Planning and Zoning Commission - workshop

And welcome to the Planning and Zoning Commission meeting of Carroll County, July 15, 2026. Can we establish a quorum?

Mr. Kane?

Here.

Mr. Robertson? Here. Mr. Huff? Here. Ms. Kirkner? Here. Mr. Soyson? Here. Mr. Lester? Here. Mr. Smith? Here. Commissioner Gordon? Here. Secretary Daley?

Here.

Mr. Chair, please let the record reflect that seven members are present and we do have a forum.

Thank you. Please stand for the pledge.

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.

Has everybody had a chance to review the agenda? Any changes to the agenda?

I move we approve the agenda as submitted without changes.

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

OK. All right. Item number five, the Freedom Community Comprehensive Plan, small area plan amendment, an introduction by the staff. I think, Tiffany, you're going to lead this?

Actually, Daphne's going to lead this tonight.

Daphne's going to? Yes. You're going to make sure she doesn't say anything wrong? Absolutely.

Yeah, I will note that Tiffany is serving as a project manager for this, so probably in all future presentations, she'll be leading you through some of those discussions. So our purpose tonight is just to introduce this project to you and to let you know what's coming down the pike fairly quickly. We wanted to make sure that you have this on your radar screen. I will follow up with another email to you all with some important dates in it. But for right now, I just wanted to give you kind of a high-level overview and make sure that you were on board with where we're heading with this project. So we're talking about a small area plan amendment to the 2018 Freedom Community Comprehensive Plan. The project originated out of discussions sort of in reference to some of the deferral discussions, but it was around a concern that the commercial area in the kind of the core of freedom needed to be looked at in terms of the appropriateness of the land use designations and ways to further implement the freedom community comprehensive plan. Anytime we're talking about possible consideration for zoning changes, that sort of thing, we need to make sure that we first take a look at the comprehensive plan because everything flows from that. So if we wanted to look at some of the things that were talked about in terms of the appropriateness of the land use designation, or creating something like an overlay zoning district, that sort of thing, we need to start with the comprehensive plan and make sure that it is reflective of the current needs and desires of the community and then kind of go from there. So that was the origination of this project. A couple of the whys that are shown up here include the fact that the comprehensive plan was adopted in 2018. The zoning designations followed in 2019, the new commercial zoning districts. And while those flowed out of the land use We want to be able to go back and make sure that everything sort of matches up. And there have been some community and property owner concerns about that alignment that we want to just make sure everything is properly aligned. There's also been a desire expressed to evaluate things like a sense of place in the 2632 corridors, how circulation is addressed in that area how the different particularly commercial land uses function and serve the community and try to create a more coordinated and sort of predictable development pattern there these are all things that are noted in the Freedom Community Comprehensive Plan. So essentially what we're talking about here is undertaking something that is both consistent with the plan and serving to implement it. So you see on the slide here, the economic development goal from that plan talks about facilitating economic development opportunities that support the local skilled workforce and entrepreneurs and expand the county's employment tax base. There is a specific objective within that as well to promote development that creates areas with a sense of place and destinations that encourage interaction among residents and users. So a couple of the specific recommendations that this small area plan amendment would support and further implement include conducting an analysis of the businesses in Freedom to continue to ensure that they are adequately and appropriately meeting the needs of the residents. and addressing the visual appearance and lack of sense of place in Freedom's commercial corridors. So really what we're talking about here is a two-part process that will allow us to make sure that the plan is current and adequately addressing the needs of the community, and then actually going one step further on the implementation side of things, to try to address some of the concerns with, in particular, an overlay zoning district. So that's the project scope. The plan amendment piece of it will include conducting public and stakeholder engagement, reevaluating the land use designations, analyzing parcel conditions and redevelopment potential, and considering whether there's any changes that would be needed that could result in a comprehensive rezoning. I should note that that will also include a market analysis that'll be done. And in particular, we know that, you know, since 2018, we've had a few significant changes to the commercial landscape. We're post pandemic here and a lot of the retail needs and characteristics have shifted in response to that. So that'll give us a sense of how well the corridor is functioning and its potential to continue to meet the needs of the community. And then part B of this project will be to explore the possible creation of an overlay zoning district that would add a layer of requirements and standards that will help to create that sense of place that's been talked about. So things like corridor design and identity standards, access and circulation improvements, potential refinements to uses within that overlay zoning district area, and things like streetscape, signage, gateway features, those kinds of things.

So who will be doing the market analysis? Is that a local company or somebody from outside the area?

We have a consultant who is, they're based in Ohio, but they also have a local consultant that they're working with, KCI. So it's kind of a combination. I'm not sure exactly who is going to be doing the market analysis piece of it.

Yeah, often we see ones that are in the commercial industry outside of the area, not familiar with a lot of nuances, what are going on.

Thank you. We'll be sure that that gets reviewed sort of with a local eye to make sure that the conclusions that they're drawing are accurately representing what our local dynamic is. So here you see the study area that we're talking about. It's really just that kind of commercial core centered on the 26 and 32 intersection, going a little further north, south, east, and west of that, depending on where the zoning lies. As I mentioned, the approach will include a review of existing conditions and a market analysis. We'll be doing public and stakeholder engagement developing some scenarios for consideration and ultimately arriving at a preferred plan and overlay district arrangement for consideration by you all and the board for adoption. We are trying to make this a rather focused and I'll say condensed project. This is not a full plan update. We're really targeted at looking at the commercial uses within that core of the freedom area. So with that, we have a timeline that'll take us into early next year. We may be pushing a little bit beyond January at this point because scheduling has made it a little hard to stick with the original timeline, but we're generally on track here. The consultant has begun doing their existing conditions review, and you can see here some of the... some of the major milestones in that eight or nine month process. So as far as your role goes, we'll provide you with some regular briefings just to keep you up to date on what the consultant is producing. We'll ask you to review some draft materials. and attend work sessions, which we will which will schedule with you individually. Also, we have a joint work session with the Board of County Commissioners that's anticipated and then a few additional meetings that we'll put out there for your sort of voluntary participation. And then, of course, your typical role of receiving comments from the public and deliberating on them and, uh, making a recommendation to the board of County commissioners. This is a plan amendment process. So it is something that is meant to be led by the planning commission. And then the County commissioners will, um, will receive your recommendations. So, uh, we want to make sure that you all are comfortable with what we're doing and that you have an opportunity to participate to the greatest extent possible. As I said, the consultant has begun their data collection and existing conditions analysis. Our next steps will be to, well, we've already finalized the study area boundary. We'll have some early outreach happening the first week in August that will include a field visit with the consultant, and a public open house meeting that the public is invited to come and share some of their hopes and aspirations for the corridor. There will also be opportunities for stakeholders to participate in small group meetings to provide further input to the consultant. And during that week, we will have the consultant come to brief you at the, I think it's the August 5th evening meeting, and they'll be asking for any priorities that you want to share with them to factor in as they get going. They'll prepare their initial findings and then come back in mid-October to follow up with a second round of, outreach and consultations and like i said i will share the full list of dates and um and meetings and things like that with you in a in a separate email so you can put those on your calendars some of them for sure we want you to be able to participate others will be up to you if you want to attend to either participate or just listen in on what's being said okay i think

Yep, and that is it.

What questions do you have?

Of course I do. So in the beginning, you talked about community and property owner concerns. Is it owners that had their land changed or owners that weren't part of the process, I guess? or that several of us were on the commission when the process was done. And of course, you all mailed stuff out to all the property owners in the area. And multiple ones came back and wanted to change their property. Is it conceivable after their property has been rezoned and some of them have sold that they will be downgraded?

I don't know. So you're talking about zoning. And I think what we want to, of course, zoning follows from the plan. So what we're talking about with this plan amendment is starting by looking at the land use designations and making sure that what the designation is, so whether that's commercial low, commercial medium, whatever, that that is the right designation. I think that's where we need to start. And if there are changes that are suggested by that analysis, then we can kind of go from there in terms of what that would mean for zoning. But I think the the the most productive way to look at this plan amendment is not so much looking back and trying to undo something that happened in the past or correct something that somebody wasn't happy with it's we need to be able to look at what the needs of the community are what the desires of the community are moving forward and then create the the planning pieces that are going to support that moving forward so if there's somebody who thinks that their their property should be designated for something different than what it is now and then possibly rezoned as a result, then certainly they should participate in those discussions and see how the analysis and the deliberations suggest that should move forward.

think and I get that and totally understand I think my question was more towards those that have already different zoning that was changed during that time if they would be changed back to something else you mean when we went from the two zoning districts to the three and there was

perhaps somebody who felt like their property should have been classified something different? Is that what you're talking about?

Not so much. If it's a C1 or a C2 and they come out and say, you know, that doesn't really appear to be appropriate there, would an owner be concerned about it changing what they currently have? Or is that going to stay?

I don't really know how to answer that question. I think there is the potential that there may be recommendations to change things. Which way, I don't know. There's also the potential that the analysis will be done. We'll get the public comments. And the upshot is everybody thinks that the land use designations and the zoning are the way they should be. I don't know how that'll go out. For sure, if there's a property owner in that corridor, they should participate in this process so that they're... they're able to express what they would like to see done for their property and make sure that they have an opportunity to participate in that process.

Okay.

Thanks.

Any other questions? Public comment? Seeing none. Okay. Thanks, Daphne. Thanks. All right, item number six, deferral code changes the cluster subdivision introduction.

Good evening, everybody. Good evening. No, I think this will work. Perfect. So we're here this evening to talk about cluster subdivisions. It's a topic that we've discussed many times over the past. Just as a refresher, what is a cluster subdivision? The concept is to take residential development and cluster it into areas that are more condensed and for a variety of benefits, both to the community and for the environment and so on. There are a couple of definitions here. I'll focus on the one on the right, which is the 2018 Freedom Comprehensive Community Plan that defines cluster subdivision as a means to develop groups of residential uses on a specific portion of a development site in order to provide for reduction of permitted lot size and an increase in resulting open space, environmental or landscape resources, or recreation or other public facilities. So this is something that's in the Freedom Plan as a method of development. And there are a number of positives related to it. Primarily what a cluster subdivision allows for is for a developer to have some flexibility in achieving the development that they are truly trying to achieve. So developers are aware of the market forces and so on. So if you have an R40 zoned property and perhaps some market forces are such that smaller zone properties are more desirable and you have a property that maybe has some environmental constraints, rather than trying to force those one acre lots and utilize some of those challenging areas, you can cluster the subdivision into slightly smaller lots, put them in the developable areas, so you have less construction costs, less infrastructure, and so on. So we've gotten some of the benefits here. So as I said, focus buildings and infrastructure on the buildable portions of lots, and it reduces some of those infrastructure costs. shorter public roads, shorter utilities, and so on. You also can develop a better sense of community with the cluster subdivisions if you're pulling the houses closer together, and you can provide some amenities related to that community, so walking paths and other sorts of amenities that would be managed by the HOA, but it creates a sense of community there rather than all of the lots spread out into one acre lots, that sort of thing. And then there are also environmental benefits. By clustering, you can set aside open space that keeps development away from those environmentally sensitive areas, away from stream buffers. You then don't have a lot of easements that are across people's private property that restrict their use. Instead, you have the smaller lots. They have their lots that they're responsible for, and then you have the open space that's commonly owned by an HOA. So those are some of the benefits. Some of the negative perceptions of clustering is that there's a perception of those smaller lots perhaps being of less value. And then there's also perception of denser development. So if you have an expectation in the community of one acre lot or R40 zoning and you now have half acre clustered lots, there's that perception of increased density of houses being closer together. And if you had envisioned one acre lots and you now have half acre lots, there can be a negative perception there. And then there's also the open space. So the open space that results from the cluster subdivision has to be maintained by an HOA. And then that leads to costs associated to the homeowners and so on. So the question becomes, would you rather maintain a larger lot of your own or have a smaller lot, less maintenance on your own, but pay an HOA fee to take care of the open space? So those are some of the negatives associated with it.

CHRISTIE WOODARD- Chris, just so If they're clustered to half acre lots, that could really only pertain to public quarter and sewer, correct? Yes. Okay.

Yes. All of this is just public water and sewer.

Yes. Actually, I was going to touch on that right now. Yes. The Board of County Commissioners had expressed some concern about cluster subdivisions, but they emphasized that primarily what they're talking about are residentially zoned cluster subdivisions which would be primarily on public water and sewer they're not interested in addressing conservation zoned clusters and we by virtue of how we develop an egg those are essentially clustered also although we don't call them that so we are focusing primarily on residential zoned properties so the I've got a list here of the various issues that when we've had these discussions with the plan with the Board of County Commissioners what kind of issues and concerns they had they relate to what kind of metrics determine the density that these can be developed at the appropriate amount of open space what qualifies as open space What percentage of that should be active open space? So open space is basically where you don't have development. So it can be environmental areas, steep slopes, stream corridors, and so on. But then there's a component in there, our cluster code, that relates to active open space, which needs to be usable for activities. And then what are appropriate amenities? Like if we require amenities as part of a cluster subdivision. And then what's the proper allowable reduction in lot size? So, it's a long list of concerns, and because of these concerns, cluster subdivisions were subject to a deferral. That deferral has now expired. When the deferral was put in place, there were not any active projects that were delayed or subject to the deferral, and at this point, the deferral expired in mid-June. We did hire the consultant who's been working on these other types of uses. They will be looking at cluster subdivisions and providing recommendations and so on. But as we've talked about, There is this state law for early vesting that's occurring in October 1st, and recognizing the resources that we have available, and the commissioners recognized everything that we had on our plates, it wasn't feasible for us to try and address all of these nuance type changes to the cluster subdivisions before October 1st. So essentially what they directed us to do was to look at a couple of big picture sort of ideas related to clusters and I'll be going through those. For your consideration, we'll take those back to the commissioners probably on July 30th and we'll see if they want to make some of these kind of basic changes At the same time, in parallel, the consultant, Michael Baker, will be working on evaluating and coming up with some of these more nuanced type potential changes to the code. But there's no way that those would be in place by October 1st.

Chris, I've got a question.

Absolutely.

About clustering. If you had a farm that was 200 acres, half of it was conservation and half of it was ag zone, can you transfer the conservation zone lot count across to the ag zone, number one, and if the conservation zone was non-buildable land, What do you do about the lot count on that then?

Oh my goodness, you're putting me on the spot here to think of these nuances. Can I get back to you on that and give that some thought? So as I said, we're primarily focusing on residential zoned changes here. We're not touching the conservation zone or the ag zone. So let me give that some thought and I'll get back to you afterwards.

Sure. Yeah, absolutely.

Going back to, yes, sure.

But on R40,000. Yes. Does the same thing apply if there's land on an R40,000 area that's not buildable? Does that count as far as the lot count?

