Board of County Commissioners - Regular Meeting

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, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I hope everybody is doing well today and so we have kind of an interesting agenda before us because we have one item that falls under open session and then we'll do a very brief recess before going into the work session thereafter. The issue before us today is a request for a public hearing for self-service storage facilities deferral for an additional six months. And Chris, I'll kick it over to you for an introduction.

Yes, good morning. So as you're all aware, we've had a couple of deferrals that were put in place by the Board of County Commissioners related to a couple of different types of uses. One of those deferrals relates to self-service storage facilities, which that current deferral expires on October 9th. Currently, we are working with the Planning and Zoning Commission regarding certain recommended code amendments from our consultant, Michael Baker. That process is ongoing, but we anticipate that we still have two or three more sessions with the Planning and Zoning Commission to get to the point where we can return to the board with recommendations. So those recommendations will certainly be after the October 9th deferral. So if the board is so inclined and wishes to extend the deferral to allow additional time, either for those code amendments or the additional process that we're going through the additional work that we're doing regarding the small area plan amendment for the freedom area, um, the deferral would need to be extended. Uh, so in order to allow enough time for, the public hearing and so on and so forth related to extending the deferral before October 9th, the decision would have to be, I believe, would have to be made this week to then start that process for public hearing and so on to officially extend the deferral beyond October 9th. So that's why we brought the topic to the board for discussion.

All right. Thank you very much for that, Chris. I'll open it up to the floor to my colleagues for any thoughts, discussion, or action. I just want to make one really quick.

We have a public comment. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Thank you.

We have a public comment. It's Kelly Miller.

Thank you. Good morning, commissioners. I'm going to hand you each a copy of this, which you already probably have several copies of. Thank you.

Thank you. Give one to Garen.

Good morning. I'm going to time myself, I promise. Kelly Schaefer Miller, 73 East Main Street, Westminster, Maryland, 21157. I'm here this morning. Oh, look, there it is. On behalf of Scott Cooper, who is the prospective developer of the self-service storage unit proposed on Liberty Road, I've handed to you a few pages of the elevations, the most recent elevations. These are part of the county file, and I just picked a few representative of his project. I think it's important for you to look at these and have these in front of you and deciding whether this topic goes to public hearing for a discussion on another extension. This deferral has been extended already to nine months and now the request before you is for an additional public hearing for an additional six months. I would ask today that you not go to public hearing on this topic. that if you go to public hearing you go on a deferral of new plans I understand that there's a text amendment processing as you can all imagine I've been involved in that process and appearing at those meetings if the if the goal is to stop new submittals because there's a pending text amendment then stop new submittals but don't stop the two plans that are in process one of which is Scott's project and and one of which is a much, much newer project that you're all well aware of. I think, and I'll defer to Mr. Burke, who gives you wise legal advice, but I would say to you that an additional extension of this deferral is unconstitutional under Maryland case law. There is case law that supports the length of allowed moratoriums deferrals, and this would far exceed what case law suggests is appropriate. So I would ask that you consider that in your discussions today. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Now I will open up to the floor for my colleagues for any discussion or thoughts or action.

I just wanted to bring up one thing really quickly for the good of the group. Chris, could you touch a little more on what we've discussed in planning and zoning?

just for everyone i know obviously the deferral has been related to the freedom district but what we're looking at in planning and zoning which would be coming before the board is not solely related to freedom it would be countywide that's correct uh... so that the text amendments that are being discussed are specific to the use of self-service storage the recommendations from the consultants and and uh... recommended text that's being discussed uh... has I would say primarily our aesthetic type recommendations for the look and feel of buildings. I think the primary substantive type recommendations The recommendations relate to process as to whether self-storage should be a conditional use in the C2 district or principal permitted. It's currently principal permitted, and the recommendation that's being discussed is to make that a conditional use, so that would require a BZA approval. The other item related to is separating out the difference between the different types of self-service storage. The external shed type that are historically pretty prevalent in the county versus the new interior climate controlled type that is becoming more prevalent in the industry. And so currently our code does not differentiate between those. And so that's a primary recommendation of separating those out. But that would not affect adversely any existing or proposed. It just would be a clarification of the types. I hope that answers your question.

Thank you. Appreciate that.

Excuse me. I just want to remind everyone that some of this came about because of changes that were made after the master plan was adopted that were not aligned with the master plan. They were not widely circulated and there was no participation of the public in those discussions of bulk requirements and some other things. So taking things and changing definitions after a master plan that's not aligned with it is not legal. So that's what the basis of all these deferrals are. And keep in mind, Unconstitutional. I know what it is. This is not unconstitutional. These deferrals do not take away the ability to build anything except a certain thing. So they can go build a lot of other things on this property, just not this one use, which is very large. It's, it's something that we don't have anywhere else in the county. As I said, the bulk requirements were changed, and a word, mini, was taken out of the word to allow for multi-story storage. We have none in the county, even in any of our local jurisdictions. Our municipality is not allowed. So this use was something new that came about years after the master plan was adopted. It's not aligned with the underlying land use. A deferral is a certain type of a use that was permitted after the master plan was adopted. in not in alignment with the master plan. Um, some of the arguments when this particular one that came up was, it was right next to a residential, a community. And I think we did a site visit on this small plan advisory group and everyone finally stood on the site and the picture's worth a thousand words. I think everyone that's still on that site, two van loads full of people, including planning. I think there was some acknowledgement. This might not belong here. Something of this bulk might not belong here. Again, that's just, we're going through that process today. We're just starting that with a small group of amendments. So just, I know the narrative changes. The only reason we're here is because uses, charts, and little word changes were done after the fact. Years after the fact. I can show you, you want the details? I can show it. It shows you right in your zoning code, what year each of these things happened, 2021, 2022, 2024, and you can follow it back. You can also see that there was nobody at those hearings. Why? Somebody knew about it because they weren't advertised like they were during the master plan process. As we were getting emails happened, a lot of this happened during COVID. They're all different. They're all a little different, but that's the basis for all of these deferrals is things that got changed that were not in aligned with the master plan. And I think if you'd look back at the narrative and look at all the testimony that was put in during the master plan, you would clearly see this was not the attention of the commissioners that passed the master plan. And it was not the end. This and others was not intended. It was done afterwards and it was not done in a fashion that was transparent. And I would say is in alignment with what we're supposed to do. You can't just come in, any of us, whether we like it or not, we can't just come in and say, oh, we're going to change this thing. That's why you have a process so that one person can't just come in and say, oh, I think we should do this now. Land use is a very serious issue because it doesn't just affect that person who bought the property. It affects the people all around it. So it affects other people's property. So that's why it's such a big deal to do it and follow a master plan. That's why you're required by law to follow the underlying land use. It's our own law and state law. So keep in mind, this is not a moratorium. It's a deferral on a certain use. This happens to be storage facilities. And after we did the deferral on the storage facility, we did it for three months. And that's because we thought we would just take out storage facilities. And then we found out, wow, these bulk requirements change. How big can something be on a property? No differentiation next to somebody's home or neighborhood or where it is. And so we realized this is a bigger issue than just a storage facility. It could be a data center next. It could be something else. So that's why we did the small plan amendment. We did that just in freedom because it was felt that the rest of the county, that people like these big uses, bulk uses. I don't represent those areas. I guess we'll see if this could go in a lot of different places in commercial right now. throughout the county, and I hope people look at their zoning next to their house and realize that. So anyway, the reason we did the small plan amendment is so that it would only affect the Freedom Area, because I was the only one who seemed to have a concern about it. And we have the most of this commercial use. And keep in mind also the commercial use that was put, it was changed, was changed to a new code that had no definition with it until after the plan was adopted. I can show you in law, and people testified, including myself, including the former planning director, many people, that land use should be adopted, the definitions, along with the plan. You don't do it afterwards. You don't do it and make major changes to something afterwards that are not in alignment with the plan. So a good planner knows this. Reading the law knows this. I think our planners should know this. That's just the way it is. If you're improving something, it's one thing, but not when you're not improving it and making major changes to it. So for those reasons, this is not unconstitutional. That word is thrown around so many times, and I love it, because no one's stopping anyone from building on any of these properties what the underlying land use and what it was before. They can go build other permitted uses. We do have to worry about the bulk requirements. That's why we're doing the small plan overlay district for this area, because There's things that fit places and there's things that don't, and it needs to be done more specifically. So we're heading in the right direction. We spent a lot of money on these consultants. We spent a lot of energy, and I thank our staff. They spent a lot of energy. But at the end of the day, I think we're doing the right thing to go back. We're not trying to change things. We're trying to put the genie back in the bottle to what got changed in a less than transparent way, which is not the right way to do things. So, and if you need the details now, I can show you all the meeting minutes. I can show you who was there. I can show you the, whatever you want, you want level detail. I got, I got bins of it. So nobody seems to want to get into the details of it, but that's what would come out in a court. So if somebody thinks it's unconstitutional, I welcome it to have this all laid out. It will take a lot of time. Uh, I'd like to take it, like to get a fix in a, an easier way, but Hey, if we want to make it transparent and do it a different way, I think they know that that's not going to be good for them. But anyway, I'm speaking for myself. So I would, Commissioner Gern's not here. He's our mover. All we're doing is taking this to public hearing so we can finish up the job that we were doing. I notice the Planning Commission didn't have enough people there, I think, the other night. They only had three people there, I think, or four.

There was a quorum. It just wasn't the complete board.

Whatever it was, I think I read that somewhere that they didn't have a chance because there wasn't everybody there. So for whatever reason, I didn't watch it. They didn't get around to changing these things. So I suggest that we've got to finish what we started. Grandfathering this is not some little deal. It's a big deal where it is. The people that have been opposing this that live near it, not only have had attorneys, we've had petitions of hundreds of people. We've had 28 meetings now. We've had hundreds of people show up at hearings prior to this few years ago when it was happening. So this is not some little deal. It's a big deal. So it's a precedent that should never have been made. I don't think it was legally done. And we're going to try to fix it. And this is just going to a public hearing to see if we can defer it so we can try to get to the end of it. I think we should try to find another spot for storage facilities. I think we should also consider why we need the large ones if we want them. We don't allow them in industrial. We don't have them anywhere in the county. None of the towns have them. This is a precedent that we're setting, and it's right next to someone's home, a couple people's homes, right on our main street. So for all those reasons, it's not just something in the, it's not something sitting in some ag land somewhere where nobody, it's not affecting anyone. It's a, you talk about aesthetic recommendations. It's not just all about aesthetics, but anyway. So, and it was a principle of permitted use. Also, should it be a conditional use while we're at it? Right now, if we don't change how we do conditional uses, pretty much everything gets approved by the way we look at conditional uses. I think that's not significant enough. They don't really look at the whole use. They're only looking at is it worse off here than somewhere else, and everything sort of gets passed. I think our standard is not necessarily aligned with what state law intended it to be, so I think we need to look at our standards for conditional uses as well because I think a lot of us get frustrated with it, but the direction that our BZA has gone has been a standard that I don't think is a high bar. It's a very low bar. So I think we need to look at that whole process as well, because it's pretty much going to, if you put it into conditional use, it's pretty much going to pass because of the standard that they've been told legally they're supposed to use. So there are a number of things here that we're looking at, and we're just trying to do the best for the people in our community, and this will affect other areas. And I'd say to people in other areas, you better look at what's next to you, because if it's C2, you could have some big buildings coming next to you. So I'm just going to ask you guys to have the public hearing. The same people will come. I feel sorry for these poor people. And hopefully we can get through the planning commission on this. We can get past through the small plan advisory, which is going to look at the whole corridor for other uses that could be very, very large offensive uses as well. And of course, it's not offensive to us because we don't live next door to it. But I think we've heard from the people that live there multiple times about the impact on their homes, their property. Obviously, they're pretty passionate, but this is not a little deal. So I will take my Commissioner Guerin's spot if someone else wants to move that. I direct staff to hold a public hearing.

Commissioner, I wanted to ask a couple questions before we took any action. Sure. You should have put the motion on the table, but that's okay. Well, if you go ahead and make the motion, I'll second it for discussion.

That's fine. I move the board direct staff to hold a public hearing on the extension of the deferral for self-storage facilities. Facilities for six months.

I will second it for discussion. I've got a couple questions, Chris. Yes. Or Tim, for that matter, because we have our county attorney here with us this morning. Commissioner Krebs has made a point about the concurrence of plans and definitions and things being promulgated together. How did we get to where we are right now with one type of zoning and definitions and everything relating to how this storage facility was able to be put into this place or proposed for this particular location?

Yes, so you may recall back, I don't remember the date of the memo that I put together for the board that talked about the process by which that commercial and industrial codes were adopted. That process, I'm going off memory here, but I can certainly reshare the memo to you all. That process began in 2017. with the assembling of some industry experts for their recommendations on code changes to commercial industrial zones. That was at the same time that the Freedom Plan, Freedom Community Comprehensive Plan was being worked on. Over the course of late 2017 and all of 2018, There were multiple public meetings. There were five public meetings that were held around the county. Those public meetings were specific to code changes related to commercial industrial code changes as well as the direction that code changes were going and the freedom plan and so on. There were five of those held around the county. I believe that was early 2018. There were over a dozen public meetings Planning Commission as well as Board of County Commissioner meetings to discuss the proposed code amendments. It was then in the October of 2018, again, forgive me, I'm going off memory here, October of 2018 that the Freedom Plan was adopted. And the final work on the code amendments related to commercial industrial, which includes the C2 district and self-storage and so on, those were continuing to be worked on. And then those code amendments, I believe, were finally adopted in 2020 along with the update to the master plan to bring everything to be consistent with the freedom plan that was adopted at the end of 2018. Does that all ring true?

I think that's right.

Yes. So again, I put together a lengthy memo that had all of the dates, all of the meetings, and so on. I'd be happy to share that with the board again. But that's approximately the time frames. So I guess what I'm saying is that the code amendments related to commercial and industrial zoned districts were being worked on at the same time as the Freedom Plan was being The Freedom Plan was adopted at the end of 2018, and then the finishing out and the additional meetings with the Board of County Commissioners and Planning Commission continued until they were finally adopted. I believe it may have been December of 2019, thereabouts. But I will certainly circulate that memo for the Board again.

I promise you I read the memo. I was just for my own reminder this morning. I appreciate that. So my second question has to do with the proposed storage facilities right now. So my understanding is that there are two that I guess are potentially or in the line right now, this one being one of them, Highlands, and then I forget the name of the other one.

I may interrupt. I'm sorry. There are actually three that are in process. Yes. There's the one that we've been talking about, Carroll Highlands. There's one near Bartholow Road on Maryland 32, and then there's another on Monroe that is an expansion of an existing self-storage that has the smaller shed type, but they're proposing to add an internal larger scale to that facility. So there are actually three that are being contemplated right now in the Freedom area. There are others that are countywide. So there is currently one proposed here in the city of Westminster that is working through the process and almost done. It may have, I don't recall if it's gotten its final approval, but there's another one that's here in Westminster.

Okay.

As far, I mean, I understand that the pressing concern is Carroll Highlands. For the other ones that are in process right now, any potential changes that may come about by way of code amendments, they would have to conform to because they do not fall under the vesting or the change in state law as relates to vesting, correct?

Yes. So when the board adopts text amendments, zoning code text amendments, one of the decisions that the board typically will make is, is there any sort of for lack of a better term, grandfathering of existing projects and process. And typically that is done based on milestones. So for example, a significant milestone in the development review process is submitting the concept for review by the planning commission. So there may be language either in a resolution or in the code that might say, Any projects that have been to Planning Commission for concept review will be reviewed subject to the previous codes, anything after. That sort of decision needs to be made to address those projects that are in process. As I mentioned, there are three projects that are in process right now. Carroll Highlands, basically they have received all technical approvals from staff. They're only waiting for the deferral to be relaxed so that they can then go to Planning Commission for the final approval The other two are very very early in the process and they are still working through concept Concept review they have not gone to Planning Commission yet. So if the board say and when we bring the new text amendments for self-service storage back to the board for contemplation and you adopt those, then that's when a decision could be made that the new codes only apply to those projects that have gone to Planning Commission for concept review. I don't know whether those two projects will have reached that milestone or not, but that is absolutely a discussion that could be had with the board as far as when you want those codes to apply. If you don't put any grandfathering in, then any project that still needs to get final approval from the Planning Commission would be subject to the new codes that you adopt at that time.

Got it. Makes perfect sense. Thank you very much, Chris. And Kenny and Tom, I want to make sure you guys have a chance to add anything if you want to. Yeah, I'm ready.

For reference, in 2005 to 2022, I was working in Pennsylvania but we were working in Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania. Part of the time we were pre-qualified here and I actually met with maintenance people to talk about microsurfacing and slurry and tar and chip. But so I was paying attention to the meetings. Uh, I knew about the land use. I didn't go to any public meetings. I did talk to, uh, uh, commissioners and I did talk to some of the planning commission. I actually questioned with the planning commission, um, the difference between the master plan, the freedom plan and zoning. And their answer to me, whether it was correct or not, I don't know, was a plan as a plan and zoning as the law. Um, and, and I think particularly for property owners, for people that want to do things in Carroll County, be it build a house or build more, um, they have to assume that the rules are the rules and, uh, and we're legally done. The bulk requirements, we talked about this during our term. We were very transparent and it was specifically about this site is why we talked about it. I was opposed to the original deferral for a lot of those reasons and we were told three months would be enough. Then we were told nine months would be enough and now we're being told 15 months will be enough. I'm skeptical about that. Um, and, and I'm also skeptical of some of the things that are consultant Baker's coming up with. Um, they're referencing Carlisle. Like I say, I worked in Pennsylvania. Commonwealth is way different than, than Maryland counties up there mean nothing almost. And, uh, I, I don't understand why they're not looking at Frederick Baltimore, Howard, um, counties in Maryland. this would be a countywide change and i'm totally opposed to the changes in my area uh... if uh... on route thirty in green mount uh... there's a tractor supply going in i haven't seen that plan i bet it's a bigger building than this and i want them to bill uh... it's it's uh... i feel like a i need to be I've been consistent with both votes being opposed, and I think I'll be consistent today and be opposed. When this site, when we were doing the bulk requirements, I went down to Eldersburg, walked this site, walked the neighborhood, drove the neighborhood, and that building was way bigger. I still thought it wasn't the eyesore people thought it was. There's so much misconceptions about this. I hear about that we should restrict traffic. There is no traffic to speak of. I've dealt with these in other counties, and by nature, I was working 12 hours a day, so I would go here at 10, 11 o'clock at night and... and it seemed like a ghost town but that's when i went um... i don't know when others went so uh... again i've said before we have a main street in manchester hampstead uh... green mount and i would encourage a building just like this on our main streets and it wouldn't be the biggest building was there uh... wouldn't be the biggest company was there we have a lot of uh... out-of-county companies. Unfortunately, Black & Decker is closing, which I hate to see happen, but we need employees, we need land use in Carroll County. So I think for all those reasons, I'm still opposed to any deferral. And I assume, I didn't ask questions but you nodded when I talked about bulk requirements. We were very concerned about that and the problem I think with what Baker might come up with and this, we have a lot of commercial sites that if we don't watch it, we could make rules that make them unbuildable because of this site. And that's my opinion on this, and I think it's grounded in facts and experience, and I just wanted to state it.

