Board of County Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Thursday, June 18th, 2026 open session for the Board of Carroll County Commissioners. As we always do, we'll begin with the Pledge of Allegiance and a moment of silent reflection. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, Hope everybody's doing well today. And our first item, as always, is Priority Carol. And Commissioner Krebs, I do believe you are up first this week. Thank you.

And since I forgot my glasses, I really can't read what I have here. But I'm going to just go from memory. I think I remember since I was just there. So last evening, we had a meeting with State Highway at Liberty High School. And it's about the bridges that are going to be going over Liberty Reservoir project. And they were trying to get feedback from the public. And it was an excellent, excellent meeting. They described the situation of replacing the bridge decks. key route for us into Baltimore County, a lot of people work there. They're asking people in the public like they travel that way, whether they rather have a longer delay and have one lane going each way, or they have a shorter period of time that it'd be closed, but it'd have to go around. They had all the different scenarios out there. It's all on their website and it was very well attended, but they're looking for feedback. It's not happening until 2028. But it's going to be a disruption, but they really have analyzed the different scenarios and asked people, you know, which was best to them. And most of them said, have it done, close it once and for all, get it done in a shorter period of time and be done with it. But they're looking for feedback and they're trying to, our own transportation secretary, Brian Boki, was there because they're worried about the, Roads in the neighborhoods being used as cut-throughs, which that's what people will probably do, and how we can make sure we maintain the traffic and the safety in those neighborhoods. So I was very impressed with the level of detail that they were looking at and had already looked at and then the issues that people brought up. So anyone that's listening, if they use the route over the reservoirs, it's two bridges. They're going to do them both at the same time. Not until 2028, but they're really trying to plan this and the safe routes getting around down into Baltimore County to Owings Mills and whatever. So on the website, the whole presentation is there on the state highway website. And I forget what section it is. I'm going to send it out on the email blast, but go in and look under Liberty Reservoir bridges over Liberty Reservoir. And it should be a lot of information there and looking for feedback.

All right, thank you. Good morning, Carroll County. Just a brief comment coming off of the Emergency Services Advisory Council meeting last night. It was... The Chairman Rick Baker's last meeting, he is termed out as Chairman of ESAC. And just on behalf of the Board of Carroll County Commissioners and all Carroll County residents, just to thank Rick for all his service. He has been with ESAC since the beginning, since the enabling legislation started in Annapolis, probably back in 2018. That's how long he's been involved with it. And everybody who's involved with CCVSA and DFEMS is very familiar with Rick. He's an amazing man. His service to the county goes back decades. First as a volunteer with Mount Airy Volunteer Fire Company. He served his country in various roles, and then he has been with ESAC again for over six years, really. And our thanks to Rick Baker and everything that he's done. He has really and truly been so effective, and so much credit needs to be given to him for all his work and everything that he's done for the county. And in that note, they did elect a new chairman. The new chairman of ESAC will be Tim Lee Gore. He's a former chief of Winfield Community Volunteer Fire Company, a longtime chief. And and then they elected Blaine Wright, who's a citizen rep to ESAC as the vice chairman. So we're very excited for both those individuals. Thank you for for Tim and Blaine to step up and try to fill that role. Everybody agrees. that it's going to be tough shoes to fill because Rick has done such an amazing job. But my congratulations and thanks to Rick Baker and my thanks and congratulations to the two new electees to guide ESAC through the next couple of years. It is going to be a pivotal few years. The Board of County Commissioners has commissioned a study about where we're going in the future short long-term goals fire station locations you name it retention it's all in there and it's very important so again my thanks to rick baker and congratulations to the two new officers to guide esac and we look forward to working with you and that's all for me

you very much commissioner commissioner gordon thank you good morning uh first and foremost wanted to uh congratulate uh weimar from boys and girls club of carroll county he was recently in new york with the northeast regional youth of the year event unfortunately we did not take that home but an exceptional opportunity for him to be in the northeast regional with a lot of other very talented and wonderful young people up there and wish him well. He doesn't know this yet, but I'll share it with my colleagues. He's going to be in here probably maybe next week or the week after for proclamation, as we always do for Youth of the Year. But we're keeping that under wraps from him. So hopefully he's not watching this morning. Also, I doubt it, but. Also want to mention something that's coming up. I know there's been some advanced conversation of it. I know this is in September, but it's an exceptional opportunity for our community, which is the Carroll Book Festival, which will be held Saturday, September 19th at the Farm Museum. This is going to be a first-of-its-kind event. They're building upon Carroll County, Maryland's reputation as being a significant community for readers and supportive authors. It's going to be an exceptional event with activities including children's character breakfasts, ticket and author events, book signings, book-related vendors, author panels and book sales. It's just, I think this is just going to be absolutely exceptional. It's nice to see new events. We have wonderful events as always, but to see something like this come forward, I think is just a wonderful opportunity for the community. And as I think many of us know, Carroll County, our libraries, we actually are one of the counties that reads the most. So I think that's just fantastic to see an event of this making in the works here. And last but certainly not least, I wanted to mention that on this past Monday, myself and Commissioner Vigliotti and I had the opportunity to meet with the former students and friends of Robert Moten High School at the Robert Moten Building to discuss the Robert Moten Museum project. The meeting was very productive and brought together a wide array of community partners, including the Historical Society of Carroll County, Union Mills Homestead, the Community Media Center. It's a wonderful opportunity where we can have these types of organizations share a commitment to preserving and celebrating the rich heritage and stories that have shaped our community. The Mote Museum will represent an important opportunity to honor local history, educate future generations, and create a lasting community resource. It's an honor for me to be involved in this as it is all of us to be involved in helping move this project forward and work alongside so many dedicated individuals and organizations who are passionate about preserving our community and look forward to collaborating and seeing how this takes off in the future. And that's all for me this morning. Thank you, Commissioner. Commissioner Kyle.

Thank you. And I'll mention quickly, we had a family wedding at Chesapeake Beach this weekend, my nephew and I love how the kids do it. They don't get married as young as my generation did, but because of that, oh my gosh, we did everything at the reception slash cocktail hour slash after party slash wedding. Some of them had their boats there. It was very good. The reason I want to mention it is so we were away and we missed Flag Day, but a great day for our country and us in Carroll County. We missed Every Step Counts, a great organization that does a lot. um we donated but uh couldn't be there and uh just i wish we could have been there uh tires only at finksburg plaza had a ribbon cutting and we missed that so the same thing i let them know we had to miss now uh things that i did do um i i did breakfast at limber with some of the volunteer fire people and that it was great. Probably last time I was there it was five or six far halls represented. This time it was probably that much again and and I've said it and. they love to hear it we need to respect our volunteers we need to support our volunteers just like we do in rec and parks the Farm Museum the the AG Center Carroll County cannot afford to pay people to do what our volunteers do and we got a hybrid fire system with ems and fire and and that's that can get pretty tedious and uh right now our volunteers think they're being ignored and uh I don't know that that's completely true, but if it's not true, you need to address the perception, and I think we need to do that. I talked to some Reese people last night and heard the same, when you hear the same story from five or six different fire companies, you start to think that there's some validity there. We had veterans advisory in the afternoon, They elected a new chairperson and a new assistant and a great meeting and they're, like those meetings I like how they've done them but they are more from the community from the other nonprofits are coming and doing reports which they're always open to and I think it's great that we're hearing from more and more people there I got to do the opening remarks at the alcohol retailer seminar that was great i was a minute and a half i didn't want to waste their time but um genie bird did the food so i came early and uh um that the public safety training facility has bad parking we need to get that project moving it's a great facility for an event like this but people had to park off-site and uh we need to fix that which we're working on it and and the other thing is i got to talk to the liquor board i got to talk to some attorneys i got to talk to some owners operators and employees of various facilities in carroll county and it's a great industry and uh i'm sure they told them we love your businesses but you need to follow the rules so it was that was a good day um i had the uh community college board of trustees yesterday evening and it was uh funny and i shared that with them a couple people asked me at early voting uh why are you leaving so early where are you going i said community college has their board of trustees graduations over uh... it's summer they must have nothing to talk about and it was one of the longer agendas we've seen and uh... you guys know here We do the budget, we do all that, and then the real year starts July 1st, and we'd have to do a bunch of other things that have to be done. So very busy, a very good group. They're having a launch at their facility, I think July 1st, and that'll be nice because I think so many people Still think the community college is reading, writing, and arithmetic, and it's so many other trades and so many other things, and they need to get that out. Tonight, in Manchester, at Dutch Corner, there's a dinner with Manchester celebrating the 250th year. There's dinner at Dutch Corner from like five to eight, and then from 7.30 to nine, Judge Joe Getty is going to do a history talk at the town of Manchester. So for anybody that's in that area, Dutch Corner, I think they wanted reservations so they knew how many people they were feeding. But at the town hall, you're certainly welcome to come here. He'll probably do the history of Manchester, and it's a great, great talk. And I'm done.

Well, thank you, Commissioner. So if anybody shows up unexpectedly at Dutch's, they just say that they're with you?

Well, I'm not sure I can make it to the dinner. I told them I'd probably stop by, but I'm definitely going to hear the talk.

So if I randomly show up, I'll just tell them I'm on your tab?

Yeah, you probably can't eat. Sorry.

Thank you commissioner. Uh, so, uh, because we have a lot on our agenda today, I'm going to forego my, uh, my own, uh, priority Carol comments today. I want to commend all of my colleagues as always for their participation and their comments. Uh, and before we get into the actual part of the agenda, if anybody is here for any of the items or for the public hearing, uh, there are common cards at the back that you want to fill out and then hand to Roberta up here. Uh, so without any further ado, commissioner Guerin, I believe you have a proclamation.

I do. I have a proclamation that July is Park and Recreation Month, so if you've got anybody from Park and Recreation, not Rec and Parks, Park and Recreation, come on up. We were discussing that this morning, didn't we?

Yeah. Good morning, Commissioner. Good morning.

Good morning, everybody. So I'm going to read the proclamation, then I'm going to turn it over to you, Director Hicks, and let's chat about this a little bit more, because I know there is always a lot going on with Park and Recs during the summer. Proclamation. July is Park and Recreation Month. Recreation and park programs are an integral part of communities throughout this country, including Carroll County, Maryland, and recreation and parks are vitally important to the quality of life in our communities, supporting the health of citizens, and contributes to the economic and environmental wellbeing of the community. And recreation and parks provide a safe place for children and adults to connect with nature and recreate outdoors. And recreation and parks encourage physical activities by providing space for popular sports, trails for walking and hiking, and many other activities designed to promote active lifestyles. And they promote lifelong learning opportunities and provides rewarding activities for families. And the Department of Recreation and Parks Connects people, parks, and programs in support of a strong, healthy community and natural environment. So now, therefore, we, the Board of Carroll County Commissioners, consistent with the National Recreation and Park Association and Communities, do hereby proclaim July 2026 as Park and Recreation Month.

And welcome. Well, thank you, Commissioner Guerin. Before I get started, I wanted to have some talking points about Park and Recreation Month. I want to introduce some newer staff that came aboard with our Recreational Parks Department. First, I'm going to start with Candy Sample. She is the center coordinator for the Charles Carroll Community Center. And she started back in October. So she's a lot of great programs and all using the center quite a bit. And then our new division manager for parks, Heather Janis. And she came from us, from Howard County Conservancy and also Howard County Recreation and Parks.

Welcome to you both. Welcome on board.

Happy to have you. Background for Recreation and Parks, but I wanted to introduce some of our newer staff that came on board. Just a couple of things I just wanted to, July is Park and Recreation Month, and that began back in 1985. The National Recreation and Parks Association started that off, and they started to observe and recognize the importance of parks, recreation programs, and professionals, and volunteers who maintain them. Parks and recreation services enhance quality of life for residents of all ages by providing opportunities for exercise, learning, social connection, and outdoor enjoyment. Parks provide physical and mental health by encouraging active lifestyles and access to nature. Recreation programs provide safe, inclusive spaces for youth, family, older adults, and people with disabilities. Parks strengthen community ties by serving gathering places for events, sports, cultural activities, and volunteer efforts, and also provide green space and contribute to environmental stewardship, clean air and water, and wildlife habitat protection. Parks also help attract residents, businesses, and visitors. And recreational facilities and events support local economy through tourism and spending in nearby businesses. Parks and Recreation staff work year round, as well as our volunteers, maintain and manage programs, protect natural resources, and ensure public safety. And in summary, this National Park and Recreation Month reminds us that parks are more than just places. They are essential community assets for health, foster connections, support environmental stewardship, and improve the quality of life for everyone. And July is an opportunity to celebrate the spaces and the dedicated volunteers and professionals who make them possible. And with that, I wanted to, Candy's gonna go over a couple of the, as part of the July Van Park and Recreation Month, she's gonna go over a couple of the programs that we have for July.

I'm very excited to be here today and share some of the stuff that we're gonna have going on. This July, we're excited to celebrate Parks and Recreation Month with this year's theme, The Power of Play. The month kicks off on July 1st with our Park Pursuit Kickoff walks at Westminster Community Pond and Freedom Park. Park Pursuit is one of our signature free family challenges, encouraging teams to explore parks across Carroll County throughout July. And this year, participants will have a chance to win Hershey Park tickets. there are three different weeks that you can sign up for and each week will bring you to a different section of the county just highlighting different areas and just showing everyone what we have to offer and in each week you have a chance to win the set of Hersheypark tickets so it's really exciting on July 8th the Charles Carroll Community Center will host our first summer pick a ball slam wit combining friendly competition with lunch and community fun I'm really excited about that and July 11th brings the third annual Carroll County Car Fest at the Carroll County Farm Museum featuring show cars live music food trucks and artisan vendors all supporting the Carroll County Park Legacy Fund we'd like to give a special thank you to Commissioner Keiler for once again volunteering as an event judge

Vivian makes me do that. Thank you.

The week of July 13th through the 17th, Charles Carroll Community Center will have summer play zone camp for kids 5 through 12. providing a week of games crafts active play and unforgettable summer memories i'll be in the lead and i'm super excited about this camp and we're going to have a follow-up camp in august so really excited cheerleader i can't tell at all July 24th we will host a free family outdoor movie night at Charles Carroll Community Center how to train your dragon a free frozen treat and a chance to win Hershey Park tickets will be given to all that pre-register on july 27th we have a fun kid-friendly puzzle competition july 29th at 5 30 p.m is a youth challenge course race at freedom park which is going to be really exciting And we'll wrap up the celebration on July 31st with a Glowin' Rally Neon Knights Pickleball, a unique black light pickleball experience. And we have had one already there at the center, and they love it. They just had so much fun, and it was so great to see. and just so you know all of these activities are listed on our main website and there is a link as soon as you go on for the month of july and it gives all the information how to sign up dates times and everything so thank you thank you thank you any comments from the board

We miss the senior center being open and being used because it's being used for voting.

Correct.

So everybody's going through withdrawal.

Well, thank you all very much for what you do. I mean, looking at the agenda for the month of July, I mean, every month we do amazing things here, but it looks like you've kicked it up a notch this year for July, and that's awesome. And I don't know, glow-in-the-dark pickleball. I'd have to get a glow-in-the-dark tie to play that.

And if you need any wheelchairs to push the people out, if they twist their ankles, we have them at the Lions Club.

And I want to mention, thank you guys for all you do. And since recreation is a big part of this, so much of the rec council's uses are at school facilities. I remember the joint use agreement being developed in the early 70s. And ADs were different back then, and then they changed, and then they changed back. And I'm hearing door knocking different programs who aren't particularly happy with their use of various schools. And a lot of it is because the ADs job description has changed and i'm not sure i think some of the schools if not all there might be a different person doing facility use than the ad so that complicates it more because you need their schedule so i i thank you guys for all they do i've i've i've encouraged them to use their rec council use their community coordinator and uh i'll get back to you i've gotten some emails since then but um and and a lot of that's online now so it should be easier right so it's and and maybe some of the rec councils haven't adapted well to the online i don't i'm not sure but i just wanted to mention that and thanks for what you guys do because it's always changing and it's not easy thank you thank you

Commissioner Gordon, any thoughts there? Just greatly appreciate all the hard work and welcome aboard. Glad to have you both with us.

All right.

Shall we do a photo?

Absolutely.

Thank you. Oh, yeah.

All right. Up next, item number two, public or FY 2027 program open space allocations to municipalities. Yes. Bob, good to have you with us again.

Thank you. Thank you. Good morning again. Good morning. I'm here before you this morning. The the get approval for the FY 2027 program open space allocation. to the municipalities. The way we work for the POS allocation is we have, of course, eight municipalities, and every year we do four municipalities, and then we alternate them each year. This year we received $1,363,278 of that. The commissioners back in 1977 made an agreement that we would share 25% of the allocations with the municipalities each year. So that leaves 340,820, and we divide that into four equal amounts. To go over each of the programs or the projects itself, so Hampstead has Melvin Miller Memorial Park to have a phase one pavilion and picnic area. Manchester has Christmas Tree Park with a pond area refurbishment. Marin area has Watkins Park, a court rehab and retaining wall stabilization project. And lastly, Sykesville has South Branch Park. It's a connector down to downtown Sykesville. I will point out for this project that being a connector going from Sykesville, it goes over the Patapsco River to South Branch Park, which is in Howard County. So I just wanted to point that out. And I did invite Drew Rittenhouse. I don't know if he's here.

There he is.

And Drew's here to talk about if you had any questions about the project itself, he can answer that for you.

Any questions, comments, or direction from the board?

No, but I would like to ask a question about South Branch. Only because they've always been good partners. Howard County has actually been good partners with the town of Sykesville and actually given us resources for South Branch. But I just didn't know what the status of that was.

I'm sorry, what was the question again?

I said they've been very good about Howard County's been very helpful in giving us money for that side of South Branch Park. But what's happening with it?

