34 a.m.

on May 4th, 2026.

Good morning, everybody.

Uh at this time I'll take a roll call, Autobin Thorpe.

You here?

Switching it up today, put you first.

Auto Roman O'Neill, you're here.

Okay, I'm present also.

Um, is there a motion to approve the agenda as written?

Send them.

Second.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Is there a motion to approve the minutes as they from the last meeting as presented?

Moved.

Second.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

All right.

Thanks so much for pairing with us as we got started with things.

Folks, the floor is yours.

Thank you.

Um, Aisha Young, Director, Office of Community Services.

Thank you for introduction.

Sure.

And hi, good morning, everyone.

I'm Aaron Lee, Social Work Care Coordinator with the Office of Community Services.

We'll go through our budget presentation.

This year is a little over than three, but I feel like we accomplished so much.

And just to give a little background, I've been here for two years, so I feel like I'm just still learning a little bit, but excited about all the things that we've done so far.

So we focused a lot on rebranding because when I first started, or when I got here, um, we didn't have a distinguished um identity, I should say.

A lot of people confused us with community action agency, or they didn't know exactly who we were or what our work entailed so I focused on, or I feel like we should have focused on the rebranding, and that's something that we did.

We did a lot of new um materials working with uh Mitchell, helping us come up with new uh logos and icons, and just having a uniform branding.

I don't know if you all seen the wellness man before, but the wrapping on the wellness man, just trying to, I don't want to say that the artwork wasn't great, but a lot of people thought it was like daycare, even though the pictures on there were um adults, but it still kind of looks like daycare.

So just focusing on moving away from that so that we could really establish um the Office of Community Services.

And as you all know, we house the grants or manage the grants.

One thing that we didn't do were like site visits, some grant trainings, um, quarterly progress sessions.

So we focused on some of that, um, hosting trainings around grant writing, sustainability, fundraising, AI training, those were um received very well.

Site visits, visiting each uh grantee or whomever signs up.

It wasn't mandatory, but we um asked everyone if they were interested for us to uh come to just sign up and we come out just to observe their work, see how we could better support them, and also put faces to names because I haven't seen a lot of people in person, just talk to them through email, and then the quarterly progress sessions was something that I came up with.

I'm kind of calling it a progress party to just celebrate the work that the organizations are doing, also the success within the quarters, specifically first quarter and then fourth quarter, and then also engaging them in a way to submit their reports.

It's like you can only kind of be celebrated for your success and what the organization is doing if you submit your reports and we can actually read to see you know your progress, and then we gave out some awards for that and just celebrated their success.

Um, the health literacy and enrollment in medical building.

This is something new.

Our enrollment assistant Evie Hernandez, um, she became a certified navigator through Maryland Health Connection.

We also became a they call it something different, but uh an organization that can certify people to become certified um navigators, and this way they can help people sign up for health care through healthcare.gov.

So she can walk them through the whole process of how to sign up for care, understanding health insurance, you know what a deductible is, how to pick the best plan.

Um, she's been working on that as well.

So that's fairly new.

She started last open enrollment, which was November 1st.

Um, rental assistant changes.

We've been working on the longevity of rental funds when I begin.

I feel like it stayed open for what, only like three months.

Yeah, so trying to keep the rent to program open longer, and some of those changes included asking clients if depending on what their balance was to seek additional support from other organizations, provide us with maybe like a promissory note saying that they will get that support, and then also um helping them after that.

Um, and then we also came up with a few changes um that I feel like just really helped just keep the longevity of the funds.

Um I think that's pretty much it.

Is there anything else on this for that?

Okay.

All right, thank you for that.

Next slide.

So some of the performance measures I'll go through.

So the site visits, the benchmark for that is pretty much how many grantees we have.

And so fiscal uh year 25, actually, fiscal year 26 included community grants, adopted community grants, and um child affirmative success grants.

So that's about 69 grantees that we have.

So again, like I said, the site visits aren't mandatory.

However, we would love for all of them to sign up for a site visit.

But so far, we've only had 19 site visits in fiscal year 26.

I'm hoping that in fiscal year 27, we get all 35, but that is also based on your all's approval for the community grant of this year.

So that's the 35 number.

For quarterly reports, of course, again, we want all grantees to submit their reports.

So again, 69 grantees for fiscal year 25.

We actually had 67 this year, um, the end of year isn't over, but we have 47 grantees who submitted their reports, and then of course, again, for fiscal year 25, we will want all grantees to submit their application.

I mean, their reports for enrollment assistance.

Since we just begin and enrollment is not a yearly thing.

So, like I said, open enrollment is November 1st through January 15th.

It's kind of hard to get those benchmarks, um, but this is something EVC and I are talking about.

I am hoping that maybe like during open enrollment, she can get maybe about 18 to 20 clients because that's what she got this year as far as assisting and enrolling them.

And then maybe we can create some monthly goals around health literacy trainings to where she actually goes out and speak to individuals about health insurance literacy, you know, how to sign up for a plan again, the deductible, how to navigate the whole health insurance marketplace.

Next program, the rental assistance program, open.

So my benchmark I use were was for this year.

Um, keeping it open at least eight months is I feel like is a good goal.

Um, again, for fiscal year 25 was only open four months.

For this year was only open seven months, and then next year or fiscal year 27.

I'm hoping we can keep it open nine months.

And this is just the average, I'm I I base that number on.

So rental applications receive.

We technically really don't have a benchmark for that or you know, how we decide who's gonna apply, but fiscal year 25 of 209 applications, fiscal year 26.

Once it closed, we had 161 applications, and that's why you see TBD for fiscal year 27.

And again, rental applications approved.

Of that 209, we approve 120 in fiscal year 25.

Of the 161, we approve 92.

And again, performance measures will be discussed and figuring out how to measure that success in fiscal year 27.

And again, new rental applications.

So looking over the past years, we had a lot of repeat clients that would apply every year.

So new rental applications is something that I feel like we should keep track of, and it's something that I have been keeping track of.

So out of the uh applications that we received for fiscal year 25, we had about 50 new applicants, and then for fiscal year 26, as you can see, we had 96 new applicants.

So again, performance measures will be discussed on like numbers or new rental application numbers that we would like to see.

And then, of course, we have care coordination social work, Aaron Lee right here for cases closed.

The goal is about maybe 10 a month, looking over you know all the cases that they have throughout the year, they help about an average of 10 a month.

So I thought that was we can continue with that goal and measure necess for me is closing those cases, making sure that those uh residents get the assistance that they need, whether it's us providing the service or Aaron and Shania referring them to outside resources.

So for fiscal year 25, they closed about 33 cases for fiscal year 26, 65, but the end of year isn't over.

And then I'm hoping that fiscal year 27, they close at least 85 of those applications.

Okay, moving on.

So some other statistics based on our body of work.

So the sustainability trainings for the grants, I would love to keep that going, um, at least having three a year.

So fiscal year 25, we did two, again this year we did three, and I'm proposing to continue with three moving forward.

Again, this year we did three, and I'm proposing to continue with three moving forward.

We got a lot of great feedback on the trainings that we provided.

They feel like it really helps them.

And I also want to continue to support our grantees with figuring out creative ways on how to get additional funding outside of grant.

I mean, yeah, outside of grants, because we know with the new climate, political climate and everything, sometimes that's not always sustainable.

So I just want to continue to make sure that uh grantees feel supported and they sustainability.

The quarterly meetings, I would love for us to continue that, especially since they have to submit um quarterly reports.

It doesn't necessarily have to be all four quarters, um, but I would love for it to be all four.

So as you see, our goals for fiscal year 25.

We actually didn't do any meetings this year, we did two.

So again, I'm proposing that we at least do four and have at least all grantees attend.

And then the progress sessions, um, again, focusing on quarter one and quarter four, so that'll be two sessions a year.

So fiscal year 25, we have one this year, we have one so far, but we're planning our second one for next month, and then again, fiscal year 27, just hoping that we can get two in there.

And then our community outreach and events.

Um, our goal is about 40 because our average is around 401 events in the fiscal year.

So I'm gonna continue that goal.

Um, so fiscal year 25, we had about 41 events.

We're not finished.

We have some events scheduled for fiscal year 26, but we only been to 27 so far.

So I'm proposing that we um attend 40 events to continue our outreach and engagement.

Um again, like I mentioned the health literacy trainings, so outside of open enrollment to allow EVs to actually go out there and assist individuals with understanding health care, and also potentially maybe enrolling them if they do have a special um enrollment period.

So someone who loses their job, you know, someone who gets married or whatever, they're they qualify to be enrolled in um a health plan outside of the marketplace um enrollment date.

So I'm hoping that we can focus on at least one training a month with some of our grantees.

As you can see, we've only done zero for fiscal year 25 and then one for fiscal year 26.

So again, hoping that we can do at least one each month for the fiscal year 27.

And then tenant legal rights events.

So once the rental assistance program closes, we're just looking for opportunities to just continue to reach people and to provide them with some education.

Um, so we hosted only one so far.

Yeah, only one tenant legal rights events.

Um, we've tried to do it in the past, fiscal year 25, we were unsuccessful, but this year we were successful with hosting that one.

And I'm hoping that we can at least have four events for fiscal year 27.

Uh, budget enhancements.

So, one personnel enhancement that we are asking for this year is a case management software called Capstone.

Um, this will be for Aaron and Shania, our two social workers' care coordinators, just to better streamline our cases and assist with you know data tracking and the demographics and measuring any outcomes.

I think this will be a great um addition to the office so that Aaron and Shania can work out of the same system and just their work just be better streamlined.

I don't know if you want to talk a little more, Aaron, about like how it can help, but um sure.

So just wanted to talk a little bit more about Capstone because in addition to just with any social services agency, they typically will have a uniform um data entry, uh, note tracking, case tracking, and it also helps for outcomes because we can definitely give I would say more accurate numbers as to how we're helping the community, who we're assisting, their demographics, and that would definitely help with that.

And also, in addition with this software, it can also be used for say other departments that you utilize social services in order to track their clients, such as no harm.

Um they can track their clients' information, look at their clients, see what might be helping, what's not, and that's a big part of what we would love to use the case management software for as well is just to see what's working, what's not, what could be better streamlined for Annapolis residents.

Thank you, Aaron.

So operating budget.

Should I read this line by line or are we just right?

Okay, um, just one thing to highlight are the supplies and other um, you know, the change from fiscal year 26 projected, I mean fiscal year 25 and fiscal year 26.

We no longer house the adopter community in the child and family success grant.

So you see that number has decreased.

Then of course we house the community grants and rental assistance, which we will still house.

I'm hoping we could get that up a little bit more, but it has decreased.

But I feel like that's our only program, and I would love for it to be a little enhanced.

But that's just my dream moving forward.

So additional information I just threw in our collaboration with county partners, homelessness prevention, such as ACDS and Anna Ronal County homeless prevention in the coalition, yes, homeless coalition, um, and how we coordinate with property managers and other organizations, you know, that continue to support our rental assistance program.

Um I they connect with Hope for All.

They you know connect families with furniture and essential household items.

Um child and careers is another great organization that we uh connect with.

They're always welcome and um happy to connect with us to provide programming and support in other areas or I should say neighborhoods and other organizations, um, and then maintaining that ongoing coordination, you know, with city funded grantees just to continue to strengthen our service and referrals and across program collaboration.

And I'm ready for questions.

Some pretty good timing.

Nice.

Umio, you want to start us off?

Sure.

Thank you very much, Mr.

Chair.

Um, I have a few questions.

Um you kind of touched on it when we were talking about I believe the rental assistance to repeat clients.

Yes.

Um, and you're starting to track that or you have been for this past fiscal year.

So we started to track it a little bit in fiscal year 25 in 26.

So if I can just go back really quickly.

So even though we had less applications this year, we had more uh new rental um applicants, and I think that's because of the increased visibility that we've been working on.

So I want to continue to track that, but also do it in a way to where we're not helping someone, you know.

