The Montgomery County Board of Commissioners met on October 23, 2025, to discuss upcoming municipal and judicial elections, the county budget, community events, and public safety initiatives. Commissioners provided updates on election preparation, the AI council, SNAP benefit risks due to federal shutdown, and local grants. The Board received presentations from the District Attorney on the biannual Drug Take-Back Day and from the President of Montgomery County Community College on the college's annual report and achievements. A proclamation was issued for Polish American Heritage Month. The Board also heard extensive public comment, primarily focused on immigration enforcement and a proposed county welcoming policy. Routine approvals included the meeting minutes, a resolution for an America 250 grant, the personnel list, bid advertisements, and multiple contracts.
First Public Comment Period (related to agenda items):
General Public Comment Period:
Call to order the October twenty third, twenty-five meeting of Montgomery County Board of Commissioners, seeing all three commissioners present. Uh, I will ask uh doctor this type of community. I pledge allegiance to the black of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. Okay, so welcome. We are just a few weeks away from our November 4th elections for municipal elections as well as judicial elections across the Commonwealth. Just want to encourage everyone to make sure that they either return their mail and ballot. There's about 50,000 that are still out there, 50,000 have been returned. Or make a plan to vote on election day. I'll be doing a town hall tonight. If you would like to dial in and participate, the number will be posted. It's 855-7567520. Extension 127 is a little eight pounds. We'll post it online. So we'll talk about the process of maintaining the integrity of the election. We'll walk through the security of that. There are always many questions, how we count the business, where we count them, what we do once we receive the tabulation. Because people have a lot of questions about our election process. And although it's an odd year, you have many important races on the ballot from your school board to local municipal officials and the judges convention. I also want to say that Monday was the voter registration deadline, so hopefully everyone is registered. And Tuesday, the 28th, would be the final date of request a mail in ballot, but you should absolutely not wait that long because it will take probably a few days for it to get to you, and then either a few days if you mail it back, which would risk your vote not being counted if we do not receive it by 8 p.m. on election day. So if you are one of the people who gets a late mail in, make sure you take it to a drop box by 8 p.m. on election day because then if there's any mail police, uh we'll still get your vote counted. We've got thousands of people who are on the ballot, including I should just thank uh 428 judges of elections, uh, and we have poll workers supporting them, 2,412 across the county, including 226 students. So thanks to our voter services for making that a seamless process. I know there are a lot of trainings that happen. There are going to be even more once we have new folks who are working as judges of elections, and uh they're all there to help their friends and neighbors vote, no matter who they're voting for. Uh so make sure to cash your ballot. Um we're having a launch of our AI council, and bringing this up because there was actually an incident. I want to thank uh all of the school officials at North Penn High School just talked to the school board president, uh, Kathy. Uh, and there was an incident you may have seen that uh a student uh was uh found with a ton in school, and thankfully nothing bad happened in the sense that no one was harmed. Uh and that's because of the great work and training of our school security staff and atonements of police department's uh response and uh DA has already taken action on that. Um but it's important to recognize that there's a system that North Penn utilizes not every day. Um, but you're now going to consider how to deploy that uh system that's called evolved and it detects weapons. Uh it's metal detector, uh, similar to what you would find in an airport, but it specifically finds a density uh uh of metal that would is likely to be a gun set off and alert. So that's the conversation they're having at North Pend tonight. There's a meeting about about this incident and uh what how should it inform policy? But I think it's you know it's an example of how we could use technology to keep the kids' safe keep guns um out of schools and making sure that uh you know we don't have an incident like this, which is really concerning to all the parents, um, not just where I'm in Monaco. So um looking forward to hearing from the work that North Penn is doing after this incident because they'll have a lot to share with other school districts across the county. So uh I also want to speak briefly on our county budget. And it's even harder now. If you look at every other body in government, there haven't been a whole lot of budgets passed, right? The state government has kind of blown through their budget deadline, and now many of us at the local level are suffering the consequences. Thankfully, in Montgomery County, we've been in a very strong fiscal position, and we've maintained the Part Triple A bond rating, which puts us in the top 5% of counties nationwide in terms of our ability to withstand difficult economic events. Right now, we are, however, spinning down some of our fund balance in order to stay afloat because we're not getting the state funds to run critical programs. Now we can't do that forever, right? And there are some other counties that are already either cutting services or putting the burden on their contractors to work without pay, essentially. And we haven't gotten to that point yet in Monco. So it's incredibly important that we continue to advocate for our state legislators to get to a sense of a budget. And you know, we'll we've talked about that a number of times, but I think what's important at the same time for us is that we find a way at the county level to work as efficiently as possible to maintain you know our fiscal house in order, so to speak, and uh do so at a time when people are feeling rising costs, inflation across the board uh in utilities, construction costs, health care.