I'll take that. My name is Joe Costantini. I'm the town manager in Sykesville. So yes, we have an ongoing partnership with Howard County. We actually leased the park from them for $1 a year. They've actually made substantial investments in South Branch Park, the most recent being the expansion of the parking lot down there. We're working with state highways to improve the pedestrian connectivity of the bridge itself that goes across the South Branch of the Patapsco. And then this project would actually connect the existing sidewalk within the park to the bridge. Right now, people that walk from downtown to get over to South Branch don't really have any kind of pathway. They basically just walk through the grass in the park or they have to walk in the road. So again, this project would allow that connectivity.

Is there anything going on with the apple butter factory?

We're in the planning process for that. In all likelihood, it will be demolished and something like a pavilion or something like that will be built in its place. But we're still investigating whether or not the building itself can be salvaged.

I just want to point out, it's always been nice that Howard County, even though it's very border of their territory and sits in the town, that they've been very helpful with funding things for our town when we always don't have the resources for it. So I thank them for that partnership. And thank you for giving me the update. Sure.

Move the Board of County Commissioners approve the recommendation of the local chapter of the Maryland Municipal.

Is that right? Yeah.

Yep. The Municipal League of FY2027 Municipal Program Open Space Projects. Second.

We have a motion, we have a second. Is there any discussion?

Yeah, it just, this is a good system and I appreciate it. I want to also mention not Not open space money, but North Carroll Rec Council is doing, I think, a self-help at Christmas Tree Park also, so they're getting like another $40,000 on top of this in work done in the town of Manchester. And North Carroll Rec Council uses the fields a lot, so it's totally appropriate, but I just wanted to mention that.

Thank you. All right, we have a motion, we have a second. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you, gentlemen.

Thanks for coming up. Thank you, Christian. Thank you.

All right, up next, item number three, grant approval of application and acceptance of award for the FFY 2025 to 2027 year two hazardous materials emergency preparedness. Morning, Valerie. Morning.

Good morning. Yes, that is a mouthful.

I've got to ask you before you start. So were you guys the reason all the traffic lights in Westminster were out yesterday afternoon, and did that cause any problems for you?

we were not the reason commissioner no um just the normal problems that any a power outage of that type would cause luckily it didn't last horribly long yeah so there were multiple calls for service around various types there were police and a lot of the red lights there were barricades at some of the roads quickly so it was a great response yeah and like i said luckily it didn't last too horribly long yeah yeah we did have several questions that came to us It was unusual. Good morning. Good morning. As was mentioned before by Commissioner Vigliotti, we're here this morning to ask for approval to apply for this grant as well as accept the funds if they're awarded. Assistant Emergency Manager Jacob Hill is here with me this morning to talk about this with you. So I'll turn that over to him for a moment. And then if you have any questions before you make a decision on it, we'll be happy to answer them.

All right, good morning. So the proposed application request is in the amount of $9,815, and this will be for training and coordination with our HAZMAT team. The performance period will run from October 1st of 2026 to September 30th of 2027, and the application does require a 25% match of $2,454. Some of the funding will be used for lithium ion battery training, as well as HAZMAT conference attendance cost, and it matches the value of the classroom space over at the Public Safety Training Center.

Any questions, comments, or direction from the board?

Move the Board of Commissioners approve the FY 2025-2027 Year 2 Hazardous Materials Emergency Preparedness grant application to MDEM, as well as the acceptance of the grant funded if awarded. Second.

We have a motion, we have a second. Is there any discussion?

Yeah. What's it mean that the match will be in-kind contributions?

It just means that we're meeting the match with already budgeted funds. So there's no additional cash that the county has to provide in order to meet the match. So we use the value of the training public safety training center facility. We come up with comparables for if we had to rent space someplace else to put the class on. But since we're already paying for that as part of the operating budget, we can use that as the match. Good.

And I want to thank your EMS people for taking care of my mother last night at three in the morning when she couldn't get in touch with me because she fell and my phone was on silent and I thought it was I thought her number would come through because I have it on that emergency works and it didn't and they stayed with her and called me four times and took care of her and she said they were so kind because they had to get into the house and unlock all the doors where the hidden you know so I just want to thank them for being patient she said they were wonderful and Got her calmed down, and I hope everything's okay.

I hope everything is all right as well.

I'm glad that we're able to help. Unfortunately, we've been higher users than I would like to be, but when you're 92, that's what happens. But she was down and could not get up, and no one knew the phone was ringing. I feel bad, but thank you. Always know that somebody's there, so thank you.

Certainly. I just have a quick question.

I shouldn't ask this up here, but do they get their information from them so they can bill? Do they get their insurance information? I didn't ask her.

That would be a specific question for Fire and EMS.

Oh, Fire and EMS, OK. So she said she's going to send a donation, but I want to make sure that we can bill for that stuff, because obviously we have insurance.

You'll receive a bill, and the bill will give you an opportunity to provide your insurance information. And then it will be filtered through your insurance, and then you'll receive the modified bill.

No, I don't think we ever got a bill the last couple of times we used it, but we'll make sure of that. Thank you.

All right, thank you.

All right, we have a motion, we have a second. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you both very much.

Thank you, Commissioner.

All right. Up next, I'm going to call to order the public hearing on proposed amendments to Chapter 150, Forest Conservation. I'm going to turn things over to our county attorney, Tim Burke, for a brief introduction. Then I'll turn things over to Chris and Janet for a brief summary of the proposed legislation. And then I will open the floor to public comments and then follow up with discussion from the board. So, Tim, I'll turn things over to you now.

Good morning, Commissioners. As stated earlier, the purpose of today's public hearing is to consider some extensive revisions to Chapter 150, our Forest Conservation Ordinance, which has not had extensive revisions for quite some time. The hearing was advertised in the Carroll County Times on June 4, 2026 and June 11, 2026, as well as the county's website and the various county social media outlets that we've been using for to advertise public hearings. As stated earlier, we have the director Chris Hein is here, John Bowman, and Janet O'Meara here to give you a quick recap of what's being proposed before we open it up to the public if you're so inclined.

All right, thank you very much.

Well, good morning, commissioners. As Tim said, we're here for the public hearing for code amendments to chapter 150, our forest conservation code. So just a little recap. So the state's policies around forest conservation have obviously evolved over the last 35 years from 1991 to 2023. which has us in a position where the state is looking to increase the acreage of forest land here around the state so with that just setting the purpose of chapter 150 is to conserve the county's forest resources protect protect forest trees and sensitive areas during development, as well as implement the State Forest Conservation Act through county code. So these proposed code changes are to comply with changes made to the State Forest Conservation Act per Senate Bill 526 in 2023 and to ease certain requirements that we have felt would be helpful. So just to summarize the changes required by Senate Bill 526, we're looking at the addition of priority retention areas, requirements related to clearing priority retention areas, revised mitigation requirements, the addition of retention banking, and a revised stream buffer definition. The staff recommended changes include a change to the applicability threshold, exemptions, the tree planting maintenance period, and the addition of a fee in lieu option for mitigation. So that is what we have this morning. This obviously summarized a presentation that John gave back on May 14. So if there are any questions, we'd be happy to answer those.

All right, thank you. Well, let's open up the floor to the public hearing. Roberta, do we have anybody here for the public hearing?

Wait a minute. No one in the room.

Hold on, Commissioner. I do have somebody here. It doesn't say we have public comment on the agenda. However, I do have someone that would like to make public comment on the phone if we allow.

Oh, of course. Yes, it's public hearing.

Okay. Thank you, Chris. Caller, could you please give us, you'll have three minutes to make a public comment. Janet, could you take that down so that we could share the three-minute timer? Thank you. We'll have three minutes. If you please identify yourself and give us your address, you can have your public comment. Thank you.

Yes, sir. Thank you. Are you able to hear me? Yes, ma'am. Wonderful. My name is Alex Fota from the Law Office of G. Macy Nelson. Our address is 600 Washington Avenue, Suite 202 in Townsend, Maryland. I have the pleasure of representing Ms. Shirley Appleby and John Ciamolone. And I'm calling in to voice our Support of the adoption and update to the Forest Conservation Regulations. Generally, we believe it is beneficial to more closely reflect the state statute. We do offer two more negative comments. The county is allowed to provide or impose more restrictive regulations than the state provides. The state requirements are the bare minimum. The county can increase those regulations. So we would respectfully request One, that you do not allow payment in lieu of meeting the forest conservation requirements. And we would also suggest that when off-site mitigation is permitted, that it be limited or required to be within the watershed that the forest is being removed from. There are other counties that have very similar provisions. I believe Howard County has those same requirements. And what I've seen in my experience is that Oftentimes, developers will remove woodland and not meet the requirements and then pay a fee in lieu that does not reflect the flood damage, the resources required by the county to address that flood damage caused by the removal of woodland. So we would respectfully request that you alter the amendment slightly to prohibit fee in lieu and require that offsite mitigation be within the same watershed. Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you very much. Chris, do you have anybody else on the line?

That's all I have, sir.

Thank you. Thank you very much, Chris. All right. I will open it up to the board for any comments, questions, or discussion or action.

Chris, this has been of interest to me since you brought up months ago. Yes. So I appreciate the caller coming in. But the first thing I want to just say to the board, We've been doing a little research and I think we're the only county so far or town that I know of that has their hearings in the daytime so people cannot participate. I want to bring that up again because I'm glad one person called in today, but having people take off or having to call in the middle of work is not a time for public hearings. i'm just saying that because i'm going to look at all the counties and so far we're the only county that does it and i think we're the only town that does it in our in carroll county so i'd like to have participation and i think we should make it available for people in the evenings 5 30 to 7 38 o'clock instead of 10 o'clock in the morning That's my opinion. So I mentioned it quietly for many times. I'm going to mention it again publicly. I thank you guys, whoever has to take off work to do this stuff. But I appreciate Ms. Wilson calling in and that opportunity for them. The state conservation manual. So that means we're going to be, are we going to be the same as the state on all this? Before we had regulations that were tougher than the state. And now everything's going to be aligned with the state, the minimum standards.

So are you referring to the Forest Conservation Manual? Yes. OK. So I think that's the next thing. Well, it's different from the code, right?

Well, is our code going to reflect the same standards? I guess that's what I'm asking. So if we're going to be aligned, if somebody is building something somewhere else, are we going to be aligned with the state standards?

So our code does not directly align with the state. We are different in some ways. Which ways?

I'm just trying to figure out what the differences are, and if they're more restrictive, less restrictive, and if there's a reason for it, and if there is a good reason what it is.

So I guess just to touch on the technical manual, which is what we are adopting per the state's manual, that will align directly with what the state has as the Forest Conservation Technical Manual. And that, John, correct me if I'm wrong, but that helps, you know, and is a guidance document for when someone prepares their forest conservation plan. As far as the code goes, we are, especially in the retention banking section we're differing from what the state's forest conservation code lays out slide five if that helps you and i and i can look at that more i'll look at more carefully but you pointed that out and we have time yeah yeah we still have time and and if i made um the presentation that john gave back in may uh we outlined and went through all those specific items

Examples would be related to mitigation related to utility poles, utility projects. So there we are putting into county code that they are not exempt from the Forest Conservation Code. We have submitted that information to DNR, Department of Natural Resources for their review and we have not received any comments. So we are presenting that for the board to consider putting that into county code. So we could certainly, I don't think we're prepared today to go through the presentation again with the differences. No, I have it. I have a copy of it. Yeah, okay.

So is that for reforestation and forestation? I'm talking about the utility lines right now. So we can make them reforest or aforest on these utility lines? If this code is passed. If this code is passed. But on both, not just on the reforestation.

So afforestation would not come into play, I don't believe, but reforestation would.

Well, that's what I'm asking. I mean, obviously, there's going to be farmland, and there's no trees there. There is some disturbance. I just wanted, in that case, I'd like to have it as strict as possible. If we can, there is disturbance.

so um appreciate that and then the issue about the fee in lieu of um do we do that so currently our code does not allow for fianlu okay and uh that's a concern because um if we do not offer that option then there are projects that will be completely stopped because they have not been able to find other options and the private banking industry has dried up at this point now thankfully we're hearing that that there is some that is coming back to some extent but we felt it good to put into code that option obviously that's not an option that we wish to to actually have to implement because that puts the onus on the county then to address the mitigation for development. And one of the reasons why we set the fee in lieu of price point where it is is that we do not want that to be an attractive option. We would prefer that developers solve the issue for themselves.

I appreciate it. But I think it'd be nice for us to know if that's happening so that we could address it. I would like to know before we approve something like that that we're doing it and then try to come up with some other options, any fee in lieu of. I mean, I'd like the board to know you know what the issues are because I mean there's obviously places that we could ask them to plant some trees because I thought the whole purpose of the fee in lieu of was to get the planting done I mean don't we have the county would plant the trees so on the fee in lieu of you're saying we would then do it that would be our remediation yes I'm just gonna we're gonna discourage as much as possible yes but we also got to help find opportunities to for these We're going to have some encouragements, find some outside-the-box encouragements for people to want to do the tree banks. I know they'd rather be solar now because we can put solar on these properties instead of trees, but I think a lot of us would rather have trees. Yes, agreed. All right, thank you.

Real quick, what is the current fee for fee-in-lieu?

It was set.

Ian, I don't have that information. It depends on if it's commercial.

Do you have it on the slide? I thought there was a...

So if you may recall, several months ago, you all agreed to a fee structure. At the time, because this gets into nuances, right? At the time, we did not have fee in lieu of as an option in county code. And so it was... it was more of a buying into an existing county bank, right? Same fee structure. But now if the code is passed, it'll be more phrased in the terminology of a fee in lieu of program. The rate is, so it depends if you're in a priority funding area or not. If you're in a PFA for a subdivision or site development, so a larger developer, would be fifty four thousand four hundred fifty dollars per acre what we have established is that for a single-family residence so if just individuals we wanted to give them a break we cut that in half to twenty seven to twenty five if you're in a non priority funding area so we there's we want to discourage that as it were Right? For a subdivision and site development, it is 65,340 an acre. And again, for those single family residences, cut that in half to 32,670. OK.

Thank you.

Any other comments, questions, or direction from the board?

Hearing none, I would need a motion to bring the public hearing to a close and keep the record open for a period of 10 calendar days from today's date. So moved. We have a motion. Do we have a second?

Second.

We have a motion. We have a second. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right. Up next, item number five, adoption of the State of Maryland Forest Conservation Technical Manual.

good morning commissioners so just to follow up on the code adoption as part of this we are looking to adopt the state's most recent forest conservation technical manual as the guidance document document for our code so with that and if you have any questions happy to entertain those

So the recommended motion is to adopt a resolution to utilize the conservation technical manual, but there's no resolution in the binder.

Let me see if it's in the magic manual.

Well, I mean, at least in mine I didn't have a... Magic resolution. Thank you. I just want to see what it is before we move on.

It basically says, yep, pass it on. It just basically says what it is.

I want to just mention, I've been noticing lately, and I appreciate this, that we're trying to put links in with these briefing papers. This one doesn't seem to have a link. It's just nice because then if somebody ever goes back and looks at the agenda, the link is right there. They can read it. So I know we're doing more and more of that, but this one did not have it. Not that I was going to sit up and read it last night, but there are people that it would be right available to them. So thanks for what you've done in the past.

And does this just bring us more into compliance with the state's technical manual then? Okay. Move the Board of County Commissioners adopt the resolution to utilize the Forest Conservation Technical Manual published by the state of Maryland.

We have a motion. Do we have a second?

Second.

We have a motion and we have a second. Is there any discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right, up next, item number six. We have a public hearing for the community development of block grant family shelter renovation and relocation. So I'm going to call to order the public hearing for the Community Development Block Grant Family Shelter Renovation Relocation. I will kick things over to Celine, you and your friends to give us a summary. Then we'll open up to the floor for any public comments. And then I'll open it up to the floor for my colleagues for any discussion. So all yours.

okay great well thank you for having us commissioners i'm here with jenny grable who is our ceo of hsp human services programs of carroll county and then also our grants manager debbie standifird and as you noted we're here to hold a public hearing for the fy 25 community development block grant on the family and it's regarding our family shelter renovation project and The HUD requires us to come back before the community and do a closing of a project when we've been funded through CDBG funds and that's why we're here today to speak to the project. Jenny is going to share some details about the project and Debbie did you want to offer some other insight with the dates of the project so that we have that on the public record?

The the public hearing was advertised in the Carroll County Times both on June 4th and June 11th and then the public hearing notice was released through the county of the Press release was released through the county on June 4th as well to advertise the hearing And so our family shelter many of you I think all of you were actually at the opening of the family shelter and that was on March 31 the

The celebration was in March, but then we actually opened on March 31 of 2026. To date, we've served 12 households with 15 adults and 19 children. And so Jenny's going to give us some of the other great highlights of the things that are going on in the family shelter. And again, wanted to thank all of you for the opportunity and the support of this project, because it really has been life changing.

Thank you to you both for all of your hard work, and to you, Debbie, for everything that you've done behind the scenes.