It's like if someone really does need the help and they have because we have one client, I know he will never really meet um the threshold for his rent based on like how much he gets for social security, how much he's being charged for rent, and then you know you have groceries and other bills.

So it's like trying to track the new applicants, but also in a way that we continue to help those that really need it.

Right.

I have a little bit of concern about oh sorry, I I just wanted to to jump in there.

Um the OCS keeps track by name.

They they keep spreadsheets of everyone who's gotten assistance, how much they've applied for, how much they actually got, who got paid, all the rest of that.

The the question of sort of in the it's it's it is just a spreadsheet, it's not a uh database.

In some ways, that's part of why the discussion about more of a client-based system rather than a spreadsheet.

So connecting, okay, it's this same person, and we use the same name across the years.

That's the piece.

They actually have the underlying data, it's the connecting across the years that she's really talking about.

Yeah.

So just going back in the spreadsheets, entering the names and seeing if they pop up within fiscal year 23, 24, 25, and that's how we know if they have been a repeat client.

And and I understand that people everybody has their own situation.

It concerns me that we have repeat clients and that we don't have a process for which to get them to not be repeat clients.

I would love to see that happen.

Yeah.

Um, whether it's through partnering or through education or mean you just said you have a client that will never meet his or her threshold.

That's concerning because that means that you're over year, they're coming back for assistance.

So I don't know where I'm going with that question, but I think that we need to address that.

Yes.

Um just as we started to address that in grants, um, sort of grants should be a way for a community organization, nonprofit organization to get a start.

Right, and then build on themselves, and that shouldn't be a salary from the city, right?

So to speak.

I will say I I've asked Jada because I've you know still continue to think about how to measure the success of the rental program and if it's actually you know working.

If we're seeing repeat clients, to me, it it feels like it's not working because like you said, it's almost like a salary.

I've asked her to reach out to each um property that we assist to ask about delinquency rates.

So I'm wondering if maybe I was thinking like if we get the delinquency rates once the rental program opens to then track if it helps decrease their delinquency rates significantly, because then if it doesn't, then you know, to your point, it's just figuring out how do we continue to you know make this program successful and decrease the repeat clients.

So we are trying to figure out you know how to lessen that burden.

And we've talked with um Isaac Vinyard over at Cove Haven about his financial literacy program, saying, you know, if if you've applied and you need to apply again, unfortunately, you won't be able to apply again until the next fiscal year after you take his financial literacy course, you know, and then have some sort of certificate, and then you know, we see that you've taken it and then we'll let you apply again.

Um I also should have mentioned we put in some rules that suggest that if we assist you, it needs to bring your balance either to 500 or less, because us assisting you under the rental program should put you a month ahead, you know, as you mentioned.

So if you are a month ahead, meaning that we paid you know your your rent last month, that means that you should technically be a month ahead and that you should be back on your feet.

So we're trying to assist you know residents in making sure that their balance gets down to at least 500 or zero to help them kind of get ahead.

So again, we're we're trying to figure out what makes sense as far as performance measures and lessing the repeat clients.

And you believe the capstone software will assist in that endeavor?

I think it will assist as far as tracking the data and really highlighting what we probably are missing, maybe.

So I'm hoping that that program will help us with that.

And there's at least one other program that's operating in the city, because I went to their awards a couple of weeks ago that Tony Pratt is running that is a financial literacy.

You speak into the mic the behavior modification program.

So basically, they um have them doing an eight-week program and it's week by week, and they get different skills for like housekeeping, financial literacy, just like a whole bunch of like life skills, and then at the end they have a graduation, they get certificates and stuff.

But it's um their partnership with Hacker, so that is one of their ways to try to prevent a lot of the residents from Hacker from being evicted by going through this program and successfully um completing it.

Right.

So perhaps we should um get those two partners in the room because community grants that's their purpose is helping the city do things that we don't have the manpower for.

So perhaps a partnership with you know those three, and I believe that there's OIC does some work too with financial literacy.

So that's three partners that we can partner with.

Thank you.

Um in your list of um recommendations for grantees.

Are there any grantees that have a recommended amount that did not submit reports?

No, everyone submitted reports, however, so sometimes it gets tricky because they can use the funding before I mean yeah, before like a new quarter report has to be submitted, so we don't technically force them to have to, you know, continue to submit reports because if the pro if they already use the funding and the program is done, then we don't really require for them to continue to submit reports.

So if you all go and I'll share with you, if you all go in and see that they only maybe submitted, you know, quarter one report but no other reports, or maybe they submitted quarter three reports, but not you know that I mean no additional reports, then that is the reason why.

Okay, thank you.

And um the outreach events that you talked about in performance measures.

Are you working in tandem with other city organizations on those or are those standalone outreach events for community services?

Everything is city, I mean not city, but other organizations' events.

We don't host our own outreach events, like we don't put on our own outreach events because I feel like we don't need to reinvent the will.

Everyone is doing health fairs, everyone is doing you know, um, food pantries or something, so we just support them and tag along.

Okay.

Thank you.

That's my question.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Um, and thank you for what you do.

Um, talk about direct impact to people.

Um so first couple questions I have are just my awareness.

On on page 43 of the budget, we talk about 50 community grants totaling 443,000 dollars.

But on your brief community grants, um this year is 418,000 projected and 375,000 proposed for 27.

I'm trying to figure out what the 443,000 dollars is which one are we looking at?

44.

So in the actual budget that uh that the mayor presented, um, he talks about 443,000.

I think we all a little confused.

Um I'm actually gonna have to get back to you with that because um I'm not sure why those numbers those numbers should not be different.

Yeah, okay.

You if you could do that, that'd be great.

Um and as much uh a level or two deeper than that would be great.

And I won't I'll stop asking questions, but um that awareness would be great.

Okay, um, and then and it maybe this is also uh uh come back question as well, but um 415,000 actual in 25, 418 projected, roughly the same number, and then we go down to 375, which by my quick math is about a 10% decrease.

What impact does that have on your job?

A hard question.

I don't mean to make it sound easy, but what what what are we not doing because we're we're decreasing the funding by 10 percent?

So you have a the pros and cons.

Pros being we are managing less this year because technically we don't have the capacity to continue to manage as many grantees that we have been managing.

Um, you know, it's just myself as a full-time Aaron and Shania, and then we have Dante, our community corner coordinator that are full-time employees, and we are doing our best to try to manage all those you know, grantees, given that we reduced the funding.

We couldn't fund as much this year.

So instead of the original like 62 or 50 this year, we are only funding about 35.

Now that does cut funding for you know a good amount of organizations, so that's how that's the con.

However, the pro is just alleviating some of the workload of our team and being able to manage less grants, and I'm hoping that allowing us to manage less grants, we are also a lot more involved with the grantees now.

Um we could continue those site visits and hopefully everyone can sign up and then that we can all go to those site visits.

We could continue reading through the reports thoroughly.

We can continue providing the additional support that those grantee needs since it'll be less grantees this year, if that answered your question.

Okay.

Thank you.

Um and I guess a general question that we could spend two hours talking about.

But um your grants, and you talked about some criteria about repeat grantees and things like that.

Um have uh a list of uh guidelines and objectives for each of your grants.

So yeah, so we have a grant presentation that we'll do, and it kind of goes over all of that once we get into that.

So um we can talk about that once we get to the the grant um presentation.

We can go over that.

Great, thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Thank you.

Yeah, and I hope you guys all know the schedule, but we do have this is longer than some of our other ones, so we have time for the presentation on community grants, so we're not we're not like bumping up against time at this point.

Um first of all, I want to really commend your very first slide where you had accomplishments.

I loved that you are able to put the cost of those accomplishments next to them.

That's really helpful for us, and um, it was something I saw planning and zoning do as well, and it's just it it lets us see how investments pay off.

So thank you very much for doing that in such a clear way.

Um I have just uh a couple questions about the budgets to actuals this in FY26.

And is there any particular reason why salaries and benefits is projected to be over in FY26?

So you can't see it on this screen, but the FY26 projected, like is shown up here, it's 516,000.

What we had budgeted last year was 495,000.

Maybe that's a question for Ms.

Turner.

Can it be the community coordinator?

I mean, in the new social worker that we have, maybe.

Yes, it's projected because what was it?

Okay, we can come back to it.

Just flag me down when you're ready.

Uh could you tell me a little bit more about something you mentioned kind of offhandedly?

You said you're helping doing AI trainings.

What's that?

So for sustainability trainings.

I I know we all know about Chat GBT and other AI trainings.

We felt that a lot of the organizations that we do help kind of still operate as a startup.

And a lot of them, you know, they don't have the staff or the volunteers.

So we thought it would be great to help them understand and use AI platforms such as Chat GBT to help them, you know, like with the missing step.

Like that could be your administrator, you know, administrative assistant if you need it.

That could be your business partner, you know, if you need to figure out trends or if you need to write a market plan, you know.

It's like you really don't have to do it on your own.

There are tools that you can utilize to help you, you know, get to that next level or your of your organization.

So we thought it would be great to have AI training for them.

That's awesome.

I I love it.

Um I appreciate you telling me more about it.

Yeah, I mean, it's crazy to me how like something that might take me 15 minutes to format 100 email addresses, it can do it in 30 seconds.

And you add that up over a week, makes a big difference.

Um just to make sure I'm totally clear, you said the children and family success grants and the adopted community are no longer housed in OCS.

They're not funded at all in the future.

Yeah, they're not funded at all, yeah.

Okay.

Um yeah, thank you.

I might have I might put a follow-up question about that in later, but that's all I have now.

Um and then we had something called the volunteers at risk grants.

That was the adopt the community grants.

Oh, okay.

The name was changed, yeah.

Cool.

Um the case management software.

So one of the first of all, we have a uh $10,000 increase in supplies.

Is that not the overall supply is another category, but the more specific supplies one.

Is that for this software?

Is that what that's accounting for?

What it accounted for in the personnel enhancements.

So that might be a question also for Ms.

Turner.

Uh where we see supplies going from 10,000 to 20,000, is that for this $9,600 software?

Yes.

And why is that under these guys rather than under IT?

It shouldn't be under there.

Um supplies and other.

What I'm trying to get at, I mean, this is not a substantive problem.

It's just a question of do we need an amendment to make sure you guys get this, but put it under IT's budget so we're consistent.

Um so there's uh in the supplies budget, um there are a number of places throughout the city's budget.

Um this is this is one of them where we what we were aiming for was the same services budget, which is not necessarily a same dollar amount budget um as last year.

So one of the places, this is one of the places where there is a change in the FY27 budget from 26.

Um, but it doesn't represent like an overall enhancement.

Um OCS has worked really hard at putting together like resource books and other materials like that to hand out to the community, hand out to partners.

They've obviously been working with community partners a lot, and so that stuff is actually gone really quickly.

We added some money into their budget this next year to support that continuing effort, but it's not really a new effort.

Got it.

Okay, so the software is under IT.

That $10,000 is for something different.

Got it.

Thank you.

Um, maybe this is a question for the city manager also, because it's kind of generalized.

But how do we think about whether it makes sense to have these case management and customer relationship management, whatever we want to call it, softwares be different for different departments versus trying to have one big one for the city as a whole?

Obviously, there's trade-offs to both, but I'm just curious, like it it seems to me like it might be helpful for other departments to know what like OCS might want to know what how somebody else is dealing with public works or planning and zoning and vice versa.

So how do how do you think about the positives and negatives to that?

Yeah, so um this is a place where my instincts are are not quite in the in the right place uh necessarily.

Um, but I tend to uh I tend to separate in my head the ways in which we engage um in some of the ways in which we engage with residents and the public.

Um this goes goes back to to my history where all of my instincts are HIPAA related.

Right.

So and I know that that's not the world we live in here, but it's still where my instincts are.

It's honestly what you guys said, Excel spreadsheet, that was where my head went.

Yeah.

Um so I think the question ends up being it's for me, it's less a question of would OCS benefit from knowing that you know this person has these other engagements in their life.

