Planning and Zoning Commission - Regular Meeting

I'd like to call to order tonight the uh public hearing for Hempstead Planning and Zoning Commission. Today is Wednesday, January 28th, 2026. It's 7:00 p.m. Uh will you call the meeting to order, please, Jim? Roll call. Uh Sharon Callahan here. Luke is not here. Charlie Overmmy here. Deborah Painter here. Barbar

here. All persons are reminded that this session is being recorded on tape is required by law for the preservation of records and are asked when providing comment to give their name and address. All persons in attendance are requested to print their name and address and affiliation on the sign-in sheet. Tonight's discussion order of hearing discussion of the 2024 Carol County Water Resources Element draft. And so basically this public hearing is just for us to receive any public comments that are related to the town of Hamstead's portion of the draft water resources element which Carol County has put together. Um it's currently under the 60-day review. Um so we're here this public hearing to accept any verbal or written comments.

Nora Nora, do you have anything? And so, and if we got any, we would forward them on to Carol County, but it doesn't look very promising. It does not. Yeah. Well, there's really no discussion we need to do. We reviewed it and we approved it last July. So, we can then have a motion then to close the public hearing. So, moved. May I have a second? Second. All those in favor? I I public hearing closed. Thank you. Hamstead planning and zoning regular meeting monthly meeting Wednesday, January 28th, 2026. Will you call that meeting uh roll call please?

Sharon Callahan here. Luke Coner is not here. Charlie here. Deborah Painter here. Or Jagger here. Thank you. Um again all persons reminded this session is being recorded on tape as required by law for preservation of records and are asked when providing comment to give their name and address and all persons in attendance are required or requested rather to print their name and address and affiliation on the sign-in sheet. First on the agenda minutes approval December 17, 2025 regular commission meeting. May I have a motion please? Motion to approve. May I have a second? Second.

Uh any discussion? All those in favor? So approved. Uh zoning administrator update next.

It's going to be a quick one. Really the only thing um on the water system modernization and centralization project. Uh we are rolling along now. Um tomorrow we're going to have the pre-construction meeting for the construction of the water treatment plants. Um, in attendance at that meeting will be MDE, uh, Koego, who will be our contractor building the the sites, HDR and GMBB, the two engineers we hired to work on the project, RK&NK, who will be our inspector on the project, Green Ridge Environmental, who will be the MDE inspector on the com on the project. Carol County will also have their own inspectors here. And then we also town staff will all be in attendance and and involved in this meeting. Uh everything goes well tomorrow, we plan to issue the notice to proceed on Monday to Kanoago and RK at which point they will then start submitting. They have to basically do submitts of every part that they're going to use in this project. And it's got to be approved to make sure that it's BABA, which means it's built in America and bought in America. And um we're hoping that once we get through that process, we can start moving some dirt and uh break ground in April. On the other side of the project, as far as the water manes, they are they were rolling right along. Um they finished task one, two, and three. The last one being Shiloh, Panther, and Dakota. Um they had planned on Monday starting tasks four and five simultaneously. the last two which are Shiloh Road going east um and then up Wellisley Court and that's task four. Task five is uh a small section on lower Beckleysville Road that goes from the existing pump house down to the corner of Chief Sites

Park where the new water treatment plant will go. Um snow has held them up some. So, we're hoping we get a little 30°ree thaw maybe next week and they can start getting back out there.

Um, they plan to have the pipeline project completed by late May. So, which would be great. Uh, the timeline on the water treatment plants is just under two years. So, we're looking at uh late winter, early spring of 2028 for that. um TSC, they've resubmitted their um their plan again to the county. Um if you haven't picked them up yet, there's revised plans for the members of the commission in their mailboxes. Also back there is a copy of the uh the guide to town and county planning process which uh Lou requested last week or last month. Um that's really about it what's going on that um as far as planning. That's it. Okay, any questions, comments? Okay, then we'll move ahead. Uh, next is a review of Hamstead information for the 2025 Carol County Department of Planning annual report and you all have a copy of that?

Yes. So, basically this is our annual report. What we do is we go through and uh look at all the planning and zoning meetings from the last year and everything that we did here. Uh me and Christina both do that. And then we also look at town council um agendas and minutes to see if we anything in there had to do with the planning. As you see, um it was fairly quiet year as far as um any development in town, as far as finishing any development in town. So, there's anything that you see that um you think we should add, we can do that. stuff like tractor supply and all that stuff is not on here.

It it doesn't go on here until the final plan is approved.

Yeah. So, some of the things that we did include on it. Um just Jim and I are spinning our wheels about what happened recently. So, we had the uh new residential developmental mime drive was approved the prior year. So, that's why you don't see it on here. Um the PAS project that was the only thing that received final approval on the non-residential side. Um we had the Narin property that annexed in last year that we included um up at 1705 North Main. And then um the only other thing we included Lime Drive the road because it was paved this year although it is a private drive. It's not a town drive, but just for planning purposes and 911 calls, we wanted to make sure that they updated their maps to include it.

Um, so other than that, we didn't have any updates. Just a quick question, not really terribly relevant to this, but the NA property restricted industrial. So, it's not being used as a residential. It is. Um, but it was previously zoned as industrial in the county. It's surrounded by industrial.

