Economic Matters Committee - Regular Meeting

05/07/2026 at 06:31PM. I will have roll call. Is Alderman Frank Thorpe present? Present. Alright. Alderman Shandermeyer is on the way and myself, I am also here. We have the agenda. Is there a motion to approve the agenda?

So moved.

All right. Second. All in favor of that approval? Thank you. Moving forward, we have the approval of the minutes. Is there a motion to approve of those minutes from our meeting on 04/02/2026?

So moved.

Alright. If there are no objections, we're gonna move on that motion. Thank you. Today, we have on the agenda AP 2026, a reappointment of Thomas to the Planning Commission. Now I'm looking at the resume.

This is someone who is appointed to the Planning Commission. They've served since 2022. I believe there may be a Ward 2 resident. So the question would be, is there a motion to have recommendation for this appointment to the planning commission? I will share that myself, I will not be supporting or opposing this reappointment. But is there a motion to do so?

Mister chairman, I've never met this individual nor do I know if there's a recommendation we appoint him.

So we can move to postpone, and I know we've invited him. Because I think moving forward, one that I will be transparent moving forward, especially when it comes to appointments, we are gonna be inviting or at least we're recommending that we invite the members who would like to be appointed to these commissions and task force or boards, especially as we begin to iron out a more clear process for our commission's boards and task force. So, I would like to request again that we invite him, if possible, to our next meeting. The question that I do have, if this is appropriate, when we postpone any appointments, do these members still serve? Because I believe that this person has been serving on the commission currently.

So how does that work just for clarity of the people?

Yeah. I mean, generally, they they remain and they're voting pending the reappointment. Or if there is no reappointment, then they would no longer serve, but they still act as a, yeah. Through their term and sometimes beyond the term too if it the term runs out, and there's quorum issues.

And their term ends on the June 30. So we still oh, the new term would be the 06/30/2020. So when is this current term, end for for do we have that at all when the current term will end for Thomas? I know we can get that quickly. Let's try to get that information to decide of.

Chairman. Yes. I I do notice that there is a letter

Yes. We do have a letter.

From the mayor Mhmm. Recommending mister Safegatidis to the so purposes for of respect and continuity and keeping everything going, I'm in total agreement with you that it would be good to have the appointee appear here and answer a couple of questions, like especially when we're talking about the planning commission, I would like to hear their commitment to the code. And in this case, you know, we do have two choices. The mayor has has reappoint would like to has recommended reappointing him. So we do have the mayor's point.

We also his his term doesn't end till June. So we could to your point, we could bring him in in June. Right. And just and, you know, maybe working with with Laura. Yeah.

So looking on the website.

Yeah. I was looking on website.

It doesn't end until 06/30/2027. So I think probably need some clarification from

Yeah. Why are we even

mayor's office as to why they're moving forward with this reappointment a year before his term expires.

Exactly. Yeah. I was looking at that. And I said and, also, one of the reasons why, I do wanna make sure we're looking at this is there are three current members from Ward 2 on the planning commission. And, you know, I I I would like us to kinda broaden that range out a little bit more if possible. There is there is representation though, which is great from Ward 156, and 8, so, that is equitable there. But I think we do want that clarification, so maybe we are gonna move to postpone this until we get some clarification. Yeah.

Would agree with that, mister chairman. Okay.

Great. I'll take that as a motion, to postpone. If there are no opposition persons for that, we'll move forward on it. Thank you. So the first first piece of legislation oh, excuse me. Oh, yes. Yes. Would do you mind? Is there so I will second that with the motion that you made. So all in favor? Aye. So thank you very much. We have legislation CA one twenty six updating requirements for publication of the charter and code of the city of Annapolis. This is first reader that's been shared with us. Looking at this, I think it's really important.

Maybe we can have some clarification or some background, if our city attorney do you mind just giving us a little bit of overview of what this is? We know, of course, but just

I do hear mean, so the the desire was to sort of modernize the language and remove the physical copy requirements of of the publication of ordinances. So making it more accessible online, but still there is an amendment that was, I believe, that's sponsored by Alderman Savage to still require some physical copies, and and that is the current practice. So it's not really, a change in terms of what we currently do and how we receive and update the code, and charter, But it's just really, modernizing the language that's in the charter to reflect current practice.

