Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Yes. Morning everyone. Like to call the McGomery County Plan Commission monthly board meeting for January or excuse me for June 11th, 2025 to order. Let the record show that we have a quorum. And right now we are uh we have a full board with Jonathan Rendy online everybody else in um are there any board comments before we get started seeing none are the there a motion to approve the monthly board meeting minutes of May 14th 2025. So moved moved. Is there a second move and seconded? Are there any comment or corrections on the meeting minutes by board members? Thank you again, Karina. You know, you could just press a button and get AI. They wouldn't be as good. I'm sorry. They can't smile at you. I was using I was using Google Meet and I was and I used the Gemini thing to take meeting minutes of but it also picked up all of the erroneous conversations I was having about about the movie The Matrix. So that was like filtered all within it. So I had I think that's only what you were talking about something else. Well, I don't know anything else. Yeah. So true. It's very helpful but not Gotcha. Okay. Uh, seeing no comments, are there any negative votes in approving the meeting minutes? Great. Then we'll move on with public comment or public any public comments, staff or um public in the room. No. Any public comment on anybody online?

Seeing none, then we will move on to our first formal agenda item. Hi, good morning. You have public comment. No, I have I think I believe on your first presentation. You're actually not. Oh, I'm sorry. I apologize for the ENS, right? Yes. I apologize. Yeah, just give us one second. We have a quick one before you. So, um, call on Scott to handle the community planning assistance contracts for upper Fredericks and White Marsh. Thank you, Stephen. Yeah, unfortunately, Eric Gerald had unexpected has to attend a funeral today and can't be here. So, uh, covering these contracts, we have two new contracts, community planning assistance for Upper Frederick and White Marsh. Um, the these are actually pretty significant in that they are new communities. Um, which we you're used to, uh, renewing contracts in the middle of the year and beginning of the year, but um, White March needs a lot of help. They do need a lot of help. That's what we heard. Um, now and you know, Upper Frederick actually started on April 1st. Been working with them. So, goes. They've kind of had a reorganization there, some some turnover and uh really appreciate the opportunity for the county to and to help them reset. You know, it's interesting to know which c which communities take a breather, the Utah breather or are a miss for a while and then come back in because we see that happening. They they they're contract communities. They go out into the real world and then they come back, right? And we fortunately we have some familiarity that they're part of the central perkyman regional planning commission. So it's not a uh blind date so to speak and so they're going to task us with a lot of flexible assistance at the direction of their supervisors. Um but we are going to focus on a rewrite of the zoning code uh as well as coordinating with with that region plan. Um that contract goes from like I say as

I said April 1st 25 through uh April or May 1st uh 2027 you know I'm sorry 2028. Um and then the total cost is $75,284 with the municipal share being $37,642. White Marsh Township uh starts July 1st 2025 and goes till June 30th 2028. Its total cost is $109,32 with share of $54,516. Uh some of the work uh identified already is updating the township zoning code, drafting an affordable housing memo, updating the subdivision landing ordinance and grant assistance as well as other support as director. So, uh like I said, we're excited. Tim Kenchi actually is going to be the planner in both communities. Um he's on vacation this week. So he's I've already been up for Frederick for White Marsh. Yeah, White I'm thrilled that we are we are in there now more substantively. There's a so many different issues there. Um but near Ka Hopin and the development of the waterfront as well as all the more preservation areas in middle and up in Port Washington. You know when when they Are you finished? Yes. Okay. So, before we take comments, I just want to get the motion in. So, before us, we have MCPC resolution 25-6.1 Community Planning Contract Resolution of June 11th, 2025 for contract 690 of Frederick's Township and 693 White Marsh Township with the numbers and terms as per Scott's presentation. Um, do I have a motion to approve? So, move. Do I have a second? Second. You have any comments or questions? Yes. I would like when we get the presentation summaries to have often when Eric gives them he says this

will be for two and a half planner days or four. We see the the difference in in the cost and I think it's important for everyone to understand the difference in the type of service we're giving them. Sometimes people want you know um twice a month. Sometimes they want for zoning hearing or what some you know something additional to what we normally get. So sure that we do include the resolution which had the figures although I had the incorrect versions I stumbled on that but um hopefully packet one I think is correct. Oh the numbers you have in that you announced the dollar were correct the the dates were messed up. um just out of pure curiosity, maybe a little bit of selfishness. Um the affordable housing memo mentioned for White Marsh Township, giving more information about what they have in mind there, what they're trying to do. Yeah, actually that they're taking uh taking us up on an offer that we've made to all communities, even non-contract throughout the county. We've done a couple so far. um our effort to those who are invite us in to to spend a couple months putting together a quick analysis of both their current districts and opportunities as well as putting forward some of the strategies really from a zoning standpoint um things like ADUs and and and different districts as well as inclusionary zoning. So that's kind of the point of it. We've been offering that for the last year or so. We've uh done delivered memos to Lansdale and uh limit township and talking to a couple others right now and and Marshman's interested in going. I think that's where it's gotten so far. Is that a free service if you're not under contract for us? It is. um we integrated into the work program on our contract communities and know it's a little little different obviously because we have a closer uh in on that and closer you know a little more robust knowledge to bring to it but um but yes so what's

the loss leader for a typical community that isn't in any program um I don't it it kind of depends on how much is spent right now if it's not a contract community it's mostly going through our county planning section okay um so they kind fit into the work plan because it's not scheduled and and really the the reason it's less structured in terms of you know budgeting cost is uh it's it's just such a priority. Um and we're trying to get things out there that help municipalities they're asking for it or those that are we want to be ready to help them. So any other comments or questions on the resolution? Jonathan, you got anything? Good. Any uh public comment? Seeing none, are there any negative votes in approving the resolution? Seeing none, then we'll move on to our next agenda item. Actually, first So, I wanted to introduce Merrick Bellson who is the deputy. Hi, good morning. CO of the county which our portfolio is the planning commission is part of it. Um, so Scott I am and I apologize for the board minutes late. It's nice to meet everyone. Yeah, I was just I've been working with Mir, two months now. Months. Yeah, a little over. Um, and it's been great having someone you know that close. You know, I previously reported directly to Lee and obviously he has the whole county and so that was you know getting access opportunity and now with me here um it's a lot great greater to have that connection. Plus, we're up on, as I told you, meetings with the commissioners uh on a weekly basis and it's really going well. Thanks. Yeah, and I I'll I'll just add that um you know, coming in, it's it's very obvious that our planning team here in Montgomery County is the best in the state. Um and I I do have that on good authority. My brother actually is the

urban planning went to grad school with Scott and he was like, "Oh, Montgomery County is where you go to learn how to actually do it well." So, um kudos to all of you on the board. greatly appreciate all of your um oversight and I look forward to working with you in the months to come. Thanks, Mayor. Thank you. So, with that, we'll move on to our agenda items. So, first up is our EMS strategic planning initiative and we have a guest with us, which is the public safety from Dave Brown. Good morning, Dave. Good morning. I think everybody received the executive summary. Actually, I think you received the whole thing. also if you had nothing to do last few days on the pile but um I'm interested in this as I remember some of this starting back when I was a commissioner in Abington about discussions about EMS and so um take it away. Thank you and good day everyone. Uh my name is David Brown. I'm in the deputy director for emergency medical services in the department of public safety. Um thank you for having me here this morning. This is a very uh current topic uh and I don't want to panic anyone but we certainly need to discuss it to ensure that we continue to move forward and make our EMS system again the best in the Commonwealth and make sure our residents and visitors get the best care. Uh I now have nearly I'm I'm approaching my 50 years of experience in in fire and EMS services uh both upstate in the Poconos in very rural country and down here in an urban environment. um uh 35 years with Montgomery County. So I've seen a few changes over the years and um I just want to relate some of the uh items that uh we found out in this study. Just a brief history. We have a very rich history in Pennsylvania for EMS as well as some of our agencies including uh the volunteer medical service corps of Narbirth and the Volunteer Medical Service Corps of Landdale have over 80 or 90 years of

service in our county. So some of these predate you will see many of the uh the other dates here as far as some of the federal legislation in the 60s. Uh in the 70s we probably most of us will remember the show emergency that really took ground and uh many municipalities said hey why don't we have Johnny and Roy in our community. Um, and it really got the conversation started about planning for uh, prehosp medicine, advanced life support, and paramedics uh, all across our great country. Um, 1985, you'll see that the state started the main legislation known as Act 45. And this uh, officially added some regulation as well as advocacy for emergency medical services. The uh ambulances used to be voluntarily licensed and it meant you got $10 more on your Medicare reimbursement uh if you voluntarily met the equipment uh training and policy standards. And then by the 1990s uh the every ambulance in the state to operate has to be licensed by uh our staff making sure they have the proper trained personnel, the right equipment and the right policies. And then you see in 2009 the act was updated to include most current legislation. It's pretty much due probably to be done again soon. Um as I begin today I just want to dedicate this to all our providers who provide compassionate clinical care 247 365. Um nearly every hour in this county there's at least 10 ambulance calls. Uh and uh so they're busy all the time. That's one every six minutes. Um, and it is a risk crisis. Um, in some communities that are well planned and they have good discussions with their municipal officials, they're doing okay. They're they're doing well. Um, as far as that goes, there are other communities in our county that are struggling. Many EMS agencies are

struggling to get folks um on the calls every single day. We're grateful for those relationships that uh municipal and elected officials are supporting EMS and we welcome additional efforts. Uh there are common regulatory and uh patient centered goals that I think we all can share and agree to and meeting the public expectation is a number one when they call 911 they expect an ambulance to arrive quickly with the proper trained crews. EMS is deemed an essential service. Um, just of note, you'll notice that's a actually a Cheltonham Cadillac from 1954. So, you can see the dynamic changes in 50 years. Um, that early uh ambulance service was covered by uh Cadillacs and oftentimes police officers. Um, and uh I believe in 1954 they had 241 calls. uh most were for heart uh incidents and the second highest call volume in 1954 was for maternity cases. Um you can see by 2004 again Sheltonham the same service modern uh ambulances that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. They are even delivering um paramedic care on a on a motorcycle to get through traffic quickly to reach uh remote sites maybe on trails or wherever else that uh where emergencies happen. They've adapted to get paramedics and equipment right to where it needs to be. U most of our ADMS agencies are nonprofit. They're very empathetic folks that a get or done attitude. And for many, many years again through the ' 50s, '60s, '7s, 80s, 90s, mostly volunteers. mostly volunteers, folks that stepped up in your community, uh, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, you know, uh, local folks that wanted to make a difference, raised all their own funds, volunteered to cover the shifts, get the training, everything else. Since the 90s

and up till current day, almost all departments now have career folks for obvious reasons, again, because the expectation is when someone calls 911, they get a service right away. Um, basically EMS is bringing modern emergency department medicine to the scene. uh things like CPAP, 12 lead EKG, heart monitors, uh whole blood has just been recently introduced by Lansdale uh ambulance. So, they're delivering a whole blood now um in their service area as well as ultrasounds in the field and uh soon to be announced a mobile stroke unit that will be stationed in upper Marian. So, that will serve residents responding instantly to stroke patients and providing care on the scene. EMS has been in crisis really for the last 25 years, not just both locally, but across the Commonwealth and across the nation. Um, CO didn't do us any favors in, you know, further declining the uh the people that wanted to assist or continue to stay in the business. Um, since 1999 here in the county, there's been more than a dozen closures or mergers of ambulance agencies. most of them were in uh smaller fire companies such as Bridgeport or Enterprise Hatboro. Um and they uh realized that they didn't have the financial budget to continue to operate the ambulance service. Um this just shows you a lens across the state and although again as I mentioned COVID caused many major problems as you can see the chart on the left uh talks about the number of agencies that went out of business in those two years. Um and it's it's striking that many of them QRS by the way stands for quick responder service and this is mostly um in fire companies that run out with one person with oxygen uh an automatic defibrillator and some other uh initial treatment items. So they're designed to get there quickly and start patient care until an ambulance can arrive. The good news, if there's a little bit there, the uh on

the right hand side, you'll notice the 23 24 statistics show that some of those agencies started to return. Some of the agencies that went out of business, so to speak, or stopped running calls in uh 2020, uh now started to return and get relicensed and come back in service. So, we are at a net plus nine. We're, you know, at least we're on the other side of the needle now. Uh starting to come back again. In Montgomery County, we fortunately didn't really lose any units. um in this time, actually there's one or two in here that uh Trap and Harleyville merged into a new company called Freedom Valley. Uh Trap has since uh that station in Trap has moved out um at the request of the municipality and they've selected a new uh vendor. Uh that skip ambulance actually covers trap as an example. The gohead, what does BLS and ALS stand for? Thank you for the question. BLS is basic life support. So these are emergency medical technicians that again can deliver a certain set of skills and advanced life support is or ALS is advanced life support which means basically paramedics. So they do invasive skills such as 12 EKGs, advanced airways, intubate people. They're providing emergency department medicine in the field on the street. So, do the BLS squad, is that sometimes just uh fire department people who take the training or are they separate people? Um, it it varies. Uh, a great example is Center Square. They both are uh licensed as a quick responder service. They have career firefighters and they're also certified as EMTs, emergency medical technicians. So, they will take the medical squad out the door uh wearing their EMT hat and treat the patient initially until the ambulance arrives at that scene. So, they're doing both. How much funding do they get from the county? Uh they get basically yearly