Okay. So, we were like, just keep it industrial. Um, if the house goes away, then it could fold into one of the existing properties or have a industrial use. And [clears throat] when we do annexations, I know that they don't come to planning zoning, but they get reviewed by Carol County Department of Planning and the state department of planning. And they both looked at that and that zoning, and they said that's fine. Okay. Any other comments? Okay.

So, if everyone's okay with it, basically um you basically just need a motion to approve the Hamstead information in this in the PL annual Carol County planning report. If you'd like to review it for a month, you can do that. Um but it's is it necessary for you guys to review? I think it was pretty concise. I think we could go ahead. So, what we need then is a motion for the Hamstead 2025 Carol County Department, I'm sorry, of planning annual report. May I have a motion, please? Motion to approve. May I have a second? Second. Any discussion? All those in favor? I. Okay. So, approved. Is there a second approval you need, Jim?

That's it. Okay. Uh let's move on then to review and recommendation of ordinance 558 to council for adoption. Have you had a chance to review that? So I don't know. I hope everyone read that briefing paper. Yep. Mhm. Um it's pretty cut and dry. Um, so when any development subdivision of land comes through the town, whether it's three houses or 293 houses, it goes through the same process, right?

Which basically is a ninestep at least ninemonth process. Um, Carol County, that's what they do for most of their subdivisions with the exception of three or less. And you can basically read their definition there. subdivision of less than no more than three lots where basically including the remainder that's but does not create involve or is not continuous to in the path of a planned new road street or highway. So basically we just want to follow that process the way it is now. It can go through Carol County's process in two months, three months, uh where it would take a developer, someone here, some an owner, land owner nine months to get it through us. And basically there's no new roads, there's very minor storm water, there's no extension of any min major utilities. Um it's basically just three houses and of course, you know, town staff will do what we always do. We review it um for setbacks, zoning districts, um things along those lines. Make sure that they do the correct improvements that's in the code, but that's it.

So, anything three or less, we're basically just turning it over to the county for their process. Yeah. Right. I mean, besides the zoning and the setbacks and stuff like that, right? And what it'll do is at the end once the final has been approved by the county and the town, um, then it would go basically to Sharon. Sharon would be involved and see the plan as chairperson and then Sharon would either sign off on the plan or say, "No, I think this needs to come to the full commission depending on what what it is." Yeah. Right. So, it takes a nine-month process and drops it to three months. Possibly two. Two or three. Okay. Mhm.

Yeah. Because not only when they submit a minor subdivision plan to the county, they can give concept and pre and um preliminary where we do it in two steps. That's one plan that goes in for a minor subdivision. Then at the same time, they can actually submit their final. So, they're reviewing everything at one time and they can just blow right through it. What was the spark that caused this to happen? Now, we have one that's coming into the works. and um it just doesn't make sense to me. Many other sub many other um municipalities in Carol County already do it this way. So,

and actually when we started to look into it, we found that we define a minor subdivision in our code, but we don't [snorts] have a process for it. So I felt like something was missing in the code where it's like, oh, we have a major and a minor, but we only have steps for one way instead of, you know, making it that you have major development that takes a lot of steps and a minor one that that takes less.

Any other discussion? Thank you, by the way. Thank you. Mhm. If there's no other discussion, so we need a recommendation for adoption of ordinance 558. Basically, you need a you need a motion to recommend ordinance 558 to council for adoption for adoption. Okay. So So you said that very well, Mr. Jim. So So moved. So moved. Uh second, second. All those in favor? I. And no further discussion. So approved. Thank you. Um and again so approved for council for adoption. Yes. Uh Carol County Department of Planning update.

So we actually didn't receive anything from the county this time. Um I don't know where the weather um you know I know they were out of the office a couple of days. Um but as soon as she sends it over I'll make sure that you are didn't receive anything from them this time. Carol County Department of Planning is also very understaffed right now. I mean, Andrew left and a few other people left, so I know that they're all doing multiple tasks. Okay. Is there any other business? The only thing I'd like to add um is that I am very thankful for the wonderful job that Carol our Hamstead um public works

public works department, thank you, has done such a wonderful job uh cleaning our sidewalks and streets or not sidewalks, I forgive me. cleaning our streets and um making these trees passable in this tremendous amount of snow and ice that we've had. Everybody in my little neighborhood has commented to me how happy they were with how this was been handled and uh so I just want to go on record to say thank you. I'm much appreciated. I agree 100%. Yeah. I mean it was nice having all the cars off the street so they could it would be easier for them. And honestly, I need we need to say thank you to the residents of Hamstead for moving their cars Yes.

off their streets because they made it a lot easier. Um it it was very very good and hopefully we can do that every time we were expecting a major snow. I was hoping I get hoping that we don't have any so I didn't have to shovel like who wants to park. No, I just I was amazed at watching them um how they worked, how careful they were, and on a culde-sac that's not easy to to do.

And fortunately, everybody was off the culdesac except for two cars parked at the end closer to Ralph Avenue. But they still did an incredible job getting around them. And uh I'm I was just thrilled. I was very happy when I left for work yesterday. I was amazed as I went up Main Street because that's the way I went to Westminster because it's a safer ride than the back roads I normally take. So, thank you. I will make sure to pass the everyone's words on. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Well, if there's no public comment because there is no public except that darling little girl. [laughter] So, may we have then a motion to adjurnn? To adjourn. May I have a second? Seconded. All those in favor?

I. So approved. Thank you. Thank you.