I'm more concerned about public works knowing that they have an OCS involvement in their life.

And that's the distinction that I make in my head is not so much that they shouldn't be able to see the others.

I'm not sure I necessarily want the other folks to know they got rental assistance, they got these other benefits.

Uh I'm not sure that's necessarily relevant.

And and I know that again, that comes out of my own personal history.

That's not necessarily the world we live in here.

That said, I still think that's actually true.

I'm not sure that I need I'm not sure I need public works to know that.

And you guys will concur with that.

Yeah, what do you think about your case?

Yeah.

Um I guess that only thing I would say is well, I guess I'm thinking more on lines of like planning and zoning when it comes to like residents and tenants dealing with, you know, like um a licensing issue or something like you know, being able to step in and help.

Yeah, the licensing.

So uh the outreach stuff, the various efforts, that to me could all live under one umbrella, right?

Licensing, there's a lot of that that's um ends up getting connected into like the financial system and that visibility, and again, that so then it's planning and zoning and it's finance and it's and it's and it's including DPW and the rest, right?

So I this is a place where uh frankly, I'm probably persuadable.

I'm just trying to be really upfront that my in this is where this my instincts come from.

So by default, that's my answer.

Um, but I recognize that that's not necessarily the right answer here.

Um I'll say, I mean, I think my my instincts are on the opposite end of the spectrum, but also persuadable that I tend to, having grown up in a social media era, think that we're in something of a post-privacy world, but uh that's that's probably also not it's not perfect either.

Um I did have a couple other questions, I'm just finding them.

Um, I wrote this note and I knew I was gonna forget what I meant later.

Oh uh this is actually related to community grants, so I can wait on that until after that presentation.

The last thing I wanted to ask you guys about is the same question I asked to the police department.

There are parts of their re-entry and community work that seem like they can overlap some with, or not overlap's not even the right word, but they can intersect with some of what OCS does.

And I think there's good reasons why we want them separate, but what I'm trying to get at is at what point do you think, and again, I asked the same question to them, at what point would you know that something you guys are currently doing might be better housed with them?

How would you evaluate that?

Good quick good question.

And sometimes um the police utilize where she sits, but that kind of deters people from coming to where she is because then they think, you know, we're the police, and then they don't want they don't come to get the help that they need.

So I'm thinking on that aspect.

Like if we were to refer someone saying, like, hey, that's better housed over there, would they be comfortable, you know, to say, okay, well, you know, or will they just give up and not get the help?

So that's how I'm feeling about it, Aaron.

Sure.

So I was also gonna mention as far as I'm sorry, gonna mention uh capacity as well, because I know, say if we if Shania and I do need to refer someone to another nonprofit or a church, for example, that does take some hand holding because sometimes for folks they may have called 15 other different agencies in that way, and I do understand their frustration when we unfortunately we have another voice saying, I'm so sorry, but we can't help you.

So that you follow up personal attention, uh calling them back, emailing, and also sometimes contacting the agency just to make sure that connection was made as well.

Too so now doing that for maybe five clients is is great.

You know, that's something that you know we as social workers can handle.

But say if that number ever increased to maybe more than 30, that would be tough.

So just having that capacity to make sure that we are, you know, not only just providing good customer service, but also living up to our licensure.

Thank you.

Um how did we oh I'm sorry, Ms.

Turner, you had something.

You were we were coming back to yes, I wanted to answer your question about the projection.

So it looks like um the projection includes their two temporary people um working more than part-time hours, which is making it more elevated.

Um, then the which but what is budgeted for FY27?

Because for FY27, we have them budgeted as part-time during part-time hours.

Um, and that's at a standpoint.

So that was at December 31st.

Um, I'm actually looking at actuals now, and it looks like it's still fluctuating.

Sometimes they're working 40 hours, sometimes they're working less back to the temporary.

So it's so thank you for explaining that.

Uh, anything you guys want to add on that?

I was gonna say I'm a little surprised because my two part-time people always make it seem like we're not doing more than 20, and I guess that's something that I have to stay on top of.

So sorry about that.

That's fine.

Uh no, that's why we asked about it.

That's uh our job is looking through these things.

All right, I had um something else I was gonna ask you guys.

Oh, the children family success grant.

I know Alderman Channel Meyer will want me to ask about this.

How did we determine that that was not worth the investment?

It was one time funded.

Oh, well, that's an easy answer.

Thank you.

Okay, all right, that's all I got.

Um, I'm sorry, Ms.

Cotty, yes, please.

Um, I just wanted to and you might want to move your mic down a little bit.

I just wanted to point out some of the um the criteria that we had for some of the grants that we were offering and your proposed um allocations that you were gonna give.

When we're making these determinations, what are we using?

Like, how are we going about do we like actually know the organizations and what they're providing besides what they're telling us?

So, do we want to just get into the grant?

Are you asking about community grants?

Okay.

Okay.

Do we want to just get into the grant?

Then yeah, maybe we should do the presentation first on that.

Do you have anything not related to community grants?

Okay, let's go to the presentation and then we'll ask some questions on community grants, and I'll let Otterwoman Conty go first.

And this is really quick, so you probably will have more questions than I have slides.

And just by the way, uh I think um I'm not able to access this within our um folder.

Okay, Miss Jackson says she's gonna fix it.

Thank you.

Okay, it's fixed already.

Okay, go ahead.

All right, so I'll start with the review team.

Um, we have Roseo, uh, Janine.

I feel like I'm saying Janine's name wrong.

Jeannie, I knew it.

Uh Patty, Norris, uh Teresa Wellman, myself, Aaron, and Shania.

And of course, thank you to all of them for being a part of the review team.

Um, so this just goes over um the priorities for the finding operating grant and the capital grant, the operating grant, of course, supports um the day-to-day of the nonprofit and the capital grant, um, supports like the purchase of property and construction, but that kind of falls more under like a CBDG grant, I believe.

Um, community grant program, of course, is subject to the availability of funds.

So considering if it's the operating or capital grant, the four pillars that it lies under, which is also on the website, and forgive me, I can't remember these by heart, so I won't read them verbatim.

Is one provides services that sustain and empower youth, families, and individuals to move towards an improved quality of life and self-sufficiency.

Two provides programs that preserve and enhance a community's character.

Three provides programs that contribute to a vibrant economy or promotes programs that are integral to the community revitalization, economic development, and environmental sustainability.

So the process of the committee is to review and evaluate each application.

So their application questions, and I'm sorry, I should have shared with you all what those application questions are.

They were already created when I got here.

We didn't change them too much, but I think we probably can make some improvements on that.

Um, but for the meantime, we've been using what was already in place.

The committee submits their recommendations to the Department of Finance to include, you know, our discussion.

Um how we chose in, you know, who will get funding and how much, and also based on what they asked.

Um, each committee person was assigned about seven or eight grants to score, um, and then we facilitated the conversations and drew up the report.

So this year there were 62 applicants.

Um the total request was around a million seven dollars, 152 dollars.

Um previous requests was 995, but the funding pool for this panel to work with was 373 this year, 700.

So Carmen and I, we kind of discuss a range for the grants this year, figuring out a better uh streamlined system.

So we decided the minimum recommend recommended grant award will be around 5,000, and the maximum being 20,000.

Um there were certain some exceptions considered based on the organization's request or to match funding because some organizations asked for less.

Um I guess I'll throw in one thing that I appreciated about the adopter community grants in the child and family success grants is that they had a set amount.

So the community grants really didn't follow that.

You know, they can ask for whatever it is that they need, and then we it's all decided on how much we should fund them.

But I thought to better streamline things, it will be simpler to have a set amount, like whether it's 5,000, 10,000, 15,000, or 20,000 instead of I don't want to say random amounts, but it felt random, like you know, 30100 or something like that, you know.

So just kind of staying streamlined with an actual amount, unless they asked for it, because you'll see that some people did ask for less.

Um, so this year, Carmen and I did have a conversation about focusing on the needs.

Um, the request that we get at the office, you know, the calls and the clients that reach out to us, what the needs are.

So we kind of focused on that and focused on those organizations pretty much receiving the most, you know, based on what they asked for.

So that was housing, which is our biggest thing, and homelessness prevention, and of course, food and security and utility assistance were prioritized over programming this year.

Well, I wish this was bigger, but this is our scorecard.

Sorry, I was looking at something else.

Would you mind just saying that last sentence again?

You said something was prioritized over something this year.

Oh, um, so homelessness, housing, food and security, and utility assistance were kind of you know prioritized over um programming this year because that's the need of our office.

Those are the majority of our clients in the cases that we get.

Thank you.

Yes.

And I can share this all with you because I wish this was a lot bigger, but I thought it would be important for you all to see what the scoring card looked like.

So focusing on those four priorities that I mentioned is how we score, you know, seeing which category they fall under, um, seeing the strong collaboration with community members, schools, churches, other organizations, something that um I agree with Karma with was that programming needed to be at least 75% of city uh residents, and then of course, having that diverse funding is something that's really important for the sustainability.

So showing us that you had additional funding outside of just city funding, and there's um some more, and I would love to share this card with you all later.

And there's um some more, and I would love to share this card with you all later.

So again, focusing on those categories, providing services that sustain empower youth families and individuals to move towards an improved quality of life and sustainability.

That category is our largest category, which was 330,700 that we funded.

So that focused a lot again on that homelessness prevention, focused a lot on utility programs, food programs, and then filling in the gaps with like after school programs, um programs and things like that.

For category two, promoting community pride and culture enrichment through programs that preserve local history, expand access to the arts and foster education and sustainability within the community.

That category was only about $5,000.

Category three support free and accessible community programs that foster connection, participation and pride among Annapolis residents, that quite category.

We funded 10,000, and then the last category provide programs that are integral to the community revitalization, economic development, environmental sustainability, that was 28,000, and that was a match funding.

So in summary, there were 62 proposals totaling over a million, 35 awardees that we decided to um recommend funding for so that we can meet the number that we're working with this year.

I think we forgot the the question slide.

This is the last slide, sorry.

Um okay.

All the Roman content, you want to start us off with questions?

So looking at the proposed like amounts that you're gonna give to some of the organizations.

Um I had a couple questions.

One of them is um for the assistant league league, and it wanted um I don't know the exact amount.

They wanted school you school uniforms?

Yeah, yes.

Um I'm trying to understand why one organization that's covering one school would get that much of a grant over other schools.

That's also community schools like in Germantown, where they provide the same services, given only them and not giving zero to the other ones, like what made y'all make that decision to propose that.

Well, technically they were the only ones that apply each year for the grant.

Uh, didn't see anyone else apply saying that they also do what they do.

So give what I'm saying is it if a school is the majority of the elementary schools that are here in Annapolis, they're community schools, which means that they provide additional services to their kids.

So if we're giving them a grant just to say that we're gonna do uniforms, the other schools need the same thing.

So we pick in one over the other ones that apply too.

But I don't know the other schools that apply, the other schools apply that do the same thing because the only schools that I seen were Germantown and I think Eastport, but they were asking for PTA.

They didn't mention anything about school uniforms.

So technically, Assistant League of the Chesapeake is the only organization that applied to help children with school uniforms.

So that's why we provided them with grant funding.

When we didn't think about like, well, there's other community schools out there that do the same thing because they didn't apply.

So this is the only organization that stuck out to us because they apply that said we you know, we give uniforms to you know the kids.

I forget what school they give them to.

And then Tyler Heights, and then as I mentioned, Georgetown, I believe, PTA and I think it was East Eastport PTI.

I can get it.

German town.

German town, I'm sorry.

They applied for you know the PTA, not the school uniforms, from what I am I can remember.

So I hope does that answer?

So I understand that, but what I'm saying is like if the community school, community schools get certain money already allocated for them for uniforms.

So they're asking for something additional for uniforms, but the PCA, the schools itself, if it's a community school, they get like these wraparound things to help with stuff like school uniforms.

So that's why I'm trying to get rid of that.

Something else.

Yes.

