Environmental Matters Committee - Regular Meeting

May 8, environmental matters committee meeting. We'll do a roll call. Alderman Arnett? Yep. Alderman Finlayson? Present. And is there a motion to approve the agenda?

So move.

Second.

All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. We have approval of the minutes from March or sorry, April 10.

Move approval of the minutes from the April 10 meeting.

Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Legislation. Let's see. So we have transit development plan, and then we have where the time is? Anybody? We have two pieces of legislation, and then we, okay, and then we have some IDs. Alright.

So mister Moore, director Moore, are you ready to start? I have r 1725, which is thousand twenty five transit development plan, city of Annapolis. And, unfortunately, we just had a long conversation about this yesterday, so you're spared from lots of my questions. But do you have do you wanna give a presentation or anything to us?

Yeah. I don't have a Good afternoon, everyone. Marcus Moore, director of transportation and parking. I don't have the total presentation posted and all, but I can give you updates on on where we are and what what it's all about. This particular plan is done every five years for our funding sources for, it's like a road map to take a look at where we are and where we like to go as far as making changes.

The last transit development plan that was presented to the council was back in 2019, and some of the ideas that were put forth in it have been adopted this year. One being the microtransit on demand service, which is still in its infancy. It's a pilot program for another two years that we started back in July July 15. And it continues to grow as we, you know, figure out how we can best utilize that. So part of the plan, the TDP that we have, is looking at how we look at zones within the city, how we can better serve the city, with what we have right now.

So some of the things that we're coming up with are the senior centers and how we can, look at a better line going directly to the high school, which is actually in the county. There is service to the high school currently with the, the county's route that we used to operate, the yellow route. But there may be a better way of making that for our neighborhoods getting into the high school without changing at the mall, because that's the only way you're you're getting there now as before when we ran it back in 2018. So the road map that has been sent, like, send it again to an abridged version of it with the highlights, the key points as well, and we can extrapolate from from that report that was that has been presented on first reader back on the fourteenth to the city council. And as Alderman Savage mentioned, we had a full presentation from the planners that put it together, AFH yesterday, with a very lively discussion.

So we're gonna answer some of the questions that came up from yesterday's conversation on it, and we can get that information, back to all the committees that want it, specifically, ATC, the Transportation Committee, of course, the environmental matters and whomever else would like to see what we're looking at. One of the cautionary points of it, this has been going on for about eight months as far as the meetings with stakeholders, shareholders, residents that don't ride, that could ride, our own employees, our drivers, and looking at, like I said, the health of the system and what are some viable options that we we could make that make sense. Some of them are cost neutral, but many do come with a cost, which will, you know, add another a bus and a route. Some of our guidelines are to try to keep a headway, and that's how long it takes a route to make a complete trip, under thirty minutes, or from one end to another before it turns back. The guide there is about thirty minutes, where after that it becomes unattractive.

And, one of the things you'll find in most transit systems of a city of our size, not a metropolis like New York City, LA, Chicago, where having a car is a big luxury. Here, we're we're catching more of the folks that don't have those means, but we like to get those that do have those means as being a viable option. And what does that mean? It's the frequency of operation and how we, get from a to b, safely, efficiently, and effectively, to make better use of their time without having to drive. But, I I can answer some of the questions that you might have.

But like I said, KFH, made the presentation for us yesterday, and they're gonna come back with some of the question answers answers some of the questions that were brought up, at our meeting, ATC yesterday.

Mister Jerry, I'm surprised the presentation is up because I thought Josh was here because it's on our, in our, on our iPad. But we do have your presentation, the entire 100 The report? Yeah.

Oh, no. There was a actually, a a presentation deck of about 12 or 14 pages that kind of KFH went through that was loaded at yesterday's meeting.

Yeah. We don't have that. We have the full

Yeah. Draft And what the other one was was pretty much pulling out the highlights of the plan and how it was arranged when we first met back in June and the progression throughout and some of the comments and the things that were heard through, you know, we had it up for public comment on their website for thirty days, and our face to face meetings that we had actually at our location. I think it was four or five meetings over the last six months. And grabbing what people actually brought to our attention of what they wanted to see in an Annapolis transit plan, things that they wanted to see that would require a change. You know, how are we doing? What can we do better? What would you like to see? What's preventing you from writing? Why are you writing? Do you have a choice?

And that's kind of the things that we've been going through over, you know, the last, nine months. They prefaced it also with, when you get government funds each within the state of Maryland anyway, I'm sure it might be nationwide, you're required to have this kind of a health of your system done, a transit development plan performed. Our neighbors, Anne Arundel County has done that, and they completed theirs probably a few months before us. I wanna say the fall of last year, and we went through sim similar thoughts of how their their service could be better. We also have regular meetings with the county and how we can help them with what they're trying to do with micro transit on demand service.

Because they've seen what we've done and like what we've done, and how can they be a part of that. So we've had, we've been in conversation with them as a director, chief officer of transportation in the county to see how we can better serve them. We have more of the infrastructure to do that with the drivers, the location, the buses. A lot of theirs is outsourced to another party to operate the service. So we we're kind of the experts in kind of leading edge with them in some of the things that we're doing.

So, director, do you want us to bring we might be able to bring up the presentation from yesterday if you wanted

us to We we could. We can probably go through it if if you'd like. Yeah. We can I didn't present yesterday? Help me answer the questions, but at least we can share what we had. That would be good.

If you want, let me just see. Is that committee of interest in that? Or Yeah. You wanna see the presentation

from yesterday?

I I would, but I also have a couple global questions to ask. But yeah. Because this is a lot of information to

Well, we might as well wait for the presentation because that might answer some of your questions. Do you wanna we could push you down the agenda if you want while we wait.

Well, I'm Oh,

he has it?

He can put it Can

you bring it up now? Oh, okay. Yeah.

Okay. I'll let Ross ask

the question.

You wanna start with start He's gonna he's gonna run it from the studio. Yeah, Ross, you wanna go ahead and start?

Well, my two overarching questions are, as you pointed out in your presentation to the budget committee, we actually have two transit systems, and I think we only need one. And I really do think it needs to be a regional transit system. So I look forward to seeing what you discuss in this report regarding that. But, the other thing that I'll be looking for is how your transportation plan integrates with the comprehensive. And in particular, which comes first, the chicken and the egg, this good transit system, we get good new development, and therefore, seems like it needs to proceed, any of the move to the comprehensive plan.

So those are gonna be overriding. I don't I don't know whether we have a choice or not to pass the resolution because the resolution says we accept the report, unless we're planning to send you back and rewrite the report. But I do think that these two big questions are of grave importance in terms of transit itself, in terms of planning, and in terms of budget. So, those are those are what I wanna hear about.

Yeah. One of the things good question, Alderman, Barnett. The transit plan, the CDP is a a grant funded plan, where it was, adopted last year. Well, for this fiscal f y twenty five, it was a part of our budget for our our local share. The, comprehensive 2040 plan is all, city funded and more of a, like, obviously, a longer term 2040.

Our transit plan is a five year roadmap of things that we could do, recommendations from those stakeholders and shareholders that were part of this or, well, I should say a part of it, in person or just writing into us and, the transformation planners were putting their notes a part of it, and then kinda weighing through what what we could do, what makes sense. And so you're you're voting on the TDP as a roadmap of things that we might do. And as I keep going back to the 2019, there was there was a lot of things there that was a possibility, the one being fear free. And things like that will cost money. So what do you do to make up the deficit if you decide to go fear free with all of our our transit services?

We'll need more money coming out of maybe the parking fund or other general funds to to fund it. There's a statement out there that thinks that, well, there's not a lot of money coming in for fares, and it should be easily to make up. But one of the things is that we do get, you know, organizational paid fares on the side that equals to what we have. So you might just think that 320 to 330,000 is it. It's more like, you know, the 600 plus.

And then we do get subsidies from the county because we go into the county. So certain things would still be in play most likely from the county. But any organizational paid fears, like from DGS with the state shuttle, or those organizations that buy monthly or daily passes, I should say, for, like, the lighthouse shelter, the detention center, Arundel Lodge. There's a list of about seven or eight that adds to about 15,000, and the DGS is about 265,000. You add that all in.

So those are things that take in consideration to go with a system like that. Well, how much does it cost you to collect fears? In some smaller agencies, that may be a big question, but we have the infrastructure for the last seven or eight years with electronic fare box. So it basically counts and says what we should have. We bag it up and brings comes and take it to Wells Fargo.

There's not a whole lot. We're not counting money on on the side of of of our building to do that deposit. So sometimes, it may look at, well, how much does it cost you to prepare this to go to make the deposit to come back into the general fund of the of the city? That's a decision that legislators like yourself would have to make, you know, what makes sense, you know, who who is writing. Will that increase ridership? I wanna say yes. Will it increase new ridership? Maybe in some. Will it increase those that were riding before to ride more? Definitely.

So, you know, you wanna look at, more of a robust system, but going to places that we didn't go before. So part of what we look at with, the transit development plan and other things that we're tweaking are making, you know, recommendations with micro transit, which is a really big thing. We can move on to who is it on? Next slide that we can go to. So when you we look at it here, what what is what are we building on?

You know, what are our our objectives? And what are we trying to do when we actually put this plan, this five year short range plan together, as I made mention of the comprehensive 2040 plan, which obviously is going out to 2040 and probably beyond. So we build upon the formulas and goals and objectives from what we already have, and we'll review what our current transit system looks like and make some adjustments because we all know that we have some unmet needs. And when you have to get certain things from a store, you know, that was better than a CVS or a Walgreens, you might call yourself a food desert in some places of of esport. So, you know, making a system that will that can get you to a brawl, a giant, a Safeway into the mall.

We have some unmet needs. Does it make sense to operate a bus every fifteen, thirty minutes, or forty five minutes, or basically the on demand. So, we wanna, you know, take a look at well, this plan did take a look at these factors and want to see what our traveling public actually, thought along the way. Next slide, please. So the process, as you can see here, what we did was a kickoff initiating the plan.

That was back in June 2014. And like I said, KFH planners were assisting us with organize organizing it and setting up, the questionnaires and say how the the the they will function as a unit, stakeholders, shareholders, residents, current writers, and I said and and the like. So the baseline is looking at the existing system, Annapolis Transit, as it is today, and looking at, you know, the demographics and, land use. And a lot of the places like Annapolis Town Center, where you have, that kind of a land use where it is, residential, and shops and all, you know, those those are big places that you can definitely, make sure that you're servicing. In the community at large, what are the issues and opportunities?

You know, we're trying to get to school, work, pleasure play, medical appointment, and all. So when you look at the system, you know, the you know, what are we looking at for operational capital investments into the system to operate with what we already have, or needing more, you know, staffing buses or, build outs for, safety, bus stops. So when you look at safe routes to transit and all and the like. The final stage is where we are now is developing that plan, and that came to fruition, probably in February and then was put out again, like I said, on our website for public comment for, about thirty days or so. Next slide, please.

So the public participation and community outlets look, you can kinda see in the top left is what the the actual plan, the actual survey looked like, and this is what, a snapshot of what it looked like actually online. So our public advisory committee, the transportation committee, the transportation board, all the surveys that you can see here from, you know, with the rider survey. We actually put them on board the bus where the the driver would hand them out and bring them back in, and we would get them back to KFH, our transportation planners, to review them. You know, the operations and driver input was very, very big because what do they see? What do they hear?

That is their office. Their their that is their job, so they're there every day. They would basically know what, more of what we would like to know or learn more about. And then the public comment, period was about thirty days, like I mentioned, online. But, out in the field, it was probably a little bit more than that. Next slide, please. So the summary of the needs assessment is what we want, what people, current riders are saying, and basically what we knew, you know, the morning, evening, and Saturday service. So, obviously, the morning, evening is going to work, going to school, getting back. And Saturday, we're running our chores, but also in there, have other appointments that we need. What does the Sunday service look like?