I'll talk about the lot count in a minute. OK. Yes. So going back to 1965 was when the county adopted our zoning codes and cluster subdivisions were allowed as part back in 1965. There have been some minor changes over the years and I'll touch on some of those in a minute. But just as a metric, there have been 68 cluster subdivisions since 1965 and we have about 1,800 acres of open space that have been created as part of those cluster subdivisions. So as I said, there have been some minor changes over the years. But in 1993, we picked that as a good date to as a figured going back 30 plus years as a comparison to some of our recent codes was a good baseline to start with rather than going all the way back to 65. So for your benefit, I have the 1993 code shown here. And then this is our current code. And what I've highlighted are the four changes that have occurred. And these changes occurred in 2022. And I'm going to talk about each one of these. But if you want to compare the codes side by side, these are the 93 and the current codes and the highlights of the four changes. So the first one is probably the most complex and that's basically determining the number of lots that a cluster subdivision can, basically the yield for that subdivision. Prior to 2022 and going back to 1993, what the county required was that we required the developer to produce a conventional plan. So with a conventional layout, see how many lots you can get. And then that was the number, that was the maximum number you could get when you did your cluster subdivision. So we've seen, I think you all have seen several examples of those over the years where when we bring a project to you all for approval to cluster, the developer would show you what the conventional plan was, how many lots they got, and then what their cluster plan looks like. So in 2022, we proposed that our experience was that there really wasn't a need to produce the conventional plan to come up with that amount of yield. And the reason is that when you cluster, you're basically reducing the size of a lot. So if you're proposing a lot that's clustered, and it's 20,000 square feet, and you were allowed 40,000 for, and you're reducing that down to 20,000 square feet, Our code says that that change in size, that reduction from 40 to 20, that has to be put into open space. So you're not creating more buildable land to then increase the number of lots that you can have. Does that make sense? So there really is not a need to do that conventional plan to show how many you could get. Because when you lay out your subdivision and you've reduced your lot size, that reduction has to be open space. And so we were, back in 2022, we were trying to come up with ways of streamlining the process and make things cheaper and easier and so on. And having a developer pay to develop a conventional plan, pay an engineer to develop that just to prove a number and then go for the cluster subdivision was extra expense. Is it a lot of extra expense when you're looking at the number of lots being built? Not a whole lot, but it's something. It's time, it's resources, and so on. We've recognized this, but we understand that this is a difficult concept to truly get. And so this is not a hill that we are willing to die on. If the desire is that we go back to a conventional plan to prove the lot yield, we're totally fine with that. But I just wanted to explain what the logic was of making that change in code. In retrospect, what we put in the code which said that the maximum lot yield is determined by the gross acreage, we probably should have just eliminated that completely. There's not a need for it because as the developer goes through that process of figuring out how many lots they can get and so on, all those things, the non-buildable areas, the roads and so on, they reduce down to what you can develop on and then you've got the number of lots. I think that statement just confuses people that we're allowing some gross acreage there's nobody that can develop the gross acreage of a lot because you have things like stormwater management, your roadways and so on. It's just not possible to get that gross acreage. So this number never gets used, but we replaced the old code with a new code. So we are totally fine if we want to go back to what it was before, but I just wanted to give you an explanation as to what our logic was back in 2022. The second item is the minimum lot size. So prior to 2022, there was no lower limit on how small the lots could get. If you went through the process of the conventional plan and you could come up with 20 lots, you could go as small as you wanted with those. There was no lower limit. What we said is let's set a lower limit of half of what the underlying zoning is. So if you're R40, you can go down to 20,000 square feet lots, R20 down to 10,000 square foot lots and so on. So that's relatively simple concept. In 1993, there was a minimum PARENT PARCEL SIZE. YOU CANNOT CLUSTER 10 ACRES OR LESS. WE GOT RID OF THAT IN 2022. But we recognize that the cluster open space provisions had things like you needed a minimum of one and a half acres of active open space. If you've got a 10 acre or less parcel that you're clustering down, but then we require an acre and a half of to be active open space, that chews up an awful lot of your parcel. So we got rid of the no minimum, but we allowed you all to have the power to adjust those open space criteria. If we want to go back and say, you know what, 10 acres is the minimum and you all don't have the authority to change that, I have no issue with it. And then the fourth item was we required that all the lot yield had to be utilized on the preliminary plan. You couldn't cluster half of your yield and then set it aside and then come back years later and try and do another type of subdivision. You had to utilize all of your yield. And that's basically in addition to the code. So really, those are the four changes that were made in 2022 that had been in place since 1993. And so just wanted to throw those out to you all. You can make any recommendation you like. One thought is that we have the consultant who is working on some of these more nuanced things. You could recommend that we not make any changes right now and we wait till the consultants report. That's certainly an option. If any one of these you feel are important that we roll back to the 1993 version, that's certainly a recommendation. So I'm here to answer any questions then.

So the lot yield, because of slopes and things like that, that's part of this too. And if the total number of lots in the original plan was 20 and only 10 of it's buildable, the 20 lots still remains. but on smaller acreage or whatever.

Yes.

Provided that it still meets the minimum requirements of $7,500, $10,000. 10,000 square feet, 7,500 square feet. And I think that's the two, right? So as long as those two criteria are still met, that's OK. Can't go less than that.

Correct. Right now that we have that lower threshold on how small the lots could be. Yes.

When we do this, are stormwater management areas considered open space?

Yes.

Even though it's not active or it's not, we can't really, you can't, you shouldn't be kicking a ball in there to plan. Yeah. So king of the mountain, maybe, I guess it may be the only thing, right?

Yeah. So, uh, so open space is a very broad term and it's basically anything that's not developed. And so it's all of your environmental features. It's all of your, your, your streams, your steep slopes. Um, it's stormwater management facilities. It's, it's all those things that that's all the open space. Now of that, a certain percentage needs to be usable open space. And so you cannot include those environmental features, those steep slopes and so on. So 50% of that has to be more usable. And then 10% needs to be active, needs to be at a relatively flat slope and so on that you can kick a ball around on and so on and so forth.

So it seems to me that part of the The nuance here is how large of a site does it need to be to qualify for this? I think that ought to be, and again, I don't have an answer. I'm just saying stuff out loud, and I'm sure people in the back will cringe, and that's allowed too. Another thing that kind of, as we've lived with this now for four or five years, Some of the feedback we're getting from our neighbors is, yeah, I pay for the maintenance of the field, which really isn't usable. We can't really play baseball. We can't play lacrosse because if it gets away, it's going to hit a car, whatever. So the open space really isn't that usable. It's just open space, which is nice, but it's not really usable. And then the other thing is when we allow these using common driveways because we're condensing everything, So now I'm paying an HOA fee, and when this road has to get replaced, I'm responsible for replacing my road too. And so it's just, you know, I'm getting cooked here. And so that's the kind of feedback, guys, that I'm hearing from my neighbors who live in these communities. And so I think, again, I don't have a solution to it. I just think it's something we need to be sensitive to as we think through this because, you know, we're doubling down. As a county, we're minimizing our – the amount of infrastructure we have to maintain in terms of linear feed of sewer, water, roads, that's all great, right? Yes. At the same time, when we allow these flag lots and use in common driveways, we're putting the onus of that maintenance on people who also have HOA fees.

For somebody that pays the same amount of tax as the shared driveway.

Exactly. So it's a thing for some of these people. So I don't know that I have the answer, but that's the... That's the push-pull here, I think.

I totally understand. Yeah, and it's really that what is the business model that the developer wants to put forward, and what is it that people want to own? Where do they want to live? Do they want to live on the one-acre lot where they're responsible for all the maintenance and mowing the acre and so on? Okay, great. Do you want to live on the 10,000-quarter acre where you've got a smaller footprint of what you're responsible for, but you've got an HOA fee?

it's Yeah, it's it's choice right did the the last component of this is and Again, we can move on I've asked I've brought this up a couple of times and I would like for us to have some We should be able to have some some data around this too in terms of Okay, so we could have one-acre lots, and I get that it's not assessed like you think it is, Pete, so shut up and take it like a man. But you've got one-acre lots that are assessed. Or we can have one-half-acre lots that are assessed, and then we've got this land that's open space. How is that assessed, and are we as a county able to receive the same amount of revenue on that HOA-dedicated common area as we do on land as if it was owned by and allocated to a specific home? Does that make sense?

Yes.

So, I mean, are we giving up in perpetuity as a county, are we giving up revenue in perpetuity on land that could have been a lot? And instead, it is a common area, an open space that is beautiful to look at. It's great for the pollinators, and I'm all about that. I'm putting plants in like it's my job. For my county, are we giving up revenue? I kind of want to understand that. Again, that's a push-pull here.

That's a great question. I honestly do not know how open space is taxed. I will look into that. But regarding the value of those lots, whether they're half acre or one acre, and assuming comparable houses on them, I believe that it's, I think we've looked at this.

It's very, very minimal difference. I actually had an appraiser look at this for me, and I didn't bring it forward because it didn't prove a point. No, seriously. I was like, okay, I'm dumb and stupid. I live on an acre. I thought I was, you know, I'm an old land man. You know, I won't land under my feet. And I'm out there cutting it like it's my job because it is. Yeah. and I probably won't get a return on it like I thought I would. So I don't think you're necessarily wrong on that, other than it's a square foot calculation in land, but it's really not a big number. And I think Richard said something when we were talking about that a little while back. It's mainly brick, mortar, roof, AC, how many rooms, how many, I get it, I get it.

I would think there's no revenue associated without an owner.

Well, the HOA is an owner.

Yeah, the HOA owns it. Do they pay taxes on it, and what is it? My gut feel is that they do. We don't deal with taxes at the county. That's a state issue. But I will certainly look into it and find out. You're the man. Thank you, sir.

Are there any in the pipeline? Any cluster subdivisions?

No, there are not.

We got time on that. How about that?

Yeah. Yeah.

So from a timing perspective, again, the commissioners wanted us to look at kind of these basic ideas of maybe rolling back to 93 code and so on. And they would want that to be put in place by October 1st. That way if... If a subdivision were proposed on October 2nd, it's vested as per what's in the code, right? So from a timing perspective, I will come back next week for our next meeting. And if there are any of these that you would like to consider, I will have the version of the code. It won't take me very long to write up because it's probably just copying and pasting from 93 to put it into current and we can discuss it further. But I wanted to find out from you all, were any of these four items ones that you wanted to seriously consider basically rolling back or amending back to the 93 version? With the understanding that, again, we've got the consultant who's working on the nuances and all the other aspects of it, that will be coming forward over the next couple months.

Have we had that many people question these changes? I mean, these changes here were made to streamline development, basically. Yes. And save a lot of time going in. I don't know why we would look at going in. I mean, maybe the minimum lot size, but. Yeah, I don't understand it. How about on the commercial side? We hear more questions about the commercial that change than we do on the clustered stuff.

In the text that we revised, there are a couple of mays in there that I would like to either change to shall in its sole discretion or I'd like to get the mays out of there in some way. And this is just my, you know, I think may opens us up to being indiscriminate or um you know i would like us to be more definitive about what we are what we can and can't do there just to create predictability i can certainly look at it that different from shell in error decision in our what we decide well you know there was a in the mixed use portion of the code it says that we may do this if we deem it appropriate and we hung our hat on that portion on that word that we might grant that kind of zoning And we denied a zoning a while back, and somebody took it to the BZA. They got their hearing, and they said, you know, May, they were being indiscriminate. And so they got their zoning. I think it ought to say, rather than May, shall in its sole discretion grant this use, I think it ought to be, we have the authority to do it or not do it. I'm just thinking predictability, and let's not leave it to somebody else to... It's okay. Does that make sense?

It does. Firm enough. We do that in building contracts.

Exactly.

I can look into that. For the builder. So were any of these four, does anybody have any desire to... I'm not hearing a big push on any of them. So I've got a little bit of research to do, and there's another concept that has come my way that, for consideration, I didn't have time to put it into this, but I'll bring that. It's a simple concept. So I'll bring all of that. We can have a final discussion next Tuesday, and then I will take your recommendation to the Board of County Commissioners.

OK.

Very good.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chris. Hold on. Sorry. Public comment.

Oh, sorry. Oh, I'm sorry. Thank you for keeping us here. Oh, it's on the next page. Public comment. We have some.

Linda Alexander, CLSI. We've been doing cluster subdivisions in this county since 1985. We've been working under the 1993. Of course, then it changed in 2022. As a whole, I don't know that we have a problem with these changes. The only major one is I don't want to, we as an engineering firm would not want to have to go back and do conventional on these plans. Now I understand that some people think you get more lots when you do a conventional type of plan and you're questioning all that. When this change, and this may have been long before the board, we've been dealing with this. Every time this comes up, we do an analysis, and we determine that when you do a conventional plan, you have a lot of roadways that you're accounting for. So those roadways take away acreage that would be lot count. So when you actually look at the type of multipliers you get for the actual land use, you're not getting that much, you're not even getting any additional lot yield when you use that gross area because the roadways are so extensive in what you're talking about. So over the years, every time we approach this, the conventional plan, thank goodness, got eliminated at that point because it became this, why are we doing that? Even for the environmental features. Conventional obviously is in our districts Conventional doesn't matter in the conservation zone anymore because on well and septic, you can only ever get eight lots based on the Senate bill, no matter how big you are. So we love the fact that we don't have minimum lot sizes. It would help with some environmental issues and stuff like that, but we really would not want to have to go back to the conventional plan. Just our input. Thank you.

Thank you. You know, I failed to read the speakers. If you haven't done so, you must sign in to make public comment. State your name, address, and talk into the microphone. Comments will be strictly limited to three minutes per speaker. Citizen testimony is not a Q&A session. Questions may be directed to staff after the meeting. If any individual fails to comply with these rules, Planning and Zoning Commission Chair may call the person out of order and may require him or her to leave the meeting. But I saw a lot of familiar faces, so you probably heard that script many, many times. So anyway, I have to say it for public record. Thanks.

Hi, Jason Van Kirk, Elm Street Development, 5693 Trotter Road, Clarksville, Maryland. just wanted to you know the conventional plan i i support what was just said by the engineer before me um you know it it's been a cost of time and money uh for the building community when it was in place but it can't be over emphasized enough that it was also everything that we produce takes time and money for the county staff to review and and that's that's as big of a factor as it is to a cost on us as it is for you guys and and and a staff that is you know, works really, really hard, I think does their jobs really well, but is always, you know, stretched to the limit to do the work properly that they need to do. And so it really was an efficiency for the entire system, you know, not just the builder-developer side of the system. So thank you.

All right. Thank you. Any other public comments? No? OK. Thank you, Chris. Thank you. So it says here we're scheduled for a break.

Yes. Since the next agenda item is to have discussions with stakeholders and so that you can ask them questions related to the age-restricted code, we thought that we would find out how many individuals would like to come and sort of, as it were, sit at the table and maybe rearrange the tables a little bit to facilitate that. So without a break would be appropriate.

A 10 minute break? Does that work? OK. Thank you.

Just real quick before we do that, could I ask if anybody is planning to participate in those discussions, if you could please go ahead and sign up as a speaker just so that we have your name and information correctly for the minutes.

