Environmental Matters Committee - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon, everybody. Calling to order the March 12 meeting for Environmental Matters Committee. For roll call, have Alderman Hakanti. Here. Alderman Huntley will be here shortly.

Let's see. So as far as approval of the agenda, we do need to add let's see, R 126. That's performance standards for fiscal year twenty seven just because we forgot we actually postponed action on at the last committee meeting, so we just need to put that back on here. And so could I get a motion to add that and postpone ID six twenty six to next meeting, which is the stormwater presentation.

Motion to postpone. Am I

second it?

So moved. I'll second it since Alderman Hartley's not here. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. All right. And I have minutes from February 12. Is there a motion to approve the minutes? So move. Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries, thank you. And then for legislation, we have O-two 26, mooring requirements in city waters.

So I believe I'm looking at the deputy city manager. If you correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm under the impression that we're still waiting on a report from port wardens. And then I heard staff might be working on some changes to this legislation.

Jackie Gao, deputy city manager for resilience and sustainability. This will we don't have a report from Port Wardens, but it can go before Port Wardens again. I mean go before Port Wardens so we can get their opinion on it.

I thought it went to them already but we were just waiting on their findings. I could be mistaken. I thought that's what I heard.

We're waiting on findings? All right,

we will speak

to the chair about the findings then.

I don't know if they had any findings but. Yes. Okay.

It's Maritime Advisory Board, right Kaelin? Because I didn't believe the Port Wardens hadn't considered this at all. Okay.

Okay maritime advisory But

that makes more sense. Okay.

Actually, are you still on the maritime advisory board? Do you have any information on, it hasn't come to the board yet? Okay. And is staff working on changes or is that

There are some changes. We discussed them yesterday. We were discussing mostly how to deal with illegal moorings that exist in Williams Creek, which we're gonna deal with separately outside of the legislation. It doesn't need to be part of this legislation. And just going over some of the language to make sure it's clear.

Alderman Thorpe wanted to add language about no private moorings are allowed in city waters. That's currently in the draft. Don't think, Ms. Reuter will have to tell me if there's any further changes that have been made so far. We've just made the language very clear on what's a transient mooring and what's an annual mooring, making clear that they are actually city owned GPS points and not private moorings.

That was the main confusion of why some residents became kind of concerned about the legislation was they thought that private moorings are being taken away when in fact those are annual moorings that are leased each year with a contract with the harbor master's office. When you get a GPS coordinate, you can put in your own tackle and anchor if one's not existing. If you decide not to release that mooring, you can take your tackle with you. Most people would not bother the expense or the trouble of taking the anchor with them. But otherwise they just turn it over to the city as city property. But you're leasing a GPS point. You do not own that GPS point.

So if somebody installs one on their own That's illegal. Okay. Because Yeah. There is maritime advisory, you can come up if you wanna speak to that. Okay. You can just take a seat, Ms. Wilde, and introduce yourself. Thank

you. Freda Wilde, 403 Chesapeake Avenue, member of Maritime Advisory Board. I just looked at our agenda next week and we are scheduled to do a revote on this legislation.

Okay.

But that may change given what sounds like what's going on.

Right, we'll have revised legislation. I was just discussing this with the harbor master today. So I think it's in good shape now to present to Maritime Advisory Board. And they can make a recommendation to the Advisory Board. They don't make a determination.

Okay. I just have two concerns, One has to do with what you spoke to to a degree as far as if there are private moorings or not. Because we did have public testimony that there were some. We also heard when I went to the Severn River Commission that they're under the impression I haven't sat down with this particular member yet, but under the impression that in Weems Creek, and this goes into my second issue, that the county, they're saying the county does allow private moorings. And so we'll need to figure out how that's gonna be handled in Weems Creek.

My my understanding is that the county would probably be fine with us taking full enforcement on Williams Creek and applying our standards to the whole creek. Personally, what I don't really want is to have two different standards split down the middle of the creek.

Miss Leonard is here. She can address the memorandum of understanding that this county and the city have with regard to the Leems Creek. The the water body is split down the middle.

Yeah.

With one side being the city's waterway, the other side being the county. And until recently when we had better GPS, we could not determine which mooring buoys were on each side. But we can now, and the harbormaster has been out to Weems Creek to identify if there are any moorings that we installed, but there are none. They're all illegally installed. They're not even, they don't even belong to riparian, there's three of them. They don't belong to any riparian property owner. They're just people who put them in to their boat to them. So miss Leonard's here. She can speak to the MOU further, what she's doing with that now.

Ashley Leonard, assistant city attorney. So the original MOU, which is about ten years old at this point, gave very limited enforcement powers. So we're not allowed to exercise full import enforcement powers in the county side of Williams Creek. I have reached out to the county's office of law, my counterparts there, to discuss because the MOU is 10 old to just sort of, you know, possibly do a new one and update it one and for them to possibly consider giving us broader enforcement powers. But I don't know at that point. But so at this point, unfortunately, we would be applying essentially different standards depending on which side Williams Creek you're on.

Okay.

And at this point, the the city does not have any enforcement authority with those mooring balls that are on the county side. And there are some definitely on the county side. Okay. And they some of them go out into the Severn as well.

Okay. Alright well it's just my, I don't know, my engineering mind just seems like it would make more sense to have a common standard on the whole Creek. But we can certainly.

Miss Leonard's looking Like at that

I said we are pursuing it and I'll keep you updated but ultimately some of it is what the county is willing to delegate to us authority wise.

And I need to circle up with Alderman O'Neill because I believe she's been in conversation with some of the Weems Creek residents

There's of illegal mooring balls in Weems Creek that are on the city side. We do have enforcement authority over those. We will require those to be moved or to be abandoned. Ms. Bellis will be in touch with those people who have their boats moored there illegally. We will give them some grace time to move them. I think she's drafted a letter right now that I just reviewed.

Alderman Huntley. Yeah, thanks. So I've been talking about this extensively with Alderman Thorpe and he seems like he's really kind of on top of things. My question here was just now, you're talking about moving them. Do mean move the boat or move the mooring?

They can either move their own mooring. They put it in illegally. Or they can move the boat, leave the mooring, we consider it abandoned, and then we can remove

And are we sure we can't just like, I don't wanna use the wrong word here Ms. Leonard, but are we sure that if we are requiring them to no longer use that mooring because this is public property, that those are not suitable for city use?

They're not in a location that the city would put them in that location in the first place.

Gotcha. Thank you. That explains it. Just a statement of opinion. I'd say like people putting in moorings in public waters, I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for it. To me it's a little like I bought that bridge in Brooklyn fair and square. So I think it sounds like you're more or less of that mindset also. Right. And just wanna express my support for that.

One woman who testified, her boat is actually on a mooring buoy that's on the county side. And she explained to me that she bought the boat that was tied to the mooring and was told that the mooring came with the boat. But the more the property the owner of that vessel had no right to tell her that in the first place.

Like I said, bridge in Brooklyn. Yeah. I bought that car and it was on the bridge. The bridge comes with it, right?

Any other questions or points for staff? Okay. So I'd be inclined to accept I would like to accept a motion to postpone until we get further information from staff and maritime advisory board.

Further information on what?

I just mean, well if there are any amendments that staff's working on.

No, not this time. Miss Reuter do you have any additional that have come in today? Miss Reuter?

Cynthia.

Cynthia. Do you have any additional amendments that have come in today on the mooring requirements?

Is that from the administration or is it from

Alderman Thorpe.

Thought something else I wanted Sorry? To ask

Which one is that? You're right. It deals with riparian riparian rights.

Or who's the sponsor? Thorpe or is it

Okay. I know what he's talking about. Because it's something I mentioned to him yesterday. So in the rare case that doesn't exist right now, but possibly could, Especially if shoreline erodes or something. If you're a riparian property owner, you may put a private mooring ball in your developable waterway. We're not saying we're taking that away.

Okay.

There are currently none of those. Yeah. But if under some scenario, somebody possibly could do that. I think that's what Alderman Thorpe is addressing.

Assuming it's even deep enough. All right. Oh

this is Littman.

We don't need to dig into it today. I just wanted to get some things out there and wait till the Mayor Time Advisory Board. Did you have something else?

Yeah, sorry, I did have one other question. So again, this is sort of an opinion I'm hoping you can react to. I totally understand the need for why we don't want people long term anchoring in waterways over winter.

We're not talking about that legislation. We're talking about the mooring requirements legislation. I'm sorry. Two separate things.

Yeah. Okay. Never mind. I thought it was in there. Isn't anchoring

No. We don't even have legislation introduced on anchoring. That was just a recommendation made by the harbor master's office. And then some people have testified about it. Became concerned about it. But nothing's been introduced by anyone.

Oh okay. I'm so sorry. I thought it was part of this legislation as well.

No.

So is there a motion So to

you well, were saying you didn't want us to postpone it, no?

This legislation, mean this is up to you. This legislation was introduced just to make a technical correction as part of the '75 foot measurement correction. And we needed this correction to be made before the city submitted its previous design for the reconfiguration of the mooring field in front of St. Mary's School. That so therefore we made this correction to the code so half of our mooring balls would not fall out of compliance with our own code.