Yes, I'm sorry. I believe it was three years ago, the board had extensive discussion about bulk requirements in the commercial zoning district. And Commissioner, as you mentioned, the primary issue is that when you look countywide, and these bulk requirements would apply countywide, Any revision to the bulk requirements, similar to what had been asked, increasing setbacks, for example, to 50 feet and so on, would make a large number of commercial properties unbuildable around the county. And so that's ultimately the board decided not to revise the bulk requirements. extensively like that. There was a provision that was added with a scalable setback based on the height of the building when adjacent to residential districts. So that change was made to lessen the impact to immediately adjacent residential districts.

And in Hampstead, we have, I don't know, a 10-acre building very, very close to Hawksville Road that half the people don't even know it's there.

Tom, did you wanna?

I just want to follow up with a little bit additional comment. I know Mr. Hyde had mentioned the setbacks that we had looked at, both in planning and zoning and obviously the board. And as was mentioned, the Baker consultants come up with some interesting information, which was mentioned in both the night and the previous meeting in which he was present. One of my big concerns, and I brought this up recently, I think in the second meeting as well as the first, he's been focused on Carlisle. and just look at Baltimore County, Frederick County. I'll even go so far as to pick something that's not apples to apples, which I mentioned in the last meeting, which was Hanover, Pennsylvania. And one of the things, from my colleague's knowledge, he was looking at of, well, if we have a self-storage unit in commercial, it should be these hours. If it's commercial but next to a residential, it should be these hours, which totally goes against the concept of having access to self-storage. I think, one, if we're going to start looking at that, you know we're we're seriously questioning what kind of businesses and entities we truly do want in our in our county do we want to make it more difficult uh... why would you know why would you want to have access to something you can access any different than me having my garage and going out at one o'clock in the morning and getting something you know not gonna make a ton of noise the one thing i found a little concerning with just the general information coming back is that he's not looking at slightly comparable neighbors. We're looking at an area completely outside of anything that Carroll County is. Um, and also some of the properties to commissioner Kyler's point, you know, we'd be potentially looking at affecting the usage of properties County wide. And I think that's something that we have to be very cognizant of when we're doing these types of things.

Thank you, commissioner. Any other comments?

I just want to, Clarify a few things. First of all, one thing I've learned is trust but verify. You mentioned five meetings. There's another issue I ask about meetings. I was told there were four meetings. I was given the date. When I went back and looked at the date and looked at what was up, it was buried. It was nowhere in the title. It was nowhere. So just because there's meetings doesn't mean there were people there and that it was transparent. The billboards, look back on those four meetings that was had, nowhere would you have ever known they were talking about off-premise signs. because it was buried in the text of something else, which is not legal to do. You have to have it in the title. You have to know what it's talking about to change something. So I haven't looked at the five meetings, but when I looked at the last four that I was given, if I showed it to you, you'd go, wow, that was a little bit misleading. So I don't know. I haven't looked at these five meetings to see how they were advertised, who was there. But so far what I've looked at, you can see exactly who's there. And there's no public people there because, again, the way it was advertised is in the back of the newspaper. in six fonts saying bulk requirements, chapter 155. No one knows it exists there. So when you talk about the five meetings, it's our responsibility to know. I would like to just bring the minutes to the meeting or how the advertisement went out, who was there. That way it shows some transparency. So the other thing, as you mentioned, this stuff was being worked on. It did not pass with the last Board of Commissioners. And part of it's because they were not in agreement with it. In fact, if you'd like, I don't want to bring my bin in, But all the commissioners, Mr. Commissioner Weaver would not even sign the plan because he thought they were up to no good because the plan passed and the definitions did not go with it. And he was right. The other ones passed it and said, no, this is what it says. You can't do these things. You just mentioned 2018. I don't know when it started, but they weren't adopted until a year over a year later in 2019, December of 2019 commercial. So it was over a year later. And then the bulk requirements were changed. You guys changed them in 2024, but they were changed in 2022. That's a pretty dramatic thing. And the bulk requirements for age-restricted housing also changed as well. That's a big deal as well. So all these things are leading to the problems that we have today. If someone would want to get involved in the real details of it and see how this was done, it was not done in alignment with the plan, that's why it was done later, because there was a group of people, including the Planning Commission at the time, who wanted all this stuff. And that's why the commissioners remanded it back to themselves, because they were not doing what the people wanted. And the Planning Commission at the time had zero people on it from the Freedom District, zero. There was no one involved, there was no one at the table. And everyone was opposed to what they were suggesting. So the commissioners remanded the plan back to themselves, and fixed it and changed it. And they were OK with the plan, but they ran out of time because they were going out of office. But they figured the plan would be the plan. You have to follow the plan. Unfortunately, this stuff that had been talked about that was rejected by the people that adopted the plan came back in a different form. And we used to have two zones of BNR and BG. Business, neighborhood, retail were two zones and business general. That was the underlying zoning. And they decided to divide it into three zones that were not yet defined. They got defined, again, later. They were not aligned with what they used to be. Those properties changed dramatically. And then the bulk requirements changed in 2022, and then you guys changed it in 2024. And you can, when you read your manual, I'm sure you guys have looked at this very carefully, like I have, on every single page multiple times. You can see when everything passed, and then you can go back and actually read the ordinance, and you can see the changes that were made. And it's very craftfully done. The residential, very craftfully done, changing one word, and you can follow it. and see that these things change. Your maximums of your height changed in 2022, which was four years after Master Plan passed. And it was significant. It was significant of what could go before. In this particular case, on this particular site, there were three residential lots. Lot one, two, and three had houses as part of this community called Carroll Highlands. Then you had lot, so they were right on Main Street, on Liberty Road, one, two, and three. Back when it was a sleepy little road. Then you had the rest of the development, four, five, six, and then the whole development. And then those particular three properties, one of them, they were all houses. One was used for plumbing. The guy, I guess, lived in it and wanted to do his plumbing business there. So they got a conditional use to have their plumbing business in with their home. Another one sold Christmas trees. I guess every Christmas got a conditional use or whatever to do Christmas trees. So those conditional uses then changed into, hey, this is a BNR, business neighborhood retail, which is local business. It's all along the corridor. mixes in, not pretty, but mixes in low uses. A lot of older homes are used for businesses now that are real estate companies or barbershop, whatever. There's lots of uses all along that corridor. And then all of a sudden they said, hey, let's just, instead of keeping on conditional use, let's just change the whole corridor. That way they won't have to keep coming back for a conditional use. And we'll just change them to these three uses that we have not defined yet. See, one, two, and three. And they did. They just labeled them that. And then After the plan was adopted and these people had a C2 on there, no one knew what it meant. It still had an underlying land use of business, neighborhood, retail, and it was residential before that. They had a conditional use for the BNR. And then suddenly we do these definitions that sort of came back from what they wanted to do before the master plan passed and the commissioners had rejected. I have a problem with that. I have a problem with the people that were on the planning commission at the time. One of which happens to serve town council now in Westminster and Westminster doesn't allow any of this stuff. Westminster doesn't allow this. They don't allow the retirement communities like we do. They don't allow clustering like we do, but somehow it was pushed for freedom to do this, but no one else does it. Tawny town doesn't do it. Westminster. I read the Westminster code last night. Very interesting how their code is much better written than ours. As you understand what it says, it's not, you can read it and know exactly what the purpose of stuff is. It's very, Well done. Whether you agree with it or not, you understand it. This stuff, you know, bulk requirements, who even knew what that was? Nobody knew what a bulk requirement is. But that was passed in 2022. So that was a pretty big change. And it also allows the same for the age restricted. You now can build it way bigger. Why? How does that benefit older people by changing the bulk requirements? That's the kind of questions that we should be asking ourselves because it wasn't really done to benefit older people. It was done to make a building be closer to a property line somewhere that may not fit. So this is a very nuanced product. It's a very nuanced thing when you have a community that has residential. And every site is different. And that's why I think it's not so simple to do it blanket. But we did. That's what they did. They blanket said, here, this is what this is going to be. That's why we're going back and taking some special extra energy with the small plan amendment to look carefully at each property and say, what does it belong? Some of the areas are very narrow. Some of them has a big space. And that way, we can respect the underlying neighbors. Is it consistent with the fabric of the neighborhood? All the way through the master plan, it says that over and over, consistent with the fabric of the neighborhood. Because one person's property All of a sudden, when you change the zoning on a property, you can change the value of it immediately overnight. That's why it's a tricky thing to do because you've just given them, hey, you can do all these things. But then the person next to them, it might be affecting their property in a negative way. And that's why we've got to be very careful of how we do it. And this was not carefully done. When they redid them, they did the whole corridor the same way. Did everybody see two? There's no C1s. There's no low level. There's everything turned to C2, undefined. Maybe some do belong to be C2. I think the C1, 2, and 3 were not, there's no C1s. Everything C2 and C2 and C3 are almost exactly the same. in the permitted uses. So I don't think it was done in a very thoughtful and nuanced way. I don't think anybody that looked at this, a real planner, would say, hmm, this is not done very well. And it was also admitted that they never even looked at any of the sites. They never went on the sites anywhere in the county to see what really belonged places. So for all those reasons, I think it was arbitrary. Arbitrary is not allowed. It was not aligned. It was done after the fact. It was not transparent. I don't think it was done legally. We're trying to fix it. Look in the bulk and Chris, I would hope when you tell us this stuff, just give us all the facts, you know, don't just say it was done. They were talked about during all this time, you know, this past four years later, it was not anticipated. It was not something that the people that passed the master plan, listen, we got a master plan coming up a couple more years. We redo the plan and whoever's in office at that time can sit with the public. That's why you have this process for predictability. It's a very open process. One person cannot get in or two people and say, I've changed my mind. I think we should do this. That's why we have these protections in law for other people as well to protect their property. So we have a process coming up in a few years. We can do it sooner if we want and revisit some of these things in an open way with the people that are going to be impacted by it, having a seat at the table. As long as I'm here, it will be done transparently. It will be done in layman's terms. We will be putting things out on Carroll Connect so people understand what it is. And not just, all that time, I get the Carroll County Times for the last 40 years. I used to get the real paper. Then I got it online for a long time when I was in Annapolis. These notifications don't even come on the online version. I've looked and looked. You can't even read them. So then I finally was like, where are these notifications? So I finally went and looked in the back of the sports section. And they're there. They're this big. And we are very vague about it. Changes to Chapter 155, 158, the bulk requirements will be heard. You can't even read it. No one knows what a bulk requirement is. And if you want more information, call this number. I wouldn't even know what it was. I do know now that it's a very big deal, but we can do better than that. And we're going to do better than that, as far as I have any fight left in me, because I think it's fair to the people. And as I mentioned, nowhere else in Carroll County, in any of your towns, is this allowed. It will be allowed outside of your towns. I'm not sure exactly what properties. But this is a precedent for everywhere. And again, we're looking. This is only taking it to a public hearing again. So we have time to get the Planning Commission to look at this carefully. And then the Small Plan Amendment Group hopefully will look at the whole corridor just in Freedom to look at the bulk requirements to see if they really are suitable I'm not trying to take anything, I'm trying to put it back to what it was before these changes were made. So just keep that in mind. And devils in the details and please give us this information.

us all the dates so the date is 2022 when this stuff was changed if i can if i can respond to that just a clarification for your benefit the annotation that's in the county code regarding changes those indicate the last time that the code was changed so the bulk requirements were last changed in 2022. that could be as simple as changing a single word or so on to see how the bulk requirements were changed related to the commercial industrial district you would have to go back to the the text amendments that were passed in 2020 so that's when those bulk requirements were changed i don't know what what change was made in 2022 but likely was a very minor change because the majority of the changes for in the zoning code related to commercial industrial were adopted in december of 2019. okay and you can look each of these up i can pull them up and i have i got all home but

So summer in 19, summer in 20, summer in 22, I mean, sorry, summer in 19, and then summer in 22, and then the one that was referred to, there was two, I guess, in 24. And we can look at that. The bottom line is, even if it's one word, the word mini, taken out of the word storage, changed from nine foot to 40 feet. That's not minor. Changing something from a nine foot building to a 40 foot building isn't a minor. It might be a word. That one word has a big meaning.

I would be happy to look at that and verify when the change was.

It doesn't matter. All of them happened after the master plan was adopted, and it's not in alignment with the master plan, and it was not adopted at the same time.

Can I make a clarification on that? It is standard practice that you adopt a plan first and then your zoning changes are implementing tools of the plan. Sometimes those are things that can be done concurrently with the adoption of the plan and sort of depends on what the extent of those is. If you're doing a complete rewrite of your code to implement your plan, that typically takes a lot longer. One example that I can give you is the town of Sykesville, which adopted their plan I think in 2022 or 23. They're just getting to the end of their code rewrite process now. That's the implementation of their plan. Plans will often have recommendations to change certain aspects of code. The overlay zoning district that you've mentioned a number of times that was part of the 2001 Freedom Plan, would have been something that was developed after the adoption of that plan, passed legislatively, and then applied as an implementation of the plan. So sometimes there are zoning regulations that can be adopted at the same time as plans, but quite often they are done afterwards because they are implementing tools of the plan. Now they're always meant and required to be consistent with what the plan says. And so if you're rewriting an entire code, for instance, you would want to go and make sure that the purpose statement in a zoning district and what's allowed in it is in alignment with how it's described in your plan, that sort of thing. Those are the details that get worked out as you're developing that code. But it is not always the case that you're even able to adopt a plan and adopt a code at the same time, depending on the extent of the changes.

Just to finish up on this, technically what you're saying might be true. The best practice is to adopt it and it's supposed to implement the plan. I would argue this does not implement the plan. So, and I think if you ask the people that were involved in the freedom plan, and you ask the commissioners who passed, finally passed and fixed the freedom plan that was presented to them by some of the people still on the planning commission, still trying to get this stuff jammed through, which I think is unbelievable to me that the very people that caused all the problem are still trying to keep the problem going. An implementation of a plan is what is intended. What's intended, what's written in words, and you can, Sherry picked things out, but you know the theme. These are not in alignment with the plan. Nowhere in the plan does it say we want bigger and higher and non-consistent and not consistent with existing neighborhoods. Nowhere does it say that. And that is why it's so important if you're going to make major changes. If you're making things better, I would argue that the overlay zone If it was laid out there and everybody understood it, they're going to support it because the people involved would support it because it's going to implement the plan. I would say that if people knew what these bulk requirements were and were at the table and understood, you know, that they're 50 foot high, you just change the heights on these things. I would suggest that you wouldn't have had support and it wouldn't have been aligned with the plan. So what you're technically saying is correct. But when you're not implementing the plan, when you're going back to exactly what they tried to do and was not adopted on purpose by the county commissioners at the time who were the elected body, unanimously brought the plan back. It is written in many newspaper articles. There's press releases. There's a whole stack of stuff I could show you about what happened and why they remanded the plan back and rewrote it and adopted it. And then for them to come back and try to, in the back door, say, ooh, I'm going to do this anyway. I'm going to do exactly what we wanted to do, that they did not support that to me. is not in alignment, and that's what happened. I know no one wants to get into the details of it, but I can show you every step of the way it goes back to exactly what they did not adopt to begin with. That is wrong. It's just wrong, and that planning director is gone. I'm glad they're gone. I'm sorry about that. But it's just a mentality that they're going to get it the way they want it versus the way the public and the commissioners who were elected at the time wanted to do it. We're trying to put this back in the bottle. And I think the overlay district, Hey, if people don't think it's implementing the plan that it's supposed to help, then we wouldn't do it, but it's certainly going to be transparent. We're certainly going to try to make it really implement the plan and do what the vision and goals are of the plan. And if it doesn't, then we won't, we won't adopt it, but I'm not going to go jamming something down their throat. That's the opposite. So I get what you're saying technically, but this isn't, I think we could agree that most of these actions were in opposition to the plan. And me being at every one of those meetings until they stopped notifying us, this is direct opposition of all the things that got fixed in the plan, and it just went right back to, hey, we're going to do this anyway.

So real quick, I'm going to, yeah, let me. If I could, real quick. Mr. Hunt, I have a question. Yes. How many members are there on planning and zoning excluding the ex officio?

Seven.

Seven. Seven. Now, and I don't know if you can answer this off the top of your head or not, but my understanding, and obviously, we, the Board of County Commissioners, select those individuals as their terms expire, whether we reappoint them or we find other parties to take those places. And I don't know if you can answer this off the top of your head or not, but in 2018, We had two members from the Eldersburg-Sykesville area. We had Janice Kirkner and Alec Yeo. No. Alec Yeo was not on the committee.

She lives in Mount Airy and she lives in Westminster. None live in Freedom. No one lived in the Freedom District. Zero.

I'm not aware of where they reside.

They live in Mount Airy and Westminster. Not in Freedom. Freedom is a location you look at a map. No one lived in the Freedom District, really anywhere near it, during that process. And neither of those are from Freedom.