Okay, so technically, I again, I don't know the in-depth of like the community, I don't have any kids, so excuse me, of the community schools and like how the uniforms work, you know.

I don't have any kids, so excuse me, of the community schools and like how the uniforms work, you know.

So just seeing that they are already, I don't know if uniforms call cost, you know, outside of the schools giving them.

Usually do, but if it's a community school, it's only three schools that are not community schools, and you always know because if they have uniforms, then it's a community school.

If they don't, then they won't have it.

But all of the community schools get certain money that's allocated for kids that might be in need of uniforms.

So that was one of yeah.

No, I get what you're saying, but um, I'll just say they were the only ones that applied, you know, and like I said, we don't really know too much, or at least, you know, I don't know too much because no one brought that up.

Look, no one brought that up.

You know, the committee didn't bring it up like well, other you know, community schools do X, Y, and Z, so we just went ahead and funded that because again, like I said, I don't know Uniforce costs or how that whole process worked, but that does alleviate, you know, some money out of a parent who's struggling, you know, to maybe pay for food or something, that that's something they don't have to worry about.

So to take that off their table looks good to us.

Older woman context, can I ask?

I'm just trying to understand uh it's the point you're getting at more that these let's let's limit it to the three schools.

These three schools already got money for uniforms and thus we don't need to provide additional money, or are you getting at more we should spread it evenly among the schools?

Exactly.

Okay.

So we could I I think somebody would have to go to those two other PTAs and say, if we give you this money, would you be willing to spend it on this particular thing?

But if we were to do that, I mean if someone were to do that, I don't see any reason why we couldn't break that $15,000 into five, five five.

Maybe there's some reason, but it doesn't, it's not coming to my mind.

So that could be a solution.

Um so like um me and you had a conversation.

So as far as like um Salvation Normandy said that they're helping with like utilities and housing and stuff like that, but for years, they've been a known um place to only give conditionally to like a certain um community or certain vest of people.

So how are we like so again, based on the scoring card that we use is how we determine who will get funding.

And forgive me, because like I said, I only been in two years.

This is also why we wanted to start doing site visits so that we could actually start seeing everyone's program and the success of it.

Because yes, we do have the reports, but it's always good to see for yourself, right?

Um so we want to make sure that we increase our site visits, continue to get out there, actually see everyone's work.

I know Aaron and I, we went to the Salvation Army for like a BGE training, you know.

We know some of the staff over there, and they are vital, you know, partner to us when we need to refer someone over there.

So they also didn't ask for too much either.

You know, I think they asked for around 7,000.

So it's like we don't OCS doesn't have a lot of programs outside of the rental, so we need those additional organizations to partner with us, especially when rental closes, you know, it it doesn't stay open long, we don't have a lot of funds.

So once our program is done, we need important organizations like the Salvation Army to cover, you know, us for them until we reopen.

Got you.

Um, I got one more question.

Yes.

So the nonprofit organizations, play Annapolis, one anaplas, and kingdom care.

Why were they granted zero?

So play anapolis.

And I can't remember everybody's play Annapolis is um a sports organization that provides um scholarships and equipment to underserve youth to be able to play sports that they wouldn't normally be able to play.

Okay.

So I'm gonna ask, I'm gonna answer this question on uh application base and not just individual base, because like everyone, like I said, they all get you know, organizations to score and then they score.

So I don't know if I scored them or who scored that.

So I'm just gonna answer it on just like an application base, depending on what they ask for.

So even though that they do provide that programming, doesn't necessarily mean that they're asking for the money to use for that.

They could uh, you know, whatever they're asking for determines how we score them.

So, you know, sometimes we'll get an organization that may ask for money for a printer or something like you know, something like that.

So it has to be based on what they're asking for, not exactly what they do.

And I do know that we have um what's the other organization?

Miss Well Mac.

That's an episode.

And that was also, you know, that also you know provides like sports and and things like that.

And I've I did a site visit with them, and they're talking about partnering with uh play anapolis, but the vote for April would okay.

So yeah, so based on what they asked for, and um forgive me, I can't remember, but you I think you all have access to the drive and applications.

You can go into the applications and read on exactly what they're asking for, the money for, not just based on what the organization does.

Does that make sense?

Okay.

Um auto Roman O'Neill.

Thank you very much.

And I appreciate it.

Um as you had mentioned, there's a lot of changes that we're looking to make to this, and it's a growing experience.

Um has the opportunity to make some amendments on this, and we will there's a couple of them that we want to make amendments, and I appreciate everything that the committee the committee has done, the selection committee.

Um I wanted to make sure that the explanations on the spreadsheet were current.

Um to date for this year's.

Is that correct that they're all the summary for fiscal year to currently?

Yes, yes, that's all current.

Okay, great.

Um, I don't have any other questions at the moment.

Okay, all awesome.

Alderman Thorpe, you're up.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Um, so I think there's several spreadsheets, and I'm just trying to make sure I'm looking at the right one.

There the spreadsheet I'm looking at has FY2027 grant request, 26 committee need, and 27 committee recommended list.

What is FY26 committee need?

What's the definition of that column?

That might have been last year's.

So last year.

I should jump in and say I unhid that column in your spreadsheet.

So if you're like, well, I thought we did that.

I was trying to find that.

Okay, yeah, the column was hit it, but I'll explain.

So last year, as you can see, the need that is always asked is way more than what we have.

So I think we, if I'm not mistaken, Vicky, I think there were like two numbers last year that we were giving.

So we recommended based on the number that we were giving, was giving um from Vicky, and then the need was based on another number.

So we we said, like, if we're going with this number, then this is the recommendation.

But if we're going with this number, then this is the need right here, if that makes sense.

That's why that extra column was there.

But we didn't do that this year, so that's why we hit that column.

Yeah, we've we've tried to be pretty transparent about what's in front of us, you know.

You have access to the applications.

Here's how much folks asked for, here's what the recommendation is.

We did end up with a couple versions last year.

Um, so there were a couple of versions of that um recommendation, and then obviously at the end of the day, council gets to the council gets to make its choices.

Um, so we we try to just show all of that.

I like to um that when they come to us during budget to get the number, um, sometimes where we're at and preparing the proposed budget, we don't have a uh heart number to give them, and sometimes that adjusts, so that may adjust their selections as well.

Thank you.

So um I've now unhidden all of the columns.

Um I guess my my question that I'd really like to know is um I see FY25 council adopted.

I don't see an FY26 council adopted.

That will be once you all make your final decisions, then you will have an adopted.

Well, FY26, this pat the year we're in now.

So last year this time, what was there's no column here for FY26?

I don't have the sheet in front of me, and I'm sorry, but there should have been one.

But I know I do have I know I do have that.

So I could share it with you all, but yeah, can we just put that as a dual if we could add what the FY26 adopted was adopted was that would be really helpful.

Thank you.

I'm sorry that it's not in there.

I thought I thought I just hit everything instead of removing it.

Thank you.

And then uh a question that might be a new guy question.

Um I thought you briefed that the criteria was five to twenty thousand.

Yes.

And on the in category four here, Chesapeake Crossroads Heritage Incorporated.

Um receives 28,000 every year.

Can you tell tell me about that?

Yeah, so we put grant award is five thousand with the maximum being twenty thousand exceptions were considered based on an organization's request amount of or match funding requirements.

So if they did ask for less, we gave them what they asked for because then that gives us more money to work with.

However, um Chesapeake Heritage Crossworlds, we have to batch funding in order for them to get um county funding, and they also provide uh many grants to uh to organizations as well to help them.

So we kind of have to, and honestly, it's just been something that's been going on since I started again.

I've only been here for two years, so we kind of have to match that funding in order for them to get additional funding from the county.

And I I totally agree with what you said, but I'd be more comfortable if you said that we opt to match it.

Okay, we opt so they get the match because you actually I don't think have to.

Um, you opt to so that they get the batching.

Okay, you're empowered to do that, right?

Okay.

All right, thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Thanks.

I really appreciate this.

Um I know we've been working on making this better, and it seems like we're we're getting better.

So thank you.

I hope so.

I think I was talking with Otto Roman O'Neill about this over the weekend that I think at some point we might need to make some changes to the code, hopefully, and so maybe that's something we can have as uh finance committee hearing.

I'm coming up with all of these ideas over the course of these budget hearings for things we need to bring folks back for when we're not in the middle of the budget.

I would love if you could throw in a grant management software.

Oh, okay, interesting.

Um should have put it as one of your name.

I should have put it.

I didn't think of it at the time.

Um I I'm not gonna agree on all these, but I do have two in particular that just jumped out to me.

Okay.

One is um the blacks of the Chesapeake application.

Last year in FY26, I remember their founder had just died, they didn't put in an application.

And this year we're choosing not to fund that, which might be perfectly reasonable.

But I just want to ensure that the not putting in an application in last year, which the council then went and corrected, and we we would so it what I'm getting at is this would show up as in FY26.

The committee's recommendation was to not give them any money.

The council understood there was some extenuating circumstances.

We made sure to go in and appropriate that some additional fund for those.

In this budget, I see they're not getting any money, which again might be perfectly reasonable, but I want to make sure that the not putting in an application in FY26 and thus having a committee recommendation of zero in FY26 was not a factor in that.

No, it wasn't.

Okay.

Thank you.

Um and then the other one, not to come after my pal to the right over here, but is uh the funding for the Eastport Volunteer Fire Department to get AEDs.

We just heard uh at the last council meeting how important it is to get AEDs, but it also is in a category here for something like supporting culture and history.

That strikes me as not about culture and history.

So uh could you just explain that one a little bit more?

We let everyone on the application pick where they felt they fall under.

So we didn't classify that for them.

So we asked which category do you feel you fall under?

They choose it.

We put them there.

So yeah.

So you guys were basically looking at this and saying, boy, AEDs are a really important thing.

They might not be important for history, but they're important overall.

Well, yes, they're important overall.

And then someone on the committee mentioned that I guess someone was playing pickleball and actually needed uh AED.

So yeah.

We were hearing about it, the council meeting.

Yeah, so yeah.

Yeah.

Cool.

Okay, thank you.

Like I said, I'm not gonna try and grow you guys over all these.

Uh really appreciate your work on this and creating better processes.

Anyone got anything else they want to talk about on community grants?

Oh, you sure not all the Roman O'Neill.

Sure.

Okay.

All right.

Um, with that, if we could just get the information out of the spreadsheet of FY26 adopted.

Yes.

I think that was our only do out.

Oh, he does have something.

Having looked at the other columns, if you're gonna add 26, you you might I notice you have 22 in here.

Um it might be good to have.

I was gonna say, I'm I'm just for transparency.

The sheet was already done before I came on board.

I just continued to follow.

Oh no, I appreciate it.

But 26, 25, 24 would be helpful.

Okay.

If you have it without doing making it a research project.

Okay.

Maybe Chat GBT would be helpful.

Uh or I'm sorry, Google Gemini.

We're we're a Gemini household here.

I don't think I don't think Chat GBT will have the numbers from that.

No, you feed it in.

Well, get it to put it in the spreadsheet.

Anyway, uh, with that, I think we can wrap up.

Um so let's say I see Director Morse here.

Director Moore, if we were to get started at 11 instead of 1120, would that be all right with you or are you waiting on folks?

Waiting on someone, but we can probably start.

Okay, so we'll um I'll recess us for 15 minutes, and if we're not ready then to get started ahead of schedule, then we can recess again.

But let's uh it's our motion to stand in recess for 15 minutes.

Second.

Second.

All those in favor, please say aye.

My committee three sets till 11 o'clock.

Meeting call back to order at 11.07 a.m.

on May 4th, 2026.

Thanks everybody for being here today.

And director Moore, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Chair, and good morning, everyone.

Um, for the record, I'm Marcus Moore, director of transportation, and with me is quackendua.

Our deputy director of transportation.

Um, we're pleased to be here with you to share our and present our FY27 budget to you.

And we will not read every slide, but however, we'll do our best to answer questions that you might have as they come up.

So looking at our accomplishments we have here for transportation and parking.