I would say first and foremost I cannot say thank you enough to everyone. This has been, it's funny because it's a close for this but it's our new beginning and it has continued to be such an incredible journey and blessing and I still walk in and it still feels surreal at how beautiful the space is. So like Celine said we moved in March 31st and when I was here last I was able to touch base on our opening and when we brought families in and the murals and really the joy of the space really continues. The top highlights have easily been the windows. It sounds very Basic and simple, but coming from a darker space with minimal windows to a space with light is a game changer. Every day it lightens the mood and you just feel better in the space. The bigger kitchen, the bigger laundry room has been a game changer. And certainly going into the summer, the backyard space is huge. And really as a result of the backyard space especially, and just the additional space of the added bathrooms and laundry room, I would say the biggest change that we have seen, by far and away, is less fighting. Because when you have seven families in two bathrooms, that causes some trouble. But having so many bathrooms now, and even more families, There's no fighting. And that was literally from day one. It was just like a breath of fresh air. Being able to do your household duties when you want to and when you can on your schedule is something that we take for granted. And when you are already in kind of the hardest moments of your life to have to worry about who's in the bathroom and waiting to take a bath and when you're going to bathe your kids, that's not even a consideration anymore. So just that immediate result was tremendous. another added bonus has been a computer lab so we applied for a grant to have new computers put in and so we have a private computer lab where kids and adults can sign up to do their homework to look for jobs to do with their schoolwork as adults and children so we had a mother who was ecstatic because she was taking her kids to the library to use the computer space now she doesn't have to do that anymore her kids can be there she can be there and Her day goes on as normal because we have that computer space in that private area. Our partners are also really excited, specifically Carroll County Public Schools and a nonprofit, Appy Time. So Carroll County Public Schools comes two evenings every single week. So one for tutoring and one for counseling. And then Appy Time is an additional tutoring support for our kids in shelter. And they have seen an immediate increase in the number of families who are participating. Because in our old shelter, we didn't have private space. We didn't have walls that went to the top. So nobody really wanted to talk about anything and no one really shared anything. So now that we have private rooms where a door can be closed and people have their space, we're seeing more people receive services, which is a huge blessing. It also is helping our parents learn a lot more structure because the space is so big. We're learning new habits and child proofing and kids are able to run and explore. So being like even simple things for our one year olds and our babies to have tummy time and to be able to learn to walk in shelter because there's space for kids to amble about and be on the floor and not have people walking through that same space. Just the amount of land that we have is tremendous. And so I told you about the last fights and also our staff are incredibly happy. Also something that you don't think about is just, you know, being, you know, working in shelter can be hard sometimes. So to be able to feel good about your environment and again, that natural light and the space it really makes a huge difference in how you feel about your day our donors continue to be very supportive so the momentum that we received from the ribbon cutting and the advertisement has maintained so we continue to see great donations for household items um you know toiletries things along those lines and linens which are always a constant need towels as well we continue to see incredible support with our community partners we've had several families get bikes through the bikes works program new Dave has been a great supporter and then in addition we're able to now bring in different nonprofits and community people now that we've been settled to start different programs so we're looking for opportunities to bring in increased activities for families and adults and we've had groups express interest in cooking classes and things along those lines because we have the space to do all these great things. And so we're really looking forward to those opportunities that will present themselves because of the space that we have. We've also developed a new partnership as well with Carol Food Sunday. So before we were right in the same building so families could go as they pleased. Now it's a touch further. So we have reached out and partnered with Carolyn to have two days a month set aside where we transport participants and they can go in, get shopping, and then come back to shelter to make sure that necessary need continues without any obstacles. So again, we're looking forward to the ability to have more programming, even more parties, more holiday celebrations that make being in shelter easier for our kids. And then kind of next on our horizon, we'll be really developing the transitional youth space in partnership with the county to be able to provide safe place for our more vulnerable young people and then really the next big project that will happen hopefully very soon we applied for tax credits for a playground so the state is about to release those funds so we have $30,000 worth of tax credits that will be probably sold very quickly either by our board or some of our top donors and then once we sell them we'll be able to construct a playground for the kids So it has been so far an incredible start to the summer and again cannot say thank you enough for this amazing opportunity.

Well thank you again to you and to everybody who is a part of that shelter. I know it's not an easy thing to do but it's a necessary thing to do and it's a wonderful thing to be able to do. So Roberta I want to open the floor to any public comments. Do we have anybody here for public comment?

Not here. Chris do you have anybody on the line for public comment?

no sir we do not all right thank you i will open it up to my colleagues for any discussions or courses of action not discussion but just want to make a comment i do think the new space is quite exceptional it was nice to be able to be in attendance with a number of my colleagues for the opening well as a wide array of other people in the community and I just thought it was a breath of fresh air and I think it was uplifting to see the color scheme and everything else because clearly when people are need you know to to be able to be surrounded by quality and uplifting people colors the settings I just thought it was it was very nice to see so I just want to commend you on that and with that I move the Board of Commissioners close the public hearing and keep the record open for 10 days

second we have a motion we have a second is there any discussion I want to thank you for personalizing it because you know Debbie does the grants does a great job we get the money we say we're going to do this much and get this much we're going to affect these many people and that's nice it's nice to know but when you really understand the difference that it makes doing it right you know just natural light is a big deal for people having having their own bathroom you know you're sharing all those and even the walls I need to think about the privacy with walls but sharing the personalization and how attention to detail, it does make a difference, especially when you're living in a congregate like going back to college again. So it's a beautiful facility. It's well deserved. And I thank you for sharing the personal stories about it. And I also would like to see how people then maybe are able to transition and get to be successful so new people can come in. So the follow through on the personalization of all these grants that we get and we work hard to get is important to let people know what our end goal is and how it's really making a difference. So thank the team for everything they did.

While we have you experts here, early voting has created a lot of questions, and this is a great facility and serves a specific need. What all is on the property? You have this building, you have offices, you have the senior center, and then there's another building. Can you describe

what happens in each of those buildings sure so so the cove we call it we actually call it the stoner avenue campus now um and so the cove building where the family shelter is um is at 115 stoner avenue and in that building also is housed on the on the other side it's two it's separated off um the family shelter occupies one space on the other space we actually have aging staff offices. So it's our older adult waiver program staff are in that area. There's also a community conference room that we use there for other nonprofits and other organizations and our staff to have conferences and trainings in that room. And then we have the Senior Center and the Division of Aging and Disabilities is the larger building on the campus with the green roof. And then in the other building is where we have the...

The offices. There's a lot of traffic in and out of there. What do people come there for?

So we have our Maryland Access Point Information and Assistance. And in there, they're our gatekeeper of all our aging and disability services so people can... come into the lobby there and seek services or they can give a call. Our office is open from 8 to 4.30. Staff are there until 5 to help assist individuals with services. And so that is anything related to health insurance. Veteran services are in that office as well. We also have our senior inclusion program offices are in there. We have our ombudsman staff and their team is in there. We have our guardianship program. our caregiver program, caregiver supports. You can access your CTS tickets there for your discount and donated tickets for older adults and people with disabilities. You can come to the front desk there. So there are a lot of services that are offered right there. I know I've missed a few for sure. And whatever program line it is, they'll probably send me a hate email. But we have a lot of things going on in there in the building. But thank you for the plug. And the number there to call in is 410-386. 3800 so if anybody wants to give a call they can also schedule an appointment to see a map specialist that can walk them through a session where they can just talk them through what the situation is with their loved one or with themselves. And it's an options counseling session where they can see what other services or resources are out there to help them be self-sustainable or remain in the community as long as they can. Because that's really the goal we know of all of our older adults and people with disabilities is to remain at home for as long as possible. And that's what our services are there to do to help them access that ability.

And what are the hours for the senior center? And like all the other senior centers, they have some community groups that use it after it closes.

Correct. So the senior centers are all open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Each center, we have five senior centers across Carroll County. We have Mount Airy, South Carroll, North Carroll, Tawny Town, and Westminster. And they're all open and serve a hot meal every day. You do have to pre-register if you want to eat at the senior center. And those meals are for a donation. And nobody's monitoring that. So if you don't have the money, that's okay, too, because we know people are on a fixed income. And sometimes you may not have the donation to leave. But we offer those meals so people can come and enjoy a congregate meal and really talk to other individuals. It's really more of a social setting than just having the meal. So we encourage that. And we also offer a lot of different programming. We have fitness classes. We have educational classes. We have community groups that come in and speak about certain opportunities. We have a lot of different things going on in our centers, arts and crafts. And at Tawny Town, we're going to be soon having a grand opening of our new back space where we've expanded the programming space there. So we're excited to get that on the books, and we'll be pushing out a press release about that date as well. So a lot of great things happening. And older adults, people with disabilities, and their caregivers are welcome to come in and enjoy that space.

And the last building.

And the last building that we have on the campus is Jenny and HSP operated. That is our adult only shelter in one portion of the building and then our night by night emergency shelter in the other side of the building. thank you and you probably skipped a couple of things but you guys do a few things so we do a couple things right so but but we have we we both have great teams and I can speak for my team especially they do an awesome job they're very welcoming and they are very communicative and I think we work because we are all on the same campus we work very closely together because we serve a lot of the same individuals in different programs

Thank you very much. All right. So we have a motion. We have a second. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you all very much.

Thank you.

All right. Up next, item number seven, briefing on progress and activities of the Carroll County Local Management Board's Engaging Neighborhoods, Organizations, Unions, Governments, and Households, otherwise known as the ENOUGH Program. Morning to you both. Morning again, Salim.

Morning, Commissioners. I see it. I see it. Sorry. All right. I always get...

Okay.

Good morning, Commissioners. I wanted to introduce, before we get started here, this is Aiden Omni. If you haven't met Aiden before, he is our Enough Act coordinator, and he has done a great job with this initiative. And obviously, Ed Singer needs no introduction. He's been around the county for many years, wearing a lot of hats, and he's our local management board manager. And you're familiar with the Enough Act program. We have been before you many times and have had your support throughout the time we've been implementing this over the past year. And what we wanted to do was come back before you and provide you with an update on this initiative. So I'm gonna turn it over to Aiden and I'll man his PowerPoint form so he can share our most recent resource fair that we had in Union Bridge as a result of this and what we've done to kind of accomplish some of the goals and where we're headed.

Thank you. Yeah, so like Celine said, we've been doing a lot of work with the Enough Act out in the Union Bridge area. It's one of our priority areas. And last April, we had a resource fair with over 40 vendors attending. And during that resource fair, we administered a survey to both attendees and vendors. So these are the results of the attendee survey. So first question we asked was about demographics, and we got a pretty even split for the most part of different ages and different locations. Most of the people were from Union Bridge, and the only group that we didn't really get a lot of responses was from, was that 18 to 24? The next question on there was one that the GOC asked us to ask them, which was did attending this event increase your awareness of services? And as you can see, the majority of people said yes. The next question we asked was what is the greatest need for you and your family right now? So the top needs that we saw people mentioning were food, childcare, and housing. And within that, I did notice that childcare was more selected by those in the younger demographic, those 18 to 34s. And the employment training was exclusively selected by 35 to 64. The next question we asked was, what makes it difficult to access services in your community? And the top barriers that we saw mentioned were transportation, not knowing where to go, and cost. We then asked people what organizations that they met today could do to make services more accessible. And most people favored the option for providing periodic services in the community. And then the last question we asked of attendees was if you could make one change to strengthen your community, what would it be? The responses to that question kind of broadly fell into three different categories. The most popular one was infrastructure and resources. So you see things up there like restaurants, a gas station, bank, transportation. The next category was events and activities. So you see more community and awareness events up there, and then some stuff for the kids to do, like a reading program. And then the last kind of broad category in that was communication and community relations. You know, having more community involvement, more coming together, improving communication in the town and encouraging authentic communication and empathetic listening. And then for our vendor survey and focus group, a lot of the things mentioned by vendors were very similar to the things that we saw mentioned by attendees. So with transportation being a big barrier, a lack of a centralized location in town to provide services. Not knowing about a lot of the different services and then stigma around asking for help. And one thing I did just want to mention about the transportation. There was a really emblematic quote that one of our vendors shared. they were discussing the the school PPWs trying to provide transportation to you know these students and they said our school PPW just yesterday was transporting one of our students to get dental work she has to pick up the mom come to school pick the child up drive the child and mom to the dentist come back to the school drop the child off and then take mom back home and that's one child with one dentist appointment so as you can see even though we're very grateful that work you know our PPWs do Trying to provide transportation to these services places an incredibly large burden on them, especially if we're asking that of multiple different organizations. And then something else we discussed in the focus group was opportunities for partnerships between different providers. We had a lot of mental health providers that were interested in working with each other and with local medical services, connecting with different administrators and elected officials in the town. having different outreach services in the community and continuing to build a presence and trust with community members. The next steps that we have with this work is we are presenting this information to the Union Bridge Town Council next week. We are continuing to follow up with service providers that were interested in partnerships with each other to make sure that momentum stays going. We just recently formed a planning committee with members of the Union Bridge community that will help us provide insight into more community needs and guide the expansion of services in the area. And just yesterday we conducted a interest survey with food distribution recipients to look at getting some additional services out there at the food distribution in a centralized location. So that is where we are with that.

So our whole effort is really focused on trying to make sure that we can serve people who are in high poverty areas. And we always talk about how much there is here in Westminster for folks, and trying to make sure that we can serve those communities that have a need that are outside of Westminster. And, you know, looking forward to what our next steps are in actually implementing some of this. There is a lot – I think there are a lot of good things happening out in Union Bridge right now, just looking at some of the community programs and things that have grown out there. And just the other day, we've been trying to encourage the – the Dollar General to expand what they offer. And I just noticed in the paper the other day that they're planning an expansion where they're going to bring fresh fruits and vegetables. And that's one of the things that the community has really been lacking. So we're looking forward to that and looking forward to continuing to work with the town.

Well, I want to say thank you to all three of you and to everybody who was involved with setting up that resource fair a month or two ago. I mean, it really was very well done. It was incredible to see the turnout, not just from the community, but from the people who could provide the resources who showed up for this. I got to speak to and meet so many people over the course of that evening. And to get to understand their stories and their difficulties and the things that motivate them, but also the things that the obstacles they have to overcome in order to get somewhere. It really does put a lot of things in perspective. For us as commissioners, this is incredibly important for us to know because it helps us make more effective decisions. It helps us to better understand the people that we serve. I'm not saying this because my colleagues already know this. They already understand. They already agree that you want to understand and know the people that you're serving. And so for us, something like this, for example, when I see a very, very specific set of data about what people are lacking or the things that they're looking for, for us, when we have these discussions for example during budgeting about what funding to allocate where or whether or not we raise taxes you know these are not questions of politics it's not about what's popular it's about what's right you know for example you know somebody who cannot afford food cannot afford a tax increase and and so for us again it really isn't about the the politics of everything it's about doing what's right and and so to have some some you know, actual data about this to have a real sense of things beyond not even conjectural but anecdotal evidence, having hard evidence now really does help put things in perspective for us. And I know my colleagues agree with that, so I'm not certainly not trying to say anything untoward there, but this really does help to put things in context and perspective for us about these outlying communities. Again, I really cannot emphasize enough how important this is to know and how grateful I am that you followed through with this and you made this happen. It really does matter, and I'm so incredibly grateful to you for that and for everybody who responded to the survey. Do my colleagues have any thoughts, questions, or comments?

No, I agree with everything Joe said, but I'm looking at numbers. they sort like even under if you can make one change to strengthen your community what would it be it's sort of spread out and if people maybe could even pick five things I'm sure that you could rank them because if people have kids want the things for the kids to do but they also might want the gas station in the restaurant so is there any way to get this out to more people I'm assuming Everybody that had need would come, but maybe they don't come. And maybe there's, how do you extrapolate this out to a larger group of people to say, what are the, because there's not a clear indication of one or two things with some of this. And I think many of it's important. And I'm looking at, we do the Carol, well, Ride With Me. And I've learned a lot about Ride With Me. And there's no fixed routes in most of the areas except Westminster. And that's because there wasn't high usership. But I did not realize that with Ride With Me, For point-to-point, anyone can ride. You didn't have to be income certified. I mean, are they aware that they have point-to-point, like to go to the dentist's office or something like that? And is cost a barrier for, I think it's like $4. Is that a barrier?

So cost is a barrier, but they are. I mean, the whole purpose of having the resource fair was to try to connect people with people what's available. And it was really nice to have our transportation provider out there. And they had some discussions with folks about what they can and can't do. We actually provided transportation for the families that weren't able to get there on their own through our transportation provider. So it was great to work with them on that. And we're working on a number of different things. The idea of doing the survey was to get some ideas of what the community really wants and needs. And now what we're trying to do, we're taking that next step and bringing all of the providers together to, you know, can the health department bring X out here on periodic days to try to provide services out here? We're working with, like, YSB, for example. They're trying to find space. And we've got some – we're making these connections where, you know, like some of the programs that already exist, can we get them out there periodically once a month or a couple of times a month so that the services aren't so far away for people? And I think what we're really discovering is, you know, you mentioned the fact that we only have routes in Westminster, and part of the problem is you just don't have the demand – know while i might need to go to the dentist today i don't need to go to the dentist every day so we can't run a route out there so how do we um i think what we've learned is is really that we need to figure out how to bring the services to the people there as opposed to um in in some cases it's not going to be practical and we're going to need to bring people to westminster but if we can bring things out there to the community i i think that may be a better model and that's kind of what we're trying to work on with this focus group right now and work with the community that there's a church there that's doing this big garden project and trying to bring more food to the community, and they offered space to folks to be able to bring programming in or even just like there's a beds program that we're starting to get connected with, and maybe they'll be able to store some stuff there so that they can provide beds for – it's a program where they provide beds for kids that don't have beds and just looking for, you know, a small amount of storage space and just finding a – Just finding a place where we can coordinate for services for what's needed out there is, I think, really what we're trying to make those connections. And that's our role at this point is trying to make the connections and build some capacity out there is what we're doing.

Well, and the other thing they're trying to do there, and they've been limited because of their wastewater treatment plant, but they've been sort of served on a housing work group last year, and they've lost population in the last 20 years. And that's why services, they don't have enough demand there to have a restaurant, the gas stations, the bank. You need some density. So I think as they grow, and I think there's some opportunity once they get that fixed, that they could have some more housing, and that makes you have more people to serve, and then those things will naturally come back. You know, losing your gas station, your restaurant, and your bank, I mean, it's You want it there, but they're not going to go when there's not enough people to serve. So I think that will help them. Healthy growth is good for maintaining a community. But on the transportation piece, even with point-to-point, if you think that – I mean, point-to-point is available. They need to know that it is available because you might not be able to bring a dentist to Union Bridge, but they need to go. But if the cost is an issue with people, maybe it's cheaper than going – It's cheaper than having a fixed route there to help subsidize if that was an issue, if cost was an issue on the point-to-point on the service. So consider that in these areas that we don't have enough demand for a fixed route. How do we get the services there to them that they need and be a reasonable price?