As part of that technical correction, we the city was making the correction that there is a reference to private mooring balls, which are actually annual mooring balls Right. Throughout that section of the code. So the city took this opportunity to make that correction as well.

Got

it. That's what a lot of testimony was about. People were concerned we were taking away private rights which weren't there anyway.

Right. You can't have private rights to the public bridge or waterway.

So is there any concern with postponing action until next meeting?

It just delays us on the work we can do on the mooring field.

So if the committee wants to do something different, I did tell the Maritime Advisory Board rep for Ward 7 that I was gonna postpone.

You're gonna postpone.

Because I wanted to wait for their information.

I mean, that's kind of what we have the board for. The question to me is, is it adequate to have their advice by the time this goes to the full council? Or do we wanna have their advice to talk about it in committee? Do know you when they're meeting next?

Tuesday. Tuesday. So we would

get it before the next council meeting, but not before the next, well, yes, we would get it before the next environmental

matter. I also told Alderman Thorpe was gonna get postponed

Okay, well I'm fine to postpone it.

Is there a motion? So moved. Is there a second? Second. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Motion carries, thank you. Alright. And then next up, city doc presentation. Director Brewer, thank you.

He's the only director we call by his first name.

Director Brewer.

Oh, yeah. I I have a last name for a first name so

Keep doing that.

It happens a lot. I'm Burr Vogel, director of public works.

Okay.

To introduce the topic that I've been asked to address, it's about the flood barrier types for the city dock project. This is a flood barrier slide we've been using for a number of years. And what's important here is that the areas in pink are gonna be fixed walls up to our design flood protection level of elevation eight, North American vertical datum, that's NAV for short. And then every everywhere else where you see yellow or orange or blue, there's always been an intent to have some sort of deployable flood barrier. So sometimes you'll hear passive deployable flood barrier or manually deployable flood barrier.

Another term we've we've used is self rising flood barriers. So in the very beginning of the project, everything was gonna be automatic and and you know, nobody would have to go out there and and manually deploy a flood barrier to make this system work. Over time as we've received costs, that has changed. So I'm I'm here to address six specific questions which I'll give a rundown on. And then I think what might make the most sense is I I just give a brief summary of the answers and then we can go back and and go into depth into any one of them.

So question number one, is the technology finalized? Yes. All deployable barriers in the current design are going to be manually installed. Why did we make this shift? Two two key factors here.

One was high cost, and we'll get into those particular savings later. And then also we are expecting a substantial amount of settlement in a certain area of the park, and that would have made the passive flood barriers really something that that couldn't be delivered with a with any kind of a warranty because they they would no longer function. The manually deployed barriers will be easier to adjust. Where would we store these barriers? They are gonna have a physical footprint, probably somewhere two to four small trailers, which we would park currently.

We have the Spa Road site available if at some point in the future that's no longer available. The water tanks make the the water tank sites make the most location, or make the most sense, Jan Wall near Tyler Heights Elementary would be a great candidate. And time to deploy. So kind of look up how many feet a crew can do, and and and it works out to to be a crew of eight would be able to deploy everything we would need in a day. But just being conservative, we would plan for two days.

And then would we need to related question, would we need to train? Yes, absolutely. I would train our kind of primary crew of eight with four backups, and that would be an annual event. Which would also serve as an opportunity to inspect the barriers because they will have rubber gaskets at the interfaces with the side or the posts, as well as rubber gaskets between each of the planks. And then how often would we have to do this?

So right now this would be something we would expect to have to deploy the the full system maybe once a decade. There are one or two low lying areas that that maybe that would be more frequent, but that would be a it wouldn't be anywhere near a crew of eight for a day. It would be two people for an hour or two to install those in the in the fuse low level gaps. For reference, the bulkhead, the concrete bulkhead that runs from currently one ten compromise or the chop tank building all the way around to the Dock Street businesses at Craig Street, that's at elevation 4.5. That was built several years ago, it has never been overtopped.

So we would, you know, how often is that in history, the water in this area gotten to that level, it's only been twice. In the nineteen thirties there was a large hurricane, and then of course hurricane Isabelle in 2003. Here's a diagram that shows each of those gaps in the phase one area. This is where we would have some of the areas that are lower than the 4.5, particularly 2A over here close to the maritime welcome Center. But it's not much lower than 4.5.

So that's just one small little gap right in here where you have some stairs. But looking forward, so the next couple of graphics I've got here talk about some sea level rise. This is sort of the history of sea level rise in Annapolis over about a century or so. And you can see that, you know, when I'm talking about something, we would have to deploy maybe once a decade. We would anticipate that changing by 2060 to being probably an annual deployment.

Now the sea level rise graphic here, this one is forward looking courtesy of primarily Alex Davies, a team of folks. Alex is a meteorologist or a professor at the oceanography and meteorology department over at the Naval Academy. And so these are these are projections moving forward. Rule of thumb that I use is five inches per decade. So fast forward thirty years, you're gonna be 15 the tides are gonna be 15 inches higher than they are today.

And the last question is what is the cost difference? What would it cost to kind of revert to that original design? Assuming we were having this discussion a year ago or when it would be possible. Now it's not really possible because the project is under construction. That would be a $10,000,000 kind of maybe on the low end is that estimate.

No problem. Let me just follow my wallet.

Right.

Are there do you have anything else?

No, that was it. That's the six questions, I've got lots of

Thank you.

You're right. I expect a little bit of follow on and I've got various reference materials too.

Any questions, comments from the committee? Nothing? No, thank you, director. So yeah, it was very helpful to hear all this and to have our earlier conversation. I thought it was interesting.

I didn't realize the settling, the settlement of some of the material potential settlement really is driving at least somewhat the change in the the barrier. And let's see. I let's see, you mentioned the installation. As far as planning for that 2060 scenario, you said that would be, you expect based on some of the projections, that would be an annual occurrence where we would have to install the complete barrier once a year? Yes.

At least? Okay. That's way past I think our time probably with the city. But I suppose that's something they would need to start planning for '24 2050 or so. Right?

Right. At at which point in time, the certainly the existing bulkhead would be nearing the end of its useful life. So there will be opportunities to do something that's less labor intensive then.

This

point about sediment, would you mind just talking about that a little bit more? Mean at the way you described it makes sense, but could you kind of go into some more detail? Do you mind?

Sure. Without getting, I'm not a geotech person, but essentially what we have is a fairly substantial layer of unconsolidated sediments. 30 or 50 feet below ground. And what what has happened is that there's never been a heavy load set on top of them before. And so what's gonna happen is when we bring in and we elevate our park, it's gonna create more weight, and if you just imagine stepping on a sponge, it's going to squeeze it.

And this is in an area very near Craig Street. So what we've been calling the active park, I'll go back to my map, let you know what we're talking about. It's really right in this area. And so it's sort of an oval shaped deposit of sediments. And what's gonna happen is that's gonna compress over 50. A lot of that consolidation will happen in the first three to five, and things will sink and become uneven. So there will be a maintenance requirement throughout this project to sort of adjust bricks. Maybe bricks will be removed and we'll be adding sand and things of that nature. But things yeah. It's gonna have a little bit of a funny look to it.

Just, you know, being fully transparent. The walls will move a little bit. And and that all that hardscaping will will will start to take on slopes that something that will start as flat will become sloped.

Gotcha. That makes sense. And then how does that tie into the choice to use these manually deployable barriers rather

than Alright. So I'll use a visual aid here.

Please.

So yours.

When

we would build this thing, a a flip up barrier or a rise up barrier would shift between two things. Everything has to fit absolutely perfect. I think millimeter. Right? Yeah. Now all of a sudden, this screen shifts this way. Yeah. Or this way. Or this way. And I fit on one side, but I no longer fit over here.

We engineered with how would we shim this up? How would we adjust those those interfaces between the movable barrier and the thing it's supposed to sit up against, we were like, that's going to be an absolute nightmare. Much better to have a manually deployed barrier that could be reconfigured, doesn't even necessarily have to be perfect square. Or we could adjust, they're just a much more mechanically simple thing. And so you can just, the mounting things can just be unbolted and bolt some new mounts in so everything still works.

Makes total sense. I'm glad I asked the question because I thought we were talking about like sediment clogging the barrier.

No. It's just making the it's geometry basically. The puzzle pieces would no longer fit.

Yeah. I'm sure I'm oversimplifying, but it's kind of like being able to shave down a door as a house sells.

It's exactly like having a door in your house where that door jam is not square.

Yeah. Cool, thank you.