You know, where where are we going? Right now, we're operating, eight until 8PM. We want more frequent service. And as we may have mentioned, if we can keep, you know, those headways below thirty minutes, it makes it pretty viable. And if I can stop here, just talk a little bit about our our GoTime, our on demand service, one of the things that we did was look at the frequency of service.

The purple route and orange route were the two most underutilized routes that we have, And the orange route was Monday through Friday from five until seven 05:30 to seven. And the purple picked up at night and all day Sundays and holidays. That purple route covered our almost our complete service area. So a headway there going from the mall towards Turnaround Point in Eastport was about an hour and twenty minutes. Unbearable.

But if that's the only show in town, that's what we anyone that needed the ride needed a ride home, that's what they did. So what we did with the micro transit, which was, like I said, the recommendation from 2019, we are piloting, a service called GoTime on demand service, to try to fix this. And in the first few months, it equaled the service, and right now it's, you know, single digits more than what we were carrying before. So, it it addressed that frequency of operation. And what it actually is, you can take a look at your we've updated on our phones, go our Google phone or our Google Google and Play Store, you'll be able to look at the Transgo app and actually make a reservation yourself, or you can actually, you know, call our office and make that reservation.

And our success is if once you made the reservation, if we can get you in twenty minutes or less. And for the most part, we are getting between fifteen and twenty two minutes of the time the reservation is made. If I can use the purple again, remember starting, at the mall going all the way to Eastport, making some, you know, 28 stops, it's gonna take an hour and twenty minutes. Somebody now going from the mall to the same point, you know, it's a shared ride, so making stops along the way, it wouldn't be every single stop that they the Purple would make. It's doing it in less than half the time.

And that's probably some of the success of GoTime that it's going when you wanna go, not when the route is, operating. And what we have is some of our regular stops and we have virtual stops. So even though it's a watered down version of Uber or Lyft, you put your location finder on and it says, I wanna book a ride, and it'll tell you how close the nearest stop to where you would be picked up, and you're putting your location. So if you said something like 308 Chickapin Round Road, which is a place I go to regularly, and I put 160 Duke Of Gloucester Gloucester. It may have the bus stop right in front of me.

It'll tell me, you know, a bus may be around in, seven or eight minutes. Please wait at this point, and you could actually follow the bus along the way. So two more years of this three year pilot, we can see how we can expand it. But one of the things you'll see in future slides of breaking it down into regions, Region 12, and three. One being more in the Eastern part, Annapolis Neck or Ward 7, And 3 being kinda out of the county I mean, out of the city into the county when you're looking at the hospital, parole, the mall, and the high school.

So we're we're tweaking those things, but we'll take a closer look at it in the other maps that'll be coming up. So those are the key destinations that we're really looking at when you look at these maps that are coming in, next that we'll share with you. Can I get to the next slide? I'm sorry.

I think we have a question from Walter Moore next.

I'm sorry. So when GoAnnapolis comes in response to an on demand, what is coming? Is it a bus? Is it a a vehicle like a Lyft or an Uber?

Yeah. It is one of our shorter buses which is called a cutaway Ford e four fifty bus that is handicap accessible. It can have right now, the ones we have are 15 seaters. We just ordered some newer ones that are eight seater. It is a bus, and we have head signs that are dynamic. It will say go time right on the front. Just like you see our buses now that says brown a, brown b, or magenta shuttle on the front or the side. So be identifiable that way. And you're at that location where you are, so you'll be looking for that bus, and, they'll be looking for you at that location. So it is a Annapolis Transit, marked bus.

So this brings to mind, recently, I had a doctor's appointment on West Street and I saw two county buses there, the big, full, looks like a school bus kind of thing. One lady came out and got on one of the buses and left and a couple came out and got on the other bus and left. That doesn't strike me as a very efficient mode of operation. I know that's the county. But if we're also sending bigger buses on the on demand. How how efficient is that?

Yeah. I I can't answer that without having more information. I'm not sure exactly what that is, but we wouldn't be sending anything. We operate three quarters of mile within our fixed bus route. So, yeah, West Street is within our realm of where we service, but you're saying county buses, what were they doing, how were they doing, was it Department of Aging, was it NTA? I I can't answer without actually knowing more markings on the bus than what it had, but that doesn't sound like efficiencies. But it wasn't us, so I can't answer

for that.

But you said that we send a cutaway bus, which I admit I don't know what it is, but it sounds like a multi passenger bus. Is it only picking up the one on demand customer or is it gathering and dropping off people along

the way?

See, that's the beauty of it. It's on demand. So when you call, you could be with three or four people or one person depending how far you're going. It's really the on demand, and the algorithms will put the folks on the bus where that actually is. So right now, it being what time is this? 03:29, we have servicing three quarters of a mile of the Orange Route. And the orange Route would come here to 160 Duke Of Gloucester. But it's, you know, I would have to share a map with you to show where the orange route goes. It's not covering the whole city until after 07:00. But it's kinda hard to answer that scenario you described without having a little bit more information.

But, clearly, it was not us as you described it as being county bus. But, you know, cutaways just yet, we expect you to know what those look like, but it is an an Annapolis transit bus, not a big transit bus that's also Annapolis transit. It's the shorter ones that have a hood on the front where all of our larger transit buses are are flat fronts. So I'm not sure what the other one was that you saw, where they were going, or what they were doing.

One was aging and one had green on it or something

like So they have, their service some go go something with a green logo then Department of Aging. But, yeah, that's the county. I really can't answer what they were doing, what was going on, or why they were too nearby. Thank you. Yeah. Where we are? Okay. So some of the proposals that you see in the full transit development plan, like I said, this presentation just extrapolated some high points from it. But streamline the, you know, the current routes that we have, which are are are brown, green, and red. You know, make them a little bit more in line with what we wanna do with the population density where we should be going.

Implementing a new blue route, just making another color that it will separate from the other routes that you see there, and you can you'll see some maps of what was actually being presented that's in the full full TDP, and we can explain a little bit more about it. But also proposals was, you know, expand the go time as I just made mention of what what it is in the morning, evening, weekend services of the routes described above. But one of the things, Alderman, on that you did bring up, and it looks like it's discussed right here with better coordination with Anne Arundel County, you know, the Department of Transportation and the MTA, which, brings the number 70 bus into, Annapolis from Patapsco. That is clearly their longest route, going from Patapsco into the city, and it comes into the city off of Rowell Boulevard down Calvert Street, and makes that left onto, West Street and around the circle and back out Saint John's. I don't know the frequency, but I'm sure it's every bit of, like, a hour and twenty minutes, that it comes through, daily.

But better coordination, with these other services that were right in the county, obviously, but, you know, MTA of Baltimore is servicing Anne Arundel County and the city of Annapolis. So some of the proposed improvements are listed here, and that last bullet number five or box there, Alderman, all net Arnett, that does look like it'll be looking at some of the ways that we can better coordinate, economies of scale because there is an invisible barrier when you look at, the mall is in Annapolis, but it's actually the county. So that one route that they took over from us, which we ran, which is the yellow route, which does go to the to the high school, it never came into the city proper. It was all county. So they brought that in back in 2018, saying they can run it more efficiently and cheaper.

And then all of our buses, which are the top mentioned, the brown, the red, and the green, all go to the mall. So all these buses, go from Eastport, on Monroe Street is the end of the line to to the mall, so that's where they can connect, to the other commuter buses, to Baltimore, Washington, to Carrollton, to the Gold, their yellow routes, which goes to, the community college and the like. There there is a need to a better streamline and have a better, concerted effort of working with the county to make this a little bit more feasible. Next slide, please. So these maps here that you see, we went over that yesterday with the the transportation committee, and I'm sorry I don't have one in front of me because there's a the spaghetti there of the the dotted lines or existing routes and the solid lines were what we were proposing to do differently.

But you can see some of the hubs when you see number two way over the far left. We're when you're looking at Annapolis High School. And then you look at number nine at the bottom right, you know, we're over the Eastport area, Bay Ridge Avenue, Bay Ridge Road, and how can we extend that past and incorporate a little bit more of maybe senior centers. But surprisingly enough, we have quite a few in that area. There's a senior center on Bay Ridge Avenue, there's one on Edgewood Road, there's one behind the CVS on Edgewood Edgewood yeah, Edgewood Bay Ridge Road.

They all have their own little minivans to take people places, but on their schedule, would be the mall or shopping center or whatever. But we would we're still nearby, less than a half a mile from these places, but we might wanna look at how we can better serve that community. And remembering when we talked about the purple route, when it's out there on evenings on Mondays Monday through Saturday evenings and all day Sunday, we're covering just about our whole territory, and we're going about three quarters of a mile of our fixed route. So we're able to get deeper into, Ward 7 and Ward 8 where there might be some mobility challenges. And one of the things we wanna look at, because right now, as I mentioned, our time that, GoTime is covering the route of the orange and that does not cover in inside of Esport.

So that's one of the drawbacks because we have other services that are inside of Eastport, which is the red and the brown and pretty much the green, even though it's coming across, compromise down 6th Street Chesapeake Avenue. The other routes, brown and red, red does go up Present Street and back down hilltop, and the brown does go back down Bay Ridge Avenue, back to the giant, and then shoots up Forest Drive through, Robinwood, Bywater, and the neighborhood's going to the mall. But remember, a lot of these routes were put together some time ago in looking at, you know, the health of our system and trying to make it a little bit better, this is a road map of things that we could try to do. Next slide, please. So remember I talked about the regions.

When you look at Region 12, and three, one being down the Annapolis Neck area and three is completely county. And that number two over in the corner is the high school within Region 3, and you can see five, or is that eight the mall. You have AAMC. You have Parrot Town Center. And in the center, you have about a bit of the Eastport, a little bit of downtown, the Bywater, Tyler Avenue, and all.

So one of the questions that came up yesterday is, like, okay. One of the ways to run a good trans, microtransit system is is to operate within within zone. Montgomery County, does that. They have two zones and they kind of feed into a transit center. If we try to do Zone 1 all the way to three, you you probably need maybe nine or 10 buses to keep up with the demand.

That is of high demand to go over. So we really need to develop this mobility hub a little bit more, like, one may go three quarters of a mile into two and vice versa into three quarters of mile into three. But if you have another spine that went around it all, that blue new route, that went around, you know, West Street, coming down maybe, all the way down to River Road, getting back down to Force Drive and around, and you can take within these systems microtransit within these zones here. These are more developed in our TDP that we can extrapolate and tell you exactly what the thoughts were based on the conversations that were had at the the meetings that with our stakeholders and shareholders. Next slide, please.

Please stop me if there's any questions along the way. And, this is still, you know, draft ideas for a microtransit operation to expand what we're doing. And a lot of systems around the country are finding success with microtransit. And, you know, it is that watered down version of Uber and Lyft, you know, at a fraction of the price, but you're not going from your door to door, but you may be going pretty close to where you were going before if you were just taking the bus from a scheduled stop. You just don't have to go every single stop along the way as a fixed route does.

The microtransit is intended to feed into a fixed route or vice versa. They need to coexist to be a a healthy system, and that's something that was discussed in detail with our shareholders and and others that had a vested interest in what we're doing. Next slide, please. So this is just the, the third zone that's just you know, we brought up zone one and two a little bit closer, and Zone 3 is just showing the same thing. The three, as you can see, is basically all county with the medical center, the mall, Social Security Administration, which I forgot over on.

