And then-

I will be returning to that hearing, and it's a really important conversation.

And we have serious needs in the district.

You know, so many of our residents are hurting or facing sky-high costs with utilities, with housing, with their grocery store prices, and we have to fund what we need to fund for our residents, for our schools, for our seniors, for housing, for safety, for our economy, and we need to make sure that we have enough money to do so.

But, uh, the question we should be asking ourselves and each other is, are we funding these priorities effectively? And I would say when we have a DCHA, D- DC Housing Authority, who misaccounted $52 million for an accounting spreadsheet, or a DC auditor who just came out with a report that our Department of Corrections, uh, officers are spending an average of 10 to 12 weeks on leave, yet we're spending $30 million of overtime, or we're spending the second-highest per capita for students, um, but still have some of the lowest outcomes, those are not all effective uses of our tax dollars.

And so we need to be ensuring that the money we do have, the $22 billion budget that has increased 26% over the last five years, is reaching these fundamental needs to address the needs of our residents.

Um, I would say not as it should be right now.

In Ward 8