And I think last comment on my part would just be, I felt quite assured after our separate conversation, because I was asking the director about some of, basically I think something for the public to understand. As we build out the entire planned barrier, it's going to be in phases, right? But we do have planned scenarios of how do we actually protect the entirety of

the city

Right. Dock in the middle of these phases being complete, somewhat complete, partially complete, you know. We have options given this technology and other technology that And we picture from

you made a great point for everybody who obviously wasn't part of that conversation. It was just a phone call last week. If we don't have what we call South Compromise, this this area completely protected and we were gonna get backdoor flooding from off the screen past, you know, let's say the waterfront hotel were to flood, and potentially that water would flow to the to the north up here towards Memorial Circle. We could, during an event like that, completely close Compromise Street and put a flood barrier across Compromise Street. In that, you know, if we were to get a major hurricane during that one or two year period where we had all of this great stuff is in place, what do we do if there's still a vulnerability over here?

Great suggestion, just close Compromised Street. And and put up a barrier, leave it leave it in place for a couple of days. That's obviously inconvenient to have compromised Street closed for that long, but it would be better than letting downtown flood at the cost of 5 or $10,000,000.

On something I just thought of when you're talking about that, I think that's even more reason to go, at least have the capability to make Duke of Gloucester two way when we need to make that decision.

It's another benefit, That project has, know, it's got some downsides, Cost and loss of parking. But the ability to to be able to handle any sort of a disruption to traffic flow whether any it could be a fire, it could be a lot of things. Yeah. It it it's a nice it it's nice to be able to route traffic a different way. Right now, the only way to get through town is to come down Compromised Street.

Okay. I think that's it. I don't know if anything else.

I'm just always so impressed at how well thought out this project is

Yeah.

Absolutely. In every scenario.

You y'all only see a few people here. Right? There's an army of engineers behind the scenes doing a lot of

work. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was been I have absolutely agree. I've been impressed with much we've thought ahead on this. So thank you very much for taking the time today. My pleasure. And keep us posted if anything changes. Alright. Next up, think active city manager Buckland came just in time. We can

I'm glad we could pull you away from watching movies. I know you don't have anything else to do.

So I do wanna jump to some legislation. We have R-one 121, which is the performance standards for fiscal year '27. And I saw that a couple departments did update their standards. I didn't look at all of them, but I did see office of law did and they look good to me. I know deputy manager Gyle did as well update for the sustainability.

Is there anything else you wanna highlight in the update? At least pertaining to the environment. We don't need to go too hard

of were updates sorry, acting city manager, Vicki Buckland. There were updates from a number of different departments. Some of them were just a few things here and there. Transit updated a couple of things. Central services updated more. Yeah, Jackie did a lot. There are a few in planning and zoning. Correct, not everyone made changes. But there were a few.

Yeah. Okay.

I think the changes Jackie made were probably the most extensive.

Yeah, and so I guess we could start there with the changes that were made in Ms. Giles section most pertinent to the environment. So does anybody have any questions or comments on any of the changes that

she I

have an overarching question if you don't mind.

Yeah, ahead.

Why is it that these were referred specifically to environmental matters? I think that was, as I remember, it was actually like a city code requirement that they come here. Why why this? No?

Oh, no. No. It's because I it's because I made the referral because years ago, the committee did ask for updates. And I recalled specifically because I know deputy city manager Guild in a previous capacity had changed them, but they didn't get carried over. And so I wanted to take an opportunity to try to get those back in there. And so yeah, it was because I asked it to be referred to us.

Gotcha, okay. Thank you.

So are there specific questions for Ms. Kyle? Yeah, thought they were great. I don't have any comments either.

Yeah, just made them to better reflect the actual work that's being done now.

Things have

changed quite a bit since the days of DNEP, and even the Office So of Environmental that's why I made those.

Yeah, yeah thank you for taking the time to do that. So the the other issue is just I did put together some amendments to propose as far as additional standards for particularly for planning and zoning. If you look at the attached handout, and I apologize these are not posted at the moment just because it didn't occur to me till earlier today that we had to add this to the agenda. It was postponed last meeting and we just forgot to add it. So I didn't wanna hold up the legislation.

So in any case, I had changes to three departments on and just from the environmental lens, I know there are bigger there's a larger goal from city manager's office to beef up the performance standards in the future. But personally, I just wanted to see if there are things we could do in the interim to make some improvements now. And so the question I would offer to to the committee and the city manager is these are proposals again. And just to summarize, plan and zoning, I tried to beef up things dealing with urban tree canopy program, forest conservation program, as well as critical area. Public works, they tried to add some dealing with storm water BMP maintenance and inspections, erosion sediment control, illicit discharge detection and elimination, MS four program, and then for transportation, metrics as far as the cycling program.

And so, again, I know you're just seeing these. I am completely fine if yourself or the committee would prefer these be postponed. If if you think that we should get some department feedback or if you have other comments, concerns, or if the committee has other concerns. So is there anything immediately from the committee or the city manager?

I'll tell you where I am on this Alderman Savage. I think we really need to update our process for developing these performance measures. And until we have a much better process, I think they're overall unfortunately not super meaningful. All that said, I also don't really want to add 11 or 12 performance measures, maybe 13 performance measures to planning and zoning when they have six right now. So the compromise I'd offer is if you wanna pick one of these that you think is most important for each department, I'd be willing to support them. But otherwise, I think I'm going to oppose this amendment.

Are there any other thoughts from the committee? City manager?

This is certainly an area where I have some interest in making changes each year. And certainly the new administration I think has some intentions for this next year as well to make changes. Generally speaking, I'd like to have the buy in of the department directors who are subject to these. So I would want to float these by them. As noted, there's a lot that's added here.

And so I would definitely want their buy in. Otherwise my fear is then that they're not meaningfully collected, acted upon. Know, it's the beginning to end that I want to make sure we don't lose sight of.

Yeah, I understand. Alderman Huntley?

I'll say I think I've done a lot of thinking about what our performance measures should look like. And I've talked to someone with the city manager about that at times. And I think two of the things that are most crucial to me are, one, that they'd be relatively easy to collect the data on, which I think actually most of these are. Maybe one or two, not so much. But especially on the transit ones, maybe not so much.

But planning and zoning and public works, the data is mostly easy to collect. And then the other thing is, Alderman Thorpe and I loved to talk about, and Alderman Arnet too, you've probably heard him talk about the difference between output and an outcome. And a bunch of these strike me as more like outputs. Like the number of enforcement actions for illegal tree removal. It's like, do we really want that to be high?

Or do we want it to be low? And so I think we can measure that, but I think we don't really want to grade people on it because ultimately we want the answer to be zero because nobody is illegally taking out trees. So on that I think these could use some work. But I commend you on mostly having these be really easy to measure.

So for the city manager, what's your larger comment as far I hear you on the department input, but what about, I guess, the question of making additional changes now? Because it seems like only a few took the opportunity to really overhaul. So

normally I would have actually specifically worked with a few departments this year, which I did not do this year. So the departments were left more to their own devices. And some folks like Jackie took the advantage of the opportunity to really make changes, but not everyone did that. When I'm sort of more in my normal role, will be fewer options. The other thing I'll say about this, and this has certainly been part of the conversation that I've had with Alderman Huntley and conversations definitely with Alderman Arnett in the past.

You know the council's been engaging in this conversation strategic planning and how do we define what's really important to us. And there should be some alignment between that larger vision and these. And in particular I want to draw the distinction of the audience in some sense, the venue for these, is what's included in the budget book. Which is different from what we care about measuring overall for management purposes or other things? How do we tell the story of progress and the effort of the departments, and how those align with what the city is trying to accomplish?

And so I think the questions that you have here around interest in this variety of things, I don't think that's, I don't want to give the impression that we don't care about these things, or care about measuring these things. I think the question is, do we want that to be the top line story that's part of the story of what are we trying to accomplish, and how does that align with the overall strategic plan that expresses the interest and intentions of the council. I think that as that effort matures, these performance measures will then also mature. And so I think there's some ways in which those two efforts feed each other, if that makes sense.

Yeah I think I see where you're going with that. And I will get back to that. I think, well, I guess we could just go go in that direction. So I guess because what I'm kinda leaning towards because I do well, first of all, is there any I'm trying to think how to word this where to start with it. The bigger question is timing.

Like in my head, we, assuming the committee even wanted to do this, but would it be worth taking the time, say between this now and the next meeting, to get staff's feedback on these to make to at least beef up somewhat some of the environmental performance standards. Of course, that would beg the question of do we should we really, do we have the time to delay that when the budget's getting introduced? Was it May? April April 13. Our next meeting sometime we're in then.

But again, the timing might not be ideal because really the budget introduced should include these performance standards, right? So as I'm thinking out loud here, we probably don't have the time, I'm assuming, to really postpone to do some of the additional work. If that's the case, well first of you agree that's

Yeah, I the timing is not working for you. But that's also why I wanna draw the distinction between what we include in the budget book and what we might wanna talk about. To Alderman Huntley's point, part of the goal, certainly for me, of performance measures is that they should be easily collected. If they're onerous to collect, then we're much less likely to stay with that. I'd rather have a smaller set of performance measures that are reliable than a larger set that we only partially believe.

And so I think the question of whether we wanna have information on these topics that we can talk about, I think that's still essentially sort of fair game, whether they're included in the budget book or not, being a somewhat different question. So just even if, because of the timing, let's say we didn't end up banning any of these. That doesn't mean that we can't ever talk about these things or look at that data or anything else.

