.

Thank you, madam mayor. Associate myself with the comments of my colleague to the right.

Council member Van Gruk.

I support all of these. Might have some details of things we can potentially do more, but we can get into that later. So looks great.

Councilman Shah.

I support all of these, and I have a question around increased food insecurity. Is there any place where that addressing that issue falls into?

I think the best place we would see that would be looking at, our community services grants

Okay.

And and the funding that we provide to those community partners.

Okay. Thank you.

Councilman Jackson.

Thank you, mayor. So I support all of this, but since we're talking about new positions or adding temporary positions, I just want to clarify. I wanted the city manager. I was gonna ask this question. I I asked it before. Could you provide some background as to the city's process for evaluating what where do they hire new, staff of full time equivalent? Does the city do an evaluation of services, try to repurpose staff? Like, can you just walk us through what went into this budget to your decision to to recommend, you know, hiring more more staff?

Let me say that we received a number of requests for additional staffing levels, much like you've seen over the past number of years. But because it's an uncertain economic times, we're really, really thoughtful about any ongoing costs. And, obviously, adding, you know, full time staff is a big ongoing cost. Trying to avoid layoffs in the future. Not that I predict that, but never wanna get anywhere near that. So the first thing is we evaluate the the request, the initiative, the new program, etcetera. Do we really need it? Number one. Number two is Kimberly, Stacy, and I are really firm a lot. Is there anything that you're currently doing in your program, in your budget that you could take away that revenue and then use that revenue to hire somebody else?

That's that's one thing. In other words, do something less to do something more. Second thing is, do we really need to hire someone to do the work, or could we use a consult? There's a couple of neighborhood plans that we just funded this evening through your budget amendment where we're using consulting services instead of hiring staff. Then can we use temporary staff? Then could we use interns? And then could we do partner part time staff? And then finally, after all that's exhausted, then it's potential for adding a new FTE. So we go through that with all the positions.

No. Thank you. That really helps. I hope the public understand what kind of thought goes into the budget process before it's submitted to the mayor of the council and to public scrutiny. Scrutiny. So thank you for that estimate explanation.

Thank you. I have a couple of quick questions. It doesn't have to be answered now because I know the city attorney's office is not here, but can you share more information about what is the intent of the city attorney position before we approve that?

I do wanna be careful about speaking on behalf of the city attorney, but I will say, the three of us support this position. One, it's we're gonna move over the MPIA request out of the city manager's office to the city attorney's office. We think that's a much more efficient way to do it. Right now, the city manager's office handles it, and then we hand it off to the attorneys to do even more work. We think it should start there and end there. We think that's a much more efficient process. Number two is there's just more and more work for the city attorney's office, whether it's procurement work, contract work, code changes, etcetera. So we think additional capacity there not only helps that office but also helps every single department that's requesting assistance from the city attorney's office.

Thank you. Will you be moving that position then from the city manager's office over to the city attorney's office? So net net, it will be neutral to the city?

It will not be neutral. There's a significant cost differential there.

Okay. I'd love to be able to get more information about that offline.

You bet.

Thank you. Okay. And the the other thing I'll ask is that does that reduce the amount of outsourcing we're doing for legal? And that's not something I know you can answer right now. But I think it's important to consider those things.

We'll add that to the list, Mayor.

Thank you. On the neighborhood signage initiative, first of I love it. Did we have something about signage in this year's budget and how this will be expanded? Can you just add to that? So

this year, there was funding for that, and that funding was intended to deal with the design and to do the very first couple signs, maybe even the first sign. Am I right, Jim? That's right. Okay. Five signs. Okay. And so this is just a continuation of that to provide more of those neighborhood welcome signs.

Can we get information about what was done and what's planned? Sure. That's not to be right now. Great. The Rockfall Emergency Assistance funding. I know that some of us raised in work sessions the idea of having a small pot of money that would help people pre eviction notice. Does this cover that, or is that something we have to discuss later in operating to add?

So the funding that we're adding here in REAP well, there's two things happening actually with REAP, two things worth noting. For as long as I can remember, there's been REAP funding that's been in the general fund, then there's been refunding that's also been in the special activities fund. Something that we're doing this year is moving all of that into the special activities fund so that it's all the entire program is budgeted in one place to be more transparent and easy to see what's coming in, what's going out. You can better gauge the need when everything's in one place. HCD has seen an increase in requests and in need, and so the extra funding that we're adding in this year is intended to address that uptick in requests and needs so that we are keeping up and managing what we're seeing come in.

In terms of, I think what you might be talking to may be a program modification. And

I'll take it from there. So yes, we are contemplating based on some feedback we received from council about doing a program design change that would allow there to be a small amount of money that could be provided to a tenant that's in, distress before an eviction, notice is served. So we're gonna come up with some numbers and bounce it off for you guys. It won't impact the budget per se. It's more a program design change, but we're having those conversations. And as soon as it's ripe with a solid recommendation, we'll share that with the body. Body.

Okay. So you'll have enough budget to potentially roll out that idea in FY twenty Yes. Okay. That's what I wanted to know. Thank you. Alright. And then my colleague, council member Shah, mentioned food and security piece. Made me think about something that I saw this past year. So Richard Montgomery Rockville High School are in our allocation area services with Thanksgiving and the end of year holiday. It's my understanding that Wooten is not, and we had about 40 requests from there.

So I just wanted to just look internally and see, is there anything that we need to do to support that for DHCD? I don't need an answer now, but I just wanted to flag that as an issue that came up this year.

That's something we'll have to circle back on.

Okay. Thank you. In terms of effective and efficient delivery, I know we're doing a lot on the grant side. We've previously and other discussions have had comments about the sponsorship program that rolled out. Are you guys seeing an uptake in that? Is that something that's helping to extend your work? Again, I don't need an answer now, but I know we'd looked at about, you know, through that program being able to support things in the city. So I just wanted to flag that as a comeback. I know we created a policy for it, but I don't know how it's doing.

We would have to get staff to provide an update for that.

Okay. And then what is the organizational development and human Resources Initiative?

That is funding targeted at making adjustments to the performance evaluation process, the onboarding process, just some of those kinds of things, building out more employee education, manager leading trainings, and things like that for staff internally. Okay. Thank you.

Yeah. And that's in lieu of adding an FTE, by the way, to go back to Councilmember Jackson's question.

Thank

It's an added FTE.

Just the opposite. Instead of adding an FTE, we're going be doing it with contractual services.

Okay. Perfect. Thank you. And then I've already mentioned comments on, you know, using analytical tools or something related to AI, so I won't repeat all those comments here. But related to HR, I've received I think, mister city manager, you received requests from a principal asking about some jobs and summer internship opportunities. This comes up every budget season. Since you had HR here, I just wanted to raise it again. I'll ask more questions during operating, but I wanted to flag the issue.

Okay.

Alright. Councilman Michelle.

I I I support, in theory, the providing resources to tenants for pre eviction. I think in practice, there are a lot of different opportunities for tenants and landlords to discuss an arrangement where sometimes they won't get the eviction. And so with limited resources, I think it just may be important to take into account like, where on the eviction cycle that that could happen because there's there's just a lot of a lot of a lot of opportunities for mediation and for the landlord and the tenants to make a deal kind of before the eviction, especially with extending the eviction notice. So I I think we should just look at the whole cycle when when we're making that decision for these extra

resources. Thank you. Councilman Jackson.

Thank you, mayor. I'm sorry I didn't ask this question earlier, but I was just mulling it over as I listened to my colleagues talk. So when we're looking at the expanded community services and enrichment grants, can you tell