I think, maybe we can get some word from Alderman Shandermeyer on what he what he believes is best. This isn't is there a rush for this or any, expediency necessary we could maybe just hold off a little bit on this matter or is this super pertinent? Do you mind sharing?

Not aware of any urgency? What?

I think this would be great to maybe get a little bit more time on to hear from Alderman Schandermeyer, and maybe we could take a little deeper look at this. But just from first looks, it makes sense if you're saying modernizing this. So thank you. Let's see here. So we are going to we don't I I wouldn't think we need to postpone this.

We're just gonna yeah. We're just gonna we're just gonna go to the next item on the agenda. And so I thank you for that update. But just so that the people know, this is for the purposes of removing outdated provisions of the city's charter, rewriting requirements for compiling and publishing the charter and code of the city of Annapolis, allowing for publishing paper or electronic versions of the charter and code of the city of Annapolis, generally related to the codification of charter amendments and ordinances. The next piece of legislation we have is o six twenty six, oversight of the city's firing range.

Do you mind if you don't do you all mind coming forth if you all have any, input or feedback on this? This is for the purpose of allowing the police chief along with the mayor to approve who uses the city's police firing range located within the Annapolis Police Department. Thank you to, deputy chief Brantford as well as to our, guests. If you don't mind, introduce yourself. It's a pleasure for you both to be here.

Deputy, chief Stan Branford.

Acting captain Hill O'Harley.

Now this legislation seems, to be pretty straightforward. It literally adds three words to to the document. Do you mind sharing with us what this means, like, this may hinder currently that this is so necessary?

So currently, we do have a firing range. We spend a lot of time, getting that up because it was down for quite, some time. Acting captain O'Harley, was responsible for a lot of that, and he pretty much knows the ins and out of our policy when it comes to the range. However, when it comes to I've gone to acting captain Herlihy on behalf of Maryland Capitol Police at one point in time. They wanted to qualify someone at the range.

And when we looked into it, we found or Herlihy found that the only person that can authorize someone to use that range outside of Annapolis personnel had to be authorized by the mayor. And we thought it with communication with the acting chief, Migas, and the mayor that was prudent that that decision could go to the chief of police also because the chief of police would have more knowledge, they would have a better understanding of what agency would be best served by using that. The range is used by our officers for training. We don't have to send them out for that type of training. We also do qualification for, which is LEOSA, which is the federal law, is, law enforcement officers who are retired or, I think it's just retired.

And what is that does is allow them to come in and get qualification, which they have to do each year, and they can carry a concealed weapon across The United States. It is a federal law. So we also do some aspects of that. So it was the easy thing to do to look at the police chief and says she should have the authority to, say who can use that range. Anything to add, Bill?

No. We also have crime scene techs who will go downstairs to fire guns for testing for, criminal cases, which they have not been doing because they can't anymore. But that would help them do that. They just do a test fire to make sure the gun actually fires. Other agencies have come to help.

We also used to have, when we have TFOs with ATF, they would come over sometimes borrow the range. But it would allow us to just say, okay, we can use for example, Maryland Capital Police approached us again about doing their red dot conversion with their instructors because we're instructors so we can instruct their instructors so they can teach their entire department. They would come over to our range and use that. Again, they would have to go through the mayor to okay that, those two officers shooting down there. We don't let anybody shoot down there without one of our range instructors down there ever regardless.

And yet the the other thing that might come up too is we wanted to start a citizens academy again, and one of that one of those days was gonna be go downstairs to the range and actually do some live fire. Again, that would have to go through the mayor before we could approve that as well. So it just it just seems that the way it's written, the mayor would be burdened with that but also not have knowledge of who these people are or what they're doing versus the chief who can say, yes, I know who they are. They've come to me. And also know that she can trust us to be there when it happens. So with again, we don't let anybody shoot there without one rain destructor down there.

Is there do you mind sharing is there an official documentation process if someone needs to to shoot? Is it just an o literally an okay? You may go and use it. Like, how does that work?