OK. All right. We're on break. OK, we're back in session. Perfect 10 minutes. So item number seven is the deferral code changes for retirement homes and villages in a discussion with stakeholders on the proposed text amendments. So just wanted to lay a little bit of groundwork here. We want the text amendments to land smoothly for the county for the citizens and for you all, the developers and builders. Based on feedback we've received thus far, and we've received quite a bit, what we're going to hear from you this evening will help us to finalize the new code to submit to the Board of County Commissioners. So we take all this into account, and the county commissioners will ultimately decide on the code. I understand the timeline in this whole thing seems tight, and it is. There's a lot coming through the pipeline here. It's a deadline of October 1st, which you say, oh, that's three, four months away. Well, when you layer in all the things that need to happen leading up to that, discussions like this, public comments, revisions, Board of County Commissioner involvement, et cetera, et cetera. That timeline gets sucked up pretty good. So tonight, I think we need to focus the conversation. I will say this again. We have an hour. This is not a public comment session. So there's an hour for you all to talk and answer questions from us. And then we have public comment after that, which we will strictly limit to three minutes because I think probably everybody that there's no public back there hardly anymore. It's all here up here. It's one. Okay. Okay. So I think it would be good for us as a commission here to start with some questions of you so that you can dive into your questions. notes and discussion points and things like that for us to hear. So if I may, I'd like to lead off. I guess with this new, the new text amendments, and I know you've probably all read them, that's why you're all here. And I should say, too, this portion of the meeting is a result of the feedback from you all asking for some more discussion about this topic. And that's why we're here. That's why we're doing this. So that works. We listen. So I'd like to start with this. Where are your pain points in the new code? I don't want to go through the whole thing. code but in here there's got to be some pain points for you all that really you know, irk you and would like to see changed or modified. So let's start there with that. And it's open. So you can jump in and discuss or present however you want to do it. But it's your session. And I hope the commission here has I know they're ready to ask some more questions of you and all that kind of thing, so have at it.

Sorry, I'll just take the first shot anyway. The first thing, Thomas.

We should probably state names.

Thomas Pilon, thank you. St. John Properties, 2560 Lower Baltimore Drive, Windsor Mill, Maryland. You know, the first thing, and you already made reference to it, is this time frame being so compressed. This is a complicated thing that is trying to be put together, and I mentioned it when I spoke during the public comment period last week, but this not having been put through its paces, meaning that whether there's even been any test fits trying to use this draft code is really problematic. We actually don't think it's workable for a couple different reasons, one of them being the use table doesn't even list exactly what types of uses, when I say uses, what types of buildings you're allowed to have, But yet it makes reference to if you're over, I think it's 50 units, you need to have 60% of, a maximum of 60% of one unit type. But in our 20,000 zone, which is what our property zone, it's not even clear that you can have more than one unit type and not even clear what kind of unit type you can have. So things like that give the impression that it's been rushed and to some extent it's been cobbled together. And I appreciate the staff is under extremely tight time frame to try to get this together. But for us, that's a really important point is has this thing really been used to test fit some sites and see if they actually work using this new code? Because if you put something together, I don't care how fast or slow you do it, If it's not actually a workable code, that's going to be a problem. So I think I would just lead with that, and I'll let others take an opportunity. There's a number of things that we would have that would be points that would be concerning to us.

OK. Can I go next? Sure.

Go ahead. Yes, I'm next to Tom. My name is Louis Mangione. I'm with Lures Lane. We have a project called Legends of Lures Lane. And we're the only commercially zoned property that's been affected by this deferral. And big pain point is commercial didn't have a density limit on multi-family age-restricted retirement home. Now it does. It has the same density limit as our 750 and our 10,000, and that doesn't make any sense to me at all. I thought the idea was to put some residential in the commercial to help support the commercial. So that's the biggest pain point. We also have a pain point, little stuff with the design of this idea of four feet between the sidewalk and the curb. And lastly, the indoor amenity open space is an economic issue that's mentioned by you guys. If somebody wants to use a gym, you pay $19, $25 a month and go use it. They're my three pain points. Thank you.

Thank you.

Since we're going around the room. So Bruce Harvey, Williamsburg Homes, 5485 Harpers Farm Road, Columbia, Maryland. The biggest pain point for me, I'm a small builder. We're not going to do projects that are more than 50 units. So you've tried to do some things that's good to exclude 50 units and less. That's good. But there's still items within this that are going to be perhaps tough to meet. and I think you all realize how many projects are less than 50 units. The land is getting constricted in all regions, and so when you get, there's gonna be a lot of projects. So I approached in my comments, which came through as MVIA's comments, things about housing that are important. Most of them have already been emphasized, but just to reiterate some of the pain points, and I'll start with probably the least important which was don't require us to paint curbs, please. I did a project in Annapolis and went and painted the curbs and the residents went crazy and we had to unpaint the curbs. So it's not pretty, it's unattractive, don't do that. In terms of, we've had a lot of discussion about the parking requirements and not allowing two car garages to count as two cars. Very unusual. Doesn't make sense to me. It's actually a good thing to make residents try to park in their garage instead of stuff it full of crap. So I would discourage that from being in the code. And it's a pain point because what you're really saying is I want more parking. Well, that's against what most of us and most jurisdictions are doing these days. They're lessening parking because of the environmental problems with impervious areas and stuffs like that. So we should allow for garages and driveways to be parking in terms of from a builder perspective. The unit mix that Tom mentioned is very concerning because I don't think that's well thought out. I know how it looks good in these big communities that were talked about, but I don't think that can be as strict as what has been described in the code. Just on the architecture itself, I think you have to be careful in terms of there's certainly some good things about requiring certain architectural features, certain architectural guidelines. 512 roof pitch, if you put that in as a minimum, like, okay, we don't want any flat roofs. I don't want any flat roofs because I don't like building them, but it doesn't mean that you're not going to get something in an active adult environment that's going to be modern and look great. So I would not encourage that one. And... You know, just in the, I think we've talked about in terms of the code requirements or the, what do we call these things? Things for 55 plus.

Age restricted.

Yeah, I know, but the architectural inside requirements, those universal design, which Prince George's County now requires for everything, but don't get me going. But just small things like, If we're going to, 36 inch doors as a goal or a requirement as a builder is very hard to accomplish. If you're talking about multifamily, you're really in a tough position. Just to make every door three foot wide tends to limit your architectural design, interior space, and kind of ruins the flow of the home. So a two foot 10 is much easier to accomplish. Most of the other universal design things in terms of active adult has become pretty standard, so those aren't pain points. In terms of the amenities, again, you've done some good things in terms of less than 50 units. I think, you know, like a requirement for a 10-foot wide pathway in any size project sounds... I don't know why you would require that. I think it's more, let's get creative. Let's let our engineers do the work. Let's let the land designers do the work. A 10-foot path could be really great and work well, but just because it sounds good, I wouldn't go there. And again, so those are most of the pain points. And again, I'd really focus on making sure that smaller communities can still be done and not Because you're going to need them. You're going to want them and need them.

I'm curious. When you read the code and you looked at how we defined density and we were doing that on net acreage and then we were doing open space on gross acreage, do you all see that as being... I was trying to kind of sketch out something and how that might work. It seemed to me that we were... double counting some of that land. Did y'all have that same confusion that I had? Or should we have the same definition for both calculations? Does that make sense? Do you understand what I'm trying to say?

Not quite, but I'm curious. I'll take that one. So with the open space requirement, to say that you want to have a certain percentage of the gross acreage to be open space mandatory, And the way that that gets defined is it's essentially all the environmental features. Then it says you can only have a maximum of 50% of your required open space to be those features. That means you now got to double whatever your minimum open space requirement is. And that language is lifted almost directly from just by observation. almost directly from the cluster subdivision regulations. But the difference is when you do cluster development, when you reduce the lot size, the area that you take out of that lot goes to open space. So you end up with some usable area and things that aren't by definition, you know, environmental areas. So if you looked at Howard, you mentioned Howard, if you looked at Howard's requirements, they focus more, they actually focus more on the amenities and that required for like the indoor use space and things like that. But if you, and I think that probably works, but if you looked at it and said, well, like by example in Baltimore County and some other places, they say, well, you need so many square feet per unit of outside area, but you could figure that out without necessarily saying you gotta have 25% of the area, and then you really need to double that to get to your open space requirement. I hope I said that clearly, but I think that that's a very problematic area. We spent time looking at that. We included some calculations or some examples in the comments that we submitted, and I think looking at Howard County's model probably would be a good direction to go. The inside space requirement is lifted right from the Howard County Code, whether that's a coincidence and someone else uses it, But that's exactly the language, the 20 square feet up to 99 units per unit. And then 10 square feet after that is right out of Howard County's code.

So can I ask, do you have an issue with that?

With which?

With the indoor.

No, that seems to make sense. Generally, I mean, others could disagree or agree if they want to. But it's right out of the Howard County code. And I think people in this room are doing these communities in the yard.

Yeah, and I would say, having done it in Howard, mostly it works, but it kind of doesn't work. And again, in the smaller communities, you know, we built like a 500 square foot clubhouse in one situation, which I don't think that's probably the best use of the property.

In Howard County, though, they actually, they focus on that, and they don't require the other, the developers. And I think Jason could probably speak to that better. the developers then figure out what makes sense, you know, speaking to what's the market going to want.

I don't know if you want to talk about that, Jason, at all, but... Yeah, I think my pain point was going to be talking about, first, that 25 percent open space requirement. It kind of double counts, and only 50% being the environmental features means you're creating a bunch of space that is going to be above and beyond where you have a community building and the potential 10% of active open space. So you end up with that kind of blank lawn type area that I don't think it needs to be. And I think you can have the the indoor, the recreation, and you don't need the general open space requirement to to achieve the community design and the amenities that you're looking for specifically on the amenities. I agree with with Bruce as you get as you get super small on some of these and you build these really tiny community buildings. I've done that in Howard County. I don't love the really small one. And in fact, have changed to just making it a workout facility. I've yet to see how that plays with some of these small communities in terms of how it's used, because I don't have those in the ground yet, but that was kind of an angle of trying to make this a more usable space, because otherwise you end up with an area that is really less desirable than than somebody's own unit. If you're holding a small community meeting or something like that, somebody might be more inclined to just hold it in their house rather than in the, you know, tiny community building that looks a little bit like a shed out there, you know, size-wise. We build them very nice, and Bruce does too, and most builders do, but that... I wish Howard County had an exchange option that gave you you know, built amenities outside that allowed you to exchange some of those small community spaces. You know, if you're only having, you know, 25 units, you know, building a really tiny community building as opposed to building, you know, a pickleball court and a bocce court and a few other things and a pavilion and outside that might be more utilized, I think would be – I wish we had that flexibility down there. It should be – It can be thought about here since the code's open and we're talking about those things. And you guys are prescribing, wanting to prescribe some of the outdoor recreational space too, which I think is super important from a livability, a sales standpoint, what the buyers are looking for. And that's why in Howard County, while there's only the indoor requirement, you go through any of our jobs we're gonna have an outdoor component uh as well because because it's it's wanted by that buyer and it helps sell the community um so uh but you know having some exchange between those two could help that flexibility on the size of the community you know going back and forth um you know from large to small if i may ask um

I seem to recall that Howard County also has an open space requirement. I think it's 25% as well on these types of projects. So currently, Carroll County does not have any requirement for open space on age restricted. And Howard County requires the 25%. And so that's where we were kind of getting that idea of 25% being a good number. but then the question becomes how much of that can you push to the environmental features versus more active open and so on, usable open space. And so that's where we borrowed from the cluster split. So it's not just that there's 25% open space, but there is some usability requirement to it.

But if you looked at, and we were just here last week with our project, We tried to measure our project that's in process right now against this requirement, and someone back here will hit me if I get it wrong, but that idea that 25% open space, we can hit that number, isn't the issue. And even if you said what's a reasonable amount, like we have three and a half acres of usable open space there, and we showed you that, what that looked like, and some other areas that are smaller pockets, but kind of the bigger usable areas, it's that It's item 5C under, I don't know what section I'm in here, but on page 15, that 5C where it says, then a maximum of 50% of the required open space may be steep slopes, streams, ponds, stormwater management. Howard County's code actually says, they say those things should be in the open space. And then for the active adult, they say, and they require it to be 25%. You might not have that much environmental areas, but if you do, That satisfies that requirement. And then they look at, OK, well, what are we going to require as far as they, for whatever reason, they focus on the indoor. And they say they want some minimum amount of that. But what they don't say then is that a maximum amount of your required open space can be environmental areas. They seem to acknowledge it as using environmental areas for that and do what you do. We looked at a couple different sites in Howard County. We've not done one in Howard County, but looking at them, you can see that the developers pick and choose the things that they want to do, but they all have a clubhouse or a community building because that's a requirement. But then you'll see pickleball courts, and there was one that had like a – know if it was like a garden or something I was getting the blank I was thinking of the thing you walk to the circle but anyway but anyway so I just think personally I think that that 5c is problematic I think you're gonna get the open space you're looking for and again remember how you're getting to your net calculation you're requiring to take out all those areas So once you do that, and then you say you need another 25%.

No, it's 25% of gross.

Understood that. But what I'm saying is, but then you're saying that your 25%, only 50% of that can be environmental areas, but that's how you actually got down to your net in the first place. So now you've got to take another 25% to hit that requirement of having no more than 50% of your open space be that. And that starts to chew up land really fast. That, to me, doesn't, to be honest, doesn't make sense. But I do think that Howard County's model, if you look at it closely, regardless of whether you like the idea of a small clubhouse, maybe you could put a limitation on that the same way as here. You say, look, if it's going to be something that's de minimis, and do something else. But you got to do something, right? If you don't think it makes sense to have a clubhouse that's less than 1,000 square feet, then don't do that, or whatever the case may be.

chris let me just comment quickly because we just did a community in howard county we met the open space what does happen in many of these communities because you're trying to get you know homes is they're all developed as condos now they're not condos in the traditional sense they're condos in the legal sense And homeowners don't like that. But one of the reasons you do that is to create the open space. So like in this situation, we just did a 63-home community in Howard County. So the lots average about 5,000, 6,000 square feet maybe. And their backyards stop before the end of the property to create open space. Most people would rather have their yard. But they don't. So we make it happen. It does create a condo environment. A lot of people would rather be a true fee simple. I mean, so open space is great, and open space creates other challenges. Because you're going to do things like that, make a lot, which isn't a lot, it's a condo lot, smaller, and then push open space behind it.