And you'll look at security and um safety and security, excuse me, securing the grants and funding uh to run operation from the state and federal levels.

You can see the 900 plus eight 684 comes to just about 1.5 million in federal and state granting grants for the capital side.

Um what this is allowing us to do is maintain uh reliable on time service, and we can talk about how we get those statistics and the service delivery.

We always want to be at 100%, meaning that we have um on time uh uh pull out.

Uh there will be issues in between that will bring our on-time performance down to something less than 100.

And we'll explain more about what that zero accent rate is and how it's obtained from the FTA um and the ND in the national transit database, how they come arrive at those numbers.

Um accomplishments for parking, as you can see, we're trying to maintain when you look at something that says uh a strong enforcement, we really mean like a consistent measure to make sure that um parking is adhered to according to city code, and the number one factor would be uh safety um for you know safety vehicles, uh police and fire, uh fire hydrants and making uh the turns around corners while um hurting property and all improving the signage wayfinding, we're in in process of doing that, but we'll talk more about what our goal is for FY27 and how we're gonna increase those initiatives on the street and our lots and the garages and also um and how that'll work out best for us.

But doing that in this current year where we're where we're in, we really had a very comprehensive review of what we're doing now, and when we look at accomplishments as we tie the uh performance measures to our budget, um things that are under our control.

So when you're looking at parking, it is within um well the area that we are responsible for, which is outside of the concession area.

The concessionary will talk about it a little bit differently and how that um is being maintained and um worked on with us.

Go to the next slide.

So, as we talked about the performance measures as you as you can see here, um the FTA and the um federal transit administration um uses uh the the primary use of how they come up out with this data using the NTD uh national transit database is calculator for smaller agencies like ours.

Uh 100,000 vehicle revenue miles.

Um larger agencies might have as much as one million.

But what makes it an FRA reportable accident?

Was there a fatality?

An injury that was treated away from the scene.

If a vehicle could not operate under its own power because of safety, meaning tail lights, marker lights, and all.

So far in fiscal year, um this fiscal year, we had about just over 463,000 miles.

So you can see what the benchmark is, and our goal always should be zero, but there's a you know factor of what's acceptable.

So you can see where we are, um, what we've done in FY25, year to date, FY26, and with the proposed FY27.

Things do happen, but they don't make that threshold to be uh FA FTA reportable.

Adherence to preventive maintenance and programs, um, our goal is 100%.

And what that means is when the MTA, MDOT, MTA does an inspection of our records, making sure that the monies that we get for preventive maintenance are being used in accordance to the contract of us running public transit.

Are we doing preventive maintenance schedule in line with uh keeping these vehicles operating for its full useful life?

And we have over the last several years, we've been hitting the market 100%.

And a note later on this afternoon, we have our quarterly meeting with MDOT MTA to look at um records again, and they'll sporadically ask for four or five, three or four buses to take a look at to make sure that um for the last year to look at the um how we've maintained them.

And you can look at the the performance measures there at the bottom for how we operate.

So we talk about the Federal Transit Administration and Maryland Transport Maryland Transit Administration and the requirements to follow the rules in compliance to get these monies and reimbursement.

Um of the last couple uh council meetings, we did talk about the application to apply, and we have been um doing our due diligence of making sure we keep our Title VI, uh all the other requirements of drug and alcohol program, uh not just a nine to five, but um all the hours that we operate in compliance, and this NTD reporting is done at the end of each year.

I think it's October 31st, and we've come out very well with that.

So we're pretty excited about how we've been able to continue to operate at a level that's above average.

Next one, please.

So the performance measures, as I may mention, um, this is just on the outside of the concession area and what our uh performance measure is and where we um hope to be going forward.

Um you can see the benchmark that we have there of 85 percent, ensuring that you know the districts are covered daily uh by you know wandering around and making corrective action as we may mention specifically on a safety issue.

So what the actual numbers show there for FY25 and year to date, month to date for where we are in FY26.

We'd like to be at 100% realistically, you know, uh the 99, you know, 98 is where you know we'll end up coming in, and we have had several months, of course, at 100%, it's keeping that average um pretty high.

The other performance measure there with uh parking, uh you can see the percentage of meters and compliance and working.

Um we've outperformed pretty much our benchmark by just a few points, um, and that probably goes back a couple fiscal years when we uh were able to replace um the single or dual head meters for multi-space meter, uh, allowing that to be um the technology to be updated and and in better working order.

Um what we like to do also, you know, the performance measures for responding to you know all complaints, even though we may have say here valid customer complaint, but we don't know if it's invalid if until we investigate it.

But having a benchmark of about 95 is where we've been really hitting it.

And what we're saying is, you know, uh, within a couple days, within two days, we've been very good.

And some of you may have been the recipient of the emails from one of the parking contractors of how they followed up.

Other statistics, this is a real interesting one because you're looking at what is it that we're actually doing, and when we look at you know the free rides that we uh give for students, um this was several fiscal years ago.

I want to say FY17 or 18, um, K through 12 can ride from free uh weekdays during school time between 6 a.m.

and 7 p.m.

And you look at the numbers there for the actual for FY25 and where we are year to date for 26.

And to kind of put that in context, you can see what the total ridership is for those years.

It's really hard to give a projection or proposed number of riders.

Um, we'd love to see you know numbers growing so fast so much that you want to just continue to give us more money to uh keep continue to expand our our routes.

Some of the other statistics that you'll see here is our participation in city sponsored and community events.

About a dozen there that you can see, and so far what we've done three.

So giving you some ideas of what those are would be parades.

Um other events when we had a cooling bus, a warming bus night, uh middle of the summer, 4th of July is a big one because we don't operate transit service, but we operate um free service from the Navy Stadium to lawyer's mall for people to go down to see the fireworks.

We have you know five buses doing around Robin from like four o'clock in the afternoon until 12 30, which requires a supervisor to be on duty as well.

That's probably one of the biggest ones.

But if you think about military bowl and all the other events that come up.

And even times, even though we have the Israeli barriers and dump trucks and all, sometimes we're asked to use an older asset to help block traffic to protect those that are in parades.

So you can kind of take a look at some of the things that an idea of what other statistics are that um we don't get a reimbursement, but it's just the right thing to do for city sponsored events, community events, and things that we go out to kind of share about um transit.

Um parking garages, when you look at transit uh transient volumes, these are considered um you know, day people.

People there for a few hours, up to a day, not monthly parkers.

So there's no real goal on how many people will come in.

We just want to make the ease better, um, the apps easier, and the response time of doing things that we get to visitor center and other places like town halls where we can show folks how easy it is to sign up.

So you can look at FY25 actual, you know, over over 417,000 transient um uses of in the parking garages outside the concession area, where we are so far, year to date.

Uh no real proposal there forward, but it will be nice to use something like we'd love to increase this 10% every year, 10 20%.

So you got the on-street parking and the revenue that is generated.

Um, this is just revenue for parking, not citations.

So the actual for uh FY25, where we are so far in um year to date and 26, but there's no real proposal, um, but we can actually answer any questions that you might have there.

That's that's year to date for 26.

Just so we're very much outpacing FY25, right?

We are.

Um, more spaces, more people being you using it.

Um, I think a lot of the things that we've done for helping the businesses, just getting folks out, it really really has grown.

Um, and then you know, the the collection or you know, people I guess the other pot would have been those that were still there but weren't paying that went to a collection part, more people are paying because they're figuring out how easy or how to use the app.

But it is uh outpacing for sure.

Okay.

Um budget enhancements.

Um, before you ask the question, I know you have one.

When you look at personnel enhancements, we say none, but you're gonna see uh FTE increase by one, and what that is is just a transfer over from another agency.

Um that person was working both um, it was being shared from different agencies, and it was just decided that um it'll it'll work on our agency at our agency, and the funds have come along with that particular position.

And we can discuss more as need be for your um as you're have interest.

Next.

The non-personnel enhancements largely go around parking, wayfinding, and signage garages.

And and you know, if we go back to a couple pages, you don't have to go back, but you may see that revenue really going up because you know, building it and they will come, but they don't know how to get in the front door is really hard for park place.

There's so many ways to get in.

Um, you know, we got a shared asset with the minority majority owner with with Guardian as a minority owner, and there's so much activity there, and that's our largest asset of 1100 over 1100 spaces.

Can you imagine if we're able to um you know get it in capacity several times a month, what that will look like.

So just getting folks from highways where we can get signage to get into our garages, and then once they get in the garages, which way do I go and how do I pay?

So there's a lot of money being that's being you know gonna be invested uh to create you know a seamless journey of you coming to Annapolis and how do I get there once get there once I get here.

And you'll hear us talk more about gorilla posts and those are really neat um post uh marks that you can use for uh parking.

You'll probably see some of them in other garages.

There's you know, no damage to the vehicle.

So that's a really big um event that we really think will really help us out a lot when we have um specials, you know, the holiday parking between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day and so many other things that we want to want to do, but that's where we're concentrating our efforts when we look at non-fair revenue.

Um that's parking and how that supports the um the transportation fund through the general fund, and we can talk more about that.

We like to get into trends, uh budget trends, and I'm gonna ask for our deputy director to help me um explain some of these things away, but you'll we'll see some things that will be a question mark to you like what is contractual services, what is it all covering, supplies and other and our capital outlay?

Uh thank you very much.

Uh so this shows the budget trends uh based upon the template.

Uh we do have the FY23, 24 and 25 actuals.

Uh just a couple of points in terms of the capital outlay.

Uh normally that is when we do get grants for vehicle replacement or equipment.

So what we decided to do is take that one out.

Sorry, 15 minute timer if you just want to try and wrap it up.

Okay.

So we took that one out so that you can look at the trend without the capital outlay, which depends upon how much we do get uh from year to year for vehicle pitches or equipment.

Uh we also have the same one for parking.

Uh, the numbers are there.

Uh, if you have any questions, uh you'll be very glad to answer or respond to that.

Uh revenue side, we do have the transportation fund.

We do it by fund because there are two funds in the department of transportation.

Uh just on the FY25.

Actual at that time, we still have a lot of uh money from the federal government, I believe is the upper funds.

Uh so that actually also saw an increase in the transportation fund.

Uh revenue versus expenses.

Very interesting here.

So, what we did here is to take uh the for the transportation fund, the non-city funds as a percentage of the operating cost, i.e.

how much of the operating cost is paid for uh revenues that we generate ourselves without any city funding.

Uh so that is where we show the 35.61%, meaning that about 35.6% of the operating cost is paid for from sources like grants, uh, fair box advertising revenues, uh, and things like that.

And it also shows you how much the city actually contributes to support the transit services in the city of Annapolis.

Uh, we do something similar for parking fund, uh, a little bit different here because in the parking fund in the operating expense, there is a large amount of money for interfund transfers.

Uh, we decided to take it out and see without doubt how does the parking revenue actually compare to the parking actual parking expenses.

So when we do that, then we do have enough money being generated uh through the parking activities to pay for ACE own expenditures.

However, when we add back the interfund transfer, then we need to look at other sources of revenue to actually help pay for everything else.

And additional information here, expansion of community outreach.

Uh transportation pretender has been doing very well, going to various senior centers, uh, division centers, schools, yes, to uh send the word out in terms of our services that we provide.

Uh, we also actively collaborate with county and the state partners.

Uh, we do have uh monthly meetings with the county, department office of transportation.

We also have our quarterly meetings with the state, in addition to anything that may come in between.

I believe so that is the end.

Thank you very much.

Uh Roman O'Neill, do you want to kick us off?

Former transportation chair?

Thank you very much.

Um, I appreciate all those information.

Uh I have a couple of questions.

Um you go back to one of the first couple of slides.

I didn't write down the slide number, and you talked about the on-street one.

Yes.

The on-street parking revenue going from 25's actual to the year to date.

Does that include fines?

It does not.

That is purely residential parking permits, meter payments.

It's all uh the actual fees to park, not the fines.

Easter park.

Okay, thank you.