grants uh from the state department of health for about uh on average about $2,000 a piece. That's it. the their their funding structure is rely is relied upon their billing the patients or other uh fundraiser uh local fundraising efforts like subscription programs or fundraisers andor municipal support um for those that have passed some tax millillage dedicated to EMS or they provide uh monies from their general funds but it's about $2,000 that from the state grant funding alone the county has funded the ambulances that the state and the county just to go back a moment um the county did fund uh monk strong one and mono strong 2 that provided money directly to EMS I don't have the exact figures in front of me but I believe it was um in the tens of thousands of dollars um during COVID and uh the state provided a $25 million uh stipend after COVID to try to help EMS recover uh that was split across the state to over 600 units and I believe uh that the amount per ambulance agency was about $37,000. So, the aging community, um, is there any light at the end of the tunnel that there'll be additional additional funding? Bob's just skipping all the other slides. He's just going right to the last. I can go right to the questions if you want. That's fine. Um, Bob doesn't have time for anything else. He just he just wants to know the bottom line. I'm the I'm the money guy here. uh there there's no additional funding that we see in the near future. And that's why we're we're saying this is one of the largest parts of the crisis that as in any business so to speak, especially a critical business such as this, that there's not enough funding. It costs more for them to turn the wheels of the ambulance. They're still

doing it because that's how much they care and obviously they need to. Uh, but it cost it cost more for them to respond than they typically will get back from insurance reimbursement. Well, thanks for coming in, Dave. I was just going to say next item. So, I did am the A and B is ambulance. What's the difference between an ambulance and a squad? Okay, so an ambulance is a transport capable of a vehicle. So, they can transport a true emergency patient even after all the great care they provide on the scene. um they they need to sometimes rapidly transport the patient to the hospital for for other uh definitive care. The the squad is carries all the equipment and the trained personnel arrives quickly, provides treatment but cannot transport the patient. It's basically an SUV or something or a motorcycle. It's hard to hard to transport the patient on that motorcycle. Yes, sir. I I noticed recently like Penn just opened or is under construction for a facility in I guess it's up at Buennet right at 363 and 202 and then um I guess Lehi Valley build a facility out in Douglas Douglas Township. Yes sir. Do they have ambulances there that can go out or No, they do not. So I think that's a great point in that there's additional health resources that are coming to the area but it's not necessarily in the EMS spect right. Well and we have you know there are some hospitals and similar services being added but there are also areas of the community where those are closing and their emergency response times are getting longer because the facilities further away. That's my next slide I think. So awesome. Okay back into your presentation. You're welcome. No, I welcome all the questions. These are these are great topics. Again, it shows how important this is to each of our communities and most people don't give it a second

thought, right? You think about I call 911 for granted, right? And I call 911 and here it comes. Um and and again, in many cases that's true, but there are other cases where that is they're struggling more and more every day. And so we need to be talking about these issues and I think there's a perfect synergy with connecting it with our our wonderful planning commission. Well, that's because we don't understand that these services are infrastructure. That's correct. And the fact that people don't understand even where they It's like they don't they think that their post office is where they live. Correct. So, you get I have a Green Lane post office. I don't live in Green Lane Burrow. I live in Marorrow Township. But the reality is I get solicited by multiple um emergency services. I don't even know which one I should use. Sometimes I give to both, sometimes I give to neither. I wouldn't know who to call. So, it's the geography and it's the understanding of what the service is and where you fit into that puzzle. Yes, totally agreed. Totally agreed. And we want you'll see it is coming very, it's coming soon here. Um that we want to talk more about um all of us need to work to educate our communities, educate our elected officials, and and just overall education of this is what EMS is. this is what it is attempting to do every day and and this is where it's struggling because again if we don't talk about it now and address the issues uh one of the main reasons we you know went into the study nationally and locally these are some of the major challenges um again it's declining reimbursements it costs more to turn a wheel than actually you know they may get reimbursed for um it's great if you're the person paying you want a low insurance premium right until the provider that is now providing you care gets it's $200 and it costs them $800 to staff a trained crew and buy all the modern equipment and everything else. Um so it is it can be certainly an a domino

effect and starts affecting everyone. The spiral of staffing shortage includes that there's not enough paramedics um on duty today. So not every station is staffed, right? And then a further station responds taking a longer response time. Um, and so it is that spiral of the uh agency is doing everything they can to try to continue to put crews on the street. The 911 calls of course keep coming. Um, which is that's our business of serving the communities, but we need to find that balance point of how do we serve our communities well with the existing funding and the existing resources. Um, and that's where everyone is struggling. And there's a lot of other things here. Again, without getting too much into minutia and keeping on Scott's time frame today, um, I'll let you soak this in. We can always ask uh if we have time at the end certainly you can ask questions. So we went to the study we looked at four main buckets. Um we talked about we wanted to look at and assess the county for uh emerging threats such as what a surprise pandemic right um but any emerging infectious disease a highly infectious disease um active threat right we see those in the news every day um with uh you know shooters in our buildings that should never have happened um but the idea that we're looking at emerging threats and making sure we're all of our agencies are prepared for mass casualty incident of any kind. Uh I call the next one, the module two is finance, but really it's dollars and cents, not spelled C N Ts. Um but it's looking at uh collaborative models. Is it something that uh you know the agencies can combine? Again, many of them have combined more often by um by accident or you know by happen stance in that they just finally came to the end and said we don't have any more money. We have to close in 90 days. And then the municipality is kind of left with oh no now what do we do and our office comes in to help them understand and try

to select a new uh new agency. Um and then operations and deployment includes the uh the idea of how are we delivering service? Where should the stations be? Should they be uh fixed stations? Should there be moving stations you know as as in called system status management? Should we move them around to where the calls are happening time of day or there's a million other pieces? And then the last is of course human re resources. Without the human beings that run our system every single day, the women and men, uh, trained paramedics, EMTs, emergency vehicle operators, administrators, uh, billing experts andor planners to understand where our system is and where it needs to go. Um, the system isn't isn't going to make the best of it. If I have a basic question. Sure. So, somebody calls 911. comes to the call station, do they they give them their address or wherever they are? Um, does their does the EM does the call center system tell them which which EMS group is is covering that area? Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. So our our effort and approach to the study was to of course go ahead. So it's not who's closest. It may it's who's covering that district. Well, it may be who's closest. We have there there's basically two two primarily overarching policies briefly. 911 center gets a call, processes it what's uh what's going on there. Uh nearest cross streets, the township they live in. They want to get a precise exact location, right? Um and uh they even use I just heard one yesterday they use um you know cellular phone signals and they can ping exactly like on a map where they are all sorts of in uh technology integration GIS etc. Uh but the idea is that there's

a what's called a beat list. So by address it goes directly into a beat list that says am send this ambulance first this ambulance second. It's by mileage from their fixed stations. In 2018, I believe we passed a what we call priority one policy. And so that is we use mobile data uh technology and computers in nearly every ambulance. Um that uh recognizes exactly where that ambulance is regardless of their coverage area or their home district. If they're dropping a patient at Einstein Montgomery and a call comes in on the trail in the park, um their computer and it's a heart attack, a cardiac arrest, their their invehicle computer tells the county 911 center exactly where they are. They are dispatched to that emergency immediately. So, it's called a priority one for those most critical calls, cardiac arrests, uh shootings, stabbings, uh trauma victims, those type of things. There's a whole list of priority one calls that they get um the immediate response of the closest ambulance that has the mobile data technology. But other than priority one, for the most part, you're you're dispatched ambulance is coming from is coming from the ambulance um the ambulance provider for that specific geographical area. Correct. Do most people know to call 911 or do they call their police station or do they call, you know, they look for the name of whatever they're provid? I I would like to say that there's a very high likelihood that people know to call 911 and and I I say that from the lens of again I just recently looked at a study from 1992. I'm old, it's okay. um that more than half the state didn't have 911 um at the time and and think about it that's only a little 30 more a little

more than 30 years ago and in fact Montgomery County turned 911 on in 1993 so but again that's that's a a relatively long time ago. We never want to assume that everybody knows to call 911. But we continue our efforts obviously and we have um in in public safety uh a full-time public information officer that goes out to all sorts of events, national nights out um you know, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, all sorts of community groups and and sends those 911, you know, messages to to everyone and has all sorts of material to encourage even school students and, you know, there's pencils with 911 on it and everything else. So, we've done a a boatload of education on people to understand and to call 911 um in public safety and we continue to do that to this day. Many of the ambulances and police cars, even firet trucks have the call 911 on on the rigs. Now, you know, when your emergency happens, you're not probably seeing an ambulance drive by at the time. Um but but the idea is that I'm pretty sure never say that we shouldn't you know stop but our people most people know to call 911. So our efforts were to do many surveys uh uh engaged stakeholders. Uh we surveyed and inter personal interviews uh on-site interviews group interview sessions town hall meetings. Um we they our consultant uh did the response time analysis of all the calls from the computerated dispatch system. Uh did a SWAT analysis looked at um system analysis of all the um you know comparisons to other systems of equal or similar sizes by population and by density. Um and then we got the study. It really was um some of these were first because it it was really one of the first times that I'm aware of that uh ever really approached it from a county whole, right? A c a perspective

of the whole county. Um individual agencies, there's 17 nonprofit or government EMS primary 911 agencies in the county. Some of them have done individual studies, but what did that look at? That looked at only their area. And what we want to be sure that we don't do is have um EMS designates, right? areas that are well planned and served and then other areas that are you know poorly planned or served. So we want to look at equitable distribution of EMS across the the county. Um it was unique I think in the sense that we engaged uh Scott France and Drew Shawl and they were amazing on our steering committee to help with this. Um, to me, this EMS planning and municipal planning is we're side by side, right? We do this every day. And I've had the pleasure to work with so many wonderful people in planning over the years. We were talking earlier, Rob and I were talking earlier about Leo Baggley and and so many other people that I I won't even be able to, you know, name, but so many people I've worked with with in the planning commission over the years, and I think it's a perfect fit for us to be working together on this. Um uh it was unique in that public safety, the the leaders um in public safety uh decided to devote Homeland Security funding to this because again the the uh without criticism intended the there's not a lot of other funding from the Commonwealth or from other sources to do these type of studies that really need to be done. So we're on the forefront probably the first whole county uh study that's been done in the in the Commonwealth. Um and we it was driven by local level input. We wanted to put the local ambulance with their local elected officials. Having been a new handover township supervisor, I know how important it is to have the local community services work handinand side by side with the municipalities and I know Second Armors had many meetings with with Abington Township at the time and to me that's a wonderful thing. We want that local relationship to be very strong. Dave, is

there is there competition or are they really just, you know, second alarmmers handles a certain area? Did you look at my slides? There is competition. I have Absolutely. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. No, you're you're spot on. And and here's so here's what they found in the in the study in the weaknesses and threats. Again, inconsistent um funding. Uh again, costs are exceeding revenue for any business, right? If it was a pizza shop and the cost, you know, if it cost you $500 an hour to keep the ovens on, um, and you only sold two pizzas, would you be in business for long? Probably not. Um, but the there so there's operating costs and exceeding revenue because of poor, uh, technically insurance reimbursement andor lack of other additional funds. And I'm not beating up the insurance industry. I'm just saying they're not getting enough reimburse. Feel feel free. No, I'm I'm just going to for the record, I'm staying out of that one. Um, financial stability. Again, many of our services Bridgeport uh Bridgeport AM uh fire company had an ambulance back in 1999. They wrote a letter to the editor that apologized to their community that because they no longer had enough funding, they had to uh sadly close their doors. And to me, without again any criticism intended, it's almost the other way around, right? the community should maybe with the right message had been supporting them, they would have continued to operate as a as a local ambulance, but uh they they had to close up for a lack of sustainable funding. Um workforce changes and challenges again folks today uh many are not even wanting to get into the EMS business. Let's face it, it's 247. you get woken in the middle of the night by a pager. You run out and you know you're encountering someone that's um maybe you know not not intentionally sharing um you know gross body fluids with you but they're uh you know they're very ill and they need to be taken care of and we take care of them um all you know all hours of the

day and night. So many folks today are not uh wanting to enter the the business because of perhaps low pay uh long hours and high stress. Uh service level response is fragmented again because there's competition in the marketplace. So in order to pay their bills, there's only one or two ways, right? If you're a business, there's only one or two ways. It's either get make more business or uh find other revenue sources or both. And some have done that to their credit. They have done uh some of the ambulances have done transport services. So they'll do inner facility work. They're doing blood draws for the police departments now and they get a few uh few dollars for doing that. It makes a lot of sense instead of the police officer having to go to an emergency room and spend hours getting a suspected maybe DUI to get a blood sample to wait in the ER. Mix that whole mess with the number of hours involved. The ambulance goes right to the police station. they can properly draw blood and then hand it right to the the police officer, chain custody, everything. You said that you wanted the BMS is to try to find more business like Well, well, that's what I'm getting to with the competition that they're only Yeah. not find business in that sense, sir. Um, in the sense that they're looking to cover the neighbor's call, the next ambulance call over. So, when that station doesn't have an ambulance on duty, the county dispatches both ambulances, the home ambulance and the neighboring ambulance, called a cover call. and that ambulance is going to respond as quickly as possible to try to serve that patient. Um, and so that's where the competition comes in is that they're looking to the neighboring squad is looking to take that business, so to speak, and get that revenue um at the expense maybe of the of the hometown unit. So, it's just that competition um that again delays may delay patient care, may uh they're not all working together as one, you know, department. Um and so that's where it's still there. And then service reliability again over