And they do offer, CTS, our Carroll Transit System, does offer, the public transportation there as far as the on demand. So you can call, pre-schedule your ride on the day that you need to go and they will provide that service. So that is available. And again, for older adults or people with disabilities, they can get donation tickets as well as some booklets of, a free booklet as well. on a monthly basis over at the Bureau of Aging and Disabilities, or Division of Aging and Disabilities, and they can call there and talk to them about registering for CTS. But I would encourage people to do that rather than thinking it's not available, and it's a reasonable cost.

Yes, I agree. And getting that information. And that's one of the things that I think in the advisory group that we talked about, how do we market that? How do we get that information out to people in different areas? And I think giving attention, like to the Dollar General, to bring fresh produce to Union Bridge, make sure people use it. Go there and purchase it so that they want to bring more. Because hopefully that demand will want them. And that's wonderful. It's

Excellent. And Ed had actually, he's not saying this, but he had actually reached out to them, to their corporation, about a grant opportunity a few months back. And we didn't get a response. So to see this, they actually just moved in to do this market, is incredible.

Well, good. Hands off to Dollar General.

So we were very excited to see that.

Good. And thanks whoever covered it in the newspaper, because that's good press, too. And that lets people know to go there and buy it. So newspapers are good.

Thank you for encouraging them to do it.

Very well said.

Any other questions or comments from the board?

All right, thank you all very much, and we'll move into item number eight, which is a request for approval to submit the reissued FY27 Children's Cabinet Interagency Fund and Engaging Neighborhoods, Organizations, Unions, Governments, and Households Capacity Building Application and accept the award.

So again, Aiden is with us as well as Ed. And like you said, we are looking to request approval for the submission of this grant. The Carroll County Local Management Board is requesting FY27 funding from the Governor's Office of Children under the revised notice of funding availability that was reissued June 15, 2026. This is a very quick turnaround for us, so we appreciate being before you today. The Board of County Commissioners had approved our original submission for the FY27 CCIF funding application and the acceptance of the award on April 2 of this year. And what was approved on April 2 is not changing, but we have gotten an increase to the funding through the legislative process. The LMBs collectively were awarded $2 million additional funding, which the state then has, GOC has then used a formula to allocate to the different jurisdictions. So our allocation is $56,739. And we are requesting approval for use of this funding. And the Enough Act capacity building funds are combined in this new revised application. So that's why we're back before you today looking at both of these items in one request. So Ed's going to talk a little bit about that additional CCIF funding and how we are proposing to allocate that out with our vendors.

Commissioners, as Celine said, we knew that the legislature was going to put an additional $56,739 towards Carroll County in the state's budget. And we had some discussions in the local management board about how we would utilize those funds. And the one thing that's – It's been difficult. As we ask our service providers to do certain programs, and some of these programs have continued for many years, over seven I think with the three programs that we said we wanted to give them a small, since the state was giving us an increase in funding, we'd like to give them a small increase in funding continued operating their programs now there's no guarantee and I've let them know already that we would be able to provide this additional funding to them next year but we thought this would help them with the operation of their programs and it's not it's not a large increase for any of them it's somewhere in the neighborhood of about seven percent but considering they haven't had an increase in seven years I think it's a reasonable thing to do so we The housing stability and navigation – housing navigation and stability services, suicide intervention and prevention services, and the youth and family engagement programs are those programs. Then there were some other things that we were considering is about a year ago, we got some supplemental money from the state to do a – a transportation pilot program. And what we did was the kid, if you are a student at Carroll County Public Schools and you want to do an internship, you have to have your own transportation. So it was really leaving out our kids that were low income, where their parents can't come and get them from school and take them to the internship. And the kids don't have their own transportation. kids, youth, you know, we're talking probably juniors and seniors, to take them to the internships. And some of them were looking at, like, internships that they could potentially go to down at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab or something like that. And essentially, we used Ride With Us to pilot that program, and we got a lot of interest in it. Generally, we're having the counselors at school look at the kids that are free and reduced meals type kids that aren't able to participate, that to be able to include them in these internship programs. And the last time that we did this about a couple of years ago now, the interest we had primarily came from Francis Scott Key High School and Winters Mill. It's interesting that that aligns with the enough areas where we've been focusing on with the areas out there, Tawny Town, Union Bridge, New Windsor, in the western part of the county, and then also here in Westminster where we have the highest levels of poverty. And a couple of other schools took advantage of it, but almost all the students that we had that took advantage of this program were in those two high schools where we have the highest level of need. So we want to allocate some funding to do that program again. And then the other thing that we're not sure what it's going to look like, but You know, we heard that we really need to do something to help with the youth out there in Union Bridge. And we've had a really good partnership with the Judy Center. and with the elementary school out in Union Bridge. And we thought that trying to do something for after school enrichment out there would be a good idea. And we've had some conversations. We've got to figure out with the group that we have together as to how we would best do this. And maybe the Judy Center has some ideas. We've talked to Boys and Girls Club. We've talked to some other folks. we transport some kids to a program that's here in Westminster, or maybe we can get something stood up in Union Bridge. But I don't know exactly what that's going to look like, but we wanted to take some of this money and allocate it into trying to have some type of after school enrichment out there at the elementary school that's out there in Union Bridge. And then the last piece of this is just the Enough Coordinator. And, you know, we funded the Enough Coordinator position through the Enough Act money, plus I'm going to take $6,000 as supplemental money towards salaries so that we've got Aiden four days a week, eight hours a day working on this. And Just in general with the Enough Act, I did want to make a mention that there's been some shift in the census data that GOC uses to identify where our highest poverty areas are. But we're going to continue with the communities we've been working with because we've made a commitment to work there and we've been focused there and I think we're making an impact. So we don't want to just go shifting without meeting those commitments we've made to those communities. We may begin the plan to look at some other areas where the data shifted a little bit. Now, with the data that the state uses, it's census data. And when we're between those big census pushes, the data is – the data set's very small and the rate of error is very high. So for the – for the percentage of child poverty to shift a little bit each year, I would almost expect that just because of the sample size being so small. So I wanted to mention that. uh i think i've covered i made myself some notes so i didn't miss anything um i think i covered everything without even looking at my notes so um you know we we'd ask for your approval to uh utilize this funding in this manner and uh would be glad to entertain any questions uh that you all would have any questions comments or direction from the board

The Board of County Commissioners approve the submission of the reissue FY27 Children's Cabinet Interagency Fund and Engaging Neighborhoods, Organizations, Unions, Governments, and Households Capacity Building Application and accept the award.

We have a motion. Do we have a second?

Second.

We have a motion and two seconds. Is there any discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you all very much.

Thanks, commissioners. And now that we've all gotten used to the enough acronym, maybe we just say that. It might be an option.

Up next, item number nine, grant approval of application and acceptance of award for program year 2026 and fiscal year 2027, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act.

We have acronyms, too, in workforce development. I know.

They're shorter, too.

I know. We try hard.

How would you pronounce W-I-O-A? We-O-A. We-O-A? We-O-A. We-O-A. We-O-A. We owe a couple bucks to the guy down the street.

That's right. Yeah. Good morning. Denise Beaver, Director of Economic Development. I'm here with Heather Powell, Manager of the Carroll County Workforce Development Center. And yes, we're here to ask for your acceptance of some grant awards. Just a little bit of a perspective on where we are now. Obviously workforce development is economic development. This is building our talent pipeline for our local businesses, which are critical to the local economy. And we've been very good stewards of the federal funding as well as state funding and local funding over the years with regard to the programs and services that we offer to the businesses and to the individuals who are looking for work. Just most recently, we are finalizing the American Recovery ARPA money. And so we had about $2 million that we're closing out at the end of this month. And so all of those monies have been reinvested in workforce programs here in Carroll County. A little perspective on the funding as it's occurred since we stood up our local workforce board in 2021 with the WIOA funding that we get from the federal government. In 2021, we had $1.4 million. And now in 2026, you'll see the total is about $658,000. So that's a significant reduction in funding. And so also with the youth funding we had in 2021, about $38,000. In 2026, you'll see it's $21,000. That only covers, in 2026, seven youth for our summer youth program, which is not anything really to talk about. It is for those seven youth, but we have much more of a need. And I guess that's the point I want to make here at the beginning of this discussion, because we are embarking on a summer youth program that starts July 6 through August 12. And we have, with the funding that we are kind of cobbling together with some of the federal and the state funding and other grants that Heather can talk to, we have 44 youth. They're going to be placed in about 28 businesses in the county. And the funding is also covering the salaries for three interns to help with the management of that program. But unfortunately, we had probably twice that many applicants, like over 80 youth that wanted to work somewhere in Carroll County this summer. And we weren't able to serve them because we don't have the funding to do so. That's a concern that I have moving forward. And we'll be back to talk to you more about it as we look at the budget for next year. Because I do think one of the issues that's happening, obviously, and you've heard about it across many different areas, that the federal funding is in question, obviously. And we work with Jesse McCree, who is our one-stop operator consultant that looks at this issue. And he's been there with some federal workforce partners in D.C. looking at the funding moving forward. And it's all up in the air. And, you know, so we don't know. So unfortunately, you know, it will be the case that, you know, it's going to probably come back down to the local level. And, you know, what funding do you want to support for workforce development that's tied to economic development that's tied to our talent pipeline, and jobs for our citizens and our youth. So we did have a board meeting yesterday with the Workforce Development Board, and we have a new chair that's elected. Brian Zuber, owner of Stratosphere, is now the new chair of the board, and the vice chair is Maddie Franzen of Best Western. And we have, obviously, representation of all of our workforce partners as well as other private sector partners, Penguin Random House. We have the tech council involved. Of course, the college is involved. The school system's involved, Maryland Department of Labor, Hans, and IBEW. So we have a good representation with the board. And I think that's going to be a concern of theirs moving forward, too, in terms of the funding. So I just wanted to start with that caveat with looking at this grant acceptance. And we're here. And again, Heather can go through and answer any questions you have about some of the grants that we're piecing together to make this continue to work as best that we can and support the workforce development services of the citizens.

Thank you very much, Denise.

Thank you. She teed that up nicely. I also just want to thank the board for working with us on our board appointments for the workforce board. We have to follow certification, and we have certain guidelines that we have to have metrics of in-demand industry balanced against our partners. So I know we have citizens that are interested, and those are forward to me. And I look at those applications and then leverage where we have vacancies. So again, just thank you. It's a lot, and I appreciate your time and work on that.

And you've lost a couple lately. Correct. Yeah. One of them went on Facebook and thanked you guys.

Oh, yeah. Zach. Zach Tomlin. Yes. He was the initial chair when we established the board in 2021. And Zach's story is amazing because he was a participant as a youth in the workforce program. And so, you know, his heart is in it fully because he experienced the help that he was able to get as a youth. the guidance when Max Baer was here. Many of you might know Max Baer and he worked in the youth program and kind of gave him some tough love and put him on the right path and helped him to be a successful business person. He got training, he has a successful business, Tomlin Technology here in Westminster and You know, so yeah, he's been a wonderful partner to lead us through that. And yeah, we gave him a certificate, Heather did yesterday, to recognize his service since 2021 as the chair.

Great guy. Very much so. Very much so.

I have a question. Sure. Do these guys have to work full time? Is that part of the requirements of the grant?

Do they have to work full time in the summer youth program?

They don't.

No, they're anywhere from 20 to 25 hours. And part of what we do in our summer youth program is on Wednesdays, we bring them in as a cohort. So we do development activities. They're doing resume development, soft skills training. financial literacy. So as a group, they work together. And I think that really enhances the program.

Because I think on some of them, the school programs, one of the concerns I heard from some employers is they can't keep them necessarily busy. And it takes a lot of energy sometimes to keep someone busy if they're doing an internship or something. And so they'd almost like to have them three or four days versus the five days. They have more flexibility. And is there any way that if you want to reach more kids, is there any way that you could ask for contributions from the employers, like part of it? And it wouldn't be on their payroll, but they would say you could pay half or you could pay a portion so that you could serve more students.

We have never done that. Most of the workforce boards are the employer record. There are some. Obviously, Baltimore City is an example where they have a huge they put over 8,000 kids to work in the summer and they have a lot of private investment in that and so businesses will sponsor on their own and then Baltimore City will just place youth. So it's different between all the local workforce boards, but that is something that we may have to look at that model.

I do know that businesses don't necessarily want them on their payroll because it's a pain for insurance a lot of different reasons. So they'd rather not be on the payroll. But they might contribute to a program like half the cost and say a couple hundred dollars a week. And that way you could serve more students. The more flexible you make it, we have smaller employers here than you have some of these big employers. And it's a little bit more of a burden for them to have someone there all the time. and to process them to be on the payroll. So if there's flexible ways to meet with our small employers, I served on the Governor's Workforce Investment Board for, I don't know, 12 or six, a long time. And it's very different in a large area with a large business versus the smaller businesses. And they were some of the issues that came up with the summer internship program with the school. So the flexibility with those folks would be helpful.

Absolutely. I also just want to say with the number of businesses we have participating this summer is amazing. We're up to 23 businesses. Last summer we had 11. People are reaching out to us now and we have good conversations and they know the expectation of the young people. It's just not giving them some little job. They have job titles and And they're going to be able to use these on their resumes.

Listen, I had interns every year in Annapolis. And just teaching them how to answer the phone properly and how to take a note and put all the information. I mean, they're all skills that people got out of college and don't know what they need to do. So some of them seems like a little thing, but you learn so much. And there's just basic jobs. And I think our youth don't get all those. So I think it's a fantastic program.

Yeah. I just want to say, sometimes we have kids whose parents dragged them in and say, you will have a summer job this summer. And you can imagine the enthusiasm. We were doing our HR orientation over at our workforce center the end of May when we had that 99 degree day weather. One young man from Tawny Town wanted to work this summer. And his mother did not have gas money. It was also when the gas prices were hovering around $4 a gallon. He rode his bike from Tawny Town. at 5 o'clock in the afternoon to be part of the program. So he has a job. Yeah. He'll do good stuff for some employer. So we're excited.

That's called dedication. Absolutely.

It's nice to see that.

Yes.

OK. So a little confusing. I'll go through this. Our grants come. We have several grants to go over quickly. But our grants come both in July and October. run on a program year, which is in July. And then we also have a start date in October, which is a fiscal year. So if you see PY and FY, that's the difference. So we're asking that you will approve or accept the grants from Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Formula allocations that we get annually. We have a governor's youth program. We have summer. grant from DOORS as one of our key workforce partners, and also the Department of Juvenile Services. So our summer youth programs, Carroll County Workforce Development will administer two youth employment grants, the Governor's Summer Youth Connections Grant and a grant through the Division of Rehab Services. Together, these grants will fund six weeks of paid employment for up to 55 local youth between the ages of 16 and 18 who face potential barriers to employment. and two college interns for the program delivery. Participants are placed with local employers throughout the program, receive instruction in essential workplace and life skills while engaging in group and team-building activities. The next grant is the Department of Juvenile Services, where this is a year-round grant. It comes in the summer, but we can do paid work experience throughout the school year. And that's up to four justice-involved youth with paid work experience, placing them, again, with local employers in our community. serves as an important gateway to our youth and young adult program for these individuals and connecting participants to longer-term workforce development support services. And then finally, our WIOA grants. These are our workforce grants that come from USDOL through the Maryland Department of Labor. They're divided up into three areas, adults with low income, dislocated workers, and youth and young adults up to age 24. And these services are provided through our American Job Center, and it provides talent pipeline to our local businesses and sustainability to our citizens. So the amounts are Governor's Youth Program is $21,630. The DOORS Program has a ceiling of $168,930. That program comes in two parts where you take 15 individuals identify them and they come into our traditional summer youth program while up to 30 individuals can be a pass-through where the county is an employer of record and Those individuals are working with other community rehab providers These young people might need job coaching on-site, which is something that our program doesn't provide so it We're able to provide an umbrella program to that. The Department of Juvenile Services is $9,900. And then a total WIOA budget of $658,220. I would ask that you would consider acceptance of these grants.

Are there any questions, comments, or direction from the board?

Move that the Board of Commissioners accept the PY26 Governors and Doors Summer Youth Program Grant Awards, DJS Grant Award, and the PY26FY27 WIOA Formula Grant Awards. Second.

We have a motion. We have a second. Is there any discussion?

One quick comment. Like many of the different departments in Carroll County, most people don't have a clue how much you and how diverse what you do is. So thank you.

Thank you. Thanks. I think we're particularly proud right now of our work in Blueprint. Just aligning two public systems to work together for the best outcome for students is really amazing. We have the opportunity. We're going to be in Nashville speaking at a national conference. about the success we've had and one of the things is by embedding us in the school system we can bridge students into our adult program who may not be career and college ready or have ideas of what they want to do career-wise by the time they leave the school system. It's a great partnership.

That makes me think of another question. Do any of these internships involve working with trades?

The only thing I ask, I'm just thinking. Are summer interns? No.

Only because sometimes it's just nice to know, hey, what does a plumber do? Do you go hang out and help the plumber?

So they may be placed with a company or a business that works in the trades, but they're limited in what they can do through work permits.

Because often it's someone you might know that that's how you know you like a job or don't like a job. And sometimes in the trades, we're pushing the trades because that's a big thing for us at our need in our community. It's very profitable. And exposing someone to something like one of the trades to see, hey, could I see myself doing this or owning this business is also important.

Our career navigation team that works with the Blueprint, we are actually identifying students in the school system and connecting them to local employers. So either they're working on their first year apprenticeship as a senior, or upon graduation knowing that they wanna go in. But yes, we're working, I think we've placed four kids in the past two years.