So before, if I may, before we get too far afield, we do have a work session scheduled for about three or four minutes from now. Uh, clock is fast running out and I want to make sure we get to what we need to get to. So I want to ask if there are any further final comments on the, uh, request for a public hearing for the extension of the deferral of self-service storage facilities before I call for the vote. All right. Well, we have a motion and we have a second, uh, on the motion to direct staff to hold a public hearing. on the extension of the deferral for self-service storage facilities for six months. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? No. Abstain.

Excuse me, do we have a rule about you can't abstain unless you have a conflict of interest? If you're sitting in your seat, you must have a vote. Really? I know all your rules.

We've had people abstain numerous times on this board, be it in any capacity in the past.

Well, if you follow any rules, if you abstain from voting, you should have a reason you're abstaining that you have some kind of interest or appearance of a conflict of interest. People elect you to make a vote, yes or no. And so I think it's incumbent upon us unless there is a conflict, or you can get out of your seat. That's what people do, get out of their seat down in Annapolis. They don't want to vote on something. They walk away, and then they're not there. But there's got to be some rules because everybody could just abstain when they don't want to take a controversial vote.

It has nothing to do. Mr. Burke, do we have any rules that specify that?

We do not have any rules that specify that.

Thank you.

Rules.

All right, so the conclusion is 2 to 1. Motion fails with one abstention. Commissioner Krebs is in dissent. Commissioner Schuyler-Vigliotti in favor, and then Commissioner Gordon abstaining from the vote. All right, so I need a motion to take a recess for 10 minutes, and then we will reconvene for the work session. So moved. We have a motion. We have a second. We have a second. We have a motion. We have a second. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? We're in recess for 10 minutes. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, now to the work session for the Board of Carroll County Commissioners referring to deferral code amendments for age-restricted housing and some other associated topics. And Chris and Daphne, I'll kick it over to you to walk us through this presentation.

Very good. Yes, thank you. So we are continuing our discussion related to age-restricted housing. Just to bring everybody back up to speed is – There is a deferral that's currently in place regarding this use. We have worked extensively with the Planning and Zoning Commission and our consultant, Michael Baker, to develop a recommended code. And that recommended code has been published on the county website for several weeks and we've provided to the Board of County Commissioners. We are at this point working through any questions that the board may have and if there are any recommended changes to the code so that we can have those all documented because we will be bringing this back to the board on September 17th in open session for approval if you're so inclined for adoption of the proposed amendments. What I did want to point out is that there is a discussion that we've heard many comments from the developers and so on that have projects that are deferred and they request for an exemption of their projects or a grandfathering, that sort of thing. And I just wanted to emphasize that really we're talking about two different topics here. We're talking about what do we want the vision, what is the vision of a restricted housing that we want in Carroll County moving forward? And so that would be reflected in our revised code. The question regarding exemption or grandfathering of the projects that are currently deferred, that's really a separate issue and certainly something that the board can discuss and to make decision on on the 17th. But our goal for today is to get through the code as we have presented and talk about various comments that we have received from the public. That includes comments that we received last Thursday at the public hearing. regarding those comments, staff has looked at the code that's been proposed and contemplated. And we have a couple of suggestions for modification. And so what I'd like to do is run through those. Many of them are pretty innocuous. They're simply word changes and so on, but we wanted the board to be aware of them. If nothing's controversial, we will simply assume that they're good and we will make those changes for the final version to be contemplated on the 17th. After we finish going through the presentation, if there are any specific topics that the board would like to discuss further, if you want to refer to them by slide number or however, we can go back and we can touch on those again. So with that, I'll run through the slides and the proposed changes and the topics, and then we will go from there at the board direction. So the first topic is a very high level topic regarding the purpose statement. There is a purpose statement that Michael Baker, they started with the first draft of it and then we had a lot of discussion with the Planning Commission and pared it down, refined it and so on. And that is reflected in the redlined code. I've got a copy of it here. Obviously a lot of verbiage and putting together something like this by committee could take quite a while. Last week, Commissioner Krebs also presented a purpose statement. My recommendation, Certainly, however, the board would like to refine what the purpose statement would be, but perhaps Commissioner Vigliotti being the professor author of the group, if you wanted to work with Daphne and myself looking at these and refining, we could do that kind of behind the scenes and present it on the 17th. But, again, I think working through writing a purpose section of the code by committee in this time frame would be very difficult, but certainly open to however the board would like to go through and refine that. Yeah. So the order of this is basically the order that it shows up in the code. So we will start with fire and EMS. And we have in blue at the top some of the public comments that we received, such as ensuring that adequate roadway widths are for fire and EMS, especially if there's on-street parking, no parking signs are not the answer, require rear access to the buildings for fire and EMS, and require guest parking within 300 feet of residences. So we have addressed this in a number of ways through the code. I guess first I do want to stress the fact that going back to, and I've seen signatures on plans in the early 80s, plans are routinely and required to be reviewed by our Department of Fire and EMS. So they are always reviewed. They are reviewed for best practices, regulations, et cetera. So all projects that have gone through the development review process have been approved for Fire and EMS. One of the things that we are proposing to do is add in some of the NFPA requirements that we already review against, our Department of Fire and EMS staff review against, and putting those into county code just to make sure that they're explicitly there. And so those are the changes that some of the requirements that we've put in. I have here some of the text related to fire lane requirements, including that they need to be 20 feet wide, unobstructed, and so on and so forth. The other way that we have addressed this is with our number of parking spaces. So a requirement that there are two parking spaces per dwelling unit for age-restricted communities, that's consistent with what our code is now, but adding in a requirement for guest parking spaces. And in the case of age-restricted communities, that there be one guest parking space for every five dwelling units distributed through the development for common usage. For age-restricted homes, the requirement is one and a half for each dwelling unit. Again, that's consistent with other jurisdictions and with our current code. And then the added requirement being that one additional guest space for every 10 dwelling units provided as overflow parking, again, distributed through the site. So we've addressed the parking concern related to these projects. One of the very minor, I would submit, changes that we are proposing, there has been concern from a number of folks saying that the provision of limiting how we count garage parking spaces and driveway parking spaces is confusing. Really, in my mind, this is sort of a non-issue because currently a requirement for townhomes and so on is two parking spaces per dwelling unit. When you provide a two-car garage and you provide a driveway that is of sufficient dimensions, you can park two cars there. So what we have repeatedly seen through these development projects is that developers provide four parking spaces per dwelling unit. So they exceed the two required. We just, in discussions with Michael Baker, the suggestion was that we put in this text that says the garage can only count as one and the driveway can only count as one. The property still meets the underlying requirement of two spaces per. And so this just became a kind of a confusing restriction and so on and so forth. they're going to meet the parking requirement per dwelling unit of two parking spaces. So our recommendation is that we strike that section as confusing about limiting, counting one as the garage and one as the driveway as really not being necessary. The other way that we are continuing and discussing the topic of parking and fire and EMS access, we have significant code related to the parking spaces, how big they need to be so there is adequate parking so that people are not blocking the roadways that fire and EMS needs access to. And this includes calling out if there is on-street parking, that it needs to be well-defined, it needs to be striped, it cannot run right up to intersections and interfere with site distance and so on and so forth. We have a lot of provisions in here that we feel have addressed that concern. Now, I have highlighted the distance requirement of how close guest parking needs to be to each dwelling unit. Michael Baker originally proposed 1200 feet in discussions with planning commission that was felt to be too far. And so planning commission recommended that be reduced to 600 feet. There was a public comment that maybe that should be 300 feet. That's entirely up to the board as to what number is appropriated. we did have an exhibit that we put together but i don't believe it's we have it in this presentation it's not in this presentation but just for comparison looking at how far walking distance is so if you are go out the main entrance of the build of this building and you walk to the far extents either over towards the the sheriff's the the court or or towards 140, the farthest extent of these parking lots on this side of Center Street are about 450 feet. If you were to walk from the main entrance of this building, walk around the building, cross over Center Street, the parking lot on the other side of Center Street is 600 feet. So just to put into perspective distances that we're talking about. But again, whatever distance we want to put in there can certainly be put in there.

Just to clarify when you're saying 600 to the parking lot across center, are you saying if you're counting walking out the back door and around in that? Okay.

Yes, exactly. Yep. So that's parking, fire, and EMS. So regarding density, and this is a topic that we talked about at the last meeting, some of the public feedback that we've received, not interested in density bonus for age-restricted housing, that density and unit mix requirements don't work together, The type of development that is allowed should conform to the vision and expectations established in the Freedom Plan and to calculate the allowable density based on net acreage rather than gross acreage. So on this slide, what we've done is broken out the different zoning districts and how they have been addressed and how they are proposed to be addressed. So in R20, the existing code allows for three and a half dwelling units per acre. That is actually specified in the planning documents. So any change from that three and a half units per acre would be inconsistent with our planning codes, or with our planning documents, and specifically the Freedom Adopted Plan. So we are proposing to leave that unchanged. In the R10 and R75, the existing code does not have any metric as far as the density. Essentially, it leaves it to the Planning and Zoning Commission to determine and approve. So the way this works is that a developer who has R10 or R75, and actually this is the same for the commercial district, is they would propose their project, they would bring it to the Planning and Zoning Commission, and the Planning and Zoning Commission would approve the density that is being proposed. For the R10 and R75, what we're recommending is that we do put a cap on that. So we're recommending six dwelling units per acre. So that is a slight increase in density. R10 is roughly four units per acre. R75 is roughly five units per acre. So six units per acre would be a slight increase in that. We are also recommending that in the commercial district that that metric stay the same, that there not be a specific metric and that the developer would bring that proposal to the Planning Commission and would be approved as part of the development review process. Regarding housing type mix, some of the public feedback, townhouses should not be allowed in our 20 zoning district. Only single family detached duplexes require new development to match the existing housing adjacent to it. And then a comment from the developers is that this would be a significant change to current code and projects in process. And so they obviously would prefer that their projects be exempt from this. Again, looking at the different zoning districts, in the residential, R20, R10, and R75, the existing code allows for townhomes and two-family dwellings as a conditional use in age-restricted type developments. The proposed code would be that all housing types would be permitted, but with a 30% detached dwelling unit requirement for projects that are over 50 units.

So that would encourage that mix of type.

And then we also have the C1, C2 and employment campus where townhouses and retirement villages and two family dwellings and retirement villages are permitted by right as part of age restricted projects. And our proposed code would match with the R20, 10 and 75, which all housing types permitted with that 30% requirement for detached. And so This could be boiled down into a basic conversation. I have in a box there where townhomes should be permitted, obviously as part of age-restricted, because our code does not allow townhomes in any zoning district unless it's part of an age-restricted community or a planned unit development, but set planned unit developments aside because the county does not have any acreage for planned unit developments anymore. So those are really, at this time with current zoning, we're not seeing any of those types of projects. We do have a recommendation for a revision to what everybody has reviewed. First, it's not crystal clear that we are saying that we should allow all dwelling types in age restricted housing communities. So the recommendation is to add a paragraph here that says Age-restricted community projects may consist of detached single-family dwellings and attached single-family dwellings, including townhouses, two-family dwellings, villas, quadplexes, cottage clusters, et cetera. And then you have the provision that says that for projects consisting of more than 50 dwelling units, a unit mix is required, and single-family detached units may comprise at least 30% of the total units. We do have a small sentence in there struck because it's not appropriate for that.

We have a separate use when you include multifamily buildings.

So speaking of that, just a quick clarity. It has been indicated by the public that the terminology is confusing. Age-restricted community, including age-restricted home, kind of mixing those two uses. So we thought it would be more descriptive and a better term for that use would be an age-restricted community, including multifamily buildings. Now, multifamily buildings are homes, I think it's a little clearer and so we would recommend changing that throughout the text when we're referring to that type of business model which has the multifamily, similar to Winifred Manor that we've talked about. It has the multifamily as a part of the development and then also the single family. So it has that mix of uses. Now we've got several kind of minor items that hopefully are not overly contentious. There was public feedback that it was unclear when we said that we wanted front-loaded garages not to project more than 12 feet beyond the front facade of the building. The question that becomes, what do you mean by front facade and so on? So we recommend changing that to the front door plane. So essentially, as you walk out the front door, your garage should not be extending 12 feet out towards the street, more than 12 feet when you walk out of the front door. Again, another terminology item, clarity of construction plans versus building construction plans versus site plans. The recommended code from the consultant was that construction plans shall include proposed building elevations including material specifications. In our terminology, construction plans is conflated with building plans that go through building permits and inspections. We do not look at those as part of the site plan process. Those come afterwards. And so because this is part of the site plan process, we recommend just changing construction to site plans to make that clear as to what is being reviewed as part of the development review process. Step down in height requirement. Something that Michael Baker recommended was having this language that when you have a large site that the heights of the buildings should step down as they get closer to surrounding uses. We already addressed that in our bulk requirements, limiting to 35 feet in commercial zones adjacent to residential. 35 feet is the maximum height in a residential district, so houses can be 35 feet tall, and we already have that requirement of 35 feet in the commercial one adjacent to residential, unless you increase the setbacks and so on and so forth. So we thought that this step down building heights were adjacent to lower density residential is not real clear and something that's already addressed. So we would recommend taking it out. Universal design requirements. So we did have some public feedback regarding this, regarding design features such as wide doorways, complete first floor living, lever handles, grab bars, and large master bathrooms, and require features that allow for aging in place in the community such as complete first floor living and universal design standards. So in our discussions with the Planning and Zoning Commission, there's a laundry list of universal design requirements that other jurisdictions have put forth, both as requirements and recommendations. We went through that list and the Planning and Zoning Commission recommended the first three there as being requirements, and then there are additional that are recommended. We have the recommendation to address the public comment that a fourth be added as a requirement that we have here, which is that complete living area, including master bedroom and bath on the first floor level. So regarding amenities, so there was general public feedback requesting that amenities be required, such as trails, community centers, and so on. This was a very extensive discussion with the Planning and Zoning Commission, but ultimately what the Planning Commission is recommending is that the county being overly prescriptive regarding what amenities ignores how things change and what the residents who move into those communities truly would want. So if amenities are required, such as a gazebo, but then the community doesn't want a gazebo, that becomes problematic. So what the Planning Commission recommended is that a report be produced as part of the concept plans as to what the developer recommends for amenities that would be consistent for the type, size and location of those amenities to support independent living, social connection and long-term community stability of the age-restricted community. That report would be reviewed by the Planning Commission during the concept review of the project, and the Planning Commission could weigh in as to what kind of changes and so on and so forth. That report would then be done and the developer would promulgate those amenities through the development of the site plans. And so when the site plan comes back to the Planning Commission for final approval, they could look at it and see, back when we discussed concept, we thought that three gazebos, you were proposing that and we agreed that was perfect. The site plan that's for final approval should indicate those amenities. So that's how these would continue forward. Then those will be on the site plan, they would be what's constructed and so on. So having very specific requirements for amenities, the Planning Commission was not in favor of and more for allow the developer to propose and the Planning Commission would review to see if they felt that was appropriate. Some minor text changes guarding walking paths. There was a question about walking path lighting, whether how our terminology was acquired in consistency between different sections. For example, under four, we had in there even illumination across walking paths. That was redundant then to a description under D6 where just by adding the word evenly illuminated, we could eliminate number four, so these are just some minor text changes, I think to make things a little clearer. And also putting in the word shall into the requirements to be consistent with the rest of the code. Wayfinding signs is another minor term. There was a question from the public as to clarifying when signage is required. And again, sticking to the theme of amenities and what's being proposed, we would just recommend that when provided, wayfinding signage shall be designed for readability, et cetera. Therefore, the county is not requiring wayfinding signage, which can become questionable as you look at site by site and whether it's appropriate. There's a reference to the bicycle pedestrian plan under the parking design and connectivity standards. It's never a good idea to put in code a specific reference to a specific document because that document can change. So we just recommend changing what the consultant had put in there regarding consistency with the 2019 bicycle ped master plan and just reference Carroll County planning documents. We then have a couple of additional public comments and we just wanted to touch on those because they're not necessarily specifically addressed in code. One of the questions was a request to maintain the conditional use approval. So just to refresh everybody's memory, our current process is that an age-restricted community is brought before the Planning and Zoning Commission for a review of the density and look and feel of the community. The Planning and Zoning Commission then approves that density. It then goes to the Board of Zoning Appeals for a conditional use approval. then comes back to the planning and zoning commission for the rest of the process for concept and final approval right so it's a multi-step process and that's in place because age restricted communities are conditional use so it has to go to the board of zoning appeals but the board of zoning appeals didn't want to hear these as a conditional use without the density being established they didn't want to approve the conditional use then it had come back to planning commission and some that would make the project illogical move forward. So that's why that multi-step process. Our feeling is that with the additional requirements that we have added to the code to direct the look and feel and what these projects are to look like, that the conditional use is no longer needed for the Board of Zoning Appeals to make a determination. Really those conditional uses are more for projects that are going to have a significant or potential significant impact to a community such as an event center or a kennel or those sorts of things that have a lot of traffic and all these impacts that you want to look at the community. That's not necessarily what we're talking about here with a residential use being put inside of a residential community. So our recommendation is a change in the code to make these principle permitted and they would basically go through the normal process, development review process, subject to all of the new requirements that are being recommended. The second item was to create district-specific housing mix requirements with R20 emphasizing single-family detached, cottages or villas or duplexes, and a larger percent of single-family detached than 30%, as well as enhanced transitions to adjoining detached residential areas. This basically goes back to that question of housing type and what type of housing in an age-restricted community is appropriate in the R20 zoning district. Again, the Planning Commission recommends that for those projects with more than 50 dwelling units that there be a mix required, requiring 30% to be detached dwellings. And then finally, there's this question that's come forth a number of ways that the county should review condominium documents to clearly identify fees, responsibilities of homeowners associations and covenants. In this case, we recommend that the county attorney's office look into what enabling legislation there is from the state regarding oversight of these private contracts. But this is not a planning and zoning code issue to put into our code. But certainly something that if the county wish to get involved in, if the state has enabling legislation to do so, could certainly put in place. So that's the presentation. I'm going to take a drink of water as my voice is getting scratchy. But essentially, these are the revisions that we've shown in red that we would recommend as staff get added to what is being contemplated on the 17th. If there's certainly we have now time to talk about any of those and we can revise those for you to all to be looking at for the 17th Once we have we've boiled down to what these changes are we will publish those on the county website for everybody to see and we will certainly make copies available for you all to you all for a further review and then on september 17th we'll have the open session for adoption and then also if there is a decision on exemption that can be addressed separately through a resolution just to remind you all the way we often take care of this is that the code is changed to what the code new code is but a separate in parallel resolution is passed that essentially says Any projects that hit this milestone before this date are subject to the old code. Any projects after are subject to the new code. So it doesn't muddy up the code itself, but there's a resolution that indicates what the board's desire is regarding grandfathering our exemption. So with that, I think that's everything.