Well, there's a request that would come in if it's outside agency. That request probably would be directed to the chief. The chief would then pass it down probably to myself which eventually would go to the acting captain and he would go through a series. We have a standard operating procedure, certain rules and regs that have to be followed. As he said before, we do have safety rules down there. It would not be operated without one of our guys being there and having responsibility. So I don't think beyond that process, there's no other process for that.

Yeah. We don't let anybody come and shoot down there. So there's no sort of fill out a form to come shoot. Civilians just don't shoot down there. The only civilians who would ever shoot down there would be again if we do a citizens academy. And other than that, I don't know that we well, and retired law enforcement officers. Because for Leo, so we they have to go back to the agency where they retired from. So we're it's we're the only ones that can actually certify them. And if we don't use that range, we have to go up to Sykesville.

Alright. Thank you for that. Do we have any questions here at all? Yes, Alderman Thorpe.

I do. Major, I'm less concerned about the authority going from the mayor down to the chief than I am to get it to the lowest appropriate authority. You're a I was going say a former Marine. You're a Marine? Yes, sir.

Is this go far enough? In other words, I don't under I don't wanna understate the importance and the safety of a firing range and all that, but we do have a pretty responsible deputy chief. Is this delegation of this authority go far enough? Would it make sense to go to the deputy chief to authorize this?

Well, the initial request probably would for respect purposes always go to the chief. She can delegate it to me. We have not had that situation with the current chief in. The previous chief, I would get those requests which was the reason why I went to acting captain Hurley before in the past and he was able to shift sift through to figure out exactly who had authorization. That's how we got here today. So, yes, I am part of that process.

Confused. I don't

know if that answered your question.

I think it did or maybe I'm more confused now. If in the code right now it restricts the authorization to approve who can use it to the mayor, I would challenge whether that authority is whether it's able to be delegated. And so by this proposal we are looking at today, it appears to me, I'm looking over at the lawyer here too, that what we're doing as a city council is we'll vote to authorize the the chief to issue that authorization. But if it's in a code like this, I don't, I would not be real comfortable, I wouldn't think that the chief could then delegate it because it's in the code. Am I correct?

I would read that the same way that this I think what I'm hearing in your question is should this actually have more of a or designee or specifically list the next rank? But right now the language, sort of the plain language is it's either the mayor or the police chief and nobody else gets to make that call.

That's how I read it. Yeah. The way it's read. And so if if

in that content, yes. It should be the chief or designee.

Alderman Schandenmeyer, did you have a thought?

Yeah, thank you Mr. Chair. Drilling down on this point here that my colleague brought up, how I interpret it as currently written is while it's the chief whose signature is formally done, they're allowed to pass it off to do with the actual grunt work on to a subordinate position similar to when the planning and zoning director makes a decision but they're not the one usually looking at every single I and T, etcetera. They pass it to a subordinate employee. Am I interpreting that correctly because I've been known to misunderstand a thing or two?

Yeah. Would say that you are and I think another thing to keep in mind is that the firing range, everything within the police department is the police chief's responsibility. So that's probably why that that authority granted is to the mayor and the police chief only. It's not intended to be exclusive, but it is intended to, assign responsibility and oversight of something like the firing range or everything else within the building to the appointing authority. And in this instance, it's the police chief or, the mayor. It doesn't include the city manager. So, you know, there's a specific reason for that. It could be argued. Where are

showing me?

Sorry. She's showing me something. I guess part of the question that I have for you, Alderman Thorpe, if you don't mind, is is is your question related to delegation of authority to give that permission or delegation of authority to ensure that the group that is given permission is utilizing the range appropriately?

So the way it's written now, the only two people that can sign the authorization for somebody to use it is the mayor and the chief of police. And my question is, should we add or their designee or the deputy chief so that the mayor is is this an issue that we believe the chief of police personally needs to authorize? Because it's more than just a signature.

The it's written would say yes.

Yeah. The way it's written now, I don't believe that the the deputy chief could walk into the chief and say, hey. Sign this, will you? Because only you can authorize it. The the chief would then have to ask all the right questions whereas if it says or their designee or their deputy chief, it would clearly delegate that authority to somebody else and then to your where you were going, if something did go wrong, the chief would not be in a position I mean, chief would because if something goes wrong, the chief is always going to the way it's written out, the chief is always going to ask questions.

