Board of County Commissioners - public_hearing

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. It is Thursday, August 27th, 2026. Welcome to the public hearing for the Market Street Extended Project. My name is Joe Vigliotti, Commissioner from District 1 and President of the Carroll County Board of Commissioners. I'm joined this evening by Commissioner Mike Guerin, District 4, and Vice President of the Board of Commissioners, Commissioner Kenny Collar from District 2, Commissioner Tom Gordon from District 3, and Commissioner Sue Krabs from District 5. We're also joined by acting county administrator Deb Effingham and our county attorney Tim Burke, as well as Brian Boeke, who in a few moments will give us a brief summation of the project that we're here for the public hearing about. As we always do, we'll begin with the Pledge of Allegiance in a moment of silent reflection. So very briefly, I'll run through the order of tonight's events and then we'll kick things off. We are all very much looking forward to hearing from you and we are incredibly grateful that you were willing to join us this evening to do so. As Tim had mentioned a minute ago, if anybody is interested in commenting tonight, there are salmon colored cards at the back of the room. Please do fill one of those out and then give it to Deb up here at the front of the room. All right, so first of all, I'm going to officially call to order the public hearing on the possible road closure of a portion of Old Baltimore Road off Market Street. And I'm going to turn things over to Tim for a very brief introduction. We'll turn over things to Brian Boki after that for a very brief summation of the proposed project and legislation. And then we are going to open the floor to comments from you. So Tim, would you take us through our next step?

Good evening, Commissioners, and good evening, everybody. As stated earlier, this is a public hearing on a proposed closure of a portion of Old Baltimore Road. This was initiated by one of our citizens, Michelle Jefferson, and several of her neighbors. On or about October 24th, submitted a petition to close the portion of the road. Prior to that, she submitted an advertisement of her intention to submit the petition to close the road that ran in the Carroll County Times on October 24th, October 31st, and November 7th, 2025. This hearing was advertised in the Carroll County Times on Thursday, August 6, 2026, August 13, 2026, and August 20, 2026. With us is Director Brian Boeke from the Department of Public Works. He can give us a brief background of what's happening here and explain maybe the rendition we have up on the screen.

Sure. Thanks, Tim. Good evening. Brian Boeke, Director, Department of Public Works. As Tim and Commissioner Brigliotti spoke to already, we've had market shirt extended, is what our office calls it, in our plan for a very long time. We coordinate with planning for planned major streets. We've had this line shown on a map for a very long time. Part of the Stone Gate development had the fourth leg of that traffic circle, if you're familiar with the area. There was always an intention to connect that traffic circle out to Market Street at 140 with the Truist and the Wild Wild Caddy Corner there. WE HAD A STRUGGLE FOR A LONG TIME TO GET THIS BUILT BECAUSE WE DIDN'T OWN ALL THE PROPERTY. THE PROPERTY OWNER AT THE TIME WAS NOT WILLING TO WORK WITH US. WE HAD THE PLANS DEVELOPED BY STONE GATES ENGINEER AS PART OF THEIR DEVELOPMENT PROCESS. until the property was sold to another owner they were then able to work with us and and provide us the additional land we needed to make this connection so as part of the development on the corner formerly was a chick-fil-a i think that's probably what most folks in the room know it as currently chick-fil-a does not have any plans to develop with this company on the site but the the project is still moving forward we're still in active conversations with the developer So they want to proceed. We have a memorandum of understanding on who's going to pay for what portion of the road and stormwater management, things like that. And as we're all here tonight, the plan has always been to have this road tie into old Baltimore. So the tree streets could still access 140, easy access to 140 or old Westminster Pike. We never saw any problems with it. We've had a couple comments regarding landscaping and some screening, and we were happy to work with the folks in this community up until October, as Tim mentioned, we did receive the petition to close off that portion of the road and not make that connection. So that's what we're here tonight. We were in front of the board June 25th. Myself, Sheriff DeWeese, Chief Robinson, to answer any questions that the board had. At that time, they decided to move to a formal public hearing, and that's where we are tonight. So, yeah, I think with that, I'll open it up to the floor. Unless any commissioners have anything else?

No?

We're all set. So, Deb, well, actually, Tim, do you want to go over the guidelines for public comment real quick?

Yes. We ask that you limit your comments to three minutes. When your name is called, please approach the microphone in the middle of the room, and we're anxious to hear from you. Deb?