Can we ask a question?

so um we have a purpose statement that the planning commission approved to to recommend to you all um last week commissioner krebs presented an alternative version of that um however the board would like to proceed with with adjusting that we're happy to assist and i object to the aging of what i don't think senior has

Oh, sorry, sorry.

Thank you. Thank you.

Hey, tell Swann we don't need him. There are communities that have aging in place, but I don't think an individual... uh, senior housing that's 55 and older should.

Yeah. If I may commission real quick, I'm looking at, at the recommended from the planning commission version of the purpose and scanning through it. I don't see a reference to aging in place.

So I think we, you say it doesn't i do not i don't see it yeah i didn't see it either but i didn't i didn't know where we were headed yes um the next slide um all plans are reviewed by ems yes the the 150 feet the water hose line access Is that all state law or is that exceeding state law?

So those are recommendations from NFPA. NFPA are guidelines. They are not codified. But it is something that it's a best practice and recommendations that our fire and EMS folks review projects against, but they are not codified.

And Chris, for anybody who's watching, NFPA is National Fire Prevention Protection. I was almost there, Chief. I was almost there. National Fire Protection Association. I got that part right.

Yes, they're essentially a professional organization that has recommended codes and requirements and so on, but they have not been adopted by the county.

Thank you very much. Okay. And Chief, I've heard different projects talk about access being a minimum of 80,000 pounds and that kind of stuff, which I feel is ridiculous. If my house catches on fire and they break the driveway, that's the least of my problems. And I'm not sure our county roads are designed to 80,000. That's just an example. But, you know, I think these guidelines seem okay to me, but I've heard stuff about access to the rear and this and that. That's almost ridiculous. And off-street parking and the next slide makes sense. And then we're at parking requirements. But I don't know if you wanted to comment on my comments and you moved up.

Yes. So NFPA 1 Chapter 18 addresses all of the standards that are recommended for subdivisions. for any subdivision as well as senior living. So it looks at two things. It looks at minimum width of the roadways which is 20 feet. It also looks at minimum vertical clearance which is 13 feet and six inches. So this takes into account our largest apparatus which are the two ladder towers, one being at Sykesville that'll be first into this and the other comes from Westminster and West Friendship, who would be on any of those assignments also. So our objective is to have adequate access and egress into these areas.

The big issue here is... And this is senior housing.

Yes.

Because I know there's a lot of developments in Westminster that don't have 20 feet. And I know behind JMPs, I have to wait to let a car come in the other way pass. And now a fire truck could still get through, but we don't have 20 feet. We don't have, and, and, but that's not a senior housing. So that is less important.

This is for any new construction. So it's not retroactive to anything that's already been built in the county.

And just to clarify these, um, these code provisions are for all site plans.

So it's not just age-restricted. So this isn't just age-restricted?

Correct, yes, which is one of the reasons why we're selective about which recommendations from NFPA that we put into code because there could be a lot of unintended consequences by taking all of the NFPA requirements and putting them into code because it applies to all site plans countywide. Your example of the 80,000 pounds of support for paving structure and so on, that's a great example. That's a recommendation at NFPA, but as you stated, the pavement section, the pavement design process that the county goes through for designing our public roads and also for private roads does not incorporate in the load of the weight of the vehicles. And so making that an additional requirement would be cause a lot of additional work in designing those pavement sections. And the question becomes, um, is that something that we want to enforce on all site plans countywide?

So if I have a 20 foot wide street with no parking, I meet it.

Yes.

Yes. But if I, uh, if I have parking on one side, what, what do you allow for parking eight feet, 10 feet?

Uh, typical parking space is seven, around seven feet.

Okay. So eight feet. So if I have a 30 foot wide street, then we can park on one side. Okay. But not both. Okay.

So there are, there are trade offs. So for example, if you're unable to meet that 20 feet requirement, you can request an exception. But typically what the code requires when you make that exception is a higher density for water flow delivery from the sprinkler. So everything is going to be sprinklered in these and it looks at the calculation of higher density. The other thing is more hydrants. and the other challenge is where these are built in non-municipal water areas, then we have a requirement for providing fire protection water, minimum of 30,000 gallons.

And I was gonna ask sprinklers where it showed up here but, By Maryland rules, you can't build anything new without a sprinkler. Correct. And you can't remodel a lot of things without a sprinkler.

When it hits greater than 50%, then you have to put sprinklers in. Yes.

So anything... We differentiate in here sprinkler and, but anything new has to be, they, nobody, Carroll County can't waive that.

Correct. Yes. Yes. However, code changes. And so maybe someday the state may repeal that requirement and our code would still be applicable then, um, regarding non sprinkler scenario.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm working on a couple with a 50%. because it causes people to cheat. In an old farmhouse, I'm going to make sure I'm under 50% no matter what, but you can't always do that. Okay. Thanks, Chief. I knew you were here for something.

Sorry I'm late. We had a fire at the dump. Oh, yeah. We had the transfer station was on fire.

Oh. Everybody okay?

Yeah. So we sat to be on Baltimore Boulevard and I can see a big column of smoke. So when you're in this business, you can't resist that.

On slide eight, is the 2% cross slope, that's been there?

No, that's a new provision that we're recommending. And that's a pretty standard ADA compliance, whether you're talking about sidewalks or other things. So a cross slope of 2% is pretty much... Is that only for senior housing?

Yes, this would only be for... 2% is too flat. They're going to have water laying in their driveway, which is more unsafe than the cross slope.

Yeah, so that's 2% cross slope, but the longitudinal slope, we're saying a maximum of 8.3. So for drainage purposes, your longitudinal slope would probably be higher.

Yeah. Yeah, but that's the maximum grade. It could be 1% or 2%. True. And that's what makes the 2%. Yeah, you're right. If you got 8%, that wouldn't be legal for handicap anyway, but the cross slope would. And then Baker said $1,200, but our people said $600.

If you look at page 4 and 5, there is some delineation between retirement or senior community housing. independent living and assisted living. With assisted living, there are some enhanced water flow requirements, and the definitions are there. I'm not going to... Yeah.

Thanks for providing this to us, too, by the way, Steve. This is really helpful.

Yeah, this is good. Thank you. I want to read it. Okay. Yeah, and the density, like you said, six dwellings is 7,260 square feet, which seems reasonable, so I like that. The 30%, that is confusing, and no matter how much you clarify it, somebody will be confused. And I like what you did with the front door plane.

um slide 17. can we let chief just finish about the rude widths because i'm let me just say one thing at a time i'm sorry i just wanted to see if cheap could we get finished talking about one thing at a time like he answered my questions no i didn't get a chance to ask him a question so it would just one if we can just finish one thing and get one thing at a time okay i'm sorry i thought i got that question okay I mean, it's up to you if you want to just everybody go through everything or are we going to do one thing at a time and try to...

While we have Chief here, why don't we ask him about... Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, one of the issues that has been brought up by our fire department multiple times is the practicability of maintaining an unobstructed 20-foot width road in a place that has no parking. And again, every situation is different. If you're in a community that has houses spread apart and you've got driveways, extra big driveways, and you've got Space between the houses, you can stagger things, and they're probably all over the place. But this is age-restricted, and the houses are 18 in a row. There's no space else to park. So I think what we're trying to say is it's unreasonable to say you're going to put a 20-foot-width road in, not have enough parking for any kind of guests, visitors, and someone's going to enforce it, and it cannot be the police. And marking a curb with red paint saying no parking might be OK for a while. And the answer is that we have to have the community board call the tow truck to have their neighbors towed. I don't think this is not a parking enforcement issue. And Chris and I will disagree on that, sorry. It's not a parking enforcement issue. It is a safety issue. So I think our fire departments, I take them very seriously. I've worked with them for many years. They believe that it's impossible, especially in the long term, to have enforceability of having no parking on a street that doesn't allow for any extra parking, especially for an age-restricted community. If we lived in Fells Point and you have young people moving there and they've got to walk down to the parking garage, it's a different scenario. And you've got police that can control it. No parking signs go up. That is not the situation. So you can't compare it to other situations that might be in a more urban area. Everything we're looking at here, and I want to just keep reminding us, Each of these properties has an underlying zoning, and they're allowed to do certain things. We have very nice, in fact, the two nicest communities that I believe we have are two that I know of that are small, are not under retirement villages. They're done conventionally. They just put a covenant on and market it as over 55. And we've mentioned that at Coventry Meadows, up in Westminster, they were half-acre lots. They built them that way. They marketed it that way. They put it in their covenants. They didn't get anything extra from the county to do it. They had to do it based on what you could build, anything else, and they just said, okay, we're going to build the type of home people want. It's a very sought-after community. We have one down in our area. I keep forgetting the name of it, Serrano Drive.

That's Antlitz, which that is an age-restricted community. What is it called? Antlitz Estates. Antlitz, okay.

Yes, but that is an age-restricted community that has an HOA covenants. Well, they were done very nicely. So you don't have to – you can take the underlying land use. You can build houses as you want, the type of houses that you think you can market that way. You can put it as age-restricted in your covenants. Now at some point in time, depending on how the covenants are written, they can overturn that, but we, for two, we have underlying land use zoning, and then we have some exceptions. And the one exception is retirement villages and homes. And one is clustering. And the reason that you put a purpose paragraph is like, why are we doing this? Why are we allowing this extra? And people say, I showed you we're allowing an exception for all these things. To what end? It's to provide appropriate housing for people that are over the 55. I would argue that we're trying to get it so people can stay in those homes. I will argue that. That's why pretty much everywhere calls it aging in place because that is what you want people to be able to do is stay in their home as long as they possibly can. That's a goal. And if that's not in there, you just want people to be over 55. It's sort of an age thing.

And that relates to fire. I'm talking. No, I thought we were going to ask him questions so he could leave, not talk about a question I brought up a minute ago. If you want me to address that, the average person stays in a house about five years.

Okay, I would like to be able to finish my comments, please.

Well, Commissioner, let her finish the point. No, if she's going to sit here and talk about what I said, you said let's talk about fire. Let's talk about fire so he can go.

Yes, I did say that commissioner. And I think she's getting to the point and if she doesn't get to the point in another minute or so, I'm going to ask her to get to the point.

Okay. So you got to say yourself, we have these two exceptions when underlying zoning and what are we, what's the benefit of giving this extra, having these, and that's why you have a purpose barrier of what's the purpose of it. So these are for older people and where I am hoping. I believe that most people want people to be able to have age-restricted over 55 so that they could possibly stay in their home as long as possible until they have medical needs. That's the goal that most places in the whole country have. That's where the purpose paragraphs come from, and that's sort of what most people do, but we won't have to agree on that. So the question becomes on these age-restricted homes, forget the underlying land use and all that kind of stuff that is arguable. The 20-foot road width, right now the recommendation has come to put... A red curb and say no parking, the enforceability and the ability who has to enforce it. It's a site plan. The homeowner association owns the roads. The police cannot ticket. We can't tell them to put no parking signs up. So it becomes an enforceability issue of the homeowner board. These are volunteer people that really didn't even know when they were getting into it, what they're out to do. And now they're going to have to be the parking patrol. So that's unrealistic, I believe. It's unrealistic. And that parking patrol somehow has got to tell people that you have no parking because the county didn't make us have any extra parking because the Planning Commission decided we didn't need it. There is no parking for guests available.

So, Commissioner, if we could interrupt for just a second. So that's how we've addressed this in the code is that we are putting in those requirements for guest parking. So that will provide the additional parking spaces and allow for... the not following the rules of parking on streets that are indicated for no parking. So we're solving it by requiring the guest parking. If there's a desire to increase the amount of guest parking, then what we've recommended, sure, we can talk about that. If you want it to be closer, we can address that. But I don't believe that this is a fire and EMS issue. What we are reflecting in our recommendations are what if they state an NFPA. We don't need to say that from a fire protection perspective, we need wider roads. What we have to define is that we want the guest parking, which I think we have accomplished.

Okay. So how much guest parking there is is up for debate. These houses, depending on the homes, that's why it's all a little nuanced, these are four-bedroom houses. They're townhouses that have four bedrooms. Three up, one down. Could have one in the basement. Could be five. There are more than two people living in many of these homes. Many of them. Three people. They have multiple cars. We don't know. They obviously are, they think about 30% of them have two, most have more. You're buying a four bedroom house, why would you have just two people living in it? So those people themselves have more cars. And in a normal community, an average community, you have other places you can park along the road or your driveway's bigger. These driveways are tiny. They can barely fit two cars in them. One word I'd like to put in about the parking space is it should be unobstructed. I mean, counting something in a garage and you have to pull out to get out of the garage, it needs most places it says unobstructed if you're going to count that. So if you have one per five, that means every house doesn't have any more than two people in it or two cars. It's over 55. Most people are driving. Now, maybe when they're 80, they're not going to be driving. But when they're 55, they are driving. A lot of them have their college students living there. They can do that. They come home. And they came home with the one facility we've been talking about. All of a sudden, the whole little community center was full, the 16 spots there, full with people from college coming home to stay with their parents. So the reality is there are more people in these houses than the two. And some of these communities have no other overflow. There's no other community near them. And some of them maybe have something down the street. Some of them don't. Some have nothing near them that they can't even go somewhere else unless you go out on Route 26. So to say that 20-foot unobstructed can be kept clear is not reasonable because it can't. It is not fair. I mean, I'm reading about Tawny Town. I mean, there's an article about Tawny Town. They're looking at changing their road widths from mandatory 30 to 40 because of this very same reason. So they're even getting bigger because they're realizing the problems that they're having. And it's in the news. I cut the article out. Do you want me to share it with you? Have you here somewhere? So the town council, and I appreciate it. The local councils seem to have the best interest of their citizens in mind. Every decision is about the best interest of their citizens. That's what I'm trying to do. It seems to me the best interest of what we're trying to decide is how do we get these two projects that are currently in front of us to fit into a mold so that they can continue. And I'm going to just say I don't believe that that is possible in the current condition that we're of the multiple issues that we have. So if we could just pretend that that wasn't holding us back, how would you, how would you design this? So our fire chief believes that it is unreasonable to build a 20 foot road in a situation like that and not have people parking there. And it's enforceable. It might never happen. It might never be a problem, but it might be a problem. I will tell you it's a problem every day with the delivery trucks trying to get through. I mean, ask the poor UPS guy and ask the Amazon guy. There are days they just can't get in because if there's someone there, two people, you can't. No, they are parking up on the sidewalks. That's why they're doing that so those trucks can get through. So our sidewalks, and I know you only saw one when you went, but if you go at a different time, you might see 20 of them. You might see multiple on a busy time because there's nowhere else to go. People want to be compliant. It's not that they don't. And one of the gentlemen from one of the... developer said, well, you know, we have this carbon problem now, and we want people to stop driving because of carbon, so maybe this is a good way to stop people from having vehicles. And I totally disagree with that, because I'm not sure how he wants them to get to the grocery store, because the closest store is probably two miles away. I'm not sure how many of them have bicycles or can walk that far when they're that old, but maybe that's a new young community that's active and can ride their bike to the grocery store. So the point is, given who we're trying to serve, By law, we are required to look at the safety, health, and welfare in everything that we do. All of our zoning requirements, that's what we're trying to do here. So those three things are required. I don't know how repeating, letting the same, when you have a problem and you mess something up, You don't repeat it over and over again. And you don't do it necessarily because, oh, you've been doing it like that for 40 years in a different community. No, you try to fix it. Again, these are senior housing. They're new. What are the requirements? And requirements for senior housing are actually less than they are for regular development. It doesn't make sense to me. I mean, we actually have more allowances, and none of it really seem to be Um, benefiting the population that they're supposed to benefit. It'd be different if it did somehow. Oh, all these things are going to give you X, Y, and Z. There's nothing in what we've been doing that benefits the community that we're supposed to. So when these fire lanes, I just, what I'm trying to find out, is it reasonable? We had a chart that was given to us last time we met. What the fire code says. I, I was told that it was in state law a few years ago that we have to fire the follow state, follow the NFP, whatever. Um, I'm not sure if that's accurate or not. Someone told me that two years ago, the state of Maryland is requiring that, but what should we be doing for this community? It is not reasonable as been stated multiple times. And again, um, my husband had to read it cause they were on, he had another meeting with EMS. Um, Joe Dennis wrote it again. It's not practical to think that it can be enforced. to have no parking in these roads just by putting and painting a curb saying no parking. Painting curbs is a joke, so it's a sign.

Can I ask a quick question? It sounds like you're recommending that a minimum width other than the 20-foot minimum that's required in FPA be proposed. What is the minimum width that you would like?

Well, if I can find a chart that we had a chart that came to us a couple weeks ago, and it basically was in a presentation that you gave us. And it told you right in the chart. Papers here. Let me see if I can find the chart. Oh, here it is. Here's the chart. On Street Parking and NFPA. It says, and this was the presentation that was given to us by you, Road Design and Traffic Impact Studies. Oh, Public Works gave it to us. Oh, on April the 9th. And it says... Road width 30 feet, which means if you have one-sided parking, you have 22-foot clear. If you have both sides, you only have 14 feet clear.

Okay, so if I may, what this is boiling down to is your recommendation is that we change the requirement for age-restricted communities that require 30-foot wide roadways.

However, it's more nuanced than that. I mean, some of this stuff is not so simple. If you make that rule, I think it should be a rule of thumb. However, when you're building rows of buildings that have no space between them, there's not even space on that road to park. So if you're doing a single family, a detached cluster, a little home, you've got some green space. Maybe you have 20 feet between your house and the other house. These houses have less than 10. So you don't even have enough space for a car length, even if the road was to be parked. So it depends on what the density is of what you're allowing to be put there. Do you understand? Oh, absolutely.