Harry Truman Drive, which is also a motor vehicle, but, you know, as a place of a a hub, a high school, the shopping center Arriva, and the Harbor Center. So those three maps have just been blown up a little bit better so you can see it a little bit more. Next slide, please. So the conceptual budget, I won't go into the weeds of it, but it was just a proposed looking at other matrices to come up with if we look at option one, two, three, what would be a potential baseline cost. And some of them, as you can see in the road map, there's a cost neutral.

Doing this wouldn't cost much or anything. But remember with those previous slides, we look at year number two for the micro cent microtransit zone one, two, and three, the associated cost of actually operating it. Microtransit can be a little bit more expensive, but it's highly more effective of going places that people need to go when they need to go, versus just running a route, just to be running it. And, Alderman, Arnett, again, to your your question, if you look further down, you can see things that were talked about with the MTA in Anne Arundel County, how we do a little bit better, maybe getting to Anne Arundel Mills, BWI Airport, Cromwell Station, other routes that you know, these don't exist, but looking at how we can coordinate with other transportation entities to make this feasible. So we would definitely need funding from the state and federal government.

And, right now, we we have we are a subrecipient of a lot of our grants from the state of Maryland, which is good because they keep us on track when we have to, when they when they look at auditing us, which we get audited every every four months. The one of the offices of what they call locally operated transit systems, which the city of Annapolis is, and there's 22 of these type of systems in the state of Maryland that gets federally gets federal funds to operate the system. From as far west as Hagerstown, Cumberland, down to Ocean City. There's 22. We just happen to be one of the smaller ones.

But, also, Anne Arundel County is a recipient as a lot locally operated transit system just like we are. We're not subrecipient or subordinate to Anne Arundel County. We're more of a a standalone as they are. But the road map that we shared here, and we can definitely entertain questions, and, you know, maybe writing them up to us so we can get them out to the full the full council, not just environmental matters or transition committee, but anyone that wants it. And we can have a more of a healthy dialogue on on what it is we're we're trying to accomplish.

And the by baseline, what we're trying to accomplish is what you want to constituents being able to get movement safely, efficiently, and, you know, quickly. And that's what microtransit has really helped us to do, to be able to do in conjunction with a a fixed route pulse system.

Is this table in this report?

It's in the one that we gave yesterday. I can make sure that I email it to you this evening.

I mean, the big

It it I'm not sure if it is. I don't think it is.

That would be helpful to

If it's not, we can definitely put it in, but the

Especially the footnotes.

Yes. We've that's definitely in what we we gave yesterday. I can definitely share that with you all, the whole council. Yeah. And I think that's it, but there's see if there's another slide there, please.

Yeah. So, basically, as we made mention, adoption from the city council, your acceptance does not obligate the Indianapolis or MDOT MTA to fund any particular improvement. It's the road map to see here's some ideas that came out of our study sessions and our work groups. An implementation of any, improvement is a function of funding availability, and that's where we gotta look at what makes sense and what we can do then and now. So coexisting in the, road map of the 2040 comprehensive plan, there might be some carryovers, but understanding that this was, this program was grant funded.

And it doesn't mean this is it. We can definitely, look at add ons, doing something additional parallel later. This was just a very in-depth, required by state statutes of getting these funds to make sure we had an independent company, a transportation planning organization come out and just take a look at and make recommendations by hearing while while hearing input of, the community.

Any questions? No. Any questions from the rest of the committee? Yeah. It's very

So I'm I'm returning to the, the big thing about it really does feel, and that's why I like that table, which I did find in the report, Alderman Savage pointed at page Chapter 6.5. And the part I like about it is the part that starts to integrate with the rest of the region. And I'm still convinced that we cannot afford to be operating two parallel systems, one or the other is going to die. And it does feel like they need to come together. That's just my analysis.

I also feel that this transit plan does need to integrate with the comprehensive plan in a much more formal linked way. And I will repeat to you something I've said to you often. I understand the goal to provide transit for people who don't have a car, don't have money. But I'm of the feeling that food transportation isn't going to work till you get me on a bus and my neighbor. And I was noting how no system whatever comes below 6th Street into where I live or over on Boucher Avenue where a lot of other people and very adjacent to a considerable amount of public house.

So, I I think we need to do something in addition to this that is broader across departments and much more integrated into planning. Alderman Savage and I were talking about this at lunch, which comes first, the transit and then the affordable housing, which I think think is right. I think that you you if you start putting in fixed transit of some sort, it's going to encourage people just like me near the subway when I lived on Capitol Hill. And it encouraged a lot of people. The nineteen seventy two, seventy three's no gas encouraged a lot of people to move back into the city and near public transit.

But, I find this an interesting study, but not sufficient, I guess. And I'm trying trying to be diplomatic. I

appreciate your comments. And one of the things that Mead mentioned of, with the go time, we actually do service exactly what you're saying. And we do go down to Bread And Butter route, all the way down to, 2nd Street when the purple is in operation. Three quarters of a mile of a fixed route stop. And that's one of the things we were talking about now.

Again, as I mentioned at at 03:47PM, we are only looking at replacing the orange right now and the purple, which is covers the whole city. So, unfortunately, until we make these tweaks after 07:00 or on a Sunday or a holiday, I'll come to your doorstep and we'll we'll we'll take go time together and go get some coffee and make our way back. So we do actually service it, but, you know, the old cliche, build it and they will come. We got to do more outreach so people in that those neighborhoods do know. This this is available right now in the next three and a half hours until 10:45 and we're done all day Sunday.

But like I mentioned, you know, expanding the routes right now where we have where we can do more of the go town on demand, that's that's where we are. And that's where the pilot started. It was just gonna be the orange, and we said we'll try to do the gold, I mean, the purple as well. So we gotta do more of the outreach. We did summit some senior senators like Morse Bloom, Greenwood.

We went to, the Bates Complex with, some staff and with KFH. We've done some of that, but we need to do more of that. But we're only nine months into it. But I think we've made some pretty good headway and some good strides in the time that we have, but we can definitely do more. And we hear you loud and clear.

So with this, I know when I need a ride. And I and I'm when I'm in Washington, I use Uber all the time. I'll park at my son's house and we'll take Uber to the theater, Uber to restaurants and it's incredibly convenient. It is more expensive than our transit system. And I'm wondering if there is in some way we can combine forces with them where we may give people, with lesser means of some kind of voucher to take that.

But the other thing though is, I have no clue when and where the Purple Line runs and how long it's been. And it's much easier to turn push that button in my vehicle than it is to try to go someplace to find out if this is the day and the time when the Purple Line until we can make those things so second nature to people, I just don't think we're gonna get people out of cars non to buses.

Yep. That's where education comes in. I wouldn't expect anyone to know the route of the purple, but our office is open for help, and we would be more than welcome would love to be welcomed or invited to go to some of those community, events, for the eSports neighbors or Ward 1 residents or, you know, East any anywhere, however we can get, the word out. But, you know, we look for suggestions on how to do that Because what you're mentioning is we have it, but people don't know about it or how to use it. But if you we we can only do it with education and just continue to do it. It's not a one and done type of a deal. K.

So I have a few things. And, yeah, and I I do thank you for coming to the committee to testify because I I as I think Alderman alluded to, you know, there's a clear connection to the environment because it does help to get people out of their cars and provides for efficient travel. So if you let's see. Simple questions, I suppose. For the micro because well, let me first couple generalizations, which I said yesterday's meeting, but just for the public and the committee's sake.

You know, a lot of good information in the surveys and looking at that, look, it verifies that the vast majority, vast vast majority of the users of the system are lower income. Also, those who don't have cars and even I think it was 60% who don't even have driver's license. And so it's we have to have transit clear, and we have to make sure it's adequately funded. But it was interesting in in that also in that if you have 20% of users only have one car, But if you go beyond that, those who have two, three cars, they just don't use for the most it seems like they just don't use transit. So my question from an environmental standpoint is, well, how do you get those who have cars out of their vehicles to use transit?

Right? And that's where our system doesn't seem to be really fitting that need. It's doing a good job, I think, of getting people to work who need it. The one exception is the circulator, right, which we mentioned. It's the most successful route of cities. You look at the state metrics anyway. I think because it runs every fifteen, twenty minutes for headway, And it serves, you know, the tourists and the residents just around downtown. So I think that shows some of the potential. Right? And it's got me thinking, maybe and this you know, I might I may pose this in the budget, but it all comes down to funding.

Right? But what about expanding that concept of the circulator to Eastport? Because that's probably our most parking and parkings, at least the one with most parking issues, traffic too, but I think, you know, obviously, Forest Drive has traffic, but we have a route. But I'm wondering, like, could we extend it, connect it, like I mentioned yesterday, from maybe the terminus of the of the downtown circulator, run it down through Eastport and, I don't know, maybe connecting up in Ward 7 somewhere and just having to do that.

And see yeah. This is a really good point, chairman. There are a lot of economic factors that you can kinda or dials you can kinda move to look at what you want. The road map is not set in stone, and what we looked at with those, zones can actually accomplish some of the things you just mentioned, if not all of them. Some of them may cost a little bit more, but one of the things you look at for going across the bridge, Compromised Street

Mhmm.

That on a Saturday or evening or Sundays, you know, how many times that bridge gonna open? So you I I look at maybe as you we reimagine City Dock, having something from City Dock to, you know, Eastport and back. Mhmm. You don't, twist what you've done well with Park Place, Magenta shuttle to downtown and back. It's a subset, so, you know, you're kinda going like that and meeting at the new City Dock, you can go back up to Park Place or go to back to Eastport.

Right.

Those are really good points, and that's really one of the things we're looking at with a micro transit, but why not a magenta shuttle with a fixed route? And it has a headway of every twelve to fifteen or twenty minutes. So there's those those are things that can be looked at. One of the things you made mention of is, like, how do we use land? When you look at land use, the ease of parking or driving, is that a a price that I'll pay if I gotta drive Main Street in Duke Of Gloucester twice before I find something on Main Street versus waiting for a bus of getting off right where I wanna be.

But the way the land is being used may have a lot to do with how people view it, their use of it, with a car or the public transportation, with a mobility source like a scooter, bike, moped, or whatever. But that that's a thing I think that's a really good thought. And as we develop that more in our minds of, what what we can do in those zones and how we can cross over to the next zone. So where where do we really wanna go when we look at, you know, the Ward 7 area of of the Bay Ridge Avenue, Edgewood getting it, you know, to downtown? Because right now the Bay Ridge Bay Ridge Road, Edgewood, we can get to the mall, and then from the mall, we can get back downtown.

Or we can go right to Eastport and then get on the green and go up Main Street. There are options, but knowing the schedule is is half of it. As Alderman Arnett says, you know, you know, how how do I know when when the purple runs? You know, it it takes one of those things a lot of people don't know, but, you know, one of the things we're working on, you might have seen, is our a v AVL, automatic vehicle locator. So, you know, there's a transit app that's out there right now for the around the country.

Maybe 450 different types of organizations are using it. Until we get tied into it properly, it's a predictor for us, meaning it's electronic schedule. So if I turn my location finder on right now, I and say where I am right now and where I wanna go to the mall, it will tell me that the green route will be by whatever the schedule predicts, but it's not gonna give me exact because it's a predictor. So one of the things we wanna do is get the a v l AVL on all of our buses because right now, the Magenta shut has it using Transloc, and our Micro Transit has it using IT curves, but our other services, we don't. So we're working on those pieces to integrate.

And I know the county is using something else called Passio, and we wanna, you know, get those all together because remember we talked about that invisible barrier or boundary again, in Crofton and I wanna come to City Hall in Annapolis. Or I'm at know, Social Security Administration in the county and I wanna go to citydot. You can still look at it on Transit app, but it's gonna give you the predictor of when it should come. But we wanna get there live real time. So as Ross held up his mobile device, it says, can get Uber or Lyft right here and I can put my location finder.