First one is Jason Peckseck.

Yeah, as always.

Hello. Good evening.

Good evening. Certainly we're here and we're discussing the fact of a road closure. And I know there's been a lot of discussion about how that would impede traffic, especially emergency services. In my mind this entire time, I've never wanted to prevent emergency services. We certainly welcome them. We want them on our streets. I live on Locust Avenue, which is the highest traffic street in the Three Streets. And when we talk about closure, I think, at least in my mind, it's always been closure to traffic at large, whether it's a matter of signage, whether it's gravel, whether it's collapsible bollards of some sort. I'm sure we've all seen many types of emergency access for emergency vehicles. So in that vein, that's what I've always proposed. We still want those services. We value those. And basically that's my take on the situation.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you Deb.

Next is Michelle Jefferson.

Before you start the clock, I had talked to pretty much everybody else in the room to see if anyone else had anything to say. He got up, he wanted to talk, but pretty much nobody else does. This has been two and a half years for us when we found out about the Chick-fil-A. Many of my neighbors feel defeated. They see hope, but every time we see hope, it gets taken away. The whole thing about the Chick-fil-A is that all the reports say that Chick-fil-A can come back into the fold at any time. This is my industry. I am a building permit expediter. Excuse me. made some phone calls to developers that I am currently working with on throughout the state of Maryland. I asked them what kind of compromise could we offer? We don't want the developer to not make money. We have never said that we don't want the property to be developed. A Chick-fil-A was way too much. Now that the Chick-fil-A is gone, okay, maybe we shouldn't close the road. But the developer has not committed and will not commit to no fast food restaurant at all. That's our red line, is a fast food restaurant of any kind. The Chick-fil-A traffic estimations were a little over 3,000. There is a strip center that is also planned on the back end of this site. What I would like to propose is until we see a traffic study that says it's going to be X, our red line is between 1,500 to 1,750 cars a day. we stay below that, I believe our neighborhood would be able to absorb that without any major issues. However, once we go over the 15 to 1750, then we need to close it. But if there is a fast food restaurant of any kind, we would like to close it. Nobody wants to do this. When Mr. Brown first suggested this two and a half years ago when we met at the indoor center, my first reaction was, hell no. That was right after the power lines went down, and we were trapped like rats, and none of us wanted to have to go through that again. However, we can still go down our tree street, pop up on the pike, and hit the circle to come back around if we want to do that because trying to come out at the intersection of the pike, main, and 97 is calling it a cluster as being nice. And there's so many accidents are in between the two shopping centers and that intersection. I know I try to avoid it at all costs, and I always go up to the other end of old Baltimore and go where I need to go from there. So it will be an inconvenience for all of us. But I think the bigger inconvenience would be the increased traffic of over the 1500 to 1750. Do you believe that that would be a compromise that the county would be willing to work with us on?

Well, so we would certainly have to discuss that. And in all sincerity, our intent here tonight is to hear from you. We want to take in whatever information you can give us, whatever your perspective is, whatever your thoughts and your information are, so we can make a decision. But I can certainly say that everybody will take everything very seriously that is presented to us this evening.

If there were a way to where we could still come and go without encouraging people who are already in that intersection saying, well, hey, that person just went there, I'm gonna go there too, go that way too, it just wouldn't work. I wish we could do something similar to that. But one of the neat things about Carroll County is that we tuck away our neighborhoods. So when you're going down a main thoroughfare, you don't know. How many houses? If there are any houses. Being exposed to 3,000 cars a day that we were never going to be exposed to before scared the heck out of all of us. And it may seem like we're being difficult. But we're not. We're just trying to protect what we have and protect our way of life. And we believe that when it gets to a certain point, fast food restaurant, more traffic than 1500 to 1750, then we need to close the road.

Thank you very much.

Okay, next is Kelly Miller.

Thank you. Good evening. Kelly Schaefer Miller, 73 East Main Street, Westminster, Maryland, 21157. I'm here tonight on behalf of the Morgan Companies, who own the two parcels that are located at the corner of Market Street and Route 140. Michelle, your jaw might drop, but I'm not I'm not opposed to anything Michelle just said. I think that my emphasis here to you tonight is that it's premature to make this decision. I understand that there were concerns of the community that were initiated because of a specific retailer and a high traffic assumption. As Brian said during his sort of introductory presentation, this is a master-planned road. There's designs that have been formulated for this roadway construction. I think it's a benefit to the county to let this road develop and then decide if there's a problem. So that's what I'm here to say tonight. Pretty bluntly, this connection is not going to determine whether that site develops or not. It will develop with this roadway. The question is, is that connection still there? Do people want that connection to be there? Is that connection beneficial? And I don't know that we have the ability to make that decision until Market Street, the planned Market Street extension, has completed construction. And we see what that actual impact looks like. So thank you very much for your time here tonight.