So essentially what you're saying is that the primary issue is having the parking spaces, not necessarily with the roadway, which is what we've been saying is that requiring the parking spaces is more important than the width of the roadway. NFPA has the minimum standard of 20 feet. So if you meet that 20 feet and you have provided additional parking, guest parking, and again, the density of that parking and so on, but I think what you've just said is that the issue is the location of the parking spaces, not the roadway width.

Well, I think it's both. I think if you did at least have one side, if you had at least 30 feet, Someone could park in front of their own driveway. You can block your own driveway. If you had a guest, they could come and say, oh, I can park here. So at least you'd have some width that would be better. And you still need extra parking. I still am saying you are jamming all of these homes into a very small spot. It's not a normal neighborhood. It's more jammed than anything we have in our community. We're getting double this. I mean, the exact same thing. Some of the roads start at 14 feet. And I'm not sure how that goes. So that's my suggestion. There needs to be a look at what we're building. Someone needs to be able to look at the plans and say, yes, if we have this 30 feet, it's going to at least allow this many spots. One per five units is not reasonable because, as I said, there's multiple people already living in these houses. They have to park somewhere.

addressing one issue at a time. So I'm hearing your recommendation is 30 foot wide roads. Now, understanding that fire and safety access is one aspect of roadway design that as the county developed our own standards and so on back a couple decades ago, there was a lot of discussion between all parties that have an interest in what that roadway width is gonna be. One issue, wider roadways causes increased speed. And so we have examples of communities here in Carroll County where wider roadways are put in and DPW is constantly being contacted about putting in traffic calming because the roadway is too wide and people drive too fast. So that's one consideration. Additional width in paving equates to additional stormwater management. So the additional width and stormwater management increases costs. There's also the maintenance side of things. Increased width in roadway requires additional plowing in the wintertime. So there are these other things that need to be balanced. And in those discussions several decades ago regarding what the county standards are for roadway widths, all of those things were balanced out and the roadway widths that the county has as our standards were agreed upon. Totally understand what you're saying as far as fire and EMS and and making that I just want to point out that there are other things that balance that. I believe what we have said is that. The increased requirements for parking the number of spaces that that will address this issue. Now, the second issue that you brought up was the number. one spot for every five. If your recommendation is that the code be changed to one space for every three, that's perfectly reasonable for us to discuss and make a change to the code.

And what I suggested, and this is where it's a problem because when you say the Planning Commission shall determine I mean, just let's be real. I've watched their meetings before. They don't determine anything. The plan comes in, you can hardly read it. I don't know if they look at it.

I think you're referring, I'm sorry to interrupt, but I think you're referring to the guest parking and the current code says that guest parking can be required by the Planning and Zoning Commission. That is the change that we've put in, that we're proposing. is that we are dictating how much gas parking. So that concern about the planning commission making that determination will go away with the revised code.

What I'm trying not to do, and I can, I'm trying to be cognizant of different types of plans. If they come back and they want to do age restricted in the way that I think it was meant to be, which is single family detached homes for a number of reasons, then you're going to have more space between homes. So then you're going to have more, even with the 30 foot, you're automatically, every house is going to have a spot between it. But if you don't do that and you continue with this, you, because there's no space between any of these houses, you don't have it. So, But we are requiring that now. No, but I'm saying the 30-foot road in a community that you, let's say it's a cottage-style community, I think it will accommodate. It will be good. That doesn't mean you shouldn't have any extra, but you're going to not have as much need because there's automatically space to do it. But in a community that's this jammed together, if we stick with this regime of these six in a row, there isn't space on the road, even with the 30 feet. I mean, it'll be better for someone to get through if only people park on one side. You have a 14-foot clear. But that's why it's not so simple. Now, if we come up and say we're going to go back to what the intended underlying use is, and you're going to have single family homes on a slab, and they have to be 20 foot from the property line, you'll have space. You'll have 20 feet. Right now, we have zero. They're together. There is nowhere in that area to park. If you're prescriptive and you go the other route, then they're going to have to have more parking than they actually would necessarily do. I just, so you understand what I'm saying. I'm trying not to, I'm trying to make it so that there would be some reasonable flexibility, but it's got to be looked at. There cannot be. I mean, this whole thing that you calculate four spaces per unit, we have way more space than we ever need. I mean.

But again, the guest parking requirement is above and beyond that. So the guest parking needs to be on the street or a separate off-street parking lot or something along those lines. So we are adding in that requirement for the guest parking. And how the developer addresses that, they may address it by spacing buildings further apart and creating spots that are designated on the street, whether it's by a wider street or having bump outs that have those designated parking spaces. But the issue of the number of spots for guest parking, I believe we've addressed through the parking requirements. Now, if you want to create more parking and make it one for three or one for two, whatever.

I think the minimum should be 30 foot wide roads, period, just in case someone would do that, even if they park in front of their own driveway. And we should have one for three. But I just want to In the rest of it, I try to look and say, OK, how are we treating freedom compared to the rest of the counties? The people there that are looking out for the, again, my focus is on doing what's right for the people moving in these homes. Health, safety, welfare. That's my number one thing. It's not about pickleball, and it's not about bocce ball, and it's not about amenities. It's not. It's about doing what's best for this population to age in place. And they're not all 55. They get to be 65, 75. And if you go to some of these communities, Fifteen years later, and I've been to some, many of these people aren't walkers. They need more handicapped spots because they can't hardly get to their spots where they are. I'm really sorry that I really care about this group of people. I go to visit them.

Don't be sorry you care because we all care. I'm just saying. Just what you said isn't factually correct about 20-foot streets, and I'd like to get a chance to talk about that.

So I would like to – But I care. So based on the – What is here that was presented to us from Public Works, road width, 30 feet gives you 22 foot clear. We need 20 foot clear, so that gives you that with one-sided parking. It would have to be striped. I mean, there's ways to do it versus putting it on the curb. They've done it fine. I think the chief talked about one of the developments, which I encourage them to come talk to the chief and how do they Dick, how do they say show that you can park on this side of the street? It's done many, many places. It's done here in Carroll County. So there's a way to show this. You can park here, but not there. So the minimum instructor with that would at least give you the 22 foot clear. If you need more, you get 30 foot clear, but I just would like to read, just show you a Tony town may widen new residential streets. All of them set standardized speed limits. And he basically is saying they may soon have wider streets, standardized speed limits. They want to operate, uh, upgrade their roadway manual for the first time in over 30 years. The manual sets guidelines for road design in the whole city. So they said, wider residential streets would allow for more parking space and more room for emergency vehicles. We had wide streets at one time. And with infrastructure changing and development increasing, how did we change that? Why did we change it, said the planning commission member. As of September, a draft over roadway manual Tawny Town may change the required width for new streets to 36 feet, including gutter space. That's about an 8% increase from the 1995 manual, which sets the width at 33 feet, four inches. We have streets that are 20 feet. This is, this is what we built at 20, 24 feet, 24 feet. I will say they were already have 33 feet. So the planning commission recommended widening local streets by about 20% to 40 feet. So the planning commission wants 40 feet. They want 20 feet in each direction, plus an additional nine feet of parking space on each side of parking is allowed. They are establishing new speed limit requirements, 30 miles per hour for collector roads, 20 miles for residential streets, and 10 miles for alleys. And they want to standardize the speed limits across the city. City officials concerned about street widths were initially sparked by the Carroll Vista, which is a retirement village, or whatever they call it in Toyntown, which I think is a very good example of a nice community, but they're finding even there it's a subdivision for residents over 55. The planning commission members say that they've heard residents have difficulty parking and navigating there. Now, that's a much bigger community. They have much larger driveways.

Very small lots. Very small.

I'll take it. They're way bigger than what we got here. So Tawny Town is reviewing other planned housing subdivisions that include relatively narrow roadways, some that allow for parking only on one side of the street. While planning commission members said Monday that they don't see an issue with such design, others worried it could constrain parking. They want to do both sides of the street. So they're updating their parking manual. I don't know what they're – I'm just suggesting that I believe that in the town of Tawny Town, these people are there. They see it. They see what's going on, and they're trying to address it. They're going to make theirs like way more than we're even talking about here. And I respect that they're doing that because they see what's happening on the ground. As far as stormwater, I can tell you on these projects that we're getting ready to pass.

Well, Commissioner, before we.

Let me just say you can't fit any more. You could not put any more stormwater on the project because every single inch of it is currently stormwater. But I want to ask Chief about. The issue of enforcement and also are there any best practices? I know Westminster has 30 foot feet. They have 30 foot everywhere as well. So I don't see any other place that does it this way. So I just want to find out.

Two things. Number one, the best practice would be go to 30 feet. That would be the optimal that way because the code requires that if there's a fire apparatus operating on the scene, that another fire apparatus has to have the ability to pass that. And again, equipment's getting larger and larger. As far as the enforcement goes, these are essentially private roads in these communities. So we have no enforcement authority. And my experience over multiple careers has been when you go to these communities, the HOA is not gonna take responsibility for these things. So to be proactive, if we were able to go with a 30 foot width to begin with, and then you're at the mercy because there's not going to be any enforcement however if you added signage and surface marking which would be red curbing and no parking signs then you're going to be in a much better place okay so so that i mean to me the road with the 30 feet is the minimum if you want to be able to have parking on both sides again there's no

Depending on the development, if you put this in and then we say, well, look at these other communities, it's going to impact in a negative way because they actually have parking. You want to be able to leave that flexibility, but there's got to be a minimum amount and someone's got to be looking at it and say, where can people actually park? Because in these developments, even if you did it wide enough, at least if somebody's parking there illegally both ways, somebody might be able to get through. But, again.

So are you saying that maybe in some communities a 20-foot road might be more appropriate and in some a 30?

No, no, no, no. I said 30 or 36. What's in this chart? 30 or 38? A 38-foot road gives you 30-foot clear to park on both sides, which means you'd have the room. 30 gives you 22-foot clear. So you'd only have parking on one side.

So 30-foot minimum.

Road with 30-foot minimum gives you 22-foot clear. We require 20. And if they're parking on both sides, it only gives you 14, which is not enough. So if somebody happens to park both places, that's why you have to say clearly where you can park on the one side. And hopefully that will discourage people from parking on the side where they can't. That's a minimum. And the other thing about the required guest parking, how far it should be, it started at a short walk. 10-minute walk. Then it went to 1,600 feet or 1,300 feet, something like that. I'm like, how far is that? And then somebody on the planning commission said, that sounds like a far away. How about 600 feet? And I'm thinking, 600 feet, that's two football fields. And you've described it across the street. I want you to come. If someone would come and watch these people, they have walkers. My aunt fell at Nell's Acres last week and had to go to the hospital. She fell on the driveway. It's pitched like this. Those Hatton's friends moved there. A lot of buyer's remorse there. I'm sorry, it's real. It's real. They had to move their car to a neighbor's driveway because there's no parking. So these things that we're bringing up are not fake. They're not made up. They're real people that are being impacted.

Commissioner, listen, I understand the passion that you have for this. Nobody is debating that the code needs changes, that things need to be fixed.

Somebody just debated about the pitch. When you have a driveway on a pitch like this, and you have a driveway that's this wide, you cannot open your door and get out of the car and be on the driveway. You are in the grass, and you're on a pitch. You're on a walker. You're not sure-footed. You're going down. Okay, so again, these folks who live there, they're not all just young people that are 55. They have friends that are 65 and 75 and 85, and that's why we're trying to, we're not trying to make it that, It's all perfectly flat, but we're trying to make it reasonable based on what we already know. So the 300 feet, you can do research on it. I know you don't use Google. I use Google. You Google it in your phone. What is a good parking distance for age-restricted homes? For people over 55 in a townhouse community, and I have a paper here somewhere that says 100 to 150 feet. It has five different sources where it came from, and it tells you why. Because people are older. They couldn't be carrying groceries. They could be carrying something else. They're coming to visit someone. So it explains why it's not the same. When somebody looks this up, somebody says somebody looked it up, they're not looking at over 55 older people. They're looking at... regular age people, and that's different. We're not talking about that. So I think if we clearly ask for the right information and you look at it, these things are being built all over our country. They're being built all over our state. They're being built all over your own town. They're being built in Pennsylvania. This is how they're doing these things. So there are criteria for people that are older, and 100 to 150 feet is what is recommended for age-restricted, for people that are older, from the farthest unit that they're walking to. Now, all this will be moot. If you put enough parking in, it's not going to matter that I think what's happened again, I think we've been trying to, uh, I keep saying this. I know people don't like put lipstick on a pig and say, gosh, if we could put it here, then we could just add in these communities, some real far away spots up by the entrance and we'll be done with it. We need to just not think about what can happen today to make sure these projects don't have to change. need to do it right there are two biggest projects we're ever going to have in my area and we need to do it properly so making rules up based on trying to get something to squeeze in is not the way to plan it's not the way to do things so i'm suggesting that if indeed there isn't this extra parking the extra parking that we have would be 100 to 150 feet away and then it says 200 max And I think if you looked in the planning guide, you guys have access to planning things for age-restricted homes. I'm not talking about nursing homes or assisted livings. I'm talking about townhome communities. It will tell you exactly what the guidelines should be. I mean, we use guidelines when we think it's appropriate, but with something like this, use the correct guideline for age-restricted homes.

So no more than 200 feet away for guest parking from a unit.

250 is perfect.

optimal no more than 200 and 200 is not all that that close either but so we said a range of 100 to 200 is a suggestion but but do we want to do belts and suspenders it's if we do the wider street there they have closed parking so the other parking can be further away my concerns Um, there's lots of 20 foot streets in Carroll County, lots of them in Manchester, a lot of them with no parking and, and it's, and people follow it. Um, painted curbs don't mean a, a whole lot, um, signs do. And if. If my plan says I have to have no parking signs, that's a zoning violation if I don't do it. So it's enforceable. But the problem I see, and if we do wider streets, additional parking, That's going to require more inlets, more storm drains, more storm water management, a lot. And that's going to increase the price of these houses that are already too expensive. I don't think people are going to be able to afford them. And we've got to look at that and we've got to look at the speed and what our public work says about Road West. Do you want to stay on this subject or can I do the rest of my question? What do you want to do?

I just want to comment on what you just said. On all these things that we've done, I always ask for you to give me not what you think but what the reality is. So we keep talking about cost and affordability. The reality is the product that we're selling is not inexpensive because you're buying space It's you said it's not expensive. It's not affordable. It's not affordable. It's very, very expensive. In fact, they're more expensive than the product that I'm actually talking about. And I've pulled the deeds on these things. I pulled the deeds on houses in the one community that are three story because you're getting square footage up here. You're getting three bedrooms in place. You don't really need. So they're not less expensive. They're actually more expensive. So the ones, and I don't know about new, but the ones that we were talking about, the two developments of Coventry meadows, I pulled the deeds on them and I pulled the deeds on the ones down at Sereno, they're actually cheaper.

They're $400, $450, and people are... Commissioner, if I may, those were the purchase prices 10 years ago.

No, they're not.

They're resales.

I just sold a couple of them.

$600,000 was a recent sale in January.

Or it depends on if it's one floor or if it's two floors.

The most recent one that was sold in Amplitz was sold for $600,000 in January. I looked at all the estate.

Good. And that was the two floor, and that has one and a half up and two bedrooms down. But if you look at them compared to what this is, they have yards, they have a little place to put a garden in the back, a little teeny piece of green. They have green space to walk on their grass. These communities have no, there's not a spot to walk. I mean, it's this big. It's not even big, it's this. So if you look at the comparison and the price comparison and what they're getting, that's what people want. That's the kind of product that they want. And you say, well, then don't buy them. Well, there's nothing else to buy. So what we... We're giving an incentive. I'm to the point, I'd rather say, don't give any incentive. Take away. West Michigan doesn't even have this product, this allowance. Some counties don't have it at all. What allowance are you referring to? We have a special allowance for age-restricted housing. You can do all these extra things. Take it out. Don't do it. Because let them just build.

Commissioner, if I may, it is documented in the Freedom Plan that we do allow for the 3 and 1 half units per acre in R20 for age-restricted. So certainly, if the board wanted to go down that route and eliminate that as a product, but that would require going through a revision to the master plan and so on, a much longer process than what we're talking about today.

And Chris, and I'm just going to argue something with you. When the average person, like myself, says something is 3.5 units per acre, I think, wow, that sounds pretty good. It's about a quarter of an acre. No one says, is it the gross acres or is it the net acres? Let me finish, please. Sure. When you do the calculations, if someone would take a map and look at it, we are very hilly here. We're not Kansas. I've said this before. If you're Kansas, you got a square piece, you got a piece of property right here, and you can put four per unit instead of two. It's R20. Normally, you could put two. We're given 3.5. So you can put, let's say, four. You can put twice as many. However, we're not Kansas. We're Carroll County, we have lots of streams, we have lots of rock, we have lots of water features. So if you take the buildable area out of a piece of property, and each property is different, you can come down to half to three quarters that is not buildable. So then you can jam that same 3.5 houses on that teeny little space, and that is why we're getting these things jammed together, because we're using gross versus net. And if you look at a piece of paper and you look at how they, you're counting all of the unbuildable space into your calculation. If you didn't do that, in the Freedom Plan, I will tell you, anyone that looks at that, it doesn't say gross acres, and you tell me that that's the planning norm, it's not, Westminster doesn't do it that way. Tonytown doesn't even allow for it. So my point is, it's not normal, and it doesn't say that. It should be buildable space.

If I may. So... One of the planning commission members researched statewide and determined that 50% of the counties out there use gross, 50% use net. So it is not a abnormal thing for us to use gross. As I've said, in the planning world, when you have a strict acreage and say three and a half units per acre, that is always assumed to be gross. That is an industry standard. The reason being is that if it's going to be net, you have to define what is the net. So there is no definition that says, that we're talking about a net acreage of something less than the three and a half units per acre. And also, just one final point, the Antlitz Estates project that you've mentioned a couple times that you find is what people want. When that went through the development review process, the code allowed for four and a half units per acre, and that's what was constructed. They constructed four and a half units per acre.