Just, Bruce, if I can, the way that they've got it set up in Howard County, though, you can comply with the requirements for the open space. It's workable. I think this isn't a workable model. It's not about whether there should be open space or not. You just want to make sure you get something that works. If you said there was some amount, like I said, if you said, you know, in Howard County, if you weren't doing an age-restricted, they say you're going to pick a zone, R20 zone, Then you have, you know, a couple hundred square feet per unit requirement. Baltimore County does the same thing. And then Baltimore County goes a little further and they parse that down and say, and I can't remember, I want to say it's like a thousand square feet per unit, but 75% of that can be kind of the passive stuff, and then 25% is the more active. Whatever the numbers are, it doesn't matter. But the point is that they're looking at it on a per-unit basis, but they're not saying you've got to claw it out of your usable space. Actually, I think they do their calculations on gross anyway. So anyway, that density calculation. So it's apples and oranges, quite honestly, and I think what we submitted in our letter I think demonstrates it rather well And we took it to the extremes intentionally. I think we said if you had 100 acres and you had 10 acres of environmental area and you do the math there, and if you had 100 acres and you had 90 acres of environmental, you can't even get there. You couldn't do one lot. Because the first thing you have to do is put all the environmental area in there. By definition, that 90 acres is your open space. And it is also, by definition, the environmental areas. That's why you pulled it out in the first place. no more than 50% of that can be the environmental area. So that means you need another 45 acres to offset, actually you need another 90 acres to offset that first 90. It just doesn't work at the extremes. So, Again, I don't think anyone's here saying don't have open space requirements. It just doesn't work. But I do think if you look at Howard County, you could get there pretty quick. Or pick a different jurisdiction, if you like. But we have a saying at our company. We don't innovate. We imitate. Where you can see where someone else already invented the wheel, just maybe a refinement of that.

We may not end the circle, but is it OK if I speak?

Sure, sure.

So I'm one of the landowners around here where we're going to have a 55 plus community coming up. And that was in an R20 zone and that was changed from regular 32 lots to 72 lots. So I'm hearing these arguments back and forth. So instead of saying, okay, we're fighting about how much open space, should it be bigger yards or should it be bigger community space, how about less lots? Then that will create space. We will keep some of Mother Nature intact around us, and we can enjoy it. We're Carroll County. When I first moved here, we said, oh, you live in God's country, and I like that. So I don't want to turn into Howard County.

Yeah, we hear that quite a bit, I think. How about this side of the table?

Sure. Mike Kalanock, JPB Partners. We are partners with Bruce Harvey, so he's touched on a number of items. But it's pretty apparent where the seat we're coming from is a little bit more about scale. We have a much smaller project. And it's not to take away from any of the discussion points except to say, A lot of this text that's being proposed will likely eliminate future infill projects, which is really what we have. We have a six-acre tract surrounded currently by apartments, by single-family homes, and two churches. We put something together by the existing guidelines, and I guess one specific item that really jumps out at us is a provision about, and I'll use a pad, a building pad, and the number of units that you can build on. And we're talking about two-story villas. So there's text in here that talks about you can do up to six units, but it has to be no more than 120 feet. And I don't know that anybody is building a 20-foot wide age-restricted villa these days. The text kind of contradicting isn't the right word, but it just doesn't work, I guess, for lack of a better term. And when you're dealing at the scale we've been dealing with, and you're dealing with a two-story villa, because I think if you look in here, there's some illustrative examples that showed a cluster of nine townhomes, three stories wide. That's not what's being proposed here. You're talking about a 30-foot wide, two-story villas that would have six units. But it's not that all of them are. It's just the way an infill project tends to work. So that's really going to be a challenge for dealing with these. Now, do we have a solution in terms of, you know, if you said, hey, under 50 is the number that's been used, and we're going to deal with projects or call them infill projects under 50 units, don't have an answer for how those might be addressed. But we are developing a project in Frederick County, and there is some flexibility in theirs and how things are being, by way of example, we've been talking about amenities here tonight. And they do have a certain number of square feet. You have to do a clubhouse per unit. But the rest of the amenity package is, when you submit a site plan, we'll address, are you covering enough of active amenities? Or what does a passive amenity package look like? And maybe there's a way to deal with the small projects that us and Bruce and Williamsburg Homes, where if you're under there, yes, there are guidelines you still have to meet, but some flexibility that says we need to look at what you're doing with bioretention ponds, which eat up almost everything in stormwater management. And we're still trying to keep it where we're limiting impervious area. And you have all these limiting factors, and we can get into driveway widths and driveway lengths. So there's just a lot of things that really don't work at a smaller scale, and so we struggle. But one in particular is what I mentioned, the six units at 20 foot wide, that just doesn't work. We'd like to see that at, assuming most people are going to do 28, 30, even 32 foot units, that you can do the six. And one last comment I'll make, sorry, is there's a great project immediately next door to us in Urbana that was done. NV is the builder, Woodlands of Urbana. And there's a lot of reference to surrounding counties and a project specific to Frederick County that they're using as a guide. woodlands of urbana really meets what the prior rules were for most of carroll county including driveway lengths with you have about 10 feet between clusters of units you certainly have more than four units which you would be limited to if you stuck to the 30 foot wide but i guess i'll pause there thank you

If I could ask a quick question. From an industry-wide perspective with age-restricted model and villas, townhomes, villas, and so on, what is an industry normal width? Is it 30 feet?

You're talking Envy Homes. It's 28 feet.

They're the biggest builder in the area.

Okay. I mean, the only thing I'd add to that is that we are also doing elevator towns in a 24-foot townhome, and it's actually being received very well by buyers, and it comes in at a slightly lower price point than the 28-foot villa, and it kind of – stratifies that a little bit, gives some lower price points for other buyers and and gives a different living experience. You know, if you don't want to live on the same floor as the kitchen and the TV room and all the other things and you want to be able to go up to bed

and somebody else still be around i think it provides a an appeal in that regard okay has anyone to answer that question if you know 30 foot 28 foot at six you need to be 180 feet so that's that's kind of the point that people are saying is you've got to find that that fits yeah right right is whether is it what's the limiting factor is it width or is it number of units and and so if

If there's a desire that it's only 120 feet, then it sounds like you're at four units.

Is there a reason for the 150 feet?

120, whatever. That's for discussion as far as the size of these things.

I will say that we've had some feedback from the community that it just looks like row homes in Baltimore. We don't want to be that. We would rather see two, threes, and fours, not sixes and not fives. So yeah, that's the pushback we're getting from the community, is that when you drive in there, it's just like, goodness gracious, this is a wall of of accommodations. And then, too, when you have a garage door and an opening, the walk-up to your house, and then you've got another garage door, it basically, you've got room for natural light on the first floor through the first half of the condo that you're buying. You basically don't get any natural light from the front of your home. And they're frustrated by it. Does that make sense?

Doesn't the width have a little bit to do with fire and EMS, though, too? I thought something about distance from curb to the back of the building or something, I thought.

Well, in Carroll County, the whole state requires that residential units be fire suppressed. And you can go to hose length on this 450 feet from the pavement. I think it's 150 feet to the front door. Otherwise, it'd be 50 and 150 if you didn't have suppressed units. I don't think that's necessarily the limiting factor as such. It's a good question, but I don't think that's necessarily the limiting factor. All right, I think that comment, though, is if you're saying six and the standard is 30, something's out of balance there. Just maybe to go back to two things, something that Bruce brought up early, and it's a comment that we included in our comments, written comments that others may have as well. not confusing ADA requirements with universal design requirements. Just to be clear, the universal design brings some of those elements, but it does not go to that point of if you have areas of public accommodation and things like that. That's an important distinction to make. So just making sure that the intent is to meet universal design requirements. And you may have seen what Howard County has. They actually have a stratified required suggested and other possibilities or whatever it is. Um, but just to be clear what you're looking for when you're talking about the age restricted community, um, as opposed to, uh, where you have like a multifamily setting or something like that, and there's different requirements.

I'd follow on with that. Um, completely agree. Just, and as we look at the definitions of, of, you know, uh, age restricted home and age restricted community, it says, She'll include accessibility and other age-friendly features. Accessibility is lowercase, not defined, but some people want to call that ADA. I want there not to be any confusion as to what it is we're trying to achieve here, which is it's an active adult, but you want to have the universal design features for people to be able to age in place. Accessibility just is something that gets very misunderstood by pretty much everybody. I don't know if we all agree on that.

It's a term of art. I mean, it really is.

Yeah, it really is. So having that in the definition versus being a little bit more specific in the definition, I think, would be positive.

OK. Interesting.

I think one of the other things, just that idea of being careful as to how prescriptive you want to be. That idea, and Chris, you kind of talked about it some last week, of somebody putting forth, here's what we're proposing. And as the planning commission, you see that. And you either say, OK, we like it, we don't like it. And it's documented on the site plan. And you move on. But some of the things, like you talked about the 10 foot wide path, and sometimes that doesn't work. We built a 3,300 unit mixed use community in Baltimore County. And we put a shared use path along the main road in lieu of a standard sidewalk, it's eight feet wide. And that meets the needs of the community. And that's a 3,300 unit subdivision. So again, those things, as you say, let the engineers, let the landscape architects and that think about how to do these things. And then when they bring it forward, if you look at it and you're like, something doesn't feel right or it feels out of whack or whatever. But I think letting the developer, the builder, even the end user kind of decide what's reasonable kind of makes sense. So just again, just be careful how prescriptive you want to be. So you might, well, anyway, yeah.

Sure, you all have done marketing and research. Do all of the buildings, do people want to have all those amenities? I mean, is it something that they want pickleball courts and clubhouses and swimming pools?

You guys would be better suited to answer that, to be quite honest.

No, they don't. They certainly don't want pickleball courts. They don't want walking paths behind their house either. They like the people walking on the street. We have somebody that's calling all the time that people are walking on the walking path behind their house. And they all don't want to use the gym. And there might be five or six who want to go play cards or marjan, if I'm saying that name right. And the amenities, truthfully speaking, If you give me more density, I'll give you newer amenities. But there's also the market determines the stuff you have to have. You have to have things out there. And that's what all of us will put those in because people are going to buy for that, whether it's or I'm against the pickleball because of the noise, tennis maybe. But anyway, I hope that answered your question. And nobody wants to pay more money because the HOA fees keep going up and up and up all the time.

I'll give you an example from the commercial world. When a number of years ago, when you started hearing about LEED certifications, we sat internally and had a conversation and Ed St. John said, we're going to do LEED certified buildings because I think the market's going to demand that. And in particular, where we found that was, and we don't do tons of government leasing, but where we're working with GSA, They're looking for those types of things, and so you score better and stuff. So we baked into our building certain things because we thought the market was going to require it. Nobody was telling us we had to do it. It just was a good decision. And so Lou's point about, you know, I mean, I was thinking when I formed Pickleball first started really becoming a thing, I kept thinking about racquetball. How many of us were playing racquetball in the 80s, you know, and even maybe in the late 70s? And now you don't hear about that so much, right? So it's one of those things where these things do tend to come and go with the times. But I think, again, the communities can decide to change that later if they choose to. But the builders and developers are trying to decide what is it that's going to help sell a community. And Jason and I were talking the other day, and he used a term. I think he mentioned the word pace, but I had heard them use the term velocity before. Can we get these units up and going and sold? And there's a good reason to want to be able to do that, not just to get the home built, but it gets construction out of your community faster and things like that. So I think the builders and the developers think about those things very extensively. I don't think you have to be worried about whether they'll bring those things or not. It's an opinion, but I think that's the case.

I mean, I think it would go back to some of the, you know, it's that balance between prescriptive and wanting amenities. I think buyers, just like most of us, are very different. So there's people, there's five out of, there's 10% of the people that are going to use the gym that you created all the time. and 90% aren't. So it's a variety. There's a lot of people that are going to play pickleball, and a lot of people are going to be mad because of the noise. Those are very difficult choices. I think the biggest issue brought up is cost, and that is a balancing act of how much is that HOA fee, how much is that conduit fee. So it's tough, and I think it changes as to what each... the seniors wants to do some do want a place to go read place go cards so in general i think so far the indoor spaces are used pretty well they're certainly good for for reading i mean for meetings and for residents to get together but it not everybody uses is the easy answer

One of the things we haven't touched on yet, and you mentioned you didn't necessarily want to go through it line by line. We would actually welcome that opportunity. And just as a sidebar, a couple of years ago, Anne Arundel County decided to update its signage code because of a Supreme Court case that talked about basically freedom of speech, and they had provisions in there that called signs too specific of things and such. I said I was invited to sit on a work group, and there was probably at least this many people at the table. We met for two hours at a time. I think it was two times a month for four months, I think it was. So eight meetings of two hours apiece to just look at the sign code. And that legislation then move forward. It got to the county council. And there were comments and things like that. And they probably made some tweaks to it. But essentially, you had the stakeholders came together and got something that really worked. So just that opportunity to make sure that you're kind of getting it right and that thoughtful process. And along that line, and using the word process, one of the things that really would need to be baked into this is that idea of how do you, you know, when you say you're not going to use a gross area anymore, to figure out how many units, what your density, your max density is, you've got to figure out how you're going to get to that net number. And we mentioned it last week when we were here. We're 14 months into a process. And that was the first time you all had the opportunity to, well, actually, technically the second time But it was really the first time that we had an opportunity to be in front of you all to see what the number of units was proposed to be and things like that. That's when we were told how many units we could go forward with. And as it was discussed last time, we can't come back and ask for more units than that. But the ability to get to that number faster. And when Chris was talking about there's certain things that you already know, but there's a couple of things that you don't already know. And our project that we were here with last week Even the existing floodplain, there was not a FEMA floodplain, if I'm using a term I'm not familiar with, but there was not a FEMA floodplain on our property, but we had to calculate it. And to do that calculation, we actually, the London Fog property had an old stormwater pond that didn't even have calculations anymore. We had to get permission from the property owner to enter the property, survey the property, and then survey the pond itself rather, then do the modeling that's required to figure out how that thing is functioning as a stormwater management pond. And then we were able to calculate and do our floodplain calculations and things like that. And that's just to get the existing floodplain. So that can be a several-month process of getting through all that information. So at a bare minimum, you'd want to make sure you have in your process the ability for someone to come forward early. I'd encourage you to stick with gross calculation But if you're going to do net, put something in your process that allows someone to get to you early before they've laid out an entire site so they know what they're working on as far as laying things out. I think that's going to be super important. There's probably other process things, but that's the one that really jumps out at us as being problematical.

I'm coming up on about 10 minutes left in the hour. So any other thoughts? Or Tom, you can keep on going.

Before Tom does. Go ahead. I want to come back to the commercial zone and me and the lone wolf up here. I think you should please consider that a lot of these comments don't apply. Same to our zone, especially we're multifamily. We didn't have a density before, and we spent money, we submitted plans, we paid fees, and now this has been changed on us. But if you're gonna use a density for commercial, put 20 units per acre. If you wanna go keep going back to Howard County. But I'll see my comments in writing. Thank you for the time. Thank you.

So I have another question. The 10 foot wide pass, what is a reasonable number?

but kind of depends on what you're going to use it for. No, no, I'm serious.

Old people walking, how's that?

Yeah, for old people, well, I'm old people based on this definition, so for me, walking. But no, I mean, if you're not going to use it for bicycle, right, you're not using it for that type of level, and maybe it's a six-foot-wide path or something like that. My only point is you should be looking at what that is, but we have a shared use path, which by definition means It's not horses, but it's bikes and pedestrians. And in the middle of a mixed-use community, it's eight feet wide, and it meets the requirement. It meets the needs of the community. I'll say that. So again, I would just say don't put those numbers on there. If you want to talk about the types of things that you could bring in or something like that, I don't know. But again, I'm concerned about it being overly prescriptive in general.