Thank you very much.

And next we have Steve Scher.

Hello, Steve Sharp. I live out on Arnold Road. I've lived there for seven years. And frankly, every time we cut through Locust Road, we feel like we're trespassing. And I've really felt bad for those people that had to deal with that all these years. As soon as we moved in, we saw the spur off the roundabout. I've emailed somebody several times saying, I see this is going to happen, but when's it going to happen? Poor people on Locust Road are just getting slammed. But two points on this. One, I hadn't seen the drawing until just the other day. But to me, one, when you put this through, traffic through the neighborhood is going to plummet compared to what it is now. I mean, anybody that would bother to go down the side streets rather than to cut through here to 140, I just don't see why they would want to do that. Second thing is, if the concern is traffic coming out of Chick-fil-A or whatever it ends up being, I'd like to see if... When I saw this, I pictured that the turnoff onto Old Baltimore Pike could be slid towards 140 a slight amount, and the entrance to the property on the opposite side of the road could be slid the other direction a little bit, and have a no straight through cut from that commercial property so that any traffic from there wouldn't go through there. They would go to the traffic circle or 140. You could still turn on and off of Baltimore Pike on to that spur so that people could easily get out of their neighborhood but i'd just like to see if that's a possibility that they could do that so that traffic from the commercial zone wouldn't go into the neighborhood thank you thank you very much mark tipo

Hello mark depot the director of community planning development for the city of Westminster 45 West Main Street, Westminster, Maryland I'm here just to encourage that the development of Market Street actually occurs we have had a traffic study for this property that demonstrates that a significant decrease in the amount of trips through the tree streets a study was done and And it would just logically reduce the number of trips through the tree streets. There's no commercial element along old Baltimore. You have an old Westminster. So look at the traffic set that was already completed and it does demonstrate that decrease. What we were asking is that the development occurs with Market Street as designed and once development occurs an actual study is um is completed to see if it does increase trips or actually decreases as the study that we have demonstrates so we're asking that it gets actually developed as planned and as approved at this time thank you thank you very much john conrad

So I might have a little bit of a different opinion. I want to close it off. I live on Willow Avenue, right at the corner of Old Baltimore. I see the traffic that we currently get through there, and I mean, I understand what they're saying about the traffic study and all that. I see the traffic now. I see it. people get a habit you know they take their roots they take their you know the standard ways that they go and people are still going to cut through there we don't know what they're going to put there you know there is no guarantee of what it's going to be I would rather not wait until the problem is there to fix it you know so I'm thinking that you know this whole Market Street extension thing was supposed to have happened years ago and we never got it so we've been suffering with the traffic for all these years And my thought is, throw us a bone here and take care of the traffic for us. Help us out with the traffic. Because it is bad. I mean, I don't know how many people have been around there around like, you know, five o'clock or whatever it is, but the traffic gets bad. I can sit there and I'm cutting my grass and I watch every single car that goes down Willow Avenue, there's not one of them that lives there. Not one of them. I mean, it's gotta be 95% of the people that go through there don't live there. And we don't know what they're going to put there. I'd rather take care of the problem now. And that's my thought.

Thank you very much.

Patricia Piper.

Good evening.

Good evening.