And I just don't know that it has to go to that level. I mean, I'm not a police or a law enforcement officer, to have a a feel for how low it should go. But the way it's written now, the chief's gonna the chief should be asking five questions as to whether these people should be authorized to do it. And and since we're amending it, we ought to make it say what we want it to say.

To that point, if I may, as well. Of course, we may, but the question earlier, I brought it up because what is the process? If I'm one of those police department agencies or responsible group who would like to use the range, and I've given a call to the chief and saying, hey. May I use the range today? And they say, yes. Like, what is what does that look like for them? Or do I call the deputy and say, hey. May I use the range? Call the mayor. May I use the range today? And I'm saying, yes. You may use the range today. Go go follow-up with this person. Like, how does that look for these agencies who wanna use the range?

Generally, first of all, it's it's not a lot of agencies. It's usually Maryland Capital Police and then our federal partners, ATF or not even the FBI. They will come to us. They'll usually come to me and ask if they wanna, say, qualify or they want to get someone in to qualify. I will then go up to up the chain up to the chief who will then go to the mayor. So no one just comes in like I said, no one just comes in and says, hey. Wanna use the range. We and even agencies that would come to us like that, we say, well, why would you wanna use our range? We just got it fixed. So I'm a little protective of it because it's it's been down for so long.

I don't want people coming in there shooting the walls and anything else. So I also don't want them to overuse the range because then it has to be repaired on a quicker basis. Like I said, Maryland capital police has reached out to us a couple times. The last time the major was talking about they were trying hire someone and get them qualified real quick so they could get them hired. And their range is in Sykesville. So it's much more convenient for them. And generally they use Sykesville. And then like I said, other than that, it's we do LEOSA qualifications is the main way we do it. And other than that, there's not a whole lot of people that do it. Usually it's not an emergency. But we just don't wanna we wanna make sure we follow the law.

Major, can I go back to my question?

Yes.

What's your comfort level on who should be authorizing this?

Well, my comfort level, I don't, I like it the way it is if you just include the chief. The chief always gonna designate anyway, and there's nothing that's gonna be done without the chief knowing. My concern would be if the chief is on vacation, do we have to then wait a couple weeks to the chief get back? So, you know, I don't know what the law is or what the ramifications are. We have a lot of policies in there that already states the chief will designate and things are designated to me that I don't have to go to chief. I do keep the chief informed of it. But if the chief's on vacation or unavailable, what what then? So that's my concern.

I can probably answer. I mean, so if the chief goes on vacation and designates you as acting chief, then you would have that authority as acting chief to to grant permission. So all that would take would just be the PO that comes out that that has you as acting chief.

But the chiefs would always know that there's a request in for the use of the range.

Would you be comfortable with the line, the chief, or their designee?

I would be comfortable with it.

I would not. So if you're gonna do if you're gonna make an amendment or request amendment, I would strongly urge that you specifically provide a title instead of or their designee so that it it keeps second keep in mind this is a firing range, guys. So you wanna keep that control with specific titles versus or their designee because then that allows for Vicky, me, you know, someone to do it that should not be granting that authority. So I would recommend keeping it. Caitlin up there could be the designee. So I think agree

with that. I mean, we we pay the chief of police a significant amount of responsibility, authority and accountability to do a lot of things with weapons that if our chief of police were to designate an unqualified person to do this, we would fire them. The mayor would fire them. So I mean, I I I don't I don't question the seriousness and the gravity of this but it just seems to me of all the things that the police do with weapons, ammunition, and all that is since we're addressing this that I'm a I'm a fan of of pushing things down to the lowest appropriate authority. And if the lowest appropriate authority is the chief, I'm okay with that.

But I challenge it because we ask the chief to do a whole lot more serious and significant and dangerous things than signing off for somebody to use the firing range. And so, I mean, I don't mean to make a a supreme court issue out of this, but but, I mean, I could totally see the chief saying, I'm not gonna delegate it. Okay? Or I'm gonna delegate it to major Brantford or I'm gonna delegate it to, the person out there running it because for whatever reason. But we pay her to do that.

So, I just, again, I, you know, I'm looking for, you know, not unanimity here but concurrence of everybody. I don't I don't, you know, I don't want to go against the acting city attorney's recommendation here but but I think the

example She's assistant now. She's

assistant now.