Does that answer your question? I would agree with that as well as recommend taking the holistic view of the surrounding area as far as continuity. Us again, JPP, are doing a small six acre site where a 10 foot wide shared use path may not work within that community. So I would just view the site specific.

If I can just, I think we mentioned this last week, but I just want to re-comment on it, but the language in here that talks about the fire apparatus access road, as far as the internal part of it, not necessarily a concern, It says right now, from the firehouse to the building. And that could require someone to go off site and do something, even in a public road or something like that, meet some requirement there. I don't think it's the intent. So we were suggesting, and it's in our comments, that you take that from the site, the limit of the site. Because if you get into it otherwise, it's kind of an APF, off site mitigation requirement. And I'm just not sure that that's what you really want to do.

Do any of you have any other comments about the EMS or the fire recommendations that are in this code with the turnarounds?

I will simply say that that section of the code applies to the whole county. Currently, that section 91 of the code applies to the entire county. So once you put that requirement in there, it's going to apply to everything. I mean, it's just talking about residential would apply to the entire county. That section currently talks about fire supply, but that would apply to everything. So it's something that at least I think about as to whether that's the intent or not. We haven't talked about grandfathering here, and you've heard us say it a few different times. We do think that there really is a need for when you're changing a code as substantially as you're doing this, I think you really need to be thinking about grandfathering provisions and what those would look like. And we'd really encourage you to put some thought into that and make sure that that's included in whatever you would send up to the commissioners for consideration.

To that point, Tom, and everybody here, I'd love to hear how long you guys, and I've heard it, but again, I've been at this. We've been at it with our small infill project since 2021, going down the rules and everything potentially changes.

2021 as well, yeah, over five years. Yeah. Yeah. You got people that are really deep in a process, have spent a lot of money, and quite honestly, followed the rules that were placed before them. And again, to have something this significant of a change, you really, really need to be thinking about grandfathering provisions.

OK. Any other questions from up here? Chris, any questions? Any further comments? We've still got five minutes left, so it's not going to be on the three-minute clock.

So there was, I'm sorry, we just got a whisper.

I'm sorry, repeat?

So the codes, go ahead, Chris.

Yeah, so we are posting those on our website. And we can talk after. I know you've got some other questions. So I promise I'll stick around as long as you like to talk. And yeah, I can point you to where we're posting all of these changes on our website so you can review them. And we welcome your comments. Yeah.

I did have, I'm sorry, one additional thing. I was trying to check my boxes here. And it whispered in my ear. But the zero step entry, the idea, the universal design requires a zero step entry. So just to be clear that it's, the requirement isn't trying to say that every entry into a building would be zero step. You see it where typically you can get that to work in the garage without a problem. SITE CONSTRAINTS MAY LEAD TO THAT BEING A REAL CHALLENGE IN SOME OTHER PLACES. AGAIN, THINKING ABOUT WHAT UNIVERSAL DESIGN REQUIRES VERSUS CONFLATING THAT OR CONFUSING THAT WITH ADA REQUIREMENTS.

YOU MENTIONED THAT. I WAS CURIOUS BECAUSE SOMEBODY ELSE HAS MENTIONED GARAGES AND THE ZERO STEP. Anecdotally, it was my understanding that garages are often set lower than the surrounding house for carbon monoxide issues. I'm not up on building codes. Is that a building code requirement? So a zero step would actually be contrary to that?

In general, it's really a construction issue and how do you set your floor trusses, especially if you're doing basements. So if it's a slab home, You're not going to have that situation. But if you're doing a basement, which many of us do, because everybody who comes in Maryland to 55 plus, they had a basement before. And where am I going to put all my stuff? So generally, because of how you're building it, it's easier to make the garage a zero step than it is to make the front door. But the real issue is, how flat is your land? That's the real issue. And especially in villas, as you're going downhill, it can be very challenging.

OK. Thank you. We had somebody in the back.

We prefer two entries, actually, if we can get it. But it doesn't always work.

Good evening. I'm Eddie Rook, Fire Chief of the Sykesville Fire Department. Been there since 2000. Fire Chief since 2010. I've heard some of the comments and we talked about the roadways and the widths and stuff like that. And that's some of our concerns is the access to these neighborhoods. Some of the neighborhoods we do have problems with. In my 26 years as a full-time code enforcement fire investigator in another county, We must apply these codes practically, so they work for the developers, residents, and our first responders on the ground. There's a couple neighborhoods out there now, Spoko. A couple weeks ago at the community center, Spoko and a couple of the neighborhoods, but Nell's Acres is one of them. They have 20-foot roads, but there's no parking in that neighborhood. And there's parking on the roads. There's going to be some issues. Convenience, if people want to park in front of their house or they don't have the driveway space or they have more than three or two cars, that's going to clutter up some of the driveways that we need to get into. Stoning Creek Apartments, that's an existing building. It's a rather large building and I understand the sprinklers and I think the gentleman here said it was a 450-foot stretch, but we have no access. We have access to one side of that building. Given the nature of that structure, we have some non-ambulatory people, people in wheelchairs on the third floor. If something were to happen, and we have to take them out by ladder truck or ladders, we can't get to the back of that building. So there's some things to think about when we talk about that stuff. I know collaboration works when we work with developers, work with the planning and zoning. The Warfield complex was a perfect example from that. They reached out to me the first day, and we worked on that for I don't know how many months through emails, through phone calls. If you drive through that neighborhood, they have the 20-foot roads, they have offset parking, they have the turning radiuses. In our eyes, that was a beautifully designed neighborhood that allows us complete access to that development. Um, I understand the fire code has room for interpretation, but we must plan for how these developments, developments operate in the rural world, not just on paper. Um, we, as the fire department would love to be involved with the process very early on and not way down the road.

Thank you. Thank you.

Okay.

So if I may, as far as, as process, I greatly appreciate you all coming out and providing feedback and input to the commission. This is a fast turnaround that we're trying to get these things pushed through and discussed to the greatest extent possible. We're trying to keep you all as engaged as is feasible. In order to meet the timeframe that's been put before us, we will be discussing this further with the Planning Commission tonight and then also next Tuesday. And of course, you all are welcome to come and listen to those discussions and make public comment. We will then be taking it to the Board of County Commissioners on July 30th as sort of an introduction. And we're going to be looking for them to schedule the public hearing. We anticipate that public hearing will probably be September 3rd. So that essentially gives us the month of August then for at the direction of the Board of County Commissioners to have further discussions. And so however they want to have further discussions, whether they want to get a group together and talk, whether they just want to talk to staff, it's entirely up to the board. But we have essentially the month of August for further discussions. writing comments. We've received a lot of good letters with a lot of good comments. We're trying to incorporate those in into our discussions. We greatly appreciate those as well. So we're making every effort to get as much feedback from folks. We had a public meeting. Some of the planning commission members were there. I think a couple of you were there last June 24, I think it was, at the senior center. So we got a lot of good feedback from the general public. So now we've gotten some feedback from you all specifically. We welcome comments when we go to public comment here and at the end of the evening. So we're making every effort to get as much feedback as possible so that the Planning Commission can make informed recommendations, and then the Board of County Commissioners can make informed decisions on all of this.

so just want to say thank you and and we're we're looking to get as much feedback as is feasible in the time we've got yep and i on behalf of the commission we thank you we really appreciate the feedback we took a lot of notes like i said earlier we do listen so we're trying to make something a product you guys talk about products all the time we're trying to make a product that is you know solves it serves a lot of people serves a lot of differences and and we think we can get there but there's a lot of work to be done so with that i'm going to change the uh yeah this is a comment maybe

Did there were a couple people out there?

Yeah, we're going to do public comment now. I was just going to say, now you're on the three minute clock. So if there's any public comment and you haven't signed in, please sign in. The speakers must state their name, address, and talk into the microphone there in the center of the room. Comments will be strictly limited to three minutes per speaker. Citizen testimony is not a Q&A session. Questions may be directed to staff after the meeting, as Chris has so graciously volunteered. If any individuals fail to comply with these rules, Planning and Zoning Commission Chair may call the person out of order and may require him or her to leave the meeting. So with that, public comment is open. Step up to the mic.

so i'm michelle steele i live on long meadow 6205 long meadow drive my property is adjacent to mr bloom's here and we bought our house in 99 we were told 32 half acre lot single family homes so we always knew we had an easement that would go down between our two properties that would go out to this community this single family community so when the zoning got changed to 72 over 55 community well when it was proposed my concern was like the fire chief the roadways so long meadow rolling view is a very narrow road we've had multiple emergencies where they've had trouble getting equipment in and out of long meadow so i stand to lose my front property for the easement and if there's this community that goes in and they need to make roadway changes, we could possibly lose roadway along Longmeadow, right? So my concern was traffic. And so when I had emailed Mr. Rothstein and also Mr. Hein about some of the roadway, I wanted to see the traffic study. So when the traffic study came, which is three years old, by the way, and I really think it needs to be redone. There was no traffic study northbound coming on to Longmeadow. So I'm going to have a road going into Longmeadow into this brand new community where I'm going to have houses like literally in my backyard. But there was no traffic study done for northbound coming into Longmeadow from 26 from Liberty Road. So I really think that that needs to be done. I think and I think we need a different company to do it because the company that they use traffic concepts is predominantly for commercial. It's not it's for It's commercial. It's like restaurants and gas stations. It's not necessarily residential. So I don't agree with the traffic study that was done. And when I expressed to Mr. Hine that I thought that it needed to be redone or that I disagreed with it, I was told that I could pay for an individual one myself. So I don't think that's the case. So I am concerned about the children that walk to Oklahoma. you're gonna have 72 homes I don't know how many 55 and over that are actually retired I'm 53 and I'll be working probably till I'm in my 60s you've got to have two cars per house minimum you could have children over the age of 18 living with you as i do i have three children over the age of 18 that live and work and go to school that's more than two cars per household and so i'm concerned with them getting in and out of longmeadow i was told that the idea was that they would pass longmeadow on 26 go up to georgetown and come in around the back and i don't know who would do that i wouldn't do it you know people cutting through to go to the new wendy's so that's it okay thank you

Anyone else?

Good evening, my name is Paul Pocus. I live on Rolling View Drive. I'm trying to wrap my head around a zoning change that would allow our 20,000 to have 72 townhomes placed in it. Definitely changing the character of the neighborhood. Just not sure where your thought process is on this. We've been dealing with this for over 10 years. That same piece of land is zoned R20,000 for a reason. It's two homes per acre, not 72 age-restricted houses. I would like for you to just take into consideration the character of the neighborhood before you make your decision. Thank you.

Thank you. OK. Any more public comment?

I guess I can stand up. I'm really part of the table. Yeah, could you please stand up? So I just, listening to this, it just occurred to me in terms of when a road does get built, and it sounds like that will be the case, just to say Longmeadow is not that wide, and we actually had two fires in the time that we have lived there, and some of them were fatal for each house, and I'm just concerned if the size of the Roads would have to be appropriate in order to get that. I know the last time they had difficulty Getting to the houses that were burning And that would probably because they would have to go around the bend to get to a new development That would possibly be even less ideal Okay.

Thank you Any further public comment All right, seeing none. Thank you all. Thank you. Appreciate it. Very approval. Approval.

All right, item number eight. We need a minute.

Do you want to reconfigure for a moment?

Yeah, do you want us to reconfigure back to normal? Five minutes.

units okay we're back in session five minutes again right on time it's a body clock you know um so item number eight is deferral code changes retirement homes and villages we continue um that review where we left off uh last meeting We have 45 minutes.

So we're going to pick up where we left off, which was at the... kind of the meat of the age-restricted section that's being proposed as a separate section. And this is talking about density and unit mix requirements. And in fact, the remaining four sections, B, C, D, and E, is really the heart of what we're talking about, the heart of what some of the comments were that you just heard. So this is, we'll just dive right into it. Section B talks about how you would arrive at your maximum density for age restricted communities and homes. And then also this idea of providing a mix of unit types. You can see some of the rationale there and some of the the summary comments that we received. I will note that on the density side of things, there are a lot of jurisdictions that don't really offer a density increase for age-restricted homes unless there are certain things that are provided in exchange for that. The eight units that is suggested for age restricted communities is. Similar to what some surrounding jurisdictions allow for, but it's really, I think the intent from the consultant was to put a number out there and begin the conversation. For age-restricted homes, that is a slightly different calculation because of the different building typology. So that would be one dwelling unit for every 3,000 square feet. That's what we have right now, essentially. And then there is an additional provision there in case you had a situation where somebody wanted to do something that was a little bit of a combination project where you would have some multi-family or some multi-story component in addition to your

your traditional uh age-restricted community type homes um for unit mix i'm sorry before before we move on from density so this is the the topic of density is is one of the primary topics that's um that's been raised and and for discussion and and i've been thinking a lot about this and there's um we're actually trying to to balance maybe some conflicting goals here. One of the things that we've been talking about in general for the whole master plan process has been affordability. And when we start talking about the business model of a community, what we're discussing here is one site where there's a management company that owns it and the condominium model, and there are various amenities and so on, and people have to pay those HOA fees and pay for those amenities and so on. And what we're talking about, a lot of what Michael Baker presented were ideas for amenities and how do we make these more, right? They're all costs associated with that. And one of the concerns we've heard about one of the example projects is that there are very few amenities, but the townhomes are already $750,000 a piece or whatever. So if we start adding in all these amenities, how are we driving those costs up? So are we actually working against one of the primary tenants that we're trying to accomplish here, which is affordability. So then you start looking at the I think one of the one of the developers that was here actually mentioned it is that and a couple of them alluded to people aren't interested in a whole lot of amenities. So then the question becomes what is the benefit of that business model where you have that site owned by a corporation that's providing all these amenities that people can enjoy but you have to pay for. So is that business model even something that is something that we should be pushing? You can have an age-restricted subdivision. I think when we started off the presentation, I gave an example. We have several of them around the county. where it's from a business perspective, it's marketed as age restricted, but they don't get any benefits as far as increased density or anything like that. It's just the business model that they want to present. And there's no corporation, it's an HOA owned. It's just, it's in the covenants and they don't have to address the school APFO. But as far as density, they follow the underlining zoning. So if it's zoned R20, they're building R20 units. And it's just a regular subdivision that they age restrict. And so when we have these discussions on density and amenities and so on, which direction do we want to push? Which direction is more important? establishing the community where there's a corporation that provides the amenities that, but in order to do that, they need the increased density, or is it more important for us to maintain the character of the surrounding neighborhood and the community and maintain that density?

