Planning and Zoning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good morning and welcome to the Planning and Zoning Commission meeting of July 21st, 2026. Welcome, everybody. We have another thick agenda today, so lots to go through. So with that, let's establish a quorum.

Good morning, everyone. Mr. Payne? Here. Mr. Robertson? Here. Mr. Huff? Here. Ms. Kirkner? Here. Mr. Soyson? Here. Mr. Lester? Here. Mr. Smith? Here. Mr. Gordon? Here. Secretary Daley? Here. Mr. Chairman, please let the record reflect that eight members are present and we do have a quorum.

Thank you. Please stand for the pledge. I get extra points for the safe.

Save the Maryland flag. All right.

Has everybody had a chance to review the agenda today?

Yes.

Any changes to the agenda?

I don't think we have minutes to approve. Is that? That's right. Yeah. Okay. So those would be.

So we'll scratch item number five.

Move we approve the agenda as submitted without change.

Second. All in favor? Aye.

Okay.

All right. Commission member reports. I have nothing to report today.

Commissioner Gordon, I have nothing as well.

OK. Any other commission members?

No.

OK. All right. Administrative reports. Daphne.

Thank you. I have just a couple of things to let you know about. Last week, we whenever we presented the overview of the freedom of small area plan amendment I had mentioned that there that I was going to send you some dates to calendar which which I did I just want to especially put on the radar screen the open house that is being planned for the evening of thursday august 6 that'll be from five to seven at the eldersburg branch library we'll have a communication that will be sent out to get the word out with the public but whenever you see that come across your inbox or what have you please make sure you share that so we can help spread the word and get some early input from folks about what they'd like to see in the commercial core of the Freedom Area.

Okay. What time is that again, Daphne?

It's between 5 and 7, so there's no set program. It's a drop-in type of thing whenever people are available to stop in and share some of their feedback.

Thank you.

The other thing I wanted to let you know about, and I will follow up also with an email about this, is a virtual planning commissioner training course that Maryland Department of Planning and the Maryland Planning Commissioners Association is holding on Wednesday, August 19th. That'll be from 4 to 8 p.m. So if you are available, it would be great to See what sorts of training they're offering and whether you've done training before or not, be a great refresher if you have. But I will send the registration information to you for that. And it'll kind of cover some of the things that we covered in our training session in January of this year. But again, you'll hear that from a different perspective and may be able to take some new things away from that. Let's see. We have a couple of things coming up with the Board of County Commissioners on Thursday. We'll be presenting the Water and Sewer Master Plan Amendment to go to public hearing. We'll also be presenting the Planning Annual Report, which you all saw. And what's our other thing? There's one other item. Pardon me. Thank you. We will be requesting approval for another application for the Finksburg Facade Improvement program, which if anybody's been down there recently, you've seen some really good outcomes from that. So hopefully we'll be able to continue the work on that. Great. Also just wanted to let you know that we are continuing to work with consultant to develop some studies for transportation network in the freedom area specifically Ridenour and Dickinson the planned roadways they're really trying to figure out the feasible alignments so that we can begin to push those forwards as as the opportunity arises. So lots of things going on to really implement both the local comprehensive plans and the county master plan. So just wanted to put those on your radar screen, let you know those are in the works, and we will bring things to you as they are ready.

Okay. Thank you. Any extensions?

Yes. Good morning. Good morning. We have two extensions since we last met. The first one is called Stillwater. This is a minor subdivision M07013. It's a one lot subdivision in Commissioner District 5. This is its 16th extension. So that went through. was granted and the second one is a major subdivision it's called lake forest estate section two the file number on that is p02052 this is a 27 lot subdivision in commissioner district 4 and this is its 18th extension And this one you probably recall from years past the developers dealing with some groundwater contamination from off-site sources. So the groundwater quality has been improving as they retest every couple years. So we've actually had a couple meetings over the past year to talk about forward motion.

Thank you. That's all.

Thank you. BZA cases.

Good morning. I have one BZA case for you. Case number 6626 is a request for the conditional use of a two-family dwelling not in a planned unit development or retirement village. The property is located at 3021 Walnut Street in Manchester in the county's residential 10,000 zone. The size of the property is 13,906 square feet. Planning staff found the request is consistent with the Carroll County Master Plan as amended in 2019. Do you have any questions?

No.

Thank you.

Good. Okay.

Any other administrative business?

Okay.

Thank you guys moving to item number 8 Tony town comprehensive plan update a 60 day review introduction.

Good morning, everybody morning. I'm going to be giving this short presentation here on the city of Tawny Town's comprehensive plan update, which is currently at the county and at the state for review. I am the liaison planner that serves the city of Tawny Town and New Windsor and Union Bridge and goes to their planning commission meetings and other meetings as requested on behalf of the county. So that's why I'm the particular planner that's in front of you today giving this presentation. Again, the city of Tawny Towns has been going through a comprehensive plan update process over the last few years, and actually they were in front of you in February of 2025, kind of at the beginning of their comprehensive plan update process, just to kind of go over with you a number of their goals at the city level. and what they were looking to get out of their process. I believe they were there on that same day with Sykesville, who was doing something similar, even though they weren't going through a comp plan update process at that time. What we are formally in now with the City of Taneytown is called the 60-day review process. And again, this is the City of Taneytown's comprehensive plan update. The county has no formal involvement in this update other than as a review agency to make sure that the plan is aligning generally with the county's master plan and the other functional plans, such as the water and sewer master plan, the bicycle and pedestrian master plan, other plans of that nature. The state of Maryland requires that jurisdictions forward copies of their comprehensive plan once it's reached a final draft. to relevant state agencies and adjoining local jurisdictions, which in this case is Carroll County. So they sent us their final draft of their comprehensive plan update on June 10th, 2026. 60-day review period gives us till August 7th to actually get comments back to them. So what we have done at a staff level is forward this plan around to all the agencies here at the county that will be reviewing it and providing comments as necessary some agencies have no comments others have have many and we are also presenting it to you as well to review within the next 15 day time frame whenever we're back in front of you on august 5th to see if you have any comments in general today's presentation i'll try to point you to some sections that are particularly applicable to our master plan and to your process as a planning commission So Tawny Town's plan update, there are eight planning principles that the Maryland Department of Planning has that help guide jurisdictions whenever they're doing plan updates. And from those eight planning principles, Tawny Town broke down nine to 11 kind of sections where they lay out goals and particular implementation steps. for their comprehensive plan, pretty standard. You see what's up on the screen now, land use and smart growth, transportation, intergovernmental coordination, which is one that is very applicable to Carroll County. And the goals that are actually listed on the screen currently correspond with the goals in the plan that are for that intergovernmental coordination chapter. So basically on the left hand side, you're looking at the chapters, the associated chapters for this particular plan. Again, some are more pertinent than others. They're all pertinent to our work in county planning, but some are more pertinent to development versus environmental sustainability versus housing and stuff like that. Each one of these chapters has a couple of goals associated with it, and each one has implementation steps. The implementation steps graphic up here, I put this one up there because it specifically calls out Carroll County for an issue that's important to the city of Tawny Town specifically, coordinating with Carroll County to identify and secure additional groundwater recharge area beyond city limits. So that's associated with their kind of water allocation from the state with how much they're able to withdraw and use in their municipal system. So some of the important chapters for you all as a commission to just briefly look at and maybe provide comment on in the next two weeks, the water resources element. You all obviously know what the water resources element is and it was recently, we're at the point where it's out to public hearing now, I believe. at the county level. The municipal growth element is particularly important. We actually reviewed this at a staff level before the final draft and are reviewing it again in process now during the 60-day review. Community participation is always an important chapter to look at. And then specific to the city of Tawny Town, I put three kind of topics that are really important to them. The Antrim Boulevard extension, obviously the Tonytown bypass, just doing a word search in my review, it appears in the plan 49 times. So it's a very important topic in their plan and something they're bringing up consistently through different chapters. Water recharge area, like I brought up a minute ago, that appears in their plan. The word recharge appears 46 times, the phrase water recharge 18 times and groundwater recharge 13. So they're thinking about this a lot as they're thinking about the future of Tawny Town, further growth and development and what is constraining them for future growth or development or allowing them to grow and develop. Agricultural preservation is another really county-specific topic that Tawny Town cares about because it determines where their growth boundary and where their growth area can be in a lot of ways.

Let me ask you a question. On some of the agricultural land preservation easements, there was a water recharge element. Does the county have a list of those farms that have that language in the easement? so that you can locate them. I don't know. I know there's some maybe in Tawny Town. I don't know. I know there's some around Westminster. possibly New Windsor. Does the county keep track of that?

That would be a question for AgPres staff. But go ahead, Daphne.

Yeah, we do keep track of it. But whether we have it in a discrete list or not, I would have to check and see.

I mean, I know that's a big area of concern right now. And there was quite a few. Well, I don't know how many. I can't put a number on it. But there were a few easements. that were pertinent to water recharge and the city of Westminster or possibly Tony Town. I just want to know how that's coordinated.

Yeah, we I can think on that for you.

It's pretty important, too, because they the land of Agpres is predominantly up there, up in that area. Yeah.

So it'd be good to know their tiny towns permit allocation for for the water that they're allocated from from MDE is kind of constrained by aquifer recharge and so they're really always looking for ways to Expand their permitted capacity and one of the ways to do that is through easements for for additional aquifer Recharge, but they have to be within city limits Or there has to be some kind of agreement made with very close to the city out that there's

and i can't quote you the language but i know there's language there's language that's pertinent to that yep and also for maybe possible development outside of the city limits of those municipalities so just wanted to mention that for sure yeah and it's definitely an important topic in this particular draft plan so just one quick point of clarification i would ask is how do we coordinate

you know, the proximity that, that these easements need to be to the city, but also allow for the city's future growth. How do we, how do we anticipate that? How do we manage that? What, what is, is Tawny towns, uh, desire in terms of, of managing both of those concurrently? Does that make sense?

Yeah, and I think it's an effort that's coordinated together between us here at the county, the city of Taneytown and MDE. I don't know exactly how we've coordinated it at the county level in the past. I do know that we will be discussing this and thinking about it with the triennial update for the water and sewer master plan and Daphne, I don't know if you want to add anything in terms of what Tawny Town's relationship with MDE and how they discuss that with them.

Yeah, I don't, it's kind of like a, a soup of conversations. I think they don't happen in isolation. So I think these are ongoing things that particularly, you know, MDE will be providing comments on this draft plan. So in terms of their municipal growth area and how they're providing or how they're anticipating providing services for that is gonna be subject to comment from MDE. I think it's kind of an ongoing type of conversation and certainly when it comes to how the county can support the town's growth or the city's growth, um, efforts and through, um, water recharge on, on conservation easements, that kind of thing.

Okay.

It's just an ongoing conversation.

Yeah. I don't know that. I don't know that there has to be an answer, but I do, we've talked about strategic approach towards this. And it would seem to me that, you know, if we're not careful, we're gonna, we're going to solve the growth issue because we've hemmed it in.

Yeah.

And I don't think we necessarily want that.

Well, that's where it would be good to see what their growth element says, if it's got any language about... trying to either encourage or discourage preservation easements right along their growth area boundary. I mean, we have a policy of not taking easements within within municipal growth areas. So that certainly comes into play here as well.

It's pertinent to this particular update plan update for them because there is an easement project that borders the municipal growth boundary that actually adjusted the growth area boundary for the maps in this particular draft plan. So it's a topic that, you know, there's already a comment that's come from the Ag Pres office to us that's going to be included for them to update their mapping. And it's something that they're aware of at the city level. So it's, you know, AgPres applications come in as they come in. So some of these things are handled on a case-by-case basis whenever they come in. And then the discussions, you know, happen subsequently with the city at that point. But it is pertinent to this particular plan because I believe there's an easement project off of Stone Cipher Road that adjusts because of it is adjusting the growth area boundary on the south side of town for the city of Tawny Town within this particular plan.

Yeah, with that one I'll just note that that was the city had already agreed to adjust their growth area boundary and were okay with that. That was coordinated. Before that easement was even taken. So it wasn't something that was done and then the city had to respond.

Yeah, I think what I'm getting at is that In the ag easement program, you can be very innovative on some things, especially when you're dealing with county-held easements. So I know we've kind of pushed hard in certain respects to include in the master plan that we're working on now to take a real comprehensive look at certain areas in the county where it may or may not be pertinent to say no. And I think we're at that point now. The county's growing. We've been discovered again. And so I think now's the time for us to really take a look at that, especially when you're talking about essential needs like water and water recharge. So again, I think when we go through the master plan, get to the ag pros part of it, That's where the rubber hits the road. Good deal. Good. Good. So I don't want to take a whole much more time on this, but I think it's very important to keep bringing this up so that there's a coordination effort going on.

Yep. And I would I would agree with your point there, but I i also would agree with it i know ms daly said she was going to look into it i think everyone on this committee should get a copy of that water recharge list we should be looking county-wide not just at those specifically around the various municipalities because we really need to know what's the what's the whole picture there we went we had a lengthy conversations with with the maryland about water recharge and water recharge elements within these easements

And so that conversation might need to be brought up again. It was quite a process to make sure that we were on the right track by doing this. So I just don't want to keep bringing that up. Yes, sir. Agreed. Agreed totally.

Wholehearted. And I'm sure that conversation will come up again this upcoming year in the triennial update of the water and sewer master plan as well as we coordinate with MDE too.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you. Moving on quickly to the next slide here. So like I spoke about earlier, one of the more important elements to look at here in the next two weeks as you review this ahead of August 5th is the municipal growth element. It's the element that we as a comprehensive planning staff are really looking closely at to make sure it aligns with our county master plan and in this kind of municipal growth summary this graphic is pulled right from tiny towns draft plan some of the themes we were just talking about are summarized here and bulleted in this particular graphic such as ag preservation easements environmental features and infrastructure limitations continue to shape where and how future growth can occur Transportation improvements including the proposed Antrim Boulevard extension will be important to supporting future development. You catch my drift there based on what I've already brought up as important topics. They're summarized in this element of the plan and it's particularly pertinent to what we do here at a county level as well. Just some maps and figures. Like any good comprehensive or master plan, there's all sorts of great mapping resources and population projections. If you look at the population projections on the right, you're looking at the year 2075 and a projection of 12,649 people in the city of Tommytown. Those are just kind of obviously good data to look out and forecast and think about what the county is going to look like in the future. And this plan is obviously full of that, so I would pay attention to specific points of data and graphics like this as you do go through a quick review. And then future land use. This is a comparison on the left of Tawny Town's 2010 future land use map versus the future land use map that's in their draft plan on the right. In my opinion, there's a lot of different things going on this map and a lot of different colors I believe the orange shading on you know surrounding the municipal boundaries and the map on the right are AG Prez easements actually when they're they're depicted in gray on the map from 2010 and So that's a little bit confusing there as you compare the two but actually the growth area the growth boundary for Tony Thomas has shrunk a little bit since the 2010 plan and that was due to a property on the north side of town a pretty large property that has I believe forest conservation easements on it being taken out of the of the growth boundary There so that's kind of looking at the top of the map top center of the map near the the new Bollinger Park up there so So what is our responsibility as staff and then for you as a planning commission? Staff will continue to review and have our comments ready to go. We're asking the planning commission today to briefly review the Tawny Town Comprehensive Plan update in advance of your August 5th meeting. We will appear before you again at that August 5th meeting to solicit any comments that you might have. And then we at a staff level, in addition to our overall comment level where we're aggregating comments from the different departments around county government, we'll be preparing a letter to then convey to the city with your comments included in there as well after that August 5th meeting. So I have until the 7th of August, but I'm hoping to actually get that out shortly after our meeting on the 5th. Uh, you know, by that Thursday, August 6th with, uh, something back to the city. So any questions for me? Why have me up here?

Ethan will, will Tony town be here at the August 5th meeting?