Oh, well

then, let's just You see Yeah. But but you see my point. I mean Yeah.

I see your point, but but the concern that I have, you're expecting something to happen in a certain way that may not necessarily do it. Let's say ten years from has a designee, but it's not in writing anywhere. Or and and you have an expectation, that designee is clearly defined, and that's not a guarantee. And so when you're putting someone in charge of even approving something as, you know, vital as the firing range, it's not just people are shooting firearms in there, but it's also maintaining the firing range in good working condition and making sure that these groups, presumably, they wouldn't be, you know, shooting up the police or breaking it. But making sure that that is all sort of being maintained well, you wanna maintain those controls too in that authority.

And that's why I'm saying as opposed to designee because right very clear picture. But ten years from now, the or the council, whoever may not have such a clear picture may not designate that person in writing, which is what you would want to have. That's not always the case.

We we put designee in writing. I mean, we

talk about the actual designation. Like, the chief saying, I chief so and so designate the individual to to use the fire

Specific person, not a group of people that I can choose from at any point in time.

Right. That's my that's my concern with using the word designee as opposed to if you're gonna amend the legislation to chief or the chief for the major.

The question would also come is does this designee have to have firing range experience or experience handling guns? Because, obviously, you wouldn't want someone don't even know anything about guns, just saying you can go ahead and use the fire range. That's a question that may come about.

I don't think anybody will ever be in that deputy chief position that didn't have that experience. Maybe not as proficient as the firearm instructor, but sure but surely they had some experience with firearms.

Or had

the knowledge of what it would take for, you know, qualification, safety, and those things that's all involved.

We were thinking of like just designee in general if there's any type of designee. Yes, the deputy of course should have that experience but if they chose a designee that had no experience that would be concerning I'm sure. Alderman Schandenmeyer?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I think this comes down to not the core idea of the legislation. I think we're all pretty on board, but where do we want the bureaucratic delay to come from? I understand not wanting the chief of police to get weighed down by the minutiae of this.

They have a very important job. They need to make big decisions. For me, I think our law office confirmed that they can delegate the grunt work of this as long as they themselves put their signature on that. I for one am personally comfortable with the chief being the final authority on signing off on this. I think that the firing range is very dangerous location.

It's very dangerous tool, piece of equipment. I don't know what proper term is. A place where weapons are being used. And we need someone high up signing off on that where if something goes wrong, immediate political accountability can happen. And when we put it down to lower levels, we have do not have that ability to give immediate political accountability because those are more in the civil service protected role.

So I am going to use the I like the term what is the lowest position to make the decision. I am going to start using that because I do like the flexibility that that provides. But in this case, I think the argument has been made why we should keep this as is for the chief being the final decision maker.

Is there documentation of who allows now would there be document because, obviously, it's just the mayor at this point, but would there be documentation of who allows, whether it was the mayor or the police chief that allowed to use the fire range at the time? And if we did open it or expand it out to it being a designee or the deputy, would there be documentation to prove, that, hey. It was this person so we can always have someone who's accountable for what took place there?

Yeah. That's something we could easily do. We we everyone signs in a waiver. Everyone everyone that goes and shoots down there, unless they're already certified police officers, they get a background check, and we check everybody. So what we could have a form as well. We have a form right now for the OSHA. They sign off on it, answers a bunch of questions in waivers and everything else. But we could have another form that says, hey, this is the form that's signed by the chief. That wouldn't be a problem at all.

Is this something that we need to have done immediately? Is it could we take one month or so whenever we have our next meeting so that we can look for a different language that could update this to allow for designee or deputy? What is your guidance on that before we move forward on making some

I believe we can wait on it. We have not run into this situation. This is the first time since I've been here that we have where we had where we found out this was the case. So maybe we could have the chief weigh in on this. Next time she wasn't able to be here, so maybe you can wait and so she can weigh in on it and take a look at it.

Alderman Thorpe, do you think that would provide enough time for us to maybe look at a different language just to maybe make an amendment from our committee that could provide an update to it?