So I've lived on Locust about 22 years now. When we moved in, I remember a little boy in the neighborhood playing with his remote control car in the street. That's how quiet it was. All the streets that are tree named are like that. You can walk up and down that street, not at rush hour, but maybe in the afternoon. Not one car up and down. Locusts, that's a different story. And not only are there cars, there are trucks. There are huge trucks. there's landscape landscaping equipment that's banging banging banging down the road i had to raise my finish raising my girls there they could not open their bedroom windows all the dirt blowing in from the road all the noise even with your windows shut you can't keep out that kind of noise i can hear it in my back bedroom so the quality of life is awful go try to walk your dog we don't have a sidewalk we go down the stone gate to use their sidewalk but you have to go up on the grass there's not one person left on our street who parks in the in the street go up all the other tree streets and you will see people park in front of their homes my husband had to put a stone way in where he could park his car so we could get I could get in and out of the driveway people put blacktop cement everything but nobody parks on the street the streets not wide enough for more traffic and I swear it continued I shouldn't say this but I swear it contributed to my aneurysm because my blood pressure was just crazy every day especially on weekends watching all this traffic come and go and come and go, the traffic that was meant to be on Route 97, not on a neighborhood street. The idea that people will use that bypass, if you put it in, because it's been 22 years almost that it's been supposed to be put in there, the Market Street extension, people will use it who live in Stonegate or come from the east direction people come from the west probably will still go down our street they might turn down baltimore old baltimore road and we have two high schools within two three miles of our home on Do you think people are not going to be zooming over to Chick-fil-A to get Chick-fil-A for their dinners while their kids are getting ready for their sports? That's what I did. I went to fast food places. We didn't have time to cook. for the kids so um it's just a quality of life issue it it's really i i want to sell and move i thought if i could if i i'm 72 i can't go anywhere now but if i could i would sell get the heck out of there and the people who just moved in with little children i feel badly for so that's all thank you thank you thank you very much that's all i have that's all

So I just want to put it out to the floor one more time if anybody else is interested in making a comment this evening. Sure, and after you do that, please do fill out a card after you make the comment. Thank you.

My name is Christine Crow. I live at 503 Willow Avenue in Buckingham View. I have been there since the early 80s, 1981. What I would like to mention is that Baltimore Boulevard is a residential street. They've closed off the one end, and the only way to go through is you have to turn back onto 140. A lot of people are shortcutting to avoid the lights. Market Street may present a solution, but if the traffic gets backed up, it won't. They'll still shortcut. I just would like to remind everybody that Old Baltimore Road has children on it. There are school bus stops along that road. Twice a week, there's a group of eight young, teenagers who do dance practice in their driveway. I've got video footage of the cars just zooming by. And there are a lot of trucks, a lot of heavy trucks that shake the house. We live at the corner of Old Baltimore and Willow Avenue. I would like to see something done. I don't trust that that shopping center isn't going to bring throughway traffic, especially if it gets backed up, especially if it gets backed up at the Circle. I would like to see something done to either maybe some speed humps or reduce the speed limit or something done to prevent through traffic. on old Baltimore Road because they will inevitably go down the tree streets. They have. Thank you. I'm sorry for being so nervous.

No, no, not at all. Not at all. Matt, I believe we have somebody on the line as well. Matt, do we have anybody on the line?

All right. Thank you.

Better to be safe than sorry. Better to be safe than sorry. Sheriff, would you like to add anything to the conversation this evening?

Thanks, Commissioner. I think the board should be commended for taking on the project. Previous boards, I think, kind of glossed over what was going on here. I am firmly with the folks on the tree streets. I have driven that route multiple times over the last several months just to see what the emergency response time would be from Reese Fire Department. First due is Westminster. as well as law enforcement, it's nominal at the end of the day when you compare the risk that these folks are taking with the amount of traffic that's coming through their property. I think, you know, the let's wait and see what it does is you can tell it's tormenting these people to death. And I can understand, and the people that say, let's wait and see, don't live in the neighborhood. So I don't live in the neighborhood, but I've policed this county for the better part of 37 years. I know that neighborhood very well, and I feel for these folks. And so I don't know when the traffic study was done, if it was done at the height of Stonegate and the amount of traffic that was coming through there. We can certainly, through my office and Brian's office, do something that's high level so that we can give you an idea of what's coming through there. But I think if this road isn't being constructed tomorrow or really, really fast, then we need to shut that place down and throw these folks something because they're clearly being tormented by what goes on in that neighborhood and give them their streets back. I think they would, by and large, agree to that, and you're seeing that here if you go through the development. It's an older development mixed with some folks that have children through there, and the bus routes. It's something that CCPS would have to adjust to when they come through, to come in Old Pike and go back out the Old Pike and pick up children. But I'm clearly with them, so thanks.

Thank you very much, Sheriff. Nobody else from the floor? All right. Without anything else, I will 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.

Move the board to conclude the public hearing and keep the record open for 10 calendar days. From today's date. From today's date.

We have a motion. Do we have a second?

Second.

All right. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? We are adjourned. Thank you all very much.