Good morning.

We are here for a joint committee work session with planning housing and parks and education and culture.

Glad to be here with my colleagues and glad to be here with Matt Logan, the executive director of Montgomery History, an amazing organization.

We also have Ms.

Lambert from Office of Management and Budget, and we have Council staff.

And so let me turn it over first to Council Staff and we can uh go through the packet and then turn it over to Mr.

Logan.

Does that work?

All right.

Thank you, Chair Friedson.

So today we have the budget for the historical activities NDA.

There is a decrease of 44,287 or 19.38 percent from the FY26 budget for this NDA.

And this is due to one-time enhancements for the county uh 250th anniversary project for the Black Resistance oral History and the Unfinished Revolution being decreased from the budget this year that were one-time enhancements in last year's budget.

Um the only addition to this budget is the 2.5 inflationary adjustment for a non-service provider contracts.

And these uh will be reviewed by full council all together.

Um table two on page two, we have the um uh proposed um what this NDA is proposed to support in the next year.

Um thank you.

Great, thank you, Ms.

Cummings.

Um Welcome.

Thank you for everything that you're doing.

We'd love to get an update.

There's a lot of big things happening with Montgomery history uh for the organization, but also as the county heads to our 250th and the intentional work that you are doing to tell the full history and the history in its totality.

If you could tell us what you're working on and give us an update, we would love to hear it.

Great.

Thank you.

It's Matt Logan Montgomery History.

Um to begin.

I think the uh the obvious thing that is dominating our time is the work to create a new Montgomery History Center.

And that's taking place in two locations.

The primary will be in Four Courthouse Square, the former MT branch, farmers banking and trust building, the beautiful RDCO building that was the only surviving structure from urban renewal in the 1960s.

Basically, all of Rockville was leveled at that point except for for that building, which gives it sort of iconic status and and makes it a significant landmark in the community.

Um is underway.

It's uh very exciting to see right now the building sort of being torn apart before it can be put back together.

Of course, we're installing an elevator, uh fire suppression throughout the entire building, a lot of security, things of that nature.

So uh right now, and again, you always have an invitation to come over and check it out, um, especially after this week.

This week uh there's a lot of uh construction debris and mess going on.

But uh we're a little busy this week anyway.

So I said we're a little busy this week anyway with budgets.

Yeah, you got stuff going on.

Subscribe weeks will probably be better for us too.

View it is a break.

You probably need uh a distraction at some point.

So uh then the other uh project is the creation of the uh an annex for the storage of our historic artifacts.

And that is in the fourth floor.

We have the entire fourth floor uh leased from the county in the great courthouse directly across the street.

And right now we've run into some snags.

We're working through those, however, and uh the goal is to get that building done by say June, so that we can move in uh before the county's anniversary when we intend to have a ribbon cutting on September 6th.

Again, that's the county's 250th anniversary date, and that's the date in which our contractors have been told that it will be ready for a for a ribbon cutting event.

So construction delays but uh anniversaries don't.

They keep telling him they're gonna do it.

So uh we're gonna hold them to it.

So uh and then, of course, everything else is sort of going apace with uh planning for the next history conference, which will be on November 7th uh of this year.

Um we are uh just completed History Day, which was one of the biggest events ever.

And then of course, we're doing a lot of work, for instance, with League of Women Voters.

We've we we did one recently on uh immigrant rights and due process.

And again, we feel there's such a void in terms of civic education.

Uh certainly MCPS is doing a really good job, but I think for our adult population and our seniors and so forth, there's a huge void that while some of this may not be immediately historical, the values that we're trying to convey through our history are those are the same ones that you have to reinforce and and highlight, especially at a time like now when basic principles are under attack and and questioned.

So that's work that I find personally really satisfying and stuff that we hope to expand.

And that's when we're in the new space, we're gonna have a venue for telling these stories and sharing it and bringing in people who can who can speak directly to their experience and from the heart.