Can I drill down on that if you don't mind?

So it does include residential parking permits or it does not.

We're on street, I believe it does include that as well.

Okay.

All right, thank you.

And then the biggest thing that I hear people ask for is increasing the hours for the Naples Go shuttle.

Hours and locations.

In your proposed FY27 budget, how could we do that?

Money.

We really would like to look at the whole system, make a holistic approach, um, take a holistic approach on how that actually works.

Because Alderman O'Neill, I I totally agree.

Um that's worked out quite well.

We're still in the uh pilot phase.

We have about thir 14 more months.

Uh July of next year, 2027.

We'll need to make a decision on how it operates and do we continue to operate um and then we'll need funding to actually do that.

Um, as that works itself within the other rainbow routes, the brown, the green, the red.

How does that go with it?

Because this one as a pilot initially was starting out to replace the underperforming orange route, which was just Monday through Friday from 5 30 in the morning to 7.

And we also decided to add in that other second underperforming route, the purple route, which is Monday through Saturday from 7 p.m.

to 1045, which covers the whole city.

With the orange only covered uh a good portion of the middle of the city.

It didn't hit the transfer or the turnaround points of Eastport or the mall.

So we really would need to really study how we do this without uh losing too much on a on the other fixed route.

Because a lot of other places, jurisdictions that found success with it, it was a feeder system that went into a hub that carried you to other locations to go other places.

Um but it's definitely something we need to look at.

We'll we'll have we need the help of transportation planners um and how we expand that footprint um a little bit further because I totally agree with what you said uh based on the calls that we get.

Um you can only use this service after this hour where it covered the whole system.

Thank you.

We heard a little bit uh last week, and I can't remember which department we talked about it in, about um credit cards across the city, and that's the second most um often question that people ask is why can they not use a credit card to get on one of the buses or you know, well, the two faceted um when you buy a ticket at our location, of course, we can accept credit cards and checks and the like with on board, we really have to be tied in very closely with finance.

So just like the permit window or somebody else buying um some other commodity from the city, how that ties in with how we do our financial reporting.

Um on our side, we've been in communication with other agencies that we can tie in with that can do mobile payment.

Um, and what does that mean?

And some if you don't have a high volume, you're gonna lose even more money because you're gonna have to pay that percentage to use that credit card, Apple Pay or whatever the wallet.

It's not unrealistic, it's just something that needs to be studied and um as a group effort with with the finance department and how we um we grow that part of it.

But we've been looking at it, and we can definitely give you some feedback on our findings from the transit side.

One other thing that we when we went to this electronic fare box back in 2016 or so, um there are a lot of components that are really easy, quick disconnect.

Uh it's unfortunate that uh MTA, the largest agency in the state, they use another one called Genfair, and we're fair we are um TripSpark, but they can modify so we can accept their cards and them um accept ours.

And some of the things we'd like to talk to you more about is that reciprocating environment where somebody that buys a m uh a daily, monthly, yearly, whatever on MTA, if they come into the city on the 70 bus, they can continue their journey to the mall or to uh inner city neighborhoods.

Someone doing that same thing on our service cannot reciprocate and use the set that same pass going that direction.

So one of the things is just how we balance ourselves out to um incorporate um this new mode of payment is something that we want to do because there's some certain generations that they don't carry a wallet or carry money in it, and that would definitely be a plus.

Thank you.

That's all my question.

I'll tell you, I don't have any cash at all in my wallet right now.

So uh yes, I appreciate that.

I think it's just uh to me, it's about uh uh obviously there is the money part of it, but there's also a how do we have people fulfill their civic duty when they want to?

And uh I think I've told you before a story about a friend who uh it's like a great like super excited to ride transit and got on the bus one day because it was raining and normally bikes do a job and was like, oh, I can't pay.

And the guy just said ride it anyway.

We want to have the the sense that everybody's being fair and playing by the rules.

So anyway, that's not a question.

Otherwise, Thorpe, you're up.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Uh, thank you, Mr.

Moore.

Appreciate all the work you uh put into this and your team, and and uh I appreciate all the time that you've spent to continue to make it better.

Um my questions are hard, and I'm just gonna put you on the spot.

Slide five.

Do you really not have an estimate of ridership of your buses in fiscal year 2027?

We it's you want to take us first step.

Um it comes to transit, uh, we are in competition with other most of transportation.

Typically, if you're doing a new bus route, you have an idea of what is the expected ridership based upon various land uses and socioeconomic characteristics.

Once it is well established, uh asking people to come and use the service is something totally different.

What we do have control of is the bus is available, uh, is supposed to be on schedule, it's clean, it's safe, and then we advertise it with a hope that people will actually take the message.

If we want to target choice riders, it means that we need more money to be able to run the buses more frequently during the morning and the evening rush hours.

So put in a number on how many people you expect to basically take the service is hard unless we do previous uh trend analysis and say on the average, this is what we expect.

That we can put a number to that based upon say five years of average data, we do that with a safety plan.

We go back three years to look at all safety events, and based upon that, we will put in a number.

So uh we intentionally did that, but if you want to see what could happen, then for the past five years, we can calculate the average.

I'm not a very fine person of averages because if you have a lot of variations in the data, uh, it's your average the most likely event to happen.

Uh, but we can actually take a look at the averages for the past past five years and use that as an indicator of what we hope to achieve in FY 2027.

So uh let me go a different way.

What are your top three ridership routes?

Yeah, let's me.

Well, Dr.

Duaz, looking at that, one of the things to keep in mind of pre-COVID post-COVID right, excuse me, ridership numbers, we're probably up to like 95% of our ridership pre-COVID.

How do we attract?

You guys tell you.

Yeah, bring tears in my eyes too.

One of the things I guess that we're looking at.

Yes, please.

Oh, okay, thank you.

One of the things that would really help us out as far as marketing, and as we do our community, thank you so much.

Um, our community outreach to the senior centers that didn't know about go time or ADA uh paratransit service and all.

So part of that we can look at uh the growth, but what took us all the agencies in the United States have taken a decline and just kind of pulling ourselves back up.

Um before that happened, you know, we didn't really have a lot of teleworking and all that kind of stuff, and people found some agencies, companies really found that that was a good way of a mix X amount of days per week to work from home.

So as Dr.

Duell will be able to tell you the top three routes that we have right now and how they're uh fairing.

Yeah, um, this is up to date for FY26 at the end of March.

Uh, the number one is the magenta downtown shuttle.

Uh, if you look at it, it is where it's the center of town.

Many people come in, it's free, and it's connects to all our parking garages.

Uh, formerly called the circulator designed to connect the parking assets so that people can park and move freely and also have businesses.

So that's just our number one.

Uh up to date.

Just special for you guys' presentation today.

I made sure to take the magenta shuttle to City Hall this morning.

Just for you guys.

So that's number one.

Uh, number two will be the brown, and number three will be the green.

Um the goal time watching now consists of three or two different routes, uh, the former orange and the former purple north and south.

Uh, it's now around 22,500 riders.

Uh, ADA is the least use service, uh, but it's for people with disabilities.

And I think the reason why we don't have many people using is that the county has a similar service, which is free, but it has long wait time.

Uh, but that's just a common complementary service that we have to provide it because we are sell federal dollars too.

So that is what we have.

I can get to much more detail for each route for the past five years.

If you're interested, I believe you saw a question from Savage, uh, which is asking for about five years of ridership by route and by the service type.

Service type currently we do have the fixed route, which is the brown, the um the green, and then the the red and the shuttle at the downtown shadow, they are all fixed route and the state shadow.

Yeah, the steel shuttle.

Actually, I that's a right number two.

Yeah, that's a high number two, but I don't have it here.

But we can provide you with all those statistics if you're interested in.

I would appreciate that, but I'm less interested in the data than knowing you have the data.

Because what you just illustrated to me was that you could have the ridership goal of 2027 because you do have five years of history.

So, what I seek to do is to create an environment where we eliminate the fear of being wrong.

In other words, I think what transportation is all about is predict what the ridership's going to be in the future, and then making decisions to change things to increase or decrease the ridership.

So somebody might say, let's charge for the magenta shuttle.

Okay, that's gonna decrease the ridership.

But you know, I I know that, I'm not a transportation expert, but but so that's really what I seek.

On that slide five, I I believe we we really need to drive to having goals.

And I would like to impress upon you not to fear being wrong, because we can work through this.

Um, I've heard now numerous times the discussion, and that and I've seen the work that you all are doing, but but if we don't measure the output, we won't know what it is.

Um, I think.

And I I just wanted to add on to that, um that sort of redefining what is wrong.

I think part of what I you know, you and I have discussed in the past um is for something like this in particular.

What are our control limits, right?

What does normal variation look like?

And so let's not get fixated on what the exact number is.

We should have some ideas, but um just that understanding that there is normal variation and this is within normal variation, or now this is outside of normal variation.

Yeah, could not agree more, right?

And and what I'm looking at is an understanding of the data.

I mean, if we have if suddenly it starts raining a whole lot more, you know, if we have a year of a lot of rain, it's gonna affect bus ridership in one way, shape, or form.

So I'm really looking for the cause and effect, and I could not agree more with what the acting city manager just said.

But although what we do in terms of do you certain things and seeing the impact on ridership when it comes to fair change, when it comes to service reduction, when it comes to uh service increase, we do uh what is called elasticity of fair change, elasticity of service increase or service reduction, and that we have the tools to do that.

In fact, when they did cut the circulator for the first time, we did estimate how much it's going to impact when they did cut service and increase first back in 2014.

We did estimate that it was going to be fair, ridership was going to be reduced by by 33%.

We were very close, it came to about 30%.

So there are tools going to come to those, but in the future, I think you go back, look at the data, use the averages, the median or the mode, which one we see better fits our environment, and then we put it down there as our aspirational goals at least.

Yeah, and I would just like this committee to get more exposure to that kind of data.

Um on that note, what does it cost per rider on the magenta on the magenta shuttle?

Zero.

No, no, I I know it costs zero to get on it.

What does it cost the city per rider on the magenta shuttle?

Yeah, because the the magenta shuttle primarily is part of the parking contract.

That is why it is run by Reston.

Uh so we do have the ridership numbers.

We can calculate on the average how much it caught based upon the contract value.

I do have the data, but I don't have the exact answer that you're looking for.

Yeah, and and that was a demonstrative question.

I would like to get to that in a future.

And I think you clarified something in that the per rider cost is not just a city cost, it's also state and and other funding.

Um and I would like to get to that.

Can I add on to this just go ahead?

To to demonstrate um there this is not always as straightforward uh an answer as as we would like.

So the magenta shuttle is actually a really good example.

It's actually a shared service.

Reston does part of it, and the city itself does part of it.

Um so the rest and cost in some sense uh somewhat more straightforward, um, just because it we know how much that contract is is worth.

They're under SP, so um not directly overseen by us, so there's a little bit of complication there.

Um, but the numbers for us are actually more complex because there are a number of different ways to calculate that.

We uh these poor guys went through a sat through a very long session with me so that I could understand where some other numbers came from.

Um the FTA has some requirements about how some things get calculated that are not actually helpful from our perspective.

Um, how we tend to look at how how things cost is not how FTA requires them to do some calculations.

So we end up having to ask them to do in some sense, sort of a second round of calculations to answer those questions for us so that it's a little bit more apples to apples.

Um it's a good question.

I just what part of what you're hearing from them comes from this background of that's actually a more complicated question than you think it is.

Is that fair?

Yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I remember the conversation.

Uh we were using the PTSD from the conversation.

Speaking and use the full uh hours from the time that the driver's punches into the time that they punch out, FTA does not use that kind of time interval, and we have to go through all the data again.

But it's doable, we do have the numbers, uh, we do actually segregate the ridership by our bus on the magenta shuttle versus that of resting, and we also separated the revenue miles and ours uh on on our bus versus resting, uh, so we can provide you with that kind of data.

Yeah, thank you.

And and that ends that series of questions.

And there's no doubt about it that this is hard.