I don't think there's a yes to the question or no to the question. But I think the thing that's troubling is that we are granting density. And in the examples that we have thus far, they've been pretty much failures on a lot of fronts. They're sold. And our friends in the real estate business will say, hey, they all sold. We've also got people that are selling them for a loss right now, $20,000 losses, because they want out and they realize it's broken. It's not working, and they want out. And so we don't want to repeat it. Whatever we did, we know that that's not it. It's sort of like obscenity. I don't know what it is. I can't define it. Don't ask me. But I know when I see it, right? We know a mistake when we see it. And we made a mistake there. And it's not just one, but if we're going to grant these densities, then there needs to be some benefit to the community that is either created and the community around it. And I don't know how we find that balance, guys. And again, I think that's where... That's where we're all kind of struggling. I'm struggling because, you know, a $500 HOA when you still don't have use of the clubhouse is absurd. Or a $300 or $400 HOA when your AC is not working, as is the case in Liberty Place. And we haven't even talked about that. It's a mess down there. Those people are... It's a mess. So it's a good question. I don't have the answer for it. But if we're going to give bonus density for age-restricted houses, it ought to be a flipping good product. And just cramming them in there six in a row to where it looks like a flipping fortress when you dive down the road, There's nothing aesthetically pleasing about it. It doesn't fit in with the neighborhoods that stare at it. And that's the pushback we're getting from the community. Anyway.

I think what we heard in that last discussion, we heard a lot about Howard County, Howard County, and Frederick County. And their model works for the developer, works with communities. And I see in here that Howard County has eight units per net acre. Net acre. I think that would work here. But I also understand, and I agree with what Peter's saying, I think that for a 55 and over community, um this is me i want quiet space um i don't need pickleball basketball tennis all that other i can get someplace else i can go to the high school and play basketball outside and all that stuff i can go to golf course at turf valley and play there and all that stuff i said that for a loop But yeah, I think it's a market-driven thing and it sounds like right now the market doesn't have a real appetite for a lot of amenities. Now, it may be different, maybe there are upscale 55 and over communities that you put those you could have those things and you're going to and people know they're going to pay for it so affordability is not an issue okay but for the most part if we're we're paying attention to affordability we should just i i would you know just go to light if any amenities i really don't think they're important and that's my opinion yeah i

I think the reality of affordability is out the window to begin with.

I agree with that.

The land cost for a developer to buy it is out there. Then they've got to go through having it developed with the And the construction just keeps adding and adding and adding. So regardless of what we do, it's going to be up there. But I see a lot of people coming from Howard County because they don't like Howard County anymore. and they don't like all the restrictions, and so they like to come here, but I'm not hearing, I gotta have a pool, I've gotta have pickle courts. It's wide open space that's limited, because I don't want to do a lot of yard work. So it's give and take, and I think that some of the density makes sense that we're looking at here.

I'm sorry, real quick. The density that we've thrown in here, the eight units per net developable, I went through the exercise of looking at all of the projects that are in deferral and some others that are done and so on. That density is not going to reduce the number of units for any of them. What's interesting is all of the projects that are being deferred have very little environmental and other types of things that would reduce the net developable area. The one exception is the Northern Baty projects, the Overlook. That's, if I remember correctly, is about 58 acres and 40 of it is developable. But even using that metric, the 40 acres of developable times eight you're you're well over what they're proposing so that eight number is not going to restrict any of the projects now that being said i don't know what the right number is we had to start with something to start the discussion but what i'm sort of hearing is that if the amenities are not the key driver here

then what are we getting by increasing that density exactly and and again i don't i'm not so sure i i think and for a guy who wants certainty this is going to come up i think what the way it ought to be written into the code is that it it it the amenity package must be proposed when it's submitted And so that we know what it is. And so the people buying it knows what it is. Because we, again, we've got an issue where somebody didn't do what they said they were going to do. And now they're just trying to say, oh, we'll give you each $1,000 and we'll go away and we'll call it even. That doesn't work from our process, by the way.

And it doesn't, it shouldn't work.

So I applaud you for that. So thank you. But I think, you know, there's room here to let the market decide. But leaving it at nothing is not the answer either. So I will say this too. I do think there ought to be an indoor space for these communities that when they're above a certain number of units, there ought to be an indoor space. Otherwise, where are they going to have the HOA meeting? I mean, seriously, I mean, it's a real simple, if you want to play, if you want to have a bridge club, where are you going to meet? Maybe you do it in somebody's house. I mean, you know, you don't, I don't know. I actually have no preconceived ideas as to what they do. But there ought to be some combination of outdoor space, indoor space. let let the developer tell us what it is at a minimum of an indoor space of a certain number of square feet per unit and have a minimum of that and then let them decide, you know, is that a workout facility? Is it just a room you can rent so you can throw up a retirement party for a friend? I don't care.

But to your point, you know, that needs to be part of the initial plans that are submitted. Yeah.

Yes. As far as indoor space goes, I mean, for me, my wife and I, we used to live in the community was done very well. We used to live many, many years ago in Jackson Heights. If you're going out 116, a little bit past Spring Grove, it was a great community. You had single families, you had the senior quads, and then you had the townhouses. and um so it was it was my uh jay and myers community so anyway when they went to when they finished building and they went to go transfer the hoa to another company they were going to all the covenants and originally there was a clubhouse that was built so then the town came in and said well you can't transfer until you build the clubhouse which They're like, okay, where all your HOA fees are going up. But the thing about indoor spaces is that everybody fought it. Nobody used that clubhouse.

Nobody.

Because the community itself was so large that when you had your HOA meetings, there was a church right up the road that had a big church hall. That's where we'd have to have them at. And the only thing about it is that nobody used that clubhouse. I mean, that's what it was. Nobody used it because it didn't have enough parking, it didn't have anything like that for the community. It's like, well, people rent it for parties.

Well, that's a good point, too. Nobody rented it for parties. Because where we're talking about, you know, look, the communities we're talking about are really isolated, restricted to freedom area. There's plenty of access to other amenities that aren't on your property. There's plenty of places to go to eat. There's plenty of places to play sports or whatever. Go to the church halls. Make a donation to the church. If the HOA wants to have a meeting, they could arrange that.

Stuff like that.

an interesting point if i could bring up real quick we're talking about retirement home in villages which is 55 and older i can tell you and it was interesting you mentioned about having a location for you know hoa meetings whatever we have in carroll county since i know one specific one that goes back to the early 2000s a development that was town homes and single-family homes they had nowhere for their hoa to meet they met off-site So even not being a retirement community, we have properties within our county that are built in that fashion without any real amenities, didn't have a pavilion, had a playground, but nothing like that. And again, they're HOA-met off-site. So it's not... just these types of projects. And I don't know where that stands at this point with new projects of that type. But this is going back 25, 26 years. So it's falling into all the categories. So then the question is, you know, it's sort of like when the various developers were talking about you know they don't want to pay for you know the residents don't want to pay for gym the residents don't want pickleball or so then the question is do you as the hoa not you know miss kirkner mentioned the affordability factor do you as the hoa community members want to have to pay more and more to maintain those amenities but then the thing is you're also competing about against what else is in the general vicinity or your larger community be it that area in the county, Carroll County as a whole. So then the question becomes, where does that fall into the whole process?

Right, right. And it's very much market driven. Again, if you're in Charlotte or Atlanta, you don't build a residential community without a pool, a pool house and tennis courts. But, you know, they've got sunshine and can swim in that pool from April till early October. It's a different, and ALTA is enormous in Atlanta. The Tennis Association is the largest. There are more marriages and divorces that take place on the tennis court than anywhere else. Well, maybe in the choir, but it is the case that, again, it's market driven, right? But again, to say that we're not going to do anything, I don't like that either because we've seen what we get when we don't do anything, and it's not right. It just hasn't been right. And the developers to date have created this situation where now all of a sudden we're reacting because... And maybe we're overreacting, right? Maybe. But the truth is... we've seen kind of a land rush to do we haven't seen a normal subdivision for just families since the school system got overcrowded. Now, it's not overcrowded now, which begs the question, why aren't we saying, hey, wait a minute, build homes? Because, you know.

Well, you've got two good-sized ones coming. Okay, good. Love that.

But again, so to the point, again, we may be overreacting to this, but if we don't put some guardrails in, we're going to end up with – people saying, look, I moved here for the open spaces. I moved here so I could age in place. I can't do it here, so I'm moving elsewhere. And we've had some of that. So anyway.

So in my mind, there's some kind of fundamental questions here that need to be discussed and answered. The first is the density question. What is an appropriate density? And current density for communities is three and a half units per acre gross. And that's the density that all the projects that have gone through the process, they've met all that density requirement. Is that a good density? I don't know. it's sort of predicated on fighting some amenities. And some of the pushback is that that increase in density, because it is an increase in density over the underlying zoning, is that worth the impact to the surrounding community? And so would it be a better product to match the underlying zoning? And there are a lot of jurisdictions that do that. There are jurisdictions similar to ourselves that have that as a business model. It's really discussing with that business model and is that a business model that's appropriate for the properties that we have left to be developed in Carroll County.

So I would just add that, I mean, we have for age restricted three and a half dwelling units per acre, regardless of what zoning district you're in. So that's part of the conflict. It's three and a half if you're in our 10,000. It's three and a half if you're in our 20,000. It's three and a half if you're in our 7,500, if you can find that somewhere. If I could just also say on the density issue, it's worth noting that Howard County has eight dwelling units per net acre, but they've yoked that to a requirement that you provide 10% of those units as moderately priced dwelling units. Yes, sir. So, I mean, we've talked a lot about the benefits that you get or the benefits that you provide if you're getting this density bonus. But we've only been talking about it in terms of the benefits for the residents in that community. But there's also this question of is there a public good that we're trying to achieve? Is that what? what giving a density bonus is supposed to be aimed at and at least like in Howard County and I think Queen Anne's County may also be the same. That increase in density is tied to the provision of a certain percentage of affordable dwelling units. So, I mean, you can look at it from a lot of different angles, but it's not just a straight up density calculation.

So, question I have, I mean, Really, once again, we're talking about the Freedom Area pretty much because the towns can still do whatever they want to do. Yes. And the difference between Howard County and the Freedom Area is Howard County has good road systems for the most part. Freedom Area is never going to have good road systems. I mean, 32 has been improved a couple times. It's made it much better than it used to be. but we're never going to get our side streets done. We're struggling to get Georgetown done.

We're studying it right now. We're doing our best.

Yeah, we're studying it, but we do a lot of studying, but someone's got to pay for it. It's like Georgetown. Someone's got to pay for it. Yes. And really, I mean, how many properties are in that freedom area that we're spending all this time, and is the density worth it in that area?

They all want to be grandfathered, so what are we talking about?

Well, I mean, going to eight, I don't know if, I mean, we're three and a half now, which is what they did. I hear you.

It's interesting you mentioned, Howard, with the affordability part, but I think, like Howard and Montgomery, the affordability part, having to give lower income or medium income, housing that's affordable also comes along with the county having programs that they can tie to. I don't think we have that magic wand in our budget.

No, I wasn't suggesting that that would be an option that we write into the code here because there's a whole other piece associated with it. I just wanted to raise that as the fact that If you're giving an additional density bonus, there are lots of ways to look at why you're doing that, and that might be the fundamental question that we need to answer here. Why would you give a density bonus for age-restricted housing, and is that the same argument that you would use across the board, or is there a difference from one zoning district to another, for instance?

So the plans that are going through now, what are they tied to? What are they tied to? They've put forth a concept plan. Is it the three and a half? Yes. Or the?

It's three and a half, yeah.

Okay. Yeah.

And we've, I mean, Nell's Acres has been brought up quite a few times. That was zoned R40. Yeah. It must be 20 houses. Yep. And as part of concerns about whether that was a property or not, in 2022 um the i think it was 22 um we removed age-restricted communities from r40 so nell's acres could not be done again and so r40 isn't it but we still allow it in r20 And three of the deferred projects right now are zoned R20. And so you're talking about two units per acre, roughly, right? And there's the density bonus of going to three and a half. But that's assuming, again, that there's some sort of community benefit and so on that's associated with that.

Well, and then there's the question, right? I raised this last time, that is it right to have the same bonus density in R20 that you have on R10 and you have on R7500? Is it right? I don't know the answer to that. And this is to the point of the group conversation. We rushed through this, and we've got to make decisions. The unintended consequences of this are bad, and making an error in judgment is bad. It's all bad if we don't do it right.

So what I would suggest is that if you are giving the density bonus, then you come to the second half of the discussion, which are what's the look and feel and amenities and so on that we've addressed through here of that you do get a nice looking community. with amenities and so on and so forth. We have to make a decision on the density, and then if there is some sort of density bonus and so on, what is the look and feel of it that it then still fits in with the surrounding neighborhood in a good way, for lack of a better term. Nobody said this was going to be easy.

Well, we heard both sides of the argument.

I said probably the only comment that we talked about with the group was, How about the stuff that's in commercial? Yeah. They're going backwards, and we want to take everyone else forward. So I don't quite understand.

Yeah. So a couple of things with commercial. So the density bonus that you get for communities, where you get the 3 and 1 half units per acre, that's only for R20. For R10 and R75 and commercial, there is no defined density. You all set the density. And so the one project that's been deferred on Johnsville, that's split zoned. It's split zoned R10 and C1. They proposed to you 31 units and that's what you approved. But that was not based on a maximum density. That was what fit with the business model and so on. There's not a density limit on that. When you talk about the, well, I don't want to confuse matters. The homes, the multifamily is a different matter. But for the communities, the town homes and so on, that's the difference. R20 is different than the R10 and commercial.

Chris, I just want to ask a general question. I'm going to go back to Nell's Acres. What did that developer offer as a reason for more density on that property or bonus density? What reason? Because I've been down there quite a few times now. And I can't find one thing that is good for the community down there. It's one way in, one way out. It's closed in as much as can be closed in. Every house looks the same. There's not a place to plant a tree. Every open space is nothing but a stormwater pond. So what amenity at all or what reason were they given for bonus density there? Nothing.

So by the code, they weren't required to provide it.

So that was the old code.

Yes, it was the old code.

If we're trying to fix anything here, we're trying to fix what happened down there. as far as I'm concerned. Some of the other ones that I have going around the county now and reviewed, the builders did some really good things. They tried to open things up, they tried to plant some trees, they tried to provide maybe an open area for people to walk. All that's real good without really spending a whole lot more money. When I visited Nell's Acres, I saw nothing but a prison.

So those are the two questions, right? Some of the driveways are shorter than others.

Some of them have slopes like that. So I'm not sure what we really ever, whoever did it. And, you know, I don't want to defer to somebody else's problem, because I wasn't on it then, so I wasn't looking at any of this stuff. When I go down there, I'm saying, what happened here? So maybe is that why we're here? To stop what happened there? And I say yes.

That's exactly what this is.

Isn't there a road that they were supposed to bring? They said they could build a road coming past the church and all of that. Yes. And they were only supposed to have... so many units along the way and I guess that just went out the door.

