The Transportation and Environment (T&E) Committee met on Thursday, April 16, 2026, from 1:35 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. to review the FY27 Operating Budget and FY27-32 Capital Improvements Program (CIP) for WSSCWater, Utilities Non-Departmental Account (NDA), Department of General Services (DGS) Fleet Internal Service Fund, Motor Pool NDA, Montgomery County Department of Transportation (MCDOT) Parking Lot Districts, and a resolution to adopt FY27 Transportation Fees, Charges, and Fares. The committee heard presentations from agency staff and council analysts, discussed fiscal challenges and service needs, and recommended approval of several items, with additions placed on the reconciliation list for full council consideration.
Good afternoon, everybody. It is Thursday, April 16th. Welcome to the Transportation and Environment Committee. We are picking up work on the FY26 budget. And there are six items on the agenda today. WSOC water, Utilities, DGS fleet, the motor pool contribution and NDA, the Department of Transportation parking lot districts, and a resolution to adopt the FY27 transportation fees charges and fares. But we will start with WSSC water, which provides two million residents with water every single day. And in response to that, WSSC is requesting a 5% volumetric and fixed fee increase, which we will learn more about. And I'll start with Mr. Lopchenko. Good afternoon. WCC Water does have a slide deck, which we can go through, and then after that, items that I have in my packet that were not covered in the slide deck, we can get back to to make sure we cover them. But I think that might be the most efficient way to get through this in a timely manner. So I'll turn it over to Ms. Powell to introduce the folks at the table. Fantastic. Good afternoon, Chair Glass and Councilmember Stewart and Balcom. Thank you for having us here today. I'm joined by our CFO, Minetsi Masara, as well as Chief Engineer Alan Wong. I'm Keisha Powell, General Manager and CEO for WSSC Water. We also have other members of our finance team in the audience, and I'm here on behalf of our commissioners as well. As we've said previously, we uh transition about three years ago to really developing our budget around specific outcomes and the vision for the utility, which is we've said sustained and transformative change. We're focused on primarily four pillars across our eight strategic priorities, with uh infrastructure being one, our workplaces, the workforce, innovation and technology, as well as uh improving service delivery. Next. WSSC Water is an anchor institution for our communities, uh, meaning that we through the work that we are doing, the work that we control, meeting permits for our facilities, uh, fixing water mains, uh, investing in infrastructure, protecting 9 billion in infrastructure assets on behalf of our customers. Uh we are in um many respects protecting the economic output of the two counties. And uh we have funding in our budget to support customer assistance as well. And I have to just say that um that is extremely important. Uh just this week we were uh in Washington, D.C. for the water policy fly-in, and um on discussions around the low-income household water assistance program, uh, which was a federal pilot out of uh during the COVID time period, uh that sunset last year. Um we've been told that that will not uh make it into the bill for re for an authorization for a permanent program. So that means there is no federal level assistance program. We do not have any state level assistance for water bills to help customers with water bills. So our customers will be solely reliant on the funding and programs that we can provide in partnership with others like Habitat for Humanity to provide the assistance necessary. Just the bottom line up front where our budget formulation is concerned. WSSC water targeted a cut of uh 5% cut below fiscal year 26 budget levels, uh approved budget levels. The fiscal year 2027 proposed budget was an 8% reduction. We were able to cut 27 million from what you know we would call the discretionary portion of the department budgets, discretionary in this sense is costs that are not required of us from others, though many of those costs are costs that we cannot cut, like chemicals and other things, fuel, other things that are necessary for operations. We also focused on cost containment and saw efficiencies within our existing programs. We have no new programs that are included in the budget, and we did not include any new head count requests. Next. Most of the funding for our budget, I believe it's about 93% comes from our customers. And we don't, you know, that's not something that we want to be the case, but it is something that is the case because there is not a lot of federal funding for capital. And I made the point this week to uh stakeholders in Washington, our uh congressional delegation in Washington that even though we are focused on reauthorizing uh state revolving funds to support the capital program, there is nothing that supports our operating, the operating side of the budget, which is why uh the low-income household water assistance program is so important. Um we've also included here the operating uses of funds, um, the operating expenses. We also include debt service in the operating budget and uh pay as you go funding for the capital program. And you can see on the the uh blue side of the of the budget is is our capital uh side, the debt, this uh state funding, pay as you go for the capital sources of funds, um, the system development credits and other contributions, and then the specific uses. The lion's share of the funding goes towards WSSC waters infrastructure capital projects. We do have some interjurisdictional investments that were required to make that includes funding that we pay toward DC Waters capital program for Blue Plains and the adjustments for developer funded projects. On the next slide, you'll see the specific budget drivers.