the long term. Are they still going to be in business? And certainly the last is system design. That you know really gets to the heart of the matter is you know is there a better way maybe to do this? So the study also showed that this shouldn't be probably surprise anyone but here's the uh heat map of the call volume of uh of all the services in the county. This is derived from our computerated dispatch system our 911 data um that shows the very busy areas. Of course, the the highest heat map is in the Nortown area. Um the second highest would be the Pottstown area. Um and again, this is not a surprise, but what I want to point out here is about half of the agencies, you'll notice, are very relatively very busy and have probably enough call volume to sustain service, but you look kind of to the north and west, you'll see that the heat map um is a much smaller there's a a much smaller amount of calls. I would uh uh relate to you that those services may have some of the same fixed base costs, right? For them to staff a parame a paid paramedic and a paid emergency medical technician in some of those north and west areas. They have some of the same fixed base costs as the busier services do. So that's where this friction becomes. Right. Hey, for any of the any of the ambulance EMS groups, are they funded or part of any municipal government or are they kind of at an arms length with a relationship? It depends. Again, we have 62 wonderful municipalities. Cheltonham uh township, as an example, has enacted the half mill EMS dedicated tax. Um, no one likes taxes, but no, but the the converse of that is people want an ambulance to arrive in a timely manner. So Cheltonham I think is a good in my opinion is a is a success story in the sense that they've enacted a half mill dedicated EMS tax and yes the ambulance is primarily funded through the township through the municipality. Um other examples of that is Upper Marian has done that. There used to be a Lafayette

ambulance that was a nonprofit ambulance service um and they again struggled to get people because of compensation and benefits packages. Um the township, the Upper Maran Fire and Emergency Services, uh hired a full-time uh chief for fire and EMS, and they manage the entire fire and EMS operations under the Upper Maran Fire and Emergency Services. Um Upper Providence is starting to do a little bit more of that. So, we're seeing some of our largest municipalities and busiest municipalities begin to find that synergy between uh local services and and finding that all the others are nonprofit agencies struggling with trying to buy health care for 20 people and you know buying supplies for two ambulances. And I think there's also municipalities, I think Abington might, I know there's others that that provide funding to the EMS groups similar similar to the way they provide funding to their volunteer firefighters. Correct. And so there there you're you're absolutely right and thank you for pointing that out. I don't want I I just wanted to mention Sheltonham as a as an example. There's almost a third to almost a half of the municipalities do it do have in fact a local enacted EMS dedicated tax mill. It ranges from a nickel to that 50 cents, the maximum allowed. Um, just recently, Douglas Township passed the half mill EMS tax that brought in almost $400,000 for an infusion into the ambulance uh company, and that's that's really really big. Um, I believe New Handover has enacted $100,000 for their local EMS from their general fund, the township. Do we still have it? Do we still have volunteers who do this? Yes, there are still many volunteers and and volunteer medical service car Nar and many others have still volunteers that do this. Uh but there some of them are aging out. Some of them have been volunteering for many years. Um some of

them have other family obligations or are leaving EMS for a various number of reasons, but there certainly are still some volunteers. I don't want to make it sound as if there's not those dedicated folks that are doing it um out of the goodness of their heart. Can could you or can you go on a marketing campaign to try to raise money for the townships that don't support the EMS? Well, we I think we'll get there in a second. Um just so of course our at the end our goal is always patient centered quality care. Um, we want to see improved outcomes, um, improved patient experiences, again, as long as how long they wait, the the crews and and how they take care of the patients, um, improve customer satisfaction and reduce costs um, whenever possible. So, the study came up with a total of 36 recommendations. Um, and I just gave you again a summary here, you know, in the interest of time. uh but many of them the reason you see 0.5 is some of the recommendations obviously involve more than one discipline per se but you can see that the you know there there's recommendations for the agencies the municipalities um there's three recommendations that might call for the an ultimate authority model um educational recommendations um operation systems and the public safety answering point that's the fancy name for the 911 center um so many of these are policy driven again as far as mutual aid calls and cover calls and being on status and being available to respond um using the mobile data technology uh technology that the county has provided. The only thing the agency has to cover is the the uh cellular air time per month. So the county provides the the computer and all the other technology. Um yet there's a couple services that have chosen not to not to

buy into that. Um, human resources again is always important and specialty recommendations. The study also provided for the MS agency's toolkits and best practices and templates for doing quality assurance and quality uh improvement. And yes, we use a lot of acronyms in in EMS because EMS is an acronym. Um, so our strategy and and thinking through this is again probably really that number one point. We want to educate, advocate, support, assist, plan, and get action to progress to move the system forward. That's our job as the regional EMS council contracted to the state department of health to improve, expand, and you know make the EMS system better working with all those partners. We don't have any direct control over that, but we have influence over trying to move that move that needle forward. So, we certainly want to unpack the study, engage our our stakeholders, develop a consensus, um perhaps re-engage a consultant group to be project coordinator, um to embrace some of these recommendations, work with again elected officials, communities, EMS, and planning groups are absolutely imperative to moving this forward and getting, you know, to where we want to be. um and consider, you know, framework for operational authority. Again, as you can imagine, some of the uh EMS agencies have a long, again, legacy of of service and experience. They're, if you will, maybe concerned about losing their own identity and joining into a larger group. Again, I'm sure everyone in this room has experienced that with one or more groups over over time. I think these are some of my favorite slides and I only have one or two left um so Scott doesn't get a big hook and pull me off the stage. Um but again I think together we do we educate, advocate and assist and plan with communities, right? So public safety and the planning commission do that almost every single day. So I think that's why we're a good fit together. Uh regional planning groups are connected to local

governments and communities. We just heard about two brand new uh connectivities this morning with White Marsh and Upper Frederick. That's great stuff. The more you can work together with these folks and and help them understand, have a conversation with them about what is EMS, what are their struggles, um it will help everyone. It will, you know, the the high water lifts all the boats, right? Um and you have the experience working with these local elected officials. you have and we we both collectively put a vision together to collaborate and to gather stakeholders together, have hard discussions sometimes and then find a way forward. Um you do a lot of forecasting and preparing for change, right? Nobody likes change, but we all understand it's going to happen. So we need to continue to try to drive things in that direction. You have data that helps immensely in making good decisions, right? We can take the data we have. we can look at the data and say what are the trends where is it going um in population data your um the the home values in each municipality you know we can do and we did do the math on what if each municipality even passed that half mill tax it would be their decision but what would that what would that look like if they all chose to support the operations in that manner um and again project development including applicable funding streams. You folks do that all the time. We both provide sage and valued advice. Uh as opposed to warning, you know, creating stress and more panic. I mean, sometimes we may give that advice. Um but are we're not like the weather forecasters per se, are we? Or are we like Punksatony Phil that once a year he says, "Here's my prediction." And people say, "Ah, you're full of it." or are we like Chicken Little and uh you know raising the panic level. No, we're that

level valued advice that says this is what's happening and this is how we want to try to make it better. Um and again I think lastly here planning and cooperative efforts work together. There's two examples again. The 911 central center before that there were 62 distinct and small separate uh police dispatch centers if you will. This is in the early 90s right after I arrived in the county. Uh it took a few years and many many discussions and many many other things but what ended up out of that after years of planning and discussions and uh project management is the public safety answering point that's you know runs every single day 247 in Eagleville. Um it's quite an operation. Uh and again it took years to get there. many municipalities were like, "Oh, the county's taken over." Uh, you know, we're going to lose our few uh certainly local jobs. And we're always sensitive to that. But again, was the whole better than the parts that made it up and we worked through it. And again, in my mind, these municipal uh partnerships such as wastewater treatment plants or uh local councils of governments and those type of things, those regional planning groups, they're already connected with those communities. And those I think are where I would like to focus our efforts uh now and in the future to work together to get those uh discussions happening in those areas to say this is an EMS this is the EMS study these are the recommendations which ones can we uh work together on to move the system forward and with that although I took a few already I don't have a limit but I'll try to answer any questions and I think we're still on time So, questions for Dave. Um, I was I'm curious, do you through um like industry groups or associations see a lot of the problems that you talked about here today occurring in other

counties across the Commonwealth or even in other states? Yes, absolutely. AC this is not a local problem. This is across other counties of Pennsylvania definitely um and across the nation. Um and we're we're also seeing those trends of other areas that are having especially the rural ambulance uh industry is really failing. Um but there's multiple examples as I mentioned not only in McGomery County but across Pennsylvania where services are closing up. Um sometimes it's because they're afraid they don't have enough members anymore. Um they're afraid of COVID. They're afraid of the stress or again it's aging. There's departments that it breaks their heart because they've been providing local volunteer service for 50 years, but their folks are now 75 years old. So, they're just aging out and there's no new young people um coming into the industry or not nearly enough. So those agencies are closing up and we're we're using that as a lens to say and that's where we, you know, had the study compare um some other areas of the country of how they've maybe recombined um all the resources that are out there to make it stronger. And again, no one likes to lose their name and identity. I served on Honesdale Volunteer Ambulance from the 70s through the early 90s when I moved down here. And then in the mid '9s they uh couldn't continue to operate because of funding and vol and uh even paid personnel and they closed up. So it's hard to see your you know hometown ambulance or fire company closed down. Um but it's it's a reality of today's world that it's really expensive and takes a lot of training to to run a good EMS operation. Yeah. As a follow-up to that, one of the things I was curious about and you spoke to it a little bit there. Um, you know, a number of strategies came out of the EMS study here, and I was curious if there was any documentation through the completion of the study about other communities in Pennsylvania or across the country that have implemented some of those

strategies to success, you know, for for some of those examples. So, there are some there there is some some information there. I I would be remiss if I didn't, and I actually forgot to, but I will now. The the entire study is published on the Montgomery County Public Safety web page. So just uh Google EMS study um and you'll find the whole document there. It's it's pretty lengthy, but there's some really really terrific information in there. So the comparison they did was said they looked at a they looked at other county systems that were um you know 900,000 a million people similar size and geography to ours and then how some of them recombined um into a more efficient system. So um and and there's others we continue to post documents there. In fact, there's a lot of good documents that we posted with permission from the Pennsylvania Association of Townships. They've been writing about EMS in crisis, I believe, since 2005. We presented to the McGomery County Association of Townships in 2008, um, indicating that EMS was stressed and, you know, would continue to change. And since those days again we've watched services like West Norton ambulance close, Saddton Ambulance close uh and again fortunately because of VMSC Landdale as an example they uh assumed those response areas and put ambulance resources in those stations. But yeah, as I mentioned over the years both locally and in the state and nationally services are closing up all the time. um ones very strongly in Burks County has done some recent little bit of study and we've been keeping them posted on our study. I also understand that our study um was looked at by the governor's office to be considered for looking at you know future initiatives across the commonwealth. So we're we're proud to be part of that front end of um you know our study kind of being first. Um, do we teach EMS as a course of study either in our tech school or our

community college? And if so, I know in our comprehensive plan, one of the things we would we're looking at in people in jobs is a description of what that job what kind of training you need for that job, what the future expectations on salaries are, what experience kind of blends. that that's really something that would the county could support in helping to bring the people into the field. I that's a that's a great um thought and it is one of the recommendations to re-engage with the community college. Up until 2016, um the community college through the state department of education was fully funding all the instructional costs or most of the instructional costs of the emergency medical technician program and a a good share of the paramedic training program. Um the EMT program is uh more than 200 hours. So it's not only a time commitment, but it's a financial commitment. Um so yeah, anything we can do and that's one of the recommendations is to re-engage to get offer more training at maybe a lower cost or a better cost or no cost would be awesome. Also, the workforce development product, we've been working with them, but we don't have a solution yet. But there are um other things. There's there's a couple programs that are starting to get some traction, but they're not across the finish line yet. Yes. U so you've mentioned VMSC a couple times, and that's my, you know, my home community. You're in a good spot. We're in an excellent spot. You know, we're we're lucky to have such a professional uh volunteer medical. Um and Shane Wheeler does a great job with the municipal officials and helping them understand how their investment in in that service really does serve the community well. Uh it's interesting though that u you talked about them taking over Salerin and things like