And again, with Blueprint and the work that the team is doing with the Carroll County Public Schools staff is exposing youth to all of those types of careers through the program Pathful, which gives, you know, they can do virtual reality experiences where they can see what a plumber does and they can go through it. That's been amazing. And Stan mentioned yesterday, I was amazed. In the three years for the Blueprint work in the school system. Middle school. Middle school, I'm sorry, yeah. They had over 16,000 hours in different career research that students were able to do in this program. And so they do have an opportunity to explore them. And that's the whole part of Blueprint and the career readiness is that. The team is working with the students on exposing them to all types of careers. Good. Yeah, that's great. Thank you. Thank you so much.

All right. We have a motion. We have a second. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you both very much.

Thank you.

All right. Up next, item number 10, grant approval to submit applications and accept the awards for the FY 2025 Assistance to Firefighters Grant and staffing for the Adequate Fire and Emergency Response Grant. Good morning, Chief. How are you? Good morning.

Good.

The Department of Fire and EMS is requesting the board's approval to make application for the 2025 assistance to firefighter grant and Staffing for adequate fire and emergency services known as the safer grant to support two critical projects the first project is procurement of additional personal protective equipment or turnout gear and We're looking at applying for a grant that would provide for 580 sets of PPE for career and volunteer personnel. Our current gear contains PFAS, which you all should be familiar with, which has been associated with an increased cancer risk and other adverse health effects. this initiative would allow us to begin that replacement we normally would do this through a budgetary process however the afg grant gives us an opportunity at a significant cost savings and this was really sparked by the recent battery warehouse fire and the process that we're still involved in with contaminating that gear so this would allow us to expedite that I will mention that this is a very competitive grant there are thousands of departments that are competing for close to 700 million dollars in total grants so this particular grant would be for total $2.494 million, federal share being 2.267 million, and the local share would be 226,727. The second grant is a grant under Safer, and I know that you all recognize Safer as something asking for personnel. We looked at all the grants and the specific criteria, and because most of the Safer grants are for personnel, this is actually for behavioral health services. Obviously, we know that fire and EMS personnel are exposed to significant amounts of critical stress with the incidents that we respond to, and this would be a comprehensive grant that would include funding for peer support training, for 120 personnel, what we call resiliency training for 236 personnel, and then department-wide access to a 24-7 behavioral health and wellness application. And I'll note that This is the same application that the sheriff's office has had for a number of years. It's known as Cordico, and it would give us access to immediate behavioral health resources through an app that everyone would get on their phones. So these three areas are comprehensive within the project. The federal share is $137,500. The good news is there is no local match required. So we're seeking permission to go ahead and apply for both of these grants. This is a multi month process, so the grant application ends on Monday and the grants are awarded incrementally beginning in the next fiscal year. So we would see the first grants being awarded around December of 2026.

All right, thank you very much, Chief. Are there any comments, questions, or direction from the board?

Both of these are for county paid and volunteers.

Yes, yes, they're for everybody in the system, yes.

And I noticed that the first one, there's no match budget, but you're just applying for the grant. And then when you get the grant, you come back and we just have to backfill that. Correct. Now that I spent a day with you on the live burn, learning all about this and the battery warehouse fire and the risks, you mentioned the PFAS, and you taught me that the gear has to be disposed of. Does this cover the disposal of the gear? Because you were telling me how you have to dispose of it in a certain way? Yes. With the chemicals from the battery warehouse, from the heavy metals, and then also the PFAS?

Yeah, there's processes and there's organizations that we use on a contractual basis to do that.

So is that included in here? I don't know if it's substantial enough.

Yes. So the cost in this would be for the actual replacement. So it would be for the turnout coats and the pants. And what we did is we looked at the total number of career people and we're going to begin a process and be a multi-year process. where each of the 14 volunteer companies would be allotted 25 sets per company, which in many cases, some companies would use all 25 sets. Those that wouldn't use those sets, we would take them to the more active companies and do an adequate distribution to be based on the activity levels starting with the most active people.

And I would suggest, as we make this motion, obviously we're committing to the local share of $226,727 to have to do a budget transfer for that, which I would appreciate. Thank you for doing this.

We have the Board of Commissioners approve the submission of the FY 2025 Assistance to Firefighters Grant Application and Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response Grant and accept the award. Second.

We have a motion, we have a second. Is there any other discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you, Chief.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

All right. Up next, item number 11, briefing discussion decision on the comment letter for the town of Mount Airy, annexation number 47, Watersville Road. Good morning to you both. Good morning. How are you today?

I am here with Carlisle Flott, a planner in our comprehensive planning division. We are here to have a discussion with you about a potential comment letter on an annexation that's being contemplated by the Town of Mount Airy. Before Carlisle gets into her presentation, I just want to note that we just presented this to the Planning Commission on Tuesday, so there is a section in the presentation that's slightly different from what you got in advance of this meeting that reflects that Planning Commission discussion. We'll highlight where that difference is just so you know what we're talking about in terms of Planning Commission comments and their recommendation to you. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Carlisle to run through the specifics of the annexation proposal.

Good morning, Commissioners.

Good morning.

All right. Monterey annexation number 47, Watersville Road, Elite Baseball LLC. This is the parcel layout. As you can see, the property is located north of Watersville Road. It is located in the 13th election district and the fourth commissioner district. It's located within the growth area of Mount Airy, as you can see with the yellow and black dotted line, and it is contiguous with the corporate limits of Mount Airy just south of the property. This is the annexation plot. It is approximately 50.98 acres, located on tax map 75, parcel 3. The petitioner is comprised of property owner Margaret C. Warfield and contract purchaser Elite Baseball LLC. They are requesting the annexation in order to develop the property as an athletic complex. Approval and processing of the development project will be done by the town of Mount Airy. This is the property street view from Watersville Road, south of the property. You can see the westbound view and the eastbound view. As you can see, the annexation area is currently undeveloped and vacant. The access is from Watersville Road. The annexation area encompasses parcel three in its entirety, and it does not include Watersville Road. The annexation area is located in the county's residential 40,000 zoning district. Adjoining properties within the county are zoned residential 40,000 and conservation. Outdoor recreational area and indoor recreational area are conditional uses in the county's residential 40,000 zoning district. The town of Mount Erie has indicated its intent to place the annexation area in the town's residential one zoning district. Public and private recreational uses are permitted in the town's residential one zoning district. The permitted uses in the town's residential one zoning district are not substantially different from the permitted uses in the county's residential 40,000 zoning district. Therefore, a zoning waiver is not being requested. The annexation area is located within the town of Mount Airy's ultimate town boundary with a low density residential land use designation as part of the 2023 Mount Airy Comprehensive Master Plan. The proposed annexation request is consistent with the land use designation. Under the 2023 Carroll County Water and Sewer Master Plan, the property to be annexed is classified within the W3 priority water service area and the S3 priority sewer service area. We reached out to a number of agencies within the county. and the state. Comprehensive planning recommends the town give public notice by posting the property prior to the date of the public hearing and notifying all adjoining property owners. The Carroll County Department of Emergency Management and Communications comments that this proposed annexation may necessitate a change to the assigned patrol area of the Mount Airy Police Department within the computer-aided dispatch system, specifically regarding the portion of West Watersville Road that abuts both the existing town limits as well as the property being annexed into the town limits. Planning staff finds that a zoning waiver is not required as the permitted uses are not substantially different between the town's proposed zoning district and the existing county zoning district. There's consistency with the 2023 Mount Airy Comprehensive Plan the annexation areas located within the growth area and also their future annexation area. It's also notable that the 2023 Mount Airy Comprehensive Master Plan specifically names recreational facilities, especially baseball fields as a needed resource in the town. Given the lack of Responses from agencies, the proposed annexation will not overburden county facilities. During our presentation to the Planning and Zoning Commission, the Planning and Zoning Commission commented that they concur with the staff's findings and convey their support for the annexation. However, they expressed their concerns about the difference between the low density residential land use designation and the proposed use being an athletic complex. as well as the proposed uses potential to create light pollution and impact local traffic conditions and water quality. The comments from the Planning and Zoning Commission are the only section that was omitted from the original staff report because we submitted it before we had our hearing. So that's the only difference and the difference in the comment letter as well. The town of Mount Airy had a public hearing on June 10th. They did not vote on this annexation during that meeting. And we have a staff-recommended motion to have the board approve, sign, and forward the comment letter to the town of Mount Airy regarding annexation number 47, Watersville Road Elite Baseball LLC. This comment letter includes the comments from the Planning and Zoning Commission. However, if you would like to add any additional comments, we can edit and revise the comment letter.

All right. Well, thank you very much, Roberta. Do we have anybody here for public comment on this item? I think I'd like to go with that first.

You do have several. Yes. Uh, first one is Ralph Ghent. If you'll come to the microphone there and state your name and address and you have three minutes. If you, uh, Carlisle, you can close the presentation. You can go ahead.

Gotcha. Good morning commissioners, Ms Windham, Mr Burke and the planning and zoning staff. My name is Ralph Gant. I reside at 2510 Kings Forest Trail, Mount Airy, Maryland. I am a resident within the town boundary. I'm here to give you some input for consideration in what is required by the state and labeled as a quote comment letter. And I offer a administrative item to consider in your response and also a substantive item to consider. Annexation at the very beginning of my comment is perhaps at the pinnacle of any municipal and county decision. We are expanding or potentially expanding the boundary of a town from county land. And so with that, the Maryland Department of Planning gives us a guide, quote, guide to county and municipal planning processes. And on page six of that guide, it has a section for county review of annexation petitions. Within that paragraph, it states that the Board of County Commissioners will provide a comment letter regarding the annexation petition and that it must be delivered to the town mayor prior to the town's public hearing. And so again, I, I prefaced was saying I had an administrative issue I'd like for you to consider and that the town has already held its June 10 public hearing without the benefit of your response. And I may add, and without the benefit of the state response that is similar required in an annexation petition. My substantive comment has to do with the transition from R40,000 to R1, which is within the town. And my concern echoes a lot of the planning and zoning commissioner's comments that Carlisle just mentioned in her slide. And I reference our R1 code, which has a beautiful general intention of what R1 is to be. The purpose of the R1 district, it's intended to provide low density development potential with concentration on good land management, harmony with the physical environment, and a variety of housing options. It is also intended to encourage conservation of open land and assure both the continuing beauty and agricultural potential of areas located in the periphery of that community, the periphery being the remaining county residents around this plat. And so again, echoing concerns with water quality, impact, it's a tough decision on petitions, and I would ask that you not just focus on the intended land use, but also focus on the collateral impacts that it may potentially bring to your continuing county residents. And I add in closing, as Carlisle showed you, just across the road is a 420 home community. And those residents made their sentiment clear at the June 10 public hearing. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

Next is Michael Rash.

Yes, hi there. My name is Michael Rash, 2508 Kings Forest Trail in Mount Airy, Maryland. I live in the Nottingham community that Ralph Kent just mentioned is across the street from the proposed annexation. I'm here to oppose the annexation. By the way, thank you for the opportunity to address the commissioners here. I want to make three points. So first, I was curious about the parking lot capacity of the Walmart and Safeway complex in Mount Airy. So using Google a little bit with some screenshots of Google Maps satellite images, so the total number of parking spaces in the combined Walmart and Safeway complex is less than 700. So that includes Starbucks, The Bank, Chipotle, New York Pizza, the UPS store and a bunch of other businesses, the entire combined complex, less than 700. What the elite baseball proposal includes in their traffic study is a proposal for 1,135 parking spaces, nearly double that of the combined Walmart and Safeway complex. Now, even if we take that, we cut that number in half, we're still at a similar magnitude. The scale of this complex is massive. It is certainly not in harmony with the town. Secondly, water usage is a common problem, has been a problem for Mount Airy for a long time. They describe in their presentation how the water usage is going to be, and I quote, comparable complexes even during peak months consume significantly less water than Mount Airy Assumption for seven homes. Seven homes. How many people are in seven homes? Let's just say 40 people or something like that. So 40 people are going to use less water than a complex that requires over 1,000 parking spaces. Seven homes are going to use less water than that facility. I leave it to the commissioners to determine whether or not that is a reasonable claim. uh in closing i then the third point is the vote in mount airy will likely be on august 3rd i believe is the date okay we are all your constituents in the nottingham resident nottingham neighborhood i urge the commissioners that vote at the mount airy town council allows for public comment i think it would be very helpful if you would attend that meeting and express your sentiment at that meeting where all the Mount Airy Town Council members can understand the impact that it would have from your perspective. So thank you very much. Thank you very much.

Next is Tim Park.

Hi, thank you. So I'm one of the petitioners for Elite Baseball Maryland. So a couple things I just wanted to bring up that there was a traffic study, a traffic impact study done at the request of the Planning Commission. It included a 1% growth rate as their background data. Our numbers were consistent with the MDOT average daily traffic numbers, the Mount Airy traffic study in 2016, and the SHA comments on that intersection of 27 and Watersville Road. And that impact study showed that the levels of service for those roads would not be impacted at all. They would stay at the same levels. There are also different ways that we have that you can mitigate the surges, whether you're talking about stagger starting the game. So not all games leave at one time. So you do it every 30 minutes. So you have two fields turning over, which leads to less people on the road. we had freedom of information act request and um public information act request to ems and police calls of service we used about six comparable complexes throughout the state of maryland and virginia that study showed that there would be a quarter to a half a percent increase in total calls for mount airy ems and police calls of service The water usage is two to four homes. We use Patriot Park North, Kiwanis Wallace, Blandaire, and Henry S. Parker. And we did Freedom of Information Act requests to see what their quarterly usage was. There's no additional impacts of the school. The master plan in Mount Airy states that it wants to have more potential avenues to attract patrons for businesses, but does not want to add residents. We feel this is a way to hit that narrow ass that the plan says. The concerns for the water usage, and the PFAS concerns that state of California mandated that turf fields stop using the crumbs rubber about four years ago and since then there's been tons of are tons there's been a quite a few turf companies that have now designed things from the start where there isn't any PFAS contamination from the start of production The sketch we provided is a vision. It's not a site plan. And the sketch we have adopted or we have sent in to show our vision, it's about 567 spaces. And from a concern where you're looking at that parking lot compared to, say, something of a a Home Depot or a Walmart, there's much more turnover at those parking lots. So if you're going to go to Walmart, you're not staying there for four to six hours like you would at an athletic complex. You're going in there for 20 to 30 minutes. So our complex needs a bigger parking lot because if someone comes in at 9 a.m., they might not leave until 1.30, 2 o'clock, where if someone goes into Home Depot at 9 a.m., they're leaving at 9.20, and someone's coming in right after that there. So that's the reason for... that but we would always do whatever the parking that mount airy determines and whatever that determination is at the time of site plan we would do whatever is asked um that's all i have thank you very much thank you very much uh next one is brian mckenna

Thank you. I'm also one of our Tim's business partner, one of the other petitioners. I just want to clarify a couple of things, especially with the water usage. When it comes to water usage in a home, you are having people take showers, using the water to cook that type of stuff. We would be using artificial turf fields, so we would not be using them. We not be using water to water them. It would just be basically strictly bathroom usage. Also, half of the season, the fields wouldn't be in use in the wintertime. So the amount of people on the property would be a lot more limited. In terms of it being in a residential area, if you look at a lot of the successful parks or sports fields in the state or even into Virginia, most of them are located around large housing developments. You look at only Boys and Girls Club, Kiwanis Wallace Park in Ellicott City. The Bob Lucido Fields in Ellicott City, Patriot Park North, they are surrounded by dense residential areas. Just wanted to make that as a comment that most of these successful parks do have a, I would say, act in harmony with local communities, especially when it comes to youth sports. That's all I had to add on that, so thank you.

Thank you.

And the last commenter that I have is David Bowersox.

Good morning. Good morning. Thank you for allowing us to present something today. Tim Park told you that this plan is an idea. It's for purposes of annexation. This is not an engineered site plan. That's where you're going to get the APFO kind of details so we can have the most intelligent conversation instead of speculation about what these impacts are going to be. So that happens down the road and happens post annexation. This is a town decision. It's the town council's decision from Mount Airy, not the planning commission's decision. And the council has made that clear. One thing I want to address is neither I nor my clients received any notice of the Tuesday proceedings at the Planning Commission, nor today. I discovered that the Tuesday proceeding had taken place yesterday morning, my discovery. What I'd like to clarify is some of the observations from the Planning Commission discussion. First of all, I did speak with Carlisle yesterday about the presentation. I thought that the matter she put in her presentation, first of all, they're all accurate. But she told me that she had never seen the traffic report. She told me that she had not spoken to my clients, and I had to introduce myself to her in the car. So she had absolutely no information from the petitioners to provide to the Planning Commission. I also found out that only fairly recently had she gotten the information she was hoping to get to prepare her report. That included an old sketch showing 1,100 parking spaces. That was an initial idea. As Tim has told you, that's down to 567. The argument that they're planning 1,100 parking spaces is not accurate. And the traffic study, with the results that you've already heard about, and by the way, if you're interested in the genuine article, I have a copy here. So you can see exactly what a licensed traffic engineering firm determined. No need for offsite mitigation based on traffic safety. Some of the comments from the Planning Commission that were kind of concerning were there was mention of the 1,100 parking spaces. Not true. Traffic concerns. No mention of a traffic study result. Probably because they didn't know it existed. Water. Again, we're not watering AstroTurf fields. There's a limited role here for the county. It's not to approve or deny this. And it's not to put your thumb on the scale, the comment scale, about matters that are based on incomplete and disputed facts. If you want a complete record, we can give it to you. But that's not your role. Your role is to look at the objective findings that Coral Isle made for you. The annexation is consistent with the master plan. It's in the water and sewer service area. It's in the future annexation area. The use is permitted in the zone sought. So in our one, this is a permitted use. That is really where you find out what uses are allowed and encouraged in a zoning district. It meets a statutory criteria for county review, which you're comment on.