Well no, so the mitigation that they were required to do was the developer was required to design the road. They were not on the hook to construct the road. So they, and they did that. They designed the road. Now there is an issue, well not an issue, when you get into utility design, private entities are not allowed to design or construct those utilities. You have to work with the utility company and they do the engineering design and then they do the construction to relocate any utilities. So the developer had finished the roadway design and then it was turned over to the utility company to do their portion. And it's been a year and we're still waiting on that. And so to hold up a developer when they've met their obligation, which was to design the roadway, to wait for something that we have no control over and they have no control over on the utility aspect was not viewed as being fair. So that's why they were allowed to continue with their building permits. So we expect that we will get the utility design, and then it's up to the Board of County Commissioners to move forward with the construction of Ridenour.

Was that the pipeline? Colonial pipeline?

The pipeline may be one of the issues, but it's all utilities. It's water, sewer, it's all the utility. Yes.

I guess what I'm getting at is, you know, I'm not sure about all the nuts and bolts that we're looking at here, but I think If there's a design there where a road should be completed, I think we should require that road to be completed. Things like that. One way in, one way out. This kind of stuff we should not be allowing. And so these are the things that I'm most concerned about. The EMS and fire. The gentleman stands up here. they're the things that I think that we should be concerned about as far as the citizens that's gonna be living there. The other thing is, I think it's incumbent on us to have an aesthetically pleasing community to blend in with the already, the communities that are already there so that we're not backhanding the people who already live there. I think that's our role here. I agree with you. So as far as a handle on a doorway and things like that, I'm not sure that that's not the buyer's... choice to prove whether they want that or not. The rest of it, as far as public safety, entrance, traffic, roads being completed, things like that. Aesthetically, I see some things that are just terrible. Then other communities I've visited, the aesthetics there are nice, and they're not disrupting the community at all in any way other than maybe traffic again. I don't even know what we're going to do about traffic.

So when we start talking about how the community looks, then we do get into the funny thing about the conversation around the width of the units was I actually think the maximum length of 120 feet, maybe you want to call it 130 because they go 32 foot wide or something like that, that's fine. But the maximum length being 120 or 126 feet long, think that that would be a reasonable thing for us to say because what we're saying is we didn't like how that stuff was all just walled off and they all looked alike and and so again i think something like that i think the number of units is not the right i think i think the length of the but the number of units and the width

is going to create how many units can be there. I get it.

That's why I'm saying 128 gives them four units that they can put in there. Yeah. Four times 30 is 120, right? Yeah.

And that was our intent of having those two metrics. We've got 120 feet or six units. So you can have six.

120 feet or six units? Is that what it was? Yeah.

So you could have six 20-foot units, or you could have four 30-foot units.

I would just say, let's allow them to do nothing to exceed 128 feet long. And the number of units is up to them. If they want to build 30-foot units or 24-foot units, we don't care. But 128, that's long. That's about as long because what we're saying is we don't like the aesthetic of that. When they get six feet long and six times 30, 180 feet, it looks like a – it doesn't look good.

It doesn't have to look like that. There are designs that can happen that are way different. The problem is that it starts becoming costlier, so, and public doesn't want to pay for all the different, you know. I like this lot, but I don't want you to tell me I can't have, you know, this roof line, so it's,

But I don't see where the public can stop buying them because every one I went by sold. How can we determine that? I want something that's aesthetically pleasing, that blends into the neighborhoods that are already there and has some safety features as far as EMS traffic through roads and things like that. I think that's our role here. And we failed miserably on some of them. On the one we just had in front of us, there was a lot of good things that were in the one that we just moved forward on. that I didn't see on some of the ones that I looked at over the last few months. Are you talking about the Beatty prop, the one last... Well, I mean, I don't want to blow sunshine at anybody right here. I'm just saying that I think we gave a little bit more scrutiny to the latest one that came through, and there was some response to it. where I saw a lot of them, or a few of them, that there was just no thought put into the long-term ramifications of that project, of those projects. And that's what bothers me. Really bothers me.

We can't go back, but we can look forward.

So that's what this is about.

So the package moving forward, when it comes into us to begin with, I want to look at that package and look at the amenities that are offered. In the concept stage. And then have them come in where it's in a pleasing community that people can feel safe in for a long time.

So but I guess where we are with staff and what staff is asking us to make the call now is and where I phone in on this is if it's over 120, 130 units, I think there ought to be a mix of villas, single family, um townhomes i think there ought to be a mix because one size fix all it we don't want it to look like um uh you know an urbanized uh what was the stepford community i mean you know where you know everybody's everybody's a robot i mean you know we don't want it to look that way so peter should we be meeting with the developers in front of all this before they come in and say we're going to put 200

Holmes here, we should be saying, no, let's put this mix in front of us and see what you can do with it. You see what I mean?

Yeah, the process, now we're talking about process. We're talking about process. And part of what I think, I don't know what happens in our county before stuff comes to us.

I don't know what happens. When a plan is originally submitted that concept plan so right chief for that district and then they are to coordinate any comes to you all is comes to you all is these plans are reviewed against all of the appropriate codes and and so our staff makes sure that it meets all of the code requirements for a concept and And then it comes to you all for the concept review. And that's your opportunity to say, you know what, we don't like the orientation, we don't want sixes, we want fives, all those sorts of things. And you all can give that direction to the developer so that they can then make those changes as part of their final design. It's also within your purview that if you feel that there's a significant change that needs to be made to direct them to we wanna see this significant change which is going to affect your concept and then they make those changes and then bring the concept back to you all before it then moves forward. So you all have that authority to give that direction.

We just don't do enough of it.

Is that what you're saying?

No, I mean, Chris. I'll say it for him.

Yes, that's true. I think it's honest because I've been up here watching this stuff, and I think we are just too accepting of what's put in front of us.

To give us, make sure that all the... The I's have been dotted and the T's been crossed, but then it's up to us to protect the community. Okay.

I agree, but I don't think without, I can't believe I'm saying this, having some things in the code, that gives us some authority to say we want to see a few amenities and maybe some diversity in the housing standards, how they're being built. A developer contractor can say, yeah, that's nice, but we don't have to do that. So, or we will do that. So I do think there's a middle ground we've gotta hit here somewhere.

I'm sorry, real quick, just to address that. And that's been sort of the lens that we've been looking at what we've been proposing, right? And so we heard some of the developers mention that there was a lack of clarity in the mix that we're asking for. We did that on purpose. We have a requirement here that says that if there are more than 50 dwelling units, that a mix is required. But we don't specify what you choose from because we want the developer to propose that. We don't want to go through a list and say, well, There's duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes, whatever. Single garden family, whatever. Exactly. Garden villa. We don't want to prescribe those exact mixes. We just wanted to say you have to provide a mix. And no more than 60%, a single type can't be more than 60% of it. So that general guidance then is what they have to follow, and then they present it to you all. Now, if they do something like saying that, well, we want to do all townhomes and 60% of them are going to be blue and 40% are going to be red.

No.

Exactly. Got it. But if they start talking about quadplexes and triplexes and whatever, and you see that general mix where nothing is more than 60%, That's all. Then we've teed it up for you all to then be able to review what they're proposing. And you all can make the decision, yeah, they met that criteria, and we like what they're proposing.

I generally like that provision. I mean, I do. And I think, again, I would go back to the length of a unit not being any longer than, and guys, y'all can push back on this. Is it 126 feet? Is it 130 feet? What do we think? Because I think six units is too many. But I do think something 120, 120. We heard somebody say that 32, they built them 32. Somebody said 32 is the biggest. But I heard 30. But if we gave them two more feet for each unit and we said 126, right? Somebody comes in and says, you know, I got a big pickup truck. Can you make my garage bigger? Well, go for it. We're not going to slap him because he built the garage bigger. I don't know. I think something like that might work. What do you think, Ralph, in terms of what you saw? I'm with you on that part of it. I am.

So we're hopping around a little bit. That's in the next design standard section. But yeah. It sounded like the standard was either 28 or 30 from the builders. Yep.

I think it's hard to build a first floor primary bedroom without having the larger scale.

20 feet wide, I don't know how you would fit it in. I mean, it would be a tiny home.

Oh, you can't.

You can't.

Certainly not for age restricted.

Where you want single first floor living.

Half of it's the doorway.

So in the amenities, the building that everybody gets to go to and do nothing in or play cards, that's a requirement? Or is that part of the amenities that they don't have to have?

Yeah. So that, so we took the same approach with the amenities where we're not necessarily requiring amenities. It's they should put together an amenity plan at concept that you all can review and say, yeah, we like this mixture of amenities. Um, we're not requiring a 10 foot, um, multi-use, um, pathway. Um, but if you're going to, if you're going to propose one, it should be 10 feet wide. I think there's a standard. Daphne probably knows off the top of her head where that came from. But that's a standard is 10 foot for when you have bikes and strollers and so on. Yeah.

uh a shared use path so if you're going to propose a shared use path as an amenity it should be 10 feet wide that's that's our recommendation now but there again chris we have to view each one independently like the smaller the smaller yeah concept plan one with that's just a few houses against one that has 120 houses so you have to view it individually so that the one that's smaller might not need or even want or even have any reason for an amenity. Very true. Good living space. Can we make a decision on this?

You know, amenities, I think way early in the conversation we said developers should present the amenity plan with the concept plan or whatever. Can we just say that? And if they choose to submit, okay, can we just leave it at that?

Or we can say... It's market-driven.

Right. And that allows the developers to have upscale or whatever they want to do. Hit the market niche they're trying to hit. Hit the market.

I was just at a... assisted living and the whole works. And she was showing us all around these things. And when we talked about amenities, they said that they had all of these different things. Nobody uses them.

My dad's at Lorien. They have all these nice rooms and plant rooms. There's nobody in there. But it's nice to have

They're just like a swimming pool. They have a swimming pool. Nobody uses it. It's a good selling point.

They don't have a swimming pool. They're all 90 years old.

Well, you know, it depends on. No, I hear you. We're talking about age-restricted places now, right? Yeah. Aging in place, not restricted.

If that's what the builder wants to build and thinks they can sell it, fine. But show it to us at concept plan, and that's it.

And we're done. Which includes that separate building that nobody goes to, gathering room.

If that's what they want to do, fine. And the residents will pay the HOA as a result of it. It's fine. If you want affordable housing, you might want to go.

I don't think it is fine. I think you might want to go next door if you don't want that. This whole thing about amenities, I think the more we say that they need to have some, I think is a mistake.

That's what I'm saying. Yeah. Okay. That's what I'm saying. There's gotta be choice. Yeah.

So we're saying that they have to present it at the time that they present their concept patent. We're just not telling them what it is. Exactly. And if they put nothing in there, we can then decide, you know what, guys? This is large enough to where we think you probably ought to do this just from a community standpoint. The senior center is overcrowded. If you can't buy it, I'll pick up all the work.

If it makes everybody happy, we'll say the amenities have to be specifically identified

whatever to include clubhouse to include this to include that gazebo complete whatever it is put it in a concept plan okay but if there is none and say there is none I understand but Pete saying we can say all right guys you should put this distance but it's not a you have to Or you may.

No, you have to. If you're going to include amenities.

No, no. I'm saying, Pete said, if they don't put any amenities down. And we look at the plan and we say, where your amenities, you need to put this, this, and this.

Is this something? The site plan would say no amenities for this site plan for this community.

I understand. I think, and I guess what I'll clarify is you're exactly right. Somebody comes in and they say, you know, we don't think a... a development of 32 homes back. You know what? You should at least put in You should at least put in something. They can say, you know, heck no. Heck with you and the works you wrote in them. That's part of the whole process. That's part of the process.

I think that we're trying to dictate what the market's going to purchase, and that's not our role. I hear you. The developers know the markets better than we do. I'm fine with that. They know the buyers better than we do. I'm fine with it. Let them build what they're going to sell. If it includes amenities, fine.

If it doesn't, fine. I'm fine with that.

and and if you don't want to see a plan come in where the only amenity is 14 stormwater bonds yeah well in that case there wouldn't be any amenities that's what i'm saying there wouldn't be any amenities and that the the new codes would address the spacing and the size the 30 foot wide instead of the whatever they got down there 16 feet for something junk that gets that's what we're addressing here that's not going to happen anymore so

If, I mean, you're saying four in a row or five, no longer than 126 feet is what I'm saying. 126 feet, I'm not sure what that equates to. If that allows a property to be able to get the density that they need, but just a what if that they've got, like, you know, four foot, four here, you know, five over here, which they've staggered, and they've got one that's got like a six unit across. I think if the overall concept is pleasing, you know, and aesthetically pleasing, as Ralph says, I wouldn't see a problem with some of the lines being longer, but not just like a steady looking down the curve here and everybody looks the same.

We do have the process. When a developer comes in and presents it, then we can address each one's Individually.

But not if we're saying it can't be more than X amount.

You've got to have some kind of guardrail. I think you've got to have a guardrail. I do. I think 126 feet is the top.

I think there's 126 coming from. Where's 126 feet? How's that calculation?

It's not in there. I'm saying it. I'm saying it out loud because I think we need to put... I want you guys to say, you know what, Pete? You're wrong. It needs to be 160 feet. 150 feet. That's five units.

I would...

like to hear one more time the developers say why what what percentage does it save on a unit to be a center unit which would be a lower cost unit for a different sale price i mean i would think it'd be 10 to 20 percent savings for being a center unit as compared to For building costs.

I don't think it's the building costs. I think it's the utilization of the land because they get more units without having to break in between it. I don't think it's just the exterior walls. There's a firewall between each unit. I think. You hope you have windows. That's one of the reasons to have I think to have more breaks is because from a fire excess, from all those things, being able to have more natural light, I just think it makes it more pleasing for everybody.

I don't know. I grew up in a row home outside of Baltimore City. We were inside the group. My parents loved it. We didn't have windows on either end, but they saved a lot on heating and electric because we weren't getting the wind either. look it's the buyer it's whatever the customer wants you know and they were like in the first it was welsh homes my god back in evanson heights back when it well whatever and they built 1600 row homes and they were in groups of let me see our address 12. let's see i mean six it was six and they were 16 feet wide but but And I'm just saying, and then there were spaces in the sixes, and they were all brick and all that kind of stuff.

Got it. Great for downtown Baltimore.

It wasn't downtown. I'm just saying.

There's a suburb.

This is Eldersburg, and I think it needs to fit.

That's not going to work. That's why I think it needs to be softer, given where we're primarily talking about.

But what you're saying is about the light and all that kind of stuff.

I think that, you know, I understand Eldersburg, and it's one different look. But also what we're talking about is countywide. So we need to think a little more globally than just Eldersburg. I don't disagree.

I don't disagree. If it works in Eldersburg, it'll work in Finksburg. If you can find the property to build. If you can find the property and the water and sewer. That's not going to happen. It's not.

So could I suggest that maybe, it sounds like maybe we're leaning towards a maximum length of 128 feet with no requirements in terms of the number of units that could be constructed within that?

Yes, ma'am. Maybe. Say that again.

I mean, we could use that for discussion purposes next week when we see this again, if you want us to make that modification.

Maybe if we could get some drawings, gentlemen, that would show us. They're not listening back there.

Oh, they're listening. They've got it. They've got it.

That could show us what we're envisioning, if you could read our minds. Not sure. 126 or 128 foot something.