We can certainly invite them. Yeah. And we'll be letting them know that, that they'll be on the agenda that that particular meeting. Um, I don't know whether they'll want to want to attend or not, but I'll be seeing them next Monday at their planning commission meeting. And we'll be letting them know that there'll be on the agenda.

And you're reviewing the items that you're going to present to us with them ahead of time?

Yep. Yeah. And we've already been. So we've had a county liaison planner at meetings related to their plan update for the last two years. So we've been consistently engaged and involved in the process and have been able to provide comment whenever it's requested of us or whenever we see that it's necessary.

Any other questions? Okay. Public comment?

No public comment.

Okay.

Thank you, Ethan. Yep. Thanks, everybody. Thanks, Daphne.

All right. Item number nine, the concept site plan for Piney Ridge Parkway age-restricted villas S230017. Kirsten's going to walk us through that.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Sorry for hitting the mic there for anybody who got any feedback. My name's Kirsten. I'm with the Development Review Division. We're here before you today with a concept residential site plan for the, bear with me, the name has changed over time, Piney Ridge Parkway, age-restricted villas. I will get my pile settled. I'll let these gentlemen introduce themselves, please.

Mike Kalanock, JPB Partners. We're the owner and developer.

Jeff Sner with CMS Associates, a civil engineer. Bruce Harvey, Williamsburg Homes, the builder for the project.

All right. Thank you. So this is a project that probably looks familiar to a lot of people. This is, again, Piney Ridge Parkway age-restricted villas. But in the past, it's been Freedom Avenue age-restricted villas and Johnsville Road age-restricted apartments. So this has been before the Planning Commission. Two times already here. And this is our third time. And again, we're just here for a concept review, concept discussion, looking for any direction and feedback that the Commission might have and any comments the public might have as well. I'll introduce you to the site now. So we're in Eldersburg. It's just cut off, but right here is the intersection of 26 and 32. You can see 32 down here. You can see 26 up here. Our site is here highlighted in teal. It is in an area where it's mostly zoned residential 10,000 with some pockets of commercial one zoning in the area as well, some pockets of conservation. This big conservation pocket you see here is the elementary school. This is church. This is another church. And you can see these are Single family dwellings. I'll move on to the next slide where it zooms in closer to our area. So those are single family dwellings I just pointed out. Over here are some townhouse style apartments. There's another pocket of townhouse style apartments over to the east. It's a pretty well built area, largely residential. This property itself you might have seen in the last page is split zoned. The zoning on this parcel is residential 10,000, which again matches pretty much the houses here in this area and the area surrounding. This parcel here is zone commercial one, C1. This project proposes utilization of both properties in concert with each other. During this review process as we proceed to the final stages, those properties will be consolidated into one. The zonings will remain the same. So the zoning will still be R10 and C1. What's being proposed for this site plan, which I think is the next sheet, yep, is townhouses. This should probably look pretty familiar. This is the exact plan I believe that we had. I included it again in this presentation because it was really useful, I think, to see it in context with the other aerial photography of what's in that area. So there are some slight differences between this rendering and what the actual plan looks like, but I think this is helpful for the purposes of discussion of location. What's being proposed now are five pockets of townhouses here and a retirement village. Retirement villages are a principal permitted use in the C1 district, this area here, but they are conditional use in the Residential 10 district, this area here. So the last time that the Planning Commission saw this was just before it went to Planning Commission. I'm sorry, just before it went to the Board of Zoning Appeals to request to allow the use of the retirement village in the residential 10 district. It's proceeded to the Board of Zoning Appeals and was approved and now we're back here again just for a concept review with the Planning Commission. So it's not like we're at the final stages here. This is for the purposes of discussion and direction. One thing that, or a couple things that can't necessarily change would be the density. That is something that what we were talking about in our last meeting was for the purposes of the Planning Commission to consider and approve the density before it proceeds to the Board of Zoning Appeals. And the Board of Zoning Appeals can't change the density and then neither can the Planning Commission. The Planning Commission, nothing can change the density once it's gone past that stage there. But the site layout within reason is a purpose of discussion here today. So in the discussion of context within the neighborhood, this is where the main entrance will be to the internal driveway we saw on the last slide. So this is, can I actually have that keyboard? It's a lot easier for me to pan back and forth.

There'll be a lot of clicking with the mouse.

Whoops. Maybe not. Okay. So this is the entrance I was just showing you. This is the driveway we can see that's already existing. So here's the location of the internal driveway. This here, which serves, I believe, 17 of the houses. And then I'm going to kind of walk us around the site going south and then east and then up Freedom Avenue. So over here is the entrance we just saw. Here's the intersection of Piney Ridge and Johnsville Road. Here's basically just past that stop sign looking along Johnsville Road. You can see the single family dwellings in the distance. Here's that corner right next to the single family dwellings looking back onto the site and then looking down Freedom Avenue. So getting into the plan review, I'll go over the history briefly. It's in the report. Again, there's been a lot of history for this property. In fact, after it was subdivided originally in 1987, which at that time, lot 64 was already zoned commercially. There have been quite a few site plans that have come through the county's review process and some of them have even proceeded to planning commission. I think one or two even to approval and then fell down. Most of them were of a commercial nature. Most of them were things like stores, a retail center, office building. I think there was a restaurant at one point that was proposed. So what's being proposed now, of course, is just residential, strictly residential townhouse style dwellings. The original plan that came in, like I mentioned, was originally townhouses in this area, pretty similar to this layout, in fact, and then apartment buildings here. But that plan has now been replaced with this one. This is what's proceeding forward. This was presented to you by the developers at the time that they were considering that change. They presented plans for discussion. There was a discussion. The plans were then submitted. The plans were presented to the Planning Commission again prior to BZA. The plans were presented to the Board of Zoning Appeals for conditional use approval specifically for the residential zoning portion. Um, and, and there've been two different technical review committee meetings. Cause again, this project has had three different iterations. Um, so there was two originally, and then this one for this one. So the site layout itself, like I said, it really hasn't changed that much since that very first planning commission presentation, we still have, they're all just single family, semi attached townhouse style age restricted dwellings. I think even the configuration has remained the same as far as how many are in each pocket. We still have this internal driveway here. I'm going to describe a little bit more about the details you might not be able to see too well here. So what we're seeing in this rendering, everything that's shown in green would be grass, in theory, grass stormwater facilities. You can see outlined these little ring shapes here. There are, I believe, 14 of them. There are quite a few of these microbioretention ponds to help treat the water. 15, I was close. Scattered throughout, but there are also areas of flat yard space. In fact, each one of these units will have, it's not delineated on this plan, but each unit will have their own little backyard space, and you can see that the stormwater facilities are not within those backyard spaces. They do have their own backyards they'll be able to do not stormwater things in. There is a pocket over here that's not shown in green, but that's going to be a forest conservation easement area. I'm going to skip ahead a little bit here. Oh, no, we don't show it. So there's an existing forest conservation easement on this site that was added to this site from a different site plan. One of the churches just north of the site previously owned this property here. And when they developed their church, they elected to do offsite forest conservation easement on this property. So there was an acre just about of forest conservation that went just about to here. That's still mostly wooded today. And a portion of that is proposed to remain, but this developer has elected, as they're allowed to do, to pursue a different offsite forest bank to address the removal of, sorry, different offsite forest easements to address the removal of a portion of this existing easement from a different developer. So they'll retain a little bit of forest in this area here under easement, protected, and they'll be doing additional offsite easements as well to address forest conservation requirements. It's a little bit difficult to see in this view as well, but there are sidewalks that run. Well, we can start internally. Sidewalks that run to the terminus here of this internal drive, I believe on this eastern side. It wraps up and around, and it runs along Piney Ridge Parkway here. There's a crosswalk cut in that will be here. Continues along Piney Ridge another crosswalk cut in here, which I think is existing and if they need to modify it Maybe that's not existing there They'll put a crosswalk here if there's not one already and we'll continue up here and connect to an existing sidewalk terminus in this location here so There's some steep slopes here and again the forest conservation easement there and there's no sidewalks in this area So the sidewalk basically begins here allowing connectivity from the sidewalks on this side of the road over to this side of the road, effectively conveying towards the school, which is just down this road here. That's, well, I can't zoom in too much here, but Freedom Avenue is also being widened to meet the county standards of width here. Right now, Freedom Avenue does not meet our current standards for that type of road, and this developer is widening it in conjunction with this site development plan. Parking is required for two spaces for each dwelling per the zoning code. Four spaces are provided per each dwelling, two in the driveway, two in the garage. And that exceeds the zoning code doubly, in fact. Water and sewer will be public water and sewer. Utilities has already confirmed that there is capacity for all 31 units at this time. And they'll, of course, they'll manage this internal driveway as a private driveway. Freedom Avenue is already a public road. Piney Ridge Parkway, Johnsville Road, public roads. This driveway, internal driveway here, will be a responsibility of the property owner, the HOA, to maintain. in addition to any public water and sewer lines that go into the site to feed these houses. And of course, they'll have to pay the connection fees when constructing this as well. As far as the multiple public meetings that we've had, the signs we've posted and the postcards we've sent out, we have gotten quite a bit of public feedback on this project. A lot of it really came out during the original discussion, which discussed the The apartment complex and the I believe 11 at that time townhouses we had a lot of public feedback in particular regard to traffic concerns. A lot of feedback about parking concerns because the apartment of course need more parking than these houses will and it was was just barely enough at that time so it was good to see this come back and they literally double what the requirements are for parking on this current plan. And concerns about water and sewer. as well but again utilities has noted that there is capacity available for these units and although again those comments were largely resultant from the discussion regarding the apartment complex we still recognize that that's nothing nothing really changes too much there's still traffic concerns there's still parking concerns in particular along freedom avenue where a lot of the residents park basically in the grass on the edge of freedom avenue now And of course there'll be driveway cut-ins in that area. So we recognize that that's a concern. The applicant has the right to connect their driveways to a public road and they do meet the requirements necessary to do so here. And a lot of the parking will be internal. Most of the units are inside this private driveway here. This page here that I flipped to shows landscaping. You can kind of see them as these little pom-poms along the edge of Piney Ridge, along the edge of Johnsville Road. There's a few over here too as well that butts right up to the forest conservation easement to provide screening for these backyards and these side yards. But you'll notice that there's not really any in the front yards. The landscaping code does not require that landscaping be provided in front yards. It's not a code requirement. Some developers will show more landscaping in the front yard. Some builders will choose to put landscaping in the front yard. These plans are currently not showing them. Again, it was not a requirement for a landscaping review. Landscaping has approved this concept plan. I'm gonna take this opportunity to go on to the next few pages and to mention the comments that our design review committee had about this site. I'm gonna flip through our architectural Images here, the renderings. So these are again, they're townhouses, townhouse style villas. First floor primary suite, right? And a couple of bedrooms on the second story, three bedrooms optional on the second story. There's essentially three primary configurations as far as the roof goes and three primary configurations as far as the siding details go. This is showing one roof style that kind of exemplifies all three siding styles. You have your vinyl, I believe. You have shake style shingling here. You can have half brick. You can have full brick on the bottom. So there's some variety in the materials and colors there. Here's another roof line. Here's another roof line. And the rear elevations, the top left exemplifies pretty well what the difference between the two bedroom second story and the three bedroom second story looks like. And the right hand side shows some of those differences depending on what your side looks like, what your roof configuration because of that third bedroom would look like. So there's some variety here. We did take this to our design architectural review committee. And I mentioned that as soon as I mentioned side or landscaping, because that was one of the primary comments that came out is that why is there no landscaping in the front yards? It really would look nice to have some landscaping in the front yards in particular along Freedom Avenue where it's facing Houses that are already there that that do have mature landscaping that potentially the private homeowners planted 30 years ago Right and might not have been required to have landscaping on those properties, but it was a recommendation of our design architectural review committee Another comment they had was pretty nitty-gritty They suggested and I'm not sure I'm going to be able to zoom in enough to demonstrate They suggested that around the windows that the zoom that the style of channeling, J channeling, this might mean stuff to some people. It's a little bit over my head, but explain it to me. So the J channeling along the windows, basically the flashing or the siding along the windows, be wide on the backs and the sides to match the fronts. So essentially these windows, the way they explain it to me is that the rear and side windows will kind of just be inset into the side of the vinyl, whereas the front windows will have more of a framing around it. So it gives you some more visual distinction as opposed to the windows just being in the siding versus having that... design aspect to it. It was a very minor comment, but those were the only two comments that they had, so I did want to bring it up. So I think they rather liked the designs of the houses and appreciated the diversity there. And something that we also notice is that the threshold to get to the front porch is essentially a zero step threshold to the front porch. And we've had some further discussions about that. Each house will be obviously You're not just building these on a flat piece of land, no matter really where you are. So there'll be some variation to them. Some of the houses might need a step up through the doorway. The goal, of course, I think probably for most builders is to not have any step throughs at all when you're looking at a age restricted facility. So that's the goal, is my understanding, is to reduce the number of steps you have. But it does look like the steps in the walkway to the front porch, at least, is no staircases. And I think... That's all I have here. So I just wanted to run that by you to go over the site layout, the discussions we've had in the past, the comments that the public has had in the past, and where we are with the review. We're at concept now. Everybody's issued concept approvals. There are quite a few agencies who need details on the final plans. That's typical. When this proceeds to final, of course, they'll get them in order to receive or issue approval. We'll also double check to make sure that adequate facilities are, well, adequate in this location, fire protection, police, traffic, and so on. Schools, of course, is not a discussion when it comes to age restricted, so that's not going to be an issue on this site, although it's an issue for other developments that are not age restricted. So I'd be happy to go over any details here. The one page I keep flipping by is the photometric plan. You really can't see what's going on too much here. It's very busy for the small screen you guys can see. But you can see that they'll have front yard lights here and all the properties will have their own light. I'm sure that they'll be the ones controlling. So pretty typical of a residential development. I'm going to go back to this page. And I'd be happy to answer any questions. And I'm sure these gentlemen would be as well.

I have a question about Freedom Avenue, the width when you're finished, the width of Freedom Avenue. You're going to widen it. So what would be the final width of that?

Pretty sure it's 30 feet, but the widening is kind of a generous term for this. What really happened was the southern side of Freedom Avenue, the lower end that we're building on, really just was not finished with curb and gutter. And so some of the pavement kind of lacked. So I think in general, one to two feet or something like that, we're extending it just to make it per the code for that type of street.

And the turnaround at the end, how big is that? And who's responsible for that?

That's an existing turnaround right now. The cul-de-sac route? The cul-de-sac. Yes, the cul-de-sac. That's existing right now, so we're not really touching that.

That's a public road. It's a public road, county maintenance.

But how big is that? Is it big enough for a fire department to, I mean, do they need to approve that in any way?

Well, so fire review has reviewed the concept plans and has issued a concept level approval. So they reviewed their code. I don't know what requirements they might have. This is built to a county standard. So this roadway is built to county standards.

Okay. No, not new ones. They're not new. Not the new standards.

I know a question I would have. I mean, currently you can see there's people that park on that side. Obviously, there's going to be no parking on that side.

with the curb and all is that correct or will it be parking there will there will be opportunities for parking on that side as well i didn't know if it was enough width well the drive the driveways don't take up what really was is the driveways take up now space that used to be for parking but it's not everywhere on this yeah and obviously they weren't parking the whole way down so

So if you park on both sides of that road on Freedom Avenue, can fire equipment get in?

Typically, as long as they park legally, yes.

So we saw There's cars parked on the other side. That road's been there for years.

And those people have gotten used to parking over there like it's their own private parking lot. So I get the challenge here. From a stormwater management standpoint, I guess I want to either applaud you or just question. My goodness, 14 structures seems for a site this size In my prior life, I did industrial development, and y'all don't need to hear about, I need therapy over what we did, but we did regional detention. I mean, ornamental lakes and that sort of thing with fountains in it, and I'm not asking you to do an ornamental lake, but for the life of me, I would like to see you try to put one or two more ponds in here. I mean, is it the way we do it, Why are there so many stormwater structures on this site like this? It's not the topography, the topography is pretty, on the backside it slopes and it comes down towards the intersection here. What is it about this site that's requiring this many stormwater management features?