Um I want to make sure you all have the confidence that as we as I look to get more granularity on this data, it's not data for data's sake, it's how can we best support the Department of Transportation in order to maximize the quality of our transportation.

So I look forward to working with you on that.

So I have one other question that's different, and that is why did we stop the electric shuttle in Eastport?

Those were pilot um operations as well.

And what we wanted to do is to redeploy our assets to help City Doc.

That was really the number one driver.

We have two carts to give more service down where you can't park at all to go to City Dock.

That was the number one driver.

Um do you track the number of riders on the electric shuttle?

Yes.

So I would be very interested in returning that electric shuttle to Eastport at some point in the future.

Um not tomorrow, not next week, not but uh there is a strong uh feedback in ESport that that shuttle was exactly what we needed to get people out of cars uh in in Eastport, specifically the peninsula, but quite frankly, uh throughout Ward 8, um and and there is a lot of feedback that uh people could have gotten used to doing that.

So uh working together in the future, not a do out for this brief, but but I would very much like to uh talk to you about returning that shuttle to Ward 8 in the future.

One of the things we can definitely look at um, because I think I've seen some of the other presentations about five percent.

So we may not have to redeploy something, but add into what we were doing.

So we found uh we got it right the first time with the Calvert Street, West Street, uh Maryland Avenue coming back in.

We may need to redefine the route in Eastport, but we really want to get all the way down to um you know um what is it um 2nd Avenue and coming back in.

So even when City Doc is done, that may still be good there because there's gonna be a bit of less parking at that location.

You know, the parking has been moved to um Hillman.

So there's probably that need to have another one.

So when we look at uh instead of redeploying assets somewhere else where they're needed most, how about you know adding to what we found that's growing?

I think we provided you with data for last year on both carts.

If you can't locate it, I uh I can get that resent to you today, and I can give you what we've done so far um since we started this, which was the weekend before, the weekend after Easter, somewhere around that period.

Uh, it is a fair weather vehicle.

Um, even if you say it's only 90 degrees, I'm only gonna be there for five minutes, the driver's there for seven hours.

Um, and that kind of thing, and then you know, water and you know, all that kind of stuff.

So we hope to go March to October, November, but some there's sometimes we just can't.

But I would like to see that grow.

I would very much like to track that data.

Please, please.

Yeah, so talking about a uh the shadow in the eastport uh Altman Savage made a budget amendment in FY26 uh for Eastport Shadow.

So it is now in the planning phase that you are looking at and look at what are the best options to do.

The other piece is the electric ferry or now the hybrid ferry part of the program is basically the EV cars in the Eastport area to take people to Fifth Street landing so that they can help onto the electric ferry.

So there are some plans here and there that actually uh could provide that kind of uh service in the eastport, uh tied either into uh Alderman Savage's uh proposal or into the ferry pro uh program.

So thank you.

I just want to be crystal clear and say that the hybrid ferry is not in any way, shape, or form a replacement for overland transportation, public transportation that's desperately needed in Ward 8.

And uh second of all, so thank you also for that study.

Uh Alderman Savage and I were on the call.

I think you were on it too.

Um, as we look at what those alternatives are.

My feedback for you, while that is tremendous, and that was also a possibility that we talked about.

Um, my point to you is there is a significant demand signal for the pilot program that you created.

Um and in my humble opinion, as the behavior was starting to get modified to support it, the pilot ended.

And so that's why I'm enthusiastically looking forward to bringing that program back in a way that we measure it and demonstrate the success of it uh if appropriate.

So thank you.

Uh thank you.

And I'll just say on that, um, you might think Oliman Thorpe and I would be button heads over whether he gets it or I get it, but I'll tell you my instinct is that it is more effective in Eastport than downtown, uh, where we have a lot of other options.

But I could be convinced otherwise if you've got the data to show it.

So you don't need to work hard on convincing the motor.

No, you're the one only saying work hard on getting some more data.

Uh I'm not sure if this was in your presentation or not, but there's a figure that really struck me as worthy of praise in your performance metrics.

Going in FY25 from about 110 for operating cost per hour down to 89 in FY26.

Is that on any of the slides?

No, it's not.

It's in the uh I can relate to that.

Um the 110 is based on to date.

Uh so looking at the entire uh calendar, yeah.

And that is that is also not a metrics that to be also tracking report to the state in the Fed.

So you were using that metric that you would get.

Right.

Yeah, it just seemed like you went you dropped it by I don't know, 2018, something like that.

And oh, I'm sorry, Miss Bucklin, you got something.

Yeah, I mean, this is actually why we had the sit down where these guys have PTSD from my very long questioning session, was to understand what why, what is what are those numbers, where do they come from?

Um so there are a couple of there's a reason why they're not here.

Um there are that's a measure that I would very, very much like for us to change this next year, both because I think there are some timing issues with um how that gets calculated and reported, and then that difference between how FTA looks at things and how we look at things, um, also drives variation in that number in a way that is not helpful for our decision making.

So I would really that's why it's not here.

I would really, really like for us to revisit some of those measures for next year to have them be more consistent, repeatable, um, and then reflect what we're actually trying to get at in our own decision making.

Got it.

Well, well, I tried to give you guys the complement sandwich.

Uh it seems uh from what I'm looking at, it seems like a really good improvement.

I understand maybe there's some reasons for that variation.

Uh, and I'll say, yeah, the the other part of that was going to be seems to me like it would be better to do operating cost per rider than per hour.

But that's the kind of thing that I defer to, Miss Buckland and her non-acting role on for figuring out those uh those performance metrics.

Uh what other department did that transportation service worker come from?

Uh it was the old DPW new central services.

Got it.

So if I were to go look in FY26, it would be in central services or it would be in uh 26, yes.

Yeah, okay, yeah.

Makes sense.

Thank you.

Um, can you tell me a little bit more about the ADA service?

You started to talk about this, deputy director, and uh I wasn't quite clear on what you were saying.

Is this is it mandated by law that we have yes, okay.

I'm seeing you nod, yes.

And so if we were to look at our like ridership per dollar or our cost per ridership figure, that would probably have the highest of any of the routes you're saying.

Yes, but we we have to have it.

Okay.

Well, I'm not gonna spend a lot of time trying to mess with that.

Um the let's see, I think I uh we had special projects last year that changed.

Uh you mentioned at one point that on 4th of July we run a bus from Navy Stadium to lawyer small.

Awesome.

Love it.

If we had funding for it, are there other events where you think that would be feasible and advisable?

Sometimes we'll get questions.

Can the city support operating a bus, which would be a charter that we couldn't from the stadium to let's say Wings Whalen?

The reason why we're able to operate the bus from stadium to uh lawyer's mall, that's the route of the um state shuttle.

We can do that.

We're not because of federal funds able to make a charter whether it's for hire or for free because of those funds.

So when the city does say yes, we will support whatever that community event is, we will usually go to restant, or they can go, we give them ideas because we can't at all um do that type of a charter.

Yeah.

What we want to do, I think what your question is, how do you uh change a route, expand a route, improve?

No.

No, no, I'm saying it's keep this the route exactly the same from Navy Stadium to lawyers mall, but for things other than Fourth of July, like would it make sense for midnight madness?

Would it make sense for I don't know, the St.

Patrick's Day parade?

See, the Fourth of July, we're not running anything, but midnight madness, we can just run longer because during session on Mondays we run longer uh to 10 o'clock at night, and then it was requested from the governor's office this year.

We we go to 840 at night.

We stick Monday through Friday, 640 to 840.

And then Mondays we go to 10.

So it was asked by the governor's office this year, Tuesday through Friday, we can go to nine o'clock.

So operating that same time frame, what we could do is do the same thing a little longer.

So if you found those three those first three Thursdays in December, we want to do that.

But what we have done is ran the magenta shuttle longer to one o'clock.

Right.

Free service.

The other one is a part of our fixed route, so it's one or two dollars depending on the category.

The um yeah, you want to add please?

That's a comment on the chatter service.

Uh, it's one of the few things that we report on it every quarter, and it's one of the two things that requires.

I guess I don't mind that.

And you do have our chatter policy.

I think uh we have giving them my but if you are interested, we can share with you what the FTA regulations uh respect to special services.

Got it.

So uh going back to the the Navy Stadium, the lawyer small part.

If say hypothetically, Miss Nolan in the the city manager's office comes to us and says, Boy, we're we're doing this new event downtown.

It's the traffic's gonna be crazy.

Navy Stadium has agreed to let people have transportation there.

Um sorry, have parking there.

What would you need for her if she came to you and said, Boy, I want to run this for that day.

What would you need to be able to do that?

Along those same routes um that you just made mention, um, that regularly happens.

Um I think I saw um in the city manager's presentation that Felicia has like 125 events like that.

And if you look back at one of our pages of other statistics, um continue to participate and uh support city sponsored uh last year.

We had 12 of them, and you know, some of those met that criteria that you just made mention or asked about.

Some of the assets that we have are not federally funded, which are those carts.

So sometimes we can put those in anywhere, we still got to pay the labor for the driver.

So it's really great if the mayor's office and the manager's office say I I can I can have somebody to drive that cart, ride that bike or whatever else.

But putting it in a parade or so, remember we can do a rescue off-route if we got to get to higher ground, working with OEM, um, you know, looking at too cold, too hot, firefighter rehab, those anomalies is not a planned event.

So, but what um um Felicia's office would need, we would just really need to look at it because those come up regularly.

So a lot of times we know if it's a yes, no, maybe, or do we need to go get uh approval from the city manager or the mayor's office?

Sure, thank you.

That uh just strikes me as one way we could really alleviate parking congestion, traffic congestion.

So glad to hear that uh what I'm hearing from you is basically it is possible already if there are situations where we need it.

Yes.

Um this is kind of a weird one, but just you mentioned event security, and you just mentioned it again, and um we're gonna be talking about that at a briefing later this week.

Could you just offline connect with the city manager and see if we think transportation needs to be part of that?

Uh that we make allowances for that, and Ms.

Buckland will know what I'm talking about.

Okay.

Thank you.

Um the special speaking of special events, the special signage that you were talking about.

Could you just tell me some more about that?

Is this you mentioned like uh the holiday signage?

Is this for more permanent or is this for more like one night of the year events?

The majority is more permanent um for wayfinding, how to get there from here.

I think you were gonna chime in or something.

Um but some of them are temporary.

Yeah, I I think that there's a been a general push um in a number of places for better wayfinding for a variety of reasons, like we've done some of that for city dock construction and stuff like that.

And I think in general, I think that has sort of sensitized us to the need for better wayfinding in general.

Um obviously the the bet here is that there is in fact an ROI of making it easier to find find where our parking assets are.

Um so that's what's supported in the budget is uh a lot of that is permanent signage.

But there were two uh categories.

If we can go back to the slide under uh enhancements.

I'm sorry, which one?

Enhancements?

Yeah, the enhancement slide.

Yeah, there we go.

So I'm asking about this second one, the signage during major events.

The example that you gave was for um like when we do free parking around the holidays, right?

And that sounds good.

But what I really think is maybe even more necessary than that is like having a vertical, uh not vertical, variable messaging board that we can put up, say, again, I'll use the example of Midnight Madness, put that up and say, don't try going down to Hillman, it's full, go park and night and garage.

Is that what this is for?

Not quite.

Those are terribly expensive.

I think the city has top five, and they are deployed from public works and the police police department, I think has them for those type of events.

There might be three or four, but they'll put them up always uh as you uh come to downtown through um uh what is that uh Bay Ridge Avenue and then on West Street and all where the non-dynamic signage more, you know, I should say stationary, but some of them as we learn each year um how to better say pay before you walk away and you have to interact with this to get the two hours free for your parking.

It would be good if we had a general city budget for more of those dynamic signage, but that's not part of this.

Could you get back to us with a uh a number for more some more variable messaging because I know they're expensive, but I also do think we have a use for it.

Yep.

Um we answered that one.

