Good afternoon.

Calling the planning housing and economic development committee to order on this Tuesday.

Can you please call the roll?

Chair Blagay.

Present.

Councilmember Adam Stafford.

Present.

Councilmember Denoga.

Councilmember Olson.

Here.

Vice Chair Oyaga.

Here.

Five members present every roll call.

Thank you.

And I do want to apologize, everyone today, that this has taken so long.

And we do appreciate your patience and sitting through this.

And we appreciate each and every one of you.

And I just want you all to understand that.

And I do apologize for today.

And I'll turn it over to our chair to take over the discussion of this bill.

Thank you.

And so as the chair of the committee mentioned, we have two pieces of legislation that are on the agenda today, CB 111 and CR90, both dealing with the sphere project that's slated for us here in Prince Georgia's County.

As Councilmember Bougay mentioned, we uh were delayed today.

And part of the reason why is that this is probably one of the most important things to be contemplated from a development perspective, from an impact perspective that we've seen this year.

Um and it's really important to me and also my colleagues that we do our due diligence, that we continue to have conversations, that we bring every single stakeholder to the table to make sure that whatever is done by this body is a reflection that the residents can feel like it's going to benefit them because they are the ones that live here and will be impacted the most.

I know that's something that's important to the county executive and equally important to this body.

And then lastly, our labor partners, um, that when we talk about living wage, access to health care benefits, um, that we ensure that the workers of Prince George's County, not just the businesses of Prince George's County, but the people that do the hard work, not just building this facility, but operating it are also center stage and part of the conversation.

And so uh we've taken our time and will continue to take our time to make sure that all of those things make sense.

Um, and I want to thank the county executive um and her team for continuously meeting with us, continuously answering all of our questions as we look over the deal line by line to make sure that all those things that we talked about make sense and that we understand them.

I want to thank um the sphere team um for also being available to answer our questions and also center um and understand that we understand how important this is and we understand that we have to do it right.

We also are trying to learn lessons from deals like we see the community and some of our MBs complained about what happened at MGM, and we don't want to see a repeat of that.

We

don't want to have unintended consequences and language that's not tight enough that doesn't represent every single factor.

And in doing so, um, what we as a body would like to do today, um, we want to move forward with no recommendation with no changes to the the language as it stands.

Uh we'll be adding a council day on Monday to give us continued time to have those conversations with the sphere, the county executive, our MBEs, our businesses, our labor partners to ensure that um whatever's added to this legislation uh is one that has every single stakeholder at the table and the most important voices our community.

So um that's why what I would like to do today.

I'd like to make a motion to move with no recommendation, CB 11 2026.

Second.

I'm sorry.

One

thank you.

111 2026.

Thank you so much.

Um can we please call the roll?

Chair Blagay.

I and um just to explain in my vote.

I do appreciate the leadership.

Um it is has been very controversial um and very difficult, I would say, while um I think all of us are feeling the same thing where we want quality development in our community that people can live, work, and play.

Um, but I've spent um over a decade um in the labor movement and also making sure that labor has a voice at the table.

Um it's we need to make sure that um give us a time to make sure that our labor voices are heard, um, but we do value spear and something coming that will bring something to the community.

Um, there's also infrastructure issues that need to be resolved.

So I know it's taken a while, and um it's taken a while because we care, because we care about this decision and know the lasting impact that it will have on our community.

So

I vote aye.

Councilmember Adam Stafford.

I

vote aye, and to explain my vote again, I want to uh apologize that we started late.

And as my colleagues have said, it's because we really want to ensure um that we put something forward that our entire community can support.

And so we fully expect that by this Monday we will have uh something that our labor community, our business community, everyone can get behind.

And again, we do think that this project is going to be transformational for our county and for our state, and so I'm looking forward to us having discussions between now and Monday.