In the context of what you were talking about originally, in 2010, the regulations for the state of Maryland changed. So it went from being the regional type facilities that you could build, put everything at the low point and make a big pond, to a step-by-step process of elimination of what type of stormwater or environmental sensitive design that you could do. in this type of project where you're not eliminating impervious area, where you don't have enough room to just do rooftop disconnect, which is basically allowing the roof water to run along a linear piece of property. We're kind of constrained here. You go to infiltration. And infiltration, the state really wants you to limit yourself to 20,000 square feet per facility. And so once you do that, that's even a little bit less than half an acre. Yeah, it's one and a half an acre. Yeah. That's amazing.

Yeah, so the treatment aspect is really what changed between your past life and today. So this actually does drain into a regional pond. There is a pond that ends up in eventually, just not on site because, again, they need to essentially— Is that across the street on the church property? Not on the church property. I believe it's actually a—

It's part of a residential neighborhood. In fact, the neighborhood itself is contiguous with that, if I'm not mistaken, maintains it. Okay, responsible for maintaining it.

Yeah, I mean, it's unfortunate because, again, this site's so constrained that if we could get rid of one or two of those ponds, you might be able to... I sound like a broken record. I'd like to see... know these units in threes and fours not fives and sixes like this and um with all the the storm water features that you have you know i just i i i don't know what to do what to ask of you are these storm water management features are they are they underground or are they just no they're they're depressions they're depressions in the land yeah

Anywhere from a half a foot to a foot of a depression. Wow.

Yeah, this is why it costs so much in the state of Maryland to build houses.

This is overkill. I mean, I'm not blaming you guys. I'm just saying this is almost a poster child for what we're doing wrong in terms of what we require of you guys. And if we could consolidate a couple of those, I would think, again, you'd get more usable. I don't know. It's very frustrating. And then I guess from a house plan standpoint, these are going to have basements? They will, yes. What is our access in and out of the basement?

The minimum is a window well, escape well. You can also potentially do some area ways.

Yeah, I mean, guys, I mean, do you all think that's reasonable for an over 55 to have a ladder in a well? I mean, you're the one who's got to sell it.

I mean, we offer those exits. And I understand your concern, comments, in terms of the stormwater managers doesn't make it any easier for us to do that. But in general, people do purchase those areaways.

That seems.

Yeah. Throughout all the counties, you see those window wells and they're received. People may never use them, but it's the way to get out.

I would love to see a demonstration by a 75- or 80-year-old getting out of one of those window wells, if they had to. It's not.

I'd be happy to show you.

All of those who would like to see that, I have a motion. Yeah, I think we could sell tickets. We're not allowed to vote. Let's make that a fundraiser. No, I'm sorry.

So none of them has actually a walkout? No.

I don't believe there's any walkouts here.

It's a relatively flat site like you mentioned before.

The topography doesn't lend itself to a walkout unless you're going to put some sort of a French drain in the bottom or whatever you do and make stairs come out of it. Guys, this is one of those things that we're talking about in terms of you know what we think we want for our county and um that is one of those design features that from a design standard standpoint i don't know what we do about it because again janice you're right the market the market is allowing it I think given the number of these things that we're seeing and the intended use in that it's over 55, I think we're doing a disservice by not pressing you as the developer to come up with something. Can we not come up with something better? We're not going to solve this here today. You guys do what you want to do. But I think as a commission, we probably ought to give it some more thought in terms of what we require.

I think that we're not giving enough credit to the active adult community because over 55 doesn't mean you're crippled and can't do that. They're out running marathons and 5K is everything.

It's an interesting dichotomy, Janice, because at the same time, we're saying they're active. We're saying they can climb out of here, but we're also saying from a traffic standpoint, they're not doing anything between the hours of 8 and 9. It just blows my mind that we've got... And they're not all 55. That's right. And so, you know, again, I hear you and I agree and I aspire to be the guy who can climb out that well. But if we're saying age in place, there's a moment in time when you're not going to be able to climb out. You are have you do have a nurse nurse coming in, staying the night with you, and you might not be able to climb out of that thing. So and the nurse may not be able to push you out. So but your point's taken. I hear you.

And They're lower level, so typically your bedroom's on that first level, so it's there for extra activity down there.

So if I could ask a description of the difference between the window, the well approach that we're using here and what typically I'm familiar with, which is you have a A door and a stairwell. Why one versus another? I mean, obviously, if you have a basement that's fully in the ground, it has no walkout capability, you have to get out. What are the pros and cons to using the well set up versus like a staircase type of thing?

So most of it comes down to space and comes down to room. So if you're going to do a patio in your backyard as an example, therefore your stairs are going to maybe get in the way or have to be coordinated. It can be done. but sometimes maybe you want to do a larger patio that maybe would encompass the area that that areaway would go. So also depends on how, is it fully in ground? Is it half in ground? So that determines how many stairs are gonna be. So that stair could maybe not fit in terms of the actual site plan. So those are the considerations. Some people don't think it's ugly to have the stairs, frankly. As a consumer, not as a planning board necessarily. So those are the considerations, really.

Just for the record, some of the findings and conclusions when you went to the Board of Zoning Appeals is that the typical resident is between 70 and 75 years old. I was testified at the Board of Zoning Appeals. So I think what we're getting at here is that more and more we're trying to understand that there's aging in place going on. And when these things are built, we talk about 55 and over. I wish I could do half the things I could do at 55. Now I'm starting to wonder what I can do at 75, and now I'm starting to really worry what I'm going to try to be doing at 80. So I just want you to understand that these things now have started to come to a head because of this onslaught of 55 and over. And we've got to stop thinking 55. 55 is what, the old 45 or something like that, whatever. And now what is the 75 and what is the 85? And that's what we're looking at here. So it's not an attack on the builders. It's just something that's happening in our society that's going to be a real issue in Carroll County moving forward when you look at all the 55 and over communities that we're dealing with here. And we've seen some good, bad, and ugly. You have a nice concept plan here. It's a very good concept plan. But this is what we're looking for, and that's why these questions keep coming up time and time again. It's not a nitpicking trial and error thing here. So these are why we're concerned about EMS, fire departments. Availability of all these things when the time comes and these things will be happening in the future. So what do you do when they happen? Are we prepared for it? That's what we're looking for.

And Kirsten, when we say that this has been passed fire review, walk me through that process just for a moment. When we send that through this does the local Sykesville Fire Department get a chance to chime in on these roads and the width and the parking plan?

So it's really a three phase or three component distribution for fire review. So in the county office building, we have a fire protection reviewer who handles site plans, sprinkler systems, permits, stuff like that. And they look at that for the behalf of the county. and they review it against the codes that they review it against. And they respond to us in comment letters just like stormwater management does, just like floodplain does, and so on. So that's our primary source of response, comment, and requirements. We also distribute the plans to two other, essentially, parties. We distribute it to the fire chief of that jurisdiction directly by email, and we distribute it to The, it's a group called, oh, emergency, oh. It's an emergent, no, it's E-S-A-C. I don't know what it stands for, but there's about...

Emergency Services Advisory Council.

Thank you. Emergency Services Advisory Council. Wonderful. So it's distributed to our internal reviewer who reviews for the code, the fire chief of that jurisdiction who can refer their comments to that reviewer or to us, and to the ESAC group who reviews it and makes comment to either the review coordinator or to our fire protection reviewer, who can then incorporate their comments into their written response. The fire reviewer reviews the plans every time the plans come in. The other two parties review the plans at the first submittal. If the plans were to change substantially, for example, when this changed from being an apartment complex and townhouses to all townhouses, they would receive a new submittal for that because it's essentially a new plan. But if we're moving where a stormwater pond is by 15 feet, they don't need to re-review those plans. We're not trying to clog up the important work that they do. So essentially, our fire protection reviewer then, during resubmittals, becomes the primary source of reviewing for the fire code and for safety codes. and they'll receive plans at final as well.

So that what just so that we can avoid because we know there's going to be a parking issue on we know Freedom Avenue just because of the habit that people have gotten into parking across the street. I can imagine that there's going to be a settling out period. People will have to get used to the new normal. So that's just going to happen. But internally, the new road to be built, I would like confirmation from our fair people that we're not creating a problem here with the parking that we're proposing, that will be able to get in and out on this road. So I would just like somebody to confirm for us before we send this on down the road. I would like somebody to tell us that we're not making the same mistake that we made Previously in other developments understand does that does that?

Request I want one day ask did the fire chief make any comment about this when he saw not for this project But again, like I mentioned the first plan submittal goes to the fire chief into the advisory group That was in 2023 maybe 2024 for this revised version so thereafter Per our process, it goes to our fire protection reviewer. Now, it hasn't been to our fire protection reviewer since, I think, last winter. So it's been a little while since they've seen it. I know there's been a lot, a lot, a lot of discussion about this. They will absolutely see this plan again. If they have requirements that need to be addressed, those requirements will need to be addressed.

I'd ask him to sharpen his eye on this one. Because we, let's not do a, let's not have a, we've seen this movie before.

Yeah.

Right.

And gets, you know, if the fire chief is saying, I don't have any comment, you can document that he doesn't have any comment or everything's okay or whatever. I'd like to hear it specifically from the end user who's going to be driving the apparatuses through those neighborhoods and see if it's sufficient. Question about the density. So there's 6.6 acres and I may be wrong on this, but at 3 1⁄2 per acre, units per acre, that's 23.2, so round down to 23, and this proposes 31 units. Why is there a difference of eight? I think I know the answer, but I wouldn't hear it.

It's split-zoned, so.

Part of a C1.

Commercial doesn't have any zone. Commercial doesn't have a density.

Oh, density. That's what I thought it was. I just wanted to hear it.

um and that's written in the code too if you need to see it as well as hear it yeah i didn't like reading that um the um how wide are the uh driveways for the residences 10 feet well it's double um no it's 18 18. yeah i was looking at this morning So the driveways are 18 feet. I was reading that this morning. OK. So the driveways in front of the garages are 18 feet wide.

And what's the length?

30 feet wide, I believe, is what I recall.

The length of the driveway you're talking about.

For the street?

Yeah, how long is the driveway from the end of the garage to the?

The length varies on certain ones. The minimum amount is 20 feet.

So 20 to 30 feet.

I don't know if there's any 30 foot driveways. They may be on those three, but.

Yeah.

Okay.

And they're two car garages, right? Two car garages, 20 foot wide. And the driveway, the garage door is 18 feet, right? Okay.

Garage door's actually 16 feet. 16 feet. But 18 is pretty standard for a 20 foot garage.

And how wide are the townhomes? 30 foot wide. They're 30, okay. And the walkway width, what is that, the sidewalk width around the community?

I believe our standard is five feet wide, at least against the public road. I wish I had a better tool to measure things while I was on.

That is our standard. It's five.

And it looks like it's consistent if you go from the public road and this point right here is where it transitions to be a private internal driveway. I mean, internal sidewalk. It looks like it remains the same width. We can definitely make a note to check that, ensure that it meets our current standards during the final plan review.

Please check that. Please check the driveway width and those things. And who's paying for the road improvements on Piney Ridge?

Piney Ridge here?

Yeah.

The only improvement they're proposing, so Piney Ridge is to remain unimpacted. They're cutting in a new driveway entrance. here, which widening is on freedom Avenue. I'm going to go back a page. So this area here where people are parking, that's effectively the area that, um, they mentioned just wasn't finished when this subdivision was done and it's just been maintained as gravel effectively. So that will essentially just be widened out to more or less where people are already parking, where it's already gravel. Piney Ridge Parkway itself will remain unchanged. Johnsville road will remain unchanged just with the addition of sidewalk and one new driveway entrance for the shared driveway.

Okay, so like we said, let's double check the width of the Freedom Avenue. Back to my question, is that developer expense to fix that road, Freedom Road, Freedom Avenue?

And curb and gutter on that. Curb and gutter. To my knowledge, it is, yes.

Right, all the work shown on this plan will have to be handled by the developer. Future maintenance for the public roadway, Freedom Avenue, is county responsibility. Gotcha.

OK. And then, as Ralph was saying earlier, can we get some specifics on the turnaround at the end of Freedom? The radius. Yeah, the radius.

Sure.

I've been sitting here and measuring on my computer. So what is the finished roadway width going to be? Because I might have missed that on Freedom. Because looking at the other, the rest of that development, everything's 30 feet curb to curb.

It's going to be easier for me to open this up than it is to zoom in on that. So bear with me.

I'm pretty sure it's 30 feet. Yeah.

Existing pavement, 50 foot right away, 29 existing pavement, 25 proposed pavement. No, 30. 25 existing, 30 proposed. It's covered with a gray stripe. It does say 30 foot proposed.

30?

Along Freedom.

would you go back to that photograph that you had of freedom from this one yes ma'am so guys if we if we look at this photograph and this is actually a pretty good example for us because we've got cars parked on the left in front of the homes that are existing if people parked in the grass and totally off of the pavement. So if if if we're saying this road is approximately, let's call it 28, is it 25?

It's delineated as being 25 feet wide.

So you got to add five. You're going to add five feet to the right. And if we have people parking on both sides of that road and it's curved and it's curved, so you're not going to be able to park in the grass area between the sidewalk. I guess my point is, again, like we're asking, can our emergency vehicles get in and out of there if that car is sticking out on the pavement another five feet, four feet, something like that, that's what we're talking about here in terms of access.

Yeah, I mean, they can get through there. I mean, I was looking in the other development where there was cars across from one another, and there's still 16 feet in between the cars. Okay. So I don't think it's any, I mean, that's what the current standard is. Right. Got it. All right. Thank you. Turn around. Meet our new standards that we want to do. No, that's not. Yeah, it's.

Yeah, a public road. So.

Right. So this again, I'm going to bring it back to this page here. This property is bounded by public roads. These all need to meet county standards and the counties responsible for maintaining them. They're going to widen this one to meet the standards that we have now. This is an internal private driveway. I think this one's probably the one that like Mr. Leister said, that we're going to really take a look at so we don't repeat some other mistakes that we've had on other properties. I mean, it curves at the end because of the cul-de-sac, but this is a straight road. It goes straight and straight back. This one is... we'll be making sure that those numbers are right in consideration of our current discussions. Our fire protection reviewer will review that again, I'm sure, with that consideration in mind.

The only thing I would see on there that would be questionable would be the turnaround, because with no one parking on the street, it should be plenty, but the turnaround at the end, if there would be a fire on one of the Units. I mean, you're going to have a ladder truck in there on the public road, on the private, on the private, on the private.

We'll look at we'll make sure we're looking and discussing all details of that private drive.

Is that a T at the end of that? It is right around. That's a standard. Come in, go there and go out.

Yes, ma'am. Okay. It's county standard for a true T turn around for an emergency vehicle. Okay.

I'm not an expert, but you see that on plans.

Do you remember the three-point turn test when you took that test? Yes, I do.

Now imagine it in a fire truck.

Along with climbing up ladders.

Very good. Very good. I have to make a day of it. That's right. 9.9 on the dismount.

Any other questions, comments? We've put up with enough. Yeah, we pestered you guys enough.

So again, we're just at concept now. So that's the point of this is that we want to have that discussion. You could elect to bring this to the chair for final approval, but I did not mention that previously because I didn't think it was going to be really a topic of discussion here. And I think after our discussion, that's definitely not going to be the case. So we'll come back before you for final review and approval with responses to the questions you've asked here.

OK. Well, good.

Unless anybody else had other questions.

No other questions? From here. OK. Let's go to public comment. Do I come up? Yes, please. Please, if you haven't, sign in. Oh, I did. Perfect. I thought I saw you back there. State your name, address, and talk into the microphone to facilitate audio and video recording. You are on TV. Comments will be strictly limited to three minutes. Citizen testimony is not a Q&A, so this is your chance to speak. Q&A, you could do that after the meeting. If an individual fails to comply with these rules, the Planning and Zoning Commission chair may call the person out of order and may require you to leave the meeting. Okay. Go ahead. Three minutes.