Well, I don't know how they got it, but it's way larger green area. My point is, The devil is in the detail. And the average person doesn't understand that if that property, any of these properties, or R20, if they were built, as the code says, they could build two houses, one, two. They're building six to eight houses on the same actual physical little land, maybe 10. and jamming them together because we can jam them together and this is all the unbuildable space. And we used to call it open space. You can't use it. It's in a stream bed. It's in a thicket. If I was able to show you what we've been doing over the years instead of making it be usable or making it a benefit, we're basically using unbuildable, unwalkable space sometimes for some of these smaller communities. For bigger communities, in conservation area, I agree with being able to cluster into small, I agree with that. We're talking about taking a half acre lot or a quarter of an acre lot or 10 and basically being able to, I can show you a map of it if you're interested, how you can take all this space and just take the calculation from all this unusable space and stream bed and stormwater management ponds and then jam everything over here and there is no usable space left in the community to even put something. I mean, one of the plans has a teeny little dog park and it's like, oh thank you, it's about as big as this Good. We've got a dog park is about as big as a poster stand. That's not the spirit of why we are doing this. And I think if you would see it and you see how we're, um, it might say that in the plan, there's not a person, including myself that ever would have contemplated that that meant per net for gross acres. You could take, if you had 90% of your property unbuildable, let's say all this page unbuildable, you can take 3.5 times. the number of houses for the whole lot, and just put them on this little spot, it virtually could be that you could not build all those houses because it could not fit on that spot.

That's an excellent point, Commissioner, and that's exactly what we've been saying, is that you could not physically put that number of houses in the remaining area. And we have further addressed that in the new code with open space requirements. You have the basic requirements for the amount of stormwater management that needs to take up space and so on. So if you have, say, that hypothetical 100 acres that only 10 acres is buildable, there is no way that you can get that maximum density of 350 units on that 10 acres because of all of the design requirements that we have added into the proposed code regarding building spacing, regarding the number of units that can be in a row on one building. Because of the open space requirements that we have now added into the requirements, that you're inherent to, Inherently, stormwater management takes up 15% of your rebuildable area. So of that 10 acres, you're going to have an acre and a half that's going to be stormwater. All of these additional requirements all compound on each other that there's no way that you're going to get 350 units on that hypothetical 10 acres.

It's the, it's the design requirements.

That's more important than the gross acreage calculation.

And I would suggest that if you just went back and use net, you wouldn't have to do all those calculations. You wouldn't have to say how much of this is usable. How much is this environmental? So if you went back and just did truth in the property you're buying, and maybe there is a lot, a parcel in Carroll County that's like Kansas, but every parcel is different. So sitting there and saying this has got to be this percentage of this and this percentage of that, it's so convoluted, and who defines that? If you just start with the buildable area and do your math, and maybe it shouldn't be 3.5 if you use growth. Maybe it should be a different number. But this convoluted process that we're using is not really, if they're looking at the other areas, how they do it, I mean, in Maryland, I printed out, I gave this to you guys last time, months ago, about in Maryland, most use, look at all the counties, Calvert and whatever, they use net, and they take the unbuildable out, and what you define as unbuildable is a key. What do you define as unbuildable? But I don't think anyone would agree that taking the way we're doing it is transparent and is what was ever anticipated, that this is what we're gonna get out of it, and what's the benefit, again, The one other thing I keep talking about.

Well, Commissioner, before we go too far, I want to make sure that Commissioner Gordon and Commissioner Kyler also have some opportunity to ask other questions. Commissioner Gordon hasn't even spoken yet. No, I'm fine at this point.

Are we done with fire? I mean, none of that was fire.

If you have any other questions, I have a couple myself. For fire? No, no.

I'm saying can the chief leave? That was the whole purpose of the half hour ago we were going to let him leave.

But did we decide? I mean, I think the reason we talked about it is because it was talking about if we do extra width and we do extra parking, then we're going to have more constraints on the property for stormwater and things like that. So I'm trying to explain why it's constrained because we already have constraints. that are allowing, I call them, somebody called them phantom lots, called them phantom lots because if you just took that little spot where they are, there's no way it's four, it's like 10 or eight. So it's not what people would anticipate, that you can just bring them all together.

So Commissioner, to Chris's point though, Wouldn't that get to the heart of what you're trying to accomplish by reducing the number of buildable lots or units because there are so many additional restraints that are encumbering the property that somebody wants to build on?

If it benefited, if it benefited, I'm not against making a lot smaller. If it was a benefit to what the product is that these folks want, you don't do that in conventional. Why do you think these projects are all coming as retirement homes? And this is not just for big projects. Keep in mind guys, this is for any infill, any infill community. If you come and see another community, we have them like five little acres. They have 28 houses jammed in townhouses on five acres. There's no parking, and it's jammed in because they called it a retirement. There's nothing retirement home about it, or village. So you're calling something something that there's nothing in it that makes it that, except they now can take it and put it in an R20 or an R10, and you can now put it in a community that you could never do that, except we're going to call it retirement. It's not defensible. Now, if we do some of these things, you at least say, well, we're trying to make it for for people for that age population. But right now, currently, there's nothing at all. That's why everything, if you have a parcel behind your home in Carroll County, it's six acres, somebody owns it, they could have built, you know, 12 houses, now they can build 30 houses, or 40 houses, and they're all townhouses. They don't have to have any parking, they don't have to have turnarounds, and that's what we've done. It's been manipulated and abused since the last master plan, and the last master plan was supposed to correct a problem that we had had an interpretation in the past, and it did the opposite. The opposite has occurred.

So, Commissioner, I made note of, I think, three recommended changes to the text that we've put out there. One is that we require 30-foot-wide roads in age-restricted communities, that the density of guest parking spaces be one spot for every three dwelling units, and that the maximum distance be reduced from 600 feet to 200 feet.

I would say the recommended is 1 to 150, maximum 200. Okay. I always say this is what you should do from the farthest unit. Make sure that's in it. So if there's six in a row, it can't be that guy down there is not 400 feet.

So I guess what I'd like to find out from the rest of the board is whether there is support from the board for making those changes so that Daphne and I can make those changes for contemplation on the 17th.

I've already said it makes the houses more expensive and it speeds a problem. In Manchester, we have plenty of 20-foot streets with no parking, and guess what? People don't park there. And, you know, I'm fine with what's being developed.

Commission Gordon, any thoughts?

Well, I understand the thought process behind wanting to widen the roads. I get that. But then I also personally have seen and experienced what that does in the Westminster area. We do have, I can think of one very particular road that's three minutes from here that is a raceway. So there's... I don't know, is there an area we could find in the middle? I'm not trying to be funny when I say that. It's just, I know what your purpose is, and I get what your thought is, but trust me, there's a couple roads, if we went over and looked at it, it's just people blasting by those homeowners 24-7, and they're either blasting by you, or better yet, they're passing you because they've got enough road width to just pass whoever. They don't care. So 30, I think, is a bit...

bit high for me on that one if we could find a slightly smaller number I would be open to the consideration of it you mentioned the parking you wanted what was it again one spot for every three dwelling units and within maximum of 200 feet with a recommended hundred hundred and fifty because we were looking planning and zoning was what six six hundred yes and one unit for and one parking space guest parking space for every five units Baker was 1200 yes Baker was 1200 and they actually I

I don't think it was one for five that they originally said.

I think we, through discussions with planning commission, we increased the guest parking rate to one for five. Yes.

I mean, we've already come, if we look at just planning zoning alone, we've come you know yes down so significantly I mean I understand wanting to have people nearby but at a certain point where does that work in the whole plan of the layout I think six is acceptable to a point but I think you know if we were to go to say five but I mean when we're talking two to three hundred I mean there's really no availability I mean how are we gonna house how's the developer gonna structure that I mean That's kind of where I'm at a loss on that, when we keep getting closer and closer.

Yeah, well, I think, and that's, I think, the point that we've been making is that, say, hypothetically, you make that guest parking rate to something like 1 to 100 feet, right? The only way that the developer may be able to accomplish that is by putting in parking on street parking. And so the parking requirement then drives the width of the roadway and they have to address everything associated with it because we allow the developer to figure out how to solve that problem. Now, whether it's 100 feet, 500 feet, 600 feet, that's, I mean, certainly up for discussion and whatever best practice that we want to implement moving forward.

And so you all put this beautiful picture, this little beautiful picture, I don't know where it is.

It's coming through.

That's Coventry. This is what is a good thing. There is a street that you come down. I mean, this is optimal. We have it. It can be done. So I'm not trying to make the moon on this. They have all different models and floor plans up there. You can get all different things, different price points. That's just an example of something that can be done well. There's plenty of parking here. I don't know what their parking range is at other places. I don't know. I've seen pictures of it. It can be done. If these properties, these larger projects, if they were done conventional, just conventional for...

I'm sorry, we're talking about age-restricted? Cluster versus conventional?

Or just right now, conventional, what would they be able to do? What would the requirements be? Would they have a certain road width?

Are you saying that if it was developed as a subdivision, as a conventional subdivision? Is that what you're saying?

If the same product was available for not age-restricted, what would it be? Right.

So it would have to be done as a conventional subdivision, and they would be subject to Carroll County requirements for the roadway. What is that? What is that? Those would be conveyed to the county. If they are cul-de-sacs, then it's 18 feet wide with open section roadway. Loop roads, I believe, are 20 or 22 feet.

The reason I'm asking, because I noticed what... The other thing is inconsistent in our code, and the more I go through this, the more I realize how inconsistent it is. If you're a subdivision where you all own your own property, you have to have 30-foot wide roads, and you have to have two entrances over a— I'm sorry, that's what I just said.

It's that in a regular subdivision, a conventional subdivision, county roadway standards on a cul-de-sac would be 18 feet wide. A through road.

A through road. It's 30 feet.

I would have to...

It's 30 feet. Okay, a cul-de-sac is different because people are stopping. A through road means people are driving through. So there's a difference.

Yes.

If it's a through road, which these are, it's 30 feet.

Yes, but I would submit on a site plan, you don't have through roads. You don't have traffic running through them. which is what a through road is.

Well, the people that are using it, if it's a big circle, the other thing in a subdivision, you have to have two entrances over 50 people. You have to have two ways to get in and out. If it's a subdivision for 150 people, you only have to have one way in and out. It's inconsistent, and the question is why. I mean, just because they're older, why should they have less access? Again, I'm just asking the question that's supposed to be about if something gets tied up here, you have space here. It seems like it should be the same. These aren't gated communities. People are welcome to want to. There are inconsistencies in our code And we're actually having less requirements for an over 55 community. They're getting more density and more yield because of that. You can say there's no more yield. It certainly is. And the citizens, the people buying that aren't getting anything in return. Like what is the benefit? What is the benefit? They're not getting any open space. They're not getting anything usable. They're not getting... So that's the question. You're actually allowing more of something that benefits maybe the person building them, but the people that are buying them that they're supposed to be benefiting don't really get any benefit. So that's why you do a purpose pair. Everybody can win. There's communities all over. And we started off last year, when we talked about this, asking the consultant to look at some model places. How do we implore or how do we, in our code, get The desired outcome. This is a desired outcome right there. We have it. There are other desired outcomes. We want different kinds of housing. When you get the plans in there, I appreciate there's 100 pages. The very last page has a picture of the front of buildings. We don't even know what housing types they are. We don't even look at that. The Planning Commission doesn't even have a clue what the housing types are. To me, that should be one of the first things you're looking at. Are the houses age appropriate? These things we're asking to be in it, that should be one of the first things. Are we getting different floor plans? Are we getting different models? Are we getting different for different types of families? No, we're getting all the exact same thing because it's easier and it's more expensive. You can say whatever you want. It's more expensive to go like this and have three rooms here which you don't need or you have two rooms here and maybe one upstairs that you can use. We could argue whether it's more expensive or not, but I mean, pretty much everywhere else that's building these things, Eastern Shore, Queen Anne's County, they're building all single, they're building all. The other reason for single, I don't want to hear why.

So, Commissioner, if I may, there's nothing that prohibits in our code from those developers from developing those types of products here in Carroll County. They absolutely could.

But they don't, and they don't because they can get more units, and I get that. But it's not the kind, again, we're giving away, We're giving away a density, and we're giving away road width, and we're giving away all these things, but we're not getting the product that is meant to be for seniors. Not just in demand. We did the survey, and I know it was only a few hundred people, but we did a survey, and pretty much the survey said this is what people want. They don't have the offer of it. People keep saying, oh, she doesn't like townhouse. I own a townhouse. Plenty of windows, the way it's designed. One of the main things that people want for older folks is daylight, sunlight, natural light. When you have six in a row, you have tunnels of a building that have no windows. There's no window in the front, there's no window on the sides, and there's a covered deck on the back. Except for your bedroom, there is no light, natural light, in the main part of your living. It is one of the number one things that people are looking for. I know people think, oh, that's frilly, and it's not. I mean, I've got a whole document on why you build. That's why you build them separate, so they can have windows. Even if there's 10 feet from the, you still have light coming in. And they even say, for people that are older, you should have one window. At least they could sit and look out of it. Because guess what? If we all get old, we might want to have to sit up one day and look out of a window. And that is not what we're, that's not the product that we're giving. We're giving units that literally, even the ones on the end, the wind is in the laundry room. So in the actual living area, is no windows. There's no daylight. There's no natural light. And it's a big deal for people. It's a big deal for everybody. We found that with schools.

I assume nobody will buy them. And the developer, no developer wants to build stuff people don't buy. And there's not a lot of stuff in Eldersburg set and empty. So I understand your passion. I also understand we got about 15 minutes left. We won't get to the other topics. And I still have questions that I was interrupted because the chief was here. So do you two have questions? I'll go last. I don't care. I don't know. I don't care. Tom hasn't got to say anything yet.

Commissioner Vigliani has some comments. Go ahead.

Well, I've got one question that we haven't touched on yet, and it has to do with the percentage of the mix of units over 50, and that was slide number 10, if I remember correctly. And my two questions are this. I mean, I know we're looking for, we're trying to get a better variety of available units. And so the question that I have is how did we arrive you know, 30% of variety over 50 units versus, say, 30% over 25? Or if I was, you know, a developer, why would I not have to build two distinct houses if I was only building two units? How do we get to that point?

Yeah. I don't think there's anything magic about those numbers. Looking at other codes, 50 is a number that you often see in respect to other types of requirements. example that stands out in my head. I believe it's Howard County requires a clubhouse of some sort if you're over 50 units. Please don't quote me on that. I think that's what I'm recalling. But 50 is a number that I think resonates in the industry as far as the size of a project. And so that's how we fell on 50. The 30% then having to be single family detached, that was just the number that we came up in discussion with the Planning and Zoning Commission. There's no magic to that number. And I don't know that I could recommend a better number, but at some point we have to put forth a number for discussion and we can certainly change to whatever the board feels is appropriate.

So thank you very much for that because, again, I was just curious specifically about that 30% because, again, if we're looking for that greater variety of homes, attached, detached, townhouses, single floor, whatever the case might be. And I understand that I take the point that 50 units is typically an industry standard, right? I take that point. But if we're trying to encourage the greater variety of houses, should that 30% be 40% or 50% of units? I mean, I understand that a developer, if I'm going to build something, having 100% variety is going to be a lot more difficult to construct 50 different houses, and that's going to drive up the price. And so if I can build three units of one particular kind with small variations between them, That's going to be a lot more cost effective in terms of constructing the house, but also in terms of the price point of the house for the citizen who wants to buy it. So is there a greater number than 30% that would not overburden a buyer of a house, but would also allow for a greater variety of styles to be offered in a development?

So I guess one thing to point out is that that 30% is specific to single family detached. So where you get into the variety is with the different types of attached. Now, in our code, we very generically call those townhomes, right? but we're talking about quadplexes or triplexes or duplexes and a different variety. There's many different varieties that would fall under that general category of attached dwellings. And so part of that discussion with the Planning Commission was, A single family detached is very specific. It's a house all by itself, nothing's attached to it. However, it would be up to the developer, as far as what the market is looking for, to look at different types of solutions. For example, my mother lives in an age-restricted type community in Lancaster, and her house, it's two houses joined at the garage. So her common wall is the garage. They market those as villas. Villas is kind of a generic marketing term, right? But that's the type of house that she lives in. We want to allow that flexibility to the developers to serve what the need is. the industry need without being overly prescriptive, which is why we stayed away from talking about we want a certain number of triplexes, a certain number of quads, we want a certain number of villas, whatever we wanted to find villas as, right? So the important thing in our mind and the Planning Commission, I believe, their mind was, 30%, some percentage, and 30% is not a small amount of these discrete detached homes. And then the remaining 70% could be whatever combination, whether you want to call them villas or duplexes or quads or allow the developer to meet the needs of what the residents are looking for. So that's sort of the logic and discussion that went into it. But certainly if that should be 40%, 50% for those single family detached, sure, we can certainly revise the code to whatever the board wishes.

Thank you very much for that. And, Tom, do you have any thoughts on that? Because I know you're on planning commission, and I know you've dealt with a lot of this stuff. Do you have any perspective from your end on the 30 percent?

I think the challenge becomes 30, to Mr. Hines' point, is a pretty significant number. If we start getting above that, at what point does that really heavily play into the overall picture?

I would agree with his comment. I appreciate that. Thank you.

You mentioned about single-family homes. You've got a very beautiful community in your neck of the woods called Carol Vista, a 25-year-old product. Bob Ward, he builds them all over the country, and he builds them all single-family, detached. They're small. They're cottages. They're great. People love them. I mean, we don't have anything like that to even offer folks that are leaving my area.

Well, I mean, I've been inside those. They're huge. They look small from the front, but they extend pretty far. Some of them have basements and...