Your driver should be here in seven or eight minutes. Yeah. We we wanna get to that. It may not be, as quick as that or going to exact place, like, door to door, but we wanna get in a a geosphere of within, you know, a 100 yards, a quarter mile, something like that. So that's really worth And

and I so and I think there are a lot of different ways to address, you know, future growth of the system. And I think, you know, as we talk about adding routes or even adding, like, circulators or other types of transit, I think the really question really comes down to funding. And I know Alder Woman and Mason's been a big champion of trying to make sure transit has enough funding. You know? But you're still we have a lot of work to do. Right? You're funded primarily out of the parking fund.

Yes.

But the big question is, with your proposed expansions, is how are we gonna pay for it? And that's where I think to back to Alderman Arnett's point, I think it seems to me we might have a bit of a silo issue. Right? I'd like to see a better connect with our planning Mhmm. Processes and the comp plan.

Right? Because, again, you know, the the conference we were just at, you know, we saw how they transit is what jurisdictions use to drive development and redevelopment, and economic, you know, reinvestment, and and that's what they use to drive these things. But they also use that to pay for the transit at the same time. Right? But we're not but we don't but I feel like we're not really doing that.

We, you know, we have legislation coming up on Monday that's gonna be just adding density with no correlation to our transit system with and the problem is then we have no way to pay for your expansions. The future growth, future tax revenue is gonna go right into the general fund probably, and we're not even gonna set it aside for transit. We're missing an opportunity. We're letting growth get ahead of ourselves when, again, what we saw is these jurisdictions using it transit first, you set up, and then you rezone, you make partnerships with the private developers, you set up TIFFs to attract all those tax incremental the or tax it's like deferred taxes, right, using future property taxes to pay for improvements now and in and into the future, but they use that to pay for the transit. But we're allowing the development to happen without any of those things in place because we don't really have, you know, we don't really have a solid transit expansion plan that goes in conjunction.

Right? So I'm afraid the problem my my fear with that is that's gonna continue to perpetuate parking issues, traffic issues that we have because we're gonna grow, grow, grow without having any kind of associated funding source for transit. That's what's really making me nervous. Or I know it's mixing mixing topics, but there's a lot going on right now that's making me nervous on how that's gonna work. So I don't know if there's anything you can do to I don't know. Like, have you had those conversations with the planning department as far as how to really sync those planning growth or with transit growth?

Yeah. That's a good question because, chief comprehensive officer, Eric Lashinsky, as well as, Casey Ortiz have been a part of it. And they've they've made their, opinions to be known or their their thoughts, and they they've been a part of it. We can bring them in, and they can share what parts of it were were theirs that were incorporated. But, yeah, they they were a part of the stakeholder process, and they've been sended one of them have attended every single meeting that we've had, sometimes both of them.

If I could interject here.

We only have two hands up, so, I'm going go to Alderman for nice and Well,

just as a general comment, well, two things, really. I believe that we need to start thinking about transit as a service Yeah. To the community. Mhmm. You know, we don't talk about how to fund the police department or the fire department or public work.

But we talk about how we can gather the money to pay for transit. And I contend that until we start looking at transit as as much a vital component to our community as we see other police and fire, then we're gonna continue to have this problem. So I hope that, you know, my colleagues on the council will begin to see transit as a vital part of living in a in a city and that they begin to fund fund it as appropriate, which includes your plans for the future. And, you know, the fact that you raised the issue about development and and no plans for it, the the fire department raised the exact same issue in their budget presentation to the finance committee. You know, we're adding more and more residents, but what are are we doing anything to increase the number of firefighting?

You know, we have a hard time finding paramedics and, ALS, folks. And the numbers our community is growing. So we can't continue to provide the same level of service with the same number of people. And so, you know, that's a comparable issue for you. And again, that's a council issue.

You know, we've got to recognize that, you know, when we approve projects, what should come along with them would be improvements on the other services. And I know that's strayed a little bit away from from yours and funding transit, but we've got to think of transit as a vital part of our our community.

Yeah. Thank you.

So thank you.

Thank you. Thank Arnaud?

No. Following along Alderman Finlayson's comments, I think transit should be integral to our life, but we deal with it in a very we, the council Mhmm. Disintegrated way. Talked to miss director Moore, and then we talked to director Kubiak. We don't have anything where we get all the heads together, in the room where we're talking about it together.

And really, our function is sort of twofold is trying to understand what you're doing and then try to figure out how we can help you do, you all the departments, better. Not get in the way, but help you do it better. But I think that we need to integrate it and not have it in these separate silos all the time. And I don't know how we do that. I think it really needs to be a change in a fundamental way that the city council operates and demand that we be served in this planning function.

Our role is policy and part of policy is the planning to effectuate that policy and we just don't have mechanisms that do that. I thought we've had a very good dialogue and I appreciate your presentation and tolerating my questions. But I wish we were having it with two or three other department heads and a finance director here, so all ears could be hearing the same thing at the same time. Otherwise, we're just not gonna move forward.

Sounds like a good work session.

May may I quickly respond? You know, it starts with us and our budget. You know? We should be putting in our budget whatever is need needed for transit, not the shortfall, which forces us then to find the the funds that are lacking. But we don't have this discussion about police budget, You know? And so it start when the mayor presents his budget, it should be inclusive of total funding.

I think we should start in October Well, that's the not mayor

Yeah. Absolutely.

Make a budget jointly. We're gonna have such a cacophony next week when everybody starts showing up and discussing this.

Don't remind us. Yeah. So but alright. So before we leave this, on that related to that point, I'd I wanna also bring up, it looks like bears and you mentioned this earlier a little bit. To the point of cost, bears bring in at, what, 300 some thousand dollars or last fiscal year, I believe. 300 some thousand dollars, but that is supplemented by other jurisdictions who are paying to make up for the fee that their employees use. Right?

Right. We said there's department of DGS, government services, instead of having their employees pay and get reimbursed that way, they're paying for them upfront. That's the DGS organizational paid fares. And then there's others that will buy them that are, you know, like I said, the Lighthouse Shelter, Arundel Lodge, the detention center. There's probably seven or eight. That number is just shy of $15,000. DGS is about 275,000. Going fear free, that will not that goes away. So the 300 plus that other

Well, not necessary. And and to the other Citi employees, we're we're gonna wrap it up soon. We'll get to you. But just to make the point, director, like, I don't think that's necessarily set in stone, because I think that's a key point for our colleagues here. If we can identify that $300,000 to make up the loss fair, the next step is we, you, whomever, mayor go to these other jurisdictions like DGS and say, look, we're going fair free because of x y z, but we still need that this payment from you and have some kind of MOU with them for the next umpteen years so they continue to pay.

But I think it's worthwhile that's a good first step to the system because what we've seen is systems that are free do get greater use. Right? Yeah. And that is really that's our first step to make sure it's fully funded. So I think if we can identify things, and maybe we need to wait on hiring some of these other positions that we are posing in the budget.

You brought up a good point because I really would think that the county would still supplement us for handling some of their area. That we almost count on still being there. You know, we look at certain things with the county as well, like, the magenta shuttle, part of the success is the circuit court.

Yeah.

So, you know, maybe they will help, you know, come to the table with stuff. But I just looked at it as being, it's free, so my my state employees aren't paying, so why am I paying? But maybe they come to the table with some other type of guarantee MOU that says, you know, we're helping the whole system work as it's intended to do for the good of the order.

So is there a motion from the committee? I know I know there are gonna be a few minor changes to the TDP. Do we wanna wait till we get those, or do we wanna just make our recommendation now?

Well, mister Pierre, I'm comfortable making the recommendation. I mean, and we have the I'm and we have the entire, plan that's on the plan. Isn't that what we're I talking mean, we have all 129 pages of the plan, but I'm comfortable with doing it now. Mean, Alderman Arnett, are you

No. I'm not, but I'm not sure. This is required, and they're doing what they're required to do to get grant money. I don't find it satisfying and I'll probably abstain or vote against it. But I'm not even sure how relevant it is to doing the kinds of things we need to do to move forward. I'm a little encouraged by the financial section in Chapter six, but I think we need to do things differently.

So it's it's the problem it's not gonna help us devote it down because this would that would prevent us from getting funding to improve the system. I mean, I I sympathize in that. Do I think the one area I would like to get feedback on is from planning and zoning, so I'm kind of if we have time, I'm kind of inclined to maybe invite them to the next meeting. We could have a conversation with them about how to tie that in with transportation.

Is there a timeline?

They're coming to the MKFH as far as presenting because, like we mentioned in the last slide, this does not obligate the city of Annapolis or the council to vote, on anything, adopt anything. It's really the road map of here's an idea if you wanna get to this place. It may not be the right way. It may be another way, but it's just the idea. So there's nothing there that's tied into a financial obligation.

But the timeline has come, but if it goes a little longer, we we can discuss it more while it's still open or yeah. We we can continue the the conversation even after it's adopted. We'll never, you know, shy away from that meeting with the ATC or anyone else, a a work session or anything else, to look at, how we wanna use what's been provided to us from the transportation planners.

And it's gonna be modified anyway by transportation committee. So it's coming back to next month's transportation committee for final action. So, again, I don't think we us recommending it now is not gonna make a difference. We our meeting is the day after transportation anyway. So we we can just postpone an action if we want to. It's not

And I ask that at the next meeting or some intervening meeting that we have both planning and transportation together. I think

Yeah.

I'm not sure how much they're hearing each other. They may well be, but I'm not sensing it. But, yeah. Otherwise, if you wanna move today, I'll just stay.

Well, if the committee is open to it, we could try to schedule an interim meeting. Not that any of us need more meetings, but

No.

Well, how about we just are you okay if we just take no action today? We'll put phone action and then figure out if we need to do anything in the interim.

I'm I'm fine with that. If mister Moore is fine with since it's gotta go back to the Transportation Committee, then, you know and we're the day after, we we just hear about what they've discussed the next day.

Alright. Is that Okay. Is that okay? It's not gonna cause you any delay, I don't think.

No. But don't feel free don't feel like you have to give us another presentation.

Yeah. Okay. Thank you.

Alright. Actually, So, you add this to the next agenda? And then next, I'm gonna skip temporarily the next piece of legislation so we

okay.

So we can get to staff. They can get out of here. So first up, I think we have storm water fee discussion, ID4025. Oh, Eastport. That's fine. Eastport is ID6825. Have Well, we don't do we have plan of zoning here?

No. That's what

I So that's what we don't have. So we can jump right to ID68. Computer just ID6825. I know. We'll take care. Is nobody here? Take care of the end. It's it'll I mean, both Sheila and Ross are on rules, they already voted on

that anyway.

Wouldn't really need to do anything. So, yeah. Do you do you have a presentation?

I have a couple slides just to show you

guys some updates on the AMRI. In the meantime, can you introduce yourselves?

I I can go first while you're doing all that. Jasmine Wilding, engineer with Public Works, program manager for the Eastport flood mitigation project manager for the Eastport flood mitigation capital project in the city budget.

I'm Gabe Coe. I'm the director of programs for the Resilience Authority of Annapolis and Anne Arundel County.

And I think we were here a couple months ago. So the so Gabe Gabe has looks like similar slides to then, and so I'll let him go first. But I think we're expecting in the next month or so that we'll have a lot more meat to to go through. Yes.

So thanks. I think okay. We don't mind sharing. So again, my name is Gabe with the Resilience Authority. And one of the things we've been working with the city on is an Annapolis Maritime Resilience Initiative.