My name is Kim Brecker. I live at 6178 Freedom Avenue. I am the fourth house in. Currently, I will not have any building directly across the street from me, I don't think, in this plan. I wanted to address Pete Lester's comment about can fire get down our street. Yes, an ambulance can get down our street and turn around in the cul-de-sac. But the tower truck cannot. The big engines go in and have to back out. When Santa comes around, they have had to change their path. They used to come down our street, but they've had to change their path because the big engines cannot turn around in our cul-de-sac. So the reason we have to park on the street is because we only have We are single family dwellings on freedom and we only have maybe a single car garage. There are some that don't even have a garage. We only have a single driveway. We have had some houses put in secondary driveways facilitate extra parking but the majority of us are two income families and we have to have multiple cars and our children some of our children are getting older and we needed extra cars for the children so we park across the street because we don't have enough space to park in our own driveway and in our own garage Currently, we have all had to put in French drains along Freedom Avenue because our property was not graded properly, and we have flooding issues. I know Piney Ridge Parkway had been repaired once because it has a sinkhole right near that entrance that they're planning on putting the driveway. I've lived in my property for 30 years and I've seen multiple plans come up for this. I am much happier with 31 houses than I was the apartment complex or Salerno's building or the highs and bank and gas station that were allotted back in 96. I would like to see more trees They are getting rid of a lot of trees that are that are big and, you know, bold. But that's just my own thought. And my question is, truly, can a fire truck get in on that private drive? Because if it can't get down Freedom Avenue, it's not going in that private drive. So I would like to see some concept changes. OK.

Very good.

And that's my three minutes.

All right. Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other public comment? OK. That's it. Very good. Thank you, gentlemen and Kirsten.

Thank you. Thank you for your time, everybody.

Thank you. OK. I'm not going to pack up.

How about a break? Hm? Break now. We don't have any breaks.

Can we take a five minute break?

Make a motion.

OK. We're back in session. Moving on to item number 10, the concept site plan for Doss Garland solar farm, S-25-0022. We have David.

That is correct. So David Becraft with the Development and Review Division. As mentioned, I'm here to talk about the last proposed development of the day, which is Doss Garland Solar Farm, file number S250022. We have two representatives of the project here. I will let them introduce themselves.

My name is Jeff Ziegler with CLSI Civil Engineering.

My name is Trey Pippen with Renewable Properties. I'm the developer.

Thank you. And as you can probably guess from the title of the proposed development, what is being proposed is a ground-mounted solar facility. This may look familiar to some of you because it adjoins an existing facility that was approved by the Planning Zoning Commission a few years ago. but for those who are unfamiliar we are on the outskirts of Hampstead so this red line you're seeing here that is the municipal boundary of Hampstead and then this black line you see that's running diagonal that is the boundary of Carroll County and Baltimore County so we're right on the edge of the county and also right on the edge of the municipality And if you look at the property, you can see that there are a slew of zoning districts that are encompassing on this property. This one to the south here is agriculture. This green is conservation. This area here is our 40,000. And then these two purples over here are industrial light and industrial heavy. So moving forward, kind of zooming in on the project itself. So the sites that we're talking about here are really three different properties. The one currently houses an existing solar facility. Again, this was approved by the Planning and Zoning Commission back in October of 2023. And then you can see that there are two other properties here, one shown up here, and then this larger one shown down here. And in aggregate, all of these properties equate to about 70 or so acres. And you can see this aerial is fairly recent. So you can see that most of the area is farm fields. There is an existing house and outbuildings that are shown here. And because we are so close to the municipal boundary for Hampstead, this property with the existing solar facility, that is within Hampstead's priority funding area. But these other two parcels are not within the priority funding area and none of these parcels are within the designated growth area. So what's currently being proposed is a solar facility and I'm going to move to the next one. So I have some plan sheets as well, but I like to do an overlay on top of the aerial photography just to give a better idea as what's being proposed. So a solar array is proposed on the property and this is only within that area that is our 40,000. because of recent state legislature these solar facilities are required to be permitted within all zoning districts that also including our 40,000 within our code we were allowed to have the prohibition of facilities in this zoning district to not allow more than five megawatts facilities. So what's being proposed now is five megawatts, and it is comprised of three interconnected facilities, which is two megawatts, two megawatts, and one megawatt. Per the notes on the cover sheet, there are no proposed lights in conjunction with this development. And so I'm just going to move forward. Let me know if you have a preference on if you like this overlay, if you like this plan sheet, or I have the zoom-ins of these three different areas, the area A, B, or C, in case there's anything in particular you want to look at. So whichever you have a preference of looking at, I can currently leave it on here as I run through.

Any personal choice? The color? The one color? Yeah.

OK. Perfect. So the last time I presented one of these facilities in front of you after the state's record bill, I actually went through chapter 155, 158, 153 point by point, talking about how that project complied with county regulations and site requirements. For the sake of time, I'm not going to do that. I'm certainly happy to pinpoint on anything if you have questions, but I will state that this does comply with all of those regulations within the county's solar site requirements. And this was granted concept approval by the zoning office having complied with all those requirements. So there is access to the property is via Doss Garland Road. So Doss Garland, actually Doss Garland Drive, I'm sorry. Doss Garland Drive is a public roadway, but at some point it does transition into a private drive. And this connection to the site is after that transition. So they are coming off of Dorskine Drive, but off of that private portion. And what they're proposing is an 18 foot wide access drive, which will lead to two parking spaces, as well as that fence gate that they have. So there's going to be a seven foot tall chain link fence that's gonna surround this site. There's no barbed wire on top of that fence per county regulations. And I am actually going to move forward. So the detail for it, just a standard chain link fence, but that is provided in the plans, which designates the height of it as well. I mentioned that there's going to be parking associated. Just moving back here. so there's two parking spots that are shown pretty close to after exiting that dr garland drive and per county regulations it states that for the solar energy generating facilities one space is required plus one for each employee there are no employees that are going to be regularly coming to this site but they elected to provide two parking spaces regardless The proposal was subject to citizen involvement at the November 2025 Technical Review Committee meeting. And during that meeting, there were citizens in attendance and they did have some concerns with the proposal. One of those relates to issues that they had with the construction of the existing facility. So with the construction of the existing facility, there was a lot of damage to the roadway, but there is also equipment that was being sent to their residents that was supposed to go to that site as well. So that was one of the concerns that was brought up. One of the other concerns that was brought up is in reference to the landscaping on the existing site, but also what's being proposed on this site as well. That citizen had asked about beefing up the landscaping and or providing some type of dirt berm or landscape berm to kind of help shield that view shed from their private residents. So they lived right across from Doss Garland Drive and they were worried about how it's going to look after this is fully constructed. Since that meeting there has been no written correspondence received and so I'm not able to provide anything in that nature. As you can see I do have up on the screen what is currently shown in the plan. So when this plan was initially submitted back in October of last year what was shown at the time was a class a screen which doesn't really have any width associated with it but it is not very dense for that matter since that the plans now show a 35 foot wide landscape buffer so the landscaping has been beefed up since that initial plan and that is shown to run on the outside of the fence Moving back here so on the outside of the fence along this property line and along the edge of the drive and kind of Fool through the site here And it's also shown in between the existing house as well as the solar arrays to the north and the solar arrays to the south here. So they are showing landscaping that's going to encompass most of the size of this facility.

In the landscaping, are they planning on having a height so that it doesn't get so high that it shades the solar panels?

There's a variety of landscaping, both deciduous trees, minor trees, but we are set back off of the panels themselves so the height doesn't become an issue.

so to the wrap up the landscaping the landscape plan did receive concept approval but obviously there's going to be further landscape review as we transition into the final plan submittal and then just moving on to the rest of the review agencies so can i ask another question about the landscaping oh please do they have any kind of uh maintenance agreements on these landscapings yes so i drove in this morning and drove through new ones they're like 65 of all the trees are dead around that one already So there are there is a landscape maintenance agreement that is recorded and land records And part of that relates to bonding that we collect as well. So we collect bonding for landscaping They provide a cost estimate and they say it'll cost this much to plant these trees and to maintain these trees We hold on to that bond until either three or five years Inspection to make sure that that landscaping has fully set in and has not died off But I do know the site that you're talking about. So Forest Conservation has granted concept approval with no easements or afforestation requirements being needed. Water resources will require an easement. So as you can see, there is a stream that runs through this portion of the property. There's also a stream that runs through this portion of the property up here. And this blue area, the blue highlight is also indicative of a FEMA floodplain easement.

Does that mean that they will not be developing the lower part?

Nothing is shown on that lower part. I can't say for sure that nothing will happen there. There will be easements encompassing those natural resources in the middle though. So around that stream and around that blue highlight, that will be required a FEMA floodplain easement as well. navigating through the site through those easements would probably not be an option but if they can find a means of getting to that portion of the property some other way we we downsized this project to comply with the county code so we don't have plans to develop you know south of the wetland area And then with the proposed access onto Dawson-Garland Drive, our engineering review, but also state highway administration reviewed that and have granted approval of the concept plan, but they are looking for additional information on the final plan set. stormwater management this was just because it was a topic of discussion with the last project this will be provided through the construction of level spreaders that are going to be kind of sporadic throughout the site and they have granted concept stormwater management approval i i see you making a face i'm sure he can provide more information on level spreaders and kind of how they operate And then lastly, in accordance with site development plan memorandum received from Comprehensive Planning, the land use is consistent with the 2014 Carroll County Master Plan. Because this is a concept plan, we haven't done any testing for adequacy of public facilities, but obviously that will be tested before they request final approval from the Planning Zoning Commission. And then as with every site development plan, the Planning Zoning Commission does have the option to delegate final approval to the chair. So after running through that report, I also want to show you what the site looks like as well. The aerial does a great job of that, but there are some pictures that will help. I've elected to provide one per slide. I think it might be difficult to see a lot of the details when you have too many on the same slide. So if this is helpful, let me know. If it doesn't really do much besides what we normally do, let me know. But this is up on Dahlskroning Drive. This is on the public portion of it. You can see the existing facility shown here, the fence, the landscaping moving through further down Dahlskroning Drive. This is after it transitioned to a public driveway. You can actually see the sign for the in-county maintenance. up toward the top there and in the distance you can see the existing solar array over here but you do see the contours of the land as they currently exist from that same spot just pivoting over looking at more of the site and then same thing pivoting over looking at more of the site and then moving further down dog's garland so this is down close towards that existing house Again, this is looking at the arrays that are shown to the north. So again, just pivoting, looking at everything, you can see the existing solar array up there in the distance. And then these last few pictures, so this is looking at the area south of that existing house on the same property. So there's that driveway leading to the house, and then this is that area that's south of that. So if there's any questions, I'd be happy to answer them as well as the constituents here today.

With an array this big, the cumulative total of runoff, How is that calculated? And so if you would, I mean there's a lot of square footage of runoff here. And if you translated that into a roofing or an area of roofs, where does the calculation for stormwater come into play here? Because it's so close to a stream, and if I put a shed up that would be the cumulative total of that many square feet, I would have to have all kinds of stormwater requirements attached to that. So what are they?

Yeah. So I will I'll defer to Jeff for a lot of the details. My understanding is that for these, it really depends on how closely packed in they are to one another as far as what requirements they have, what facilities they're allowed to use for these. But as far as the nitty gritty,

So the way these stormwater facilities are designed, they're considered disconnects where we have slopes that are 5% or flatter or where we exceed 5% slopes up to 10%, we're putting in level spreaders, which collect the drainage into a stone facility that's two to three feet deep. and sends the overflow out to the grass to flow down the rest of the property. As David mentioned, we do have a FEMA floodplain that goes through our property that a portion of this discharges into. um another portion of it drains into the adjoining solar farm property that has already been dedicated for water resource protection for that stream that came up on the plan right hand side, the eastern side of the property. So because these property or because this property drains into the existing streams, quantity management was not needed to be calculated according to MDE's requirements and the local county government requirements.

What is the slope? What is the average slope on this project?

Average is is somewhere between 5 and 10%. OK.

So the steeper the slope, the more spreader areas you need.

Is that correct? You need the level spreaders anytime your slope is between 5 and 10%. Okay. If it's over 10%, then you need a quantity facility proposed. So we've graded the site so that we're, in some cases, less than 5%. I would say probably two-thirds of the site fall in between that 5 to 10% range.

What's the acreage for the existing solar field next to this property?

So there is a chart on the first page of this plan, and that says for the solar array, the existing site is currently at about 13.7, 14 acres. Okay. What's proposed now is right around 19.5, 20 acres. And that's not collective. That's independent.

Okay, right, right. And this is considered a commercial solar project?

Or is it a community solar project? It's a community solar project. It's a community solar project.

Where are the connections, connectors to the interconnection point on the property?

So your first map might be where you had that.

Right here? Yeah.

So. You want me to go one more? That's all right. The power comp, well, your first one you had where you overlaid it on the, there you go. Okay. So in the top corner on the existing solar farm is where BG&E has, they have two 33 kV feeders that come in right there. So we're taking that and then extending it just down Dos Garland underground And then you'll have three interconnection points kind of spread out evenly to each site going down to the south along Daskar.

So there isn't any new construction for any of that equipment needed?

Just some underground trenching from the existing equipment that's over there feeding the other solar array.

Same thing with the... transformers and all that stuff that's up there on the existing BGE construct there will be new transformers to feed service the solar array but there will be ground mounted transformers they sit beside the solar array and what's the acreage of the unused property south of the watershed the watershed yeah top of my head I want to say it's like 25 acres but that's just off the top of my head Just for my education, because I'm not fascinated, but I'm curious about this, because every solar project that we are seeing are typically maxed at two megawatt, one or two megawatts, similar to this. This is two megawatts and one megawatt. So the cumulative is five megawatts, if I did my math right. Why are they broken down into twos and ones and not just a big old five?

So the community solar program has the exemptions from going through the CPCM process where the Public Service Commission will approve them without that. And some of those exemptions are industrial zone properties, brownfields, such. So this site sits across from an old black and decker facility that had a retention pond there. There was, I guess, a leaching from that retention pond that created a groundwater plume. So it posed the risk of creating water contamination under these sites. And if you look at the voluntary cleanup program, I think there's four or five of these voluntary cleanup sites around there where people have taken it through the voluntary cleanup program. So this site went through the voluntary cleanup program with the MDE and was accepted because of that. the Public Service Commission considers it brownfield eligible, which means it can co-locate sites. So we can have two megawatt sites on the same property without having to go through the CPCM process with the Public Service Commission.

So you're okay if it's two or less, more or less?

Two or less you can co-locate. Gotcha.

So I guess my, and I think this may be a, I'll ask Chris Hine to put it on his list of things that he and I are gonna talk about at some point. We'll probably, I don't know that there's a, whatever. Is there an unintended consequence, David, on our county, and again, we don't have to have an in-depth conversation about this today, but I guess my concern is that we get piecemealed at two megawatts a pop. And I think what we want, I'm a fan of solar. I want solar. But at the same time, I think our county, so I'm not This isn't speaking for myself, I'm speaking for my county. I don't think my county wants to be paved as a parking lot or have solar panels wall to wall as we drive up 140. So I guess what I want to understand is what are the limitations that prevent, what have we put in place that prevent someone coming in and saying, I'm doing two megawatts a pop all the way down. the six months from now, we're going to see something for the property that you were talking about to south of the watershed. And pretty soon, you know, in in four years, we're going to come back in this this entire everything to the left is going to be solar panels because we've done it at two megawatts a pop. want to make sure that we as a county understand what limitations we've put in place to prevent something like that so that you know maryland land holding llc venture one is this ll you know the maryland lander holding venture two is is the southern portion we just don't want to get boiled you know with with solar panels and again i'm for solar panels i just want to make sure we understand the consequences of

what's happening so that you know we can get in front of it um does that make sense what i'm asking i i think it does and ultimately what i'll say is it really comes down to how the state views it and how the county views it so as i mentioned um and as mr pimpin uh chimed in is that for the state's purposes this is two megawatts two megawatts one megawatt On the county's purposes, because they're co-located, we view it as a holistic project. So we're looking at this as five megawatts. Good. And what we have, it really depends on the zoning district, but in this zoning district, the R40,000, we have limitations on how big those facilities can go. So five megawatts is the cap. They cannot make these bigger than five megawatts. In this zoning district without going through some sort of CPCN process.

