So good afternoon, everyone.

Thank you all for joining us for our first operating budget discussion for FY27.

I want to thank my colleagues, Councilmember Ludke and Councilmember Friedson for joining us for this discussion.

This meeting is being televised live on County Cable, Montgomery and streamed online.

A recording will be available within 24 hours for those listening by phone.

The number for meetings is 7CHR 240 7737.

I also want to thank our council staff, uh Miss Tara Clemens Johnson, Miss Nicole Rodriguez Hernandez, and Miss Monsi Guns Gosalia for their hard work preparing today's agenda as we begin our in-depth review of the Department of Health and Human Services.

FY27 recommended operating budget.

Today's discussion takes place in the context of a challenging fiscal year.

Requiring careful and deliberate decision making.

We will start with the Office of Food Systems Resilience, which plays a crucial role in addressing the significant challenges faced by residents who have lost their jobs unexpectedly.

It helps those navigating the complex process of determining their eligibility for SNAP benefits and ensures that residents throughout the county have access to healthy fresh foods.

Additionally, this office supports our growers in the Ag Reserve and beyond.

Next, we will hear an overview of the Department of Health and Human Services overall funding and staff from the director and OMB.

And then finally, we'll take a deeper look into the department's administrative and support services.

As we consider these items, it's important to recognize that every line in this budget represents real services and real people.

And so with that, I will turn things over to our council staff to introduce our first item.

Good afternoon, and thank you so much, Chair Sales.

The FY27 recommended budget is 13.8 million approximately not approximately 1,000 $691 increase from the FY26 approved budget.

And so the uh one item of change that is recommended for increase is a $150,000 for the food system food systems educated grant education grant program.

There is also uh $380,000 in recommended programmatic reductions.

That is for um $230,000 for the food as medicine program and $150,000 for the retail food access program.

Uh we so council staff will go through each of these reductions for the committee to weigh in on and well we'll vote to approve or disapprove or make other recommendations as it is related to those items.

Um the recommended the executive's recommendation also includes a 130 uh thousand dollar increase for compensation and we will highlight the um other items after the OFSR has done their uh brief presentation on the FY27 budget.

So with that, I will stop and we will revisit the budget items after the presentation.

Uh good afternoon.

I'm Heather Bruskin, the director of the Office of Food Systems Resilience.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and your fellow council and committee members uh today for the opportunity to get to discuss uh the OFSR budget proposed for FY27.

Um, and appreciation to Miss Clemens Johnson for her uh valuable partnership in uh in this process.

And I'm joined today by our team, Catherine Nardy, Juan Cruz, uh Kaylin Sok, Kira O'Brien, uh Yeti Uragba, um, and two folks who are not able to be with us today.

So we have a small but uh very dedicated uh team, and um grateful to have them here with me.

Uh so uh oh, I'm in church.

I forgot about this.

I think yeah.

Thank you.

Um so before we uh talk about the FY27 proposal, wanted to just take a brief moment to recap uh our journey in getting to this moment.

Uh building a brand new agency over the past three years, it takes time, and we've been intentionally crafting our approach and our strategy so that we can get to this moment.

Um, you've seen this slide before.

This is uh a capture of our initial four year strategy uh where we were beginning with a very um large couple pots of money uh in non-strategic funding buckets and have slowly over time shifted them into distinct programs.

Uh and there are in particular you can see our grant programs here as well as our contracts, which have been shifting from non-competes to competitive uh programs over time.

Um as well, some of these uh bigger buckets, like our community food assistance grant program actually is broken down into smaller uh sections through an iterative process that allow these uh these grant programs to also be tailored to the unique approaches of the more than 60 partners that we work with.

And so our first few years were really focused on uh really identifying where we are, where we were as a county, what we were already doing, and what was being funded, uh, while establishing a variety of flexible competitive processes and really focusing and implementing and data collection and reporting requirements, not just internally, but getting our partners up to speed and creating the reporting platforms required to tech the technology that we need to really be able to capture that data, um, while also establishing really critical partnerships that we've been building on over time.

In phase two, which we're just at the tail end of now, uh we have been intentionally aligning metrics across programs so we can see not just the individual impacts of the funding mechanisms, uh, but also uh capturing the collective impact of OFSR funds and uh making sure that we're integrating the input and expertise of both our partners and the program participants in informing our decisions.

We've been streamlining funding administration, for example, taking multiple non-compete contracts that all had the same scope and purpose and consolidating them under one uh grant agreement to the benefit of not just MCG and our operational efficiency, but also uh that for our partners so that they can focus their time on programmatic impacts.

Um we have also been over the past few years working with the Food Council to implement new strategies for connecting the partners with each other, creating geographic and programmatic communities of practice through peer learning circles, quarterly trainings, so building their capacity and allowing us to build an integrative network of partners that also includes those in healthcare, uh in schools and in the faith community so that we can leverage all of those unique assets and perspectives to reach every resident.

And so for the phase that we are emerging into now, we can build on that foundation to elevate standards even further around nutrition, food safety compliance, food waste.

And so now that we know that the core services are being effectively delivered, we can really lean into a triple bottom line approach.

So not just the social impacts of the funds, but also the environmental and economic benefits that these dollars can uh can create.

Well, we're also focusing on leveraging external investments.

We know that we're headed into tighter financial times, and so it can't just be county dollars, particularly as federal dollars are withdrawing.

Uh, and so looking for both public and private partners uh to um to invest in this work and institut more match requirements in our grant programs to encourage our grantees to seek additional sources of support so that if our funds ebb and flow, uh these programs don't have to be as directly impacted.

Um, and then finally making sure that across our programs there are referral mechanisms.

So our SNAP partners are referring to MC Groceries, are referring to education and other school-based programs.

And then finally, where we're headed.

Uh, obviously, this slide looks a little bit different because it's still unchartered territory, uh, but we want to really spend the next few years looking at how we can intentionally coordinate services to make sure that we're closing any service gaps and that we're addressing the root causes of food insecurity and the challenges that face our food system while also uh systemically integrating these strategies, not just in OFSR's work or in that of our community partners, but broadly across our MCG community and all of our initiatives.

We know though that the best laid plans can quickly be disrupted, as we saw from the federal shutdown in the fall, as well as the impacts of HR1 and the federal policy changes.

We have been closely monitoring through our partnerships with grantees what the changes in refugee and asylum enrollment looks like with SNAP, as well as reductions in benefit amounts that families are receiving due to new work requirements.

And it still remains to be seen what the direct certification impacts will be across programs because SNAP is the foundation for so many initiatives.

We also have over seven close to $700,000 in education resources that had previously been provided in MCPS sites through SNAP ed, which have ended.

And I think something we don't talk about quite as much, but it's critically important are the federal dollars that historically have been used to support SNAP outreach work both within government as well as by our community partners.