Please do finish up your comments, sir.

I am. Your comments should reflect those objective factors and not indulge in speculation over things to come.

Thank you. Thank you. Roberta, do we have anybody else for public comment here? Chris, do we have anybody on the line for public comment? I have no one on the line, sir. All right. Thank you very much. I'll open it up to my colleagues now for any conversation or discussion.

Does anyone know if Mount Airy approves the facility, they want to annex the land. If they don't approve the facility, do they still want to annex the land and do one acre lots or we don't know that?

I don't know. I would leave that up to the town to answer.

I want to I want everyone to bear with me and take a little bit of time. First of all, I want to address this issue of timing and what information was given to the county and when. For unexplained reasons, the county just received, I don't know what the right term is, the petition, the request, just a couple weeks ago. We should have received it months ago. That is unexplained. Is there anybody here from the town and our government?

I can actually, we've done a lot of digging to try to figure out why we just became aware of this. It looks like the information was sent to Claire Stewart, who has been on maternity leave. she the sender should have received an out-of-office message and I don't know if if they did or not but no follow-up was done to connect with somebody else in lieu and I'd like to make the point that I wasn't nobody contacted me either so you know typically I would hear from the town if

there's an issue or something. I've never been contacted by anybody regarding this. So the frustration of perhaps staff not to put words in your mouth, some of the frustration up here and with the legal counsel is all shared by the fact that some of this timing is inconvenient. I want to step back real quick. And again, I do want to take issue with one of the comments made earlier. I understand that annexations follow fairly strict guidelines. This board has reviewed a number of them. To my knowledge, I think we've approved all of them, but it didn't mean we didn't have questions and comments. But in terms of what this board should and shouldn't do, all I know is that my name is on this name tag right here, and I represent the entire southwest portion of the county, including everybody that lives in Mount Airy. So my concerns will be heard. Um, so we do review about a dozen of these a year. Um, I think that, uh, again, I have do have questions and concerns, uh, regarding the timing of some of these, uh, my concerns. I'll get into that in a minute, but I am going to be asking the board to delay any action on this until these specific administrative and processes questions are answered. Um, mainly the fact that the public hearing took place before the County was given the opportunity to, to weigh in on this issue. And I want to reiterate that the town council of Mount Airy has very well laid out the timeline for this discussion. I'm not taking issue with the town council. The town council president was very specific back in early spring, late winter, about what these timelines might be. And he did at that point say that there probably would be a vote over this annexation sometime in August. And again, I want to reiterate that there has been no decision made by the town council of Mount Airy. And I know that he said that because I was there. So, you know, that's not the issue either. This is going to be for the town of Mount Airy to certainly determine what's going to happen. But this issue of whether the information from the county was received back by the town before the public hearing, that concerns me. And, again, this is all public law. I mean, I don't want to. claim I'm an expert on state law, but this is in there, that this information should have been provided to the town of Monterey before the June 10th public hearing. It was not for whatever reason. The town was supposed to advise the county of the June 10th public hearing so we could have members there if necessary. Obviously, we didn't know about it. So again, another timing administrative issue that I can't explain, but it's an issue nonetheless. And given the tremendous amount of interest in this particular development and this particular proposed development, I think that the people, the citizens of this area deserve, you know, much better in terms of due process. And again, at the, public hearing on June 10th again, unfortunately, because of some of these administrative issues, there's a question of who was really given the ability to speak to the should the state and county planners have been there to pay to play a role in the public hearing process again, I understand The concern that in terms of the board, we check the guidelines. There's a fairly low bar to approve annexations, but it doesn't mean we can't ask questions, and it doesn't mean we can't have concerns. This usage issue, I understand R1 and R40,000, there may not be a usage issue there. Certainly, when you get... Not legally speaking, there's a big difference between a residential and a sports complex. So again, people's concerns in the area are over that. This issue of no impact at Route 27 in Watersville, I got to be honest, I just do not understand that at all. I live in this area from Twin Arch Road all the way down to Gillis Falls Road on 27. It's not a scientific term. I'm not a traffic engineer, but it's a mess. I cannot imagine how in the world There wouldn't be issues with Watersville and Route 27, but again, not for me to decide. And I think it's worth stating that some of the issues regarding water and sewer that weren't noted by the Planning and Zoning Commission are real concerns as well. Again, not for me to decide. The board, the Monterey Town Council is going to have to make a ruling on this. They're going to have to vote. But at this point, with all these issues, all these administrative and process issues, I'm going to ask that the board delay any action on this until we can make sure we're in compliance with state law and all these different guidelines.

So do you propose to do a specific time or we need to wait for them?

Well, that's a great question, Commissioner Crowler, and I guess I hadn't thought it that much through. I'm going to let the staff, the staff's going to have to weigh in on that. They're going to have to work with the town of Mount Airy, and there's nobody here from the town of Mount Airy, to work that out to make sure that we're meeting all those guidelines. I mean, that's really who this is between. This is between the county and the town of Mount Airy. I just want to make sure that we're in compliance, that everything is being done to the T, and the results of this are going to be what they are.

And I guess the point I wanted to make is they've dropped the ball so far. So we can't say, well, we'll talk about this next week because we know they're going to answer us, but we don't know.

We don't know. And that's one of the reasons why. And I feel like the County did make a very concerted effort to try to move things along very quickly. Everybody who watches our meeting knows how overtaxed right now, the planning and resource management staff are with a lot of the things we're doing planning and zoning commissions the same way they've got a lot going on. So this was, A special effort was made to put this in front of them, to pull staff off, to make sure we could get this presentation today. I certainly appreciate it. I'm sure the town does as well. But again, with everything I've mentioned, with some of the shared concerns from others, it just makes sense to me that we're going to have to take a step back and ensure that we're in compliance with all these guidelines before this board moves forward. And that's what I'm going to propose. Commissioner Guerin, is that a motion? Yeah, so I move that the board delay action on the I move that the board delay action on the comment letter for the town of man area annexation number 47 and delay. Yeah, just delayed action. That's it. And we'll move as fast as we can to make sure we're got everything straightened out.

All right, so try to break down that motion. Motion to delay further action on the Mount Airy annexation number 47 Watersville Road elite baseball comment letter until such time as procedural concerns have been adequately and legally addressed.

Yeah, I'm in my motion to, as stated.

OK. A second. We have a motion. We have a second. And Commissioner, I'm in agreement with you. It really is, to me, more than just about, as you noted, more than just the procedural problems that have arisen. You know, it isn't just about procedure for the sake of procedure. It's about making sure that citizens, as you said, have their due process and their ability to be able to be heard as well as the petitioners. And in addition to that, it allows for the sharing of better information for everybody involved with this. So I think that's a sound motion and a sound way to proceed. And something else I do want to say here, too, as well. Some comments were made during public comments about I'm going to characterize them as being negative toward our staff, toward people who work for this county. I'm in complete disagreement with those. Our staff does what they can with what information they have, and they do the best that they can. And so I don't want any members of any department walking away from this thinking that they've done anything less than what they were required to do with the information that they had. So please don't walk away thinking that. All right. So we have a motion. We have a second. And do we have any discussion?

Yes. I'd just like to get some... This is an unusual situation. And I... These things come up and we need to deal with them as they come up and, like I say, fix it for the future because they're unpredictable. Number one, I'd like to understand, see the two different zoning, the county zoning versus the town zoning. And we say that they don't need a waiver because they're the same. And listen, I don't think a project like this is a fantastic project. The question is, where does it go and who does it serve? And it sounds like, and I've read our own zoning a lot, and it sounds like they're similar, but R40, it says we need recreational space. I would love recreational space next to my R40. However, it depends on the scope, the size and the impact. And so, you know, you might have five baseball fields for your little league team or you might have a big. So I think we should be careful of when we say that we need to be sort of clear. What is the recreational space and what does it mean? Because and who's this going to serve? And I think it's a good project. I mean, again, where does it belong and where what criteria do we use? The people that live there now are county. They're not in the town. They don't live in the town. So they're not subject to, they're not represented by the town council necessarily. You are outside. You're in the county now, right? Some are. Some aren't. But the actual facility, I'm not sure where Nottingham is. Are they in the town, Nottingham? Yes. OK, Nottingham's in the town, but this is outside the town. OK. So I'm trying to understand that, because it sounds like it could be more of a regional kind of facility. And I haven't seen the property. But some of those unique situations, we have to consider the impact on the community if it's not necessarily strictly for local. So understanding those zoning, because the zoning waiver is not required. If our codes were not the same, isn't there a certain amount of time that they can't change it? And how long is that?

It's five years if you do not grant a zoning waiver.

So if the zoning was not similar, you'd have to wait five years for that waiver? OK. And I just think we should understand that. I'd also like to read that, Dave, you mentioned the book, the zoning, the state book that we should consider. What?

I believe that was Mr. Hint.

Oh, OK. No, it just be. I'll give you my copy. No, I just, we've done a lot of these, and I've always said, how do we consider these things? So I love to read stuff. Puts me to sleep at night. So thank you for that. So I'd like to be more educated on this. And just the other thing with trafficking, and I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to judge one way or another. But on these traffic impact studies, I've noticed, I was sat at the planning commission meeting for, what, how many hours yesterday, the other day? They say, oh, a traffic impact study was done. And everybody seems fine with that. But they don't really say what's in the traffic study. They said about another community the other day, and everybody's, oh, good, the traffic study's done. Did you read it? It says F. It says failing letter. It has information there. I think people assume, our planning commission assumes, that if a traffic study is done, that some recommendations have been made based on that, and it's not. And so everybody says, OK, that's taken care of. No, it's not. You have to read it and say, what remediations do we make? So I think in the future, we've got to be a little more clear whose role it is to read the traffic study that comes from the, I'm not saying one way or another on this one, but it seems, maybe it is an impact, maybe it's not an impact. But I welcome these type of projects in our county. The question is, where do they belong? And I don't know anything about this property. It sounds like The June 10th meeting maybe should have been, maybe it was, informational versus a hearing. That way people got used to it and said, hey, what do I, I'm not saying how they call it, but sometimes introducing the community to something and saying what can we do to make this work is better than just saying here. And then you sort of work through the issues. But I would like to get some of the traffic impact study to understand it. Also, sometimes there's remediations that can be done along with OK, so just to where I know what we're going, we're going to make a decision. I understand that.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Just to be clear, there are annexation. There are two different aspects to annexation. The county's role in annexation is is very limited and does not extend to the questions of things like impacts and traffic studies and water use and parking and things like that unfortunately as much as we might like it to that is the town if the property is annexed that it becomes the town's responsibility to handle all of those things our responsibility is to make sure that it meets the various annexation requirements such as contiguousness and you know other things on zoning compatibility and and things but the commissioners so what happens sometimes especially in cases where the annexation request is paired with a more controversial underlying use that is being proposed and and then the two issues become intertwined, and then it becomes difficult for everyone, residents, the applicants, the commissioners, I'm sure for the towns as well, to separate the two issues. The one issue on annexation is actually rather administrative, and as Commissioner Guerin said, we have significant concerns about the procedural process that was followed or maybe not followed in this case. So it makes some sense to delay so we can make sure that those procedural processes can be followed. The underlying use of the property is really not a ripe conversation for the Board of County Commissioners.

I'm going to disagree with you, and here's why. I'm not judging on this case. As I said, I love recreational facilities. I think we need more of them. I don't know the scope of this in the right place, and I'm not saying this isn't at this point because I don't know. I welcome an opportunity to have some types of these things in our county, but I don't know all the details. But predictability for all parties is important, and it's concerning to me that in R40, which people, when they move there, expect certain things. And I will tell you that the stuff we hand out to the public, and we have these little booklets that you guys make up. They're very nice. And it says under R40, it doesn't say all these other things. It says R40, single family detached homes on one acre lots. That's what it says, what we hand out to people. Now maybe you're just abbreviating it. Doesn't say can be this, can be that. So that's what people think. And then we have all these other things that it could be. so we got to be careful because people don't read the legal part they read the user's guide to um zoning and we've handed out all the functions and you read it and it tells you what can go here but it's very limited and r40 in our booklet i've shown it to you it says r40 single family detached homes on one acre lots that's what it says doesn't say anything else You read the code, and it's got some iffy stuff in it. And again, having recreational is fine. The question is the scope of it. And how big is it? Is it commercial? Does it serve the community? Does it serve outside of the community? What's the impact going to be? I don't know the answers to that. I know they have a lot of these types of things. I always talk about how kids live in places where they have these things. They love them. I'm not sure if it's comparable. I mean, down in Lowndham County, up in Boston, down in Ellicott City, they love having these uses for their community. But it depends on the scope and who's using it and what it's being used for. But the reason it's different. But my point is for our, it is, but my point is for our, if this could go in our R40, it depends, I shouldn't say this because I'm picturing a certain thing and I don't know what it is. But if it's more of a commercial kind of use, it's going to be it might be different than if it was a more local kind of use and i'm not going to judge it i'm just suggesting that we got to make sure that what we we all thought could go in r40 is what we are projecting to people when they buy their homes even in our county part of it and it might not be that it's similar again predictability for everybody um i think some people might think it'd be a good idea it just depends on on the remediations of it but again predict depending on how much you've got the light issues that they could be dealt with, if traffic issues could be dealt with, if noise issues, some people might welcome a project like this. So again, it depends on the scope and the size and who's benefiting from it, whether it's more welcome in a community or not. So it'll give everybody time to look at that. And I'm going to read the guide. And I understand the zoning waiver is not required because they're supposed to be the same. I just didn't realize. what possibly i'm not saying this is it but what possibly could go in our 40 and and what what the setbacks are i i know i'm dealing with that for other issues and sometimes our 10 feet setbacks on some areas not acceptable if it's 50 feet setbacks maybe it would be acceptable so i think we need to take a better look at our code as these things come up to make sure that they would be a reasonable reasonable neighbor with what people expect in their own predictability so that's all I'm saying I'm not I'm not judging this particular project itself it's just bringing up other issues that are in front of us and just because the code says this sometimes we have to realize unintended consequences and maybe it maybe it's not an issue maybe there's enough ability to make this a project that could be suitable to people. But we do have a certain responsibility because it is in the county today. It's under our jurisdiction. Thank you, Commissioner. Commissioner Collier, I think you maybe have something to add.

Yeah, I tried to say something. on the subject so we need to know why they didn't notify us and and they didn't notify us I don't know that it's legal or not legal but it seems like the property owner and the contract person purchaser didn't get notified and I think it's that's the proper thing to do whether it's required by law or not and and what else do we need to know I mean

Well, I think one of the largest issues that I see is the town of Mount Airy holding the public hearing without all the comments from, it sounds like, the state, if one gentleman is correct, and certainly they have.

Why they did things in the wrong order. Was it a public hearing? Makes sense.

Yeah, Commissioner Keller, I appreciate you trying to. drill down on this and come up with some tangible you know requirements and I think you've got it we just want to make sure the county is in compliance and that we're affording all the parties the necessary time and absolutely yeah absolutely and that's and that's another question so yeah okay thanks thank you sir well all right we have a motion and we have a second is there any further discussion

Oh, I just want to make one comment. I saw in the one picture that there was a nice big sign there. And I gave whoever put the sign up in Mount Airy credit that you could read it. It was big enough. So at least you knew about it. You know what I'm saying? I mean, notification comes a lot of different ways. And I think we should do proper notification. But in that one picture, it was a pretty big white sign. I know it had a lot of work. I couldn't read it. But I give them credit. That's what we're looking for in our county, to make sure people can read the sign and not have to scan a QR code to even know what it's about. At least you know about it and are here and are notified. So that's good. Conversation is always helpful.

All right. Thank you. Any other discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion carries. Thank you both very much. Thank you, everybody, who came out for the public comments as well. All right. Up next, item number 12. We have briefing discussion and possible decision on introduction to water resources element documents.

I don't see it.

Good morning to you both, at least for 10 more minutes.

Yes, good morning, Commissioners. So as you indicated, we are here for an introduction to a discussion about the water resources element. And I'm just going to take a couple of quick minutes to bring everybody up to speed. And then I'm going to turn it over to Brenda Denny to walk through the presentation. So the water resources element is a required element of the county master plan. Because of the size and nature of this element, it's typically done as a separate document and then referenced in master plan type documents. So the water resources element is a state requirement that essentially requires the county and municipalities to acknowledge that growth and development are constrained by water supply and the ability for public sewers, septic and so on. So there are constraints to future growth. The state requires that the county and municipalities adopt this type of plan, recognizing those limitations. But I want to make sure that everybody understands the plan does not obligate the county or the municipalities to do anything. It essentially is identifying long range growth and the needs for public water and sewer, what those constraints are, and possible solutions. But it does not obligate the county or the municipalities to take any actions. So this project has been several years in the making because we have coordinated with all eight municipalities, so all eight departments of public works, all eight planning commissions, planning staff, and so on. Every planning commission has had separate public hearings, discussions, and decisions, et cetera. So a lot of coordination with all of the municipalities. I do want to clarify what this is versus what it is not. So this is, as I said, a very high level look at future resources and constraints. It's not the Water and Sewer Master Plan, which you all are familiar with. It was mentioned earlier. It's something that the Water and Sewer Master Plan, we bring before you amendments twice a year. The Water and Sewer Master Plan is the short-term planning document that looks at individual properties and whether they have access to the water and sewer infrastructure. This is not that. This is a much higher level look at from a municipal perspective and county perspective what water and sewer supply there is and what options there are to meet the demands for future growth. It's also not the operational side of water and sewer, which is what our Department of Public Works and our municipalities deal with on a day-to-day basis for infrastructure and rate structure and so on and so forth. So it is not related to the operational side. Again, it's a very high level. So with that, unless there are any immediate questions, I'm going to turn it over to Brenda. Yes.