Yeah, so I think if we really don't really have the time, I don't want to just get these added without department input. Plus I think that'd be an uphill battle. But the question would then I guess come for me, well two, if there's anything we should pull out of here to include. And I'm not I think think that Ms. Kyle did a great job of including I think a lot of these anyway. At least some of the, like for tree canopy, that's included in the sustainability offices.

It's included but one thing I did do was try to remove things that I'm not responsible for. Like for instance, the tree canopy and a lot of the tree initiatives used to fall under my purview when I was the director of office of environmental policy, but now the urban forester is in planning and zoning. So I can't be held to that standard because that's not my job. Like I can work on some initiatives that are tree related, education etcetera. But a lot of the things I used to have under my performance standards because I had the urban tree forester with me I had to take out.

Yeah. Well I guess I'll ask Ms. Jackson maybe we add this to agenda down the road to work on some of these. Because I do think and that's kind of my question to you, miss Buckland, would be what are what are the next steps for this process? I know it it may be somewhat contingent obviously on when we get a city manager hired.

But in your mind, because I know you've been doing a lot of work on these in the past and currently, so what do you think? What's the next step? Should we schedule something for, I don't know, half a year out where we get, maybe say, hey, here are departments, here are some ideas from the committee. Take a look at these, get us a proposal, we can have a discussion. Or is that something you're gonna or somebody else in the office work on and get us some drafts for firmer standards ahead of time?

Yeah, so the departments that I would normally have worked with this year, there are four departments in particular that I haven't worked with at all. What's here is mostly legacy stuff for them, is the Office of Law, HR, Transportation, and Fire. So

when I add a little bit

more of my time back, those are the departments I'll target first because we haven't talked about those at all. For departments where you know, like you have an obvious interest in particular parts of this, I think it's fair game to have a conversation about them. None of those are transportations on my list that I would have worked with anyway, because I haven't talked with them at all. But the other two wouldn't normally have been on my list specifically talk with, but knowing your interest, then let's talk about it. And so normally I would have done some of that work over the summer after the budget was passed, and then into the very early fall.

Which is still probably the timeline that I would want to work toward.

Okay. I certainly, I don't want to take up too much more time. But I know I think I've had conversations with the Alderman Huntley about this bigger picture before. I see these performance standards as really being a key way to make sure that policies are getting and programs are getting implemented. Because just take for example, and I know it's, I see it as environmental, but it is transportation as well.

But the cycling component as an example, We had a 2011 plan that was adopted and then the person who put us together left the city. We had two director changes in the interim. That plan fell by the wayside. There were supposed to be annual updates, annual meetings with this cycling work group, and it fell off everybody's radar. But if we had some of the deliverables such as like, again, just for sake of example, linear feet of bike lane installed or whatever maintained or kind of metrics that we keep track of.

I feel like that would really help us make sure these programs are perpetuated, right, and continue. Because I've just it's just one example of things that I feel like is often just, we just don't oftentimes I feel like know what the priorities are of the departments. It changes year from year to year, whoever's in the position. I don't want to belabor this point.

You're looking at me like you want my feedback. I totally agree with you. I think this is, in a perfect world, this is one of the most important pieces of legislation that we pass every year. I think we recognize that we're not quite in that world yet and we should strive towards it. But for now, I'm happy with the work that we have done, that Ms. Buckland has done really, to get a bunch of these much better than they ever were before and recognize that we're not going to solve the other ones today or tomorrow or the next day.

I think from my perspective it's also important to just recognize that these should be sort of living, right? That we're gonna start somewhere, and if that doesn't illuminate information that's actionable, of interest, then we need to make changes. Or it's not telling us what we thought it was telling us, or we find out that it's not reliable. I don't think any of the measures that are here that there's anything sacred about them. They should they should adapt over time.

And so I don't you know the idea that there are misses in here, and there are things that aren't really framed the way that counsel's interested in, that doesn't fuss me at all. Like let's make changes then, right? Let's work over time to get that framed in ways that align with the strategic vision of the council. Help us illuminate the work that we're doing or should be doing, and give us some basis for making adjustments along the way. So And the idea that we'll need to make changes over time, yep, we definitely will. And let's do that.

Okay, so if we were to circle back, if the committee were to circle back with you or whoever on some of these standards, when should we, for next year, when should we do that? You said I think fall?

Yeah, so given the August recess, if you wanted to just start right away in September, that would make sense to

me. Okay. Alright, get a placeholder for that. And then just hearing the committee, sounds, and even myself, it sounds like we don't have time to move forward with some of these. Mean personally I'm still a little frustrated just because I'm not very happy with the standards that we're gonna be putting into next year's budget. I understand why and the time constraint we're under. I guess we'll just have to deal with it. We've dealt with it in the past. Okay, anything else from the committee? So I guess we would make a motion. Do we want to make a motion to recommend or no action? I'd probably just prefer no action but.

Yeah, I'm fine with no action.

Alright. So. Yeah. No action.

Yeah.

I don't think that needs to be motion, right? Okay. Is there a motion then? A motion for no action?

Alright. So moved.

Is there a second?

Second.

Alright. All those in favor please say aye. Aye.

Thanks for coming to talk

to Thank you, Buckland. And let's see. We have I guess so is Puppetworks prepared for presentation good? Okay. I guess what if you would join us up front, we'll start with ID 626, storm water fee incentive rebate program.

Is this an updated presentation different from the last time? Alright, if you could introduce yourself for the record. And this is part two for the presentation on stormwater. Last time you spoke about the commercial fee. Right?

Yeah. So Mike Rosberg, stormwater program manager, public works. Yes. This is the it's an updated presentation that is a continuation from the last presentation. And we'll part of part of the update is what we talked about last time and what we're talking about this week.

Ann Rotoer, stormwater engineer, department of public works. Okay. Also just thank you for your flexibility with my schedule today.

Okay.

So as you mentioned, this is part two. So part one, last time we met we walked through just sort of a background on water quality and storm water regulations and how the municipal separate storm sewer system, otherwise known as MS4 program, operates. And how the city of Annapolis storm water group works, functions with that permit. We also talked generally about the storm water utility fee that supports that MS4 program and looked at some basic benchmarks for regional how that fee fits into the region. So all of those slides are still here.

So I'm just going to flip through them. And we did talk a bit about non residential last time but we didn't quite finish the conversation because we wanted to talk about the credit program or what I'm now calling the fee reduction program. So I'm going to I'm going to go through this faster because you've heard it already. But you can always go back and watch the YouTube. What's that?

Oh no no no, never mind.

Go ahead.

No I see you. I was gonna ask something but I saw you're addressing it in a couple slides.

Okay. You can always go back and watch the YouTube from 05/08/2025 at one hour and forty eight minutes. There's a detailed conversation about the non residential rate structure and the fee reduction program. But I'm going to talk a little bit more about the fee reduction program today because we do have some some developments. So just as a refresher, the proposal on the table relative to the non residential storm water utility fee is to change the fee structure for non residential rate payers from a tiered structure to an equivalent residential unit basis, which we say, which we call an ERU, using measured impervious area.

The goal of doing, making the structural shift is to more accurately reflect existing impervious conditions and stormwater practices on-site to provide a more uniform building approach. And I'm gonna touch on touch on that a little bit more in a second. And to just generally raise awareness and incentivize storm water management for larger properties in particular. I got rid of the word equitable in this in these points and I'm sure you've seen this slide before because this is really intended to address the conditions on the ground. It's not actually intended to lift up anyone who is who has greater need.

It's really mostly about the larger properties and making sure that they're paying their share into their contribution, their use of the system. So as it stands right now, the residential fee structure is a tiered structure. The proposal is again this ERU basis. So just to clarify, an equivalent residential unit, an ERU, is really like a, it's a billing unit. It's a typical billing unit used in storm water and it's kind of, I like I keep this definition on the bottom of every slide because I don't know why it's unnecessarily confusing but it is unnecessarily confusing.

So the idea is that it's a billing unit that reflects the median impervious area of a single family detached house or detached residential property. And so in the city of Annapolis, we've established that to be 2,100 square feet. And again, that'll just show up on the bottom of the slide, so when you get confused you can look back at that. So if we look at this change you can see right now for non residential, this is looking at if a large property, the impact of the fee for a large property. So right now Annapolis, the rate would be down towards the bottom of some of our local local fees and other municipalities.

But this change would increase that contribution from large property owners fairly significantly. Very quickly, not going through the details of this because we did it last time, that means that if we have, if we look at the existing structure, a 21,000 square foot property or a 21,000 square foot impervious area property owner would fall into the second tier and they'd pay a $170.86 per quarter. If we change the structure, they would then, that would be equivalent, the 21,000 square feet would be equivalent to 10 ERUs and the rate would actually, their fee would actually triple. So that's a pretty significant difference, and those property owners with more impervious area would pay more to fund the system. And it would not be limited by the cap of tier four.