Yes. But they have price. They're all different. There's different models. They have different price points. And now, obviously, some of the price points I saw when I looked at it in the fall were like $300,000 to $400,000. I drove through there. I went through Tonytown and visited with your former town council member last year for a different reason. They're way less expensive. Some of it's geography, and they're not new. But they're reasonably priced, and it's usable. So that's an example. And Bob Ward builds like that all over because that's what is best for that type of a community. That's why these builders that do these things That's why they're building for the community. It seems like these guys are not building for the community. They're building as much as they can get on a certain thing that we allow in Carroll County. But we keep talking about the law, and I want to keep getting back to the law. You cannot just change the underlying use of something midstream in a master plan. I mean, it says in the land use article of the state of Maryland, the consistency with comprehensive master plan, section 1303. I've quoted this before. It requires an action to be consistent with or have consistency with a comprehensive plan. The term shall mean an action taken that will further and not be contrary to the following items, policies, timing and implication, timing of rezoning, timing of development, development patterns, land uses. You can't just change the land use in midstream. And then plan implementation requires an action to be consistent with. It's not something we just put in our plan or have consistency with a comprehensive plan. If you look right now in the Freedom Area and you look at a land use map, and it has these different colors on it. I will tell you that what's been done on the ground is not what the land use is. Almost every property in the last 20 years has been intensified because of clustering, so nothing is really what it looks like. If something shows it's R40, it now, it should have had 25 houses, and now it's 129 houses. You're putting five to six times as much, and it still shows these colors on a map, and none of it is consistent. And there's no reason to say, how did this happen? We'll make all these excuses up. Well, we allow this. We allow that. There's no consistency. There should be a way. There's a letter. I've got a copy for you. I don't know if this is the one. About changing zoning. This is from Ned Kuman. I've got several letters from him. My copy machine is very slow. But basically, changing... stuff in midstream is not planning and it's not consistent. And also, there's another one I'll give you a copy of. If your underlying land use is X, and on every single property you're going down to the next zone, it's called bastardizing the process. It's not transparent. And what's happened on this clustering, what's happened on this, every property, and it's been going on for a long time, except for the small, the small maybe one, two, and three off, is going half of what it says in the land use. So you say land use is R20, they're all going to R10. You say it's R10, it's going way further than that. So there is no consistency with the underlying land use because our policies are allowing you to go down to the next zone. And there's not necessarily a benefit. That's why you put a purpose. I say take it out. Don't allow it because we're not getting different kinds of housing. because of it. We're not getting what we want. Your zoning should require what you're trying to get accomplished. Our zoning today is how much can a developer come in and put on a property and squeeze together for no benefit to the community. That is a violation of the master plan and why we plan to have this zone is for this and this zone is for that. And if I ask you to do a map today for what is actually on the ground on these properties, our map would look totally different because the underlying land use on these things is way different than what's actually being allowed and it's been happening for about the last 20 years, little by little, and now we're just codifying it even more, and that's why I'm very certain that we would not be successful defending this because it doesn't meet the requirements. If you want to change this stuff during the next master plan, go argue it with the community, go make your case heard. Hopefully we'll have a planning commission that reflects the area that, like everyone else does, it reflects the area where it represents But plan implementation must have consistency with a comprehensive plan. So I'm just telling you, everywhere in state law, that's why you have a plan. And you can't just change things. You can't say, well, the underlying land use, as you showed us on the first day, is residential, is single-family detached. I could argue that in some of those zones, maybe we should have allowances. But today, we don't. It's single-family detached homes in R20, R40, R10, R75. That's what was adopted in the plan. It says it right up there. And all of a sudden, we're going to say, oh, let's have this mix. You're changing the zoning in the middle of a master plan that the underlying land use, and there's no purpose to it. It's not something you can just do because, oh, we started here. Now we're here. The underlying land use said, now, can you do a project when they're like that? Yes, you can. And you've got the ability to do the 10-year review on the master plan. But that's why the reason. that you have rules is because there should be predictability, not just for the person that bought the property, but for the people that already are there, and there's a plan that they can depend on, unless it's thoughtfully determined that, oh, we now need this, and that's what belongs here. It shouldn't just be willy-nilly, this person wants to do this, let's interpret something, growth versus net. And it talks all through here, extensions to the comp plan, the plan update, how you can change your zoning laws, bulk parking density lot, To promote the health, safety, and general welfare of the community, a legislative body may regulate the height, number of stories, the percentage of a lot that may be occupied, off-street parking, the size of yards. You tell me how for this community, this over 55 elderly people, how that what we're allowing moves that ball forward. Oh, excuse me. It moves it backwards. We're not getting a better product out of it for them. We're getting a worse product out of it, and it is not any more affordable, I will argue. That has not been shown to me because you're buying space that is not needed. So, read the law. I'm not sure, I am, I'm gonna just say this off the cuff, I'm a huge believer right now, our entire Board of Commissioners, Planning Department, Planning Commission, we need to have a rework of what is in state law, what is planning, what is a master plan, and how do we do it? Because it shouldn't be me having to spend months and months researching this stuff as to what you're supposed to be doing because it's it's it's the way plans are done it's the way they do it in your towns i mean you sat on your town council you couldn't just go in and willy-nilly change things and the people that were trying to change them they were trying to do it for the best of your community and we don't even have anybody in our community that has a say in any of this stuff but just i found my paper for natural light How natural lights through windows supports healthy aging and independent living. And it's not just that it's nice. It's actually for their physical, their mental health, so they can see. People lose their vision when they get older. Aging changes the need for light. It does not receive it as efficiently as the young eye. The architectural implication is profound. The amount of daylight that appears adequate to a younger designer may not provide the same biological or visual stimulus to an 80-year-old occupant. Age-friendly daylighting must therefore be designed around the aging user rather than merely around conventional minimum illumination expectations. Maybe I used AI or Google to pull this up, but it comes from the Doctors Association. All of the reasons and how you should do it From accessible housing to supportive housing, you know, the best age-friendly home does not continually remind residents of their limitations. It quietly expands what they can continue to do for themselves. Natural light is an important part of that quiet support. When architects design windows around the fillet side... philosophical, physiological, psychological, and daily routine of aging occupants, daylight becomes much more than an illumination. It becomes a tool for circadian stability, safer movement, visual competence, connection with nature, temporal orientation, emotional well-being, and personal autonomy. When we say that we're building these units, they're actually doing the opposite. We're building tunnels for people to live in. And even the ones on the end that have their little window in the laundry room, they have 10 foot between them or 8 foot in their house next door. There's no daylight. So Susan doesn't like townhomes because you can have them. But the way we're designing these communities has no benefit to any of the aging population. And that's why I'm very passionate about it. I am because I'm passionate about people getting older, and I'm also seeing the number of people that I know that are not staying in my area because we don't offer the product. Are they selling a favor as a different product? If some really good developer wants to build a beautiful community, they could do very well in our area to build something that is of the caliber that they're doing it. I'm thinking about Calvert County, Queen Anne's County, Kent County. Go look at their beautiful neighborhoods that they're building. Cause that's what they want for their folks. And we're not, we're just like, how do we, how do we put lipstick on a pig? How far should we have to make them walk to football fields or four football fields? It's a, it's a false conversation and I'm sorry that I'm passionate about it. I'm not going to give it up because I really believe that we owe this to people.

Well, commissioner, I take that point and I'm going to argue with you. It's not a false conversation. We're here trying to make the code better because we care about the citizens because there are concerns that have been raised to us. The second thing I want to point out very clearly here, right? Our staff is incredibly professional. They're incredibly capable. They are doing their best to shepherd us through this. Any decisions that were made in the past were not decisions made from staff. They were made by different boards of county commissioners who at the end of the day vote on things. It isn't staff deciding what's going to be where or who's going to do what. That's the board of county commissioners. So your fight is not with staff. It's not with Chris. It's not with Daphne. It's not with planning and land management. It's not with anybody in this building. It's with previous boards of commissioners. And we're attempting to correct things because, yes, everybody has stated at this point, yeah, the code could use some updating. We could change a couple of things. But the way the code is, it's not staff's fault. At the end of the day, it's the commissioners that have the final vote about how code is addressed, how code is changed, what goes into code, what comes out of code, whatever the case is, right? And based on this conversation today, I'm going to submit this to everybody. I'm not sure that we're going to be ready to vote on any of this on the 17th. And the reason why is because today, just for example, you brought up this whole thing about natural lighting. There are all these new issues that are constantly arising, and I'm worried that we do not have adequate time to competently address all of the concerns that you're raising. For example, we talk about the parking being an issue. I get it that maybe the ideal is 100 to 200 feet. Well, to use the example that staff gave us today, again, it was a recommendation. That doesn't mean that this is what staff is demanding. At the end of the day, we're making the decision as the commissioners. Now, because we have these ongoing and evolving conversations, again, I'm not sure we're going to be able to make a decision on this on the 17th, because now we have to look at You've raised this objection about housing unit types with respect to natural lighting. And that was something that was not on my radar back in December when we enacted the deferrals in the first place. Back when we enacted the deferrals in the first place, my primary focus was emergency access. And I take Commissioner Gordon's point about, well, maybe there's a point at which the roads are too wide, or maybe they're not wide enough, and maybe there's a common ground in there. I take all these points, but again, I worry that we're not going to be prepared to address any of this on the 17th because this is an evolving conversation.

And I'm going to agree with you 100%. Where I'm going to disagree is that, again, you can't go backwards, but we have offered a product that's evolved over time, and it started off being there for nursing homes and assisted livings years ago. It was never upgraded, never updated. We believed that was going to happen during the last process, very much believed that that was happening. It didn't. It went the opposite because we didn't really have a focus. I shouldn't have to tell someone when you're doing a community like this what's best practices. They're all out there. They're everywhere. I mean, I have, this is a fraction of the stuff that I have. That's what a planning commission is for. That's what an advisory board would be for. That's what a group with our Department of Citizen Services could have been involved with. There's many things. We did have one meeting with a consultant. And people said, this is what we want. They did a survey. We got what that little group wants. It was not thoughtfully done. I'm going to suggest, I don't think it is ready for prime time. I also don't think we can continue what we're doing today because in violation, many, many places with the master plan and you're changing things in midstream. They got changed already in midstream past what was adopted. This stuff was adopted in 2024. The chart was put into place to supposedly allow these townhouses a little C in the little chart. I'm suggesting that we should for now temporarily for that we're in the time constraint is to remove age restricted housing from the plan. I mean, just from our code to allow it and then have the time to get the proper group to look at this stuff in the proper venue that it should be with people that really wanna figure out like look at what other people do. There's no, everyone can still build conventionally like they could have two years ago until this chart got done. Everybody can build on that property. They can build whatever R20 can let you build, or R10, or whatever they are. And then we'll have a little time. Right now, we're under this constraint. And it is a lot of things, but we need to get it right. So if you just take out, same with clustering. Clustering is an add-on. I don't think it's done, it doesn't, I haven't even talked about, because I know I talk too much, but the amount I've talked, I've spent about a thousand times more than that talking time, is researching this stuff. And I don't just do it from the top of my head. I do research what's best practices, what are other counties doing in similar situations. I've got it all documented. I don't know how to share that. I think it should be something that the whole planning commission or people that are interested in that do that. And don't just say, I think this and I think that. It needs to be based on some reality. So if we want to do this right, we could say we're going to remove clustering because clustering is not, these things are not benefiting us financially. We haven't even talked about clustering, but It's changed in the last few years how we do it, and it's costing our homeowners hundreds of dollars in maintenance of areas that they can't even use. So their homeowner fees affordability is going up to take care of something that they shouldn't have to do. So we haven't even looked at the purpose of why we allow it. There's different reasons. And the costs that are associated with these things now because now they have to maintain this, that, and the other, whether it's the roads or the stormwater or the thicket that's now their open space. And if I showed you some of it, when I first started seeing it abused, I say it wasn't really for the reason of having a little playground area. That's when it started, it was a number of years ago. And that's why during the last master plan, if I showed you all the testimony that I wrote, that the Freedom District Citizens Council wrote, that Mr. Kuhman wrote, it's volumes, volumes of letters Saying the same thing then, the commissioner said they stopped it. They weren't going to do it. They rolled back the plan and adopted it as they were. This happened afterwards, despite everything that was written, everything that was said, and it's not just me saying it today. I can go back. If you want, I have letters from 2017. We have articles in the newspaper, and it's like, okay, here comes COVID, and here comes COVID. time and we can slip this stuff through and we can interpret it this way. So I would suggest, that's why I get angry about it because it's not just now, it's not just coming across it. This is, when I sat here the other night and watched these people, it was harmful. I could not probably sit there because we sat meeting after meeting after meeting, being prepared, having our three minutes, putting our stuff in writing, everybody, very well done. And then Planning Commission did what they wanted, pushed everything through, threw arrogant about it. I'm sorry they were. None of them were from Freedom. The commissioners drew the plan back and said, we're not doing this. Fixed the plan, and then after the fact, the Planning Commission and the person in charge at the time basically did it through these regulations and changes. It was not done right. It irritates me to death because that's not the way things are supposed to work. And that's why I'm unhappy, and that's why people here are unhappy, and that's why people stopped participating. Because their participation was in vain. If somebody would take the time and read some of this stuff, you'd go, oh my gosh, and we spent a lot of time doing it the right way. And how would you like that? In your town, you're going to do what's right for your town. But when you have other people doing it because they've got other rationale... and they hear from other people why we need to do these things, but it's not what's in the best interest of the people in our area and what we put in the master plan. So I would say both of these issues, we have a time crunch because they're residential. You just remove it from as a use, take the chart out. that put the little C in, that supposedly, it was put in in 2024, this chart, this supposed use chart that explained everything. I say no, it's not, I don't believe it's consistent. It was never talked about, having a little chart like this. I would suggest taking this stuff out. It happened after the master plan was done. They changed little words, like it says in R40. Single family detached homes are the use. It says it everywhere. But they took a word out. They took a word out and they said, generally, I mean, they put a word in, generally. That was good. So generally, this isn't generally. It was so artfully done, and it was, I think, maliciously done. And that's what irritates me, and that's why I get upset about it. So I would suggest then we'd have time. I would be happy to have a group from the citizen services, whatever groups we have, to sit down with some of this stuff with a couple planning people, best practices. We've tried to do that with the consultant. Unfortunately, there was always this pull that we had to fit it in to put lipstick on a pig so that two projects could get through and we don't have to change them. I would suggest to you that if we had done, if things had been done the way they were supposed to, one of them would never have been approved. It would have never passed the BZA. Well, I'm going to tell you everything's at a failing intersection that we haven't, I'm talking about traffic. Every single thing, it would never been approved if that traffic study had been presented when it got approved two years ago. So we have flaws even in our own system and you got to ask yourself why? Because the people depend on it. The people think that there's a system in place and it's not. So that's my suggestion and that doesn't mean we put it on the table. I think there's a demand. for age-restricted housing to age in place. And we can argue about that all. Let's have a discussion about what the purpose is. I think we would benefit economically, the economic development it would bring here. People want to come be with their families. There are people that still work when they're 55. Would you want to move in this, or do you want to move into a tunnel? There's people 55, 65 still working. They want to downsize. They want to move here. This is what they buy. They're not going to buy that. There's no other options. And then we can also have some smaller versions for other people. We can look at the zoning during the next master plan and say, should we allow some of this stuff in R10? Should we rezone some of it? But it's done in an open manner and a purposeful manner because this is not just about these two properties. If you change this, it's every infill. Every infill piece of property right now, you can do this. And that's what's going to happen, because why would you not? Why would you not put 28 houses on a property you could only put maybe 10? So this is not just these couple properties. It is a huge, huge change for my district, and it also affects anything in the unincorporated areas that have water and sewer. And there are some in Westminster. I'm not sure if there's any in Tonystown, but I know there's some in Westminster.

Well, you always say Tawny Town. I have an entire district. I live in Tawny Town.

No, you don't have water and sewer outside of your district.

Yes, there are areas with water and sewer in my district that are not in the municipality.

I did not know that.

So I want to kick things over to Kenny real quick because I know you still have a couple of questions.

And I think we need to continue the process and try to get it done, but we need to focus on it. I think it's a good process. I said I didn't totally bleed with the consultant, which is my right, but they've done a lot of work. 17. That's where I was. So this essentially says the developer should present report on amenities. EZA will do them and then they get approved and they're represented on the site plans.

Yes.

The HOA didn't exist then because nobody bought any of the houses and what I've seen in the past is 50% sell and the HOA gets a voice and I've seen many, many times, but right now we have one current one. The HOA doesn't want the specific amenities. They've gone to the developer and we'll take the money, we want 10 more of these. They want changes. So then the developer, not the builder, has to come back and change the plan? And what's the process with that? Let's say HOA tells you, I don't want the community center, I want a pool. And they say that, and the developer says, I'm good with that, I'll change the plans. What's the process?

So the process is they would have to amend the site plan to represent what is agreed to is going to be constructed. And that amended site plan would come back, and we would talk to the chair of the Planning and Zoning Commission to see if they were fine approving the amendment by themselves. If they felt that it was a significant change they wanted to bring back to the entire Planning Commission, then it would be brought before the entire Planning Commission. But there is that process by which the approved site plan could be revised after it's been 50% constructed and so on. What I would submit is that the process that we've laid out here, where the developer presents an amenity plan and that gets reviewed by Planning Commission and so on, i would be if i'm a developer i would be a little bit more generic in my amenity plan i would say we are going to set aside these areas that once we we start building and we have an hoa in place we may build a gazebo we may build a fire pit area we may build a swimming pool whatever option leave some options and present that in the amenity plan, then as long as the final site plan allows them to do those, the site plan then becomes silent on what actually gets built and then the HOA can move forward with building and putting in and it wouldn't become an issue or a non-compliance issue with the site plan. The issue that we have is that that site plan needs to represent what the developer is presenting to the planning commission, this is what I want to build. the more specificity in that we're going to put this gazebo. I've even seen fire rings, right? If that's an approved site plan, they have to build it unless they come back and redline it.

And so they can redline it and that's the approval?

That's the approval moving forward. But I would submit, if I'm a developer, I'm going to be more generic in my description of what I'm going to say. I'm going to put amenities in, but I'm going to wait till I have an HOA to have that discussion. And then it's up to the Planning Commission to decide if that's an acceptable path forward or not.