One clarification. You're not here to ask us to approve this. You're here to ask us to take this to a public hearing.

Exactly. Yes. So the state required process is that the elected officials hold a public hearing on this and then make a decision. Today, we are simply introducing it to you all. And then if you direct us to have a public hearing, we'll take that next step.

And what do you expect at the public hearing? I mean, it seems like most of the public hearing says, nobody came, nobody commented. And the purpose to me of public hearing is to encourage and make it that people do comment, and they do educate themselves on these things. So I've heard over and over again the same thing. Nobody came, nobody commented. How do we encourage interest in this, even with the town folks or whatever, that they understand it? And what does it mean to their towns? What does it mean to their properties? How do we encourage interest in these things, informational interests?

Yes. That's an excellent question. But I can say that every effort, and we welcome the comment.

How would you plan to do this one? Where would it be? Who would be invited? How will we advertise it?

Same as we do with all the others. The proper legal notice is required. It would also be on all of our social media. Press release would go out. All the things that we do nowadays. think generally speaking we also let in this case since the towns are all invited included it's a combined we invite the towns so that they're aware and they frequently but not always attend especially if they have something of interest I appreciate and a proper notice and legal notice

And I'm just going to say, again, legal notice is what happens, and that's why we're in the situation we're in. Legal notice is six font in the back of the legal section, and no one has a clue what it's talking about. It's in some term that no one. Changes to Section 155. I know we're doing better than that now, but we're trying to make sure we encourage it, what the purpose of it is, why we want them there. One of the things I'm interested in, I know Westminster has a new water reuse program, and it's very exciting for places that don't have the accessibility to water. How do you have those discussions with some of the towns? Because some of the towns are... they're small, they have small staff, and they have water and sewer issues. How do we get them understanding some of these new options? Like Westminster has sort of taken it on and been the pioneer for water. Is that something that would come out of this, that this would be an option for them?

Yes, and Brenda will go through that. And those are the exact conversations that we've had over the past two years, is working with every municipality, talking about what their plans are, what options there are, documenting If there is a limitation for either water supply or wastewater, how are they going to address this? Or what are their options that could be considered in the future? And that is what the purpose of the plan is, is to just identify that, yes, there is a deficiency in the amount of water that's available or septic capacity. And here are some options that are contemplated. The state just wants us to acknowledge that we are looking at this and that when we get to that point, that there are solutions that can be looked at.

And the reason I'm asking, again, I was at the planning commission meeting the other day, a lot of talk about the ADUs, accessory dwelling units. And the towns are subject to that as well. And I'm not sure what conversations Commissioner Gordon and I were having a discussion about that yesterday. What conversations are they having locally about the same issues we're having with the county with these ADUs? Because obviously, can it be stopped because you don't have water? But then if you don't stop those and let them keep putting ADUs on, then you may be stopping a new development. There are a lot of questions out there because there's conflicting stuff coming from the state. Obviously, we have to have water, but you're forced to approve certain things. I think the towns are in the same boat as we are. They're having the same conversations with more limited ability to answer those questions. I think this would be a good opportunity to bring some of those questions up to them as well, because they're all related. If you don't have water, how do you have more housing for these accessory dwelling units that we have to approve? So I think this is really important. That's why I want people to be involved in the conversation and maybe invite them to this opportunity at the towns and other folks. But they're the ones that have to deal with the mandates and the requirements that the state's asking them to do, but not necessarily give them the tools to do it. So I think it's a good opportunity to put it out there. Yes.

So turn it over to Brenda.

Well, Chris said everything, so I think I'm done here. So you might hear some repeated stuff. But we'll go through it anyway. So as Chris said, the purpose of the WRE, which is what we call the water resources element, is to ensure that the comprehensive plans reflect the opportunities and limitations that water resources locally present based on our capacities and to address that relationship between planned growth and those water resources. This plan is a state requirement. It has to be adopted as part of the comprehensive or master plan, and it is required to be updated every 10 years. This was first adopted in 2010 by the county and all municipalities. The update process this time began after 2022 when the state released their updated guidance. So one of the additional desired outcomes of this plan is not just to comply with, not just to provide that information, but also to demonstrate to the state that we have considered water resources as part of limitations and opportunities as part of future plan growth. There's been I'm not going to read every one of these, but since 2010, there's been a lot of significant changes in the regulatory setting. And so all of this had to be the plan had to be updated to reflect a lot of these changes that have happened since 2010. An example would be the total maximum daily loads for the Chesapeake Bay, which were set in 2010 after this was adopted. And that's a huge difference. So that type of thing is reflected in this version of the plan. Another very important thing to note is that the information in the plan is based on a point in time. It's based on the water and sewer service areas that were in place in 2023. So things have changed since then. It's basically to provide the information in terms of an order of magnitude if there's going to be a need or if that particular system is looking good. There are three main things that the plan addresses in terms of areas of water resources, drinking water supply, wastewater, and stormwater. So if we look at the drinking water, each one of the municipal systems were evaluated for their demand and capacity based on that build out of that 2023 service area. And then we identified, would they have water currently available? to serve that build out, or is there a need for additional capacity? And then you can see on this chart, we use the traffic light system to identify the order of magnitude for that need. So the ones that are in yellow, that limitation could be overcome a little more easily with a little bit less investment, such as drilling a new well or increasing appropriations on existing permits. The ones in red, Union Bridge and New Windsor, would require more significant investment because their water supply is constrained by their wastewater capacity. Essentially, if you have, you can't pump 200,000 gallons of water through a 100,000 gallon wastewater treatment plant. So they would need to expand their wastewater treatment plant in order to provide more water. So the overall conclusion on the water supply is that it is expected to be a short-term limiting factor for many of the systems, but that can be overcome a little more easily than it can for the two that are in red. Overall, when we look a little bit longer term, there are several alternatives that can be considered. Of course, always groundwater wells, surface water intakes, quarries, reservoirs, interconnection with other systems, and indirect potable reuse, such as Westminster's system. Each one of these would be evaluated by that system at the time to determine what is the best option for that system and there are some of these that would be more of a collaborative effort when you look at it such as reservoirs. The plan also identifies kind of overall for countywide you know what are some things that could be done to help with our water supply and So these are just some examples of them. Many things are already in place and being considered by one or more systems. These would all be separate initiatives from the WRA plan document itself. But they would be an implementation of the plan document. So wastewater is the next area of water supply or water resources. Again, just like with the water supply, we looked at the demand and capacity for each of the municipal systems. And by order of magnitude was the capacity available to serve the 2023 build out of the sewer service area at that time. It was for a couple. A couple others here in yellow need some additional work in order to expand their capacity. And again, it's a little easier to overcome if it's inflow and infiltration improvements, which is like fixing leaks and stuff where water is going into the system from those leaks in the pipes. and using flow capacity. And then again, New Windsor and Union Bridge both need either a new plant or an expansion of their existing plant. So that would be a more significant investment. So just as with water supply, it is expected to be a short-term limitation for many of our systems. But they can gain some additional flow capacity, most of them through their inflow and infiltration improvements. So overall, the options are the inflow and infiltration, water reuse is a possibility, and also the expansion or new wastewater treatment plants, which is a more significant investment. But it's important to recognize that that needs to be considered when they're updating their comprehensive plans. And again, countywide you know act what can we do the county and municipal systems in order to address water wastewater capacity so many of these things are already in place or planned but you can see that there are things that could be done to help with that issue. Stormwater is the last area, water resource area, of the three main ones. And again, stormwater should be considered when land use decisions. However, it's not anticipated to be a limiting factor in this case. because we have so many things already in place to address stormwater. So for new development, we've already got a stormwater code in place to address the stormwater there. And for existing development, we have our MS4 stormwater permit, which addresses treatment of that. So we've got all these things already in place through those mechanisms. We don't need to reinvent the wheel. Instead, it's easy enough to just reference those items in the plan, particularly because they're updated every year. Again, many things that can be done, most of these are already in place. We also have a couple additional requirements that we anticipate coming down the pike in the near future, such as the stormwater code. We'll all have to look at that. One of the additional things in the state guidance this time was to address climate change. So in Carroll County, some of the things that we've seen happening here are warmer temperatures, increased extreme precipitation events, increased flooding. increased drought potential. So it was important to look at this issue for us. However, most of what can be done to address climate change are the same things we're already doing for water supply, wastewater and stormwater. So there's not a whole slew of new things that we added for action items to address climate change because most of these are co-benefits to the other areas of water resources. Another thing that we have addressed is emerging contaminants. You're well aware of the issues with some of the emerging contaminants, such as PFAS. We have others here that we expect new requirements to be coming down the pike, or already, such as chloride is in our permit. But lithium, we expect EPA to be putting requirements in place to address that in drinking water. So that's something that we'll have to address in the future. So again, we've identified possible action items to address these emerging contaminants. Most of what you see here is already in place, except for the lithium monitoring. That's something we could start doing ahead of the EPA setting the standards for that so that we have monitoring data available when those requirements come. In terms of process, Chris did address this some. But we have worked with each municipal system to evaluate their demand and capacity. With those municipal systems, we identified actions that could be taken. So we worked together on the countywide actions. And then we also, with each individual system, identified with them what they think they could do for their system to address their specific needs. And as Chris mentioned, all nine planning commissions have reviewed and discussed it in November. The plan was sent to the state agencies and neighboring jurisdictions for the required 60-day review period. At the same time, it was released for public review and comment. We held public information session in January. All nine planning commissions held their public hearings in January and February. And the public comment period and the public hearing records all closed by February 23. As was mentioned before, there weren't any comments at any of the public hearings. By the end of April, all nine planning commissions had approved the plan and were ready to forward to their elected bodies for consideration for adoption. So now we are the council's all are considering it now and working through their public hearings. And we're here to initiate this process with the board and request whether it's your direction to go ahead and schedule the public hearing. I'll turn it back to Chris.

I think we've covered it. Yes. Well, thank you both very much. Yes. And just looking at the last slide, as I forgot to mention, obviously we're happy to have any sort of discussion that the board would like to have. So if there is interest in doing a deeper dive into any of the aspects of this, we could schedule a work session and dive deeper into the technical details, anything that you wish. But the minimum that's required by state law is to have the public hearing and then an adoption by what resolution? Yes.

The state requires the board sign a resolution of adoption. Yes.

so i want to uh i want to thank staff again for going back and making the proper edits regarding the shamrock farms situation and how that's been taken out and obviously because that's not going to happen anymore and with that said i move the board of county commissioners approve the request by the department of planning and land management to proceed to public hearing for the proposed water resource element second we have a motion we have a second is there any discussion

There's two issues that I think we need to learn more about. And one, we've talked about before, the PFAS and the lithium. And I won't get into the details of it, but I think we need to be more up to speed on what the... Standards are, but also it seems like there's some conflicting, like with the PFAS, that the state's still making us accept sludge from out of state or other places that has PFAS in it. So we've got, I guess my point is, we're trying to meet a standard that we have to do for our water remediation, but yet we're still allowing certain things to happen to add to that problem. I'd like to understand the PFAS part and the lithium part and make sure that our policies are in alignment. I'm not sure what you do with all of the sludge, You keep putting it on the ground and going into the water and then say, we need to remediate it. It doesn't seem like, it seems like it's conflicting. We need to address, you probably know with that, but I don't want to know the scientific version. I just want to know the layman's terms version, but what can we do about that? Because it seems like we've got to stop the problem from coming because you just can't remediate your way out of it. that higher level policy conflicts that we can be raising at the state level as well. And what can we do about them?

Yes, we can certainly do that. My only question would be, is that something that, so for the purposes of the water resources element, we touch on it. We are not proposing and we're not obligating the county to do anything regarding PFAS and lithium and so on. We're more following what gets pushed down on us, that sort of thing, right?

so my only question would be do you want that sort of presentation prior to any action with WRE or can we just schedule that and we can absolutely bring that information to the board I want to do but it's all a part of it at some point and I just want to be more educated I don't want to like a year from now two years now say hey what about lithium we got to do we got to remediate it I mean let's figure out what the causes are what we can do to solve the problem I mean I learned about the just about the heavy metals in the firefighters after the Battery Warehouse fire and how those metals are really bad and they're bad for the water. I didn't even know really where they came from and what caused it. How do we remediate that stuff? The same with the solar panels. I would love to know more about what's in these solar panels and that's going into our ground because we have all these contaminants now that we're going to have to remediate. And do they have some of those things? Or the storage battery facilities as well. So it's just trying to anticipate what could occur and be a little more ready for it than here it is. And it's new to everyone all over the country. And I'm not sure what everyone else is doing about it. But I want to have an idea.

I want to have an idea what we have ahead of us, potentially. Sure. Happy to put something forward. No rush.

We've got a lot to do, but I'm just. Yep. No problem.

All right. So we have a motion and we have a second. Is there any other discussion? All right. Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Thank you.

All right. Up next, item number 13, briefing, discussion, decision on text amendments to chapters 155 and 158, planned commercial centers. Hello again.

Let's see it up here. Have it in your books. Well, I don't see the presentation loaded up here, but you do have it. This is an item for your decision on the proposed text amendments to chapter 155 and 158. And You did hold the record open for 10 days. You did not receive any additional comments in that time period. So we're here to get your decision on the proposed amendments to chapters 155 and 158. I have the text up here if you want to go through that or.

Sure, walk us through.

Okay. So essentially the what the the proposal was that was the subject of the hub public hearing was simply to remove the entire section in 150 5092. That's our subdivision of land code related to the allowance of residential uses as an accessory use in planned commercial centers This is, of course, in response to the deferral that is currently in effect for planned commercial centers in the Freedom area. There was one associated amendment to 158, which is our zoning ordinance, that would simply provide for an exemption for planned resident dwellings accessory to a planned commercial center if they were approved prior to December 18th, of last year, which was the effective date of the deferral. And that's really all that I have for presentation. We're really just looking for your decision on this matter.

All right. Well, thank you very much. Are there any comments, questions, or discussion from the board?

I'm going to suggest that the board take no action on this at this time. The deferral expires in October. We don't have any of these plans, my understanding. We don't have any of these plans in process right now.

So if I may, so planned commercial centers, the deferral expires August 18th?

Oh, August 18th. OK, August 18th. My bad. OK. Yes. No problem. August 18th? Yeah. And we don't take any action. We let our consultant and our process still play through, because I do not want to remove these from our county code. There are, in the very preliminary stages, at least one of these. proposed for my district and the concept plans I've seen it's perfectly fine it faces a agricultural area and it's on the backside of a proposed development and why remove that why not give the process time to develop some additional guidelines so when August 19th rolls around developers throughout the county have some clear guidance on what the board's looking for what we voted on and move forward that way

just out of curiosity um if we were to do that and i think i asked you this at a previous meeting but just to bring the point up again what would be the time rough estimated time period from start to finish for a project like this typical project like this um i'm going to say probably 18 months for a site plan okay So we're still looking far enough out to your point that it's not going, it's not like it's going to happen tomorrow and we've got none right to you at this point.

Correct.

I would agree with you on that because I really, I'm okay if we want to tweak this. I just don't want to see us remove it. I think to remove it and start over I think is maybe going to be a more difficult process than what we're hoping for. So I would agree with you on that.

So question, if we keep it and it's got residential component, would that fall under the October 1st deadline because it has a residential component? I mean, given your plans and having them approved? So what does that mean?

That's a good question. That's a good question. Boundaries being crossed with these types of projects.

Yes, yeah, because it has a residential component to it. Yeah. We might have to check with the state to see what guidance there is on that. That's a very interesting question. What I would say is that Yes. So October 1st, the state law basically establishes an early vesting for any projects that are submitted after October 1st. I don't believe that we would be able to come up with new requirements for residential related to planned commercial centers by October 1st.

Well, the issue is a complete application. I still would like to understand what a complete application is. And let's get this straight. I think I mentioned this at the hearing. not saying we don't want these kind of products and we did not spend any time on them because there is no definition there's nothing in there it says anything is that you may put residential on top of commercial that's it that's not a time-taking deliberate you might get great projects you might not get great projects I haven't had two projects that there's not a single person I've ever talked to except somebody doesn't live in my district that says it's a good project and it's what we it's a minimum we can do better than that we want to do better we want to you know parking standards so that people can enter differently uh just where they're sighted making sure there's laundry facilities those types of things so we haven't spent a lot of time and it's going to take time and that's why we wanted to because there was none in the queue when we talked about this um there was nothing proposed i'm not sure if when we do the answer the question i just asked is something i um like to have answered because there's a potential for these along our entire corridor got changed the entire liberty road corridor through 26. we could have these all up and down the corridor that's what's happening now and i don't want that to happen i don't want a duplication of this and it could be they're not an asset to our community what we've had I don't think I don't think my name like my community thinks that so we want to find a way to do it in a way that is acceptable which is they're very nice lots of places so that I need to find that out and then when we do the overlay district um would we be able to do that these type of things in the over that's not going to be back in time either because it's going to take to do these things right takes time and we have a lot of catching up to do we might be able to copy some other counties and what they've done over the years for mixed use but could we include this if other people want them and don't want them regulated and you know with design requirements could we just do it into the overlay district But with that, if projects come in prior to that, that's the key. I don't want these projects just coming in and saying, oh, we've got a complete application and we're going to do more of them that we already have. So that's all my concern.

yet those are certainly things that we can look at with the overlay district and and you're right the the proposal to remove the residential as an accessory use did stem out of this concern that developing the kinds of guidelines that we've been talking about wanting would take a lot longer than the deferral period so this was an opportunity to

buy ourselves a little bit of time that way but um and at that point in time we talked about there was nothing in the queue now something came up the other day and tell me about walmart and then when are they a planned commercial center that so all those things are see i was thinking this new use was the it's because the first time they put the residential on top of it the residential on top component is something that's been sort of newly well it's been there but it's been newly um engaged and done But so all of the, I never thought about the whole Walmart, that whole thing is considered a planned commercial center.