So those large property owners would see the highest increases in overall fees and are most likely to be incentivized to implement or expand their stormwater management practices. On the flip side, many nonprofits and religious institutes, or it's not really on the flip side, keeping in mind many non profits and religious institutions might have limited capital to support that sort of expansion or improvement of their storm water management. And that's where we're gonna start to talk about making this not only more consistent but also more equitable. We took a look just quickly at keeping, if we're keeping the residential structure the same for the point of this conversation just for the moment, the revenue impact of making this fee structure change and it's about 26% increase in revenue largely again coming from those larger property owners. And then if you look at the spread of that impact on the different rate payers, you can see that the majority of rate payers will actually not see much of an increase.

They fall in that 0 to $200 per quarter rate increase. But those 11 properties over to the right wouldn't see an increase of over $2,000 or up to $2,000 sorry, over $2,000 in their quarterly fees. So that's pretty substantial. And

do you have, are those, do you know which, are those typically the ones that I'm assuming have more ERUs, higher number of ERUs. So essentially those with greater impervious service to begin with or is there a particular tier where you're seeing a greater increase than the other?

No, so yeah, so within each tier, anyone that's currently at the top of the tier is in theory paying less than they should be paying and the people at the bottom tier are paying more than they should be paying. So it does shake out in each tier. But those ones there in the 11 group, those are largest property owners. Or the largest properties owner with the largest amount of impervious area. Potentially somebody could be a largest property owner who install impervious.

Do you mind if we take questions as you go? I know there's a lot of information.

Yeah

yeah. Just this is very heartening. I love the way this chart looks. When we talk about 0 to $200 sorry if this is a silly question, but how much of an increase does that represent percentage wise? The people in that category, are they typically paying $2,000 a year? Or are they typically paying $200 a year? In which case 200 is a big jump. Just very roughly.

Right, so it's, I mean it's, so they're falling in one of the four existing tiers right now. Yeah. And so there's a set amount within each. $200 could be, it could be a 100% of what you're paying but it's most likely not. It's going to be usually more like 20 to 30%. But it really all depends on where you fall in that existing tier. And so it's kind of random. And that's that's sort of the point of making the change is where you fall in that existing tier and is kind of random. Right? So if we normalize it, we can be a little bit more accurate about how it's actually reflecting what's on the ground.

And I I know that didn't exactly answer your question because I can't give you a hard number right off the top of my head, but I can try.

Yeah. That's totally fine and I don't expect it right now. The The way I'd like to be able to phrase this, and I'm hoping maybe you can help me plug in the numbers on it. The way I'd like to be able to phrase this is 90% of people will see either a decrease or an increase of no more than 10%, 20%, 50%, whatever that number is.

Keep in mind these are non residential too. Right.

This is just, yeah so this is non residential. So we could do that pretty easily with the math. I can't do it in my head right here. But 700 versus 77. So yeah, so that's 90% approximately. Yeah. Slightly, slightly less than

90%. No yeah yeah, it's 90%. I did that math. I'm trying to figure out the, the number I don't have is the

Right.

Is this a 10% increase or a 100% increase?

And it's the point is it varies for each one. Gotcha. And that's the that's the tricky part. And that's why I took out the word equitable for just this change. Because some people will see increases. Right. Some people will see decreases. And it it doesn't mean that you're you might see an increase even if you're a very small property owner. Right? Depending on where you fall in in the tier.

Yes, okay. Now I'm getting what you're saying. Thank you so much.

And then, just trying to look at the impacts of the rate on different property uses. This is not granular and it's only looking at the net change, but we can see that basically commercial, which is that other business category, the green row, will see the highest increase overall in fees. Again, there are some of those properties that will actually see their fees go down. And then, we see the churches and see the biggest decrease, but we have a very clear example, and we're working with the Heritage Baptist Church on this credit program that I'm gonna talk about next, because their fees will go up. Again, just because of where they happen to fall in that tier right now, which isn't about what they're doing to manage storm water, it's about the tiers that we've established.

So in order to to provide that more equitable approach, we are also proposing that we can currently roll out an expanded non residential feed reduction program with basically the same goals of incentivizing opportunity to maintain or improve practices. But also to limit new financial hardship for non commercial and non residential tax payers, I. E. The churches and the non profits for that more equitable approach. And we're also hoping that this program will allow us to leverage those community partners activities because they're out there in the community on the ground.

So we have initiatives around outreach and public education and participation that we can take advantage of these community partners to work together on that. So just to back up one second, right now we do have a storm water fee reduction program. It is quite underutilized but it does exist and it basically reflects what was required or what was permitted in the 2007 storm water act. Which is it allows up to 50% reduction of the storm water fee for storm water management practices on your site. And we have an application, there's some minimum requirements that are listed up here.

Basically it's it's fairly technical. It's the practice needs to meet the standards that the state has has published. And we need to set up a maintenance agreement to confirm that the property owner will continue to maintain the practice, so that we can continue to claim credit for it in our MS4 program. And we do a site visit to verify that their practice is what they say it is, that it's functioning as should be.

Question about some of the, stop me if you're going to get into this, but some of the allowable measures to get this fee reduction. Sounds like, so was it a requirement on the state enabling legislate, enabling whatever the statute is that, does that enable a credit program and then put these requirements on there as far as how you can get the credit to the local storm water fee?

It enables the credit program and it sets a limit on how much reduction you can give them.

But does it say how you put metrics on or or requirements on how you give that?

No. And municipalities do it different ways.

Because what I'm getting at is, and I think I think you do get into this too, but allowing for example people to convert their parking into vegetated, put a Well, tree, put a

practices are documented in the Maryland storm water design standards manual. Those are the approved state practices. So those need to, anything that gets, could, that's eligible for this program would need to be an improved state practice.

But it sounds like we're not limited to that if we

There are a lot. I mean it's Yeah, It's pretty big, right? Okay. It includes not just your sort of standard rain gardens and detention pools, but impervious removal of all sorts of alternative practices. I'm sure you're familiar with the standards. You want to say something more? Okay. Okay, so that is what we have existing. Currently we have eight non residential ratepayers that take advantage of this program which is pretty small. And so we're hoping that this change in rate structure, which will have an impact, a significant impact on some rate payers, will allow for that.

We'll kind of incentivize them to look more closely at this program. That said, we also want to ramp it up a bit. But this is an example of just looking at the calculation, and again I'm going to try to go kind of fast with this, but of how that reduction would happen. So step one, you calculate the percentage fee reduction. So this is an example of adding a stormwater pond and it says the maximum allowable credit is 50% for this for this practice and 60% of the total impervious areas directed to that practice.

So you get to take 50% of 60% which is 30%. So your fee goes down from from the $3.45 that we saw earlier, $3.45 30 to $241.71. And oh this is black, It's very black. Does not look like that on my computer. And when we look at this, if if we looked at all the properties that we are aware of that have approved practices in the city right now, if everyone came and applied and was accepted to this program, it would have this impact on on the revenue.

So it would have, we would increase the structure, we would change the structure and increase revenue and then we would increase the fee reductions and it would bring it back down a little bit, but not down further than where we are right now. So we are also wondering if there are opportunities to again help those, to help those other rate payers, particularly the churches and non profits, people with limited capital to increase their opportunities for fee reductions beyond that practice based fee. So when we're looking at that, we want to consider who might be eligible to receive additional reductions, what type of properties and use of properties, and whether we want to just have a hardship waiver exemption for certain property types. What qualifying activities, what activities would qualify for additional fee reductions beyond that practice based reduction. And even in the practice based if there are any changes that need to happen there, And if there's a threshold for qualifications.

And then finally, what level of reduction can they get? Again, there's the 50% mandate, but can we give them additional reductions for non practice related activities. So we took a look at several different municipalities and their programs. These are some of them, not all. And not just fee reduction programs, but various incentive programs.

And the county is always our first go to. And the county, we work with the county on a watershed restoration grant program. So we are jointly funding restoration projects through that program. The county also has property use exemptions in their fee structure. They give tax credits and they also have this DNR, Clean Marina program.

Baltimore City has so many different loopholes and craziness. There's a decision tree that is just nauseating to look at. So they have many many use carve outs including carve outs for the discharge permit holders, NIPS permit holders, for harbor discharges, for religious, for K through 12, for small green and limited development spaces. There's just a whole bunch of different different exceptions and ways to go. Prince George's County has an alternative compliance path, which is something that we were interested in and we'll talk about more.

They also have a rebate program for their residential rate payers, which has had some success but is actually currently paused because they've run out of money. So that's also kind of a red flag. Then we looked at some other programs and there are lots of different options. You know when you get to bigger cities, bigger cities like Philadelphia or New York or DC, they're actually buying practices on private properties to claim them. Which is what you start to do when you get desperate with your MS4 program.

But we might get there someday. And then Alexandria is an interesting one, and one we looked at a lot. They have, in addition to practices, they have conservation landscaping practices as acceptable ways to go and some other ways that we'll look at a little bit more. So looking at all that, what we are proposing for this program is that all types of properties, so both residential and non residential will continue to have this option for a practice based fee reduction. Again limited to 50%.