So it's it was funded through NIFWIF NCRF grant, is National Coastal Resiliency Fund. And we've been partnering with with Jasmine mainly at the city on her FEMA grant to look at esports footprint. We're really looking at so let me just go to we're really looking at, you know, Wards 67, and and 8. And what we've been doing over the past couple of months, since the last time we came in front of the committee was going out and and talking to community members about where they're experiencing flood issues. So we're partnered with Greenvest and Council Fire to do a lot of assessment, desktop assessment, and looking at, you know, hydrology and things like that.

But we've also been going into the community, going to business associations, going to Eastport Civic Association, going to all kinds of Earth Day events to really understand where people are experiencing the flood issues. From that experience, we were able to put together this list of roughly 38 project sites where nature based solutions could be viable. So, again, we're looking for ways to remove impervious surfaces, to to implement kind of nature based techniques to to slow the flow of water and also to kind of mitigate the flood impacts. And then we're working with Jasmine who's got some FEMA funding to look at maybe some more of, the gray infrastructure type of applications. So this is, you know, our 38 sites.

From here, we've worked with the team to come up with a a project prioritization metric. And and that's really looking at the potential resilience impacts, the green infrastructure network potential, project feasibility, and then the social impact. So what we're gonna do is using this metric, we're gonna be working with the team to go through all of these 38 sites. There may be more as as we get into this, and really pair this down to 10 priority sites using using this this metric kind of table. From there, those 10 sites get developed to a 10 concept plan.

And then just at the beginning of this week, I guess on Tuesday, we put in a pre proposal for phase two funding from NIFWIF through that same National Coastal Resiliency Fund to to take some of those projects. We probably won't get all 10, but some of those projects through final design and permitting. So that with them we can go and and and build these projects so that the community is is having those benefits and those impacts. So, by June so again, like Jasmine said, we're kind of at a a working point right now. We'll have those 10 identified sites early to mid June.

And then if we're invited to submit that full proposal through NCRF, that will happen July 17. Or late August, early September, we'll have kind of a a full master plan, all of those 10 concepts. And really we're committed to working with with the city, but also partners at Seven River Association, some other watershed organizations to look at how we can fund all of these projects or really advance all of these projects, specifically those top 10 priority projects. So I I believe I I worked with miss Jackie Gowd. I believe I'm on the June 12 agenda again to come back and and really be able to show you guys those those 10 sites and dig in a little bit further about how we got there.

And I'll just add, I've been watching what Gabe's doing, and monitoring, you know, the federal situation as it unfolds with FEMA. So what I've been able to do with the Citi program is so far I've only spent 10,000, piggybacking on the outreach that Gabe is doing. I had outreach component of my grant as well. And I think we we've at least doubled the outreach originally planned by being able to leverage with them. There's a budget amendment I'm working on right now to reflect the loss of a FEMA grant that was showing up in f y twenty six.

We still have the previous FEMA grant. And then the other federal partnership we were going to leverage was the army corps. But because it's been so slow and, I've gotten proposals to do similar work to what they were going to help with at only a 20,000 cost differential to the city. I'm planning to proceed with that. And so what that part is is modeling, of the storm drain system in Eastport.

And I should say that if you pull up your map again, Gabe, where I'm focusing my efforts is sort of just Eastport proper, so 6th Street and East that I'm so I have a little more narrow geographic region. I picked that because, there's a lot of points of interest in there as you can see on the map. A lot of public we owned street ends and right of way areas and storm drain infrastructure in that area. But that's not to say that nature based, you know, components couldn't be a part of those solutions. And so I I think the next step is with the modeling, that we're going to have a private firm do and Gabe's prioritization matrix.

We'll have a really good idea of what are the best projects to proceed with. And I'm you know, I think it would make sense to use the remaining Citi and FEMA funds to augment some of the 10% designs, if they overlap with what, we wanna do or, we'll see what we can afford, to design, how many areas with the funding that we we have left which is about I think like 300,000. So the city's already done a lot of great plans showing vulnerable areas in e sport, the hazard mitigation plan, the Annapolis flood, resiliency plan. So the modeling is just gonna take that a step further and say for this type, this size of storm tidal or rain, you know, what can we do? So the model will put in some flood mitigation options to see, you know, what could be the most beneficial cost.

And it might be that the larger storms, there's not a whole lot that can be done, but we know we have a lot of nuisance flooding. And so it may be how do we not make the worst scenario worse, but how do we make, you know, a series of other storm events better. And so it'll be, you know, preventing tidal flooding, but then also allowing similar to City Dock has pumps and things, and we've put in a pump in Esport too, making sure we can get the rainwater out and we're not gonna be, you know, flooding from the inside. So I've been watching the Naval Academy progress and their ideas and City Doc and then Gabe. So, you know, hoping that we can get some good flood mitigation projects in Eastport starting to get designed in the next fiscal year.

That's all. And we also plan to have a stakeholder meeting. I think Gabe was alluding to this probably in the early July time frame to kind of parse out like we had an early stakeholder meeting with the museum and the resiliency authority and this one might be a little bigger but, you know, a lot of people are interested in and so how do we leverage all the resources we have in this climate, to the most benefit.

Very well. Thank you too. Any questions from the committee? No.

I'm good. Thank you.

Thank you. Bye. Hawaii.

Have a

good question. So does this have a CIP page?

It does. Yes. And, yeah, that's what I was just mentioning. I have an amendment with Jake and Darren to correct some of the evolving information as it unfolds. But but basically, our f y twenty two FMA FEMA grant is still good and that was the bigger one. Their f y twenty three FEMA grant that was showing up in '26, that one was rescinded or just not continued. And, like I said, the army corps reached out earlier this week, but they're still trying to find new starts and budgeting. So it's kind of still at stage zero for them. So to keep it moving, I think we've got enough momentum.

So the

So it's a 150,026 that got taken back.

What about Twenty seven, twenty eight, twenty nine.

And so all of those in the revised, budget will or amendment will those will show up as pending grants. So no construction grants have yet been applied to.

So you only have 350 approved and a 185 in bond. Yes. So I guess because now is the time well, I guess you'll you'll have an opportunity to introduce more amendments, but our cutoff is tomorrow. But I'm asking because, you know, we're running out of time. If you do need more funding, more bond funding, we need to know soon to get that allocated for future years.

Yeah. I'm I'm trying to be fiscally, you know, conscientious. I mean, I I think I don't have it at the moment, but I I have about 500,000 to get some kind of design and something ready for permitting whether that's back of Like, I personally think that's enough, you know, but I I've seen the range of design costs fluctuate. Like, Gabe is spending 800,000 on 1010% designs. I'm not sure if I would have spent that that way, but, you know, I think I wanna focus on the most important areas first and, you know, I think the other 38 or however many project sites aren't gonna go away, but we can, you know, work those in in the future.

But I think we have enough funding now to work for the next fiscal year that I mean, like I said, I've only spent 10,000 of my $4.75 or how much I have now.

But I guess, I mean, as far as future project cost, we don't have anything. That's gonna take care of the design and the planning, but not construction. So I guess it's a question for us too if we wanna set aside any amount of money even as the rough planning perspective, how much a year we might do have any idea how much a year you might wanna spend in project money? I mean, you you did have 500,000 in FY twenty seven and then, you know, a million

Yeah. I would say what's in there now is the kind of planning guesstimates and there are some bond funding in there for those. It's like looks like it's like, you know, not quite half. But I think one element that the modeling will also help with is quantifying like what the benefit of doing the project versus not doing it is. And unless we have that, we can't really go after future FEMA grants, and then kind of wait to see how it goes with Gabe, with NIFWIF.

You know, the reality is it might, you know, we might have a delay, you know, depending on what grants we can get. But, I mean, I think having a solid design and benefit cost analysis is gonna set us up for success if that's, you know, has to get delayed a year because of funding. But I guess this is the best information we have right now. But

Yeah. Well, I mean, so it impacts part of my ward and mostly Eastport. So we question my colleague too. I'm I'm kind of inclined to put

I'm all I've also been leveraging, the waterfront infrastructure projects. I've, you know, been started inviting that program manager to our meetings and, you know

The individuals, the IP, waterfront

program? Yeah. There's like so many of them, but I mean, if there's resiliency components to any of those, you know, and there's fund, you know, we could leverage funding off of each other intelligently to stretch it further. Like if she's already going to do a whole new bulkhead and the model is showing this also could like be a game changer of, you know, a backflow per you know, I don't know. The design and, you know, experts will tell me what's best, but if there's just a little thing to add to her project, it could be more cost effective to spend the spend the funds jointly on waterfront infrastructure.

I hear you, but I think that still has a little too much uncertainty for my taste. I so what I think we might wanna think about is just even I don't know if we wanna do it as a committee or what, but I propose even just for fiscal year twenty seven, twenty eight, twenty nine, at least put a placeholder of, like, half $1,000,000 to play it safe. If we get grant money, great. We can move that. But, again, I just feel like

There's already half 1,000,000.

There's what?

There's already a half 1,000,000 in I twenty

thought you said that was not available. That's this is his grant money.

I'm showing it on '27, there was a half million of bonds and a half million well, 550,000 bonds and 500,000 grant. So there's sort of placeholders already, but, I'm gonna be editing this tomorrow, around lunch. So if you yeah. Think we need more

I missed the top. Okay. Alderman, if if

I can add, so part of what the grant is gonna deliver when I when I mentioned the master plan that we should be getting late summer, early fall, there will be with those 10% designs, there will also be a financial plan. Okay. And and like a a strategy is what we've called it, a financial strategy to try to get through all of those. So that's something that our partners at Greenvest and Councilfire and the Resilience Authority along with the city will be working to to at least have some strategy for getting the fund. Alright.

May may I ask along the same lines? I apologize. I just stepped out for an emergency call. Are you not worried about any grant funding being eliminated tomorrow?

I mean

I mean, mean, the way we hear, you know Yeah.

Things are being So the way the MDM applications work I mean, I don't know what the climate is with NIFWIF. Gabe But can speak to with FEMA, you apply during the notice of, you know, intent and you apply to the state and then the state decides whether they wanna submit that application as an FMA, which is a flood mitigation assistance grant or a BRIC grant, building resistant infrastructure communities. And the Eastport, all of my f y 20 twos were submitted as FMA grants and those have all been untouched. For some reason, MDEM submitted the I thought it would be FMA again, they submitted the 26 but it's our 26, but they're 23 focused esport grant design or into Brick and that got canceled. So everything that's been canceled to date has been Brick.

That word has been, problematic. So I'm not worried about the three I already have because I feel like they've all, you know, been looked over and I've met with the new MDM POCs. I just submitted my first reimbursement request so I'm just proceeding. I mean, I think everyone's worried, just a little generally, about everything. But, no. I'm, you know, operating as usual for those three grants. Yeah.

Well, that's probably the best approach. Yeah. I'm not even worried about the local state folks. I'm worried about the national folks that are making

Yeah. And when I say MDM, that then they go to FEMA with it. So they're sort of the actual applicant and then we're the sub. But Mhmm. I mean, I guess in my head, I'm just trying to be ready with a solid design and construction ready, you know, for when funding is available and whichever route we find it, you know, we can continue.

Throw a lot of eggs in the basket. We'll throw a lot of the eggs in the basket, see what happens. You know? Good.

Gotta try. Alright. Thank you. I'd like to move on unless there are any burning questions. We have a couple of things to get to. Thank you all. Next up, you're here for another one?

I I was I have Cars Beach too, but I can wait.

That's right.

Yeah. Let's do Cars Beach, ID 9725.

Is that okay?

Yes. Okay.