that. seems like there's a real catch 22 as you as you start to explore opportunities for additional revenue streams to support your own core that you start looking at the uh bur homes of the world and the Philadelphia the pen community and the chop and transport services. But every single one of those every single one of those opportunities requires you to invest more money in resources to provide to be on location there. And so how do you how do you really balance trying to keep your cost down to be economical but yet spending more money to explore an expanded zone to keep yourself floating and maintain your level of service? Yeah. Yeah. And so and that's again that's the million-dollar question and to Shane's credit and many others um it's that business savvy. It's like how would you decide on whether you'll invest in stock A or stock B? a little different, but you know, in the public community, how would your store decide to run a new brand of product, right? Is there a cost, risk, benefit, right? Um, and so some of that is the some of it just by I don't want to say no, I won't say it. Um, much of it is that business savvy looking and saying, "Okay, blood draws." Um, it makes sense all the way around. The, you know, the the ambulance gets a few hundred hours, which is good for them. It doesn't take a lot of their time and energy. they can still maintain their service area. The police know that they'd still rather wait 20 minutes if the ambulance is on a call right now. I just heard one the other day, Lansdale or Skipek, I think, was called to the state police barracks for a blood draw, but they were already out delivering a critical patient to the hospital. So, the county radioed the ambulance. The ambulance said, "We'll be there in 25 minutes." And the police were fine with that because they know that for them to go get a blood draw maybe at Einstein with no criticism attended Einstein, it may take four hours. Right? So the cost benefit to both the police and the

service they're getting and the blood draw helps both, right? Um Lansdale, VMSSC Lansdale has operations in Monroe County. Um they have they work with CHOP and pediatric transfers and things. So they've looked at the market and realized that it's not just all about vanilla, right? Sometimes it's chocolate, sometimes it's strawberry. and they've um and then one of my slides had the the point I think I passed by pretty quickly, but it's going from the traditional one-sizefits-all of you call us, we go to your house for the emergency, we take you to the hospital, and then we go back to our base. But there's many hours that they're sitting in between. So, they wisely said, "What else can we do?" Um, they could do Door Dash. I mean, I'm joking, but but I mean, they could do any other business that didn't detract from their primary purpose. So we're we applaud the services for looking at those alternates without compromising their emergency 911 response. Thank you. You you had mentioned that in two I believe in 2008 you made a presentation to MOO. Correct. It's been you know you know 17 years. You think it's time for another presentation? Absolutely. as far as you know like well if you do a half a mill you're generating that we can increase our salary to the people that would man it things like that and I think you know a half a mill is is nothing to most people and uh you get a good turnout for I think there's one in the fall this year yeah they're usually in the spring and the fall right um I don't know if there was one this spring but and it's absolutely perfect time you're absolutely spot on that especially with the MS study we're working one-on-one with municipalities. Been working closely with Douglas lately and New Hover. Um, but any any municipality that calls, that's part of our duty is to work with those municipalities and help them understand. I remember Upper Gwenned had contacted

us a few years back. They were looking at relocating a a fire or EMS station for better service support. So, we provided them some um, you know, mapping information and some other run volume data. Um, so we work with the municipalities all the time. Um I personally have been involved with planning for um many many townships uh coverage including Whitpain Limrich uh so many more Hatboro um over the years. So absolutely we want to engage with the municipalities. Um we're gladly engaging with municipalities and giving those over overview presentations at MOO and other groups so we can communicate the message that we want to work with the agencies. And again Shane Wheeler is a great example where we said please you go and be that steward to those municipalities that you serve. It's not unlike the police department or the fire company giving the township some information, right? Here's how many calls we responded on the month. Here's how how busy we are. Here's what it costs. And that's what I get back to 2008 with is that that's when the state actually passed a law, again without getting too deep into it, but passed the law that said the municipalities are responsible for fire and EMS uh coverage. It encourages the ambulance, the fire or ambulance agency to have those annual conversations with townships most often obviously and makes sense to me and we've communicated this to the ambulances for years is go in now, right? June and July is when they're doing next year's budgets, right? I remember doing that that cycle obviously when I was in New Handover as a supervisor. But typically ambulances will go uh one went to a burrow in March and asked for money for a new ambulance that had 100,000 miles on it and they said who are you? We've never seen you before. So they didn't have a relationship. They said even if your was yours was the best project in the world,

we don't have money allocated in March for us to give money to you in March, right? Would have to take from some other budget line item that somebody else dutifully came in in August and made a presentation, right? To get to it on the agenda right now for the September. Sure. And take your report 62 copies or the disc and maybe generate some attention. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Did you did you do corresponding mapping? Did you do corresponding mapping for response times? Um, yes. I didn't show those slides. Um, they have a correlation to the locations or the concentration of the EMS group. Yes. So, they did mapping on and it's in the full report. Um but they did mapping on again those heat maps of where the most calls are occurring and then where most of the recalls are occurring and all those type of uh analysis. Um I I'd have to look at the exact time but there is some correlation obviously between the most densely populated areas the number of units that they have on duty. It's gets pretty complicated pretty quickly as you can imagine but there there there are correlations between the number of calls in a particular populated area. That's why we most often look at you know per capita. But the other big uh drawer is some of the um uh the long-term care facilities. As you probably know, and I have this of course memorized because we talk about it all the time, but there are over 7,000 licensed uh nursing home beds in in Montgomery County. There's nearly a thousand licensed nursing home beds in Springfield Township. So those also draw on EMS resources. In fact, again, years ago, I just heard this morning a call there um that reminded me of the exact name, but as an example, um when Limmerch Township was looking at building one of the 55 plus communities, um they contacted the county and and our office and said, "We

know that what is the planning effect or the building of this facility on what is the impact on EMS?" And I was able to say at the time and even today that nearly half for 46% of all the patients that EMS sees are over 55. So nearly half nearly 50% of all the EMS calls in the county in any given year are for those patients aged 55 or older. So obviously building a a long-term care community um you know or a a 55 plus community uh nothing against that. I'm in there too. But uh uh the idea that you know there is a larger draw and impact and yet I can tell you that I've been in meetings where a uh a 55 plus community was proposed and uh some of the leaders in the room were saying they were given some uh funding some impact fees that what you know what what did they want to do with it? Some of them wanted to fix an intersection. Some of them wanted to put a police station in that community. Some wanted to put a fire station in the community. And I kind of raised my hand and said, "I think the thing you're really probably going to need is a ambulance station maybe, right?" Um, and again, not to embarrass anyone and not I I get it. You know, the big shiny red trucks are wonderful. I grew up in the fire community as well, um, they have their place, but in a 55 plus community, most often my guess and with some good data would be that ambulances are in there probably more hopefully than police or or fire trucks. Yes. So, one of the municipal communities that I serve in Chester County, they have a process where they require the land developments to do a study and coordinate it with EMS services. And specific to those aged type developments, they have to pay essentially what is an EMS impact fee. I was curious if any of our communities in Montgomery County have that set up. Not that I'm aware of.

um another logical revenue source at least an infusion at the beginning. Absolutely correct. And that's back to the the long-term thinking of an authority model which there are other ones in Pennsylvania. Um again, I know some of the ambulances are resistant because of losing identity. Uh but there may be values in in combining and efficiencies and an authority model can in fact uh allocate uh levy fees uh impact fees on facilities such as nursing homes that are maybe nonprofit or somehow you know built in a way that they're they're not necessarily paying their fair share of the the impact that they have on EMS. And if if EMS is taking a patient out of there with Medicare or Medicaid insurance, um there again the reimbursement is even lower than sometimes what the insurance, you know, private insurance reimbursement would be. So it's a bigger cost. Um other ones with very large assisted living or independent living apartments, um there's a huge impact on EMS uh for what's called a lift assist. Okay. So, Lower Providence Ambulance is uh suffering wonder greatly about the idea that they have thousands of calls um in their run area that sends a full loaded ambulance for a lift assist. They get there certainly they want to do a medical assessment. Um they get the person if they're not injured and don't need to be transported, they get them back into bed or on their feet or whatever. Guess how much money they get for that call? Zero. Zero. So that's a huge impact on building that community, which is wonderful for the people that live there and the company that operates it or whatever. Huge impact on EMS, zero reimbursement because they they can only bill when they transport to a hospital and they it's capped. They could send a bill to the insurance for $10,000, but

the insurance is only still going to pay them maybe 400. Yes. Scott, one of the things that I thought, you know, in being part of small part of this process along the way and what struck me early on and throughout is, you know, the uh known people involved with this knowing the challenge of uh the provincial nature of all these companies and not wanting to, you know, give up. We're as planners, we're very familiar with that and other arenas uh with municipal governments and other entities. Um, but I'm curious like what is if what's the primary kind of reason or or for resistance to more consolid not even consolidation but like an over you regional more regional authority. Um, is it is it revenue? Is it is it not having control over those calls and maybe worried about not getting the ones that they need to support themselves or or is it something else that I've been having trouble figuring that out? You know, it's it's I think it's the it's kind of that that mystery of life in the sense that I guess it always looks good when it's somebody else putting things together. But yeah, I think it's that loss of vocal identity. There's a there's a a tremendous amount of pride for a very good reason. Like I said, these are dedicated folks that have all but dedicated their life to this. Whether they're compensated or not, they are empathetic folks to the nth degree. Um and and I understand I do understand that there's they're very proud. um they've served their communities for so many years and they don't want to lose that local identity I believe and the other is just that is that if there's now an operational kind of process to this and they they fear I think without understanding that it looks like a loss of revenue it looks like we're proposing something that is doing away with them and in fact I truly believe and our whole mission is to make them stronger so they're there and with an authority model levying fees on the

municipality. Again, no one likes new new levies. I understand that. I truly do. Um but like uh was mentioned, most people probably spend more than that at, you know, buying their weekly coffee um or or whatever else. And I think given the the community given a choice now is a little cheaper, but no. Um, but given the uh given the community, I was at this morning. There's no judgment here. You can have whatever coffee you like. That's okay. Um, no, the idea is that the community needs to understand that they're they're supporting supporting the ambulance services and that actually an authority most likely even though they would be now a collective overall operationally it would be more efficient cost-wise would have that probably more personnel available to them. And we put the ambulances in the right places because once the fees are coming in then obviously the expectation is even higher that hey I paid my half mills tax. I have a very high expectation that EMS needs to arrive here quickly. Is there a maximum to the millillage rate that that a municipality can charge as it stands right now the max on under the state law and that's that act 7 8 and nine of 2008 is that half mill unless there's a voter referendum. So Ben Salem's a good example where Ben Salem uh has appealed to their community. I believe it was actually voted down in one uh voter uh sequence, but in the next voter sequence it was voted uh in that they actually are authorized to collect uh two 2.0 mill. Um, so right now under the state law, uh, half a million. And what, um, how many municipalities of the 62 municipalities in Montgomery County assess a a millillage for EMS? I believe it it's at least a third of them. I want

to say it's in the neighborhood of 22 or 23. So, we're at least a third of the way, but as I as I mentioned again, as a caveat, the some of them are at the half mill. Other ones are only at like a nickel or two. And again, I believe that I believe we have a published list or I'm sure you could most most municipalities will even post it on their website, right, that they have a local, you know, their local taxing uh makeup. So, it's again educating those I think local officials, understandably, everyone goes in hers when they impact or put new fees on on residents or properties. Um, but also then think about it. Some of the western areas still are growing, right? I mean they're not we're not completely build out. So as those EMS agencies may already be struggling as people move in if there are property assess or you know geographic assessed fees for them then new people moving in will start already paying into that prior to this all those organizations and I'll equate it to uh my parents and grandparents who they would you know like clockwork every year fill out that subscription fee and join the ambulance bulance for $100 a year to prevent any balance billing. But most people today, the the subscription drives and fund drives that the ambulances do try to encounter, it costs them $30,000 to send out the mailing and and set it up and they might get $150,000 back. So, it's it's barely paying for the cost. It's a little more than obviously the cost of the the publishing and the mailing, but again, that the subscription fees most folks are, "Oh, it'll never happen to me," you know. Um, again, most folks, not everyone, but but many folks are like, "Oh, you know, they're in denial or I won't ever need an ambulance." Whereas, you know, they just don't see. And, you know, most calls are one on one to one, right? More than 70% of all EMS calls

are one-on-one. They're not multi victim car crashes or they're not um, you know, any other type of major public event. They're singular cases, oneonone. Did the study at did the study approach uh solutions based on the way a system is set up now where we've talked about it over and over in this presentation versus a a different type of system like a governmentrun system where the governments or the municipalities or the county is is providing the service. So we didn't it didn't get that far. Um the idea that these 36 recommendations would move us definitely move the ball way forward. That would be the the actual operational model. They suggested several but it wasn't necessarily was it was private run or or government run. It was more like let's set up a again like a wastewater authority right let's set up an authority representative of all those municipalities that choose to join um and then from there develop the exacting model and the exacting levying of fees and and you know those those items. So it was more of getting rep getting a representative board. In essence, it would have one centralized, if you will, board of directors, right? Instead of each individual agency having its own board of directors today, and they're mostly concerned about their own service area for obvious reasons, and that's understandable. But the idea that you'd have a broader view, right, of the like this board looks for out for every municipality in the county, whereas again without criticism, the uh you know, Limmerick Township supervisors primarily look out for issues in Limmerch Township. Not sure I not sure I see how that operation works, but I guess that's something that So, in your mind, after you've been through this several times, this presentation and understanding of it, what do you