And then for non residential we're proposing an alternative compliance path where they can get an additional reduction or they could not get practice based reductions at all and they could just go on this path up to another 50%. So in theory you could get a 100% fee reduction. You'd have to be treating a 100% of your impervious area, which is hard. And you'd have to do all the other bits, but in theory it's possible. And so we're proposing that this alternative compliance path would be for tax exempt religious or other five zero one non profits for that alternative compliance and potentially also just a hardship waiver.

So qualifying activities would be those state approved on-site practices. The threshold for that would be new or redevelopment or retrofit would meet the existing guidelines and they'd have to pass our inspections that we have to do every three years. And then for activities based qualifying activities, we include options for outreach and education, green care, and good housekeeping. And we'll look at those a little bit more. Credit programs typically evolve over time and this proposal is trying to keep it pretty simple.

It doesn't seem like it by looking at the slide but it really is. But there are other interesting things that we've seen like that Green Marina program that I think would be interesting to introduce in the future to look at potentially including.

Then Which program?

The green marina one that this county does. Or looking at easements and purchasing practices or zoning allowances. You know there's there's always more options. Well maybe not always but for a while there's more options. But we're trying to keep it simple to start.

So, so the level of fee reduction would be that maximum 50% for practices and or the 50% for for the alternative compliance and then potentially a 100% hardship waiver that would be one year renewable. So this goes into the kind of details of the application for that alternative compliance path. So it gives you a, gives you kind of a look at what we're proposing. So the alternative compliance path has a outreach and education component and a green care and good housekeeping component. Again trying to leverage these institutions position in the community to expand outreach and public knowledge about stormwater management by hosting campaigns or cleanup events or stormwater management practice renewal events, different things like that.

And then the second piece, the Green Care and Good Housekeeping really is touching on lawn management, pesticides, housekeeping practices, conservation landscaping, and mature tree preservation, as well as tree planting. And these are the details of that and I'm not going to go through them right now but they're there. So just to give an example of that, if if we had our previous large property owner with the 21,000 square feet of impervious area, we previously established that they could get the 50% of the 60% which is 30% for their practices. If they were able to apply and participate in this alternative compliance path, they could get additional 25% for outreach education and another 25% reduction for the green housekeeping and landscape practices. And so that would be 30 plus 25 plus 25 is 80%.

And so their fee could come all the way down to $69 per quarter. So that's that.

Well are there any thoughts or comments on the commercial before we move on to, I mean the non residential before we move on to residential? The other one?

Just one thing. I'm a little concerned about the hardship waiver that I won't pretend to know every specific year but certainly I have seen other environmental programs where is a significant cost of compliance and everybody spends a bunch of money to show that they don't have the money to spend even more money to do the environmental compliance. I'm thinking back to some work I did with municipalities in Iowa a while ago. And I'm just concerned at how we make sure we don't have tons of people applying for that hardship waiver and losing out on significant revenue. And also more importantly, not have our creeks get clean. So have you guys thought about that much?

Yeah I agree with you. I have some hesitancy around the hardship waiver. And I think it may be something we could just try to pilot for the first year and not implement full force. We've worked mostly on the on the fee reduction program. And we are piloting that right now with the Heritage Baptist Church, trying to work through the details.

For the hardship waiver, we have been working on a hardship waiver sort of thing for our storm water, what do we call that, maintenance, storm water practice maintenance grant program. And so we do have some background information that we can use, but I don't think it would be something that we would be pushing hard. That said, I mean not everyone has, some people don't have a lot capital, but they have cultural capital or community capital. Some people just don't have any of that. But I don't I don't think it would I don't think it would come up too much to be honest with you.

And when we looked at that spread of who's impacted and how they're impacted, it's really those large property owners that already are used to paying money for, as the cost of doing business. Yeah. So I don't think they'll be attempting to claim hardship waivers. I also do maybe give people too much benefit of the doubt.

No, I mean not to say there aren't like, again using that example that I'm thinking of is Iowa wastewater treatment plants not upgrading because they really are short on count. We're talking about towns of 300 people sometimes. Yet what ends up happening is they spend $50,000 on a study to prove they can't make the $100,000 worth of repairs. And then the water keeps getting dirty. Although anyway, I can go on about Iowa water quality.

Not really the point. I think what you're saying is very reasonable and we just iterate on it and we keep an eye on what percentage is of people are seeking these hardship waivers.

Yeah, yeah. But certainly if it's a big obstacle, we just take it out.

Yeah and I'm I'm also not a huge proponent of property exemptions just blanket because I think the county does exempt religious institutions. I personally don't like that idea because well, one, they're they're already tax exempt, but two, they have a lot of impervious surface. And

Right.

I think some of the I think the point is a lot of the measures that are allowed are pretty cheap to do if, you know, for example, removing some parking spots and putting in either putting in some permeable you could put grass paved. Because a lot of these church lots are only used very for very brief periods. So you could they could certainly get away with grass paved or converting them to tree wells of some kind.

Right, and we're also trying to give them these other options. Yeah. Outreach and engagement landscaping Because anything that involves construction is surprisingly expensive.

Well and that's what we need to change too I think because they really shouldn't have to get permits if they wanna do some of the easy things on here. Like I mean yes, we want them to do obviously miss utility, make sure there's nothing. But if they wanna take out some parking spaces and put in some trees, let's make that as easy as we can. Right. So,

yes we have the tree planting part in the alternative compliance. Yeah. So that you can cover that without Yeah. Without the maintenance agreement and the standard and the practice, state approved practice. So agreed. Yeah, definitely not proposing exemptions. If it was, if there was a hardship waiver it would be for the church and non profit and they would not be able to accomplish the alternative compliance path. I mean it would be true hardship, right?

And it only lasts for, I think I saw one or two years?

One year for the hardship, yeah.

Okay so on to But it's renewable.

On to So the other thing that we were asked to look at was to evaluate changing structure for the residential rate payers, which is currently a flat fee. There's one fee for single family residences and then there's a half fee for multi family units. So changing that from either from the flat fee, sorry fat fee, to an equivalent residential unit basis, which is what we just looked at for the non residential, or switching it to a tiered basis, which is what we currently have for the non residential. Again, same goal is to more accurately reflect the existing impervious conditions for a more equitable building approach, and to raise awareness and incentivize management. There's that definition of an ERU at the bottom of screen for you just in case.

So here's our current structures, that flat fee showing up there. The one billing unit is the 34.53 for quarterly fee. And if you have a unit in a multi family situation, then you're paying that half of that. Which yeah, if you think about hard, it's hard to understand. But it is not uncommon.

Well I just wanna point out, I think it's worth emphasizing that on the flat fee, is the current, that somebody who has a know, a thousand 500 foot whatever it is townhome is paying the same fee as somebody who has a 5,000 square foot house.

Yes, as somebody who has a 50 square foot town home, I am very aware of that. And

so that's where you get into the

But we will look at that a little more, that the spread of that. So the options that we talked about are either the ERU basis, which we just reviewed that structure, or going to tiered which is maybe a kind of an interim step. And if we take a look at the existing residential properties that we have in the city, you can see that they do all, they do largely fall around that purple line, that's our ERU line, our 2,100 square feet. And so if we were to change this to the ERU structure, Anything, any of the properties above that line would be paying more, and any of the properties below that line would be paying less. And any properties on the line would say the same.

If we change it to tiered which I put I put some proposed potential tiers in there, you know you definitely still have greater density towards the bottom. Those giant properties that you were mentioning. There are some, but there aren't that many.

So you said everybody to the left of that purple line basically is paying too much right now. Well, relatively, right? Based on their actual impervious surface, they're paying a lot more than

Yes. Yeah. I mean that's kind of a gross overstatement but yes.

Politicians are good at gross overstatements.

I didn't mean that in any sort of negative way, I'm sorry. Okay so, and so we have some examples from other municipalities. Arlington does the number of ERUs, the ERU based structure for residential and Baltimore City has tiers, they have three tiers. And just to see where we fall within that range of other municipalities in the region, our current structure, our current rate is actually up there. So if we're changing that rate and we're reducing it for a lot of people, that's great.

If we're increasing it for some people, it will be even more up there. So here's an example of a small property if we made the change looking at both options. So a small property is currently paying that flat fee, $34.53. If we change their ten ten square feet to an ERU based fee, that would be one ERU. So they would then pay whatever that ERU number is, which is $34.53 ironically.

So they would not change. If we change it to a tiered structure, they would fall into that first tier, and so they would pay less. If we look at a large property, if we change that is currently paying that flat fee, if we change it to the ERU basis, suddenly they'd be paying for two ERUs, so their fee would triple. And if they, that's not right, their fee would double. Anyway, their fee would double.

Right, yeah.

Or

it would double.

It would double.

Okay, cool.

Thank It says triple, but it meant to say double. And if they, but it would triple if we move to the tier where they would fall into tier four. And that number would go up. So if we were to make this change, there is a significant amount of administrative lift that would need to occur. The non residential properties, we have eight eighty some odd non residential properties.