I guess what I'm asking is what's to prevent someone very similar, probably the same investor group coming in and saying, oh, we're a different group and we're doing another five megawatts just south of this. What's to prevent somebody from doing that? Or there is no preventive measure on that?

I don't believe there's anything in the code that would prevent that. I would have to imagine that the need and the market for these, how much you can actually put back into the grid, I believe there's restrictions on that from the state level. Okay.

All right. Again, that's a Manhattan project for another day. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. I have nothing. I'm good with it. Good.

Where's the access road to the arrays on the site? Comes down that left side on the new site.

Yeah. So as yes, exactly. It comes down really from the top here. So I'm going to move forward to the more zoomed in. So here's DOS Garland, right? It curves and it runs right through here.

Okay. I missed that. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions, comments? All good. OK. How about public comment? So public comment, I'll read this again. Public comment, please sign in in the back. You must sign in. You state your name, address, and talk into the microphone to facilitate audio and video recording. Comments will be limited to three minutes. Citizen testimony is not a Q&A session. Questions may be directed to staff after the meeting and any individuals failing to comply with these rules. The Planning and Zoning Commission Chair may call the person out of order and may require him or her to leave the meeting.

Hi there, I'm signed in at the back. My name is Gary Siegler. I live at 4291 Wolf Hill Drive. So on the one picture, just the neighborhood just off to the right there. So I work from home and so for the last project, You know, I heard what seemed to be for four months that sort of droning sound of the land moving, the leveling and all of that. And then for what seemed the months, the sound of the pylon drilling, you know, pounding these things into the into the ground to hold these arrays. I like you. I'm a huge fan of solar. I have solar on my house. My concern is the the developer mentioned it, that the black and decker fleet that leached into our land years and years ago. When I bought my house, I had to sign a whole bunch of papers that told me where all the airports were, but nobody mentioned that all of our wells were polluted. There was some remediation done, but my big concern is how much of this stuff is getting knocked back into the aquifer that we're drawing off of? And now we're having another round of that coming. Is there anything that the county can do to make sure that the developers you know, taking responsibility to do some well testing after the fact, make sure that we haven't created a problem, you know, for the future, and potentially to help remediate any things that might pop up. So that's all I've got. I thank you. Thank you.

My name is Steve judge. I live at 4090 Doss Garland drive. Um, this project is directly in front of my house. Um, what I would like to know is what is the setback going to be? Currently we have, uh, when I bought my property, I believe there was a hundred foot setback for anything that is done on that property. I don't know what their setback is for their fencing. The last project that was there, they did an extensive amount of grading. This created a lot of dust. You walk out in the morning and your cars were covered. and dust you can open your windows. I didn't see anything for dust prevention. I didn't see any water trucks down there trying to keep that dust to a limit. As far as the extending of the private road. I believe that they're going to extend it. I'd like to know how far they're going to extend it. I currently mow the grass along the existing solar field. Where all the trees are that they were planted, they've never been mowed around. I live there. I see it. We've had one truck come out and attempt to water as much of the trees as they could. Most of them are dead. There is no maintenance outside of the fence. They don't do any cutting or anything. And the grade, I believe that they're going to move the grade again. What is going to be the slope now in front of my house? And how far back is it going to be from our existing driveway? I'm not going to be able to stop this project. I'm just concerned. And this is also going to devalue our properties. I mean, I said close to the existing drive. Now I'm going to be... 100 feet from solar panels. That's what I'm going to see is up fields of solar panels. Done said well, all of you up there, how would you like to have all these solar panels, but right in front of your house. So when you walked out your front door, you came out your driveway. That's all you see. And then again, the road leading in that goes to public Doss Garland Drive, that was put on top of a very poor base. And when those trucks come in and it's warm out, it crumbles the road. Any of you drive back there, you can see it. In the past, when the trucks would come in, they would block our access and our egress. And sometimes you'd have to just sit there and wait for him because the drivers had nowhere to move to.

Okay. Mr. Judge, I need you to wrap up, please.

All right. So, um, yeah, these are my questions. I wanted to know what the, um, what the slope is, uh, how far they're going to extend that black topping. Um, and what are they going to do about our utilities going on the ground? There's currently telephone poles going across our property. Will they put our utilities as well on the ground?

Thank you, sir.

Hello, my name is Derek Garland. I live on Dahls Garland Drive. Dahls Garland was actually my grandfather. My house sits right on Dahlskarlen. When I look out the living room window, that's where all the solar panels are going. So I appreciate the upgrade in the landscaping. It's my understanding there was supposed to be a berm there with the landscaping and then the fence, which would help hide it. So that's good. One of the things Steve brought up is when they bring their tractor and trailers in, they need to have a place that they can pull them in or back them up, and I didn't see that on the drawing. That was a problem. They did tear up the driveway, and I believe the county took care of that. I had to call the county to get it repaired. I don't know how the money worked or if there was any money involved, but that was a big part of it. Dust is a concern. I think that's really, really what I had. I mean, I've looked at the drawings, and I understand that setbacks are quite a ways. That's good. There's a lot of power and a lot of acreage. That's for damn sure. I don't know. They're my concerns anyway.

All right. Thank you. Any more public comment?

OK.

So that was just a review and recommendation and all that stuff. You heard some concerns and things like that. So we'll see you back, right, with this?

This will, yes. So this is just concepts. They're not looking for any formal approval at this point.

Okay. All right. Well, thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. It's not even close.

So it's some sort of frequency that's in it for you? Yeah. Is there an audible hum? No, you can't hear. It's got to be the transformers raising the voltage or whatever.

Yeah. Okay.

Okay, Mr. Hine has joined us for the deferral code changes related cluster subdivision plans. It's a review that you're going to walk us through.

Yes, good morning. Good morning.

Good morning.

So as you may remember, I was here last week to introduce this idea. As a quick refresher, we are currently going through two parallel paths looking at codes related to cluster subdivisions. We are looking at, we have engaged a consultant who you've heard from in the past, Troy from Michael Baker and Associates. or Michael Baker International, my apologies, that he and his team are looking at our current cluster codes and making recommendations on nuances on how we may want to improve those in the future. We've talked some about the the state law that is going into effect October 1st regarding vesting of residential projects and we just do not have the bandwidth to get through with the consultant and staff to try and get these nuanced type changes in place by October 1st. So the Board of County Commissioners directed us to look at some of the higher level general type of requirements for cluster subdivisions, namely those changes that we made in 2022 from essentially what was in place since 1993. And so last week I introduced those changes and back here after you, I'm sure you all have thought through it significantly to see if any of those changes those topics are ones that we want to discuss potentially making changes to. And then I have an additional change that was a request by one of the commissioners for consideration that I did not have time to put into the presentation last week. So I will touch on that as well. So this is the old presentation.

Sorry.

Do you have the new one? Yes. So well, I'll go. I'll work off of this. So skipping ahead to, so this is the code that was in place in 1993. And this is our current code where I've highlighted the four changes that have been made. and then have them broken out here for discussion. And so again, the first item is basically the determination of yield that prior to 2022, we required a conventional plan to be produced to identify how many lots could be developed following a conventional plan. And then that set the limit for how many could be in the cluster plan. OVER THE YEARS WITH EXPERIENCE WORKING THROUGH THESE TYPES OF PROJECTS AND SO ON, WE RECOGNIZE THAT BECAUSE OF THE REQUIREMENT THAT WHEN YOU REDUCE THE LOT SIZE, THAT REDUCTION IN LOT SIZE HAS TO BE SHOWN AS OPEN SPACE, THAT THERE IS NOT AN INCREASE IN DENSITY THAT YOU WOULD SEE. So in the spirit of trying to streamline processes and reduce costs and so on in 2022, we made the recommendation and it went through our whole text amendment process where the Planning Commission agreed to it, Board of County Commissioners agreed to it, that we eliminated the need for that conventional plan to be produced. And then we just set sort of, I don't want to say arbitrary, but we said, you know what, look at the gross acreage and that's the total cap, recognizing that as a developer works through the process of laying out the subdivision plan that they take into consideration all those non-buildable areas and the streams, the steep slopes and so on. And the plan they produce has an amount of lots that can fit on there. And it's because it's clustered, there's an amount of open space that they were required to show. And we get to a good final product that typically would not have an increase in number of lots above what previously they had shown as a conventional plan. So the primary question here on this item is, is there a recommendation to go back to prior to the code prior to 2022 and require a conventional plan? Or do we want to leave the code as is?

Leave it as is. Anybody else?

Leave it as is. I think I'm hearing a lot of, leave it as is.

I'm hearing a lot of, okay, very good. So the second item, the second bullet is the requirement of the minimum lot size that you can reduce those lots down to. So if you have an R40 zoning, that's 40,000 square feet, If you cluster, you can reduce below 40,000. That amount you reduce has to become open space. But we set a lower limit of 20,000 square feet for those R40 zoned properties. prior to 2022 there was no limit the developer could reduce those down as much as they wanted to to meet market conditions what they thought would sell and so on so as part of the change of not requiring a conventional plan anymore we set that lower limit and so the question is are we good with that lower limit or do we want to allow go back to prior to 2022 where the developers have that flexibility to go below that basically half the zoning so

I'm going to walk through an example that I do this, but let's suppose that we have 100 acres gross and half of it is in floodplain wetlands, whatever. It's not usable. We can't build them. So if I'm a if I'm a or 20, if I'm zoned or 20 and and we're basing the lot count on gross acreage, am I allowed then to put two homes per acre on the gross acreage, which was 200 homes? Am I allowed to put 200 homes on that site based on the gross acreage? Is that the way it's done? Yeah.

In theory, the reality is you'd never be able to do it.

That's why I said half, because I'm trying to go.

You said half is buildable.

Yeah, yeah, half is buildable.

So if it's 50 acres, it's buildable.

But it's on the gross acreage. It's on the 100 acres. This is where I'm headed here, because I think we all need to understand this. So now versus, because again, what we're talking about here is, our master plan and adhering to the master plan and the intent of our master plan, which is basically, you know, we like, which clustering sounds like it helps us manage open spaces, have nice viable neighborhoods. And y'all know that I'm not a huge fan of clustering. I just want to make sure if we do it, let's do it better than what we've done in the past. So that's where I'm headed here, I hope. But everybody else, we'll do what we want to do here, we. So the converse of that is if I have the same situation, 100 acres, 50 of which is not usable. So I'm basing it off of the net acreage. I now can put, rather than 200 homes on there, which, again, I get is the fictitional. You're never going to be able to do it because of the roads and whatever. I can now put 50 times 2 is 100 homes on the net usable, if that's what I'm basing it off of. That's the rationale that I'm driving towards. And that's why, you know, I would say I'm more of a net usable guy because the developers coming in and swinging for the fence. And again, I agree with you. They're not going to be able to get 200 homes on 50 acres. Pete, that's absurd. Just right of way setbacks. You're not going to be able to get that many homes in, but let's take something that's more reasonable where you've got, you know, 70 acres, 80 acres, and 10, 15 of it is in wetlands, that's probably more of a real world scenario. Again, I think we ought to be basing this off of net usable because otherwise we're going to end up with that if we use gross, that's not it's not fair to the community. It's not fair to the outcome is is not what I don't think that's the outcome that we are trying to drive towards for our communities. And so that's the Chris, am I making sense of what I'm saying?

Yeah. So if I might point out, though, one of the provisions that's been in the code since since 93, this is that the the open space that that is the result of you making the lot smaller, you can only use only 50% of that can be those environmental features. So in your example of where you're cutting the, um, where you've got a parcel that's 50% environmental and so on, it's not like you can say, well, that's where I'm going to put all my open space. Only 50% of that can be used. for your open space. You have to have an additional 50% that is in your developable area, and 10% has to be active open space. So those other constraints, that's where you end up that you really are not going to have more lots than if you had laid out the conventional plan.

Well, and the other part of that is that we end up with what we just saw, where a bunch of the open space is, how do we say it, marginalized? Because the open space is not really open space. It's not usable. I can't go out there and play lacrosse. I can't, because it is a flippant stormwater management pond that is forced upon the developer. And so are we including that in the open space calculation? So when you look at open space, basically it's everything that's not hard infrastructure.

So it's not roads, it's not houses and so on. So it would include your environmental features, it would include stormwater management and so on, but 50% of it cannot include that. So if you're going from, your example, 100 acres and 50 acres, and you're reducing 50 acres, right? Of that 50 acres, 25 acres has to be developable. You can't use that environmental area.

Does that make sense? Yeah, it does make sense, but then I don't even know why we're including it in the calculation. You can't build it in any way. It's a flipping wetland. It's a buffer around a stream. It's not open space. It is conservation. It's unusable. You can't build on it in the first place. And so as a developer, and I'm putting my developer's hat on here, when I bought land like this, and guys, I'm still an owner in whatever. We deducted that land. That was land that was, we will never make a dollar off that land. It was all about how much, I'm all for buying this 300 acre piece of property, but how much of it is really usable? How much can we really build on? That was the first question the general partner was gonna ask me, but when I bought an assemblage to him. And so this is, for people to stroll in here and tell us with a straight face they don't know how much land is usable i'm i'm calling bs on that because i'm telling you they know you got to know otherwise you know you're not you're not signing the the document to buy that thing so

So what you're getting back to is having them do a conventional plan to, to prove out how much of that property is developable and how many lots you could, you could potentially have.

You know, the truth is, is I don't think they have to do the conventional plan. I think they probably need to, as, as a matter of good business, they will know with an informal survey, They don't have to punch holes to know. We're not going to be able to build on that. This is really what we can build on. I mean, to Janice's point, she said it last week, it's going to be subjective. That first look is very subjective. But once the engineers get through with it, they know. They know what they can build on and what they can't.

Sometimes.

Well, I mean, you go out there and you punch holes, and all of a sudden you find we didn't punch a hole here, and dadgummit, there's rock. You're right.

I will say from a development standpoint, past years um it it worked correctly i mean we didn't go out and because of all the factors that limit you without having to go through the The original plan, the conventional plan, you know when you look at a property. You've got this much over here that is unusable ground. Let's just look at the Beatty property. You've got a stream running through. You know you're not going to get anything near that stream. Just common sense and from developing, you can look at it, get a pretty good idea of where you are, and know that you're not going to get

50 lots on 100 acre property in all probability because you've got roads you've got all of that 13 loss factor just for roads exactly so i i'm i'm dialed in on on doing the net usable yeah because i think and by the way I think it makes sense for that to be the baseline for what we do so that we don't have to ask, well, no, wait a minute. This is commercial. No, no. We're talking net usable acreage. When you're talking to Carroll County, we've made it real simple for you. Well, how simple have we made it? I get it. You're calling me out. You didn't say it. You're still calling me out. Net usable is what we ought to be doing, I think.