think are the two biggest threats to the EMS system in Montgomery County? Now, based on your convers based on your presentation, I have my own thoughts. I'm sure everybody else has other thoughts too, but what do you think are the two biggest threats to the EMS system? I would say the way we deploy the the resources and and definitely the finances. Okay. And if I had to pick a third, I would say the people, right? Is there is there a direct correlation between the lack of lack of um coverage by EMS as to is there a direct correlation to the lack of coverage of EMS services with the contraction of hospital and medical care services? Not necessarily in Montgomery County. Okay. uh Chester County, I'm sorry, Delaware County was a very unique occurrence only a sense and we I don't want to spend another hour but the idea that Croer as Proer and Taylor as hospital systems were healthc care and proer paramedics covered about 60% of all the municipalities for paramedic field coverage. So that that was a a double whammy um in that sense. Um, we've had hospital closures in my career. Now, let's I thought I was I think I was two for two. So, I was here in 1994 when Sacred Heart closed. Um, I was here when Montgomery they didn't they closed in Norristown, but really moved to East Norton. So, I don't know if that's a that's an an opening and a closing. Um, then CHOP opened as a as a new pediatric resource which was amazing. Um, Lehigh Valley, Gilbert'sville opened since in my career. Um, so yeah, I think we're three plus and two minus. Um, but now say Suburban General, that's it. I'm three for three. Three, three open, three closed technically um with Suburban General moving to a behavioral

health center um on July 1. But the idea with Suburban General is they we saw the trend again looking at data and saw the trend that about what last fall I believe they announced that they were basically uh reducing or eliminating all their inhouse services right no ICU no upstairs they really became what we call a micro hospital um with like ER beds and some overnight beds just to transfer folks out much like Lehigh Valley Gilbertville runs and it's a valuable community asset it doesn't really affect EMS as much as they need to be able to deliver patients to definitive care. Um, so it is going to definitely strain the suburban example, but we saw that ambulances have been taking less fewer and fewer patients to the suburban general hospital ER in the last several months, right? So, it's not a perfect world, but the transition was a little better in that there were several months when the ambulances and probably obviously the most impacted would be Einstein Montgomery would be receiving a much more uh potent introduction of EMS patients. And the other thing to note is that EMS takes about EMS delivers about less than 10% of all patients to the emergency department. So 90% of that of course is walk-ins um and folks from the community again that may struggle to get health care. Conversely though, think about it. If they are concerned about getting health care um by walking into the facility, what might they do? Call 911. Thinking and many folks for years thought that if they called 911 and got an ambulance that somehow they would get faster into the emergency department. And I just want to dispel that as a myth because certainly 911 will respond to that emergency um and take them to the facility if it's necessary and needed, but they still go through the triage process when they arrive at the emergency department. Um it doesn't give you a a ticket to get um into the

emergency department any faster if you arrive isn't a fast pass, right? Correct. Are there any other uh Looks like there's some questions in the back. Uh Chloe's got a question. Hi Chloe. Thanks for coming to visit us. It's coming in multiple parts. Ask about zoning. In terms of citing a new facility, are you aware of I know that doesn't happen all that often, but it happens. um issues in terms of finding a location that will permit uh a BMS facility and just what are any issues around that with zoning or sighting sighting surveys? I'm not aware of any recently. Um historically I remember the um I'm blessed with a very long memory but I do remember the Sibly Avenue address for volunteer medical service corp Narbirth was a community issue like kind of a nimi thing um at the time and obviously they were able to overcome that with the discussion about you know they're going to be good neighbors they're not going to be noisy all around the clock um with the sirens going off and the you know claxon going off in the station and all that. So the to my understanding this the last one I'm I was aware of was sighting of emergency uh stations was again that probably was the mid to mid to late 90s and the sibl address like I said I think it went through in several uh community zoning uh hearings on sighting of that kind of in a residential neighborhood. Other questions? Thank you. So, um, this is another piece of emergency services, but I don't know if it's DDMS that actually responds, but one of the other things that we deal with a lot is we're seeing new housing developments going into the flood plane and that they need to be blocked off during a a flood emergency and then we comment to the township like like make sure that your emergency services are prepared to deal with this. Do you get those calls? So

not in EMS but as part of public safety and in from my past experience working in both EMS and emergency management and director Brian Macau is here from the department of public safety. Um but uh basically that those those flood plane issues are in the uh flooding and hazard mitigation plans and um again the county emergency management works closely with those municipalities and I'm sure with the planning commission um to to develop those plans but again you know the townships again can say yeah we completely embrace these or we do otherwise. Um and again it's not a criticism other than it is their local choice whether they're going to do that. So sometimes we do uh become frustrated because we believe that there are ways to maybe prevent some of that emergency response into those emergencies um that could be prevented but sometimes isn't isn't doesn't help us. Um part question part opportunity. Um it seems from the conversation that there is a lack of education like we need to raise awareness about these issues. Um, and I'm surprised I'm bringing up the comp plan and Chloe did not. I was I was gonna do that next. We do a lot of comprehensive planning. We do sustainability plans. We do lots of plans where this sort of issue could be raised and addressed. Um, you talked about the information that we were able to provide. Um, is there information that you can provide us? Is there a way to set up a like an easy to use conduit where we are working on a comprehensive plan and we can have a point of contact or a method of being like this is a type of information for this community for this county where we think the community would be it would be beneficial for them to have that information to be aware of these issues. um just kind of the more we can market

it, the more we can raise these issues and as many as easily as possible. I think I have one more answer. Absolutely. Um that absolutely you can take that $20 I put under that taped under that seat for that softball question. But no, it just makes total sense. You're absolutely right. you have data that is useful to our plans and planning you know it's not the plan it's right it's planning right it's the action that's important it's that continuous process and yeah I've had the the honor I again to work with like I said so many different people in the planning commission over the years um many of you I'm on a firstname basis with obviously but um we want to continue to do work together on that absolutely because you have data we need and we certainly will find ways to bundle data back to you. I know I've provided commentary to the 2040 plan and now the 2050 plan um and other other plans over the years. Again, when I was doing more in emergency management, I worked all the time with Michael Stokes and others in the hazard mitigation planning world. Um I see you have a hearing coming up, I believe, on a piece of hazard mitigation. Did I say that incorrectly or not? Yeah, the percuan flood study. Yes, that's it. The percuan flood study. Thanks. I just saw that yesterday, I think. So, there's a shout out for your percomen flood study. Um, and thank you Chloe and everyone that Ann worked with with you many times. Um, and we we would love to continue that relationship. Uh, quickly as long as it's not repetitive. Go ahead. It's not repetitive. Um, morning David. I'm Austin. Good morning. Um, you have mentioned in your presentation at least twice um using the verbiage uh communities that are well planned and served. Um, if you were to pull each of our planners what a well planned community looks like, I imagine eventually we'd all hit probably the same points. However, what we list first would be unique among each of us. I

think everyone knows what I think makes a wellplanned community. Um, David, as the uh deputy director of EMS, what makes a wellplanned community? Wow. And I only have one answer. Anyone that knows me, I could talk like three hours on this, so I don't know if you know I should even answer this question. Um, honestly, I think a connected community is most important. Um, and and you know, that's obviously a very broad brush answer, but intentionally so because and you all know my passion of course, but connected communities are are key. Connected meaning connection is very very broad. Manga 2040 talks about connected communities. Um, do you mean connected physically, socially, structurally, all of the above? All the above. We have anybody online there? Karina, Jonathan has a speaker, so I'm thinking he wants to ask a question. What's that? Jonathan Randy has a speaker on, so I wasn't sure if he had a question. Yeah. I just uh wanted to say this was a riveting presentation and and Dave knows his stuff cold. Uh thanks a lot. Thanks Jonathan. Anybody else before we move on? Dave, thanks. I appreciate it. It was uh enlightening and disturbing at the same time. But I appreciate the work that's being done. Thank you for having us. And again, we're we're glad to come back anytime. I think there's a lot of great things we can do and I'll continue to work with Scott and the other team to to move the ball forward together. Great. Thank you. All right. You're very welcome. Thanks. Thank you. Okay. Move on to our next agenda item which is 2024 construction report and pull in Dave for residential and non-residential construction. Morning Dave.

I'm handing out an amended version of the nonresidential report last minute. [Music] Thank you. All right, D. Not as cool as the first day, but all days are cool. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. So, okay. Uh, yes, I'm going to be going over our 2024 residential and non-residential build reports. But right before I do that, I just wanted to give a um a quick overview of all of the reports that we do throughout the years because I know we give you we give you all a lot of them and just kind of a recap and just a little give you um a little ordination of where we are in the year. So January of course we release our annual summary report which is all the proposals and submissions that we receive through our our 247 database. Um March we go over med housing prices for and where we are now the housing non-residential and in September we'll go over the inventories where we traditionally go over the inventories multif family aid restricted developments. um I should not say and I should say uh shopping centers and and uh business parks but and those are taken directly from our uh reports our annual build reports and then throughout the year we to the best of our ability track major developments through our quarterly construction construction reports. Um, these are multif family units, uh, developments with at least 50 multif

family units and, uh, and at least 30,000 square feet of non-residential. I say that because, uh, all of these put together help us obviously track what's been built in the county, but also what's what's coming and, you know, we it helps us to research what's happened and what might be potentially having happening in the future. So, just a little insight there before I move right into our housing units built. So, we've had a little departure from our previous years in terms of our total residential. Last year, we had 1,782 units built, which is about a 26% decrease from the year prior. This was driven by a significant decline in multif family units compared to previous years that you can see over 70% decrease uh from 2023 units total. Uh single family attached grew a little bit 34 uh 34% and detached homes remain basically steady. And of course we'll go into how this all aligns with the comp plan. As we all know, we are updating the comp plan. So that growth and preservation map will look different when we do these reports next year. And just going into the five and 10 year trends. So yeah, single family detach and attach is variable somewhat year-to-ear, but generally pretty steady. Uh single family attach we saw actually the highest number we've seen since 2019. And of course, multif family as you see through through the the decadel long trend. You know, traditionally it has been at least since 2014 the largest major house type of of the three house types that we track up until this year where it has dipped uh below what is what we typically see well below what we typically see and we'll be getting into that. Just an overview of where we saw most of

development throughout the county. So, McGomery Township uh saw the most units per year. This was mostly driven by the Luxer lifestyle apartments that were built in McGomeryville. It's 225 units total. Um and so that that was the major driver then really the only major multif family development we had in the county this year. Horscham, Upper Marian, Bridgeport. These are either driven by um in Horscham's case especially age restricted housing which we've seen which is continuing to build they're continuing to build on that upper Mar and Bridgeport major town home communities um have been have been up there as well. Just an overview of the single family detached is, you know, generally spread throughout the county. Still, you know, we're seeing pockets of density in Douglas. Upper Potts Grove um down here um is some of that's driven by age restricted units this year. the pot hunt community. Uh um and you know a lot of these were especially in Porsche and Hatfield driven by age restricted units and attach units. This doesn't look like as many but it's actually more just because they're all on top of each other but you bridge cord. You can see they never works well. Um the bridge view uh community continues did get some construction. They haven't started on the multif family portion yet, but town homes continue to be developed and upper Marian seeing the overlook at Town Center and Stone Brook at Upper Marian. Major developments on that front. Multif family. So, um a Montgomery you see the the Luxer lifestyle apartments there. We've also had um you know in terms of the kind of midsize we've seen the creek side mainland which is kind of straddles lower southford in

Talamemenson and uh the al cove at um at Forest Lane and Schwanksville but yeah you can see definitely um lighter on the multif family in terms of major developments and this is a little bit much I know but you know when we want to get into why a development has our pattern has changed so drastically. We want to first start off with what's been proposed over the last 5 to 10 years. And what we have right here is we've taken from our annual summary report that we gave in January. Uh this is every all proposed residential units by type in 2014 2024. And looking at these and and here is what you see below are the largest multif family developments proposed in 2023 20 22 to 24. And you know, looking at these, you're thinking, okay, well, have we seen a drastic decrease in what's been proposed? Have these developments just have trouble getting through the process? Are they just not simply being brought to completion? Whether that's, you know, high in remaining high interest rates, um, you know, just certain developers having difficulty, you know, putting funding together or just halting projects that were proposed. So you can see there has been a decrease in in proposals in multif family for 23 and 24 but that doesn't directly affect what uh this past year has seen in terms of completions. Um it's it's generally been pretty consistent with the exception of 2020 and uh but you can see though in the 23 and 24 multif family proposals you see less major developments. You've got a couple developments that are, you know, 200 multif family units or 200 units or more compared to 2022 where you've got, you

know, 500, you got 111 Presidential Boulevard, which is slated to be 425. So, in short, it's not so much that we're not getting a lot of proposals, but it's the type of proposals we're getting, but also whether those are brought to completion. And to zoom in a little bit further with this is our quarterly construction report we just did for quarter one of this year. These are currently all of our multif family developments of at least 50 units that are either under construction or in land preparation phase and based on this number based on this report what is slated to be completed for for this coming year. So you'll see this when I present this next year is at least a slight increase for compared to what we've seen this year. So about 571 units are of the developments in this report are uh scheduled to be completed for 2025. So that's at least uh a slight increase that we can anticipate for this year. But you know the as you can see though a lot of these developments they're obviously been in the pipeline for a while they first proposed anywhere between 2019 to 2024 but mostly in the 2020 20 to 2021 range um last year when I when I completed when I presented this report we were talking about Madison West we were talking San Green um the province at at Town Center those were all major units that have had a similar era in terms of when they were proposed. Um but just we're seeing fewer major developments brought to completion. And um that could also reflect uh developers having trouble with funding have prevailing high interest rates that keep these projects from being completed and not