Residential properties, we have 11,000 plus residential properties. So we would need to do the work that we've done for the non residential program to get us to the point we're at in terms of looking at whether we need to do code updates, getting a website set up, doing outreach. We would also need to significantly revamp the billing process because right now they're not being charged based on any any kind of impervious area. They're just getting a flat fee, so that's adding an extra layer of data that we don't have collected or validated or understood in terms of billing process. And that data would require ongoing management and maintenance and transfer to billing every year.

The biggest bit I think with this potential change is the appeals process. Which is something that already exists. It's required to exist. It's in the city code. I believe, again if we go back to my my townhouse and my my bill, if I got a bill that was radically different or even slightly different, I would take a hard look at it.

And if I didn't agree with what they said, I would appeal it instantaneously. So when we're talking about 11,000 properties, that's a lot of potential appeals. So we want to be sure that we are presenting the information to them through some sort of tool that, like an online viewer or something through GIS, and we have examples of those, which would take some effort to get in place. And at this point, we're still a bit concerned about the integrity of the data and whether we could back it up. That said, all of these structures have wiggle room.

So if you're in a tier, you're getting charged based on you know a range of impervious area. So that's your margin of error, right? And if you're getting charged based on an ERU, you're getting charged based on that that base unit, that billing unit. So that 2,100 square feet again is your margin of error. So that's a pretty, those are, those can be pretty good margins of error.

But when you start to get to the bigger property owners is where where it could get be, get fussy, or if they're falling on the edge of a tier, they could be battling that they should be in the other tier. So that's one major concern we have. Those are two major concerns we have. The data validation for a much larger data set and the administrative lift of handling appeals.

Sorry if you mentioned this, I had to step out. The, so for the ERU, that, do you have that listed as 2,100 feet? The tier structures is, I'd have to do the math on this, but it's

I'll get back to it.

1,400 or so in between each tier. What would and are you gonna maybe you'll get into this. Like, is there a benefit to doing it based on your year or based on tier?

Yeah. And So how do

you actually charge the year you? Is it best at a one on one when somebody gets their bill? One or do you get a decimal, go into a decimal?

No, gets rounded.

It It gets rounded.

That's why it's, that's why it's your margin of error. So really that's kind of the big, the big difference between them is whether you want, whether you want your margin of error to be 2,100 square feet or half of 2,100 square feet. And whether, well I'll go to that slide. Okay. We can can read my answer to your question.

Okay. But

you're saying either way, needs to be more work done

Yes.

To get to

Right. So potential barriers, we're kind of talking through the administrative requirement for the data validation, the appeals, the tracking, the maintenance. Anticipate that would be a 1.5 FTE to manage at the overall and more at the startup. So the challenge there is supporting those additional costs is potentially going to offset any savings that a smaller property would see because we would have to increase the overall rate by 10%. And then multi unit properties are a sticky wicket. How to figure out how to charge them is a big task.

Because

none of them are the same, right? Potential benefits. So the measured structure could result in some savings for the smaller properties, we saw in the example when you were gone, you can go back and look at it. We saw in the smaller property for the, if we switch to the tiered. If we switch to the ERU, they actually stayed the same.

But if we switch to the tiered, saw a benefit or reduction in their fee. Given the spread that we looked at, of the house sizes are, we think that that has a limited equity impact. And may not really incentivize those property owners because really the cost of installing the practices is far exceeds the savings they might realize. And I didn't back up the number return on investment calculation there. So you had asked if we switched to a tiered system, would that be easier?

I think it, so the recording, tracking, the administrative bit would be similar. But it could potentially reduce the number of appeals because it's a little less precise. So that would potentially reduce, I mean that's speculation. But that is my speculation.

Oh yeah, go ahead.

So this is just a kind of spitballing thing. But if we wanted to sort of phase this in, because one of the things I'm hearing from you is that the real limiting factor is appeals. And I think that's totally right. Is there a way that we could say, we're keeping the structure for 90% of people. We're keeping the current structure.

But if you are in the top 10 highest percent, we're creating just a second tier. That is those properties with the highest amount of impervious surface. And we'll expect them to pay some additional amount. Is that possible or would it be too burdensome because we'd still have to figure out everybody's impervious surface to do that. Let me ask you. Yeah. Does that address some of your concerns?

Yeah, so that's, if you kept the flat fee for everybody, but that upper tier, I don't know. Is that a thing? I'm not sure, that's a possibility. I think if you do switch to tier, then you do have to, yeah, again the recording and tracking of the impervious area for everyone has to happen.

Well it would essentially still be tiered except there'd be only two Two

tiers, right.

Right.

So yeah, and you'd still wanna be able to go and see where you fall in that.

But I think the people who, the only people, under the proposed tier structure, the only people who would be appealing would, sounds like would be the medium to large properties. Because they're the ones who would see

the They

could, it could be that or it could be the people on the edges of the tiers. Right? Yeah. Because if I'm on the bottom of tier two, and I really think I should be in tier one.

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So here's my recommendation. Maintain the current fee structure for the residential properties at the moment. Because it, I don't think that the benefit really is equivalent to the, is enough for the lift.

That is one step. Draft an amendment to revise the non residential fee structure from tier to ERU because we think we have seen that there is a real benefit there. Particularly when it's done concurrently with the upgraded fee reduction program. We're gonna skip

Are this for a you going to propose moving forward with that? The administration gonna move forward with that in the budget you know as far as moving towards the non residential?

So we'll talk about that in a second.

Okay. And well on the residential before we get to the other point, is do you have a chart like you did earlier for non residential that show revenue?

No, we haven't done that analysis.

Okay. So I think that'd be

important And so that's, part of that falls into four and five. So four is to develop that lookup tool, whether it's just a thing that spits out a number at you, or whether it's GIS based and you can see your property. For the non residential, so that can support this new fee structure for the non residential, but we can also do it as a test pilot to see if we want to do this for the residential. Which again, has a much larger scale, 800 properties versus 11,000 plus. So if we give it a shot with the non residential, we can see how that goes and work towards the residential if we think it, if it makes sense.

And then in the meantime, we can also continue to evaluate other incentive programs including enhancements. My biggest recommendation would be looking at enhancements to the existing residential storm water fee reduction program. Focusing more on the carrot than the stick basically. Because I think that's where the bigger impact would be.

So on that, oh you're going back to the schedule.

Say that for a sec.

Yeah. On that, I just wonder if you could work in something to Alderman Huntley's point. Because I see your I like the idea of just moving forward with the non residential and then you're talking about concurrently implementing, let's see, fee reduction program. But I'm just wondering if there is another step we could take which would be to increase. Because I just, it's those large properties that really like to give them an incentive to take action. Because they are, they're really underpaying their Right. Based on their actual impacts.

Right. So and that's where I'm, my proposal is to look closer at their fee reduction program, less where I think we can really incentivize them. I don't know that the, that this is the right tool because the numbers that they will paying more are not significant percentage wise. I mean if you are a large property owner, alert home property owner, the scale is still much smaller, so your increase in fee is not really gonna be that much. So let's look at the incentive programs rather than the fee program. That would be my recommendation for now. And again, this is evolving.

Yeah.

And we can work on this fee lookup tool, the viewer, and see how that works for non residential. If we feel like it works well, we can you know, talk about what how that needs to happen for residential. But for right now, we can definitely move forward with the non residential. He's been talking about it for a while.

Yeah.

And when we talked about it last year, we had this calendar and in that red box it said that we needed to get a rate amendment to counsel by, or to the finance committee by June. That never happened. Think, I don't really know why. I was excited for it to happen, but it didn't happen. I think we got kind of caught up in the actual rate change numbers distracted and it didn't happen.

So this year I've made that red box bigger. And I would like to recommend that you do it sooner. Basically right away, which is why I didn't want to postpone this session today. So that we can get that amendment to the finance committee and get it through review. It would still, I'm still proposing that we have a hundred day waiver period once it starts, so that we can kind of provide technical assistance and get people on board before we just triple some people's fees.

Yeah.

But it needs to start now if we're gonna do that.

Yeah, no this is, it just complements you on this. It's so incredibly helpful to see this charted out as far as when you're planning on doing these things. It just helps us really understand where you're, what to expect.

Yeah and for the residential, I mean we can also make a calendar for that but it's not, there's no way we could potentially get that done in the next three weeks. Yeah. All the things that would need to happen. So we have at least a year to work on it, and we can talk further about you know, whether you do want to do that financial impact analysis, can do that. Those are my recommendations for the moment.

I mean, I see the benefit of having it by April 1, but also it could just get incorporated into the general fee schedule that gets introduced when the mayor introduces budget. So, we could have a little bit more leeway on that. I thought you were going to say something. No, no. Meaning, yeah, we could potentially have a little bit more time on it, I would think.

Yes, I'm being more aggressive because it slipped last time. We did get caught up in the discussion of the fee. But we were told by finance that it would need to be a specific amendment about the rate structure, not just the fee change.

Got it.