Yeah. I think that's exactly right. We need to look at this. What's the legal ramifications? What are the leadership ramifications? What are the management ramifications, of this? And, I mean, it whatever the right thing to do is. I mean, we can't you can't delegate all the authorities. There are some authorities that we should look to delegate and this is definitely one that should be discussed. So, mister chairman, I'd be very comfortable and I think mister referenced exactly right. I would love to get the chiefs, because that put you in an awkward position. Should we delegate to to you? So, yeah, I think that's a great idea.

Okay. Great. Thank you.

And we appreciate you all coming today, and you're more than welcome to come again whenever we have our next meeting. I know June's gonna be a tight one, we'll talk about that in a bit. But if you have any other questions or thoughts, feel free to share. If you wanna share anything else today, we appreciate all that you do to serve us in our city.

Nope. Thanks for, taking this serious enough. We are looking at making sure that we're covered. Wanna thank, acting captain O'Harley. He did who discovered this. So it's something that we need to get done, and we'll we'll get there.

J u for doing that too. Just coming right in is acting.

Yeah. I just the the range was down for a long time, so we weren't really using it much for, I think, about two over two years. So I would just like to get everything in line, not not rushing anybody, but that we get it set up so that moving forward, it's an easier call to get in another outside agency if they have an emergency. They don't always do, but they did have the one from Capitol Police was like, hey. We need to get this guy. We have to do it this week. So that's usually the the fastest we have for emergencies is like that week.

But that's all. Thank you. Yes. Absolutely. Thank you. It looks to be that that's all that we had on the agenda today. Though, yes, so we are gonna move to postpone until next meeting this ordinance. So is there a motion to postpone this until our next meeting to discuss a little further? So moved. Awesome. Is there a second for that?

Second.

Okay. All in favor? Aye. You. So that's all we have on our agenda today. I will ask if there's anything that anyone would like to share from, our committee. I will emphasize some bills coming to us soon, most likely, one that's about expanding the board of supervisor elections and the other reducing the human relations commission membership, to be on the lookout for, and I'm sure there'll be others to come as well. Anything that you all would like to yeah. Alderman Shemai.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I understand we postponed action on an appointment for the Planning Commission. I don't know if we're willing to reconsider that. I know it was a reappointment. Traditionally reappointments have not come in for these meetings. It's not really a thing that I'm gonna make too big of a deal over if we wish to postpone it one more meeting. It occasionally happens but I just do wanna know what traditionally we've done.

So the and please correct me if I'm what the basis for the postponement is the term of that particular person is not ending until June 2027.

So to

try to determine why this appointment is is getting pushed through the cycle, a year early. Or it's possible that it's wrong on the website, but trying to figure out what's going on here.

That's what I get trying to understand, postponement while on the bus reading emails.

No. No. But we appreciate that because it is important that we, it's it shouldn't be a requirement that people come before us, before we agree to a a reappointment or appointment. So I think in moving forward, especially since we have so much work that's gonna go into updating, how we go about these our membership on commissions, boards, and task force that we just kinda put in place maybe some, openness to be able to actually see who these people are and engage them in conversation as to why they're so passionate or even interested in being a part of what our city needs, which is our representation on boards, commissions, and task forces.

How we've traditionally done it is for first time appointments. We have wanted them to come in for exactly that reason and we have postponed action because we do think that for the initial appointment they want to hear directly from them along with going over their resume, ask them any hard questions. But the reappointments usually it's we've seen them in action, we know what they're about, we know what they do and why they're passionate about this. But hearing that there's greater reasons for the postponement as well, I will withdraw my issue.

Alderman Thorpe?

I hear what we've done traditionally but as we reorganize the board's and commission's effort, I see real value in when we reappoint somebody to bring them in here and go through a process where we ask them why they want to do it. Roger the tradition but I'm not married to it. And so I you know, this is probably a Laura Richards discussion too but I think that's her intent is to bring people in. I don't want speak for her but I think there's real value in making these appointments a little more noteworthy in their milestones.

Thank you for that. Both of our aldermen. Okay. We have reached the end. Is there a motion if there's nothing left to be shared? Thank you. As well, is there a motion to adjourn today? So moved. Okay. Is there a second for this? Second. Alright. 07:11 p. M. 572026. We adjourn.