Thank you. And Alderman Bin Laysen did mention that Elktonia Park, we need to we need to work on that nomenclature. So I know that that's on the screen, but that's something I'll take back to the team, especially with with Roz and and her team at the at Parks and Rec. But, yeah, just to give an update on on the design process. So very similar to AMRI, we've been doing a lot of engagement, with our our team at Scape and McAdams.

They were here in January and February doing a lot of public outreach, and really looking at how how the community wants to reactivate the beach and also how, you know, they would respond to to the design of the beach. And so this is just an example, some of the boards that were up and and folks voting voting as they came through. But as you can see, so activating the beach, people were really interested in the the, fishing, kayaking, swimming, and sunbathing, and having seating in the in the area. Design of the beach, really looking at, like, Assateague and Matapique, more of a a sandy beach with with a large cove that felt safe for swimming. And then it talks a little bit about the resilience of the beach, and I'll I'll talk about that a little bit more.

So I believe and and Audrowoman Finlayson said that she grew up going to the beach, which is fantastic, but it's, it's it's very far from what it was many years ago back in the nineteen thirties and '4. So it's a very narrow beach now. We do have an exposed sewer manhole there that we're working with the county to to remove or to at least move back away from that shoreline. And we really wanna get it back to to support public gatherings, to swim again, and to really, honor the legacy of this area. As you can see, since 1932, there's been about 94, 90 let's say 93 feet of erosion.

Really, a lot of that has happened since 1994. Almost 60 feet of this erosion has happened since 1994. So it is eroding quickly, and again, that's that's really easy to see when you're there because of this exposed sewer pipe. And so that's, you know, really really pushing some of this design, and the way that we're approaching it. The other piece again from the resilience authority, so we're thinking very climate forward and how we can protect these these, community assets in in the long term, sea level rise is of concern at this at this beach.

And you know, we're using a lot of science from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, and some interpretation from DNR to look at the Annapolis gauge and look at the emissions pathway ways to understand that, you know, a two foot sea level rise is something that we can expect somewhere between the next thirty and fifty five years. And so that leads us to to some of our design thinking and and having to really protect the future park that we're gonna be building there. As you can see with two level two, feet of sea level rise, there's this this area, this tidal area that becomes well, this area that becomes tidally influenced, over those times. So one of the things that that the design team is proposing this is just an overshot again, is to kind of take that that area now to allow relief for some of this, during storm events and other things and and really create a kayak launch and a a get down area, which is a seating area and a way for, environmental education to occur. But really overall, it becomes a larger beach.

There are these headland areas that can be planted, that can be used for fishing. The pier is gonna be a part of our park planning, so that's kind of a separate discussion happening at this point. But you can see in this, it's relocating the manhole, manhole. There's vegetated dunes that are about, Elevation 7, but the whole beach is gonna come up to about Elevation 5. And so, really, it's it's going to be bringing in some materials to build this beach back up so that during large storm events, as we experience sea level rise issues, this beach will be sustainable and resilient.

Will it be there forever? You know, when we look eighty years to a hundred years, it may not. Eventually, it may be underwater. But we think we can have a good fifty plus year experience with this area and and really address stormwater and and the sea level rise. When I mentioned stormwater, there's this upland stormwater conveyance that you can see kind of on the bottom of the screen that's on the the south side there.

That really helps capture some of the stormwater from the community that's south of the of there, but also helps to relieve some of the water from the future park areas. That can be really become usable, for the passive programming that's being planned. So, our our vision for this area, the seating, this is kinda where the the get down idea is coming from so people can really access that tidal area, especially kids, and and see what's happening there. But a lot of swimming, a lot of kayaking, opportunities for citizen science, and really sunbathing and and kind of, activation of that area. Whoops.

I'm sorry. I thought I hit all these. This is if if we're interested, can get into some of these things. But in the interest of time, this is really just more of the design and how we're we're pushing that that kind of water out and and where at different elevations mean high water and stuff we'll see inundation events. So, again, just another kind of vision, view of the park.

You can see on the back end the kayak launch, these vegetated dunes, a big beach area, and then access to the water. One last view of it just because it's nice to see different renderings. What what we expect from here so we've started the conversation with Maryland Department of the Environment. We went in front of their shoreline protection review team in April 3. So we're waiting for some preliminary feedback from them.

We've started talking with the city critical area folks and initiated conversations with the county or state critical area because there is gonna be some concerns, some tidal impact as well as nontidal wetland impact. And so we wanna make sure that we're getting this in front of a lot of those regulatory agencies in the near term. We expect 60% designs for Cars Beach in the next week. And so, I plan to come back in June if that's okay with the with the committee to show you a little bit further designs, and we'll have more input from MDE in critical area at that time. And then also the future park concepts are planned to be delivered May 15.

And so we'll have more idea about what the McAdams team has vision for the for the the park area, the China grayed out area there. And they're delivering us two concepts that then, again, we'll be working with Roz and her team to really identify what pieces of those concepts we wanna bring forward into a final design. And the last thing I'll mention is that both is although these are being done, the park planning and the shoreline planning are being done kind of through separate contracts, there is a lot of conversation happening between these two teams so that it is one comprehensive park where the usage, the programming is all gonna happen. And actually speaking of programming, Blacks of the Chesapeake Foundation that that you all know has been very active on this site and involved in this site. And, you know, we're working to to really honor Vince's legacy here.

Didi Strum and her team have a National Park Service grant through Chesapeake Gateways, and they're already starting to pull together folks and curriculum for the the educational programming of the site. So, you know, they're looking at all kind of options from from video options and, you know, AI and different ways for folks to really understand the history of the site and also the future of the site and and how they wanna program education. So it's moving. I'll have more information next month, but I'm happy to to answer any questions.

Any questions from the committee?

Looks great. Yeah.

I I do have a question. First of all, thank you, and I'm excited. And, yes, I did grow up on the real cars. That was beaches. The water, because we used to swim there. Yes. Is there a drop off? Or

It will be a very gradual 10 to one slope. So that's the kind of the most sustainable from a resilience perspective.

So when

we do living shorelines, that's kind of the slope that we wanna get to because it's a very stable, slope, allows water to come in during inundation events and but then when it goes away, it doesn't rip the sand out and take it with it. So, yes, for swimming perspective, it will be very accessible. For waiting, there won't be a big drop off. There will be times of year as the tide in the in the bay is is a little bit different. So there will be sand. I believe during summer months, sand might might go away, and then during winter months, might accrete a little bit. But the stability of that slope will maintain. There is concerns about, you know, what's in the water now. Right? Because people haven't swam there for quite some time.

We know there's a sewer pipe that goes about 400 yards out into this, main stem of the bay. It's clean effluent, but it's, you know, it it's treated effluent, at least. So there will be some assessment done, especially before we start building, to make sure that there's nothing dangerous in the water there. And these vegetated headlands, of course, will be further off. And I know Roz and her team are planning on having lifeguards here and things of that nature as well to make sure it's a safe place to swim.

The sand. Yes. Are you bringing in good sand? One of the things I all I've never liked I I love the beach. Loved all the amenities, the entertainment, the rides, everything. But the sand was always hard.

We will bring it so as fine a sand as we can. Right? So there's different there's a lot of different, kinda sizing specs that we have to work with. And, again, on the headlands, we're gonna have larger boulders and then smaller boulders between there and then sand in between there because that's what we can actually plant the location in. But the sand is all very clean sand. It's it's silicone sand. It's, you know, where it's sourced is either, you know, if we have opportunities to do beneficial reuse of of dredge material right from the bay that can be, you know, it's clean. We have to test it and all of those things, but that's one option, or there's sand spits locally, you know, in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia where it comes from. But it is clean. It's very fine. It won't be, you know, dirty, for lack of

a better term.

There might be rack lines after you know, things like that happen in the bay where SAV and different, you know, things may come onto the beach, but that's just something we'll have to maintain.

Okay. Good sand.

That's all.

Yes. Good sand. Hey. I'll I'll I'm gonna write it down. For sure, that is it's been discussed. And, yeah, we're gonna make sure that the material we bring in, not only native to the Chesapeake Bay and, you know, great for the habitat, but also safe and and welcoming for visitors.

Thank you.

Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah. And thank I I do appreciate you being on this. I'm glad

back next. Absolutely.

Yeah. I'm really glad that the beach replenishment is gonna be take place of some kind.

Mhmm. Yeah.

Because I was thinking the same thing when you were showing the photos of Narrow Beach. That is a good addition. And as far as future, like, when you do get a point, you mentioned Record Parks wants to pick what components, be sure to include us because it's my award that we've somebody who actually is has a history there, has been there. So I think it's important to to get our perspective early in the process post later.

For sure. As I said, we should have the two concepts from the park planning folks middle of this month. I think the Friday the fifteenth is when they deliver those. And so we'll be in a really good spot. They're giving us a we asked for four weeks to review that so that we can get it in front of different committees, make sure that Ross, the mayor, everybody has a chance to look at it and provide feedback. So for sure, we'll make sure you see both of those that have input.

Great. Thanks so much.

Yeah. Mhmm.

Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate the opportunity.

I think I wish I know you two aren't gonna be here next time, but who knows? Maybe I won't either. But it'd good mean, next time.

When when are we really

I mean, I'm thinking in the future because I think it'd be good to it'd be good to we should really do this more with with other VIP projects, get updates. Alright. So next on the agenda, we have, let's see. We're going back, right, to storm water Yeah. The discussion.

We didn't rearrange our agenda. When no. We approved Okay. Very good.

I see three attachments. Is there a particular one we should be looking at?

E and V. Okay.

Okay. Alright. Could you introduce yourselves for the record, please? Mike Rosberg, stormwater program manager, public works.

Anne Roterer, stormwater engineer, public works.

And I'm Dave Heider with Stantec.

And I think you were gonna update us on the incentive program the credit program. Right?

Yeah. That's correct. I do have a little bit of background just in terms of the storm water fee structure, but I'll go through that quickly. Some of it to address some of the questions from last time. As we've talked about before, the whole basis of a storm water fee is to use impervious area as the basis or the measurement of potential contribution to the, system.

What was presented to the finance committee last week was a 15% increase in the stormwater fees, and so that's what's being recommended. And that's for adoption, under the current fee structure. So you can see the current fee structure shown here. So for fiscal year, '26, the, single family would be $35.45, multifamily would be $17.43, and then you can see the various tiers for non residential customers. So what we've talked about before is changing the fee structure for non residential, parcel owners, changing that structure with the goal of essentially aligning to more closely aligned industry standard, provide more equity in terms of the billing approach.

So that essentially you'd be charging based upon actual measured impervious area and equivalent residential units or ERUs would be the approach. And so what's essentially what would look like in terms of recommended structure is for non residential, your measured impervious area, the number of ERUs you have, one ERU being 2,100 square feet of impervious on your parcel, you would pay per year you at 35, 45, in fiscal year twenty six. Real briefly and just in terms of an example, so this is a non residential parcel. They've got 21,000 square feet of impervious made up of a roof and parking lot, but essentially equates to 10 ERUs. So that 10 ERUs times the $35.45 would mean that they would have a quarterly stormwater bill of $354.

So what this looks like, I wanted to provide a little bit of a comparison to some similar sized cities, some surrounding jurisdictions in terms of the non residential stormwater fees. So this is for a parcel that's got that 21,000 square feet of impervious. You can see currently today in the tiered structure with the current fiscal year twenty five rates, they're paying a $152,152 dollars per quarter. With the 15% increase without a rate structure change, they pay set $175 a quarter.

This is for non residential.