Let me just mention, these developments aren't that sophisticated because they're not as big. But there's a situation of someone we knew that bought a home in another state, in a community. And they were supposed to have all these amenities. And they paid a lot of money for this home. And they bought it on the early end. And the ending ended up not happening. and the value of their home went down dramatically, they went foreclosed on their home because they bought a home that was promising X, it had pools and different things, and they ended up not getting those things. So I think it's important if they're going to market it that they, and I'm not telling them what to market, how to market it, But it's important if they are going to market something with X that they should put X because that person might have bought the place because of X or the value. I mean, we're saying a gazebo. Let's say it's a pool and somebody wants a pool. Somebody wants an indoor pool. Somebody wants an outdoor pool. And they bought it because of that. I will say when I first met with St. John last year, I said to them, they had a pool in there. I said, you can put a pool if you want. That's a marketing thing, but for me, It's costly to have a pool for a small group of people. It's very costly to maintain. I have a home in Delaware that we have a very robust set of amenities, but there's also a large number of people to support them, and it's actually cheaper than most of these people are paying. But my point is, you're paying for the amenities you're using. I wouldn't buy something on a golf course because I'm paying for the golf course. I don't golf. But if you buy something on the golf course, and they don't build the ball golf course, then your value's just gone down, and the reason... We did a subdivision like that in Pennsylvania.

The value actually went up, but they didn't build the golf course.

Well, my point... Normally, they're buying something because... Let me finish what I'm saying. So the point is, I don't care if they put them in or don't put them in, but if they put them there and market them, they should have to do them. Because the person who ever bought it thinks they're going to have, now just because a whole bunch of other people think, oh, we don't need it now, it should be.

So if 80% of the homeowners association says we don't want that, then one person can make them do it?

If it was in their site plan and they bought it based on the site plan, it, no matter what it is.

That's not fair. That, the HOA, um, makes the decisions, once 50%, they're in charge. And literally, this one HOA said, if you're hearing from the minority, I'm sorry, but they have nothing to say. We've voted.

Well, the story's a little bit different than that. But my point is, if you bought something because you wanted a certain thing, I'm just using an example. Don't make fun of me. Let's say I want a pickleball court. OK, I bought it because I wanted that pickleball court. That's why I bought it. And they don't have it. They never do it. So if it's in their plan, if it's not in their plan, they don't have to do it.

We had a job. The pool was in the plan. The HOA said we can't afford the insurance or maintain it. We don't want it. So we should have built it no matter what.

Well, the HOA doesn't exist until you've bought the houses. So you've got, you've got all these sites. It doesn't exist until everybody's bought and it doesn't get turned over. So you don't know when you're buying it, if they all agree to it, but somebody wants it and they bought it for that reason. there should be a way to have those expectations, whether we want it or not. I wouldn't buy a place with an indoor pool because they're expensive to maintain, but there's people that want that.

And if they bought the place because they were supposed to get... Their dues double, and then they're upset.

But they're supposed to, by law, there's a Maryland Conduit and Homeowner Association law, that you're supposed to give, in good faith estimate, the developer, and we don't check this out, that they're supposed to, in their covenant, say this is what we believe it will cost based on a reserve study. They're required by law to do it. Most counties make them give that paperwork in. I don't know how they review it. But then they know, when I move here, I'm going to have to pay X. When the pool was mentioned at St. John, I said it's up to you, but there's two pools within St. Right close by there's merit, and there's a pool across the street So if I were you maybe you could let that go it be less But you decide is just a thought and they did take it off and you know shouldn't be what I want But whoever bought the place if they wanted that pool, and it was in their site plan. They should I'm using a pool.

I mean If they want to do what you're saying none of the counties none of the counties. I've worked in do it that way I

Oh, okay. Well, the ones that are in the law and the ones, if you're looking there, they, they do, they say what's in your covenants, what's on your claim.

I've done it. Okay. How many houses have you built?

Okay.

Before, before we go, I mean, I've got questions. I'd like to finish my fricking questions.

Right.

And that's what we're trying to editorial going on every time I say something.

And commissioner, if you had allowed me to finish speaking, I would have said, can we get back to your questions? Cause I know you have questions and we're running out at 20 minutes over. Yeah. We're 20 minutes over.

21 21 and then I'm done hopefully so and and this is a problem that we just talked about it can be so like like the one in 20 towns a condo so they have condo fees and they probably have homeowners association fees and And the problem is you've got a developer, you've got a builder, sometimes you have real estate people. Do they see the condo documents and the homeowners association documents? And like I said, in Frederick County, we had homeowners meetings from the start. If there were four houses sold, we had it, but we controlled it. Once it got 50%, they controlled it, but we still attended. But... there is no condo association and homeowners when you start the first house, but if I'm buying that house, do I see these?

So yes, but what I would say is that the process that we're talking about, related to zoning code and so on and so forth, that's the development of the site. So adhering to all of the, bulk requirements and all the other codes and so on, getting to a point that the site is approved. That's the purview of the zoning code and the approval authority of the Planning and Zoning Commission. Once you get past that and you start getting into the business between the property, the owner, the developer, the real estate agents and so on, that aspect of things Carroll County is not engaged in those business practices. We, I believe that there are some counties that are involved in that. And, and so there, there, there may be this enabling legislation that the state allows counties to be involved in the business practices of everything that you're describing, but I would submit it's not a planning and zoning code issue. If the county wants to stand up a new department that, that, that reviews these sorts of things or expand the county attorney's office, that they were going to review these legal documents that are a private business contract between developers, owners, and their customers. There may be a way. I am not familiar with that because it doesn't fall within our purview.

Does it reference it? And I know this is different. We bought a lot back in the 70s. It had covenants. They were right on the plan. They listed them right on the plan, and I don't know if other people looked at the plan. I asked for the plan, and so I knew what they were. And they were loose because it was a small subdivision. One of our neighbors wanted to violate one, And we all voted to let him, but, well, my wife made me vote to let him, but that's a whole other story. But is there any reference on, in other words, how do they know, if I'm buying a lot, how do I know that there is even considered a condo?

Yes, so that would be the discussion between the property owner and the developer and the product that they're selling to the person that they're selling it to. So that's part of all that documentation. With age-restricted communities, they are required to put into the deed those covenants so that they are deed-restricted and they are in there.

So it's in the deed.

Absolutely, yes.

But it's not on the plan and planning and zoning doesn't get into it. No. It's in the deed. Exactly, yes.

I want to just say, I think that's not correct. The actual age restriction is in the deed. The covenants aren't in the deed. We always say we don't want the state of Maryland telling us what to do, but they give us, in this case, some guidelines. The documents or the covenants, the county attorney's office should investigate what authority has been given to the state, granted under state law, and discuss these findings with us. Right now, under the Real Property Act, under clustering, clustering is the same thing, too. because you have a Maryland Homeowner Association, those people now have all this stuff they're responsible for. They should know what that is. I'm just suggesting that if we're gonna offer, that's why I'm saying put this on hold, we're offering a product that is sophisticated and it's got a lot of, regulations that now these people are signing off on. They don't know what they're signing off on. If we're going to offer it, we need to either pick up our game and make sure there's some protection in there so they know what it is they're coming up with, or we shouldn't offer it because the money that's involved in these homeowner fees, there's an article in here in the Wall Street Journal about homeowner fees and condo fees are driving up the costs of affordability more than anything right now. Some of these fees are going up $500, $600, $800 because they're not doing the reserve studies and they're not putting money away. I don't think people can contemplate this because they've never lived in a place like this, but if they're not putting stuff away to put the new roofs on and they're not taking care of the pavement sometime when they have to replace it. So to ensure that there's clear protections and rights for the individual in the common areas, it should be in their covenants. It should have stuff in there like the budget notice, the reserve studies, what late fees are, elections. How do you make people pay? Because when people stop paying, you still have to do these things. So in most counties, you'll see, and these guys are now in charge of their easements. They're in charge of roads and stormwater management. It's a lot. They're responsible for a lot. There's all these things that they now have to pay for over and above that they told them they had trash included or something. So the covenants should be filed in the county land records. They're not. We don't require it. We don't require anything. We don't require it to be in the deed. You said it's in the deed. There are some that are not in the deed because we do not require it and no one follows up with it consistently. Could you give me one example? I will do that. I'd like to look it up. Yeah.

Thank you.

Okay. So, homeowner covenants must be, should be filed in county land records. Developers initially file and record the HOA declarations, their bylaws, and their restrictive covenants with the clerk of the circuit board.

I've got to ask this. 1225, how long are you going to read to us?

As long as, I'm just saying these are things.

I understand that. You've said it before. And you wonder why these meetings were not accomplishing anything. You're their, you're your own worst enemy.

What I'm trying to point out is some of it we're offering a sophisticated product. I'm suggesting that we should take a pause on the sophisticated project.

I think you've said that already. Well, we have Liz from the attorney's office here, and maybe she can address some of the concerns that you've raised. And to my colleagues, I know that Commissioner Gordon and I had some where we had to be 20 some minutes ago. So Tom, if you want to head upstairs, that's okay. But Liz, maybe you wanted to speak to one or two of these things, and then we want to wrap up.

Yeah, I can make it super brief. So all covenants, restrictions, things like that, they are considered a, we call them a negative reciprocal easement. which is the nice long term for it, all negative reciprocal easements, which say that you can and cannot do certain things on the property. Specifically here, we're talking about the age restriction element. They must be filed with county land records. We may not necessarily have it in our code, but because they are considered a negative reciprocal easement by law, they have to be done anyways. Whether it's in our code or not, they must be done. Those things are also usually included in, and it's a legal requirement actually that all realtors when they're selling to someone in these specific communities, they have to provide that documentation and usually you have to signature off on that that you're accepting that you're losing certain things, certain rights, by joining this community. You may also be gaining certain rights to that. But it is required in both the actual transactional package that real estate agents must give to their clients, and by law, because they are negative reciprocal easements, they must be recorded in the county.

And you're talking about the age-restricted piece, and I'm... It's required by HAPA, which is federal law. There's nothing in our Carroll County Code that requires us to do anything. They are required by federal law to put the age restriction on it. I'm talking about all the financial stuff and the covenants of what is it they're responsible for. That's what I'm talking about. It's the bigger document of the covenants. As was testified, these people at Nell's Acres at settlement were given a 400-page document that was in conflict, and they were given different documents, different people. It doesn't matter, but we in the county, if we're going to allow this sophisticated product, we need to make sure in our county we have certain – somebody could come, and they should be on file, even if we're not looking at them. So somebody could come look at them. They must give them to them when they sign a contract. And some of these things are in place, but the state does not tell us how to do it. Many counties, the big counties, they have whole departments that do do these things because they have thousands of them. They've got big condos. We're just stepping into this, and we don't do any of it. And what I'm suggesting is We've seen what we're getting now. We're having concerns about costs and homeowner fees and what they're covering. And if we're going to continue to do this, if we're going to continue it, we need to get sophisticated and give some protections and some transparency to people getting into these. Or don't do it. If we want to just stay like we used to be, plain vanilla, and not do it, that's fine. But we cannot just get the stuff in return and not give them some type of clarity. Because anywhere else, everyone I've read so far, Frederick, Howard, They all have in there, you have to turn the covenants in. I don't know what they do with them. They're on file with, we don't have any of it. So all that you're talking about is that they must put restriction on the deed because that's required by federal law, HAPA. There's nothing else. There's nothing in our law that says you look at stuff. County specific rules depend on county ordinances rather than state statute. We don't have anything infill age restricted or clustered. Same with clustered because you're now getting fees to take care of all this open space that you now have. It could just be stormwater management ponds. It could be just an empty field that you got to get mode all the time. And you don't know when you're going into it that I'm paying $300 a month because I got to get these fields mode. Maybe you're going to say, gosh, that doesn't really benefit me. I don't want the fields mode. I would have rather had it on my own lawn. So having that information up front, infill age-restricted, every condo association must maintain the property and liability insurance for the community's common elements. Roof, utilities, stormwater, it's a huge cost involved, and they're now responsible. They're responsible when people don't pay. They're deadbeats that don't pay. And so you've got to somehow figure out how you're going to, so you have to get a lawyer, you've got to get a management company. All of this, and you're saying, what did I get out of this? Oh, I now got to take care of my stormwater management ponds.

So I will note just briefly that covenants and bylaws are totally separate documents. So the covenants are part of what is still required to actually be filed. Bylaws are not because the bylaws are changed usually by the majority vote of the homeowners association, the condo association, et cetera.

But the covenants tell you what easements are yours. Do you have a forestation plot? Do you have a stormwater management? There's 11 of them. There's a whole list of things. When you read the back of the. The report that you all sent, it'll say, these covenants, this is going to go to the Homeowner's Association. This mailbox cluster is going to the Homeowner's Association. This is all that they're now responsible for under their covenants. Their bylaws is how they're going to do it. So you're right, but their responsibility does not go away. That's in the covenants. That sticks with the property. The covenants really, so it is very complicated, and you're putting people in these. We're going to see more and more problems with, people absconding and not paying their homeowner fees. And then it stuck for everybody else. And some of these people are saying, hey, wait a minute. Why am I paying for my roads and my stormwater management when I pay all these high taxes and everybody else gets it taken care of? It's a good question. And they're paying now $400, $500, $600 a month in homeowner fees. So we've got to acknowledge it. We've got to look at it. Again, we're offering this sophisticated product. And years ago, we did it just a little bit, and it wasn't a big deal. But now it's becoming a big deal of what we're asking them to do. And it's upon us. We've got to make sure we get it right.

So commissioners, I recognize that we're over time, and some of us have other meetings that we need to get to and so on. So quick question for you regarding next steps. There was some discussion about access roads, the 30 foot wide, one spot for three, and 200 foot minimum distance. I did not hear a majority indicating that those changes should be made. So we will leave the code as is for now. And certainly, if the commissioners want to discuss that further on the 17th, we can obviously make changes then. But for now, we're going to leave the code as is from that perspective. Switching to ADUs, because ADUs is another topic that is coming before you on the 17th for adoption. In the presentation, which you have copies of, there are three relatively minor changes to the ADU code. If anybody has any questions or concerns about the recommended changes, if you could please email myself and Daphne, and we'll try and answer your question if possible, or be prepared to talk about it on the 17th. make those changes, those recommended changes to the ADU code for the 17th. As similarly, the changes that we have recommended that we discussed today related to, we will make those changes, the staff recommended changes. So if the board is so inclined, the changes, the version that you've reviewed and the changes that we've presented today will be the official version that will be before you all on the 17th. If you want to choose to adopt it as is, great. If there are specific items that you want to go back and discuss on the 17th, we can do so. But I just wanted to clarify a path forward so that you are getting everything that you need so we can have an informed discussion on the 17th.

And I would like the language, if possible, to be in there about underlying land use. The underlying land use, because to me, if we don't fix the underlying land use, the product is not conformed with the master plan. That to me is, I want to just get a vote on it.

It can be separate, if you want to separate it out, that we must abide by the underlying land use of the zoning code, which is... Commissioner, if I may, when you've been talking about underlying land use and so on, I don't think there is overall agreement that that is something that's required by state law and so on. And we can have a much longer discussion about that.

I'm just asking you to prepare that one piece because.

I guess what I'm saying is that if we follow that tenant that you're proposing, it then changes a lot of what we are proposing in the text.

But it's a fundamental, the zoning, I should say this, the zoning that's attached to the fundamental, on the date that the master plan was adopted, the words and the plan and the land use were together. So on the date that it was adopted, before they made the changes years later, in 2022, 2024, made the chart, stuff that was adopted on that day I just would like to get a vote because I think this is going to be an issue that's going to be very important that we are consistent with the adopted master plan when it happened and not when it happened not when it got changed in 2024 so the underlying zoning that went with the land use which you said in your chart is all for all three of those is single-family detached homes right or wrong that's what was it's in the adopted plan and And then on the clustering on both of these net developable acres versus gross, and we can define what that is. I want to get a vote on that as well, because I think it's disingenuous what we're currently doing. And we, you know, I know it seems like a lot of hours, but we're, we're discussing, 20 years worth of problems that have been manifesting themselves. And it's been disappointing watching some of the conversations of the Planning Commission have been not focused on these important fundamental issues. And it's very disappointing to me. It's more about amenities and what should we do. And to me, that's the last, at least most important thing. So I would like to have that and have the things. Months ago, I gave you a sheet and it says, here's, in the state of Maryland, the things you deduct from net This is what, and it had these numbered things. It had the flood plains. It was a sheet that was printed out and said, in the state of Maryland, most people use net, but this is what they take out. And I'd like to. I'm sorry, what was the source of that? I don't remember some of that. I had it here. I used it at our last work session, which was what, in March? I gave it to everybody.

So, Commissioner, are you looking for motions to the Rush staff today, or are you looking for something to be added to the agenda on the 17th?

No, what I'd like to do is have those things prepared for me separately so that I...

I'm sorry, I don't have clarity on how that's possible without totally rewriting the code.

Well, what it would do if you did certain things... I know what you... Establishing... If we had established those earlier, it would have driven a lot of things and made them not be moot. But we didn't do that. But those fundamental principles, it would change things. That's why I'm suggesting that we're not ready for prime time in many, many ways to have this product that we're offering. And it will be challenged one way or another by somebody because it's just not, somebody's not going to like it because it's not adhering to our code. People don't like that it's changing them in midstream. And I would suggest to you that the people that say it's in midstream didn't even settle on their property until all of this stuff was signed, sealed, and delivered a year ago. So they were sort of part of orchestrating getting this stuff changed. And I give it to them. Smart. So I would just like to go back to what it was, underlying land use, which it's always been, and also on the clustering net versus gross. And just the main things come out. What is buildable and what is not. You take it out of the yield calculation to start with. And that's what you start with. Fundamentally, it's broken if you do it the other way.

Commissioner, I understand the concepts that you're presenting. What I would say is that is looking at trying to draft something and making all the adjustments to all of the codes to support that is much more work than we have time between now and the 17th. It's not possible.

And I've told you from the very beginning, those two things were fundamental. to what is in the master plan. It's fundamental. If you don't do those things, then you've changed zoning in midstream, in the middle of a plan, and you violated the very principle that I'm trying to say you can't violate.

I'm sorry. I apologize. I'm going to step in here now. We are almost 40 minutes over time here. Commissioner, if there are changes that you want to see, you should not be speaking to Chris about that. You should be speaking to us about that, and we should be probably doing that on the 17th. to get consensus from the Board of Commissioners that you want a rewrite or a redo or whatever the case is of the code. That's beyond the scope of what we're here for today. And so I'm going to exercise my authority as president to ask for a motion to adjourn. So moved. We have a motion, we have a second. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? We are adjourned.