surprisingly potentially leads to fewer overall proposals for 2023 and 2024. So just trying to track that history there and make sense of it is is why putting all these reports together is so critical. And and David, sorry to interrupt, but I'll just add I looked this yesterday when I was thinking about these numbers. Um for 2025 to this date, we've had 1,700 units proposed uh 900 and so of which are multif family. So the trends of the last 10 years are still in play despite this kind of a flip and D great job illustrating how some of those Yeah. I mean I think it's interesting when you look at the quarterly construction report quarter one year proposed I mean we we do have to remember and you see it in this chart co you know I mean we want to focus on the interest rates absolutely a factor but the reality is these projects a lot of them have been lingering they suffered through co and knowing a lot of these projects on the list are suffering for other red tape and other issues that are holding them back we've got new issues right in front of us global stage of what's happening, right? It's ever shifting, but when you dig into it a little bit, there are a lot of factors at play here. Yeah, certainly. And and CO obviously slowed, you know, a lot of these down. So, that's that's going to we're still feeling that effect uh today. Um and this is something that's, you know, been going on throughout the region, throughout the country. Um and just some for some broad perspective um from we typically utilize a lot of co-star data um you know the city of Philadelphia last year saw an increase in the number of of apartment units built while the suburbs saw a 42% decline in new units uh entering entering the rental market. So this is well although the decrease was a little higher than that it's you

know kind of part and parcel of the broader trends going on throughout the region and ultimately the the country and so that's that's our um you know that's our ability analysis of that difference. Shifting a little bit to age restricted housing. Uh we saw slightly fewer age restricted units than last year. 267 total units. Um perhaps not surprisingly, no multif family units were of this of this uh total. We saw uh Dell web and Hatfield continue to develop it and then as well as Horscham's Regency wide continues to grow. It's 100 had 110 units this year. And then a new development, Potts Grove Hunt in upper pots Grove, it's 59 units and that comprised nearly all of Upper Pots Groves was built for last year. And the growth and preservation map, which will, you know, as we update the comp plan, this will look different next year because, you know, we keep growing and and uh, you know, we're seeing a little bit more development in rural resource areas. This year it was 126 units built in the the developable portion rural resources. Uh some of these were as you can see kind of on the dots here this you know single family homes built in Douglas upper uh pot development was built in a rural resource area as well. So that's explains a lot of those and we've had a few in conservation opportunity areas. There was a portion of upper Marian that was uh the Glasgow track that saw development on what was technically a conservation opportunity area was kind of you know hovering right on that. So, so that explains a lot of

those, but of course, this is going to be changing. So, it's um you know, just want to keep important to keep that in mind as we're analyzing these numbers. And lot sizes for a single family detached actually went a little bit down this year. Typically states somewhere between in terms of the living area, excuse me, not lot size around the low 3000s. We saw 3,11 uh square feet to have a median this year. Lot size total went down as well uh to a little below 12,000 for single family detached. This is overall. These are so variable though. So it's important to show the overall trend of 10-year period. So just in summary yes significant increase multif family decrease interest rates production controls covid a lot of factors as we know fewer large scales multif family has been brought to completion but their 2025 totals are so far as we can tell slated to be a little higher than this year and we we're seeing fewer proposals for 23 and 24. So, we'll keep an eye on those and and see where that trend takes us and more development in the rural resource areas as well as the comp plan continues and going right into non-residential development builds. So, we had uh 1,00 1,52,512 square feet of non-residential building this year. That's a 45% decrease in 2023. uh in many ways driven by the decrease in industrial projects and we've seen kind of a decrease all over the country and the region major industrial projects warehousing manufacturing it's kind of been again part of a larger story commercial made up 38% of the non-residential commercial has been generally pretty stable with some few nuances and of course how does this

align with the comp plan overall trend um yeah decrease from last Here we seeing um pretty big spike in 22 and then kind of brought down to to a little bit more the average and just here's where everything fell within the county. So as is typically the case most of your commercials falling along your major corridors had some industrial that was a little bit off the major corridors though and that could be you know those were largely smaller scale industrial. We didn't quite see nearly the amount of u I shouldn't say quite we didn't see nearly the amount of major warehouses and manufacturing distribution centers that you know may have likely put us closer to um to major transportation corridors. Just a little zooming in of some of the specific developments. So commercial we had um biggest project was our public storage facility at Bridgeport 13,000 square feet and um as you can see though you know last year we had a few large projects that were um over 100,000 so smaller smaller scale projects this year rather than Zan Scott Kia as well industrial is kind of the big story of or the big you know notable observation in residential though. So nothing was 100,000 square feet that we have sold built last year. Global packaging expansion at 98,400 obviously manufacturing and press water to 122 Presman road and skip back. Um you know so a lot smaller this year. Last year we were talking about the core five buildings that were built at Talmenson. That one was 400,000 square feet. um in what's kind of been a larger trend across the the region and the

country is again, you know, certainly COVID, but also builders find finding financing. Um and then, you know, some of the some of these places haven't found tenants yet. So, that's I think kind of been we think really been slowing down a lot of the industrial space uh or the demand and the drive to build those. So, you know, this is um As an example, the core five development is also split by the third building. So that's not really been that's still they can fight. So on that institutional lower Morland High School, uh the new lower Morland High School and Lehigh Valley Health Network buildings, Milbertsville and St. Charles Burmea Cemetery that moved their campus to little winded constitutes their their student life center and their dormatory and there's still some development there and here's where they all fall in the growth and preservation plan. So you know overwhelmingly growth occurred in or non-resident development occurred in growth areas. We did see existing preserved open space and rural resource areas going to be careful because a lot of these we had a few um maintenance buildings or you know um community buildings in our parks this year and our golf courses and um so those are so those largely comp constitute what happened in rural resources and open space areas vacancy rates we still we're going to get 2024's um vacancy rates. We just want to make sure the methodology was consistent. But yeah, you can see there's uh a slight dip in a dip in the office vacancies, not surprisingly from COVID, then a slight rise um or not

surprisingly because of um some people back to work or or just you know overall uh tenants being you know filling up those spaces but then arise again in 2023. So it remains to be seen what we'll see in 202 and just the summary commercial uses decrease but um you know generally remain steady just fewer major developments and storage facilities um institutional development big increase this year and they're mostly driven by schools and hospitals uh in terms of their development and industrial development's kind of been declining across the metro area and really the So significant increase there and 92% of all of this development curve in growth areas but of course that's you know to be presented next year it'll map will look different so it'll be interesting to make the comparison uh then so I know there's a lot of information in like what was that 10 minutes um questions for Dave Do you have I know you talked about I didn't see it on the commercial, but you you had some projections towards the residential. Do you have some projections as to where we're headed with some of the commercial development? We do have um so we have several in terms of industrial development. I mean, we still have um we have quite a few under under construction still. Um we're not sure exactly what's you know we're about to update uh our second quarter so we'll definitely have better idea of that um later in the month. Um but no exact projections for commercial industrial. We have major warehouses that are

still kind of in the early phases of um development. So we'll see if they get you know when they're built to completion. not on board in 2025, but at some time they're working through the planning approval process. Yes. First half of 25 proposals have been a little slower than the previous year. Not quite as as I mentioned with the housing was got back kind of back to pace, but non-resident residential was not as high. We're about 900,000 square feet. Yes. Oh no. and and just in looking at the first quarter construction report where we do have a pretty sizable list of non-residential development that's taking place but a lot of it is institutional um expansion at Penn State Abington expansion at the Bron Church school there's uh new construction at the Westminster Theological Seminary middle schools supermarket not the same level of um institutional construction that or rather industrial construction questions for Dave comments online. Thank you. Thank you very much. We'll see you for the next one. Thank you. Good job, sir. Okay, next up is our Monco 2040 implementation grant awards for 2025. Fine. This will be a fun one. So, um

this is our grade program. that's existed for 10 years. This this was the 10th year of giving money away and it's always fun. The commissioners approved $3 million to gift this year. Um and I will tell you got it. They were awarded at the May 15, 2025 board of commissioners meeting. So not even quite a month ago. So, this is the program prior to this year. Um, we had awarded grants to 53 municipalities. We're now up to 54 after these ones I'm about to show you. Um, the average grant awarded was about 126,000. Um, we got 31 applications this year uh from 27 different municipalities. And we'll say what we did with them. This is focus categories. I didn't know about that. Okay. So, we looked at all the applications. We reviewed them based on whether they addressed our count adopted county comp plan goal, which is like the core of the program. That's why it was uh instituted in the first place. When the MCO 2040 comp plan was adopted in 2015, this program was a way to help implement that. Give municipalities money to do things that achieved the goals in the comp plan. So, had to do that. um connections to county assets, consistency with local and regional plans or other plans. Um had to have some kind of an impact that transformativeility, visibility, longevity, otherwise impactful. Um does it leverage other funding sources? Many many many of these grants leverage a lot of other grants. So we give money and other agencies give money. it ends up being um a much larger project than this program could accomplish on its own and some of them don't. Feasibility of the budget. Is the

funding secured? Like do we are going to do the project? Um looking at diversity and equity and inclusion. Was there an outreach process to the community to come up with a project idea? Does a target audience benefit a group that's experienced disparities? Are there any other benefits to uh diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging? And then project readiness. Have if we've awarded them money in the past, have they managed to actually accomplish the project? Do we think that they've taken the preliminary steps needed to get the project done? Does it have a realistic timeline? And do they have some kind of a maintenance plan? So, committee scored these things. We looked at all these different factors. Um, many thanks to the members of the committee including Dulce, John, Nicole, and Sandra who are here. Really appreciate your commitment from other parts of the county staff. Aliia Gerard, Steve Forser from Commerce, Terry and Ivonne who's also here. Thank you very much for your time and your commitment and then our staff from uh MCPC were involved. Thanks to everyone for serving on this committee. It's a lot of work in a small period of time. We like get all of the grant applications and then we try to read them and score them and meet to discuss them um all kind of in a condensed time period. The rest of the year of serving on this committee is every once in a while an occasional question about something which I did just send you one but um it's much less intense. So but then my thanks to all of you. Sorry the foury John Erns Nicole and thanks to you. Okay. Who got the money? 17 municipalities. Um, it's a little more than we've gifted in recent years and because some of the asks were a little smaller and we had more to give away. So, accommodation could give it to more people. Uh, East

Greenville for Action Park. Uh, making a number of improvements here. Uh, adding trees, adding a passing things about the park. Greener, better, greater. This is the largest park in the burrow of East Greenville. small place. So, it's nice that you need money for them. Hatfield Township and Hatfield Burough uh a joint application. Um but this will be a first award for Hatfield Burrow. So, I guess technically that means we go up to 55. We can count this for Hatfield Burough. Um for various bicycle infrastructure, it's includes signage um striping of sheros, bicycle fixit station, and other information. So before I go on just so anybody watching Yeah. that hasn't been involved the table at the top shows their other grants and if it's green that means they completed it. Correct. Yeah. I'll list this one simpler because there's only one but that's thank you for pointing that out. So in the past if they got a if it's if there's a dollar amount that means that we awarded them and if it's green that means they completed the project. If there's a dash like that it means they did not apply. This one has a D, which means Hatfield Burough did apply once in the past, but we denied the application. We did not award that application. Um, and then this orange color means that they have a grant, but they didn't complete the project. No surprise if we only awarded it a year ago that they haven't finished the project yet. So, that's not necessarily a bad thing. But, yeah, that's what those mean. Thanks for pointing that out. So, you can see the past history there. Okay. Jenintown um applied for funding to do intersection and pedestrian related improvements in five locations around the burrow. These are great projects great projects um that are going to have

a meaningful impact on a what's already a very walkable place that actually has a lot of pedestrian activity throughout the burrow. So s good stuff and it continues. They've been doing things like this over time. It's great to see it. Landale is going to repave and widen uh trails in three parks, including eliminating 80 barriers steps at the edge of one trail that going away and also some tree planting as part of this project. I still got money. Yes. And yes, John Ernst was on the committee and I will just say that he was very good about being completely like out of the room. I can't say for this is a covert replacement project. It's um an area where there's flooding where the culbert does not adequately um address the storm water needs. They're going to replace and improve that lower Providence is adding essentially like two blocks of sidewalk, but it'll make connection from it. So, this is based on a plan that they did to study existing sidewalks and trails and prioritize connections. So, there's um this neighborhood off to the right here and then there's this the Ottoman Loop Trail which connects to the Skooko River Trail here. Uh, and this this one block of sidewalk will help this whole neighborhood be able to access this these um these areas as well as this ball field, popular ball field here. So, it's a block of sidewalk and some intersection right there. Lower Southford is doing a stream restoration project. This involves um restoring natural hydrarology, native plants, um