This is for non residential, 10 ERUs. So it's gonna vary obviously depending upon how big big you are. With the new fee structure, because now it would be based on their ERUs, it would go up to $354 for this particular parcel. Important to note that we'll talk about in a moment, the credits. This does not include any credits, so to the extent that somebody received credits, they could essentially reduce that by about 50%.

These are annual?

These are quarterly.

These are quarterly.

Yep. Quarterly. So one more slide I think for me is just in terms of the amount of revenue that's generated on the system. So this slide shows the current revenue in fiscal year twenty five from residential, property owners, about 1,700,000.0. Non residential property owners is about 900,000.

With the 15% increase, you can see residential revenues would go up to about 1.9, close to 2,000,000. Non residential revenues would be about a million dollars. And then with the fee structure change, we would get an additional amount of revenue for non residential properties. That would go up to 1,400,000.0. So that fee structure change without any credits equates to about $400,000 per year in additional revenue.

This is important to point out. The residential stays the same. It's just the nonresidential. Correct.

I'm sorry, mister chair. Would you repeat that?

Said the the the residential stays the same even with the new structure. It's just the non residential commercial properties, essentially, that are gonna be increasing.

That's correct. So just to kinda go over it one more time. So the current amount of revenue you're generating is fiscal year twenty five. Fiscal year twenty six without any rate structure change just reflects a 15% increase in the fees.

That takes it to one point o three.

Yep. Correct. But what we're proposing is a new fee structure and if you move to that new fee structure for non residential park parcels, it would generate an additional about $400,000.

But it's also important to point out the new fee structure you're proposing for non residential is the same fee structure as residential. It's the ERU based. It is. More closely ERU based model.

It's no longer tiers. So

Right. There are no more tiers, but it's clearly your use. So in my mind, that puts it on equal we're treating this would treat commercial equal than residential, I think.

True. To to the extent you every residential pays the same. They're all one ERU. So it is it is ERU based.

All residentials are I thought they were

Yes. They're all treated the exact same. So there is no variation in terms of residential properties. They all pay the same.

I thought that okay. Thought So is that the same thing the county does? I thought the county has more.

No. The county does the same. It's per

Do other jurisdictions have it actually be determined based on your your actual impervious surface?

There are some. There's not a lot that do it based on actual similar to what we're proposing for non residential. What you'd see similar to like Baltimore City or in DC, they have tiers of impervious. So it's similar to your non residential. It's pretty common for single family Just because generally there's so many more single family parcels to actually measure everyone and have that precision is one of the reasons why communities do tiers for residential.

But I could I mean, it just seems a little inequitable to me to in fact that somebody has a bull row home is paying the same amount as somebody who has a big mansion on what road's the mayor on? Can I pick on him? In whatever. Spa V Road. Right? It seems a little unfair to have to pay the same thing.

Mhmm. Yeah. There is there's trade offs in terms of the administrative aspects of it versus that you have a much more should

be like, ideally, automatically calculated based on the GIS system, and it's all baked into Mhmm. Whatever formulas and calculations you have. As you get the new aerials, AI automatically calculates it. But I'm just wondering if it's worth and, again, I can't do it this year, but in the future, maybe I'll put it on my, what do you call it, parking lot. As far as just at least creating another tier structure for residential. Yeah.

You could do that. You're right in terms of the actual measurements aren't difficult, but you do get a lot more feedback if you have residents are more likely to call up and say, hey, I measured my property and they forgot to do the eaves and therefore they're improperly measuring their impervious. So you do get more feedback if you go to that level of precision. Tiers would eliminate that because then they would be kinda put in those buckets.

That's what I'm thinking is, you know, residential maybe if you at least have two or three tiers, I don't know, without the problem I had, thousand feet, 5,000, 10,000 feet, whatever it is. Yeah. Anyway Because

storm water is different depending upon your socioeconomic status?

Well, yeah, your roof size. Right? Roof and driveway size.

But you're paying for that. Yeah.

But but again, a 2,000 square foot roof on the townhome is paying the same as a 10,000 square foot roof on a big mansion.

But big mansion is paying more

Big mansion has No. No. They're paying the same thing on this model, which I didn't realize.

But they're paying more in other areas. Maybe not just storm water, but there are other taxes and Oh, sure. They're paying considerably more.

But the idea of a fee, utility fee, is that they pay based on

Contribution.

In this case, it's not necessary usage, but it's impact. Right? Matters of water the infrastructure has to manage. Anyway, I'll I'll add that to the back burner. Okay.

And it's important to note that that $400,000 additional revenue assumes again there's no credits. We're gonna talk about credits in a moment. So to the extent that you make that structure change for nonresidential properties, they apply for credits, maybe they get a 50% credit, we're forecasting you're not actually gonna see that full incremental amount because we want people to encourage people to to manage storm water on their properties. So my next slide just shows given the distribution of non residential properties, there are some that would actually see a bill reduction. So this just shows the distribution of non residential properties going from the current fee structure to a to a per, ERU basis.

So you'd see some that actually fall in the lower end of the tier and therefore they see a benefit going to to the actual measurements, whereas there's some that see pretty substantial increases. That's the distribution.

Can you explain that again?

Sure.

So this is the distribution of impact.

Yeah. This is the number of

Oh, I see. The left is the after the credit. Is what you're saying?

This is No. Just purely from going to the new structure.

Oh. Yep.

So when we switch from the small, medium, and large

Yeah.

Structure, which is a range, The people there are people that are say, they're in the medium range right now, but they're on the low end of the medium range, so they're actually kinda getting a break right now, and the people at the high yeah. So it so it'll balance out a bit a little bit. It'll be it'll be more precise and more aligned with with what their actual impervious area is. So sometimes they'll pay less, sometimes they'll pay more. Overall, they'll pay more.

So the the column on the left is just dollar value?

Column on the left?

Correct. Yep.

Dollar charge.

Yep. So there's basically 551 properties that would see an increase in their bill between 0 and $200. There's 35 that would see an increase in their bill from 200 to $400 and then all the way up. And there's some that see there's 11 properties that would see over $2,000 increase per quarter in their bill in this change.

And those must be the really big properties. Yeah. Because if

you think about it, you're essentially capping how much somebody is currently charged.

Currently. Correct. I see you have some examples.

Yeah. So this is the just looking at each of the classes. So these types are from the billing system. So this is how they're coded in your storm water billing system. This is the total amount of revenue per quarter for each of these customer types using the fiscal year twenty six rates, not changing the structure.

And then the next column over shows if you do change the structure, and then you can see the total for that class of customers quarterly change. So if we take churches for example, they're showing it's basically flat, but there are churches that see reductions and there's churches that see increases. Other other businesses, that's the one that sees a lot of increase and that's one of your biggest parcels. The Naval Academy Stadium has a lot of impervious area on it, so that one would see a rather large increase. And these are totals for the entire Correct. Not here, but

group. Yep.

Alright. So now we're gonna yes.

I'm sorry. Why does the counties go down in retail?

That's as a class. So we could dive into the individual details. I think the county shows up.

Well, there are a few others too. That one kinda stuck out.

But hotels,

motels, another pretty significant reduction.

Yeah. And that's really just a result of how they're falling into the tier. So if they're currently you know, not at the middle point of the tier, essentially, they're getting penalized because they're paying for more impervious than they have. So once it goes to the actual measurement, that would be why.

But even within these uses or classes I mean, some people will pay more and some will pay less. This is just the average. It's just sort of to demonstrate that it is more equitable in a way, but it it's not geared towards a specific type of property use. And

you said these are all average? Yes. Okay. Thank you.

Alright. So the other topic we wanna talk about is the credit program. And so what we're proposing is that at the same time you make this fee structure change, you roll out a credit program and that credit program would really be designed to incentivize stormwater management on-site, encouraging folks to create new stormwater practices, participate in education, outreach, things of that sort. We also are considering some new financial hardship for non commercial, non residential rate payers. So if you're a nonprofit or religious institution, could have a potentially credit for that as well, and we'll dive into those details here.

Before I turn it over to Anne, just some considerations in terms of a credit program is are the items listed here. So first off is who's eligible, what types of properties, what types of use, should there be a hardship waiver or other exemptions. Once you determine eligibility, we look at what do you need to do to qualify. So what what is a qualifying best management practice? Can it be on-site and off-site or just on-site? Can it be activities based? Do you have to maintain those facilities? Is there some threshold for qualification? Things of that sort. And then ultimately what level of credit is provided, so how much of a discount is given for each different type of activity.

And then most credit programs have some type of maximum. Even if you're managing all the stormwater on your your property, you're still benefiting from storm water management throughout the city, and so most communities have some type of cap. I think in the state the maximum is 50%. Yeah. So the, assumed maximum would be 50% credit. And we do see a lot of communities generally, based on my experience, once they put in a credit program, the participation isn't what they want it to be. And so oftentimes credit programs do evolve over time to try to get more and more participation. So with that, I'll turn over to Anne.

So, we took a a look at a a bunch of different credit programs, and, we have lots of familiarity with them for various reasons. But, I wanted to share just some some examples, of, you know, local jurisdictions and and also some larger and more interesting jurisdictions. But just starting with the county because that's usually our our baseline place to start. They have a pretty involved credit program, that includes, tax credits and reductions to fees. And they have really just a whole lot of property use exemptions for for different types of of users, and it's it's it's pretty complex.

One of the things that they do have that I I thought was interesting and potentially applicable to us is they have a a credit for DNR, which is Department of Natural Resources, Clean Marina program ledgers, so marinas that are part of this program with with DNR to keep their, you know, their discharges clean. I think that's a a pretty interesting program. I don't know that we're necessarily gonna propose introducing that in the first year of rollout because the last two start slides just said credit programs can evolve. And what we in truth, we actually have a credit program already. It's just not being used.

There are three nonresidential ratepayers that are that are currently receiving a credit. So our our main goal in this first rollout is to keep things simple, as simple really as possible. But we looked at all these other examples. So that's a highlight of of the county. Baltimore City's very has even more carve outs.

Some other interesting exceptions, like small green spaces to, you know, to to incentivize sort of pocket parks or limited development, small areas that's very, you know, urban oriented, which is pretty interesting. Prince George's County has a a great alternative compliance program, so outreach and education, greenhouse keeping, other they actually have a easement program. So we actually looked at that pretty heavily for our alternative compliance proposal. And then Portland was one that we looked at that it's comparable in size at least, but it, you know, it's a different place. They're unique because they they have credits that address quality and quantity specifically in a fairly convoluted mathematical way, which if you're, you know, a geeky engineer is exciting.

But if you're trying to increase participation in this program, is maybe not the way to go, but it's it's neat. Philadelphia also has tons of incentives, and they actually will buy purchase BMPs because these larger municipalities that are more urbanized, they're desperate to to get the the credits for stormwater management, and, you know, they're really making a a a big effort. I don't think we're at that point yet, but it's something to keep in the in the toolbox moving forward. And then Alexandria is another interesting example out of out of Maryland, well, so it's Philadelphia, but that has a credit for storm water facilities, which is your sort of standard, but they also have a credit for landscaping practices. And the thing that is really interesting is they have a credit for dry flood proofing practices.

This is for their residential program, but for, you know, protective barriers on basements and and ways to keep to limit damage, to buildings, which is sort of outside of the world of stormwater management to in a in a sense, but it's sort of for the greater public good. It's interesting. So those are some of the examples we looked at. Based on our research and experience, the recommendations we're making at this time for rolling out this initial program, again, it's actually a replacement of an existing program that's just not functioning, is to focus on nonresidential for this year to provide a an alternative compliance path for religious and other five zero one c organizations and and a hardship waiver. The hardship waiver is actually something that is in the 02/1977 stormwater management act that you you have to provide something.