Marketing, uh what the note I had down here was as we're talking about increasing uh ridership, and ultimately I think uh not I think I absolutely agree with what I think Alderman will Thorpe was getting out of making that a performance metric.

Is there have there been discussions around what would it take to better market our bus system?

How we would uh do we need a staff member for that?

Do we need more supplies?

If if somebody were asking you for a recommendation of how do we better market it, what kind of money do we need to do that?

That's a really good question that we battered around, and and Dr.

Dual will be able to give you some examples of real life situations in ADOT 15 years ago.

We actually had that position, and we can share how we went out to the community more than what we're doing now and what that benefit was.

Yeah, uh, it's a very beneficial uh marketing specialist, for instance, created uh kind of a wig book uh that uh was given to us children uh with various ways to move around the city that I and the and she went to the schools and then gave out the uh those weg books, they took the workbook to home and guests were who worked with them, the parents who may not have been ahead or know that there is Annapolis transit.

So during those uh times, there was an active engagement at the city level, businesses, communities by the marketing specialist um to basically let people be aware.

Uh, she also did uh training how to use a bus.

A classic example was the people who go to around the lodge, they used to be bossed.

Uh that time with the effort of the marketing specialist, she was able to train them how to use a bus from the around the lodge, transfer at the mall, and they use another bus to get to their group home.

So these are some of the things that uh were done in those times, and I believe in 2011, that position was defunded.

And since that time, we have not been able to have not failed.

We have worked closely with the mayor's office, the PIO to do some kind of marketing, but in the TDP, we do have a recommendation for a more robust marketing program.

Yeah, and and I think that um will be really important to increasing ridership.

What I'm trying to get at is I'd like to be able to defend whether the best ROI is gonna be for us putting that into supplies, putting it into a staff member, putting it into some kind of contractor.

And so it's probably not going to be in this budget, but I would just say, as you're thinking about maybe what we want to even look ahead to the next budget, being able to come back with what's the ROI for each one of those categories would be really helpful.

Personally speaking, um, right now supplies would be it because we have a very robust staff with um a parking program manager, superintendent, uh supervisors that you know when we're invited, we come and then we knock on doors to invite ourselves, and hopefully we're let in.

So you and me both.

So one of the big ones is uh visitors center, as you saw in our presentation.

We do call uh Miss Peronis twice a year to get to her staff because those volunteers are ambassadors for the whole city.

Totally.

So when we come, we come with both parking contractors and our transportation folks, our parking program manager, and a list of questions, and they'll videotape us and use it for other engagements.

But we try to do that in October before the Holly Rush.

We try to do that in spring to let them know what's going on, whatever has changed.

Um, you know, the last time we did this, we actually invited Public Works, the pro the project manager for City Doc, Matt and Jeff also came.

Um, Matt Kelly, the project manager, and Jeff once our uh um traffic engineer to kind of explain certain things that we you know, more of the technical, but in layman's terms.

So I personally believe that we have the bandwidth because it's not something that comes up every single day once a week.

We we may have those 12 or 15 events, and they're only an hour.

When any of you have asked us to go to um one of your town halls, ECA or anything that may come up, that's our opportunity to share more about it.

Uh, because it it really helps to really that those unmet needs of the population that just like I'm gonna all get together and get an Uber or Lyft, and it's like really I can take go time or ADA, you know, the ADA bus will take me there.

They don't know.

So us getting out there and educating it, educating our our our community of residents that don't have other options.

Yeah, yeah.

I tried to take go time over to visit Alderman Thorp's Ward not too long ago, go to Adams, uh rather than an Uber.

And it was kind of it was kind of cool to have the the options.

Um I'll tell you in that case, I forgot why, but we did end up taking the Uber.

But um right, uh Alderham and Conte, do you have questions?

Okay, I just want to know how quick I need to be with these remaining ones.

Either you guys got anything else.

I have one more.

One more, anything else?

Okay, I'll be fast.

Um quick one.

The part-time drivers pooled is set that is a total number of people, not a total number of FTEs, correct?

But what is the number we have there?

Six, because those are 12, 12, those are full, those are positions, and we were building them together, Suzanne, to where FTE, so you would see FTE being six.

Okay, got it.

Thank you.

That's what I wanted to understand.

Um we'll double check that number, but that's what we were reporting as FTEs versus the actual part-time sure.

Yeah, I know it.

We we kind of are swapping over this budget, and it's a little bit squishy in a couple different places.

The um one of the areas that's called out as an accomplishment, which sounds great to me is the collection rate of fines from issued violations being 76%.

Do you guys have with you or can you follow up with us on what it was previously?

Yes, yeah, okay.

That's great.

Thank you.

All right, just two more things.

Uh, as we are swapping over in the past and probably doing more of the future to more electric buses.

Do we feel like our staff, our maintenance staff are adequately trained on being able to work on those?

We continue to get more training for them as it comes up.

Um, purchasing these buses, um, BYD has been very supportive of sending someone down and going alongside of our um our our techs uh to uh teach them on the job training kind of thing.

Uh we've had a couple codes that we did need their their help to have them cleared or understood.

Um, as you may mention, there's two more smaller buses that are um in the pipeline that we probably won't get to the end of this year, probably um early next year, like January, February, that are the smaller ones.

Um as more training comes up, you know, we won't really want to look at it, you know, our training budget because part of our grants, like one percent, should be used for training.

Um we could always use more.

You know, that's one of those things that we're not gonna rest on our laurels say, yeah, we got it.

Uh we could always use more.

Great, thank you.

Um, yeah, and and maybe we should check on that two more coming because I think the 100% electric mobility plan in the capital budget, as I'm reading it, it says funding was removed for two battery electric buses.

So that would be a shame if that's the case.

Oh, well, it was Flarties here.

Do you know anything about that?

The this is under funding changes.

Um in that 100% electric and apples mobility plan, which of course includes the ferry, but also includes our buses and and go karts, not go-karts.

Suzanne Flarity budget analyst.

You're speaking to the capital project itself.

Yeah, we removed it from the capital project itself because the they were funded under the transportation department.

So they were basically double counted.

There was some under CIP, and there was some under transportation.

And so we do have to update that CIP page though, because now that that um ferry has been signed off on, that page needs to be updated.

So I just want to make sure I understand this says funding was removed for two battery electric buses and two buses which were purchased under the operating budget with grants.

That reads to me is there were four budgets, two got funded with grants, so we took those out, and then we also took two additional ones out.

Ms.

Turner is shaking her head no.

Which one of you guys wants to answer?

Tell me why I'm wrong.

So uh for the log electric buses, uh, one of them was 100% funded under our grant application.

The other was uh grant funds uh that was originally meant for a diesel bus.

And then uh the city decided to go electric, so the county came alongside, uh, gave us some 250,000, and then the city did add.

So those projects have been completed, and the sources of funding were different.

So I worked with her to suggest that we did remove that.

The other electric wages, I believe you are referring to the EV costs that were purchased.

So those have been that that project uh uh has been completed.

Uh so what is remaining right now is the ferry and anything related to that.

And even at that time, because the city has not signed the ferry agreement, we weren't sure where to put it, but now that the city has signed, she sent an email that I we need to put it back in.

So we will actually uh revise that one to refer the current uh status of funding.

And specifically the ferry thing was especially our grant, that's for ferry.

It was not part of our normal grant application or request.

Got it.

Ms.

Flaherty, Ms.

Turner, anything you need to add?

No, okay.

My very final, well, we're almost at time.

Actually, I'll I'll give the last five minutes all over and thorpe.

So just to continue.

The ferry agreement is not decided to move forward yet.

Correct?

No, it has been signed, so we can move forward with the ferry.

Uh currently, uh the procurement officer is uh and public works is reviewing the RFP for the design engineering uh and construction of the landing site, primarily Fifth Street, and also looking at the designs, engineering and building of two ferry vessels.

So we are moving forward with that.

Uh if you do recall with the change in administration at the federal level, there was a delay uh because the administration felt that uh that 100% electric uh ferry is not feasible.

So we had to change the scope of work from 100% electric ferry to hybrid.

Uh so that was part of the delay, and therefore the agreement has to be changed and signed by the mayor.

I'm glad to say that the mayor did sign it.

Uh so the funds have been obligated by MTA.

So we are ready to move forward with that.

Yeah, so um the my understanding is that um we have continued to reserve that money um by signing the grant agreement, but that the full scope and scale is still under discussion.

So uh I think that that's I think that is uh still in the works.

I'm I'm not I'm not aware, although this is not one that I follow day in and day out.

Um I believe there are still some discussions about what that actually looks like.

Yeah, I I am 99.9% sure that the fund that we had to sign the document because of a deadline, but that there no decision has been made at all to do anything with the fifth street ferry landing uh in terms of the uh the scope of work, uh that has been under construction.

Whether to move forward, I that has been uh under our review for some time, but that doesn't mean that the city can't will move forward with that.

The same thing with the grant agreement, though we have signed, if the city decide at one point that it doesn't want to move forward with the project, all that we need is to send a letter to FTA saying that we don't want to move forward with that.

And this is will not be the first time the city has done that, where we sign a grant agreement for money, and later on the city decide that, and now we don't want to move forward with that.

Right.

It's just a it's not semantics when the the public answer from the city has been the decision has has not been made to move forward with the hybrid ferry, end of statement, which is very different than the decision has been made to move forward but can be changed.

So uh maybe we should just take that as a do out to confirm exactly what the situation is there.

But by that what I mean is that once you sign the grant agreement, it means that you can move forward with that.

But that doesn't mean that you have to do the project.

If you have not signed a grant agreement, then there is a deadline and that is a stop.

Right.

Uh and you cannot move forward with that.

But when you sign, it means that if you want to go ahead, okay, the funds have been obligated and we can use it.

It is in that sense that the city has signed the agreement, and therefore the city can move forward with that.

I would maybe put it as the distinction is the decision has been made to move forward, but that doesn't mean that the decision has been made to finish it.

No, it that's fundamental.

That's absolutely what is not the case.

But you're moving forward, right?

You're doing things for it.

No.

That's exactly what Mayor Littman has been very clear with the residents of Eastport is that he has not made the decision to move forward.

The signing of a document that had a deadline, he was specifically clear that that was not a decision to move forward, but had to move he had it had to be signed in order to maintain the possibility of moving forward.

I don't understand that is moving forward.

That's taking a step forward, right?

The difference is process versus the public decision to move forward with the ferry.

The two different topics.

But Mayor Littman has not made the decision to go forward with the ferry.

And that is a very strong distinction.

I'm not gonna spend too much more time on it.

But you had another question.

I did.

So um back to the electric ferry pilot in Eastport.

As I sit here and think about the math, um, the mobility study will go forward in the months ahead and next year we'll get a response.

The electric fair the electric uh shuttle, the go uh uh yeah, the go fair, the go shuttle, the two electric shuttles.

Would it be possible if the city council was to add funding for a third one of these electric shuttles to have three electric shuttles in March of 27?

That was uh the point I was making earlier, having to decide to move what was working here to help out those businesses.

Let's not make that decision of which is the favorite child, add a third one there for next year.

Um we need to make some changes around because remember, this is not a transit route, so it cannot be used by transit dollars.

So the folks that we hire their non-CDL drivers that's paid out of another pot.

So, you know, having that third person or you know, because when they're not driving, even the winter time, they're doing other things, helping out with the um bus shelter maintenance and other things run our property.

But we need to have that discussion with our our finance um uh folks here uh how we make that happen, make sure we're properly funded through city funds to achieve this goal.

So I I would like to ask if you could put that number together in fairly short order in case the city council were to opt to fund a third one of these, and arguably to to begin operating in March of 2027, if that would be possible.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Sure.

All right, uh, we are at time, unless anybody's got anything pressing.

I got one question I'll put for follow-up.

Uh, but I think we are ready to adjourn.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you very much.

I'm sorry I didn't say thank you for your time.

I appreciate it.

There's a motion on the floor to adjourn with a second.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Motion carries, uh, meeting adjourned.