So just so I make sure I understand, with no limit on the number of units, so if somebody proposed six 20-footers, Good luck selling that. But good luck selling it. Absolutely, right? Got it. I'm with you. OK. Let's say you're fine with whatever number of units, but you just don't want to see.

It's going to be nothing but driveways and garage doors.

So you're just going to maximize the length.

Isn't that what we're just complaining about with Mel's acres?

It is. It is. Right. The maximum cumulative building width of 126 feet with no units per building or whatever, that doesn't make any sense.

So do you want to say maximum of four units?

Yes, I do. I do. Those five and sixers, guys, they are long. And that's just not... So it would be both metrics. We're trying to preserve. Look at the master plan. We're trying to preserve... rural nature and the bedroom community nature of our community that's what the mat that's what the master plan says and what I'm telling you is if you want to build an apartment building that is you know a high-rise go for it let's call it that but don't come in here and tell us this is a village no a village is it should be more aesthetically pleasing there should be room for to plant a tree every now and then so didn't

the plan that St. John brought before us, didn't they have a lot of that, some separate roof lines, some back and forth on the buildings where it wasn't?

Six.

Oh, like straight line. Yeah, it wasn't straight line.

It was some difference, yes.

And it showed a lot of shrubbery. If what we're trying to do is avoid Nell's Acres again, in deference to the team that's sitting here, that's... Nell's Acres, slightly nicer. Slightly nicer Nell's Acres. It's five and six units. It is still an embattlement of homes with very few breaks.

But I think because they're all, I don't know how wide they are.

Bad streets, bad parking, bad.

We're solving a lot of the worst parts.

That's right. No question.

A wider building looks a lot different in a line than something that you walk out and your neighbor, here's your porch and you walk here and there's their porch.

Yes, ma'am, you're right. I agree.

Josh, you said, what's the... the uh with the um main bedroom on the first level well i said primary because you can't call it master anymore i didn't say master i said main main bedroom primary primary well realtor speak um what's the what's the width of the uh home need to be or typically average um well it depends but you know

Most primary bedrooms end up being at least 14 to 16 feet wide. You have usually a four-foot foyer along the way and a garage there, so you're probably looking closer to And the primary can be in the back. It doesn't have to be in the front. But, you know, it's between probably 28 and 30.

Okay. So that 30 foot seems to work. Because that's another thing. I think 55 and older... would like to have is first floor living. Yes, sir. Right. The primary bedroom on the first floor.

True. So unless you get an elevator, which, of course, not everybody wants to.

That would be cool, but I don't think everybody wants to.

Right up and down.

The grandkids come right on the elevator.

Yeah, they're good.

What's next?

Yeah. That was just food for thought number one on the the width that we're talking about. I don't know that we need to make this a code kind of issue, but as we're looking at site design, if you have a 30 foot wide, 30 foot wide unit with a two car garage, that two car garage is going to take up. Well, at least what we are saying here in this in this code is is 20. 20 foot wide. So I think one of the challenges that we see down at Nell's Acres is you have the two car garage enough space for a front doorway and then another two car garage. And so what that means is you have driveway, driveway, driveway, driveway, driveway. There's no... Green space. If they did have on-street parking, there's no place for it. But it also just creates a... you know, no, no space in between the driveways.

It's not a room either, because your front door, you have to walk down a hall to get into. Yeah. So yeah, you have to walk past it. It's all dead space.

So now I will say that the difference is, you know, Nell's Acres doesn't have auxiliary parking areas to kind of offset that fact. But those are some other things to think about in terms of the cumulative effects of some of the things that we're talking about here, whether it's width of the unit or length of the blocks and what kind of parking you're requiring, that sort of thing. but so yeah I think those are all just things to think about as we're adding up each of these requirements is then in the end what is that gonna get us to for example the standard

with that the developers or builders are using building now 30 feet, that probably includes garage. Yes, sir. So yeah. Yeah.

But if then if that 20 feet of that 30 is like on the on the on the garage facing taken up by the the garage face of the of the so the face of the building, you've got ten feet of of something else that's architectural and you've got 20 feet of

garage and then the next unit you've got 10 feet and 20 feet but if you put two of those together you got 20 feet of grass space or walkway in front and then 20 feet of garage space on either side or if you limit to three units and then your next building has a larger gap yep

And until your next set of three, now you've got some green space between buildings. That's correct.

Now you're changing overall density, which then creates more.

So I think we go back to what's the density that we want to see on these projects. And maybe the amenities and look and feel don't match the density that we've allowed.

You mean the 3.5? Mm-hmm.

So if you were to look at, I'm not a big fan of quads because overall, I think people tend to feel like if they're going to have a quad, they're going to pay less. But if you have townhomes and a mix of single in there, I wonder if that does anything different for overall density.

Yeah, Daphne and I have been talking about it, and a mixture of singles and duplexes. Would that be a community that would? Well, you could probably do all three. Yeah. Exactly. Ones, twos, and threes, and some mixture thereof. Again, we weren't trying to be too prescriptive on this. We wanted to give the flexibility, but indicate that we wanted to see some sort of mix for you all to contemplate what that community would look like.

So some of the developments are already pretty far along in there. So would that be something that we would probably ask the commissioners to say? At what stage should they be grandfathered?

So that, to be perfectly honest, that's the Board of County Commissioners' decision. I know. I said to ask them. Yeah. I mean, certainly you can make the recommendations. And I know how the developers feel. But that's going to be the commissioner's decision as far as whether certain ones can be exempted for whatever reasons because they've gone so far or those sorts of things. I think the important thing that we have to do is think in terms of, what do we want the code to be and not think so much about the existing projects. So what do we want to see? And then we will deal with the ramifications.

I will say I agree.

That's what we need to key on right now.

In the back of my mind, though, I can't help think about what legal things will come down the road. Yep, understood. OK.

All right. So you're still on density. I asked the first question. You're still on density. Still on density. And so what's the right answer there?

We don't have one. We're going to talk next week. OK. Tuesday.

But it sounds like it's not 3.5.

Start endpoint.

Mm-hmm.

And I'll just say that I personally am not a fan of trying to use some net developable acreage. Different jurisdictions use it. Other jurisdictions use gross. To me, gross is a lot easier to understand and for someone, a prospective developer, to look at a property and get an immediate sense on how many units it could look at. I don't see there being a lot of benefit to using some... convoluted net develop pool acreage that requires them to come to to spend time and effort to figure out how what their density could be and it's subjective yep so i'd wait i i think how is it subjective well because what

What I may go out and look at a property and my engineer comes along and he looks at it and he's like, well, I think that's a stream. It could be flood plain. There's some steep hills here, but we can bulldoze them out. I'm figuring in my head.

I'd say I don't think it's subjective at all. I think from an engineering standpoint, it's a flip in science.

When you get to that point.

Yeah, when you get to that point, it's not subjective. I mean, the problem is initially making the call on what you think is usable versus not usable. But that's not subjective.

That's subjective at times.

That's subjective. But at the end of the day, the Corps of Engineers is going to tell you what they know based on the soil, the water content, and the type of vegetation, whether or not it's wetlands.

Trying to get all of that back from them can be time consuming. So I've got a piece of property. that I've got five other developers that want to buy it. And I'm in a hurry because I don't want to guess wrong, but I also don't want to guess. You don't want to overstate it. Right.

So to your point, you're saying that you would like to use gross for this rather than net usable.

And then, but then the question still remains, is three and a half the right number?

Yeah.

Where did that come from, three and a half? That's what it currently is.

Yeah, that was the latest change. So if you go back to the 60s and 70s, retirement homes and villages were the same use. and they started off at the one dwelling unit per 3,000 square feet, which is equal to about 14 1⁄2 units per acre. Over the years, the community number shrunk, and the home number stayed the same. So that 3,000 units per acre, one unit for 3,000 square feet for home has been the same since 1971 until today.

Okay.

The community that's decreased from the equivalent being 14 and a half to, I think it was seven and a half, which is what Nell's acres was approved at. And then in 2022, that could reduce further reduced down to three and a half. I wasn't involved in those discussions. I don't know where we came up with the 3.5, but it's slowly been decreasing.

And that's the same for R20?

So it's just R20. R10 and commercial, there is no density. The developer proposes something, and then you all approve it. Right, right, right.

Okay.

And... Nell's Acres R40 was removed. So prior to, R40 could be developed at that rate, which is how Nell's Acres was approved. And then in 22, we removed communities out of the R40.

So you're suggesting, and I'm not putting words in your mouth, that we start at 3.5 units per acre and gross acreage?

Which is what it currently is, yes.

And I'm just going to say that out loud because I did do the research. 23 jurisdictions and the city of Baltimore, 10 use gross, 10 use hybrid, and four use net. So you can say it. 14 don't use gross, or you can say it, 14 do use net, however you want to say it otherwise, or something other than gross. But gross is 10 out of the 24. So we're not an outlier either way. What I'm trying to say is there's no wrong answer here based on what the other jurisdictions in the entire state are doing. I believe that to be accurate. I may be wrong. but having read all 24, I think I'm right.

I believe you. That may be right, but I may be wrong.

Maybe so, probably not, yeah. I prefer net because I would like to know what we're really dealing with in terms of usable acreage. That's my preference. But since we've been using gross forever, it's not a wall I'm going to die on. And again, I think when I was doing commercial real estate, what we used, the jurisdictions I was dealing in, they all made us net usable. But that was a different, and it was a lifetime ago. So whatever you guys want to do, I don't feel strongly about one way or the other.

And I guess to further narrow the conversation, like I said, the R10 and commercial, there is no density requirement. So they propose it, and you review it, and you approve it. Are you OK with no calculation when you're talking R10 and commercial? If you're OK with that and that's staying the way it is, then we're really only talking about R20. And so you're talking about essentially two units per acre just for, I know it's not exactly that because you have infrastructure and so on, but essentially two units per acre and a density bonus to three and a half. Are you okay with that jump to three and a half or is it something closer to two, the underlying zoning or is it somewhere in between?

Well, I think the density has gotten us into. Problems yeah. So I I think we need to tighten that up somehow. I don't know what the answer is.

Yeah, I'd like to see something. Black and white like here. So. And can we pick this up Tuesday morning when we're all fresh?

You still have to do public comment. Yeah, so on Tuesday, I believe the way our agenda is structured, and Daphne can correct me if I'm wrong, We do have a couple projects for you all in regular business, and then I think we are breaking for lunch, and then we'll get back into this. So we've got all afternoon, and we can stay as late as you like, because, again, we need it to be finished with you all, and then the commissioners get it for...

And they get to beat it around the same time. Yes.

Yes. Tom's been taking great notes, so he knows all the conversations we've had. Absolutely. You can brief me, Commissioner.

And Daphne's bringing beer next time.

You have to go until at least 5 o'clock then. So are we going to stop here?

Well, we need to do our public comment.

I know.

Just our part. That's your call. Yes. Already. Matt's got his keys down. Matt is. I'm not, but I am packing.

I can't wait to say I motion that we adjourn.

Matt was up with a sick cow at 3 o'clock this morning or something. That's what I heard.

We do have to. Go ahead. Well, I was just going to say, I do want to say that while we did not get through a lot of the code-specific discussion, I think we had a lot of really good discussion of kind of the meat of what Daphne and myself and other staff and the consultant have been struggling with in trying to craft this for you all. So very much appreciate all of the discussion. I think we made good progress from that perspective. And then on Tuesday, I think we'll be a little more structured in going through the specific code items. And we're just going to have to go line by line probably and make decisions and recommendations on each one.

Yeah, and I thought that session we had with the developers and builders was really good and very helpful to hear what's going on outside these walls in their world. So I thought that was terrific. That will help shape things, too. So with that public comment, and here comes Ms. Schaefer. I'll remind you that you have three minutes. Somebody please start the clock.

I'm going to talk quickly. Kelly Schaefer Miller, 73 East Main Street, Westminster, Maryland, 21157. Thank you for the opportunity for that stakeholder discussion. I think that what you saw from that is that everyone is very engaged in this discussion. And also, hopefully, what you saw from that is that this proposal, as currently drafted, has a wide impact across the five plans that are processing. It's not specific to one of the plans processing. And that's why we all feel that it's important that there be a grandfathering provision and recognition provided for those five plans that are processing. I took a quick look back at some of the last text amendments, and I do think it is appropriate and fairly customary for this board to recommend grandfathering provision and also for the commissioners to adopt that. Now, obviously, you do not have control over what happens when this gets to the commissioners, but for some examples for you, when the comprehensive text amendment happened, there was grandfathering for plans in process, and there was grandfathering for plans that had received conditional use approval through BZA. When the most recent solar tax amendment process, there was grandfathering for anyone who had submitted a development plan. When we had the text amendment that changed the bulk requirements for the commercial zones when they adjoin residential, we had grandfathering of plans in process and anybody having received conditional use approval. So this is something that this county has recognized as customary and actually members of this board have vocally stated before that it is not just or fair to impact plans that are in process and have processed in good faith. So we would ask you to take that into consideration in any recommendation that you make. And I'll remind you that grandfathering of these plans is actually subjecting them to a heightened review standard because they have to go through BZA and they have to have gone through that special report process to you that is not under this current proposal. So it's not as well as all technical requirements, fire and EMS. You heard Chris's description of that today. So there's there's not getting out of anything that is a major concern or creating public health, safety and welfare problems. Very quickly, the age restricted density has been something that's been contemplated in the master plans. So when tonight and tonight's discussion where you were asking where that came from, why do we have 3.5? This is not a new concept. This is a concept that was thoroughly vetted and is drafted in our master plans. So I think I would just say going forward, those were discussed heavily during those planning processes. This is not a new concept. And I think you should all consider that as you move forward with these specific recommendations. So we will stay engaged in the process. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Good job. That was quick.

Tom Pilon, St. John Properties. Just a couple of quick things, kind of reiterate. I mentioned about process, and you all talked about process and look and feel. And there's not a means to get in front of you all early right now for that purpose, so you can get the idea of the look and the feel of the community. So I think that's something that you would want to think about inserting something that would allow for that, because I heard that very clearly discussed. The comment that we had made about, that I had made actually about, it's not clear in the sort and things like that. So that's why we're asking for clarity on that because that's the only way you're gonna achieve. Last week when you asked about our density, we didn't even achieve three and a half units. Two point seven. With the town homes. So that's just something to think about. Like, if you want to allow for that, make sure it's clear in there that it can be done. Because when this staff is no longer here and you're not sitting there anymore, it might not be clear to the next group of people saying, you know, what did they mean by that? So just to be clear on those couple of things. And I think you all got the sense tonight. I know you got it done. And the guy said, did anybody think to ask for more time?

as a project that they would like an audience before you all, before they even put pen to paper and sketch something. We allow for that. It's something that is built into our process now.

I think we've actually had a couple.

Yeah, the Johnsville folks. They also came to you all and talked before they had really firmed up any sort of significant design.

yeah we got a heads up on that elite baseball kind of thing even though it's mount airy but they came up before us yeah it's pretty cool okay any further any other public comment