So if I may. the development process of laying out a site, and whether you're talking about a cluster subdivision or a site or anything like that, the development process does use essentially net usable. Where we don't call it out is that kind of metric that someone can look at a property and say, oh, you could get 20 lots there. But through the development process, we absolutely use the usable area. And so as you're laying out that subdivision, and say it was R40 and it's clustered onto R20, the developer, the engineer who's laying that out is saying, okay, for whatever reasons, easements, forest conservation, floodplains, steep slopes, whatever, I'm not working in this area, so I'm working in the area I have left. I lay in my roads, and then the net area that's left, that's buildable, because I'm allowed to cluster, I can go down to, I've got the flexibility of going down to 20,000 square foot watts, and I start laying those out. But because it's cluster, I also have to provide for the open space and the active open space, and I have to put that in. So the development process absolutely uses the usable area, the buildable area. I think where we're getting hung up a little bit is that first initial number, and I think I mentioned last week in retrospect, adding in the number one there, the total number of lots and saying that we use gross acreage, that in retrospect, we could have left that out because that gross acreage, that cap, is it's sort of meaningless yes it's it gives everybody a comfort level that you're not going to see anything more than than so many lots there but that number was never going to be achieved anyways because we do develop the plans based on the net usable acreage that's on that that property and and you see that through the progression of the development of the plans that you all then see to approve okay so then if that's what we do then that why isn't that what we say we basically took out the requirement for the conventional plan and felt the need to put in something there that just set this higher number. And like I said, in retrospect, maybe that we didn't even need to make that statement.

So where can we say net usable in the residential coding?

Well, I guess what I'm saying is that it doesn't need to be said, in my opinion, because that is how development and site layout is performed. We've got a couple of engineers here that I think could speak to it, if you'd like to hear from them on this topic. But fundamentally, you have portions of your site that are usable and portions that are unusable. And you're developing on the usable portions. And there are a whole host of reasons why you don't develop on areas. The complexity when you start putting in code, the net usable concept is then defining what's net usable to come up with that calculation, which then you came up with a calculation for a number and then you set it aside and then you figure out how to develop your site. And then there's the reality of how many lots or how many buildings or what area you're gonna work within and so on.

all right so let's let's go to the to the end result here for a second and then work our way back what we're seeing happen on these parcels this rule first of all we're not seeing anything that's a conventional neighborhood everything is being clustered And from an aesthetic standpoint, it does change the complexion of the neighborhoods that we are getting. They look different, for better or worse. They do look different. I mean, there's a difference between a home that sits on an acre and a home that's been clustered that was zoned R40. I mean, the look and feel of it. And so when we say that we're a rural county, that we wanna preserve the look and feel, and we know what we don't wanna be, we know what we wanna be when we grow up, clustering is antithetical to what it is we wanna be. And so, at least I think it is. And so the way we're doing it right now, where we end up with open spaces that really aren't usable, And the open spaces that we have that may be usable are improved in no way. There's no basketball court. You couldn't play lacrosse out there or you couldn't hit golf balls for sure because it's going to go in a road and it's going to take out a windshield. So the way we're doing it right now, Chris, it's not really working. And so what I applaud is us talking about it. And what I need to hit myself over the head with a two by four is I'm the only one talking. So with that said, I've been talking for seven minutes or actually longer. Gus, what do you all think?

So if I may, real quick, just to address your comment, is that's a great philosophical discussion to be had. And it's not necessarily what we're talking about today, but our cluster subdivisions as a development, Style something that we want to continue to have given the remaining properties that are out in Carroll County and so on The answer to that may be no in which case we eliminate this section of code I think those types of discussions are the more nuanced discussions that we'll have with Michael Baker and and and so on and as to the appropriateness of this style of subdivision. And absolutely a great topic for discussion.

I mean, I guess really kind of what you're saying, too, is how do we prevent the, you know, give an inch, take a mile type of thing. And a lot of times the developers, obviously, especially the bigger ones, are going to know every loophole, everything that they can do to essentially maximize. And I know you can't put in, you know, well, we're going to give you an inch, don't take a mile. But I think that's almost... i'm following correctly you know what you're kind of trying to say like how do we prevent those loopholes from being exploited or those little nuances from being exploited you know to because i mean money's money business is business and there's a lot of people that are paid a lot of money to define that, essentially.

I think there are guardrails that prohibit a lot of that. So I think like Chris is saying, that's something that would be further down here to look towards.

I think the verbiage or the language that is in the code, the addition that was made in 2022 is really what drives all of these conversations, decisions by developers, et cetera, et cetera. The all lot yield must be used. that's that's it and and when um that opens up allowance to a bunch of shoehorning or imagination and figuring things out and all that kind of stuff that that really did change all of this and that still remains that was an addition in 2022 yes

So one of the things we keep beating back on is the open space that's unimproved or whatever. What are the requirements by the county to maintain open space in these clustered divisions?

So if you look at number three in the existing code, and this goes back to 93. So when you reduce the lot size, what's remaining is to be open space or recreational areas for the joint use by the residents of the cluster subdivision or offered to the county. So when a cluster subdivision is presented, we look at the open space and we discuss it with recreation parks and whoever to see if we want that open space to be conveyed to the county. There haven't been a whole lot in recent times because we don't have the resources to maintain a lot of small pocket parks, right? So typically the county has not been taking over ownership. If we don't, then it resides with the HOA and the HOA is responsible for it. And if it's all stream valley and wooded and so on, is there really a whole lot of maintenance to be done? Probably not. But there is the requirement for active open space. So in which case it has to, there's requirements for under 5B, a minimum of 10% of the required open space or one and one half acres, whichever is greater, shall be suitable for active recreational use and may not exceed a grade of 3%. So the idea being you have a relatively flat playing area that's grassed that can be used for whatever the community is using it for. That the community would be responsible for maintaining.

um mowing or whatever um whatever amenities get constructed and so on but those would be the responsibility of the hoa when when i was the director of recreation and parks many years ago we ran into this all the time and basically the only time we would accept it is if it was adjacent to property that we already had otherwise we were never interested in it

Okay, so Where do we go?

So if I may there's so there are the four items down We had talked about the the convention a lot but as people mentioned and there is still this concern about how you determine maximum so we can There were a lot of nods for leaving it as is, but absolutely can make mention when we take this to the commissioners that there is this concern about not allowing too much yield and so on out of this. So your concerns are noted and will certainly be discussed more when we bring this back when Michael Baker makes the presentation to the more nuanced aspects of the code. So then we were talking about the minimum lot size, whether we want to maintain that or if you think that giving the developer the flexibility of being able to go less than half of the underlying zoning.

Am I totally off base by saying i think r40 ought to be removed from the from the clustering uh section i don't think you should be able to i think r40 it's the top end of what we have we will never have one acre homes in this county and i really honestly do believe that one of the things we want to have is a diversified um not just not just the housing types but we also want an economic base And if we don't have one-acre homes that decision makers can live on, guys, when you're trying to attract an office building or an industrial building, you can draw a circle around where the guy lives. And if he has to drive past a development, to get to his house, he's going to that development that he just drove past. He's not coming to ours.

Go ahead. We're not talking countywide. I mean, we are talking countywide, but it's water and sewer what we're really referring to here. So to take To take the growth area, which is also what we're talking about.

There's one piece of property we're talking about.

And say that it has to be, no, there's a couple, but to say that it has to be our 40 left is defeating the smart growth, the growth area. So I don't think we can take our 40 left.

Wait, I don't understand. We're not increasing lot yield. How are we defeating that? What we're talking about is the type of home that's constructed, Janice.

Yeah, but a developer can make that decision and still do R40 if he wants to. He doesn't have to cluster it. So it leaves it up to the developer on what they want to do.

We will never have... We will never see another... First of all, we can have a sidebar because I'd like to know what the other properties are because I think there's only one left in the Freedom District. That's our 40. I think there's one left. So we're talking about one piece of property that we can have homes that have septic and city water and sit on one acre. This is our last opportunity to have these types of homes in the Freedom District. And we want a variety of homes. So if we want a variety of homes, this is our last shot to do it, Janice.

Let's take where you are. You are in a community of one to three acres. And I think there are plenty of them around. But to limit a developer

on and say you can't you have to have r40 is but that's what it's sung janice the underlying zoning is r40 we're not limiting him it's it's already by nature that's what it is what we're saying is we want it to be what it was envisioned to be all along which was one acre homes i mean we're not limiting him it's already limited It's zoned R40. So why would we want to cluster something that was intended to be oh you know these home where homes were supposed to be sitting on one acre lots or more why would we that's not limiting it's we're basically saying we've got a bunch of homes that are on half acre lots we've got a bunch of homes that are in quarter acre lots we've got retirement homes that are now being built you know for whatever you know and and this is our last opportunity to have one acre homes We want an inventory of housing opportunity in the county. This is the last shot to do it from one acre lots. That's what I'm saying. I know I'm the minority on this. And I'm spent. Because, again, I've said what I've, I believe it with all my heart that this is the right thing to do. But I know that, I know I'm in the minority. I would love to see our 40 removed from the clustering code in its entirety.

Totally understand what you're saying, and we can absolutely produce present that as one of the opinions that they came forward from from you all.

All right. So what else are you looking for?

So minimum lot size. So if you're zoned are 20, And you can go down to, I think it's, just make sure before I speak. 10,000 square feet in the R20 district, yes. So if you're zoned R20, the minimum lot size is 10,000 square feet. And we've set that as the minimum threshold. As I said, before 2022, there wasn't that limitation. You could go down smaller. Right.

So just taking the argument about R40 and not allowing cluster there. doesn't that, there's no denying that R40 gives those big, beautiful, you know, million dollar homes anymore. That's where they are. But if you allow them to cluster, doesn't that give, and maybe have some R40 homes in there because of land constrictions. But doesn't that allow the possibility of maybe something being affordable rather than... No.

On R40?

No. Yes. If you allow it to go to half acre lots. Not saying

It's not going to be affordable, Janice. I mean, we're not talking about affordable housing here. I mean, we've exchanged emails on affordable housing. We've got ideas on affordable housing.

Right, but I think what Janice is saying, a home built on a one-acre lot isn't as expensive as a home built on a half-acre lot. I think that's probably the reality.

I think it's the opposite.

Yeah.

Did I say that backwards? Yeah. Okay, sorry. Try that note again.

The smaller the lot, you know, the larger the lot, the more desirable maybe. To some people. To some people. Versus a half acre lot with the same size house on it.

I will acknowledge, Janice, and you're not wrong, okay, You're not. I mean, we're reducing the infrastructure. You're reducing the infrastructure, the linear feed of road, the linear feed of pipe, the water, all those things. It's reduced when you cluster. All that's reduced. And so it can have an impact on the price point of the house on the market. But these are not affordable homes. The person looking for a house on a one-acre lot that's brand new, he's not, they, she, they are not looking for an affordable house. That's not, let's not even, that's not a,

I think that's a completely separate.

It's a separate thing.

Yeah. That's a whole.

But your point's taken. It is. It's less, less expensive to develop for sure. I agree with you totally. I'm in on that.

I said the value difference between a half acre lot and one acre lot is so small because it's all about the lot.

It is. I mean, the Indian. Really not much difference. Yeah, Richard said.

Except when you're looking at assessments. Often they are because a half acre lot the county can get more half acre lots in charge for than acre lots.

But again, we're not talking about an increased yield here. What we're talking about, we're talking about the same number of homes And the other thing is, and we've talked about this, and this is kind of a Manhattan project moment, because what we're talking about is putting land in open space that's owned by the HOA that will never be assessed as a land that is domiciled. And I will maintain to the day I die that the county doesn't get the same, in perpetuity, the county is not gonna get the same assessment on that undeveloped open space land that they would if a house sat on it. And that's from here forevermore.

So a good point, last week I happened to scroll to look some public records and I pulled up Tawny Town I pulled up open space in some communities I knew $60 is what their tax bill was so I don't know if that goes around the county but if it's if you're allowed to cluster and you can get our 40 and I think your calculation might be a little off because you could get a little bit more with less, so less acreage.

All right, so do we stay with the R40 to 20,000 square feet, the R20 down to 10,000 square feet? I mean, let's make a recommendation here.

Well, can I ask staff? I mean, there is more than one property that's still R40,000 down in the Freedom area. With water? Just looking at it.

Yeah, but if they're in the Freedom area, then. I'd have to, off the top of my head, I can't say for sure.

I was just looking around. I know we've done some infill projects in the last couple years. You know, I mean, at the end of the day, we're making recommendations to the board director. I mean, that's right. Commissioners and it's they're going to have to go through the whole thing all over again.

That's exactly right.

And, you know, I feel that we should still be able to cluster our 40. I mean, yeah, I agree. Because we're going to have these small in, you know, infill projects. By looking at the map, there's still several more infill projects that they won't be able to cluster. That's right. They want that. And they're not super highly desirable when they do the infill. So it's going to go build a McMansion on a in between an acre. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I think the Gibson Prophecy property is the last meaningful piece of property. Maybe that's the correct way to say it. The last meaningful piece of property in the Freedom District that's zoned R40 is the Gibson property. I think that's the correct way to say it.

Large parcel.

Yes.

At what point are we going to do public? Because I think if we're making recommendations now, I think I see two people I know will probably have something to say.

So if I could, if we could finish going through this, and then certainly I would appreciate public comment. And we didn't really talk about process, but from a time perspective, today's the last day, unless you all schedule another meeting between now and next Thursday. We're knocking this out. We're not going to be here. So is there a recommendation on keeping the cap on the minimum size? So minimum lot size is essentially half the size of the allowable zoning district. We want to keep that? Your recommendation is keeping that?

We're all in on that.

And then another change that was made was prior to 2022, you could not cluster on projects that were less than 10 acres. And so we removed that provision in 2022 to allow clustering on smaller lots. As part of that, because of the open space requirements, and I can go back, and it's specifically the one that was really the issue, is 4B, the minimum of 10% of the required open space or one and one half acres has to be active open space. If you're talking about a parcel that's less than 10 acres and the code requires one and one and one half acres of active open space, that's a big chunk of your less than 10 acre land. So we allowed the provision for you all to vary those requirements on open space. And that's what happened with, I'm drawing a blank now on the name of the project, but anyways, one of the more recent, yeah, Mineral Hill, because that was, I believe, just under 10 acres. you all varied the amount of active open space on that property because the one and one half would have been excessive. So really the question is, do you want to allow cluster subdivisions on lots 10 acres or less? I'm seeing some nods, yes.

I think we should just keep it.

Yeah, I think we have to. It's my opinion, but I'd like to hear what everybody else says. But you've got to remember, that's the largest segment we're probably dealing with now in the county. So I think we have to allow some flexibility there.

Yep. Okay.

All right. And then the last item was that all the lot yield must be utilized when you're producing the cluster plan. Yes. Yes. Okay. So before we move on, and I apologize, I don't have the most recent presentation up there for you. Yeah, I've got it here. Yeah. So one of the commissioners mentioned there are situations when a project is being proposed, a cluster subdivision may be proposed, that there is a benefit to the county to perhaps reconsider some of these absolute metrics that are in the code. So metrics such as we've been talking about, the amount of open space or the density or lot size. If there is specifically a county benefit that maybe we wanna be able to have those negotiations with the developer. And so I've given it a lot of thought on how we might put that into code. And my recommendation that I'm throwing out for consideration is that you tie that to a development rights and responsibilities agreement. And so the language, and I'll read it slowly, that I've came up with for consideration is the Board of County Commissioners may, through a Development Rights and Responsibilities Agreement pursuant to Chapter 161, which that's our chapter on DRAs, vary the requirements for open space, density, and minimum lot size. So that's the meat of it. Now, if you recall when we talked about DRAs, we have a requirement, it's 16103C, that says that DRAs are only appropriate for residential developments of 125 units or more. Reason being is we didn't want every residential subdivision to be coming before us on them wanting a DRA. So we set that requirement. So the recommendation is, because we're not going to see a whole lot of 125 lot or more subdivisions, is that notwithstanding 161.03c, a cluster of subdivision that provides a benefit to the county as determined by the Board of County Commissioners may request a development rights and responsibilities agreement. So essentially saying that eliminate the for the purposes of what we're talking about cluster subdivisions where there's a Identifiable public benefit that you don't have to meet that 125 unit threshold that the Board of County Commissioners can decide to enter into a DRRA and vary some of these requirements that are in the cluster code because there is a recognizable public benefit. And that would be a decision entirely with the Board of County Commissioners as far as what the agreement is. They're not required to have an agreement. It's entirely in the hands of the Board of County Commissioners. But this gives them that authority to look at a potential property where there is a significant county benefit to enter into a DRRA that the developer gets something, some relaxation of the codes and so on, and the county gets something. And it's up to the board to determine if what the county gets is worth entering into an agreement.