So and so our qualifying activities that we're suggesting recommending for credit would be state approved on-site, be stormwater man best management practices that have a city maintenance agreement. That maintenance agreement might exist, or we might need to create a new one, but, that would be part of the deal. The threshold would be for new or redevelopment or retrofits that those practices meet or exceed state design guidelines. For existing practices, we have a triannual inspection process for BMPs, and they get a passing or a need maintenance or failing status. So in order for them to receive credit under this program, they would need to have a passing status.

We're also provide we're also recommending this alternative compliance path largely tailored around the PG County, but making it Annapolis specific, which would include outreach and education pledges and pledges for green care and good housekeeping. So that would be only for religious and five zero one c eligible people. And, you know, it would increase their opportunity to engage and participate even if they don't have the funds to build expensive practices because really, they are quite expensive to install. And future considerations, don't I'm not proposing it right now, but I would like to continue continue to understand this Green Marina program and think about incorporating that in the future. And as I mentioned, keeping it in the toolbox that we could look at city easements or purchase as a possibility in the future, as well as potentially zoning allowances.

As mentioned, 50% is the maximum credit that we're allowed by by law, and we but we could provide this alternate compliance path, and we could provide a hardship waiver, which would be 100%. And because of our triannual inspection cycle, we're proposing that the the practice based ones be on that three year renewable cycle. This is honestly just a repeat of what I just said, with some more details. So I don't know how much in the weeds you wanna get, but the stormwater practices is up to 50%, maximum allowable alternative compliance up to 50%. Some things that are kind of interesting in the alternative compliance are, you know, tree opportunities for tree planting tree planting events or cleanup events.

So they would pledge to do these things, and then we would require them to do annual reporting. And we can actually use that reporting towards our MS four compliance for outreach and in education as well.

That's for option b.

That's option b. Yeah. And option c is is just a straight straightforward hardship waiver. So looking at our previous example of the size of this property, I I added this delightful pond here so you can understand how the calculation would work. And again, I'm just gonna emphasize we could get really geeky engineering and turn this into a whole bunch of volume things, but we're proposing not doing that.

We're gonna try to keep it simple for now. So the calculation would be based on the amount the percentage of impervious area treated by whatever practices exist. This only the slightly geeky thing is the treatment value, which is if if it's managing the first inch or more of of runoff, which is the first flush, the highest pollutant load. It gets a one if it's not meant, which and that's state standard. But if it's not meeting that, they would get dinged.

It would be prorated for what it's meaning. And then times the maximum credit available for that particular practice, which we have generally just proposed at 50%. So in this example, this pond is treating 60% of the total impervious cover. It's eligible for 50% maximum credit. It's treating an inch or more. So it gets an overall 30% credit. So the final fee for the this property owner would be 70% of the fee that the the new fee structure.

Alright. So using that framework, what we did was went in and looked at all the non residential parcels that currently have BMPs and just assumed if they all participated and all got 50% credits, how much would that reduce our revenues? So if you remember before, the current structure from non residential is gonna generate about 1,000,000. We go up to 1,400,000.0 with the new structure. With the parcels that currently have BMPs, assuming they got 50% credit, it would reduce it down to about 1,200,000.0. So there's still a net increase in revenue anticipated and this is assuming they all participate and they all get the 50% credit. This is all properties with existing. Correct. Yep. You're assuming it's a credit.

Okay. Yep.

And but based on the example that we just had, that that would be the maximum. I mean, that example only got to 30% credit. It's unlikely that a lot of existing properties are treating a 100% of their impervious area.

A lot of them aren't gonna be up to maintenance

Yeah.

But farm

know, over time, hopefully, we get to incentivize them.

Do you wanna take this one?

Yeah. So there's a whole bunch of administrative stuff we need to do to get this done. We we've talked about going in for, an amendment for the rate change, the rate structure change. I don't really technically think we need any sort of amendment for the credit program because we do have an existing credit program and the code language is is pretty vague. So I I think we're kind of okay there.

But we the the biggest part of this is really trying to drum up participation. So the outreach is the is the really big part. Once we get the thumbs up to move forward, we want to be doing we want to be putting together a website. We want to be doing a mailer and a flyer and social media, but also direct one on one outreach, particularly with those larger property owners that are going to be impacted. And we, aren't gonna be able to do everything all at once, so we have a list of things that we're looking at in the future.

So setting up they're they're good examples of web sort of web viewers where you can see what your impervious area is and calculate your potential credit. And, one thing I will say is this Dave alluded to it. This this will open up appeals as a potential risk. Right? So some people will come back and appeal this.

So while, you know, if the the tier structure kind of gives us some padding from that as they're in a range. But if we're saying, you know, you have this exact amount of impervious area, some people are gonna peel it. So we have to be prepared for that. And, of course, we this is just also just gonna change the billing process itself. There's some back stuff that has to happen for that.

Alright. So our final slide is just again the schedule, that we're working towards, and just wanna emphasize what's being proposed is that the current fee structure, so with the 15% goes in place, July 1, and that structure would stay in place for residential and non residential through through the, remainder of the calendar year, at which time, though, during that period of time, non residential parcels would have the ability to apply for credits in anticipation of the fee structure actually changing on January 1 to get that in place. So that would give them time to not be hit by the additional fees potentially, but also address the, the credits over that period of time. And that's all we had. Happy to take any questions.

What

do we need to do legislatively to adopt this?

Well, it sounds like nothing legislatively that the budget is gonna be the question. Right?

Yeah. It's just it's getting it's getting it through finance.

So Well, actually, no. That's wrong. Because the right. Because the the budget's gonna adopt the 50% with the with the current model, but you're saying around

Well, so we were we were gonna go back to finance.

We have to adopt the new

fee structure. Yeah.

Yeah. We have

to do midyear.

That's the fee schedule. What but what about credit program?

So as mentioned, because we actually have an existing credit program and there's some language in the code that's pretty vague, I don't think that there's anything legally that we need to do, but from a responsibility side, the outreach, is is a is a big part of this effort.

Seems too easy.

I know. It's not. It's really hard.

But the the only the only tricky part, we'd have to adopt a new fee schedule. The tricky part is going to be it looks like you're proposing to do that in I wish I'm not clear. When would you be

So we're proposing to go back to finance in before July. So there's a June 4? There's a June 4 meeting that we're proposing going back to to propose the new rate structure.

To go back to finance committee, you're saying?

Yeah.

In

To come back to us?

Mhmm. In July.

In June 4.

With with what?

With the new rate structure.

So would that so when do you so are you proposing to have this big effect with beginning of the new fiscal year?

We're proposing that it sort of takes effect, but we waive it for the first three months while we roll while people are able to submit applications and review them for the credit program.

Can I propose an alternative? It might be a little easier.

I'm I'm just trying to think. We didn't make any I mean, in essence, we accepted the recommendation from your last presentation. That's what we're just talking about because we're working on the final report. And we didn't make any we talked about it, but and even this morning, but we weren't making any changes. So you're coming back to us to

Yeah. I I think from my understanding, based on what the finance director or the former finance director said at the last meeting was, for fiscal year twenty six, you essentially are adopting the 15%, and that's the anticipated revenues you're gonna have on the system. I think she recommended that we could come back with amendment that would change the fee structure, but we wouldn't change the anticipated amount of revenue because we don't know how much credits are gonna be given away and how much additional revenue you get from the fee structure change. And so I believe the amendment would just say, okay, this is the fee structure. There's gonna be a six month period before it goes into effect.

But revenues on the system from a budgetary perspective would be just assuming the 15%.

Yeah. And the changes we're really proposing today are not changes. They're just it's just an update on developing of the credit program, which we have

I know finance I don't know if this makes sense for finance, but it just seems like it might make sense just to because it sounds like you're saying, like, we're at this point, we're moving forward with currently proposed in the budget, is Mhmm. A 15% increase. But then you're you're saying, no. But in June or in June, you're gonna come with an amended fee schedule to to adopt these. But there's gonna be a waiver, so they're not gonna take effect until the new year anyway.

My alternate would be it seems like it'd be easier just to well, adopt the current, like we're playing, no change in this budget, 15% increase. And then January 1, with the new council, just oh, and that might be losing too. But, say, with the new council, just adopt the updated fee schedule. I think I I can spend

with the council like to Give them give them time. I think the idea is to give them time before the fee goes into goes into place, a warning to to apply and for us to have ninety days to respond to their applications.

Yeah. Who's who's administering

Some the of the properties will be impacted quite

a bit. Sorry?

Some of the properties will be impacted quite a bit. So I Yeah.

And I see your point. This way they get a

heads up. It's like a it's a rollout period.

Yeah. Yeah.

That makes sense. Yeah.

Because there's stuff down here in the bottom about you publicize the plan and there's outreach. Who's doing I don't know who's DPW is doing it because it's in blue.

That's right.

And are you doing are you calculating the credits to turn over to finance so they know what they're supposed to be collecting?

We're working with finance. Yeah. Back and forth.

Does finance know this?

Yes. Absolutely.

Okay.

We're working closely with finance.

Surprise.

No. No. Not at all.

Because water bills are sometimes contentious in finance. So

Yeah. We're we're working hand in hand with them.

If we don't have to do legislation

Well, don't at this point. We'll just have to be we'll have to explain it to everybody when we get the fee. Are there any other questions about the I have a few, but are there anything else in the committee?

No.

Just a few points. Would you need any additional resources talking about for next this week, thinking ahead. Do you need any additional resources to shift to a multi tier system for residential that we need to try to get funded for this? Or do you already have that information in GIS and whatever else you're using? Because if you need additional resources, they can get it you could try to get it added to one time use.

I don't think that we would need any specific resources. It's just acknowledging that it's a lot more properties, and so the volume of change will be larger than upper you know, the risk of appeals and and Nobody's and

be appeals from So people with big house. But, again, I think we need to I think we anyway, I'm I'm probably gonna pursue it because I just I wanna my goal is to make this more equitable.

Right. Right? Well, I the one thing I would say is if if we are successful in increasing participation in the credit program, then that will that will be a staff burden for I mean, not a burden, but that will

Right. Yeah. And that's definitely staff. Yeah. That's a good point. Well, it won't get again, it won't happen till next year if that if at all. But but again, that's a good point, though. Even if we do do that, the property the property owners with the big houses still participate. By that time, maybe we'll have credit program we can roll out for them. It's just that in the back

They already have a credit program.

They do?

They do. Okay. Yeah. And

think what? You've answered. Oh, the other just one other thing. You mentioned trees as one of the alternative credits, and thank you. Along those lines, suggest we're working something in related as far as parking spaces. Because, again, one of my goals is to figure out a way to incentivize I like, pick on my ward, the giant, incentivize them to essentially remove a few parking spots here and there to put trees. Right?

Yeah. So impervious removal is an accepted

Oh, it is. Practice. Oh, Okay. Great. Perfect. Well, at least from my standpoint, I wanna really commend you on a very detailed, excellent presentation and just thank you for this very excellent programmatic rollout. You.

Thank Now

we have one other item on the agenda, right Ms. Jackson? We have one item left, I think.

Oh, yes.

Essay Which should take oh, wait. We do another essay?

Take from him.

What? We don't have an essay.

I need I was asking him if he could take

I was asking you.

Okay. Well,

I'll come over to you. How's that? We'll right here.

We have a quick item on 125, expansion of child care options. But really, don't I know YouTube dealt with that in committee. I don't have anything to add. Well, you wanna do you wanna make a motion? All those in favor of a favorable recommendation, please say aye. Aye. Thank you. And that concludes the agenda, I believe. Vice Jackson? Right. Motion to adjourn. I'll second that. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Meeting is adjourned. Thank you, everybody.