stream bank restoration things. Okay. New handover. This is you can see from this here, they never applied for a grant ever before. So, it's impossible to award a grant to a community that's never applied. So, we were glad to see an application from them and um it turned out it was a good project and we were happy to award this. So, they've acquired this tract of land which is going to become a new township park. Um they have all kinds of ideas for improvements, but this project is primarily to put trails throughout the park which will also provide connections to neighborhoods and um commercial areas. You can use the trails not only to circulate within the park but to get places on the township. So we're excited to and some other things to support this first phase of development of this park. uh Norristown. This is actually we or have awarded earlier phases of this project um before. They're trying to transform Arch Street all the way from Lafayette where it connects to the Skogo River Trail uh up like six total into this green street um eventually to connect to another route that would go to Norristown Farm Park. So, um, we gave them some funding for a future phase of this project, Green Streets. Uh, North Wales has a a great thing going on where they're taking a former church building and transforming it into a community center. The the North Wales Arts and Cultural Center. Um, that's already an ongoing project. They have other sources of funding. Um they've already done a lot of of improvements to the building rehab. Um the community is really excited about this, really supportive. They have some tenants and some of the office space. They're going to have a rental space. If you know anyone who wants to get married in the new North Wales Arts and Cultural Center building, you should check it out. But

this funding application was specifically for building security. So, we're happy to help them with some um cameras and items to support this adaptive reuse project. Uh Perky, similar to New Handover, they've acquired this large tract of land. It's going to be a new township park. Um they're going for a totally natural restoration. So, includes stream bank restoration, includes natural surface pathways, includes a food orchard, uh, community gardens, and, um, they're trying to put them near this. This is like an assisted living facility, and this is kind of one of their more dense neighborhoods. They're, um, putting some amenities over near there. There's so many other things they have plans to do with this park, so it's great to support that. Hottown wants to redo some of uh one of their neighborhood parks. U adding some additional picnic tables, a new uh pathway through here that would be ADA compliant. And they're having this bankshot basketball system, which I'm not familiar with, but guess that's very popular. What's going on with other 20204? Um, that's where I come in. Now, I'm not silent to jump and he hasn't said a thing about it. Um, we went through all of this. You were so close. Born out by it. I'm just worn out at it. I'm sorry. He just wanted to hear your voice. Uh, so the 2020 grant is the Colberdale Railroad grant. Um, which is mostly out of town proper hands. Uh the pathway up to the building is complete. They're just waiting on some installation of guard rails. I guess a better way of putting it. They've more

than spent the money at this point and I encourage them to apply for reimbursement just to close out. Um the 2024 Yeah, I get that sidewalk. Um Red Hill Burrow uh in partnership with Kirkcom Valley Library is making several improvements. Smallest amount of money that anyone asked for and we were happy to help support them. Um this includes these UV blocking blinds. This is this library is in an old indust former industrial building, so it's already an adaptive reuse project. They have these huge windows um that help them. It hinders their ability to to cool the building in the summer and it also is causing damage to some of the materials. They're getting these fancy blinds. Um they're improving the doors so that they can have ADA push buttons help people with mobility challenges or strollers get in and out of the building. And then um putting new uh LED lighting along this pathway that leads to the street. Uh Royersford already has a lot of blocks of this streetcape that you can see on the bottom right. They wanted to extend it an additional block onto this block with the same kind of bricking and lighting, etc. So, we're supporting that project. Um Tmanson has these two very old storm water basins that the township owns. It's in a residential development. um and they want to upgrade them to the latest and greatest in storm water management. Um and they will include an educational sign. One of them is right by the sidewalk about what is this thing uh about managing storm water and it will al better manage the storm water. This native plants included all kinds of good stuff and trap we awarded this project last year. They've done a great job. They've done some incredible restoration. You

can see um this was just completed in 2024. This is the kitchen. Another view of the kitchen with a program that they're having in there. Um this pre- restoration. Yeah, they want to get it all done before next year when they are doing celebrating the Sami Quinn Centennial. Uh but they're already doing a lot there. I mean, they have are they already run programs in classes, have events on the lawn, other stuff, and they're going to really ramp that up for next year as they complete the restoration. This is also another thing that was completed uh in 2024, restored um this little porch and the uh masonry, etc. was all kind of fixed up and so more money for them so they can finish that. I'll just add that as part of my conversation with historic trap, I did also reach out to our contact at the Pennsylvania Historic and Museum Society and talk to them about other funding sources and um National Register designation and sort of helps make a connection there. So, you know, sometimes other good things can come of these project applications just with our other connections knowledge. So, the good stuff and money. Um, West Norton, this is the last one, is improving this bus stop. You can see this great bus stop by a ditch, right? It's like stuck in the curb. There's a ditch. There's cars traveling right there. So, um, some days you can take a swim while you're This will be way better. Um, also West Orton technically was awarded one time before in 2017, but they withdrew the project. I'm not sure the story there, but it was early on in this process. They applied for something, we gave them money, and they decided in the end the project wasn't feasible. So, even though this doesn't quite count as a new award,

it will count as like they'll probably be able to actually finish this project, it seems very feasible and they seem very dedicated to actually doing it. And that's it. We awarded $3 million on the nose. Um, again, thanks to the committee and I can take questions if you have them. Any questions for Chloe? Um, just a couple of the question one question and one statement of sorts. Um, so question curiously, how like um with what frequency would you say you awarded the amount they asked for or were you kind of That's a good question. Only two of the awards in only two cases did we award less than they asked for. Um and one of them was the speakers house in trap. They asked for the maximum award of 250,000 and we gave them like 2356 or something. It was only a little bit less relatively speaking. And um that was how we were able to get to $3 million exactly. And then Nortown um is ambitious with their green streets project. They've completed phase one. Phase two is in progress. Phases three and four are fully funded and they actually applied for that funding for phases five and six. And they also asked for the maximum grant award and we felt that is a great project. We want to support the project. We want to support Norristown. we weren't sure they were quite ready for um I mean I know it takes a really long time sometimes to assemble all the funding needed for a project and so we awarded them 100,000 instead of 250,000 with the encouragement to them like as you move forward with the previous phases that are funded and under construction please come back to us if you as you amass funding for phases five and six which they intend to do at the same time like three and four are going to have it together five and six so Um those were the two everyone else we awarded what

they asked for and if I recall correctly there was communication with those applicants that it wouldn't you know derail the project if we award you lesser that makes sense. Um and then more of a statement and forgive me if it seems like a stray but I'll try to bring it around. Um I guess for Scott's benefit but everybody in my background is in affordable housing. So um let me go over there for a second. In the affordable housing world, when affordable housing developers are proposing new deals using the low-inccome housing tax credit, which is a competitive source of financing, uh there's two key moments that developers interact with the county for information gathering. One is around uh alignment with the comprehensive plan and the second is around um ways the county has invested in that local area. And this kind of stuff is hugely valuable to winning tax credits with PHFA um and the state. And so to the extent that when those requests come in from affordable housing developers about the comp plan or about investment in the area, knowing that you've put like $250,000 and the commissioners have into even a historical site or storm water or whatever around the corner, that can be the difference maker in getting tax credits. So I just want you to be aware of that as a way to sort of help affordable housing developers if that's what you want to do when those requests come in. Okay. A quick follow question on that. That's it. Thank you for telling me that angle equal parts. Um if we were to uh somehow the next iteration of this program or next year's version of this program had some sort of link to uh housing affordable supply or whatnot. Is that is there is there an angle there of like if the program itself had some sort of uh correlation that that would be even stronger when you pulled up and said you know this county is doing this and this community. I think any um demonstration of investment by the

county into an area where affordable housing is being proposed will be viewed positively. If you're talking about specifically an investment into that affordable housing project, I think that would be even more valuable. You got to be careful because you start to get into grants versus loans and all that kind of stuff. But happy to talk offline with you about it. But but generally speaking, the PHFA and the state is is looking to make sure that this development isn't being proposed, you know, in a very rural setting that nobody cares about where infrastructure doesn't support. So to the extent that you can say, no, you know, we're doing all we've done, you know, I think you're one in Jenin Town, you know, we we've awarded uh $100,000 five years in a row to pedestrian and we really support pedestrian and that and affordable housing is going to be great because of that. That's exactly what they're looking for. Does that make sense? All right. So I had a sort of similar question. Um the office of housing and community development has a quarterly zoom call with affordable housing developers. Come on. Okay. As am I. Um I don't get that many requests for letters of consistency from the affordable housing developer community around the low-inccome housing tax credit. The ones that I wrote for you earlier this year. or like maybe that was it. Um I wonder if we can approach Charlene to have a couple of minutes on the next call to let everybody know that we can write these letters and that if they want some summary of information on what you're just talking about that we'd be happy to provide it to bolster their application. I think that'd be fantastic. I'm sure the development community would would very much welcome that. I mean it's all driven by I don't want to get too into the weeds. I'm happy to talk offline. It's driven by that cycle for application for competitive tax credits with BHFA, which only comes around once every 18 months. So, you're only going to get them right as that deadline approaches. Um, and you're only going to get them for deals that are being

proposed in Montgomery County, which is probably only, I don't know, eight or so in the last round, something like that. So, it's you should be expecting 40 and you shouldn't be expecting year round. The only ones they did, that's surprising. Um, maybe giving them those examples on that call of here's what we would be providing. It's not just a blanket letter, but there's actually some really good data and examples that will be meaningful for your application. Yeah. All all good ideas. Great. Okay. Anything else for Chloe before we move on to our last agenda item? Second to last. Thanks, bud. Good work to uh the full committee. Excellent work by staff putting the information together. It was I appreciate the work of the board members for taking the time to be involved. expected. Uh, next up is our community planning update for Marboro Township and we have John Leer and Abby. Good morning. We will make this as uh brief and concise as possible. It has to be. I mean, I know walked through water township longer than the previous Look at that photo. Oh, wait. Where's Where's Dulsie? Are you saying that because Dulie is not here? I'll stand in for her. No, no, no, no, not at all. Um, for those of you who do not know, my name is John Leer. I am the environmental planning uh manager. Um, due to that new position, I will be handing over Marbor Township's planning contract to Abby Kov. So, this is our transitional presentation. Um, I will start off and then I'm going to hand it over to Abby. Next, uh, open

very quickly. This is Marorrow Township, Northern uh, on the western suburbs. So, when I do presentations like this, I like to tell the story of the community because I think that's important for the board to understand. um not always the specifics but to understand our experiences and what we feel um are takeaways from this. So in my 14 years being the township planner township planner for Marbor Township really what's interesting is everything they do they try to strive to protect their natural resources they understand they are a rural community everything around that community revolves around that whether it's the uh desire to for trails open space or understanding that their development is limited by their database and the lack of public sewer and the inability to do on lot sewer systems. So it defines the whole character of the community. Um but they also understand that they want economic development. They they want to be a thriving economic community that has a strong tax base to be able to do the things that they want to do. Um this is just an interesting uh this is a muster scout reservation. This is one of the biggest parcels that is the biggest parcel in the township um and has been of interest over the past uh three years which was our current contract um when some issues that we'll go into in a second. So, um, some of the highlights physically, it does have Skymount Lake, um, which is a source of recreation. Um, this Mouser Scout Reservation, uh, was a scout reservation, is currently a scout reservation, has been is in the process of being sold um, from the Boy Scouts.

Uh, there was some, it was going to be bought by a private entity um, to be used as basically a compound. Uh but that has fallen through and now uh is being bought by um natural lands and will be east through uh DC North. I was interested in a compound. So is the township. It was like you're not supposed to know what's going to be on the compound. Exactly. We didn't know exactly. It was a family that was buying all of it and they were not going to develop it. it was going to be just dur you know gotcha. So, but that is no longer the case and you know the township is happy that the land will be eased and will continue to be open space. And then Sumntown which is uh in the southern end of the township. It is the home of their commercial district um and is a point of interest for the township looking to develop that looking to have that be the focus of the community for their economic growth. some of the previous projects that we've seen. Um they have started to receive over the past three years. They are getting more and more grant funding. Um they did improvements at Finland Park. Um they got a small grant from Pico uh to add recreational facilities at um a kayak launch at the uh Skymount Lake. and they really are starting to see the value of grants and they are becoming a little bit more sophisticated on how they plan to get grants in their pursuit of grants. Um so that is something that is through my time there has uh that interest has increased and I think will continue to increase trying to take advantage of those opportunities. Um historically some of the ordinances that they've worked on um it is an interesting combination. I've always found Marorrow interesting in the fact that they do things to they do ordinance

amendments to respond to issues that they're seeing in the community, but they are also forward more forward thinking. They were one of our first communities to do a renewable energy ordinance. You know, they are interested in these sorts of topics. They are interested in these sorts of issues. Um, they did do what we called a commu commercial and community adaptation plan. really trying to meld those interests of protection of their natural resources, eco uh and agurism along with commercial development. How do they combine those two together? Um recently I picked pulled these because I think they really tell the story of Marorrow. Um there's a Dollar General going in in Sunday Town. That is big news in Marboro Township. They are and like everybody laughed like it's kind of like it is interesting but it is the one of the first commercial developments that they saw coming into Sumntown. We've talked about it as kind of like an anchor as if it was if Sumntown was a mall, they're going to be our Macy's. Maybe maybe not a good example at this point, but yeah, they hope that this will spur development throughout Sumntown. But it was also interesting because we did a village commercial ordinance. Developer came in. They're like, well, if we do this, we can't do this. We ended up going back amending the ordinance because we understood that some of the things that we put in were were too ownorous. So we found that balance of maintaining community character. There are design elements that are going into this Dollar General that do not normally go into a Dollar General that help it fit the character of Sumntown. But it's just an interesting story about how ordinances can evolve and grow and if a community can work with a developer to so that both sides can get what they want. All right, go to the bottom right slide first because I the anticipation of what