So we, and I kind of just want to keep those in their own lanes. Because they're not the same.

Alright. So that's Yeah. So what is gonna be introduced in the budget then?

So that blue bar that's the second from the top is the continuing every year those discussions about the rate changes. And so we'll have Stantec in I think at the next finance committee meeting to talk through the rate change. And that those discussions will happen you know over the next two months and then that will go to the finance committee for final approval with the budget. Okay.

Anything else? Questions?

I gotta tell you this is one of the most detailed and impressive presentations I've ever seen in my time on the city council from any employee. Like way to go. This is so much detail. This is, it was so well done. Thank you very much.

Great. Yeah, thank you.

And again, if you want to watch it again, May 2025, YouTube.

Yes. Yeah. Excellent job. And I'm just thinking like I guess, I know this is nothing to we need to rush because I I I agree as far as let's focus on the non residential. But and maybe Stantec could help with this. But at some point next year, would like to see some scenarios as far as if you did wanna move if we did wanna move all of us, you know, in the direction of a tiered or ERU based model for residential, what would the impact be on revenue?

Right.

Right? Right. And then staff, associated staff costs that would have to be absorbed by the watershed fund just so we can get an idea if it's something we would wanna move forward with or not. I I'm inclined to just because I do wanna make it more equitable and actually capture the the actual impacts from these larger properties who are way underpaying what they actually contribute to degrading our water quality. And I feel like that feeds into the rate reduction program and getting them to, giving them a reason to do what we're trying to get them to do as far as reducing impervious.

Understood. So I mean I did include the cost for administrative in estimate, but and I did speak with Stantec. I don't, didn't just come in here off the cuff. And their recommendation was not to make this change at this time, but we could certainly continue to analyze that. And again, my recommendation would be also to take a hard look at the fee reduction program for residential and see how we can amp that up. Because that it's a place for a possible impact.

Okay, alright. Yes, Alderman.

Just a minor thing. When we're thinking about, not rate structure, but like when we're calculating our impact, the impact of storm water. Do we consider delivery factors? Like put it another way is a house, maybe this is really a question for you, is a house with let's just make it up 10,000 square feet of impervious surface right next to a creek better or worse for that creek than the same amount of impervious surface farther away from the waterway?

So you wanna answer that?

Go ahead.

Okay. So our storm water management requirements have, we have different requirements for waterfront properties than non waterfront properties. And there's critical area requirements as well. So those are, the critical area requirements are pretty extensive. The storm water management requirements, it's just a grading trick, a grading permit trigger changes from 5,000 square feet for a non waterfront property to 2,000 square feet for a waterfront property. That's maybe a little less significant than the critical area requirements. Mike, do you want to add on

to that?

Far as, but we don't have, you don't pay a higher fee if you're closer to the water or anything. Right. It's, there are stricter requirements if you want to develop closer to the water or in the critical but the fee is not based on your location, your proximity to any resource or anything like that.

Yeah. Okay. Thank you. And I don't I don't even think that would be legal. We'd have to check the Yeah.

No. The way I'm the reason I asked the question is I was thinking about the fact that probably many of our particularly large properties at least in my ward or large in terms of having a lot of impervious surface are right on the water. Like if you have the money to buy water for property, you've probably also got money to build a house there. And so I was thinking about if we implemented some rate structure that had a bigger impact on larger properties, how it would have a bigger impact also on properties that are closer to the water. And thus if we had something like we have for the non residential where you could offset it by having some kind of compliance type thing then maybe we would drive more of that near waterways.

But anyway, I was just trying to get that crucial piece whether it made sense or not.

We mentioned that the county does that marina program. So like they know that things close to the water and the activities that are going on, they're trying to target specific things for those areas.

Makes total sense. Yep. Alright. We're running we're out of time very much. So thank you so much again. Thank you. And miss Scott, always do this to Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. I apologize. I'll put you up front of the next meeting. But I I actually do have a meeting I need to get to soon. So I'll give you five, ten minutes for I know you have a lot to go through. Any any key highlights? And is there, well first is there anything from the committee that you really want hear an update on? Go ahead. Okay. I mean as far as on this list? No yeah. Okay, alright so.

Well I guess street lights, but you'll cover that probably. Street lights.

Oh, street lights. Okay. So yes, I will. Overall, my team is focused on building efficiency, reducing our energy usage and energy rates, and transportation initiatives that we work closely with Department of Transportation on as well as putting more electrical vehicles in our fleet from light duty to medium duty vehicles, And then working towards police and fire. So we do have a number of initiatives and grant applications in around solar on city facilities.

And we're waiting on some of those grants and we have some. And then the other thing would be transitioning lights to LED which BG and E is working on all of the ones that they own and maintain and the ones that the city owns but BG and E maintains. And they've done probably two thirds of those at this point to LED. Then the remainder are city owned and maintained. But we are work we do have grant money and we are working to move all of those over to LED at this time as well.

The other thing that we're doing with light posts that are owned and maintained by the city is we have money to do five volt posts. Volt post is a charging company, electric vehicle charging company that you use the power off of the light pole. BG and E did not want us to use any of their light poles. Dylan Laconich made a presentation to historic preservation commission a couple weeks ago that went rather well. They just didn't want any on Main Street.

But we are looking at Hanover Street and West Street and one other area for the volt posts. So we can have charging on the street by people coming to do business or who live in the area overnight charging, etc. Then we know we're looking at other areas to continue to put in electric vehicle charging. We do have grant money that we're putting in two l twos, so four ports and one DC fast charger at the police station. So we're looking at doing facility by facility and we thought we'd start with police, you know, putting the infrastructure there so then we can buy the cruisers as well.

But meantime, there are other vehicles like their parking enforcement and inspectors and day to day people in and out who are not using cruisers could use those and get them used to the idea and feel comfortable with electric vehicles. Part of the earmark request that I put into the federal federal earmark funding was for a solar on the roof of OEM police station headquarters backed up by a micro grid and generator. So that would also go nicely with the EV charging and we could use that for the EV charging. That could be a completely clean energy fueled building over there and the infrastructure as well. So we're kind of excited about that.

I did receive a letter from MDM that said that was an eligible project. But only eligible as far as it affects the EOC If we were to also include police headquarters with the microgrid and the solar power, that we would the city would have to put money into that as well. But we do have grant money for that sort of thing, so we are looking at that.

I have a question. I do want to have a question on the city ferry, electric ferry, well I know it's now a hybrid ferry. Because that is something that actually, you know, that we've we've talked about in the past in relation to, like, Cars Beach. And I Mhmm. Because it could potentially be a connection for people to get from my ward downtown. And so I I yeah. So I'm just curious what the status of it is of Yep.

So that's which is now the ferry is now hybrid per the requirements of the federal government. And the RFP is ready to be advertised. However, the administration has asked us to put a pause on that and seek input from the Maritime Advisory Board on their get a recommendation from the Maritime Advisory Board, so I've requested to have it put on this Tuesday's agenda, a short presentation on the ferry where it stands, benefits, challenges, opportunities, and get their recommendations. The mayor wanted that before he would sign off on the new grant. It's a grant agreement that we would have to sign off on.

And whether we would pursue that or not, we've had a lot of blowback from Eastport. Much of that was is is around parking and the fact that there's some misconception that we would open the cities trying to get people to park in Eastport and then take the ferry over to City Dock when it's quite the reverse. The idea is that people park in Hillman or somewhere else come in by bike, bus, whatever, and then take the ferry over to Eastport. Into the heart of Eastport, there's a little blowback on the 5th Strip street landing mostly around parking again, which the city did not plan to encourage on 5th Street.

Can can you share with the committee the materials that are getting shared with the maritime advisory board?

Which materials?

I guess whatever the is gonna be in the presentation.

Oh we will have very, the harbor master's putting together a few slides right now really just showing possible routes for the ferry and like what a ferry boat would look like so they don't have a misconception that it's a very large boat. It would have to be fairly small, about 35, 38 feet at most in order to fit at the 5th Street landing. And it, you know, we have ideas about even going across the river to Holly Beach, which is now owned by DNR. It was purchased from Chesapeake Bay Foundation. So as a recreational stop. So it could be Holly Beach, Hawkins Cove, Cars Beach, and across the 5th Street, and then any other place you'd like to take it. Alright.

I'm gonna have to call it there. I will follow-up with you on that because I just wanted to have more of a conversation about the ferry.

Yeah. I just wanna add real quickly, the greenhouse gas inventory is done and the climate action plan is going into draft form. It I'm going to work on a work work session for city council on the climate action plan and also a public meeting date for the climate action plan. Council? For the public meeting and for council, a work session with council.

Okay. Good.

And that would most likely happen in April or early May.

Okay.

But I'll have a draft available to you before the meeting.

Okay. Okay. Thank you.

You're welcome.

And I promise we'll put you first on the agenda next time. Alright, anything else we go to the order? Alright, is there a motion to adjourn?

So moved. Or second.

You can't do both. She moved it. I second. Oh, she did. Okay. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Meeting adjourned. Thank you all.