I think that's a good idea. I like the county benefit piece of it, absolutely. We're in the process on the timeline with the county commissioners' way in to pursue that agreement. A technical review?

Because they don't even, you know. Probably even earlier than that. Because if I'm a developer, I'm not going to go down the road of producing plans and so on without having some assurances that I've got this agreement. So Chapter 161 lays out that whole process on how a DRRA is put into place. And that would still apply. And so it would be a negotiation between the Board of County Commissioners and the developer as far as... Now, as part of the DRA process, when an agreement has been drafted, it is brought before you all so that you can weigh in on whether you feel it's consistent with the master plan and making recommendations to the board for consideration as part of the negotiation.

So we could overrule Commissioner Gordon?

I think the code specifically says that you can make recommendations. Yeah, make recommendations. But within your charge, you're ensuring that it's consistent with the master plan, right? Right, right.

Yes. So in what you read, the word may appear twice.

would encourage you to consider and i'm just i'm on a mission to get may out of that out of the code as often as we can if you could strike may and put can and it's sold discretion internet to or whatever you want to put in so i'll step in and advise you probably don't want to do that on this specific instance okay purely because we are talking about contractual negotiations here if you change that to shall or then can and may are going to read the exact same legally. They're not going to really make a difference. But if you switch it to shall, now you're telling the Board of County Commissioners and whoever does the DRA, you have to enter a contractual agreement.

No, I don't want to. We certainly don't want to take away negotiation. What I what I don't want someone to be able to do. And so, Liz, I'll follow your lead on this. Obviously, you're the attorney. I didn't know can and shall read the same. That's awesome. That's news.

Sorry, Ken and May. Ken and May.

That's what I mean. Ken and May. Thank you. I didn't know Ken and May. I thought May had a more – I thought – anyway.

It's more flexibility.

Exactly. What I would like to protect our Board of Commissioners from in suggesting that is that we have the total right – It's within our commissioner's ability to either do this or not do this, and it's their decision. Absolutely. And you know what? We can be arbitrary. We reserve our right to be arbitrary because I want to protect their right to yay or nay on their sole decision. So again, my right to be unreasonable is a right that – or your right to be unreasonable as the county attorney.

know and genesis is all about yeah you we put in there you know my approval yeah i'm done okay sorry yeah so that was a discussion certainly when we were putting together the drra code chapter 161 is that this is not something a drra is not something the county is required to enter into and even if if you negotiate away all entirely favorable to the county we are not we

not we the county commissioners are not required at all to enter into dra totally at the commissioner's discretion okay right and regardless of all that that's why courts and lawyers are around because when a decision's made they always have the right to go to the next highest so

So does that language sound favorable for when there's that significant county benefit? Yes. Okay.

Yeah, I like it. Great.

Thank you. And Liz's job is also to keep us out of jail. That's what I really get paid for.

That's right.

All right, so that is all that I had covered, to cover. So again, we still have this parallel track of the consultant working on diving deeper into our cluster code and making recommendations on best practices in other jurisdictions and so on. So we will be back to discuss that in the future. Right.

But you have what you need. I have what I need to discuss it further. To meet our deadline of today for this cluster . Yes, thank you very much. Okay. All right. And with that, let's move on to public comment.

Here they come.

Here they come. We have two public comments, it looks like.

Good afternoon, everyone. Marty Hackett with CLSI 439 East Main Street, 21157. cluster and as we're going through this obviously they looking at the minimum lot sizes at all I mean coming up with a better plan I know is the goal of this deferral and trying to create some parameters and all that I think that Mr. Hein alluded to as far as in certain cases you may really want to be able to get your density in a smaller location so you can give some public benefit, that kind of thing. What we find is the R40 zone that we're talking about in certain cases, there's a couple around. Most of the time you see them outside the water and sewer service area. The The problem is if they're outside the water and sewer service area, they're going well and septic and then you fall under Senate Bill 236 and then you can't obviously do more than seven units per parcel, that kind of thing. And there's some ways around some things, but you just you won't see that much. But the. If the county we have a lot of history with these cluster subdivisions over the years, we've done probably a majority of the ones that are existing today, whether you like them or not. It's one of those things. We can certainly look at giving you guys densities and working with you to understand whether you're looking at a gross number and you're deducting things and coming up with a... We worked that out a couple few years ago with Development Review on some of these to try to compare. Well, as we're doing these calculations, they were coming up plus or minus one in two lots on 100-lot job, that kind of thing. We have a project right now going through that actually calculated out to be about, I want to say, four lots more than what we're getting, but we don't have any more room because we have to put in some stormwater management facilities and so on. So we couldn't even obtain what you could normally get. We need to be in a position to, particularly like R40, you gotta allow people to cluster down if needed, and that number has to match no more than you can get conventionally, like we've talked about. Nobody's getting any bonus densities. Because if you don't, if the number, whether you use a net tract area or a gross tract area, If we're feeling that the number, you're always consistently better to do a conventional plan, then you end up not doing a cluster plan, and therefore you don't have any open space requirements. You can have easements on lots and so on on a conventional plan. So that's just, you know, we certainly we have the data as well. You guys obviously have it. And, you know, we know we've previously did that. So we worked with the county previously on those when they were developing it. But the DRA, I mean, most municipalities do utilize that opportunity. I know there was probably a year ago when when Chris alluded that they actually the county has the ability to do it Some people don't and some places don't so that's a great way to do it. You guys always get the opportunity even today You guys decide whether or not a project can be clustered at the beginning of the process so, you know, it's one of those things where we I think Looking at that, it gives a lot of opportunity in the future on some flexibility, especially with public benefit and stuff like that.

Okay. Thank you. All right. Thank you.

Hi, I'm back again.

Linda Alexander, 439 East Main Street, CLSI.

I wanted to throw one thing out that Marty didn't actually address. And I know, Peter, you've discussed about the amenities that are added with some of these open spaces. years ago now grant you i'm talking way back we did diamond hills out here on the edge it's all done in county county and westminster right tons of amenities in there trails tot lots some other stuff it was a mixture of r40 townhouses single families Five years after the trails went in, the trails were removed by the homeowners association because of issues. Okay. Jenna states, we did that one. We put, um, we put some multipurpose fields up on top of that area. There was a huge open space area trails again, um, some tot lots we have found that I'm just throwing this out there. When you start talking about the amenities, putting in may not be a bad idea to contact some of these homeowners associations on these bigger subdivisions. of see what problems they've been running into because not just in this county we had it happen in Frederick County too we go and we put some of these amenities in and five or six ten years later they're getting removed because they're having problems with them not necessarily from a maintenance issue all the time but just you know so i'm not i like the idea of the i know the county doesn't want the open space in some cases it seems like if it did have them maybe these homeowners associations wouldn't have quite as much problem with them um i prefer not to have to do the conventional plan we spent years 1993 we did it again in 2004 on the first deferral we did it again in 2005 we did it again in 2020 we came through and every time we hit these clusters we do these calculations and we're not really noticing any density what we've noticed is the open space over the years has been eaten up more by stormwater management practices so that's required if we had the ability to go under a minimum lot size we're able to get that open space easier the stormwater management yes it's taken up open space but if we're able to go those smaller lot sizes we have the ability to have more open space more amenities right now I mean some of these subdivisions are just getting eaten alive by stormwater the open space is getting eaten up by stormwater even with that active open space which we are providing I don't know I just it's just a thought because I've just noticed over the 15 or 20 years the amenities that were provided on some of these subdivisions are disappearing And just wanted to throw that out there as a possibility of just maybe bringing them into the mix and especially some of these larger ones in that Freedom District area.

OK. Very good. Thank you. Any other public comment? OK. Well, we'll wrap that up.

So if we could, because we were making formal recommendations to the Board of County Commissioners, we will require a vote.

A motion?

Yes.

So I can, let me just recap what I understand the discussion has been. You can correct me if I've noted it wrong. But on the question of determination of the number of lots, the recommendation is to leave it as it currently is. On the question of minimum lot size, the recommendation is to leave it as it is. On the question of minimum parent parcel size, the recommendation is to leave it as it is. on the question of using all the lot yield. The recommendation is to leave it as it is. And on the question of adding language that would allow for flexibility in cluster requirements when there is a benefit to the county and to address that with a DRRA. the recommendation is to include the language as proposed. Did I get anything wrong?

No. I would also add, though, to it that there was a lot of discussion on the first item regarding the conventional plan and so on. And we'll note that to the commissioners.

So move. So can I get a motion on all of that? You did.

Can we do what she said?

Do what Daphne said.

So move. I'll make a motion that we accept the motion. Daphne's recommendations.

Oh, it's not my recommendation. You're wording for Daphne's notes. How about that you forward the recommendation as described? As described.

There you go.

Second. All right. Do a roll call.

Mr. Huff?

Yes.

Mr. Kuckner? Yes. Mr. Lester?

No. No.

Mr. Robertson? Mr. Smith?

Yes.

Mr. Soeson?

Yes.

Mr. Gordon?

Abstain.

Mr. Chamberlain, let the record reflect, we have four yeas and one nay, and one abstain.

Okay, so moved. all right thank you so good job guys yeah good discussion thank you that there was a lot of discussion when and mr. Commissioner Gordon will take that to the board as well to let them know you guys have done a ton of lifting thank you yeah okay so we're gonna take a break for lunch now so I need a motion to take a break for lunch how long should we Half hour. Half hour. 30 minutes.

Is that enough?

Let's take a 30 minute, get a motion for a 30 minute break for lunch.

I'll make a motion we break for lunch. Second. 30 minute.

All right. All in favor?

Aye. Aye.

All right. Break. OK. We're back in session. And I want to make a meeting that we close the meeting. Motion. A motion that we close the meeting so that we can consult with counsel to obtain some legal advice.

I'll second that.

Roll call? All in favor?

Aye.

Okay, we're back in session.

So just a... We'll actually have you make a motion to reopen.

I'm sorry, yeah. I want to make a motion to reopen our Planning and Zoning Commission meeting of July 21st, 2026. I'll second.

Roll call?

No. All in favor?

Aye. Okay. All right.

Now we're back in session. So let me just make a slight comment about what we took a break to obtain some legal advice. Lots of notes were taken and those notes will be uploaded to the website as soon as possible so there you'll be able to go onto the website and see what was talked about and then for our next public meeting we'll have a little discussion about it as well so anyway so moving on to item number 12 The deferral code changes. Retirement homes and villages. Review and recommendations. So yes, we are making a recommendation at the end of this session on to the Board of County Commissioners. We've been going through quite a bit of reading and writing and brain teasing and history lessons and all that kind of stuff with this rewrite or this new code. So today we got to get it done, guys. And with that, I'll turn it over to Daphne to lead us through this home stretch here.

All right. Thank you. So I'm going to go through a presentation that's going to try to take a pretty weighty, voluminous set of text amendments and distill it down to some key decision points that I think will help then at the tail end of our discussion in going through the actual text itself. So hopefully that'll help get the juices flowing, give you a little bit of context. But before we really get into that, I do want to almost take a little bit of a step back to kind of frame the discussion about text amendments in terms of the way in which the zoning ordinance serves as an implementing tool of our comprehensive and master plans. So we always have to make sure that the zoning is implementing our plans. And in some cases, the plans make very specific references to how that should The Freedom Plan, which is particularly of concern with respect to these text amendments related to the deferrals, actually has quite a bit to say on some of the topics that we've been talking about. So I wanted to put that out there as context for our discussion because I think in some cases, some of our outstanding questions need to look back to what the Freedom Plan says. So I'm going to go through a few of those points. We'll touch on some of the fundamental questions that were kind of left open in previous discussions specifically related to the question of density, the question of variety of housing, and some of these essential site characteristics that we want to make sure are provided in age-restricted housing, and then we'll get into the actual details of the code. So very quickly, I've got about three or four slides here that pull out some excerpts from the Freedom Community Comprehensive Plan. The first one is found in the element one, entitled From Freedom's Past to Freedom's Future. And this is a few points from the summary of recommendations that you can find on page three of that document. It generally talks about the need to accommodate a variety of housing types and densities while also maintaining the character of the existing communities. And you can see here a few of the things that are emphasized in that broader gist of things. When we get to the housing section, element five, housing, we have some specific language that talks about Um, senior housing. So, um, in the housing needs section on page 59, it talks about the fact that, um, as. The demographic called out here is specifically baby boomers, but this probably applies across the board. Um, as people age into the, um, senior popular population, uh, There may be a need or demand for different housing types as people age, and a few of those are called out specifically. So moving from their single-family homes on large lots into smaller attached or detached homes such as villas, townhomes, apartment-style living communities, retirement age-restricted communities, in-law apartments, or townhomes on smaller lots. So this was noted as a need in the housing section. Also in that housing chapter, there is a recommendation or there was a note to look at the zoning and subdivision codes which currently allow for a limited variety of housing types and development patterns to serve a diverse population.

The actual recommendations from that chapter

appear on page 66. And I know the text here is small, but there are quite a few that touch on housing and this question of housing density and housing types. So there are several recommendations related to reviewing what variety of housing types are provided. and accommodating differing densities within our designated growth area. There is talk about providing well-designed communities with diverse housing types and onsite amenities, providing housing across the board for residents at all stages of life. and accommodating infill development in character with the existing homes. So these are the recommendations in the Freedom Community Comprehensive Plan that touch on some of the things that we've been talking about here. Also in that plan at the back in Appendix D is the designated land use definitions. And These are the drivers for our zoning code. You see here residential medium density, which is generally equated with our 20,000 zoning district. has specific language about the three and a half dwelling units per acre. So our zoning code currently aligns with that definition in allowing that density for age-restricted communities. So all of this is to say that the challenge before you is to take this language from the Freedom Community Comprehensive Plan. And I should note that when that plan was adopted, the County Master Plan land use designations were amended to match up. So it also relates to the County Master Plan. But the challenge is that this plan expresses a desire for a variety of housing types and densities while also expressing a desire to respect the character of existing communities. So our challenge is how to allow for that variety of housing that the plan envisions while ensuring that new development does not fundamentally change community character. This is the beauty of plans. They are not black and white. They allow for a whole lot of flexibility. And your job is to kind of find that balance in terms of what sometimes can be competing goods or competing good objectives. So we want housing variety. but we also want to maintain the character of existing communities. So I think that question has been really acutely brought forward in some of these discussions that we've been having related to age-restricted housing. So with that framework in mind, I'd like to dive into what we think are a few of the fundamental questions that we'd like to find your preferences for before diving into the nitty gritty of the code, because there's a lot of text there. And we'll start with the question of density. So the Freedom Community Conference Plan and the Master Plan both define the density for age-restricted communities in residential medium density as not to exceed 3.5 units per acre. And our zoning code reflects that. However, density for age-restricted communities and homes is not defined for residential high density, which is our R10,000 or R7,500 or any commercial areas. So the first question that we have up here for discussion is whether there should be a density defined for age-restricted communities in the R10 and R7,500 and the C1 and C2 districts? And if so, what? For reference, the plan defines the land use designation residential high density as ranging from four to six units per acre. So one option may be to take that six units per acre as your density in those zoning districts. or anything in between or whatever you would like to suggest. As I said, it's not defined at this point. And then the second question, you can choose to pick them up in whichever order you want, is whether the age-restricted density bonus should be given by right or should be tied to providing something. And if you say it should be tied to providing something, the natural follow on question will be what? Right now, based on the zoning ordinance and the language in the plan, there is nothing that you have to provide, no minimum standards that you have to meet. in order to receive the 3 1⁄2 dwelling units per acre other than the basic requirements of an age-restricted community. So let's start the discussion on density with those questions, and that will help us probably when we get into the actual details of the code. It'll help us work through some of those sections.