the chainsaw means is the chainsaw that's a home occupation ordinance literally. And a lot of this was spurred through the pandemic when people were working from home. Can't wait for this connection. Dude was chainsawed in his yard like literally making sculptures like that was his home occupation. and the township's like that's cool but not if you're the neighbor. How do you balance people doing their home occupations and as opposed to in some communities like where you're an architect or you're doing consulting like this dude's home occupation was like I have a chainsaw in my driveway and I'm doing cool stuff. Wait, was he selling was he selling the sculptures? Yes. What happens if he wasn't selling was he selling the sculptures from his yard? He was not because you cannot do retail sales then it becomes commercial but he was creating and then selling them offsite later on and that's the question. What if he was a guy who loved his chainsaw? I was just going to say what if it's just like doing artwork. You should come to you should have been at the Marro Planning Commission. I spent we spent hours talking about guys with chainsaws and what they can do and what they can't do. posture wise using the herkut professional but you know I think you should do the same in addington I mean free Google images I I couldn't I didn't want to get too deep into the technicalities of chainsaws but that's interesting so the the problem was that he was selling them but he was even selling them off site correct but his working the business was creating noise but his working the business was creating noise there were people doing you know other sorts of but if he was just doing artwork and you know that's why we had to then do a nuisance ordinance or something. I'm going to start doing all my virtual meetings in my front yard or my driveway

and I'll probably make just as much noise as the chamber. I'll test it out and see what happens when I'm working for but it becomes a cascade of issues in a rural community of okay like you know chainsaw art. How do we is that a business? What do we do here? How do we allow somebody to be able to do the work that they want to do at home? But then we need a nuisance ordinance because what happens is if that person is doing it for their own recreation and you don't want to be annoying about that. It is a very interesting dichotomy between don't tread on me which we until relatively recently hung up in their conference room and I don't want this person messing with my way of life because I want to be able to relax in the country. This is why I bought the house where I did. So, okay. So, how did you have a question? Right. Um, and then very similarly, home accessory uses and a lot of that revolved around people putting up barns, barns and sheds because you need to be able to do your chainsawing somewhere. So, you had to put in a barn. Barnes that are bigger than your houses, barns that are filling up the lots. How many sheds can you have on one property? Rural issues, you know, and how do you manage them? So, wait, the guy that was doing the the chainsaw was doing it outside or inside? Both. Now, he has to do it more inside because he he he has uh noise restrictions and things of that nature. But people are putting up pole bars everywhere and how do you regulate those? So these are some of the issues kind of telling the story of one of our more rural communities but also wanting to see economic development. You want pe people moved out there during the pandemic to get away but now they need to work. They need to live out there. They need to function. So it's an

interesting dichotomy and I am going to say goodbye to Maru hand it off to Abby and she's going to lead you through some of the things that are coming up. So I'm Abby. and Maggie Cover taking over. Taken over. Gonna hopefully cover hopefully hopefully it's a benevolent takeover. Uh I'm going to hopefully continue the work that John's been doing uh updating zoning and uh subdivision ordinances, comprehensive zoning ordinance updates. So going along with that Marboro is forward thinking while also trying to be very cautious. They have uh with aggra tourism that was mentioned they have uh voiced some interest in short-term rentals. So Airbnbs trying to really kind of bolster the community to be a a destination for aggra tourism but that means providing ordinances for regulating the short-term rentals. The next thing also we're going to look at is their uh heavy industrial zone which currently is just the quarry but thinking about how that impacts the rest of the township. Also grant assistance. So since they are thinking about grants more often, providing more assistance, really voicing that we do that help for them and we can help more in the future with finding funding opportunities, writing the grants if needed, providing editing assistance, and then continuing with the commercial um desires that they have for Sunnytown to sort of gently make it more of a commercial destination. A parking study is something that has been um come up as a point of interest for them to see if people do want to go to Sumntown, where can they park, where currently can they park, are there options in the future. So that's upcoming work. And then the terms of contract, this is something Dulce mentioned that she's not here but that she was interested in seeing. So three years total calendar years this year 2026 and also most of 2027 one and

a half plan days about 10 night meetings a year and uh about 30k for municipal share and that that's it. We try to make it quick for you guys. So if you have any questions, comments, concerns. So what's the aguris and the traction? The chainsawing. Chainsawing. change all. So they I mean most of most of Marboro is uh is rural. Most of is rural. So they have a lot of preserve space. They have Sky Mount Lake. They have the Scout Reservation that currently is a reservation is not a compound thankfully but uh not a compound is going to be purchased in theory by natural lands. So that's a a destination. They mostly just people wanting to be in nature is is the thought. Trails trails. The Hannes property has the Hannes property. Yeah. Uh owned by John Haynes has recently become a museum which then has event space, both indoor and outdoor event space as well. So people can come to visit the museum, see all his old cars and tractors and whatnot. Um there are there will be weddings and other event corporate events there as well. Yeah, we we did the Dollar General and there's another commercial piece next door there that they're presently marketing. Yes. Yeah. We uh Yeah. Somebody's got a chain chainsaw wants to move in. Johnson. You want his number? The chainsaw guy. I feel like there's probably more than one chainsaw guy. Probably I hear I'll let you know. Yeah. Thank

you. Well, I will say while the scout mus while musler scout reservation was there, they actually made chainsaw certification. Really? Yeah. Which I've taken just so you know. But anyway, so that's going to be lost now. Reservations there. Did you do statues? I like I like how my family buildings I like how my Oh yeah. Yeah. My sleeves with one eye continuing education credits. I like going through my 14 years of work in Marro Township. The the takeaway now will be like, "Oh, Marro's got chainsaws." Chainsaw economic development. Well, thank you, Abby. Good luck with Maro. Thank you. Thank you kindly. You got literally big shoes to fill. I do. Yeah. 13 and a half, but thank you. So, we look forward to seeing the additional work that's being done. Yeah. Excited to show you guys. Great. Thank you very much, Scott. You're up. Yep. Close it out here. Um I always start the reports off with staff news, but um we're going to start with what might be considered our adjunct staff. uh our board chair Steven Klein want to congratulate he was announced and appointed as chair of penvest by the governor congratulations all the penvest dollars um but no it's great and the wonderful that they have that position it's that's just so what because I keep pitching the same thing but it's not known widely but Penvest gives out a billion dollars a year doing to Pennsylvania communities. That's their re revolving budget is is a billion dollars. So, it's, you know, it's big big money and um a lot of projects being done throughout the state. I would tell you that it's

amazing to me that more southeastern Pennsylvania municipalities don't use the don't use the uh the fund um as much as they should. Um you know, we see a lot of um Philadelphia applications. We also see Aqua does a lot of applications for projects that they're doing um a lot recently for PIO and PAS um projects. But anyhow, it's it's a a lot of money being circulated in the state through um just a revolving revolving fund. say in my 20 year horizon like the first 10 years I heard about Pinvest a lot you know dealing specifically with it myself but then it was a lull there for a while and just recently I started to hear more so and we could talk about expanding this promoting those opportunities what are there um forums and applications Steve or just go to the pen penvest website if you go to the website there are there are regional um facilitators from penvest that will that will help through the application ation process um and um will help to guide potential applicants um how how that how their their application should be tailored to to get the best. Yeah, exactly. um they are considered um there's four meetings there's four meetings a year so it's every quarter and the application periods are accepted before each of those application periods. Um so it's not just one date per year it's four dates per year for applications to be submitted and considered. um they go through, you know, needs assessments and the the interest rates are anything from 1% to two and a half or 2.7% which is much

less than any other uh financing, even bond financing that that municipalities can get. So, which is either more reason why I boggles my mind that municipalities and authorities don't take advantage of the of the fund. Okay. All right. So, back to staff news. Um, I want to welcome new staff member, Doug Maisie. He's our new senior trails and open space planner. Started on May 19th and, uh, got master's degree in planning for the University of Illinois Chicago, but in the last 10 years had worked for Campbell Thomas and actually was on uh, the private side of working for some of the county trail projects. Uh, so this change and shift really is couldn't be more closely aligned and appreciated. Welcome. Thank you. Nice to meet you. Appreciate it. We also have two new interns, one of which even starts today, Ally and then Erin Gothier has been here a couple weeks. Uh, welcome. They are here for the summer through the MCO Rise program. And, uh, Steve, I don't know if you want to. Uh, yeah. Yeah. Aaron, Aaron and Ally, they're both full-time. They'll be here until August 1st. Aaron started a couple weeks ago. Alli's first day is today. Alli comes from the university in Vermont. Was in Lansdale. just studied abroad in Manchester and Aaron is a senior at Bloomsburg University doing the same program he's from. Yes. Cassie. Oh, yeah. From so uh we also have two other new hires uh that have not started yet, but uh starting Monday is our new newest transportation planner, Russell Levolce.

And then Sharon Ja Xiao starts in August, but that she's been formally uh approved for that position. So we're filling up here. We do have two openings now. Uh one is the senior environmental planner left over from the shift from John Leer and Duchaw's retirement. Okay. Which are we currently interviewing now. And an administrative assistant to replace San Marie Mian who retired. Her last day was Friday. Um last Friday. And so um all told we're we're doing well in the staffing department. It's always good to say. Um, and also one last staff news, uh, I do want to shout out to Austin Mosby who received his master's degree from the University of Central Florida. Um, Austin was a unique when he he was still still pursuing that degree and he literally commuted to Florida to finish up that work. And honestly, you know, we took a chance. I think if somebody had just put an application saying, "Oh, you know, I'm going to get my degree next year and hire me." Like, we probably would have set that one aside. But Austin was an intern. We knew how what you know the prospect in the future uh that he had and I'm happy to say it's certainly paid off on that gamble and congratulations. All right, moving on. Uh open space grant program. We've talked about the supports in our work program. We're finally getting ready to to uh launch the plan right now. Uh we've been Bill's section has been scurrying with me to get the guidelines drafted. uh we have it out to a few outside reviewers to help us uh identify any last uh concerns. Uh but the goal is and the intention is to announce that more publicly at the July board of commissioners meeting in mid July with a launch of application receipt set for September 1st. So uh I won't go into I was going to go a little detail but I'll I'll I'll stay back especially since Dulce is not here. She's one of our outside reviewers of those guidelines. So, uh, we'll talk more about that

probably next month or or in September. And, uh, there's a SEPTA press event today at 12:30 at the King of Pressure Mall. Uh, commissioners are speaking as well as a number of business, uh, really highlighting the impacts of SEPTA on the business community and on the King of Prussia Mall itself. So, the actual spokesperson for the or director of the mall uh, will be part of that as well as GVF and a few other uh, friends and business owners in that area. Uh and then finally, MOCO 2050, an update. Lots going on. Uh this week, tomorrow is our advisory committee meeting to look at the draft initial goals and recommendations. Uh and we'll be bringing that uh to this board most likely at the July meeting. We'll confirm that with our our board chair and vice chair next week. Um, but if we do so as as as intended, it's going to be more of a workshop setting and it will require in-person attendance. Uh, won't be possible to have a virtual component garden. So, uh, we we'll let you know, but you can already if you can mark your calendars and anticipate that uh, right now. And then in September, we're still planning September 30th, the the town hall public meeting on the comp plan at the Amler Theater. That is has become more solidified. to date it and location is solidified. Uh so that will be exciting. We're also doing some informal events through leading up to that in various locations in the county and we'll let keep you updated when we have those details. Uh at that town hall I also want to mention we're going to also celebrate um if you didn't know this is the 75th anniversary of MCPC which was formed in 25th or 1950. Uh and uh that's exciting. So, we want to kind of integrate that. If nothing else, it'll be an excuse to have some cake at the meeting. Uh, and also have a happy moment in addition to all the comp plan discussion. Um, and we'll be promoting

that or noting that anniversary uh leading up to it as well through social media and other posts. When is that again? Uh, that is September 30. Uh, we should give them full details on that uh if we haven't already. It's 4 to 6 p.m. at the Amler Theater. Uh, please come and not during the high holiday stage, so no excuse. Um, okay. And you have the events list. Uh, I'll highlight two things. The percolan flood study public meetings are on June 18th. they're virtual and there are two of them to share the initial findings and recommendations uh coming out of that study which is a very big deal and uh and then on June 25th our Patty Gut plan is participating in planners day on Capitol Hill with the American Planning Association's national chapter uh organization I should say and uh she's really going to be focused on housing and talking to some federal legislators on that issue and what's happening in Washington. We'll be correlating our county interests of course and policy interest into that as well which align very closely with the NBA already. That is oh one more uh save the date also or or be aware uh we've just finalized it July 31st we'll be doing a planning smarter in Landdale thanks to John uh called let's get energized local tools for energy transition we'll be highlighting our EV ordinance uh building sustainability energy ordinance and also uh a new solar power ordinance um that is just being put together will be launched uh next That is planned. Great. Thanks, Scott. Any additional comments by anybody in the board in the room? If not, we are ajourned. Thanks, everyone. Thank you. Next.