So the site where Walmart is located is considered a planned commercial center. Yes, that site is, yes.

The intention, because there's no residential component, that it wouldn't have been impacted. But there was a concern from the developer that it was impacted. Somebody told them it wasn't. And maybe they just thought it was. But I said, no, it's no residential component to it.

They're deferred. Because the ordinance that was passed, the deferral ordinance, prohibits the application, the processing, and the approval of any development plans for planned commercial centers. Since they are planned commercial center, they are deferred as well.

it has nothing to do and that was never the intention the intention was the residential portion of it so I'm not sure you know if we could take off the one and just say the ones with the residential component the other ones we have shopping centers everywhere and we might want design requirements or not but the intention was never to stop that type of thing so is there a way to is that how we can because here it definitely says with the residential component

order to modify the ordinance you would need to have public hearing and have it advertised have to go through all that process it would probably take the better part of a month you'd be you know the end of July more or less before that if before that decision would be able to be made and this deferral ends in August 18th I don't know. I would recommend that the juice isn't worth the squeeze in this case.

I'm just trying to make sure we have, again, in my area, the way until this all gets fixed, the entire corridor has been rezoned to a high-density usage along the entire way with strips of land. I don't believe it's appropriate. That's why we've been here. These things could be proposed along the whole corridor, because there's some there now, the whole thing. And we don't want that to happen in the way that it's happening. So the residential component is the issue. There's also design standards that people would like to have. like they have in the towns and we would like to have that same courtesy in our main street. So how can we just make that for the intention of what I'm trying to do It's never been intended for everything unless it had the residential component.

So there are two paths that are currently going on concurrently. So we have Michael Baker, who is working on the specific use, which in this case is planned commercial centers. Because they were prioritized on other uses, they have not started working on this yet. But we still intend on working with them. And that would look at... similar to the other presentations on the other uses. So that's one aspect of one path that we are going down. The other path is the small area amendment, which we just kicked off with the consultant, which is to look at that corridor, the Maryland 26 corridor, and to look at the potential for an overlay zone, et cetera, exactly what you just talked about, which is what kind of specific requirements would we want to apply to that corridor and those could absolutely be requirements specific to um planned commercial centers and residential associated with it and so on and so forth but um that separate path is uh has just begun and um that is a a small area amendment so it's a planning process that we need to go through that our due diligence with reaching out to the communities, property owners, and so on. It's a lengthy process that our consultant gave the initial schedule of eight months to complete. We just kicked that off with them and we are working on fleshing out what those public engagement opportunities are and so on so that we do a good job of documenting what is desired for that corridor.

I appreciate it. I don't mind. what you want to do, as long as the answer to my question is about the residential piece of it for October 1st. And I still don't know what is a complete application. Because one of the issues we have, again, and we're also doing, there's a lot of stuff going on at once, and I appreciate it, it's good. But the Carter study of Route 26 with the ingresses and egresses, each one of these commercial centers has an ingress and egress. And it's making a mess. The combination, and it's right away from a light, it's really a problem. So we're causing, every time we build these, we're causing more problems because we've got more ingresses and egresses with all this traffic coming out. And now we have a problem up by Cleveland Road. so we got all this stuff at the same time the road networking what we're letting go there the uses how many curb cuts we're gonna have where we maybe should put some roads that connect to each other that's one another reason I want to halt as much as this stuff as possible So the answer to that complete application, is it possible to get what you know is a complete application? Would we risk anything? There's only a few months left. How long does it take to get a complete application in? Because I don't want them to be a whole bunch of these in and then, oh, we've got to deal with them.

So we've had a similar request from the Planning Commission regarding defining exactly what a complete application is. We are currently working on a presentation. And we are also reaching out to other jurisdictions to see how they are addressing this issue with the state. I've reached out to Frederick County, Howard County, and Queens County. I can certainly reach out to more. So far, the response is that they are addressing it the same way that we are, and we are putting together a presentation that we can certainly bring to the board. We had anticipated taking it to the Planning Commission for their discussion.

Okay. And while we're doing this complete application, the one thing that still is out there with me, I think we're, we need to flip around a little bit is the adequate public facilities, especially for roads. We don't really discuss that. We discussed at the beginning, but it doesn't really get solved until the end. And they put a lot of investment in, I think the whole issue of adequate the road issues have to be talked about early on, as much as possible, so there's no surprises. Because someone invests all this money in their plans in years, which I hope we don't have years anymore. It's going to be much less than years. But then they say, oh, but we've got to do these three things. And they say, well, gosh, that's lots of money. So having those conversations early on in the process.

They are.

But even before we say we're going to process this application, because Then they want to, we just have to make sure that's a big part of it. Because then we get stuck in the community without having that address.

So if I may, the evaluating a traffic impact study and APFO, that's part of the process. So in order to do that, we have to accept an application. So holding up and determining that an application is complete, there's no way to go through a review because you've accepted it, right? But we will certainly bring that before the board to discuss.

I was in a meeting last night about the traffic, but Route 26, I was approached by a number of people at one of the places that I've been talking about. It's just way worse than I imagined, and we've got to fix it because we've got to. It's our responsibility to fix it. And it is about predictability for all parties. So, I mean, should we wait to get the answer? I mean, I don't mind doing this, what you just suggested, as long as you don't think that we would have a complete application and it have to be approved

based on this October 1st date because of the residential I think the worst case scenario is so the worst case scenario is that a complete application is whatever they give us and has to be approved within the 30 or 35 days and then they're vested with those rules so if we go on the idea that this whole review of what a planned commercial center is is and how mixed-use and residential might fit in it is not going to be done before October 1st because there's no way we can do it and if a and if the deferral ends on August 18 there is the possibility that the complete that someone by November 1st could have applied to the county for a planned commercial center with residential on top of it or residential in it in some way based on the current law as it stands at the moment that is I would say the the basis on which you should make your decision as it stands right this moment you said they could they could or could not they could they could they could do another Princess Shopping Center, or whatever that's called there. You know what I mean?

I'm going to just keep my mind. I'm not blaming the person that developed it. We allow it. And you got to put it in code. Everybody said, you got to put in the code. So the design, can you add design requirements to code after? Is that considered a vesting tool, or is it just the underlying use?

So based on the state law, the zoning codes that are in place after October 1, when they've submitted an application saying, we want to develop this, and we say, OK, we are reviewing your plan, that we've acknowledged that they've submitted an application, they are vested based on the zoning codes that are in place at that time.

Are design requirements part of the zoning code?

That is entirely up to the board. If the board wants to put design requirements in the code.

Are they normally or not?

It varies on different jurisdictions. Some jurisdictions have items in code. Others have design guidelines that are guidelines. They're not required by code, but it expresses what the jurisdiction would like to see, but they're not absolute code requirements. So there are different ways to address that.

Are they enforceable if they're not in code? We want to have flexibility, but you don't also want to make sure there's some guidelines. And I don't know where there are ones. I'm trying to think of the ones I've looked at where they were, if they were in code or somewhere else.

Yeah, so they're guidelines. So they are not strictly enforceable by code, but they are a document of desires that the Planning Commission would look at and say, as a community, we are looking for this type of...

so the distinction would be if it's in a guideline then the Planning Commission could point to something specific and say you have to paint every house blue and I'm talking about that right I know I know it's a stupid example but it's off the top my head it's like open session math somebody's gonna say oh Krebs wants to paint every house blue if you do it was Roberta Windham not Commissioner Krebs your simple example is fine thank you the so so guidelines are something that a group like the Planning Commission can say we want you to do this and then generally speaking the developer is going to do it there are two problems with them being guidelines one they are not subsequently enforceable so if you really wanted everything to be blue and later on afterwards everything becomes pink you as a zoning authority, which is what your zoning administrator enforces the zoning code, can't go back to them and say, you made everything pink, it was supposed to be blue. So that's one reason why you'd put it in code, not in guidelines. It does make it harder to change, of course, but that's one reason. The other would also be if the planning commission in this case said everything has to be blue and the developer said, I really don't want everything to be blue, they could appeal the planning commission's decision regardless of whether it was in code or guideline but it'd be an easier overturn by the board of zoning appeals and by subsequent courts higher up those are just two off the top of my head that I could think of why you might want to go one direction versus the other but that as Chris said will be discussed when we get to those points and and the board can and can go and I'm willing to do this I just want to make sure in the spirit of what I'm trying to do that I'm not derailing the intentions of all the stuff we're doing because

This isn't stuff I've just come up with this year. I've been involved with my community for many years. And in 2001, which is 25 years ago the top priority of our area was to have a boulevard district with all of this in it not one thing ever moved forward and that was years of discussion when people used to get involved because they thought they were had some ins some say years and then it went away and it never happened not one little piece of a gun implant and that's why there's frustration and so i just want to make sure that it doesn't just fiddle away and nothing ever happened because plans you can do plans forever and if there's no implementation or effort there's no use in doing a plan and um that's why I'm skeptical I'm sorry I'm skeptical because it hasn't happened in our area I know the towns do a great job I wish that we had that opportunity but we don't but we just have not ever had the implementation piece or the the will and the anybody that pushed the implementation of these things it's been 25 years since it was adopted and now we've got the um the um what'd you call it small plan amendment overlay district whatever and um i appreciate that i want to make sure i'm involved in all the conversations on it because i'd rather get understand where we'd like to be and i'm not talking about little details of making things blue but um i just like them to understand what i'm looking for because i haven't really explained it to you guys so i want to make sure that i'm involved in these conversations and you know we get a group together that will help dictate some of those things because a very large group years ago that required it was a large group our business community and all were very involved in this they wanted it too our entire corridor we had south carol business association we had a community group back then that dissipated because nobody ever paid attention to them but all those guys there was dozens and dozens of people were involved in that boulevard discussion and we got it and then it just never happened

So if I might, I want to make sure that all of our other colleagues may have a chance to speak if anybody else wants to say anything.

I think we have three votes to say no action is required. I think we need to move forward.

Commissioner Gordon, any thoughts?

I concur with Commissioner Kyler and Commissioner Guerin's comments from earlier.

Okay, so from the procedural standpoint, Tim, do we need a motion not to take action or do we simply take no action on this? just take no action okay all right well with everybody's uh with no objection we'll move on to item number 14. legal dispute okay so you yeah we're gonna

OK, I can fix this. With regard to text amendments to chapters 155 and 158 plan commercial centers, I move that the board take no action at this time.

Second.

We have a motion. We have a second.

Any further discussion? I just want to thank staff for putting the links to the code and putting the links to the proposed amendment. It makes it so easy. So thank you. Yes.

All right. We have a motion. We have a second. All those in favor?

Aye.

All those opposed?

I'm going to say in favor with the intention of what I expressed. I will go with the team.

Motion carries unanimously. Thank you both very much.

Thank you.

Item number 14, last on the list. Contract award for Hempstead Valley for stormwater management facility retrofit RFB number 75F12526. These motions, the item titles are getting longer and longer.

It's becoming like an eye chart for you.

I appreciate the specificity, but yeah.

It's always better off to be safe than sorry.

That's true. That's true. Good to see you guys.

The Office of Procurement, in cooperation with the Division of Resource Management, requests your approval to award the contract for the Hampstead Valley 4 Stormwater Management Facility Retrofit Project to Kinsley Construction LLC in the amount of $1,349,025. This project was advertised on the county's e-procurement platform public purchase and received three bids in response. This project is partially funded through a state of Maryland Department of Natural Resources grant. This amount is approved in the FY26 budget. Stormwater. You want me to keep going? Stormwater facility will reduce nutrient and sediment pollution, protect stream temperatures, control storm flows, and provide approximately 25 acres of impervious surface restoration credit towards compliance with Carroll County's municipal separate storm sewer system permit.

Good afternoon, commissioners. Everybody's getting tongue-tied today. You did great. You did great. So thank you. So just to add a little bit more to the background of this project, so we, in conjunction with a consultant, performed a watershed study in 2020, which identified this project and several others. We're excited to be here. To move this one into construction, like Corey mentioned, we do have grant funding for this project. We received $600,000 from the Department of Natural Resources Chesapeake and Atlantic Coastal Bay Trust Fund. The project is located within the town of Hampstead. We've been working very closely with them, as well as the Fields Homeowners Association that owns the open space parcels on which the stormwater facility will be constructed on. So if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer those.

My only concern is 33% bid spread between first and second bidder. I ask you to make sure Kinsley doesn't get any change orders for this. They're going to come in whining and not – they're a good company. I'm not bad-mouthing them, but my gosh, their bonding company probably is going bonkers.

Hopefully they were just hungry and they wanted to work.

You don't drop 33% because you're hungry. No, somebody made a mistake. And especially with Miller being so much higher yet. If those two were close together, I'd feel a little better. But it's an ugly bid result.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, we kind of wait and see what we get every time bid results come in. Because we did get grant funding from the state of Maryland state wage rates did come into play on this project, which we do typically see considerably higher bids when when that is in effect. So we were not surprised by

i mean you know the bids given that with pen dot work is probably more used to that so you know but that that makes it 25 yeah but i i just wanted to mention that we need to be very cautious that that there's not a change order in week two understood thank you all right any questions or direction from the board I move the Board of Commissioners award the contract to the Hampstead Valley for stormwater management facility retrofit project to Kinsley Construction in the amount of $1,349,025. Second.

We have a motion, we have a second. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you all very much. All right, next we'll move into the public comment.

It makes your state grant look way better.

Next we'll move into the public comment section of the agenda. Roberta, do we have anybody here for public comment?

Sir.

All right, thank you. Chris, do we have anybody on the line for public comment? I have nowhere on the line, sir. All right, thank you very much. We'll move into administrative session open. Does anybody have anything today for admin open?

Just to clarify, county office buildings are closed tomorrow for a federal holiday? Yes. Just to make sure everybody knows.

Thank you. Good point. Thank you very much.

Does that mean they can leave early also?

Yeah, Commissioner Kyler's telling people they can leave early tomorrow.

We actually had you ask if the summer Fridays turned to summer Thursdays.

I'm like, no. No. Oh, I bet you got questions.

Yes, yes.

No. Hopefully you answered them sternly.

I have no problem saying no. Yes.

I'm shocked. I do have one quick thing I want to bring up. I know commissioners are, I would say, less... maybe time-wise, than others. And I'm just wondering if we could take some of those and maybe combine those into an evening, or even consider some of the other ones for evenings. Because we, you know, like what we did today, some of those are rather, well, I shouldn't say they are, but they could be of less time, let's put it that way. But I just think, you know, in consideration to the public, maybe give that an option for a few here and there just to kind of put that out there. Just want to mention it, and we can discuss it at a further date if we want to, but I think it's something we should consider.

All right, anybody else have anything for admin open? All right, hearing none, we'll move into agenda review for the first week, the week of Monday, June 22nd. Monday, June 22nd. Oh, I'm sorry, Wanda, I apologize. How are you this afternoon?

I'm good, thank you.

She was ahead of you before she sat.

She's always ahead of me. She's got to keep me in check. Thank God somebody does. And I mean that, too. So for Monday, June 22nd. Monday, June 22nd shows nothing on the formal calendar. Tuesday, June 23rd, Carroll Chamber of Commerce Biz Challenge meet and greet at the Town Mall of Westminster Food Court. Wednesday, June 24th at 5 o'clock p.m., a public meeting on retirement villages and homes at the South Carroll Senior Center in Sykesville. Commissioners Kyler and Krebs will be attending. 7 o'clock p.m., the Carroll County Public Library Board of Trustees meeting at Mount Airy Branch in Mount Airy, Maryland. Thursday, June 25th, 8 o'clock a.m., Board of County Commissioners closed admin, followed by open session at 9 o'clock a.m. Item number one, Weimar Priority Carol and then Weimar Martinez Proclamation, who will be attending, and he is obviously the Youth of the Year for the Boys and Girls Club. Followed by item number two, FY26 operating budget adjustment 26-01 for Carroll County Public Schools. FY26 operating budget transfer 26-01 for Carroll County Public Schools. FY26 food services budget adjustment 26-01 for Carroll County Public Schools. and FY26 CIP budget transfer for Carroll County Public Schools. Item number three, approval to submit and accept the buprenorphine, I'm going to get it right eventually, buprenorphine initiative grant and the access overdose prevention and response grants and add one EMS position to the Department of Fire and EMS. Item number four, grant approval to submit application and acceptance of the award for the FY2027 long-term care ombudsman program funding for the Division of Aging and Disabilities. followed by public comment, admin open, and agenda review. Friday, June 26th, 2 o'clock.

There will be more agenda items, by the way.

I had a feeling we're winding down the fiscal year, right? Friday, June 26th at 2 o'clock p.m., the Town Mall 250th event at the Town Mall of Westminster with Commissioners Gordon and Kyler. Saturday, June 27th, shows nothing on the formal calendar. And Sunday, June 28th, I have the podcast. Are there any alterations, changes, or corrections for the first week? All right, hearing none, we'll move into the second week, the week of Monday, June 29th. Monday, June 29th shows nothing on the formal calendar. Tuesday, June 30th shows nothing on the formal calendar. Wednesday, July 1st, Radcliffe Applied Technology and Trade Center construction launch at Airport Drive in Westminster with Commissioners Gordon, Kyler, and Krebs. Thursday, July 2nd, there is no open session that week because of the July 4th holiday. Friday, July 3rd, county offices will be closed in observance of Independence Day. Saturday, July 4th, shows nothing on the formal calendar, but there will be the fireworks and the 4th of July ceremony that evening at the Farm Museum here in Westminster. And then Sunday, July 5th, Commissioner Tyler has the podcast. Are there any changes, alterations, or corrections for our second week? All right, hearing none, we need a motion to adjourn.

So moved.

We have a motion to leave a second.

Second.

All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? We are adjourned. Thank you.