Can we start with the easier one, as I see it, the commercial? Sure.

Because we're limited in what we're seeing in terms of what's coming through with land submittals and things like that in the commercial district, commercial zone. And we have one currently going up down in Freedom. Oh gosh, I forget the name of the development.

Legends at Lures.

Yeah, Mr. Mangione's project. And so we really don't have a whole lot of reference points to point to, saying, oh, that's, you know, our experience is this. Well, there is no experience with any of that. But he was in the meeting we had last week and the week before, he was expressing that if you're going to make it, we need something for commercial. If you're going to do something, make it 20 an acre. I think he was referring to that's what Howard County has. So I I just throw that out there as a starting point is is 20. Good, bad, ugly. I mean, it works in Howard County for these, you know, higher multilevel housing units and stuff like that. So should it work? Could it work in Carroll County? Anybody?

In the past, we've had stuff done on commercial, correct?

Yes.

And it was case by case because there wasn't a restriction, so.

Yes, so to clarify, we're talking about two different uses. We're talking about communities and we're talking about homes, right? The single family detached kind of concept. And we're talking about homes, the multifamily. So what Mr. Mangione is proposing is the home. So the density that Daphne is talking about here is more on the community side. So we're not quite at talking about Mr. Mangione's situation just yet because While it's a similar question, the density related to a community and the density related to a home in the R10, R75 and C1 and C2 districts are not set. That's for you as the Planning Commission to agree to, right? So this first question is specific to the communities. and the fact that we don't have that density set for these zoning districts. Now if you want an example, the project you heard this morning is split zoned between our 10 and C one. So it does sort of apply to this morning and the density that was established, there wasn't a cap that they were working within. They looked at the property and the layout they wanted and they came up with 31 units on that, that property. And then they brought that before you all to agree to the density. but there was not some metric that said thou shalt be allowed to have whatever number, right? So both from the perspective of the C1 zoning and from the perspective of the R10, there was no density requirement there that they had to meet. It was up to you all to agree to what they proposed. And that's really our first initial question is on communities in that scenario. So using the project this morning, should there be a density that they are capped at? Now, just to remind you of the metrics of that project, it's about six and a half acres. What we're recommending, and we came up with six, because our 75 is 5.8 units per acre, so six is a good number. But it's totally up for discussion what that number may be. But if you take six units per acre times the six and a half, you're over 36 units, right? And they're proposing 31. Is that a realistic number? I'd say it's in the ballpark. But again, it's totally up for your discussion.

Thoughts?

Well, if we were... If we were, I think a decent starting point would be our 7,500 would be somewhere like six to eight units. Our 10,000 would be six units, and our 20,000 would be the three and a half. So if you kind of write those out, you know, guys, you know, 7,500, just, you know, put it on a piece of paper for you so you can look at it. $7,500 would be, again, I'm thinking eight units. Our 10 would be six. Our 20,000 would be three and a half. Does that make sense to anybody?

Yes.

That makes, you're right. It doesn't give. your answer to the C, the commercial district. That's okay. I do think there ought to be a cap on that at some point, but the way it's written right now, it allows us to say, wow, that's a lot. I'm more concerned with the R10, R7500, but I don't mean to disregard what you're saying.

Got you.

I think you guys are asking for both.

Yeah, I think later in the presentation we get into the homes discussion, so the Mangione project. But for right now, we're focusing strictly on community.

Okay. And once again, our 7,500 is actually 5.8 units per acre. Yes, that's 5.8 units per acre. And 10,000 is 4.3?

Yeah.

Does it make sense?

So let me just make sure I'm understanding. So you're saying R10 at six dwelling units per acre, R7500 at eight dwelling units per acre, C1 and C2 stay as planning commission discretion?

Yes.

Okay.

And our 20 was 3 1⁄2. Yeah. Right.

Wow.

You say, wow. What was that?

Well, I just want us to make sure that we understand that the idea of the initial freedom plan was to try to stay consistent with the neighborhoods. I hear you. I know. I know. I just feel like we're not doing a service to the people in those neighborhoods if we don't put some sort of cap at some point between the R10 and the R20. The R75 really worries me.

You're saying eight's too many?

I think it's a real disruption to the neighborhood.

I'm just trying to get the conversation started.

What I mean disruption, I'm talking about roads, services, everything that the citizens down there have expected because there was a freedom plan that laid a lot of that out. So at what point do we allow that disruption to continue? And, you know, I'm willing to go, you know, I think there's compromise in everything. That's what life is. And it just seems like the R75 really starts to stack it on. I'm concerned about that. So I might as well lay it out the way it is.

I thought we saw... earlier that our 7,500 was out, that our 10,000 would be the minimum. But, you know, I realize we're building a lot of this on one bed, Apple, and it's spooling some of our thoughts for everything else. I think there are guardrails that the county themselves have for guidelines where things need to be changed a little and that's probably a different conversation. But for instance, the fire chief, in the local jurisdictions looking at it more than just when the initial one came. I mean, if there's a pretty significant change, even if the zoning didn't change, I think it's probably smart to send it there. But if we're relying on an email address, my thought goes to the You know, many emails we probably all get today. Some go into spam, some go into junk, and some go into the cyber world, whatever that is.

Janice, I don't want to hang every one of these projects on what the fire department says. I think we set those guidelines, and then they come in. I mean, we're saying maybe we don't like the R7500 or whatever, but we're going to depend on the fire department to tell us that's not right. We're not doing our job if we're doing that.

Well, you're talking about the notification.

Correct. But the actual. No, we actually set the guidelines here.

Right.

And then the other agencies.

Well, we set the recommendations here. Exactly.

Yeah, we're gonna set the recommendations and then the process of how they go through their yay or nay.

Right, so the county has their recommendations, their guidelines, what they do. Right.

So back to the numbers. And even Janice raises the point, should 7,500 even be included in this, right? Right. Because currently it's not.

I'm looking. Is there really that much R7500 in the Freedom area? Like none? No. There's not much. Not at all.

I mean, we're splitting hairs over something that's, I mean, we probably ought to codify it, but as soon as we say don't worry about it, something will come forward.

No, I mean, it's got guidelines to begin with, 5.8. 5.8 and 4.3.

Yep. Yep.

And once again, it's our recommendation to the county commissioners. That's right.

That's right. Beat themselves up over again. I mean, and the way I the way I kind of came up with the numbers that I was suggesting was, you know, Under normal density, R20, you would basically be getting two units per acre, right? So we're saying three and a half. So you're basically, again, it's not necessarily a multiple. So if you say if R10 is getting four per acre, we're now saying six. That's It's two additional units rather than one and a half additional units. So that's that's how I kind of in my mind rationalized it. I'm not saying it's right, but that's that's how I was coming up with just making it up. Then there's no and I'm sorry, there's no rationale. It's just me. so sketching something on paper say it so r20 what what 3.5 okay which is what it is and then the r10 would be six is what i'm suggesting but again that's just me so r10 what is it currently it's three and a half four point three yeah four point three now yeah that would be four point three yeah

So you're getting a little bit of a bonus.

Yeah.

With six.

I like that. You cool with it?

So am I.

And then R7500, do we not want to address it, or do you just want to leave it at six? Are we saying that, Ralph, are you saying from a community preservation standpoint, neighborhood preservation, you're thinking six is about as high of a density as we should go?

Certainly wouldn't want it anymore. No way.

Okay. Not for homes. Not for homes or no. I'm in on that. Absolutely not. So we flatten it out at six. Six. Very good.

Three and a half and six. Commercial is still for the Planning Commission to approve.

Yeah, we're going to have to do that. I mean, otherwise would be... out of the realm of sanity, maybe, right now.

Well, we do have height restrictions now. We do. Oh, absolutely. So there is a limit to the height, which is good. Right. They're your guardrails. That's your guardrail. Exactly, Janice. But yeah, OK.

It works.

OK.

OK, next question is whether you feel the age restricted. Density bonus should be given by right or be tide to providing something.

And if I could, just to set the stage a little bit on the discussion. In a little while, we're going to be talking through all of the requirements that at a base level, this development model, which is a community that's owned by one entity and their condominiums on it, right? The base requirements, things related to the widths of roads, the amount of parking and so on. regardless as to whether a developer takes advantage of the density bonus or not, right, we set a ceiling, they can go up to that ceiling, they're going to have to meet those basic requirements. So the question that we have for you all is, in order to get that hit, come close to that ceiling or hit that ceiling of the three and a half units per acre for R20, for example, is there something above and beyond the basic requirements that we're going to be talking about in a little bit that are going to be the basic requirements for an age restricted community.

Yes. I mean, it's not my right. There should be something else because, guys, we've talked about amenities being driven by the marketplace and all this, and it is market-driven. I want to go back to the gold standard. I'm more laissez-faire than – but I'm here on a – on a commission and we're tasked with protecting communities and property values and predictable outcomes and all those kinds of things. That being the case, since we're giving someone a bonus, if we build these communities and they don't have some services on site, the county has to provide them. We do as a county. We're inviting people into our community. So senior centers, they got to be staffed. So I'm just saying, and not only that, we do have for every person who says, I don't want HOA fees, I don't want this, I don't want that. We also have people saying, I'll look at what you have. this is not what I want, I'm out of here. I would have stayed if you had it, but you don't, so I'm not. And so I think we want to err to the side of having nice communities that can be contained. You don't have to leave. If you want to walk, you can. If you have a dog, you can walk the dog. You don't have to walk in the middle of the street because people are parking on the sidewalk. I think we want amenities. What that amenity package looks like, again, I don't think we have to tell somebody, but I think there ought to be something in it for the community if we're giving this bonus density.

Well, I think we need to set some sort of a standard that we don't want to go below. And we've talked about all the ills, so... I don't think we want to see a community where you walk out your front door and there's a stormwater pond. You look up the street, there's a stormwater pond, and everybody says that's open space. We don't want that. To me, not having things like that is an amenity. It doesn't have to be complicated.

We aren't. That is what the rules are.

That's what they say. Yeah, but the people are complaining about that already that are living in these communities and saying, I didn't think this was going to be. So is it incumbent on us to make that so it doesn't happen like that again and again and again?

You know, some guardrails. I mean, for instance, one of the notions I have in my head is a certain, if we're going to end up with these stormwater management features being a part of the open space some of them need to be covered some of them need to be treated in a certain way like you're saying to where it's i don't know that it has to have a water feature in a fountain or anything like that but it needs to be maybe it needs to be underground peter we saw one this morning where the builder is going to provide a nice long walkway for people to walk on that's a great thing

They've opened up things a little bit. We're seeing things that to me are looking a little bit better. I just think we have to put those guardrails up so that we have those things moving forward. I'm not talking about swimming pools and pickleball courts and all the stuff that I don't even know what they are. I'm talking about just good to blend to the community. Exactly. I hear what I'm seeing is not blending to the community and making the community look better.

So we're saying tied to something, but we should be tied. We don't know what something is.

Yeah, well, that that puts a lot of pressure on us.

So we're recommending that we're recommending. So, you know, some of the basics, I think, and age-restricted communities are a meeting area for the community. And, you know, a room for folks to go play cards or have their bridge club meeting or, you know.

And we touched on this earlier when we said when a project comes in early, the earlier we know about it, the more we can help work with the builder to say, you know, don't come in here with something like we've seen in the past. Come in here with better.

Right.

And so do we have to put something down that shows that I, you know, I don't know.

I mean, it really depends on the size of the community. Well, there's going to be that's the biggest thing. Yeah. I said, if you if you just have small ones, I mean, you don't like

They said multiple times, I mean, the amenities don't small in this morning, Matt, and we saw a nice big walking trail is going to be put in there. That's why I said there was an amenity right off the bat.

I don't think we should dictate what the amenities are. Yeah, I agree. I just think that's a market driven thing. And like I said last meeting, you know, if there's a need in the market for you know an executive level 55 and over community with pickleball pools you know whatever uh there you can have that uh and and present it that way if you don't want that and you want to maintain affordable housing because these things drive up costs if you want to make it more affordable then you have no amenities or a walk a path instead of all this other You know. Infrastructure. Affordable is just a word.

That's all it is. I knew it is. It's just a word. It has nothing to do with it.

What's affordable to me is not affordable to you.

And it's kind of funny that we're saying, you know, we think we seniors want all of these things, but if you think about your children as they grew up and you may have had everything in your neighborhood for them. They had their friends and all of a sudden they're like, well, I don't want to play with them. I want to go play with my other friends because they have a better pool. They have a bigger house. You know, seniors are looking at, just even like in Eldersburg, Merritt offers a huge opportunity for seniors to come and participate in water aerobics and a lot of different things. There's a cost associated with it. But often they're meeting up with friends outside of their neighborhood because they aren't really that close with somebody there. So I think I think it's good to say, you know, maybe amenities should be there, but I don't think we can say what. I agree.

So we're saying it's— I think some people here are missing the point. I'm not talking about—I call the little things, like the swim pool and the pickleball court. I'm talking about how that community looks. Open areas, something that's healthy for people. I could care less about all the other stuff. I just want to see a community that is wide open, looks like there's room for people to stretch their legs a little bit. That's fairly basic. That is a big amenity, but it's fairly basic. And we're not getting it. We're not getting it. So there's where my biggest concern is. I could care less about all the other little things, whether you have a place for the dog to crap or something like that. I don't care about that.

You've got to pick it up. Brent, we're into definitions now.

Yeah.

So to your point, we do want, it's not by right. We do want amenities. It's not by right. But it's not right. You don't get density by right.

Okay. So one of the things that maybe this is a good question to circle back around to once we're finished with our discussions, because like Chris was mentioning, we're going to be looking at setting sort of a baseline, right?

Right.

Maybe let's get to that baseline and then come back to this question to say, What else would we want to encourage or incentivize by giving a density bonus? Yeah. So let's come back to this. It can be that simple.

Table number two. Yeah, it's going to be that simple. Yep. Okay.

All right, the second fundamental question that we seem to have been talking about is this question of housing variety. And I mentioned the excerpt from the Freedom Community Comprehensive Plan that notes a few different typologies that may be attractive to people who are looking to downsize, who don't want a yard to take care of, who want to be able to have their streets plowed by management company, what have you. So the two questions when it comes to housing variety relate to what's appropriate in specific zoning districts, which typologies are appropriate in different zoning districts, and then whether a variety of housing types should be required. And if so, where? And is there a threshold in which that requirement kicks in? So let's talk about the first question here. I've given you a... admittedly AI generated image of different housing types. I just wanted to help you kind of visualize this, right? So what you have here is a one acre plot of land and different housing types on that same piece of land. So starting at the upper left and making a way around, we have a single family detached. You have a duplex, so taking up maybe a little bit more square footage, but essentially the same kind of footprint, but two houses. You have a triplex, or a triple, which is going to increase the size of that actual building, but still maintain some space. some yard space around there. Same thing with the fourplex or the quad. This is shown as a two level. You also can have single level quads, which you often will find in age restricted communities. On the second level down, you have townhomes. And I do just want to note that our zoning definition, the definition of our zoning code for townhomes covers, it encompasses both the traditional townhome that you see there, as well as something like the fourplex or the triplex. So we don't have a separate definition for those. They are covered under our definition for townhomes. Then you have something that has been talked about a lot recently. We don't see a whole lot of them, but it's this idea of a cottage cluster. So these are very small detached units. They're usually around the 1,200 square foot size. So it allows for independent units clustered around kind of a central green space. And that's four units on one acre. And then you have something like a small apartment building, which is getting at really more of a age-restricted home, something like that, what's proposed at Legends of Lures. A little bit smaller than that.

Isn't the cottage cluster something that you'd see more in Fairhaven or Carol Lutheran? Isn't that kind of how they position those smaller homes?

Yeah, both of them.

It may be, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.